So today Mrs Speech and I went for another of our walks - we were out about two hours. The rain threatened (but that's all it does - we have had .2mm rain in two months) but didn't break on us, which was nice. In fact, the monstrous thick cumulonimbus clouds thinned above our house by the time we returned, and I ended up with a sunburned face.

We actually had a little nature hike thing going on, walking the length of the section of the bikeway that runs through our area, through the bushland which swallows it up. We came across a scrub turkey, scratching at a dirt hill as though foraging for food (maybe it has young somewhere near? It is spring here after all). Could be the same one we saw the other day. One day we'll catch it. Din-dins!

Also, about thirty minutes into our walk, Mrs Speech clutched my hand in a grip of cold icy fear, and I stopped in my tracks, and looked at a massive lizard which lay on the stump of an overturned tree. They're incredibly skittish and this one moved as we passed. I managed to tip toe close and get some pictures though. Then he skittered away. He was just getting some sun I guess.


Today we began gearing up for Mrs Speech's new Etsy shop - Pink Scissor Designs - which she will use to sell her crafty creations. We've not put much up yet - just her Jesse Tree Ornaments, but more is to come. I personally am excited by Christmas already and the Jesse Tree Ornaments are putting me even more in that frame of mind. We took some photos today of what she has done, and broke out our smaller Christmas tree to hang them on.

We've put our Christmas tree up in September.

We got an interesting call today. There's a phenomenon lately here in Australia, maybe in some other western countries, where the Indians call you, and telling you they're calling from "Windows Technical Department". The line's always really shabby, it's like they're on a walkie talkie from Big W. I've never been too far with them but I read a couple years ago that their thing is to get you to look at a certain folder in Windows on your computer. Then, they tut-tut while they tell you that they can see you have lots of malware installed on your computer, and to clean it, please go to xyz website where of course, you can download a program to get rid of all your nasty malware.

What you download puts malware on your computer.

Usually I laugh uproariously at them until they hang up but this time I had a little fun. I asked the woman on the phone if she could hang on. She said yes and I dumped the phone in the next room and made a point to forget about it.

Five minutes later I put the phone to my ear and she was still there. Some twenty minutes later Mrs Speech hung the phone up. Mrs Speech didn't seem all that happy with me, but I say anyone who cold-calls you, attempts to defraud you out of your computer security and gives you a virus, while treating you like an idiot who just fell out of that tree over there, the really big one...gets what they ask for.

That was our day!