Last Tuesday morning I started scanning Dad's slides. There's about 7000 of them. I'm aiming for one box of 36 a week (more if I'm not too busy), which should mean I could get it all done in about four years. If I don't die of Covid-19 first. I had a play with the dust and scratch filter and it pretty much works like magic. I should have used it on Mum's slides. Oh well. I'm still impressed how well my 14 year old scanner works (Christmas present from the sweetie in 2005). Tuesday evening was washing, blogging, Lego sorting, geotagging (some of Day 3 of USA 2004 trip). I also started to try and figure out the catalog numbers for the hundreds of Vic's minifigs, and what sets they go in. He sure has a lot that don't belong to any particular set he had, so he must have gotten large quantities of loose Lego not in sets.
Wednesday evening the sweetie took me out to dinner because he's the best sweetie ever. Went to Kinn Thai and had softshelled crab again, and orange duck. Yumm. Then more Lego and minifig sorting and finished geotagging day 3.



It rained during the week. A lot. Looky at this - the new Belconnen swimming pool they dug out the past couple of weeks!

Thursday was Gin night. Four of them tasted like, well, gin. One was a bit more interesting. And there were two flavoured ones - shiraz, and earl grey. They looked, smelt and tasted of those respective drinks. Cool stuff. Well the shiraz one was, the Earl Grey tasted like tea. We had F over for pizza and tv after.


Friday evening I had to work. My work was only about a minutes' worth, but I stuck around in case they needed my help with anything (or if I'd missed a firewall rule somewhere). Bailed at 11pm.
Saturday I checked in at work and everything seemed to be going ok. So midmorning we headed down the coast (via Belco to pick up a present for Pete). The blackened bush started at Nerriga (most of the town was saved) and stayed black the entire way to the coast. Absolutely heartbreaking. It was actually amazing to see just how much property had been saved though. In places it was completely burnt bush all around, and in the middle there would be a house intact. Amazing job done by all involved, especially the firies.
And because it's Australia, you have bushfires one week, raging floods the next.



We headed straight for Huskisson and went to the beach briefly because, coast.



Then had some lunch, picked up some supplies, then headed for Kit's. Their place was basically completely surrounded by fires, but their street was saved. At Bewong it looked like the firies stood on the highway and said "you shall not pass" ..

We setup the house then waited for Pete to get home. It wasn't a complete surprise because his mum spilled the beans, but he was expecting just his sister and maybe a couple of his local mates, but instead he got a small crowd so that was pretty cool :) So yeah nice party, and only one tantrum haha.

We had dessert first. Because that's what adulting is all about.

Akubra party!

The itty bitty bbq gas bottle ran out, so they hooked up the house one to it.




I was up at normal time the next morning, but then had to wait hours for everyone else. Eventually Kit got up and I could copy all the wedding videos for them. Had some brunch, then we headed home.



Was too tired to do much Sunday arvo/evening so just had a quiet one and an early night.
Monday it was full steam ahead rearranging the house. Stu had been wanting some study space for quite a while. He tried setting up a space downstairs last year but he never really liked it. So we emptied out the dumping ground room, brought up the couch and swapped the tables around. It took all day. And now everything from the room is spread all around the house. Which is stressful in itself. hrmmm.


We also went out at lunch to do our food shopping. We hadn't been in three weeks so we were pretty bare. Of course the empty shelves were something to behold. No toilet paper, almost no tissues or paper towel (people thinking they could use that instead of toilet paper??). Very little rice, pasta and long life milk, no flour. Just madness.






Cooked curried sausages for dinner (to use up some of the curry powder that's been sitting in the spice cupboard for ten years or more). They were pretty good. I'll put the recipe separately, because I have this feeling I'll be using it again heh.
Tuesday woke up at 1:30 with hurty and never got back to sleep :( So zombie day Tuesday. It took about 14 goes of disconnecting and reconnecting my phone on Tuesday night to download the seven videos I'd taken at the party. Fricken HATE Apple.
Wednesday we finished season 6 of Big Bang Theory - half way through!
Tonight I've been watching the 1970 Ned Kelly which I've never actually seen. There's not much on IMDB about it, but it does note it was filmed in Braidwood, and look at that! So it was! Fifty years later and all the buildings are still there (screenshots from the movie and Google Street View). Enjoyed it more than My Brilliant Career.




I brought some glow sticks home from the party. Six days later and they're still actually glowing. !! Although very faint now. The first couple of nights the phone could still take pretty decent photos of them.


Sylvia Johnson
Big change in the spare room! Stu's study area looks very comfortable - good job!
I liked Pete's birthday cake and the eggs looked interesting. They were very lucky to have survived the fires.