Wow. So 2025. It sure was a year!

Travel

I went to Adelaide with Mum in late February to visit my Uncle Graham who was in hospital for three months being treated for a lymphoma. He was doing really well at the time (he'd really only just started treatment). Good news is he's done with treatment and is (so far) cancer free. We went down the coast to visit Kit and Pete in March for Pete's birthday and I went to the Milton Show with Kit. I didn't go to Europe with Mum, even after spending months planning it. At least David got to go instead. I did go up to Sydney the day before they left to go through everything I'd prepared with them. In November the sweetie and I took ten days off and headed down the coast, staying in Narooma and Kiama. Didn't get to spend as much time as we would have liked in Narooma due to reasons, so we hope to go back again some time soon. Did a day trip to Sydney in December to see Back to the Future the Musical.

Work

At work I was the Naughty Email Intervention Layer (NEIL) a few times while Neil took leave. We're not sure what's going to happen to his position when he retires next year (after 50 years!!!!). I got to do a bunch of work on some of our management scripts to get them working in the new environment. Learnt a lot, which I've now completely forgotten. Did scripts to check on the quality of objects/rules, backup configs, look for orphaned objects, print out our rules in a friendly format, delete crap. I love those delete scripts whenever I use them - they save So. Much. Time..!! Used Copilot (and Google AI) to help me with regex and Powershell (the regex stuff was pretty cool - I gave it a problem and it found me a solution - that worked!). Did lots of decommission work in the first two thirds of the year, ran out of time with everything else going to do much in the last third of the year. I still think my job description is mostly "Sadie". Helped Neil build and cut over to some new mail servers (which took months to finally get to do after they were like, oh, yeah there's a bug, soz). Ray brought in his pizza oven in February for a team lunch which was quite fun. We farewelled HBZ in February which was a bit sad, also farewelled Julian and Bruce in March and Imaar in October. There were trivia nights in March (a bit trash), June (a lot of fun, and we actually won, but luckily didn't have to run the next one - they decided in advance that the last place getters would run it) and October (a bit trash). Had a small "anti ball" in April but it was a bit of a fizzer and I don't think I'd bother trying to organise another one. Used "New" Outlook for only a couple of days in April because it was trash. The dealbreaker was shared calendars which just wouldn't render properly. Did a massive cleanup of our main dev environment, which I've been wanting to do for literally seven years. It makes me so happy that it's *clean* now! Worked on policy for our new cloud proxies, but even though I've been using myself for months we're still not really any closer to getting it released to everyone. In November it suddenly became crunch time on our existing proxies - the old hardware (which we've been using for TEN YEARS) was going EOL and we didn't want to renew the licence and we weren't ready to cut over to our new proxies, so I spent a few days migrating the policy to other equivalent but newer hardware, doing all the paperwork, and prepping it all so Con/Ward could cut it over while I was on holidays. It went mostly smoothly which was epic awesome. Spent a heap of time looking at what talks to some legacy domain controllers so could replicate their rules to new ones. Broke something during a transition though sadly. It was fixed super quickly once they told me though. Had to rework our ticket dashboards when they upgraded versions and our originals were done so long ago they were "legacy" and didn't work properly. Had various Christmas parties in December, including my annual bbq at the lake attended by over 40 people.

Health

I had a bit of a sore throat in February. Spent two days in bed and pretty sure I beat it off because I didn't seem to get fully sick. Mainly I was paranoid about getting sick because if I did I wouldn't have been able to see Uncle Graham in Adelaide. Ongoing bouts of insomnia and thermoregulation issues throughout the year (thanks menopause). Oh, and the minor inconvenience of the C-word. Not that C-word. The other C-word.

