Wednesday.  New Years Eve.  After I posted my end of year post and year in review post I shut my computer down because of the incoming storm and went and did some dotz for a while. At dinner time we headed over to Annie's for nibbles and drinks. Lovely catchup.

Left maybe around 22:30 because some of them were headed to Melbourne in the morning. We put on The Fifth Element to keep us awake til midnight then watched the Sydney fireworks.

Just beforehand they had Mel C and I'm like .. what .. two years in a row of having British acts before the Sydney fireworks!? (last year was Robbie Williams) Weird. Then we watched rage for an hour. Whoops.

wtf.. Michael Jackson and Eddie Murphy.. Whatzupwitu .. ????  Never heard of it.. pretty much as mindblowingly random as German Bold Italic by Kylie Minogue!

Thursday.  New Years Day!!  Slept okish all things considered, even slept til about 8:00. Cooked up some cheesy hash browns for breakfast, with added freshly grated parmesan cheese.

Went and climbed Mt Rogers in an attempt to pretend to be healthy.

Saw *two* of these epic caterpillars!

Then just Lego and dotz.

I did pick up a few jigsaws from Jo. Whoops.

After prepping dinner I looked at my todo list. And got completely overwhelmed. Hrmmm. Cooked up a tuna bake and a bunch of veggies for dinner then we watched the end of season 5 of Stranger Things.

Friday.  Slept relatively well. Logged onto work for a bit to be NEIL. Then wandered off again. Did some gardening - potted a ribbon grass and trimmed the ferns. Late morning we headed out to do some shopping. The mall was feral. Officeworks parking was feral. Idiots breaking road rules were feral. Had lunch at Grease Monkey.

I'd been wanting to get some silicone baking mats for a while because we go through a *lot* of baking paper.  How cool are these? They have measurements and circles for making circular things (and another one has cookie circles you can use)

In the afternoon made some Lego and did some dotz. Dinner was a mouthful of ice cream and later some cheese and crackers. Yeah we were still full from lunch. Then we watched the end of 2023 Beyond Paradise Christmas special which was nice. Tried for an early night. Failed.

Saturday.  Slept mostly ok. Frustrating morning rescanning Mum's slides - every time I rescanned some slides there would be fluff in different positions. So annoying. Dotz, Lego, jigsaw. Finished the leftover turkey for dinner then watched the new Knives Out (Wake Up Dead Man) which was a bit of fun. Oh, one night, maybe Friday, we finished watching The Fifth Element.

Sunday.  Slightly early night and got to sleep ok, then woke up a bit before 23:00 with the storm. Then stayed awake. For HOURS. Sigh. Zombie tired day. Finished rescanning Mum's slides. A storm went through in the morning but just missed us (got like three drops of rain).

Let's see if I can give myself food poisioning by eating this week and a bit old parmi and chips.. spoiler alert.. didn't get sick!

Finished building Vic's City sets. Finished a jigsaw. So lots of finishing things today which was good for the last day of the break. We had a life planning meeting this afternoon. Then I got overwhelmed again thinking about my project list. Sigh.

Sunday.  26th.  Cooked up some leftover lamb? pork? and a heap of veggies for dinner.

Futurama 13.6.  Then I started watching You are What You Eat: A Twin Experiment on Netflix.

Monday.  Slept like crap. Had an early night but took forever to get to sleep, restless, then awake from like 4. Busy day achieving not much.

Cooked up two pasta bakes with pasta leftover from the weekend - a red one and a white one.

Futurama 13.7. Photo picking and filing. Watched the second episode of You are What You Eat: A Twin Experiment, which had little to do with the twins and more on deforestation and climate change and other such fun problems caused by the food industry.

Still grunty about an interaction I had today. This dude, who I've literally never talked to before, messages me and says "Hey mechanic, I'm trying to go somewhere but my car doesn't work, what's wrong?" Ok not in those words, but that exact scenario. No self introduction, nothing about what he was doing, where he was doing it, any errors, or ANYTHING that would actually, you know, give me anything useful to go on. So I ignored the message for a while because I couldn't deal. Eventually he messaged again and starts complaining about it holding up some release or something, and I went through what I went through just there. Never heard back from him. Clearly it was a massive problem. Either that or he found someone nicer to annoy.

Tuesday.  Slept somewhat better maybe.

