Sunday.  24th.  Cooked up some fish that Stu bought with a creamy lemon sauce, with some leftover veggies and some frozen veggies.

I've also been eating some lime jelly that I made up with some half price jelly from Chris's.

DS9 6.10.  We might have had a craving for coconut cake.  It would have taken nearly an hour to do it in the oven, so we tried David's method of doing it in the microwave.  It was ok, but hard in places and soggy in others.  Do not recommend.

Very tired.

Monday.  Slept okish maybe. Still feeling blah. I'm kinda over this crap. Another couple of days of blah for this cycle then only one to go at least.

Put on some brisket at lunch and roasted a bunch of veggies (cauliflower bake and brussels sprouts) and some garlic bread because I can actually still taste garlic.

DS9 6.11 then continued watching Anti-Chef from the beginning (up to video 10).

Also. A red-back spider took up residence in our letter box WTF?? All the nope. Normally I will evict spiders but this one didn't want to be caught and there's no way I'm going to keep sticking my hand in a letterbox with a venomous spider there. So she got spray-and-wiped.  Sorry.

Tuesday.  Felt somewhat better today. Back to DC migration stuff and helping Neil cut over to new mail servers. Cooked up the rest of the fish with some leftover veggies for dinner then DS9 6.12. More Ferengi dumbness.

Wednesday.  Felt normal enough to have food for breakfast today (in the first week I don't feel like much, usually will just have some milk). Spent way too long looking at a login problem that we should have been able to figure out and fix earlier hrmmm.

Stumpy gave me "the look" at one point today - the look that says, aight I'm done with my winter fast, give me food.  

Europe photo labelling and Jamie Anti-Chef watching. Leftover brisket and veggies for dinner then DS9 6.13 which was kinda fun seeing what everyone looks like normally.

Thursday.  Woke up at like 2:30 for ages. Continuing to feel a bit better. Bit of DC work and dealing with crap.

Managed to label a day of photos. Pizzas for dinner (must be Thursday!)

Then DS9 6.14 which reminded me of the old Lost in Space episode where they go inside the giant robot (Trip Through the Robot - I only ever saw a couple of episodes of this show like ever, but happened to see that one twice).

Friday.  Romans 12:1 Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God--this is your true and proper worship. 2 Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is--his good, pleasing and perfect will.  I remember having to learn that once when I was younger.  

Slept a little better. Got a bunch of my DC work done but also a bunch of XL's work and dealing with crap. Just missed getting hailed on getting supplies from Chris's.

Had a fake beer. Just doesn't cut it. Kievs for dinner then DS9 6.15. 

Went over to see Annie and the family after dinner so that was a nice catchup.  Mila was in town too which was nice.

Saturday.  Slept okish. Bit of Lego. Also got my brand-new-second-hand saxomaphone back all clean and shiny. So it seems low D/C notes are super tricky on a saxophone. But higher notes are a lot easier.

Leftover brisket for dinner then DS9 6.16 and Tokyo Trial episode 2.

Sunday.  Woke up at one point needing to pee, then didn't get back to sleep for ages. Mostly a Lego and photo and baking day.

Sunday.  17th.  Cooked up some creamy lemon and dill chicken with some curry powder cauliflower, brussels sprouts and bacon, and garlic for dinner. Yum yum.

DS9 6.3 then an early night.

Monday.  Slept okish. Spent much of the day working on a big rework of some rules so we can move some DCs from one environment to another. Cooked up some leftover beef with some cabbage, a shallot, garlic powder and all the beef juices. Nothing wrong with it, just not super spectacular, and the sweetie didn't go back for seconds heh.

DS9 6.4 then finished labelling Reformation Tour photos (up to day 17). Oh I noticed after patching this week everything on my task bar is just a bit smaller. No complaints from me, hopefully it means I can fit more on it before open windows scroll out of sight.

Tuesday.  Romans 8:8 Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, 2 because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you[a] free from the law of sin and death.

Poisoning round three.  Except this time they couldn't find a vein.  Tried four times on my right arm before giving up and going into my hand on my left.  Not ideal but at least they got there in the end. 

So that all took a lot longer to get through.  Ended up going straight to my doctor's appointment afterwards instead of going home first.  Had a little lie down with the sweetie when we got home, then it was time to cook dinner (cauliflower and broccoli bake, zucchini and capsicum with a bit of leftover lamb).