Family and Friends

We started the year (almost) with some of the n-gang (we left at 11:30 and got home just before midnight). Mum and D/K/S came for the family Christmas lunch in early January for last year, and a week before Christmas for this year. I definitely like doing an early family Christmas. Went to see Lily for her 21st in January. Had EffanC over for dinner in February, and also my birthday, and went over to theirs for dinner in May. David came to visit in March to install a new light fitting in the kitchen. Because the old one died. It was only six years old. Hating on how crap everything is nowadays. Mum tripped over just inside her village entrance in March and was knocked out and broke her collar bone. She went to hospital and they did a bunch of scans because they didn't know if she'd passed out and then fell, or got knocked out from the fall. Passing out first would have been super worrying. Fortunately there was security camera footage and you can clearly see she just tripped (she was power walking and was just moving off the main path when she tripped on a raised bit of concrete). Had Jenn over for dinner in March. It had been two years since we saw her last. Whoops! Caught up with Luc for drinks/dinner in May and December. Fiona came over with a care package in May, and visited again July. Tony also dropped in a care package in May, and we went to the arboretum in July, as well as had a couple of movie nights. Had lunch at the Burns Club with the Chrises and Tony in June and the Chrises and Glenda and Neil in December. Kit came to visit in August for Ben and Sarah's baby shower (which I would have loved to have gone to, but, people). Went and saw Annie and the family in August. Had Friday afternoon drinks with T/J in October - we really must do that more often! David and Kellie came to stay in November when they went and saw Ricky Martin. Went to Rob and Fiona's in November for a deck warming. Had Mishi's 60th in December. Had a super quiet Christmas Day, but Stu did got to see his family (and we'll hopefully catch up with them on New Years').  New Years Eve Eve party at M&M's with some of the n-gang.

The Social Club

We went out in June for Ian and Chris's 10th wedding anniversary formal night which was lovely. I did our annual Christmas in July by remote control this year - the sweetie did all the shopping for me, I did as much prep work as I could either at home or in the van, then got the sweetie and helpers to cook it all on the night (with lots of printed out instructions!). Went out again in September - Stu for a committee meeting, and I did some priming of cabinetry. Went to the Halloween Spooktacular night in October which was fun. Went out again in early November for a committee meeting for Stu, and I continued priming cabinetry. Then there was R&F's Christmas party in late November.

Photos

Spent ages picking out photos for Mum's funeral (on account of she wants to see it and I want to get it done in advance should the worst happen and then it would be one less thing I would need to think about). Spent chunks of time here and there tagging people in Picasa. I figured out how to have different databases for different people groups and even wrote a startup script to make it easy to switch between them. Jumped in to finally getting my Europe 2016 photos online - spent ages and ages culling culling culling, then labelling them and getting them online. I still have to make panoramas and get them online. Also filed a lot of photos into directories with more descriptive folder names. Re-scanned all of Mum's slides at the highest resolution my scanner would go (the first time I did them very quickly at a medium resolution). Then rescanned the ones with fluff on them, sometimes over and over and over again. I've geotagged our south coast trip from November, but that's all I've done so far.

Fish and Stumpy

Stumpy's UV light died at the end of last year, but I couldn't find anywhere that sold a 48" 10% UV light, so had to make do with an incandescent bulb which does heat *and* UV in one. He'd been pretty lethargic at the beginning of the year, possibly because of the lack of UV light. He perked up again with the new light, and got really quite tanned over the course of the year. My AquaOne 620T tank leaked in February because the filter wool drifted over and blocked the outlet, backing everything up. Whoever thought using chipboard to make fish tank stands would be a good idea should be shot. Lost the sucking catfish in the two foot downstairs in February - it was happy then was dead. Towards the end of the year I thought I was losing the clown loaches - they both hid in a corner and wouldn't come out. But in the last week or two they've been behaving more normally.

Our current fish inventory:
* upstairs two foot - a whole heap of guppies at various ages
* four foot - nine congo tetras, one lone male guppy (I'll get him some friends when others in the other tanks get big enough), and an enormous fat loach
* Chrissie's tank - two clown loaches
* angel tank - a whole heap of guppies at various ages
* downstairs two foot - a whole heap of guppies at various ages

Lego

Spent ages of time (and money) on Vic's Lego. Bought a crazy number of loose pieces to complete some sets. I managed to complete all the Creator and City sets. I built and photographed the Creator sets and have been building the City sets. Still a long way to go though. The LEGO Group is taking over Bricklink more and more. This year they forced you to use your Lego account to sign into Bricklink and later in the year they gave two weeks notice they were going to suspend trading in a whole heap of countries (which they then pushed back til next year). I'm just waiting for them to enshittify it completely. The only set I built new was 31134 - Space Shuttle, which I got for my birthday, but haven't had a chance to build the other two sets I got for my birthday.