It was 0.0 degrees outside according to BOM. 12.4 inside according to my Ali Express thermometer. Ran the heater for a while today because it was COLD. I was cranky all day. Being NEIL is super distracting and I have too much to do and too distracted to do it. Then after work had to cook dinner (a bunch of mince and a heap of leftover pasta). Futurama 13.8. Then photo picking while half watching/listening to Half-Life Histories (a rabbit hole I went down after seeing a video on Therac-25 incidents). I blame Dave2 :)

Wednesday.  Woke up at like 4:00 and never got back to sleep. Sigh. Busy distracted day again, and achieving nothing. Well almost nothing. I did get one thing setup for the new proxies. Hanging out for Neil to get back so I can concentrate on other stuff.

Last of the leftover pork for dinner. Futurama 13.9. Another lame episode.  Went for a little walk with the sweetie after dinner.

I'm going to have to ask Damien if I can steal a few heads of these things when they're done

Thursday.  NEIL and proxy stuff mostly.  Had a farewell lunch for Imaar at Ikko.  I had slow cooked beef, it was very nice.

Got a message from Neil in the afternoon that he won't be back til the 17th!! arrgghhh!!  Good drinks though.  Tried the new orange flavoured Hard Rated - alcoholic Fanta!

Made pizzas with a heap of the leftover cheese from the club function last weekend.

Futurama 13.10 (end of season 13 .. hurray that's over and done with .. for now .. )

Friday.  Restless sleep.  NEIL and proxy stuff mostly.  

Got this cool eyeball from the oncologist centre

Kievs for dinner

Then we watched The Last Emperor.  I really didn't know the story at all.  It was kind of sad (and kinda weird it being in English).  I read afterwards what happened to his "main" wife, it was pretty awful.

Saturday.  Restless sleep.

Got ready and headed out to the club (Stu for a committee meeting, me to do more priming, which I forgot to document).  

Came home and picked our first strawberries

Only had like an hour at home before it was time to think about dinner.  I'd found a *heap* of leftovers in the club fridge, so I "dealt with it".  A heap more cheese and pasta, and some sliced up bread rolls.  Given it really wasn't going to last, I cooked up a heap of it.  Dinner of champions!

Then we watched Back to the Future.  Forty years after the events of the "present" time, seventy years after the events of the 1955 time.  Cool stuff.  Oh we ran the cooler when we got home today too.  So in the space of like a week and a half we've run the cooler, the heater, and the cooler again.  Silly really.

Sunday.  Restless sleep.  Panicking slightly over my todo list and losing half my weekend.  Spent a couple of hours in the morning doing gardening and housework and getting grunty about it.  Didn't achieve as much as I wanted.  And there goes the weekend...

Monday.  7th.  Labour Day.  Slept mostly ok I guess.  Woke up ~6.29.  Fish and gardening stuff all morning.  Then setting up and fighting with the new printer (needed another driver to print double sided).  Then trying to sort out tax stuff.  And getting stressed at everything.  Adulting is hard :(

Tuesday.  Slept mostly ok I guess.  Catchup day at work really.  Shine Dome talk in the evening. Prof Nanda Dasgupta talking about the research of Prof Mark Oliphant, and Dr Ed Simpson talking about his work with particle accelerators and making new elements. 

Bronte Cormican-Jones's "Of Line of Light" outside the NFSA

Dinner at Badger&Co after.  Talked into buying more food than I wanted.  Like a LOT more.  Oh well, leftovers.  Hurrah.  Also Badger is pretty hit and miss, and more misses with the specials.  Like the "crispy" pork belly bites that weren't crispy.

Wednesday.  Awake from before 1:30 til after 4.  Hurray.  Zombie day.  Did go to the Crepe Cafe for lunch to avoid the food court in school holidays.  Hadn't been since pre covid.  Except they're the Aussie Crepe House now.  I had the stroganoff crepe (up to $17 now, ouch).  It probably had a bit more cheese filling, but the beef was TOUGH.  

Cooked cheese kranski chipolatas for dinner, and the kitchen smelled wonderfully of them for the next 24 hours or so!

Thursday.  Ok day I think.  Herbert's after work for a final TRBC tap takeover.  Tim came which was nice.  He might be looking for IT work in Canberra, although his wife is not keen on them leaving Tumut.  

Friday.  Crap sleep.  Ok day.  Kept a bit late at work and then had to race down the hill for a bus, which I only *just* caught, to go out to Cypher for Wello's birthday drinks.

Saturday.  Slept mostly ok.  Busy day trying to catch up with life.  Stu was also too stressed with life so we didn't go to the club working bee. 

In the evening was a Rocky Horror night at Rob and Fiona's.  I did a very half-hearted attempt at Eddie (couldn't find a wig or vest, or borrow a saxophone, but did find a scarf which matched and made a slingshot).  

