Farewell Summer! Hello Autumn!

It seems crazy but, officially at least, summer is over and today was the first day of autumn. This is always something that surprises my Northern Hemisphere friends who officially still have three weeks or so of winter but here in Australia the seasons changed on the first day of the month.

When I posted last month I mentioned that I had a great summer and that it really felt like a season of fun this year. February continued on in that manner too and so again I thought that I would share a few photos. The social life looks set to continue unabated through until some time in April and I have some really exciting things coming up over the next few weeks too!

Here are just a few highlights

Barefoot bowling, also known as lawn bowls with a sausage sizzle and cheap beers thrown in. Awesome fun, especially when you realise exactly how quickly your friends get competitive about everything!! Follow this was a barbecue with friends, and lots of drinks and laughs. What more can you ask for?

A day at the cricket. The Cricket World Cup is on at the moment in Australia and New Zealand and I had to take the opportunity to catch a game. And what better game is there than Australia versus England at the MCG on Valentine's Day. Me and more than 80,000 other people! The day was warm, the company was great, the weather was perfect, the beer was cold (albeit expensive) and the game was a cracker!!

I've already done a whole post on my White Night Melbourne experience so I am not going to recap again but I will say again that it was a really memorable night from the cocktails at the beginning of the night, to dinner at a nice restaurant and then wandering around seeing the sites.

And for the final day of summer, I could not have asked for a better day, despite the fact that it has been a very ordinary week work wise. I spent the day down at one of the coastal towns at Torquay attending a Sustainable Hook and Vine festival, basically seafood and wine. The grilled barramundi and salad I had for lunch was so good and I may also have tucked into some delicious ice cream. Diabetes? What diabetes? The person who I went there with is actually someone I met years ago through blogging. At the time we met online she lived in Scotland and then she moved to Melbourne a number of years ago and we try to catch up on a regular basis.

Whilst I haven't been posting very often or even visiting other people's blogs very often, I do see a little bit of what is going on in blogland and I have noticed that there have been a number of people whose blogs I have loved over the years who have decided that the time has come to say goodbye. I must confess that the thought has crossed my mind too and not just occasionally. Is it time to walk away from just under 10 years of sharing my life with other like minded people? Has my lack of posting meant that the people who have been part of this journey have lost interest? Has my lack of book related posts mean that I have confused the focus of my little place in the internet?

Here's the thing though. I still feel like I think like a blogger. Maybe that will always be the way that I think, after 9 years of habitually thinking about the posts I am going to write. Some of those never saw light of day, and some of those posts may have potentially been my best ever but there are also hundreds of posts that did get published.  I still think about the posts that I am going to write, and have at least two that are practically done. Maybe one day soon, one of those posts might even be about a book.

Speaking about books, I actually finished a book in February!! Hoorah! Does that make me a reader again? Maybe too early to declare that I think, especially seeing as book club is tomorrow night and I have only read about 50 pages of the book!