Jigsaws

A little bit quiet on the jigsaw front, especially at work. Bought two jigsaws with a voucher from my 50th birthday, but have only done one of them so far.

Other Hobbies

My favourite hobby at the moment is diamond painting. I find it super quieting for my brain (which always seems to be overstimulated). After the little Christmas tree I did on Christmas/Boxing Day last year, I've done Green Eyed Beauty, Pink Galah and Banksia, White Cockatoo and Waratahs, and started on Oh Christmas Tree (which Dave2 very kindly bought and posted to me, on account of not being able to find anywhere in Australia that still had it). I did an Anko miniblocks Owl in Tree that I got for Christmas from Kellie and David which was very cute. I also did a Nanoblocks Church I got from the Green Shed sorry Vinnies sorry Goodies Junction in March. It wasn't quite complete but it was mostly there and is very cute. And there was also a Petit Blocks fox I got at Daiso for at work. It's very cute. I bought a brand-new-second-hand saxophone from the Young Music School sale in February. Had it serviced and got it back in August. I've done a little bit of playing on it but not as much as I would have liked. I did find some easy Christmas music for it which was fun and have been on the hunt for other music for it.

Weather

We had hail in January, August, September, November and December. There were various rainbows throughout the year. In October/November it went from needing the heater, the cooler, the heater, the cooler, the heater (although didn't actually run it that time) in the space of two weeks. Had lots of storms in November and December. Had an overnight low of 0C on 2 December.

Toys / Purchases / Techie Stuff

I bought a new camera in January because my old one (Dad's old one) had some dead pixels and just isn't as good as newer cameras in low light. But I got super frustrated at the 24-105mm lens which didn't have the range of my old camera/lens. I also got frustrated at how dull and lifeless the photos are from it. Did a bunch of testing comparing the new camera, the old 600D, my G5X and my iPhone. Also played with user mode settings to increase saturation and contrast, which has made a difference. In July I got a 24-240mm lens, much happier with it than the 24-105mm. The 24-105mm is still great for people photos and low light, but the 24-240mm is my general usage lens. I'm totally hating on Windoze 11 which does utterly daft things. Like if I open a text document on one desktop, it'll open it IN ANOTHER DESKTOP!!! Even if just a moment ago I'd opened and closed another text file on the original desktop. Or that it NEVER remembers folder settings. There's a few folders that I have specific settings (sorting by reverse date order, details instead of large icons etc..) and it resets them every fricken time I use them. HATE. There were a couple of times this year it remembered the settings, but mostly it just reset them. Or that sometimes when I unlock in the morning, windows that I've had on the right screen (my main screen) will randomly be moved to my left screen (which I don't use all the time) and I have to turn on that screen and move them back. Or that notepad is so trash now. If you have a large text file it becomes unusable due to the lag of it trying to do spell checks or whatever. Or it'll literally just not enter keystrokes and just skip one or more letters that you've typed. Or that Windoze will reboot AGAINST YOUR WILL when it feels like it. Or that whenever I attach a USB device it takes a full minute for windoze to recognise it. Or that whenever I attach or remove a USB device, explorer collapses what directories I have open, so I have to re-navigate to them all to get back into folder context. Or that when I open a command prompt (which I have pinned to my task bar), the command prompt doesn't open where the pinned icon is, it opens all the way over on the right of whatever else I have open. I got a new desktop at work and it's doing the same thing. Yet the Azure ones didn't do this. Or it'll just randomly jump to the top of the explorer window and I have scroll back down to find where I was working. Or it changed how folders are displayed by date. My computer crashed earlier in the year and in October as well. Frustration with Apple. If you let it automatically set the time zone, it'll just change the time zone on you randomly. It stuffed up a bunch of photos in Adelaide with its nonsense. Apple also merges timelines from different numbers into one message thread. So you reply to a message in the thread, but it goes to the home number not the mobile number and is never received. Apple is so stoopid. I had to split out Mum's mobile number into a different contact to stop that happening. Google broke Chromecast because they didn't renew a certificate. Eventually after a week or so they fixed it. OneNote threatened to force me into an Office365 subscription, but didn't end up doing it. I finally got around to setting up my phone to use my own hosted SMTP service because Optus was getting super flaky for trying to send mail. Raged at Optus who now FORCE you into using $5/day roaming unless you pull the sim out of your phone. BOM updated their website in October and half the country screamed at them for ruining things. Pretty sure CloudLoop made some change to email headers in mid to late November which means that mails from some places aren't rendering properly. I downloaded (and paid a little) for Thunderbird to handle mail from the problematic senders. Might one day copy everything across, but for now the way of filtering mail is super annoying.