The sweetie went as Dr Scott.

There were frank n furters, meatloaf, and rocky horror road.

Ian even let me have like one of the last ever TRBC beers I'm ever likely to have!

Ended up staying up wayyyy too late, but it was fun.

Sunday.  Got like five hours sleep.  Cause I wake up early no matter what.  With sore throat.  Spent the day continuing to catch up with life.  Managed to get all my Queensland photos online, only a month late.  Also went and did food shopping.  Tuna bake and veggies for dinner.  Early night.

Sunday.  8th.  Backdating, because, well the mother type person called me just as I sat down to blog which took up all my blogging time before I had to start cooking dinner.  Watched The Orville 1.6.

Monday.  Slept okish although woke up at like 4:45 and it was all over.  Ok day catching up some stuffs and thinking about next server migration.  Cooked butter chicken for dinner which was quite nice (cut up the chicken and marinated it Sunday night).  Wrote up all our cash spending from our Europe trip and it was only out by 0.50c which was pretty impressive.

Tuesday.  10th.  Busy day.  

In the evening was Looking Back Moving Forward at the Shine Dome.  they had A/Prof Duane Hamacher who's an American that visited Australia years ago and become fascinated with styding indigenous knowledge of astronomy, and Mr Des Mongoo, a representative of the Wajarri people of Western Australia who worked with the CSIRO on a long term deal to benefit both the local people as well as provide space for the SKA-Low telescope east of Geraldton.

Wednesday.  Awake for two and a half hours in the middle of the night.  Sigh.  Spent some time fighting with the disaster recovery laptop, but gave up, couldn't be bothered fighting with admin permissions and group policy.  Had Mooney's farewell in the afternoon and Wello's birthday at Cypher in the evening.

Thursday.  Awake for a while in the middle of the night but wasn't too bad.  Too much noise and too much crap in the office to concentrate on anything there, plus two new starters.

Friday the 13th.  Went to bed at 20:20, but didn't get to sleep til like 23:00, then awake from 3:00.  Sigh.  Zombie morning.  Was going to do some tidying but that would have required brainpower which I didn't have, so spent most of the day deleting stuff.  What could go wrong? :)  Ahsoka 1.7.  Wondered if there was any point going to bed, because bed is where I go to NOT sleep.  Sigh.

Wonder how many strawberries I'll get out of my paver weeds

Kiev Fridays!

Saturday.  Sure enough, awake for ages, but at the beginning and in the middle of the night.  Sigh.  Zombie day hurrah.  Went out to the club and spent the whole day raking leaves around the place.  Took CRD with us which was nice as we haven't seen her in ages (although it did make it too complicated to go out the Friday night). 

Leftovers for dinner then Death in Paradise 6.4.  Silly episode because if they'd just checked all the suspects for GSR they'd have solved it in a few minutes.  Even peeps on IMBD agreed heh.  Sadness that No got up.

Sunday.  Slept ok but still awake for a while in the middle of the night.  So still pretty tired.  And my everything hurt.  I'm not used to working for a living.  Did some blogging catchups, food shopping, fish stuff and a heap of gardening - planting all the seeds - dill, coriander, tomato, mint, wombok, sunflowers and also planted out some spring onions on the kitchen window sill.  Basa bake for dinner with brussels sprouts and bacon (which we completely finished) and also made up a bolognase sauce to have on other nights this week.  Watched The Orville 1.7 and Twin Peaks 1.2.

Monday.  6th.  Not backdating!  Day of doing doco mainly.  Did lots of gardening after work (like for an hour).  The beef cheeks I'd prepared yesterday I chucked on the stove in the afternoon to have for dinner.  Yum yum yum (clearly people aren't as interested in summer - they were due to expire that day, usually they have a couple of weeks on them).  Finished season 18 of The Simpsons.  Got stuck into year in review reading, as well as work photo labelling.

Tuesday.  Team lunch, so bussed in mid morning (to avoid the peak hour crowds).  

Wednesday.  Did a heap of cleaning in the afternoon - all the deleting!  Blog reading in the evening - man, I was *sooo* stressed about having to go into the office the first half of the year.  Since lockdown in August it's been so much nicer.  Pity it won't last forever.

Thursday.  Ok day, nothing too exciting.  Drinks, pizza, tv.  Backed up my phone and computer (well, except for the E: drive).

Friday.  Woke up at dentist time, til about 5am.  Thinking about all the things.  Mostly about the party.  hrmm.  But.  Party!  In the rain!  Didn't seem to deter anyone, only two no-shows, and one of those was a no-show last year too.  So nearly forty people, I think most people enjoyed themselves.  

