No updates for an entire week?

Yes, I missed an entire week. 

Do I even ham? 

Yes, but not very well. It's been a crazy week. New years turns into my birthday which means having gone from very scaled down New Years engagements to Birthday things with family to recovering, to the youngest going back to day care and me starting to de-Christmas the house, trying to find places for all the kids presents, finding pieces of the presents that are in places they shouldn't be... and getting on top of the pile of washing, whilst having another kid at home wanting my attention. 

Back to work next week, and there's a lot to do, so I suspect January won't be much of a radio month.  Hopefully I can call CQ during my breaks.

The side of the house where most of antenna gear is now has a fence + gate to keep the kids + dog away. That was a day long project just to build all 2m of it. The weather hasn't been great since. The Bunnings supplied lattice is complete garbage, and requires an awful lot of sanding to get it even close to a point that I'd consider painting it.. and I'm not chasing perfection. I actually need to replicate the whole thing again further down the side close to the rear garage door where the vertical is, and where the feed lines all start meet up, but that's a future problem now. XYL has other priorities, which means I have other priorities. After I finish this one.

The week off I'd taken with grand plans to spend almost entirely playing radio has turned into half a week so far of house work, and getting other things done.  

I did have to help my step-daughter with a present yesterday. I'm big on her getting STEM related gifts now in hope that she will learn things rather than just be a consumer of garbage content like kids seem to be.

This particular present is  called a "Magic Garden". In the box was a plastic tray, some cardboard and liquid. The card is actually blotting paper with invisible crystals on it. The liquid is sucked up through the paper via a capillary action, and over time the crystals start to grow. She had some trouble out of the gate with this one. None of the card would sit in the tray as per the instructions. I took an alternative approach of going section at a time then adding the liquid so it started to settle.

18 hours later...

Cool huh?