DS9 6.5 then bed.

Wednesday.  Romans 8:28 And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who[a] have been called according to his purpose. 29 For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. 30 And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.

Slept okish. Put on 1.7kg (mostly fluid I guess) overnight. Hurray. Nice quiet day, even made some Lego. Leftovers for dinner. DS9 6.6 which was pretty good.

Thursday.  Romans 9:15 For he says to Moses,
"I will have mercy on whom I have mercy,
and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion."[f]

Okish sleep but not great. Back to work. Wanted to work on one thing. But All The People wanting All The Crap meant not getting anything done on it. After 16:30 to 18:00 had a good interrupted time on it though. Pizzas for dinner - one tomato, olive, spring onion and cheddar, and one pepperoni and blue cheese. Stu assures me they were good. I miss salt. 

DS9 6.7. 20:00 is bed time right?

Friday.  Romans 10:13 for, "Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved."[f]

Okish sleep, awake for chunks. Continued on the DC migration work.

Kievs and blue cheese cabbage bake for dinner (the sweetie ate most of it so must have been good!).

DS9 6.8. Earlyish night.

Saturday.  Okish sleep maybe. Feeling blah most of the day. Made a couple of sets of Lego. Labelled some Europe photos. That was about it.

Watched Forgetting Sarah Marshall in the afternoon cause didn't feel like anything much else, although did label Europe photos while doing that.  I hadn't noted seeing the movie in my blog, but it felt very familiar like maybe I had seen it.  Maybe it's just that cast, those movies are all the same (dumb).  The sweetie was feeling blah too, so we got Dumpling Inn (sadly they won't do duck pancakes for takeaway booo).

Shredded beef Peking style, Chinese broccoli, 3 cup wine chicken

DS9 6.9 then the first episode of Tokyo Trial - William Webb! ha!

Sunday.  Okish sleep maybe. Feeling blah most of the day. Made a set of Lego. Labelled some Europe photos. That was about it.  Went out with the sweetie and waited around for him to do the shopping.  The other day I watched something on YouTube about McDonald's apple pies no longer being a thing in a lot of the world.  We still have them though!  Winning!

Sunday.  22nd.  Finished Wonka.  Cool been-there's of St Paul's and Oxford.  

Monday.  Slept ok I guess.  Busy day.  On the phone from 16:00 to 18:00 blah.  Cooked a red curry with some of the leftover beef.  And spent the evening writing up my dramas with Vodien.

This bit of geranium has been out of the ground since January.  !!!

Tuesday.  Slept ok I guess.  Not quite as crazy busy day.  Biggest set of migrations done, with cutover later in the week.  Smaller batches to go.  All evening battling mail on CloudLoop.

Wednesday.  Um.  Planning migrations I think.  Drinks after work with Neil and some other peeps.  Watched some Amazing Race, talked to Kit for a bit.

Thursday.  Awake from like 2 to 4 or something.  Setup johnson.id.au on CloudLoop and changed the nameservers over.  Cutover of some management stuff.  Broke a proxy.  Good drinks.  Pizzas for dinner.  Early night.

Friday.  Awake from maybe like 2 or 2:30 and never got back to sleep.  Sigh.  Dealing with the failed proxy.  Wardie restarted it last night which fixed it.  Seems the cutover we did confused it.  Sadness.  Went to Herbert's at lunch with the Chrises which was nice.  Kiev balls!  Back at work, contractor broke stuff.  I'm getting a reputation for failed changes.  Sigh.  Proper chicken kievs for dinner.  Bed 19:30.

I totally need to get the recipe for these things!!

Four of these 17 kegs are TRBC beers.  They're planning a tribute night soon with them.

Saturday.  Early night but woke up at 3:40 and never got back to sleep.  Sigh.  Breakfast at Beess & Co.  Had a very nice eggs benedict (although salty AF, I was *thirsty* later).

Wandered around Yarralumla while waiting for the mint to open, then went in there.

Stopped at Scrivener Dam on the way home.

This looked like a roomba lawn mower..