I think she was hissing at me

Oh hai

Mine!

Ugly ducklings? :)

The sun came out at the end

Literally the bestest sweetie in the world.  He did about a hundred trips to the car and two trips home to take everything home afterwards.

Saturday.  Awake for a couple of hours again.  hrmm.  Such a busy day doing All The Things.  Mostly house organising and cleaning and tidying. A bit of computer work as well.  Roasted a whole heap of veggies for dinner (with leftover sausages from the bbq). Finished season 1 of Sex Education then Matrix Reloaded (which I haven't seen since I saw it at the movies in 2003.. it wasn't as bad as I remember it heh).  Edit: I lied, I also saw it at Striker's in 2004.

Sunday.  Today (for a change ;) ).  Slept ok.  Annoyed in the morning because I lost a brand new hair tie *somewhere* in the house.  Maybe it'll turn up.  But another day of All The Things.  Barely any time on the computer at all, just slogging my way through everything that needs doing.  Except I didn't do much of the computer stuff that needs doing, like advertising our cruise to see if someone else will take it, booking a vaccine booster, labelling Dubbo photos, reading blog entries or labelling work photos.  hmmmmm. 

Tonight I managed to download and process photos from the past two weeks, as well as blog last week *and* this week.  Party leftovers will be for dinner.  I need a vacation.

Sunday.  28th. Backdating because I'm a slacker.  And my weekends are too short.  Just adding a few photos for the day.

Most expensive petrol I've ever seen in Australia

Finished decorating the Christmas tree on Sunday

And played with light

Monday.  29th.  Slept ok.  Finished doing the risk assessment for the bbq.  Did some planning for a new firewall.  After work was gardening and music and suddenly it's 18:30.  Ploughing through tagging people in work photos.  I want to get the first pass done by Christmas.  Along with everything else on my todo list.  

Did you know whitetail spiders will live in a container at least two weeks?  That's how long it took me to release the biggest whitetail I've ever seen.  So gross.

Tuesday.  Slept ok, although woke up early again for the second day in a row (~5:40am).  Spent most of the day auditing unneeded firewall rules.  It was 25C in the study by mid afternoon.  Stu decided it was hot enough to turn the cooler on.  Leftovers for dinner (Stu cooked while I did weeding and music practise).

Wednesday.  December.  How'd that happen??  Stu had to *go* to work which was no fun.  I spent a chunk of time helping someone with a problem, which if they'd followed my damned doco they wouldn't have had in the first place.  #grunt.  So many hours wasted.  It was a frozen pizza kind of an evening (although Chris didn't have any Doc Oc pizzas, so we had McCains).  Because all the weeding.  And Stu was exhausted after work.  It threatened to storm but never did, got like three drops of rain.  Then paying bills and doing All The Things like photo labelling and emailing people and sorting out backups and registering for rates by email (*again* because I'd done this previously but they stuffed up the whole system last year).  And I'm really really looking forward to weekly green bin pickups.  

Thursday.  Woke up at like 4:30am hrmmm. 

Did a whole bunch of deleting of rules in the afternoon which felt realy good.  Had Sichuan Chinese takeway for dinner.  It was very nice, but also very expensive, something like $66 for this.

Simpsons, X Files and first episode of season 1 of Sex Education.  We watched season 1 independently a while back (I think I might have watched it while recovering from having my appendix out), and I'd seen all of season 2, but Stu only got to see bits of season 2 when David binge watched it here.  So we're going back to the beginning to freshen up for season 3.  

Friday.  Another fairly early wakeup.  Finished up writing up my next round of deletions.  Did some doco in the afternoon.  Weeding and frozen dim sum for dinner.  Watched The Matrix in the evening.  Lolz www.whatisthematrix.com redirects to Matrix Resurresctions site.

Stu got a tea advent calendar for Christmas from Annie, so we've been working our way through it.  Not that I actually drink tea, but I've been trying all these.  Some are actually interesting.

Saturday.  Super productive morning cleaning and organising and stuff.  Not so productive in the afternoon.  Finished season 5 of You Can't Ask That.  During the week I started getting popups that I should run a chkdsk to fix some drive issues.  hrmmmm.  I finally decided to reboot and let it do it on Saturday afternoon.

Yep, it's rooted.

After the reboot there was a whole bunch of directories on that drive I couldn't actually get into at all anymore.