House stuff

I spent ages in the first part of the year trying to get the back yard under control. Our lemon tree dropped probably about a thousand lemons over summer. I'm not even exaggerating - a branch fell off that had 110 lemons on it, and that was just one branch out of the whole huge tree. I juiced most of them and was drinking homemade lemonade for months. I grew a bunch of mini capsicums which I could harvest in April. Such a lot of effort (and having to water every single day) for so little reward (but a nice reward!). We tried to turn the heater on in April but either the controller or the heater was having a spaz and kept rebooting. In May we managed to get it to work and didn't turn it off for literally two weeks straight. After that we managed to operate it normally for the rest of the winter. But in spring, after being off for a few days, it got the crazy behaviour again. Potted a chrysanthemum that I'd accidentally uprooted out the front and it's been thriving. I still need to find a permanent home for it. Frustration the Mirabella Genio lights and app, terrible user interface and annoying to try and get them to repair. Started picking strawberries from the weeds in the back yard at the beginning of November and continued through early December. Not nearly as many poppies this year, must have been too dry for them.

Restaurants

We had Quan's Kitchen delivery in January (because Dumpling Inn presumably wasn't open yet). We went to Bar 59 a few times in January for work drinks, and again in April. Dumpling Inn is a continuing favourite, with deliveries in January, June (x2), July, August, September, October and December. So is Chong Co, with deliveries in March, April, May (x2), June, August and October. McGriddles at Maccas finally arrived in Australia! I had one in July but my sense of taste was shot at the time so couldn't judge it. Have had a few more since October though. Went to Ikko again for a work farewell in October. Went to Stellas by the Lake for brunch in November with David and Kellie, nominally for his 50th. Tried out Bamiyan with Luc in December which was really good. Tried out Grease Monkey in the mall in December. Went out to Four Winds for pizza lunch with Tony in December for our annual lunch out there. Went to the Labor Club with Mum and Stu in December. And to the Old Canberra Inn for Tony's birthday.

Food / Cooking

Our first meal of the new year was cheesy hash browns cooked on New Years Day. We usually have pizzas every Thursday night, mostly made ourself, but occasionally a commercial one. We often have Ingham's chicken Kievs on Friday nights. And we often have a roast dinner on Sunday nights. Made lemon pepper dill chicken a few times (with all that lemon juice!) and creamy lemon dill sauce with either chicken or fish a few times. Luv-a-duck Peking duck is a favourite, had that a few times. Did a pork neck in the slow cooker in February which was *amazing* and again in April. Tried Microwave Pork Crackle in February which was actually pretty good! Had steak a few times earlier in the year (we never get steak at home because Stu is usually meh about it). Had NQN's butt sorry beef cheeks in May. Stu cooked a little bit in April/May when he was on leave. Made a potato, blue cheese, and rosemary pizza in July. I couldn't taste it at the time, need to do it again. Did slow cooker lamb shanks in August. Tried a cheats mac & cheese with just a bit of water and cheese (and a bit of milk in one version, cream in another). Made a couple of coconut cakes - once in the microwave and once in the oven in August. Did slow cooker beef brisket in August. Baked a plain cake and icing in August from the Women's Weekly Children's Birthday cake book to test the recipe. Officially started cooking cakes out of it in September (just one so far!). Made puff pastry scrolls a few times - vegemite or pizza flavoured. Cooked some crackling by itself in November which turned out pretty well. Made some gingerbread biscuits in December. Made a peppermint slice in December.