Wrote up a todo list for the day.  I think it'll take a couple of weeks to get through.  I had to fix up all the Canon photos I'd taken this year - they were all still on summer time :(  I got some stuff at Chris's the other day to make up a lasagna to use up the white sauce that's been in the fridge for months.  Turns out it really didn't freeze very well and was quite disgusting once it was defrosted.  Sigh.  So I had to make my own white sauce (using Lana's recipe).  But the flour I used was from a container I'd dug up that needed using from forever ago.. I think it may have come from Mum's.. and I think it was a little.. off..  So I was worried it'd be a disaster.  But it wasn't!!  Hurray!!  It was a little dry, which I attribute to not adding enough liquid to offset the dry sheets I got from Chris's.  Lana summed it up perfectly:

"Fresh lasagne sheets. I really can't recommend using anything other than these. If you do feel the need to use dry sheets, then slap yourself make sure you add extra liquid to the meat sauce, as they will suck it up. Nothing worse than dry lasagne."

In the evening we watched Grave of the Fireflies.  Yeah it was pretty sad. 

Sunday.  Slept mostly ok for a change.  Another busy day of doing all the things.  Finally uploaded my Tassie hotel photos.  Also did some food shopping.  

Sunday.  11th.  Picked up Neil and went into town.  Had Pappa Rich for dinner.  I had the roti canai with curry chicken which turned out to be huge, didn't need those chicken dumplings..

Did you know there's a bowling alley in Civic?? I didn't..

Then saw Twisters.

This whole week has been a complete blur.  Work is insanely busy and stuff on most nights as well.

Tuesday was a Shine Dome night with Professor Richard J Payne with a very interesting talk on discovering and synthesising new proteins, and A/Prof Rona Chandrawati and her work on using visible light properties of chemicals/reactions for practical applications such as detecting food spoilage.

Dinner at 10 Yards.

Wednesday had a sneaky afternoon off with the little brother and went to Questacon.

Loled at this on the way home..

Had some bubbles

Got Chong Co delivered

And made up the pavlova leftover from the club Christmas in July.

Was a lovely afternoon/evening and great that David could come up.

Thursday.  Awake from like 3 til 5.  Hurray.  Crazy busy day.  Again.  Drinks.  Bed.

Friday.  Slept mostly ok.  Crazy busy day.  Again.  Finished at like 18:30.  Still no kievs at Chris's so found other frozen brown food to have.

Then watched Iron Man.  Bit of fun, if a bit silly in places.  It's a bit dumb that the other dude could fly straight away.  What would have *actually* happened is he'd faceplant the first time he took off.  Someone on IMDB agreed with me:

Tony Stark is shown, learning to control the powerful thrusters in the suits hands and feet. It takes Tony considerable time to master the art of flying. However, when Stane acquires the arc reactor from Tony and inserts it into his new iron suit, he is able to fly and maneuver well, immediately.

Saturday.  Took forever to get to sleep.  Felt totally overwhelmed in the morning trying to keep up with housework.  I did finish labelling Tassie photos (day photos) so that was a win I guess.  And started some Lego.  But felt too blah to cook, so got tv dinners.  Hurray.  Then tried to watch Iron Man 2, but Disney refused to play anything - Error Code 83.  It was literally working before dinner.  Then I tried Netflix.  Had it going round in loops of logging me out, freezing up, not having anything in my profile, logging me out again.  WTF.  Fine.  So I try it in Edge.  Works fine.  Stoopid Chrome.  

Sunday.  Slept mostly ok.  Another busy day of house/photo/food shopping/cooking etc.  Juiced all the lemons that had fallen off the tree in the past week or two.  Now what..

These are nice though..

Sunday.  31st.  Had tuna casserole and veggies for dinner.

Then Mash and the first episode of Shogun.

Then got all kinds of depressed cause I didn't get invited to Herbert's birthday on Friday night, and noone told me that the tickets for the Canberra Airport Open Day had come up while I was away, and had "sold out".  

Monday.  April Fool.  Yeah that's me.  Took til past midnight to get to sleep because of feeling blah.  Did some weeding and scattered some purple poppy seeds around the garden, but not fully transfunctionating and too brain dead to concentrate on anything much.  I did finish geotagging photos from Tassie though.  Sausages and frozen veggies for dinner.  Watched Mona Lisa Smile which had vibes of Dead Poets Society but for girls.  

Tuesday.  Slept ok.  Nothing much day, leftovers from fridge and freezer for dinner.  Also got an email saying I'd come up on the standby list, so got myself a ticket for the Canberra Airport Open Day.  Messaged David and he was able to get one too.