Fortunately it's my E: drive which only gets touched once a week when I process my photos for the week.  And I'd backed it up the night before it had a spack so I didn't lose anything.  So now the decision is, do I get a new drive, or a whole new computer.  Given my computer is over nine years old, I'm thinking new computer.  

Arribbiata bake for dinner, tv and Die Hard (it's Christmas!).

Sunday.  We were going to go shopping together at some point on the weekend, but with Omicron in the wild and only a few weeks til Christmas, I decided to play it safe and go shopping super early Sunday.  I also dropped into work to pickup the hard drive I'd last backed up my E: drive to, so I could copy it to another local location (so that I have copies in two physical locations).  All The Things in the morning.  Into season 6 of You Can't Ask That.  Cooked All The Food in the afternoon - roast chicken, beef cheeks, mince and a heap of veggies.  And blogged.  Just not the past week.

Sunday.  21st.  Backdating because I was just too busy last weekend.  Had slow cooked lamb shanks for dinner, and finally finished watching through Dug Days.  Then I watched Ciao Alberto.  If covid doesn't stop us I might be going "there" next year :)  Watched the first episode of Squid Game.  The english dub was super annoying, so put on the Korean subtitles, although that was annoying too because it felt the need to subtitle all the sound effects as well.

Monday. Ok day, did some cleaning.  Did some weeding after work although no music practise - making a final push to get the last five hundred-odd photos labelled this week.  Did 124 before dinner.  Dinner was some frozen dim sum pieces we got so we could use up the bucket of sweet and sour sauce we got with the Chinese we had the other night.  Finished labelling my quota by 19:17, but then kept going - doing 307 all up - all of day 53 - Sapporo to Tokyo.  Only 247 to go!!  Then watched Lie to Me and into season 5 of You Can't Ask That.

Tuesday.  Ok day, planning for more cleaning.  Started thinking about the risk assessment for our Christmas party.  Weeding, music, leftover mango chicken for dinner.  Then the final push to finish labelling photos from my Eurasia 2012 trip.  At 500 photos per week, I was schedule to finish Wednesday, but I was so close I pushed through and finished it Tuesday!  Twenty four and a half thousand photos labelled, taking nearly all year.  What an epic achievement :)  The flight from Sydney to Canberra on that trip was pretty cool - I managed to get photos of all three of my previous homes in Sydney :)

Wednesday.  Rain!  I shoulda put the deck chairs out in it for rinsing.  Did more cleaning planning at work, and leftover lamb shanks for dinner.  Have been doing a whole heap of tagging of people in work photos now using Picasa.

Thursday.  Had to go to work *at* work, which meant taking the bus which was a bit awful.  But everyone was wearing masks at least so that was good (it's still mandatory on public transport).  But it was humid and disgusting and they didn't turn the air conditioning on in the office, so it was pretty miserable in the morning.  Went to the mall with Neil at lunch, but maybe only 20% of people are wearing masks there.  Blerf.  The bar was open for the first time in over three months, so that was nice.  Although not many people there.  In the evening I put on Fantasia 2000 to get a photo of The Sorcerer's Apprentice with the jigsaw.  Yeah yeah I know the jigsaw was from the original Fantasia, but the original is pretty boring, I like Fantasia 2000 much much better.  Might have also put up the Christmas tree (just the tree though no decorations).

As usual, it's really not quite right

Friday.  OMFG.  Practically had a meltdown because I was trying to concentrate on *one thing* but literally every time I tried I would get interrupted again.  I felt like just giving up on trying to do any work and just sit there staring at my screen waiting for the next question.  #grunt.  Eventually got some peace and quiet so got some stuff done, and some cleaning in the afternoon too which was nice.  In the evening we watched the 80s version of Dune.. which was.. strange.. hmmm.  

Saturday.  Did the most essential weekend housework stuff before heading out to the club for the Christmas party.  Did a bunch of work helping prep all the food and serve lunch, then drank and chatted all afternoon so that was all quite nice.  Although I really hope noone brought covid along, that could be quite messy.  Leftovers for dinner and an earlyish night.

Sunday.  Slept relatively well.  Got up early and came home so I could log onto work for an upgrade.  Then spent the rest of the morning putting up Christmas decorations.  But then by the time I'd done gardening and music practise it was late, so managed to download and process photos but not blog.  Whoops.  Roasted some veggies for dinner then pretty much just collapsed.

Sunday.  14th.  Cooked All The Food for dinner.  Started into season 18 of The Simpsons.  Started watching the 2020 version of The Witches but didn't end up finishing it (finished it later in the week).

