Tamlyn Dreaver

I forgot I was sitting on the edge of my seat because there was a cat behind me. There is no longer a cat behind me, but a rather offended one down the hallway.

That is scary!

I thought I disliked the misleading mobile game ads, but having now been getting a slew of snake oil ads, I'll take the game ones. The most they'll do is irritate someone who goes to download a game and discovers it's nothing like the ad. Snake oil ones are trying to kill people :(

(If that DM was from you, I cannot see it, sorry! Australian, Bluesky locked me out of my inbox just in case it became affected by the social media laws, and its verification process has already refused me once and made itself too much effort.

If it was not you, sorry, whoever it was haha)

In a possibly silly question, is this a replacement for the Grinder newsletter? Or does it give additional information?

...my reading journal suddenly feels inadequate.

Close up of very non-professionally painted nails. Black background with splodges of colour for fireworks on each nail. Uneven but gives the right effect.

I tried to make my nails New Year's-y. Messy, but not so bad I felt the need to wipe them clean.

*looks at March 2024 pub date of that last one* Or, um, longer.

Thinking about changing browsers means looking at some of my older tabs and actually reading the stories I opened up to read 'soon' probably at least a year ago >>

Given my extensive posting habits (/s) this is probably literally every word I've used in the last year.

You can have some of the heat over here in Perth, if you'd like. Please. Take it. Please.

A tabby cat's head resting on a keyboard with pretty glowing lights, and an unfortunate amount of cat hair visible between the keys. He is absolutely close enough to hit multiple keys.

He really felt I needed more spell checks and the like.

Managed to finish a jigsaw puzzle with only three major attempts at destruction by the cats (and some minor).

A black void chicken plushie with angry red eyes, a Stardew Valley animal. It is soft and squishy and adorable and slightly evil.

Then back to Melbourne for a day of PAX, for the first time in long time. I didn't take pictures, except of game names to remember them to look into/wishlist later, since that sort of thing doesn't even occur to me. But this is my new void chicken.

A waterfall over rocks, with a beautifully contrasting pink tree against the other green trees around it. I do not know the tree types, but they are probably Japanese.

Royal Botanical Gardens in Hobart. Japanese Garden.

Water in the foreground, then sandstone ruins, then forested hills. The Penitentiary is still four storeys high in some spots and is quite an imposing ruin.

The Port Arthur Historic Site from a boat. Most prominent is the Penitentiary ruins, but you can also see part of the wall, the law courts, and the hospital at the back. The cruise (part of the ticket) was a good introduction to the site.

Looking down a street of the model village, with bonsai myrtles, houses, fences, and figurines in various acts of daily life, such as the children balancing, and falling, off the fence in the foreground.

Old Hobart Town in Richmond. A very cool historical model village.

A dirty, rusty and with the beginnings of being plant covered, large old ferry against a river bank. It was blue and white once. A equally decrepit tug boat leans against it.

At Launceston, an abandoned car ferry up the River Tamar. And a small tug but our boat captain couldn't tell us about that one.

A small nose, whiskers, eyes and dark fur peeking out from under a box. He wriggled under on the other side, then came out this way to look at us.

A baby Tasmanian devil at Trowunna Wildlife Sanctuary.

It snowed on the day we left. I was delighted. It was probably a barely noticeable fall for people for whom snow is ordinary.

A lake with a backdrop of mountains. Cradle Mountain's distinct, snow-speckled shape is clear. A tongue of bush-covered land thrusts into the lake.

Glacier Rock lookout, on the walk around Dove Lake.

A close up of a very fluffy chunk of a wombat. It's nibbling grass without concern.

Wombat.

So many wombats!! Some more distance, some just chilling right by the boardwalk.

Another stunning vista. Snow in the foreground, then looking down at a curving lake, with more mountains in the background. There are light scratchings of snow on the mountains but more bushes and trees.

Marions Lookout view. Down over Dove Lake. That is my first ever snow in the foreground. Real snow, at least. It snowed once when I was a kid, but that melted before it really reached us.

Looking up the tall trunk of a tree. The other trees around stop part way up, and there's a ring of sunlight around this trunk, creating a cool effect.

Then we went on to Cradle Mountain and tried for many walks. This is an elderly King Billy Pine on the King Billy Walk (very aptly named).

Close up of bright red tulips.

A tulip farm on the north coast.

A beautiful, sunlit scene of an old volcanic plug, with a flat top and steep sides, almost surrounded by ocean except for a town-covered bridge of land. Photo is taken over fields on a hill. Every plant is vibrant green, and the ocean is intensely blue.

(Okay, not the picture sizes. Just Bluesky.)

The Nut, Stanley.

Grave stones on a hillside, shadowed by trees, grass everywhere, long abandoned.

Queenstown Pioneer Cemetery.

Tasmania was ridiculously beautiful. Everywhere you looked. I come from a very flat state, so it was also differently beautiful.

A river, framed by trees, that drops away suddenly in the picture, though you cannot otherwise see anything of the falls. Beyond it is more, smaller trees, and beyond them clouds mostly obscuring the mountains.

Russell Falls in Mount Field National Park was amazing and I did not capture it very well on camera. But the view from the top was also lovely and more capturable.

(I realised I should have resized these because the uploads are struggling. Will do that for the rest.)