Theatre / Shows / Exhibitions

* Pompeii at the National Museum in January with Mum which was really good
* AI in Science talk in April with T/J, but missed the rest due to avoiding people and being busy
* Constellations at the NFSA in April with Tony which was amazing
* Back to the Future - The Musical with the sweetie in December which was a bit of fun

Movies (at the movies)

None. *gasp*

Movies (TV)

* Heaven is for Real
* Die Hard 3
* Darkest Hour
* Star Trek: Generations (after seeing the Duras sisters in DS9 1.3)
* Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone
* Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
* Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
* Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
* Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
* Blackberry
* The Princess Bride
* Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince
* Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part I
* Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2
* Fantasia 2000
* Perfect Days
* Inglorious Basterds
* The Holdovers
* Jaws
* Flying High
* Rogue One
* Star Wars (A New Hope)
* The Empire Strikes Back
* Return of the Jedi
* The Post
* Cruella
* Forgetting Sarah Marshall
* Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
* Terms of Endearment
* Lego Batman Movie
* Lilo and Stitch (the original animated one, and the live action remake)
* The Green Mile
* Passengers
* The Last Emperor
* Back to the Future, I, II and III
* V for Vendetta
* The China Syndrome
* Die Hard and Die Hard 2
* Birdman
* The Neverending Story
* Love Actually
* Enola Holmes and Enola Holmes 2

TV

* Death in Paradise - seasons 11, 12, 13, 14
* Wednesday - seasons 1, 2
* Beyond Paradise - Death in Paradise but back in the UK
* Stranger Things - season 1 early in the year, then 2/3/4/5 later on
* Return to Paradise - a spinoff of Death in Paradise set on the south coast of NSW
* Meltdown: Three Mile Island
* Deep Space Nine - seasons 1-7
* Air Crash Investigations on Disney+
* Andor - season 2
* How to Change your Mind
* Turning Point: The Bomb and the Cold War
* Lego Grand Masters of the Galaxy
* Trainwreck: Poop Cruise
* Black Mirror - season 7
* Tokyo Trial
* Trainwreck: Storm Area 51
* The Antisocial Network: Memes to Mayhem
* Futurama - season 13
* You Are What You Eat
* The Simpsons - bit of season 36
* Lost Melbourne documentary
* GameStop documentary
* Pirates: Behind the Legends - a couple of episodes

Books

None. Although I did get some way through The Princess Bride by William Goldman. Reading is just so *hard*.

Other Stuff

* Got frustrated at the lack of response from Access Canberra in January over the new MyWay+ issues
* Got some ok photos Comet C/2024 G3 (ATLAS) in January
* Got our Queensland holiday from 2004 and Col and Sandra's wedding blogged. Only took 21 years to get online..
* Took some Cousin Itt photos in February
* Remembered 11 years since Dad carked it in February
* The Green Shed closed down booooo and was replaced by "Goodies Junction" run by Vinnies. Definitely preferred the Green Shed. Later in the year found out the owner of the Green Shed started a spinoff in Fyshwick.
* Did a keto diet for a few weeks in February to lose a few kilos. It was pretty effective! And mostly kept the weight off too.
* Neighbours moved to New Zealand in April
* Climbed Mt Rogers a bunch of times in April while I was trying to get a bit fitter for my holiday
* Did low carb again for a little while in April. Gave up when it became apparent I wasn't going overseas.
* Had a lovely drive around Canberra on our wedding anniversary in April
* Saw the Giant Crane in May
* Listened to the Classic 100 Piano in June
* Went to the Handmade Markets at EPIC in June
* Neighbours house was finally rented out in June
* Watched all of Jamie's Anti-Chef videos from the very beginning in order from August. Still only about two thirds of the way through them.
* A red-back spider took up residence in our letter box in August. She was spray-and-wiped.
* Crimson rosellas returned to chew on the beams supporting the roof
* Stu rage-retired in September. Then spent the better part of a month in agony from his back. Recovered from that only to have hearing problems and nausea.
* Saw comet C/2025 R2 (SWAN), but only barely
* Visited the new "Green" Shed (The Shed) in October
* Stu more or less took over some cooking and some basic housework in October or November
* Plucked a number out of the air to go for in the Melbourne Cup (my birthday), and that horse won!
* Got frustrated at MyWay+ which doesn't work properly. Got one free ride out of it, but then figured out a fix.
* Got some photos of the aurora in November, although I never actually saw it
* Made a beer advent calendar out of beers I missed from work drinks that Neil saved for me
* Found a 2011 10c coin!!
* Chipped one of my front teeth
* Neighbours got a new barky dog
* Reread the second half of the New Testament

So there we have it.  I guess a fairly quiet year in a lot of ways.  We're both hoping 2026 will be better, especially health-wise.

Happy New Year!!!

