Sunday. 31st. Leftovers from Saturday night for dinner. Finished watching Obi-Wan. I liked that they had James Earl Jones voicing Darth Vader.. only .. they *didn't* ..!! they deep faked him! And having Ian McDiarmid was pretty cool too.
Monday. Slept ok-ish but woke up early. Started panicking over my todo list. Started trying to get in control by giving the house a bit of a tidy. But had a meltdown as soon as I logged into work because people were making mess and it was all too much. Had a cleaning planning day. Leftover pork for dinner.
Oh, the other week my everyday walking shoes split (I bought these in 2015 and worn them almost every day since) so last week I bought some new ones. Almost the same, look slightly different.
In the evening I tried to book flights to Europe with Qantas. Big mistake. I tried to book the exact same itinerary as I did three years ago (when it failed epically and I spent *hours* trying to sort it out and in the end said "screw you" and went with Emirates). Well in three years QANTAS STILL HASN'T FIXED THEIR BOOKING SYSTEM!!!! As with last time, you select a multi city trip (I only had three legs, nothing too complicated), it lets you get all the way through including doing seat allocations, but when you go to pay you get this error:
Sorry, an error seems to have occurred, and this page cannot be displayed (15079, 23951, 420)
Thanks a fricking lot QANTAS. I can't believe they're still so bad at this crap. It's like they're actively trying to deter business and alienate customers. Literally every time I have to deal with Qantas I have to go through the sheer agony of their booking systems (if it wasn't for their AMAZING flight crews I'd probably boycot them completely).
I used Webjet to hunt around for alternatives. But THANKS COVID.. NOT.. there's very limited options at the moment. Etihad had no flights available at all for the legs I wanted, and Emirates for the same legs was going to cost three thousand dollars more. Yikes. Lufthansa would have been ok except they had some really crazy connections that totally blew out the travel times. So I booked the flights through WebJet, which was going to cost $200 more. And sure enough, their APIs had the same issues with Qantas. I got this error:
Customer Service Advice
We have been unable to confirm your requested itinerary, but have retained a copy of your requirements under Webjet Booking Reference: <redacted>
We will now process your itinerary manually and confirm your booking within 48 hours.
If you are departing within the next 48 hours we will contact you today. Please do not attempt to make another booking on this site or another, as this may result in a duplicate. Please wait for us to contact you.
Thank you for your co-operation.
Customer Service Centre
So I left it. At least someone at WebJet will have to deal with Qantas and not fricken ME!!
The next day I got an email from WebJet that everything was sorted and the flights had been booked. Hurray.
Tuesday. Cleaning day and holiday research. Did a basa bake for dinner which was lovely.
Wednesday. Rinse and repeat of Tuesday. I had a whole commentary in my head about how getting older makes you more *fearful*. I really noticed this a while back riding Kit's horses (I literally had no fear about riding horses when I was younger but now they're so *big* and it's a long damned way down!) and let's not mention The Nerve Test. So I was stressing about all the ways things could go wrong with our holiday. Although in the grand scheme of things, mostly all we'd lose is money. I really need to keep that perspective.
I did an experiment with the brussels sprouts - would they crisp up better "right way up" or "upside down"? Turns out, didn't really make a difference!
Thursday. Lay awake until like midnight stressing over All The Things (mostly holiday stuff). Then woke up at 1am by the storm for an hour or so. Then woke up early too. Sigh. Zombie day. Farewell for Alex at lunch. Quiet drinks. All The Water!!!
Friday. Slept a lot better. There was even a lovely sunny day after the wild weather all day yesterday. I needed milk for breakfast so went over to Chris's to get some. I didn't have enough for the eftpos minimum so thought I'd get a bottle of cab sav. But he didn't have any singles out of the one I like so he was going to open a box but I said I'd buy the box. It was on special too, so that was a bonus. Except carrying it back home the box split and smashed all over the car park. Lost two bottles of wine right there. And then I was trying to clean up the mess and pricked myself with a shard of glass and started bleeding. Sigh. Another customer came up and I asked her to ask Chris for help. So he came out and took away all the broken glass and gave me a bag for the other four bottles and the milk. They say not to cry over spilt milk but you can cry over spilt wine, surely? Another cleaning day. Chicken kiev for dinner. Watched Kingsman: The Secret Service which was a bit of silly fun.
Saturday. Went food shopping first thing. Then a bunch of house work. Then dropped off my backup drive at work, bought some new fish tank lights for the 620T, and accidentally bought myself an early birthday present.
Got home and then it was time to do All The Cooking. I made a low(ish) carb, vegetarian lasagna.
Slightly over done, whoops..
Had the hills over to enjoy it and Jess had a lot of fun playing Stu's instruments. Wait, that sounds wrong. ;) Specifically, his cornettos.. cornetti? After dinner Jess and I played a whole bunch of stuff together and she played all the harmonies around me trying to keep up with her awesomeness. It was so much fun :)
Sunday. Did a bunch of research on countries that we plan to visit on smartraveller. Should all be fine. Then a whole heap of fish tank stuff. Also some camera side-by-side testing. The new camera is much on par with my Canon and my iPhone for most things, but it does excel in extremelly low light. Read: under the house with just vent holes for light. It's not so great on closeups (but some of that may be me needing to get used to the settings) and it does struggle to focus. The iPhone probably wins on difficult lighting (with pretty decent HDR), and the Canon wins on speed and focus (except in very low light).
It's almost completely dark under the house, so this shot is actually pretty impressive.
Then it was cooking All The Food.
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