Wednesday.  Slept mostly ok.  Nothing much day, did a bit of decom work planning.  Met up with Stu and Dennis after work then had Kinn Thai for dinner.

Demolition in Civic

Chicken pad see ew, chili jam crispy pork, roti

Then backing up holiday photos.

Thursday.  Nothing much day.  Gin night at drinks.  Well not really, they had it a month or so ago while I was in Tasmania.  But there were plenty of leftovers so had a half shot of each.  Pizza for dinner then Death in Paradise 8.7.

Friday.  Since I wasn't invited to the evening Herbert's party, I had my own with the Chrises and Neil.  Got to try all six of the beers for the Bearded Bro Brewery tap takeover (altho one was just a sneaky mouthful I took of Aquila's).  Braddles and I shared some lamb balls and honey soy chicken wings.

Then spent the afternoon deleting stuff.  What could go wrong? :)  Kievs for dinner and Orville 3.4

Saturday.  Woke up at around 1 til well after 4.  Sigh.  Zombie tired.  Hurray. David and Kellie picked me up at 8:45 for the Canberra Airport Open Day.  It was pouring with rain and it was windy and the puddles were several centimetres deep and we got drenched.  I really should have taken my hiking boots which are a lot more waterproof.  Whoops.  Kellie went back to the car while we waited to get on the Hercules.  After a quick walk around the emergency vehicles we decided to call it for the first round and come back a bit later, so headed back to the car.  Which was gone.  Kellie had taken it.  Whoops.  David was a bit upset (busting and hangry sure didn't help) but everyone felt better after a pitstop and some food.  We went back to the airport fence to ponder our next move.  David called Adam/Brenda and it was established that lunch would be at the Burns Club.  After I'd just eaten a double cheeseburger.  Whoops.  There were like twelve of us including a few kids.  And Fiona paid before we had a chance to, so all I could do was give her all the cash I had on me ($20).  Whoops.  Saw Adam Peters for the first time in probably 30-35 years.  And met Craig who was one of the drivers who taught my brother how to drive Sydney trains.  Had a much better afternoon at the airport - saw some of the air shows and the sun came out and the people left at the end so got some nice photos. 

Felt a bit blah when we finally got home, so just watched crap on the internet.  Watched Mash and Sex Education 4.7 with the sweetie, then had some cheese and crackers (didn't need dinner - had it at lunch) and went to bed.

Sunday.  Went to bed at 21:15.  Woke up at what I felt like was about 6:30 but it was only 6:00 on the phone, still, it felt like a good nights' sleep.  Played on my phone for a bit then went and had a shower.  Get back and the bedroom clock says 7:54.  WTF?  Yeah, daylight savings ended, so I actually slept in til 7:00.  Felt a lot better after nearly ten hours sleep.  Wasted wayyyyyy too much time on Friday's XKCD.  You have to make a rube goldberg machine with either one, two or three coloured balls.  My first one was super boring, just one coloured ball with a funnel almost straight down.  The second one was three colours but it was still pretty generic.  After looking around at all the creations on the board I made a third one that was a bit more interesting.  But they're not static - if you refresh the page other boards will stay in place but yours resets.  So I never got screenshots of the first two.  This was my third though:

Then did a bit of Turkey photo stuff, house stuff, weeding, Tasmania finances, and food shopping.  Although we didn't buy much food - still getting through everything in the freezer.  Not entirely sure how I'm going to survive a five day week this week.. hmmm..

Sunday.  28th.  Backdated because life.  Cooked up some mince for a taco casserole (see previous entry), and had it with lots of veggies.  The Crown 6.9.

Monday.  Woke up at like 1:47 and didn't get back to sleep til well after 4.  Sigh.  Ok day at work, spent most of the morning catching up on emails/chats.  Afternoon was bits and pieces and attacking the todo list.  Bit of house stuff after work, and cooked a dinner of fried beef and salad.

Too hot to go for a walk (was still like 28C at 19:30).  Sigh.  I'm going to get fat again.

Also had a look at my blog commenting.  After pushing through the errors about things not being secure and send anyway, I was getting this error:

Your comment submission failed for the following reasons: Invalid request

After a bit of googling found this page - https://www.kiffingish.com/blogs-etc/ - and it was like total facepalm - the scripts weren't being loaded due to mixed content.  Until I get around to hardcoding the scripts as https, make sure you force my blog to http:// instead of https:// which your browser will now do WITHOUT YOUR CONSENT!!