2023. Another lap around the sun. Another busy year.

The big trip for this year was to America with my brother to visit theme parks and do a Caribbean cruise out of Tampa. I still thought it was "too soon" to be travelling to America and cruising, but I had no choice because Bare Necessities is an evil company and I would never EVER travel with them again. And guess what. It was indeed too soon, half the ship got covid, and I probably did too at the end. But I didn't test because what was I going to do. We called it Schrödinger's Covid. Not that Americans care about covid anyway. They flat out refuse to wear a mask when they're sick or use hand sanitiser EVER. So I felt no guilt spreading germs around Disney World, especially when there's no hand sanitiser to be found anywhere in the parks. I kept my mask on which was the best I could do. Luckily I didn't get very sick and had a pretty awesome holiday with David. We had a couple of little trips as well. We went to Berrima for the weekend around our 15th wedding anniversary. It rained the whole time. We went to the coast in May to visit Kit and Pete, and a very last minute trip in October as well. We went to Sydney to catch up with some peeps for my 50th, and again to go to the Powerhouse Museum for possibly the last time ever. I also worked super hard to get the last two overseas trip photos online, and actually managed it, six months after America, and one year after Europe. But did get filled with rage at tripadvisor and booking.com. Both have utterly terrible invoicing and communication. Tripadvisor literally ripped me off for one of our Europe tours. And booking.com charges you randomly for hotels but I couldn't find emails for all the ones they did so had to make guesses on some of them.

At work my job description is still mostly Sadie. Well, when I have time in between people wanting stuff and wanting me to fix problems. Over and over and over again I was reminded that the correct spelling of Microsoft is actually B.S. Everything they do is designed to compromise any sort of security. I hate it so much. Early in the year I decided that we really need to manage our certificate renewals manually. That is, keep them in a diary of sorts so we don't miss renewals. Because over and over again there'd be outages for systems due to certificate expiries, even with management tools, to other teams, and I didn't want that to happen to our team. I helped out with some firewall upgrades in January. Did some apnic training on routing in March. Spent ages with Neil cleaning up mail policies. Cleaned up routing on a bunch of devices. Migrated our DR laptop to a new laptop. Did a week of oncall in September to give Connor a break. Trialled a proxy replacement, but while it did have some nice saas features, it was very week security-wise. Got forced into using Windoze 11. I hate it. So. Much. Got three new people in our team, but our area is already full so everyone's having to shuffle around every day which causes me all sorts of anxiety. And yet further down the floor it's a ghost town and noone sits there. Pisses me off. Socially we had a whisky night in July, and I went to trivia nights in July and September (I missed a later one due to Stu having covid). And I ran my big bbq at the lake for the eleventh year in a row with over fifty people.

I've generally been ok healthwise. There was the probable covid in America in March. I definitely had gut involvement because I'd get hungry but then only be able to eat a small amount before my stomach would be like, nope, I'm done. When I got home I had two bouts in March and April of what the doctor suspected might be diverticulitis (mild case) but I never actually found out the results of the tests. Given it was shortly after covid, it's quite possible it was related to that. I have been avoiding strawberries though, except the ones that grew in our back yard (no problems with those). There were the bouts of insomnia on and off that have been plaguing me for the past few years. Super annoying to just be lying there just awake. After getting back from America and having spent so little time on a screen in a month, I found I was completely blind trying to look at my monitors. So I really needed to get new glasses. I tried a new optometrist in Dickson (the son of the optometrist I used to see when I first moved to Canberra) but the practice is a little unorganised and when I went to pick up the glasses the optometrist wasn't even there to help fit them. Plus when I asked a follow up question later the optometrist wouldn't even talk to me. So not sure I'll go back. But, the glasses are great, I can see my computer now clearly. But it does mean I have to swap them out with my other glasses all the time as they're optimised for screen distance. I did have a bit of a cold in August, but multiple RATs were negative. Stu got a likely case of food poisoning in August, most likely from Disappointing aka Hero Sushi. I think he's only been back like once since then (he used to go all the time). He got covid in November most likely from a work colleague who continued coming into work even though his son was sick with covid. First time for him. He had a week off feeling pretty miserable and worked from home for a while after. I worked from home for a couple of weeks too, but never got it. I guess it helped having my booster just a few weeks earlier. Stu also got another possible bout of food poisoning in December, although it might have been covid related.

