Our garden always has something coming or going - during the day it's birds that are all the colours of the rainbow, and during the night it's furry creatures.  During the summer months some of those furry creatures are flying foxes having a drink of the nectar our native trees produce, but all year round we have our possum visitors.  We have 2 regulars that I know of - a small-framed ringtailed possum that's a light ginger/orange and a larger grey brushtail possum.

The little ringtailed possum lives in our garage somewhere, and comes out just after dusk.  We often see him walking up our driveway, and then once he gets to the trees - up he goes to his favourite feeding branch.  Some nights I'm not quite quick enough, and he's out before I've got the evening snacks ready - a nice bit of apple cut into possum-sized pieces.  As I walk slowly to the feed dish in the tree, the little possum will sit there and watch me intently - somehow knowing I'm there with something for him.

Last night was a real treat for me though.  Our second possum visitor - the grey one - emits has a strange warning call when other animals are nearby.  So I went out to investigate.  As I peered into the branches of the tree, the torchlight fell upon the grey one - and it didn't look right - small head, big body.  I stood there looking - trying to make sense of what I was seeing.  Then it dawned on me - the possum had a baby on its back - or joey - just like baby kangaroos are called.  The joey was a miniture version of its mother - thick fluffy grey fur, little pink nose, pointy ears and a fluffy black tail.  As the mother sat there feeding on apple and tender tree shoots - the joey crawled about on its mother's back and looked out at the world around it.  This was a real Kodak moment, but I couldn't bring myself to leave, lug out my Nikon and zoom or disturb them with camera flashes.  Maybe another night I'll grab some happy snaps of mother and baby.

Home renovations - two words that can strike terror into the hearts of some home owners - and elicit tingling shivers of glee in others.  We've been in a perpetual state of home improvements over the past 2 years, and I do have to say it becomes a rather addictive way of life.  I can definitely understand why some people buy "do-it-uppers".  Our house didn't fall into that category - but at 16 years of age - our house was in need of some major work to the bathroom due to termite damage.  So - we went all out - and had the bathroom, toilet and laundry renovated.

A big job requiring lots of different tradespeople - electrician, plumbers, tilers, waterproofer, cabinet maker, and builder.  In our current building boom - the thought of getting all of these people organized is enough to send most people grey overnight - but the builder we engaged to do the job is a master at what he does.

He had this job co-ordinated down to the hour - and was in and out in a week.  It was a week of flurry, and we had tradespeople coming and going - but we went from a tired crappy old couple of rooms to brand new everything.  This wasn't just a "touch up" job - we had everything ripped out of the 3 rooms and replaced.

We're just waiting for the finishing touches now - a classy frameless shower screen which takes about 2 weeks to have custom built.

I've had so much fun with this project - now I'm working on my husband for a kitchen renovation ... well we're all allowed to dream

I've been working on some Community Builder integration for my commercial components, and had the need for an updated version of CB.  So, off I toddled to the home of Community Builder for a download.  While I don't object to the need to register prior to downloading - I do have to ask myself why the heck do I have to fill out a questionnaire regarding my activities that then becomes publicly visible.

Having spent so many years constructing research related stuff - including questionnaires - confidentiality is at the very core of any data collection activity.  To deny that confidentiality or the choice not to fill out a questionnaire is just inviting inaccurate results not worth a damn - oh - and it's the ultimate power trip.  Fill out a questionnaire that will have the results shown on your publicly accessible profile or don't get the goodies - onya Joomlaopolis.  I think if I did that here in Australia I'd be charged with an offence under our federal privacy laws.

In our part of the world, spring is right around the corner.  Our native trees are laden with flower buds - particularly the bottle brush - so we're going to have an explosion of colour soon.  Along with the blooms we'll have our annual visitors - the mountain lorikeets.  They love to feed on the nectar, and when they have too much - they get drunk.

The feeling of spring has also caught up with my lovebirds - and we're looking forward to some babies soon as there are eggs in their log.  Only two of my little lovebirds are a matched breeding pair - a blue masked and green masked - so I hope to get a nice combination.of colours.  The green male has previously bred with another lovebird - and we've had a pied baby from that pairing - so it's going to be a bit of a surprise package.  We had given up on the hope of having any other baby lovebirds, as this paid has been together for well over 3 years.  It just goes to show you should never give up hope ;-)

I also have a new nephew in the family, born two weeks early on Saturday night, and weighing in at 6 lb 12 oz.  Next up will be my younger sister - she's due in the next month, so we're all waiting for this little addition too.

I'll have to go visiting now to take my new camera gear for a good test.  I just got a new Nikon digi SLR with a couple of neat lenses for my bird photography.  After having a bit of a play with it, I've decided I want an even bigger lense to get the really good close-ups of the native birds in my garden.

It seems when things need to be done - you tend to put the needs of others before your own.  Such has been the case with PixelBunyiP.  As a personal site - it tended to get pushed to the bottom of my list of things to do.  It went for quite some time without being updated, and then when I moved it to a new server earlier this year - it went untended completely for a number of months.

In the midst of all the site attacks that are going on against Joomla/Mambo sites though - I finally squeezed in the time to get PixelBunyiP's back online.  It's sort of my way of sticking it to the site attackers - because life does go on and I've got things to do.

And what is PixelBunyiP's about these days - well it's my own personal indulgence where I don't have to mind my p's and q's.