(dinner was basa fillet bake, although I probably cooked it a bit too long - it was pretty dry)

Monday.  Awake for a couple of hours in the middle of the night, feeling hot, even tho it was *cold* (13C in the house when we woke up - cold enough to turn the heater on!).  Saw my birds at lunch - needed my jacket because it was *cold* !  And noticed one of the sunflower seeds had sprouted (didn't see any others though).

Also picked the first strawberry off the plants Michelle gave us last year.  I considered splitting with the sweetie but in the end ate it all myself ;)

Weeding after work, and 78 photos labelled before dinner.  I figure I have time for two out of three things between finishing work and dinner - weeding, music practise, photo labelling.  Had time after dinner/Simpsons for a bit of music practise, and managed 182 photos labelled all up.

Tuesday.  Slept ok.  Was Neil for the morning.  Did a whole pile of doco for some rules which had never been documented before, so that I could do doco for my one simple little rule that needed adding.  Also did some thinking about the next round of cleaning that needs doing.  Lunch was leftover tacos.  Taco Tuesday!

After work was weeding and music, with mango chicken I cooked on Sunday for dinner (the chicken is somewhat buried under all that rice)

Managed to label 353 photos! Although Aaron called, which stopped me finishing day 53 in Asahiyama Zoo.  

Wednesday.  Spent all morning writing up details for cleaning out of a super complicated system no longer in use, but may come back one day, so want to be sure we have a good record of what we would need to do for it.  

Not much in the afternoon, spent too much time helping people with stuff.  Then worked late, had a quick break for dinner, then back online for work for more upgrades.  So behind in labelling for the week after all.

Thursday.  Couldn't do any fixup scanning in the morning because the computer wouldn't talk to the scanner.  I mean I know I really needed to reboot my computer but it takes so damned long to do it.  Started the process at 7:54am.  It was 8:28 by the time I'd saved/noted/closed everything, patched and rebooted, and 8:31 by the time I'd gotten Chrome loaded.  Le sigh.  The sunflower hasn't changed much in a couple of days..

Spent the day cleaning all the things.  Creamy fettucini for dinner.

Simpsons, whisky tasting, Speed Cubers

Then I watched The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.  I'm not usually a fan of Adam Sandler/Ben Stiller movies, and this one started off pretty silly, but the scenery in Iceland was stunning and it turned out to actually be quite sweet a movie.  Even managed to label 57 photos.  

Friday.  Another day of cleaning.  Watched Soylent Green in the evening.  It was made in 1973 but set in 2022 (we should have watched this next year!).  I reckon they could have at least *tried* to not make it look like the 70s in terms of fashion and decor :)

Today's pickings!

Saturday.  Did all the Saturday morning things.  Downloaded my email and found out they wanted to charge me another $1000 for the cruise I'm trying to get out of (for port fees or some such crap).  Had a little freak out and ended up calling them (don't know how much that's going to cost me).  At least I managed to get them to defer it til the end of December, but this whole covid thing has really put me off ever booking a holiday in advance if there's no option of refunds. We've already lost thousands on Europe, and likely to lose even more on the cruise. Makes me sick thinking about it actually.  

But then.

I've had this in my rss feed for a couple of weeks that I can't bring myself to mark as read.  It's a reminder to me that my problems are First World Problems.  So What if I lose $10000 dollars on some holidays I can't take.  At least I'm not displaced from my country due to or war or famine or whatever.  Life is good.  Really.

Then I spent the entire day alternating between the jigsaw and filing club photos (I've been sorting 9 years of club photos into folders for posterity).  Actually managed to finish photo filing!

This was the jigsaw progress mid afternoon.  A bit difficult to see what's going on, because I'm doing one half literally on top of the other half.  

Leftovers for dinner, and in the evening watched Official Secrets - a really interesting telling of the story of Katharine Gun and her efforts to prevent the 2003 war in Iraq.

Sunday.  Today.  Really just spent the whole day on the jigsaw (and finished season 4 of You Can't Ask That at lunch).

This is the progress in the morning.  Already I've done heaps since last night.

By late morning I'd done every piece that was on top of the other half.  So everything here is identical on either side.

Once that was done, I twinned up all the "special pieces"

At lunch I put on dinner - devilled lamb shanks (with de-boned meat I found at Coles)

And by mid afternoon I'd finished the jigsaw!!  Amazing that it took about seven weeks to do the first half of the jigsaw, then two days to do the second half!

Then did some music practise before Annie and the girls came over to chat for a bit.  Then it was photo downloading and blogging and dinner is just about ready!