I saw quite a bit of various peeps at Herbert's during the year, either with Tony/Frank/Karen etc or The Chrises/Tony/Neil etc. There was a tap takeover by Big Shed in April, but I missed the one in October by TRBC because we went down the coast. Kit came to stay a night in January. We had Jenn over for dinner in April. Caught up with Luc for drinks in June. Went to R&F's in July and November. Had brunch with Katie (Stu's school friend) and Andrew at Little Bird in September. Went to Ben and Sarah's for dinner in September. Had Chris and Glenda over for dinner in October. Went to M&M's for dinner in November. Had Christmas Eve "Herbert's @ Tony's" although Dino and Kristin never made it, but it was still a good night with a bunch of peeps. David came to stay in September. He had a look at the oven and found a blown element (which died when the oven was less than two years old). He also replaced our stovetop (one of the elements had died but the final straw was when I accidentally smashed the whole surface by hitting the preexisting chip at just the right force/angle). I took him out for lunch at the Star Buffet after. Then we walked around Ikea for a couple of hours to walk off lunch. He came back again a couple of weeks later to install the new element I got, only to find the thing didn't actually fit. Sigh. We saw Annie and the family on Christmas day which was the first time we'd seen them all since last Christmas. We're all such slackers. Mum/David/Kellie/Sia came for Boxing Day lunch, and Mum stayed til the 28th before going home.

We didn't spend a whole lot of time out at the club this year. Partly because of Certain People, but also because Life. In March the sweetie and I completely emptied out the office, cleaned it, threw a whole heap of crap out, and put everything else back again. Then it was the Mardis Gras social. We went to the M themed night in May and I went as a minifig. There was Ian and Chris's anniversary formal night in June. I did Christmas in July again for like fifty people. And then another couple of working bees later in the year. We were going to go to the Christmas party but Stu got covid.

I had a few photo projects this year. One of them was getting Dad's slides into chronological order. I'd literally lay rolls and rolls of them out on the table to piece back together their correct order. This worked up until he started printing labels and gluing them all over the slide numbers, and the newest rolls were made of plastic so you couldn't even scrape back the label to see the frame number. I've still yet to finish processing the slides but at least now I'll be able to get them into the "correct" order. Well, except for the few odd ones that seem to be loners and not fit any other rolls at all. I also managed to get *two* overseas holiday photos online within six months and a year of going on the trip. I've gone back to working on Turkey 2014 to get them done in time for the ten year anniversary of the trip. Finally, I filed three years of "Canberra Life", "Friends and Family" and "Homes and Gardens" photos which had been presorted but not actually filed. Will go back to trying to file all my photos every week. There's still a lot of work I want to do in the sorting space. Hardest is when things overlap. Like going out to restaurants or holidays with friends - do they go under restaurants/holidays or under friends. It's a dilema.

Our blue-tongue lizard Stumpy is still puttering along. He (she?) must be about fourteen years old now. I got a bag full of guppies in January to add to the genetic diversity in the tanks. The last cory that I got in 2015 finally died in July. I consolidated all the downstairs tanks until Stu retires and has the brain space for fish again. So now we only have five active tanks. There's my "angel" tank (the 620T) which has guppies. The two foot upstairs has guppies and heaps of java fern - I rarely need to change the water in this tank because it's so well planted. Plus there's always so many babies I'd be worried about sucking them up. The four foot still has fourteen congo tetras and a loach, as well as some guppies (I think all male - no point letting them breed in that tank as the babies would get eaten straight away). The four foot is still plagued with algae problems - needs more plants and guppies I reckon. I still have Chrissie's tiny little tank with the two clown loaches. I've had them for nearly six years now. Downstairs I only have the one two foot tank active. It's got guppies and a sucking catfish and is also a fairly healthy tank. All the other tanks downstairs I either drained or turned the heaters/lights off and only run the filters for an hour or two every day (while the sun is at max on the panels) - to keep the heaters from drying out and the water from going stagnant.