Tuesday.  Slept ok.  Awake early enough to go for a walk before work.

I was feeling a bit blah after work and none of the food in the house was inspiring me.  So the sweetie got KFC on the way home.  hrmmm.  Mash then Turkey photo culling, and some photo filing.

Wednesday.  Went to bed at 21:45 and didn't get to sleep til after midnight.  And then woke up at 6.  Sigh.  It's like every second night I sleep like crap.  Just bits and pieces during the day then called it early and joined Tony and Frank at the pub.  Beef and salad again for dinner.

Thursday.  Nothing much.  Some doco at work and bit of doco planning.  Death in Paradise 8.3

Friday.  Looked into a bizarre firewall logging problem.  Stoopid firewalls are buggy as hell and seem to get worse with every version.  Finished up early and headed off to Tumut.

Yes these LR-44 batteries are over twenty five years old and still work!!

Sunday.  Got home.  Depressed.  Because Sunday.  Tried to get the house a bit tidier.  Mostly failed.  I really need to chop this back...

Sunday.  21st.  Cooked a yummy dinner of lemon butter chicken (chicken thighs, garlic, butter, lemon juice etc) and buttered veggies (mushrooms, zucchini, spring onions, butter, cream etc).  Crown 6.8.

Monday.  Slept ok I think.  

Not a bad day, got some stuffs done.  

Tuesday.  BOM said "no rain".  While it was literally raining.  

Felt flat all day.  Spent too much time stressing about Tassie.  The buttplugs at Cradle Mountain won't let you drive to Dove Lake anymore (and charge you $15 each to take a shuttle bus).  Problem is the shuttles only run from 8am to 6pm but given we want to take our time with the walk there's a very real possibility we could miss the last shuttle.  Could you imagine then having to walk the extra ten kilometres out and back to the car???

Tony said he had a glut of basil, so I asked for some.  This is what he gave me..

!!

So spent like an hour using about two thirds of it to make two tubs of pesto

Is the juice worth the squeeze?  I dunno...

And my kitchen garden is getting a little out of hand..

Cooked a beef roast and a bunch of veggies for dinner.

Wednesday.  Slept mostly ok.  Decided I should soften up the old Scarpas.  Oof they're very tough.  Got a bit of house stuff done and some Lego sorting. 

For dinner I cooked a Mexican inspired dinner - beef mince with onion, bacon, garlic powder, taco seasoning, shredded pizza cheese and some cream cheese (omfg it was so good!!) and a salad of lettuce, cucumber, tomato, tasty cheese and coriander, with a dressing of Greek yoghurt, lime juice, garlic powder, salt, pepper and finely topped coriander) which was also really good. 

Then I watched Hannah Gadsby's "Something Special".

Thursday.  Slept mostly ok but woke up at like 4:30 or something.  Mostly Lego sorting day.  Hurray.  Nearly done though.  I keep saying that, but there always seems to be more..  Made pizzas for dinner then Death in Paradise 8.2.

This whole low carb nonsense has been pretty effective.. have lost like three kilos in three weeks..

Friday.  Slept mostly ok but woke up at like 4:45.  OMFG I FINISHED INVENTORYING VIC'S LEGO!!!  Gonna have a break before next stage though.  There's still a loonnnnggggg way to go.  Fried up some beef in jelly and had with salad for dinner.

Mash/Orville 2.12 (lolz with Marina Sirtis and directed by Jonathon Frakes).

Saturday.  Slept mostly ok but woke up pretty early.  With the Lego done it was back to almost a regular weekend day and trying to get All The Things done. 

Booked some Tassie stuff which was good.  Man, how much of a ripoff is Strahan??  $200/night for essentially a caravan park.  Yeesh.  Went over to Chrissie's for dinner which was nice, haven't really seen her much since pre covid.

Sunday.  Slept mostly ok but woke up pretty early.  Back to usual Sunday including feeling blah about having to go back to work tomorrow..

And now to cook All The Food...

Sunday.  10th.  Barramundi bake for dinner (supposedly more responsible than basa, but it wasn't quite the same)

Then Crown 6.3.