Sunday.  24th.  Not backdating :)  Butterfly lamb roast for dinner.  Put on Hocus Pocus, because Bette Midler, but wasn't watching it very closely.  Instead I was planning out an itinerary for Italy if we end up going.  

Monday.  Woke up a bit after 1am and never really got back to sleep (except for a couple of small sleeps between 4:30 and 6).  Zombie day.  Trying to sort out a big mess and not functioning very well didn't help.  It was a KFC drive through for lunch kind of a day.  Ended up rage quitting the day at 16:30 because I'd had enough and I was too tired.  Had beef cheeks cooked a week ago for dinner, and even managed to label 109 photos, which isn't as many as I need to do, but still better than nothing.

The garden is a riot of colour though!

Tuesday.  Slept much more betterly.  Still trying to sort out the mess at work.  Spent most of the day on it.  Short power outage at lunch.  I reckon they were prepping for Thursday and had a whoopsie.  After work was weeding (out the front), music, dinner, then spent ages trying to find some music files and I hadn't even started labelling by 19:39.  Hmmm.  I did manage to finish day 44 - arrived in Japan!  Was watching Lie to Me (Depraved Heart) and had to LOL at the house in Pasadena that I'd literally just seen in Beaches the other night!

I then managed to label day 45, which doesn't really count as a day - this was the trip from Tokyo to Osaka.  I also watched the first couple of episodes of You Can't Ask That on iView.

Wednesday.  Took like an hour to get to sleep, then woked up a bit after 3:30 and never got back to sleep.  I'm so fricken tired of insomnia.  Brain dead zombie morning.  It was a KFC good-thing-I-brought-extra-on-Monday for lunch kind of a day.  I don't even remember the afternoon.  It was a couple of beers and chicken kiev for dinner kind of an evening.  I did manage to label 84 photos though, so 205 behind for the week.  Hopefully can make that up over the next few days.

Thursday.  Slept relatively well.  Power went off around 9am.  Had a guy from some Not Registered for GST company show up to give us a quote on some garden work.  I asked if he was fully insured and he said yes, but I'm just worried.. all seems a little.. dodgy..   Then did some jigsaw and some paint by numbers, then we headed out to do some long-needed shopping at Bunnings.  Spent ages there trying to find All The Things.  Got maccas on the way home (the power had actually come back on around 11:35 - a couple of hours earlier than expected).  Did a bunch of gardening and planting plants with the sweetie in the afternoon but then not too much else, and some music practise.  Basically just a nice day off.  Watched a bunch of tv including Lie to Me and You Can't Ask That in the evening.

Friday.  Up at stoopid o'clock to do some upgrades, but testing was delayed because half the people testing had no power at home due to storms.  The morning dragged on because I started so early, and they finally gave us the go ahead to do the other half of the upgrades *very* close to lunch.  So got that done then headed out into covid-infected Canberra for a farewell lunch for Luke at the Lighty.  First time I'd seen any of my colleagues in two and a half months!  But I was a bit late arriving and so ended up sitting in the sun.  As soon as I finished lunch I asked to swap seats with someone who is not allergic to the sun, but the damage was done - I'd been sunburnt :(   Not that I knew that to start with, and it was actually a lovely afternoon catching up with all the guys.

Saturday.  Did some weekend stuff in the morning including a couple of loads of washing.  And cheesy hashbrowns for breakfast :)

Then late morning we headed out to the club for a bbq lunch (first time out there since late July).  Stu swam and I tidied up the van and finally setup the "pantry" - a chest of drawers I bought at the Green Shed months ago.  Brought home a bunch of food that had been sitting out there for years, tidied everything up and loaded a couple of the drawers with snackages and tea/coffee.  Then I was finally able to give the coffee machine a home, and could move the kettle off the only bit of bench space next to the sink.  So the whole space is a lot tidier.  There used to be a little table here with an oven on top of it and all the food and containers and crap on top of that, but the oven couldn't be used there because it needed a lot more space around it and we never cook out there anyway (we just take leftovers or bbq).  It's not quite what I wanted for this space (I wanted a cupboard that was a bit bigger), but it'll do for now.

Also!  Flowers!

We actually didn't stay the night, but came home instead.  Both of us felt like it was a Sunday afternoon because we usually come home from the club on a Sunday.  Cooked some mushrooms and macaroni and had creamy mushroom mac and cheese for dinner.  We had salad at lunch.  Honest.  ;)

Watch Big in the evening, which I haven't seen since the late 80s.  And some episodes of You Can't Ask That.

