That Birthday Party

COVID

My brother's birthday party turned out to be quite an event.  You may recall both Jan and I attended.  four days later my brother sent us a text message to advise his eldest son, his (son's) wife and three daughters had all tested positive for covid.  A week on my brother and sister in law are positive along with half of the party attendees.  Jan and I tested ourselves.  We are negative!  But have stayed at home for seven days just in case. 

Windows 11

The self-enforced isolation has given me time to upgrade the laptop to Windows 11.  It turned out to be less complicated than the upgrade from Windows 8 to 10.  I've also been able to remove all the 'bloatware' and unnecessary Microsoft services and apps.  I still have the 'Classic Menu' application running which means Windows 11 looks like Windows XP.  Do I notice any difference in performance since upgrading?  NO!  The only thing that appears to have changed is Windows 11 has the wifi drivers to make the laptop onboard wifi adapter work.

Seniors Moment

I went for a bike ride yesterday after selecting a route that kept me away from others.  It was a hot, dry and very sunny day.  After recently having some skin cancers cut out I'm even more conscious of the need to 'Slip, Slop, Slap and Slide'.  I carefully applied sunblock to my face, arms and the tops of my ears.  Whilst placing the little container of cream back down I noticed the tube of 50+ sunblock cream beside it.  That's when I realised I'd had a 'seniors moment' and liberally applied some of my cycling 'Genuine Aussie Butt Cream' to my face!  Won't be much use as a sunblock but it might smooth out the wrinkles.

One observation during the ride was the arrival of the circus at our local shopping centre.

Two large tents which appear to be manufactured from vinyl rather than canvas.

"The Great Moscow Circus"

It would have to be decades since this circus left Russia… If ever!  Looking at the information in this article it appears the circus arrived from NZ in 2009 and it is based in Queensland. 

Thirty years ago I remember we took our three children to "The Great 3 Ring American Circus" which was touring New Zealand after being in Australia for decades.  The days of a circus containing elephants, lions and tigers are long gone.  More likely to be dogs, ponies, acrobats and clowns.

Solar Panel Cleaning

Cleaning the solar panels does not appear to have made much difference to their performance producing approximately 40kWh daily.  We consume approximately 30kWh daily sending the surplus back to the network.  However some of our consumption is at night where we are obviously purchasing electricity.  What we sell to the network a $0.07kW covers the cost of what we purchase at $0.37kW.    However we can't produce enough surplus electricity to cover the daily $1 supply change.