Monday.  Ok sleep.  Ok day.  I felt like I could maybe have a nice wind down to Christmas at right.  Yeah right.  All The People wanting All The Things.  

In the evening started pulling apart Neil's Saturn V.  Then I came to this.  Turns out I'd put this row of cylinder pieces in the wrong way.  But I blame Lego because look at this crap.  You build it all up one way..

So you'd expect it to slot in as is.  But nooooo.. you have to flip it round!

I missed that and put it in the wrong way around.  Pissed off because I certainly wasn't going to remake it all to rephotograph it.  But I'm never going to unsee it.

Tuesday.  Took ages to get to sleep - too hot with covers on, too cold without.  In the morning finished reading through my blog entries (so far) for my year in review post.  Probably the earliest that has ever happened, pays to start these things early.  In October.  Can probably start writing things up now, just adding a few things here and there as needed.  Another nothing much day - too many distractions and interruptions to really concentrate on anything.  In the evening organised Christmas with my family.  I was hoping we could do something in January so as not to cut into the break, but alas that was not to be.  Still, it was all organised with not too much stress from me, I just told Mum and David to sort it out amongst themselves :)

Wednesday.  Slept mostly ok.  Another day of too many distractions and interruptions to really concentrate on anything.  Had the division Christmas party at lunch which was actually pretty chilled.  There was a heap of leftover sausages in the fridge which I yoinked for our party.  This cool thing arrived just in time to start!

Thursday.  Not too much in the morning.  In the afternoon had a super intense decommissioning session.  Was at it for three hours straight but still didn't finish it.  Last drinks.  It was pretty quiet and I ended up running the bar while Neil went to a committee meeting.  

Friday.  Woke up for like an hour and a half during the night.  Not much in the morning then it was off to do the shoppying for my Christmas bbq at the lake!  Had close to 60 people come this year, one of the biggest in a long time.  Sadly no ducks came by to be molested.

Saturday.  Woke up for like two hours during the night.  So pretty tired.  Spent ages sorting out all the recycling and leftovers from the party.  These aren't all from the party, some are mine from the past few months.

Also weeding and All The Things.  Although not nearly as much as I needed to get done.

I also cooked up all the chicken sausages that we didn't end up using at our party.  While they'd been put in the fridge straight away on Wednesday, and kept in an esky all Friday afternoon, the esky wasn't super cold.  So I cooked the heck out of them, had one, then froze the rest.  If I don't get food poisoning (over a day later, so far so good) then they'll be fine.

Finished off several containers of old leftovers to clear space in the fridge then watched Love Actually.

Sunday.  Slept relatively well.  More weeding in the morning, then brunch then food shopping and suddenly it's lunch time.  Hmmmm.  Felt blah about everything I needed to do, so barely got any of it done.  Cooked up the beef sausages and had one, same deal as the chicken ones yesterday.  

And just like that the weekend is over and I still have barely scratched my todo list..

Sunday.  9th.  Mini roast beef for dinner.  Finished season 4 of The Crown.  In Amazing Race the cops came back, after being out for two weeks.  !!  Turns out at that point they'd been racing for six weeks total.  In like sixteen legs.  Craziness.  You wonder where all the other days go.  Travel days?  Rest days?

The lemon cheesecake I made

Monday.  Slept ok.  More server migration work.  And lots of photo culling.

Tuesday.  Took forever to get to sleep.  Tried to do a test server migration, but only got about ten minutes of that done all day because of all the stoopid and all the rage and all the meetings.  Needed a drink by 15:20 but no time for that cause I had a prod change to do at 16:30.  Sigh.  But I did manage to cook a nice pasta bolognase for dinner.  Also finished first pass photo culling of Europe photos!

Wednesday.  Took forever to get to sleep.  Got to work super early, and left super late, so got a lot of stuff done (at least on either side, not so much in the middle because people).  I'd get so much more work done if I didn't have to GO to work or have to talk to anyone.  

Thursday.  Had to migrate to a new DR laptop to replace an aging one, and tried to do a prod server migration.  Didn't finish either.  Oh well.

Saw this at lunch.. wtf??

Drinks/pizza/etc.

Friday.  Slept ok.  Took an RDO!!  Trying to do all All The Things.  But then took like three hours out of it to do an Ikea run.  *sigh*.  Thinking of something like this for a bin solution (will have to move all the shelves up a bit):

Also had pork ribs nom nom nom

Saturday.  Slept ok.  Another day of All The Things.  