Sunday.  Today.  Busy day trying to cram in two days of weekend into one essentially.  Stu even got lots done too which was nice.  Didn't have too much time for any fun, but did do a little bit of jigsaw and one short session of paint-by-numbers.  Had a second guy from Not Registered for GST company show up asking if we needed any work done, and I'm like, you guys came just the other day.  If this company can afford to have employees, surely they'd have enough turnover to need to be registered for GST?? hrmmmmm!!

Stu found this in his four foot tank - how cute is it!

The poppies have started flowering too

I guess I've filled in the gap in the middle since last week.. that's about it though.. 

Dinner will be leftover butterfly lamb, with a bunch of fresh roasted veggies.

I'm backdating this entry to a week ago.  I was sick last weekend so didn't feel like blogging, then it all got too hard.  I'm also using a View to a Kill quote even though I didn't watch it last week, because otherwise I would have had two to use this week ;)

Monday I got home and put on my washing and sat down at my computer only to find the internet wasn't working.  Rebooted the router but it didn't come back.  Messaged a few people around - turns NBN were doing work all day Monday resulting in various outages.  Damien's internet came back but ours didn't.  And there was *nothing* on Internode, iinet, Aussie Broadband, Telstra or TPG's websites about the planned (or, as it turns out, unplanned) outages.  Fricken useless ISPs.  Stu got home and logged a fault with Internode.  It ruined my plans for the evening (labelling photos) because you need the internet to see geo location of photos.  I did do a whole heap of filing of photos from the past few months though.  But even then I got frustrated because I couldn't check geo locations of photos I was filing, or Foursquare history to confirm locations. 

Also on Monday I had to drop the rent on my place in Sydney by $40/week.  Turns out there's a surplus of unit rental accommodation in Sydney and prices are dropping.  Hurrah.

Tuesday there was still no internet.  So no photo labelling, just more filing of photos.  Internode messaged Stu to say they wanted someone on site all Thursday morning.  #grunt.  

Wednesday someone accidentally broke everything, so stayed back til 21:30 helping fix everything.  The equinox sunset shone all the way down the floor which was pretty cool.

Thursday I flexed off to wait around for the internet to be fixed.  At about 10:20 a dude turns up and barges into the house wanting to see the modem.  I mean literally - he didn't wait to be invited in.  I was pretty cranky about this because this outage WAS NOT OUR PROBLEM.  NBN caused the outage, they should be able to fix it without even needing to come anywhere near our property.  So he looks at the modem and of course gets sad by the fact we have our connection patched into a patch panel and not a direct connection from outside.  Then he wanted to see where the connection came into the house and I showed him the corner of the roof and said way up there.  Anyway he had a bit of a sad and got on his phone and said he was going to go check the node.  Yeah you do that buddy.  I did a bunch of gardening out the front while I waited for him to come back.  About an hour later he came back.  He checked the line and plugged the modem back in.  Checked on my computer and all good!   Yayyy!  Yes, NBN had disconnected us on Monday and hadn't bothered to reconnect us.  Happened to a house three doors down too apparently.  Retards.

But.  Flowers!

Hopped straight on a bus to work (even got a free ride!).  Had quiet drinks and pizza leftover from Wednesday night for dinner.  Had a chat to Kit about her hen's night.

Friday met up with EffanC for drinks and pizza at the Pot Belly (pizza three nights in a row hrmm) then adjourned to their place for a while.

Saturday I woke up with a sore throat.  So a slow start and didn't get too much done.  Then it was hurty which stuffed up the afternoon.  Did food shopping quite late.  Realised that at some point recently, Microsoft FINALLY enabled control-backspace in Notepad!!  I've only been waiting for that for twenty years!!  Still not enabled in our work SOE though.  Watched The Crimes of Grindelwald in the evening which was a confusing mess of a movie.  

Sunday still sick.  Had a long lie in although very little actual sleep.  Played through a whole heap of escape room games.  The first few I found were really good, but after that the ones I played were pretty lame - incessant ads (even *in the middle* of doing puzzles) or would lose progess if you got out of the game you were in.  We had to cancel the hanami lunch with Nat and Andrew because Nat was worried about getting sick.  We did have a beer and some honey soy chicken chips anyway.

Tried to sleep in the afternoon but failed.  Stu cooked salt and pepper squid for dinner.  Watched the last episode of Veronica Mars season four.  I could see the ending coming like an invetible train wreck and I was NOT impressed.  It was a total slap in the face which ruined the whole last season.  Everyone on IMDB was *pissed* and I don't blame them.  

Early night Sunday, and decided I wouldn't be going to work Monday.