Do you reckon this will kill us?  

Looks disgusting right? :)  It was some beef dumplings that were being thrown at work (fridge clean: everything had been taken out of the fridges for cleaning.  Around 17:15 I claimed a couple of perishable things that would have needed throwing out if they'd been left out overnight.  These dumplings were a frozen solid ball that needed defrosting, but of course the dough can't handle that and they disintegrated).

But, they turn out quite nicely if you fry the heck out of them, and 24 hours later we haven't gotten sick ;)

Watched First Man in the evening.  So it was more a character study than a movie.  Not that there was much character to explore.  He says like three things the entire movie (ok exaggerating, a little, but not much).  It was told from mostly Neil's point of view, which means your entire experience of the movie is inside a dark shaky metal box.  Certainly none of magic of something like The Right Stuff (*that* was a good early astronaut movie).  This one was a bit lame.  AND FFS KEEP THE F#$&ING CAMERA STILL!!  OMFG such a terrible trend in filmmaking, oh let's just give the camera to a drunk cameraman to try and make the audience feel queasy.  Fricken hate.

Sunday.  Slept ok.  Another day of All The Things.  Except I felt blah about the fact that even long weekends are too short.  I can't keep this up.  There's just too much to do to have time to go to work.  Took some more stones to Cath's and made a bit of a dent in the periwinkle under the cherry tree.  Also finished sorting Dad's slides into some semblance of chronological order.  Going to have a break from that for a few weeks so I can finish culling Europe photos.  Then it will be geotagging, applying exif data, copying, touching up, renaming and filing.  

Some fun facts:
* this was from last week - Mozart actually had six children, but only two survived past infancy.  Neither married or had kids, although one did become a musician.
* Australia controls 11% of the world's air space!
* The name Arctic comes from the Greek arktos, meaning "bear." Anta is synonymous with anti, which means "opposite".  So you have Arctic (bear) and Antarctic (opposite bear).
* From the time Pluto was discovered until the time it was demoted from planethood, it still hadn't made one complete revolution around the sun (it still hasn't)
* Neil Armstrong had a daughter Karen (she died at the age of two from a brainstem tumor)

Sunday.  24th.  Had leftover lamb for dinner with All The Veggies.  Watched the fourth episode of Obi-Wan and more of The Crown.

Monday.  Spent a bunch of time going through my todo list and tidying it up and actually doing some things on it.  Went and got my fourth jab at lunch - moderna this time to spice it up.  Tidying and cleaning in the afternoon.  In the evening fought with Optus' website.  OMFG their personal portal is just as bad as their enterprise portal.  Literally went round in circles three times trying to get myself re-registered and logged in.  I was trying to find out why I'd been charged for an international SMS when I hadn't made any.  But Optus' bills are completely useless and don't give you the time/date/number of SMSes, even online.  So got online with a chat bot and eventually a human, and the first thing they did was credit the account as a "valued customer" and I'm like, thanks, that's great, but I want to know why it's on the bill at all.  But she was like, oh we can't see that information.  hrmm.  So then she was like, oh btw, we can save you some money on your plan.  So that took a while longer.  But hey, it'll save me $15 a month, so the fact I lost an entire evening sorting it out was not all in vain.  But I was still like, is the date of that sms actually the date it was sent, or was it just because that's the last day of the billing cycle.  So she went off and found the date/time/number.   WTF??  Why say you can't do that when you totally can??  With the date/time I was able to find the offending sms.  I'd been replying to a message my real estate agent sent me that day, but the contact information was faulty, and the reply didn't go to a "real" number, it went to some text which got translated to a number.  The number was 0011 23553776774 which is like Chad or something.  If they'd have just put that information into the damned bill I wouldn't have had to waste an evening chasing them.  Le sigh.  

On a lighter note, we had very delicious stuffed capsicums for dinner.  This mix had bolognase mince, feta, spinach, mushrooms and parmesan.  I then topped them with cheese and roasted them.  Delicious!  And no leftovers ;)

Tuesday.  Slept okish.  Very sore arm.  And quite tired.  Had a quiet cleaning day.  The sweetie cooked some Pialligo duck breast with spinach and mushrooms for dinner which was very nice.

Wait what?

Wednesday.  Still a very sore arm.  Did more cleaning planning at work.  Brought home my hard drive from two weeks ago and did a restore of my desktop/documents/downloads.  Turns out the files I thought OneDrive had deleted weren't actually there - they must have been there from an ancient backup of my old computer.  Those files had been filed when I moved to my new computer.  So all it's done is make faulty restores of files that weren't there just to confuse things and potentially create duplicates.  Sounds like something Apple would do.  And Microsoft is no better at it.  Hopeless.  My old computer doesn't load OneDrive at boot anymore.  And my laptop wasn't signed in, so I was able to clear things out before OneDrive got its hands on things.  Signed in on the laptop, and sure enough it tried to restore the same old files to my desktop.  Will have to go and completely clear out whatever is online with OneDrive.  I also turned backups OFF thankyouverymuch.  

Thursday.  No notes.  Probably cleaning.  Probably drinks.  Blah blah blah.

Friday.  Ok morning but super busy crazy afternoon trying to get All The Things done in the limited windows we have to Get Things Done.  Because I also wanted to log off early so we could go do the food shopping for the club Christmas in July event we were doing.  So went and did that after work.  All the pork and all the food.  Fun times.  Leftovers for dinner then watched the fifth episode of Obi-Wan.

Saturday.  It was cold.  Got up and ready then headed out to the club.

Did I mention it was cold?

Got out to the club and brought in All The Food (and a bunch of lucky door prizes on the left).

Then my whole day got thrown into dissarray because John bought a brand-new-second-hand oven!  So instead of having to do the turkey in advance and reheat it later, I could actually do it independently in the separate oven!

So spent a couple of hours prepping all the foods.  There was 8kg of pork, 3kg turkey, two epic potato bakes, 2kg peas, my (Coles) "winter salad" which I totally forgot to take a photo of, apple sauce and gravy, and I made a tray of "Christmas skewers" as well.

Two epic potato bakes

This was the sweet potato for the winter salad (which I didn't get a photo of!)

8kg pork!  So good!!

3kg turkey.  There would have been four except when I opened one, it had been dropped while still unfrozen and the seal was open too, so decided it would be safer not to use it.  We did run out of turkey (after everyone got seconds), but there was still pork so noone starved ;)

The potato bakes cooked

Mulled wine anyone?

These were the "Christmas skewers" I made - bocconcini balls, olives, tomato, basil, with balsamic glaze and olive oil.  A little time consuming to make, but actually simple and effective and they all got eaten.  

My dinner.  I might have already pigged out on pork and crackling so wasn't feeling super hungry at this point ;)

Stu and Chris helped decorate the pavlovas

All in all it went really well.  The food all turned out well and we didn't get much leftovers.  We won't mention the one woman who literally made a vomit face over the olives.  And when I said I'd be putting rocket lettuce with the sweet potato I asked if she'd vomit over that too, and she said yes so I said well maybe you could grab a few pieces of sweet potato before I do.  Seriously who does that?  If you don't like something you can just say "yeah not a fan" and not eat it.  But to make vomit faces and say you hate it makes you look like a three year old.  For someone in their 60s or 70s.  Lame.  Later she came into the kitchen and literally stood right behind me while I was cutting up the crackling obviously hoping to get some and I said NO!! OUT OF THE KITCHEN!!  Sigh.  But other than that, pretty damned awesome night!!  And not too late either, I think we went to bed around 22:30.

Sunday.  So last time we were out at the club I couldn't sleep because even with two doonas I was COLD.  So the other week I went and bought a 75% down doona.  And it was awesome!  We were quite comfortable all night.  Well other than be being awake for a couple of hours feeling bloated.  All that eating and drinking I guess.  Eventually got up and I spent an hour and a half packing up chairs and tables and vacuuming and washing up to get the place all tidy.  Although I didn't put away all the decorations because I didn't want to ;)  Got home and the house was COLD.  7 degrees!!  Craziness.  Two hours of running the heater later and it was still only half way to 19.  hrmmm.  Pretty nothing afternoon, although did download all my photos and do some music practise and blog.   

I also had to laugh at this.  This is a meme I saw this week about skies:

Which is so damned true!!  

This was the sky on Monday night when I went to Chris' for supplies

and this was at Jamo on Friday night

Merry Christmas in July!