I had a bit of a fun year with Lego this year. Last Christmas I got myself the Titanic, and built it (slowly, to make the build take longer) after my America trip. It's a spectacular model, I love it. I also made an iceberg with some of Vic's huge pile of 1x4 bricks. For my birthday I got The Starry Night (which I've seen in New York!) but it's not just a mosaic, it's a fully 3D version which is pretty cool. I also got Himeji Castle (been there!) which is a really lovely set, and finished it Christmas day. I got back into inventorying Vic's Lego and finished off the loose pieces. Then worked on the non-Star Wars minifigs. Bricklink was down for a week in November because a bunch of accounts got hacked. For Christmas I got a big minifig, although haven't started that yet - I don't have time for fun anymore!

I didn't do as many jigsaws at home this year - I'm just too damned busy - too busy for fun! The problem is if I start one I'll spend too much time on it and not doing the things I need to do. I need to retire so I have time for fun. I still play the clarinet a couple of times a week.

The weather this year has been a bit insane. Apparently 2023 was the hottest year in recorded history. There was a huge lightning storm here in March. Fortunately it didn't do any damage here, but it destroyed heaps of Aquila's electronics including both his heating and cooling systems. There was snow out past Queanbeyan in May. The winter here just *felt* warm. Sure it was cold too but spring sure came early, with stuff flowering a couple of weeks earlier than usual (and Stumpy got *hungry* earlier than usual too). Another storm in December knocked down a sizeable branch off one of our trees. Fortunately no damage here, but there were heaps of trees down around Canberra. And let's not even get into the heatwaves, fires and flooding catastrophes around the world this year.

It was definitely a year of battles with technology this year.

My blog turned 20 this year! For its 20th blogiversary I gave it a bit of a design refresh. I put in a mobile friendly template which does make it a little easier to read on the phone. I also updated the banner. But I had to increase the throttle timeout so searches on my blog would work (no idea why it takes so much longer since the design refresh). I also got frustrated with Chrome which will now try the HTTPS site even when the link you click on is http:// This means the style sheet won't load as it's "mixed content". Unfortunately twenty years ago noone used https so my entire blog is all hardcoded by Movable Type with full urls with http:// I hardcoded the style sheet as https and for later pages it now renders correctly but if you look at older stuff and your dumbhead browser changes the page to https it doesn't render properly.

Vodien broke my blog three times this year. Firstly they broke Perl->MySQL in March and it took me a week of telling them it was in fact their fault before they finally fixed it. Then they broke my cpanel access during an upgrade. Twice. Had to get the password reset. Twice. Then they broke CageFS in October which broke *all* my scripts. When they eventually fixed it a couple of weeks later they left a "how did we do" survey which I couldn't do because the certificate was completely broken on *.vodien.com. Three big outages this year. Maybe I should pay for hosting somewhere else. Although with the state of the world I suspect it'd be just as bad anywhere. There's just no such thing as good service anymore.

I continued to be frustrated with Apple. While my new (now a year old) 14 Pro is great (the low light features are spectacular), it took a bit of getting used to. Firstly, don't ever use the 2x lens, it's just digital magnification. Either get closer or use the 3x lens. Next, if "macro" gets triggered while using 3x for macro, stand back, point it away to reset, and try again. The "macro" on 3x will completely destroy the photos, I have no idea what it does, it possibly uses the "wide angle" lens and then digitally magnifies 3x. When you can get the optical 3x to work on closeups it actually does ok. It pisses me off though that you can't force it to use the lens you choose. I got so fed up with Apple messing with the timestamps on my files when copying to windows that I bought a third party app - iMazing - which will at least copy jpgs/pngs properly. With movie files it copied them in native Apple HDR which makes them look trash. So I'd have to copy them off in windows as well anyway. Well that was until Apple changed something and now they both copy exactly the same. Oh, they also decided later in the year to start presenting HEIC files to windows instead of JPGs, so I *have* to use iMazing. I was enraged to find that Apple just randomly changed timezones while I was travelling in February. Multiple times a day it'd jump back and forth to GMT-4/GMT-5. It took me hours and hours to sort out the mess that was my holiday photos. And even when I got home, and had been home for a day or two on the correct time, it randomly dropped back to Houston time until a reboot. Speaking of reboots, the wallpaper is borked. Everytime you reboot the wallpaper is just a black screen. You have to go in, change to a different wallepaper theme, wait a few minutes, then change it back again. Someone suggested clearing browser cache to fix Redactle early in the year. Not only was it stoopid advice because Redactle itself is usually at fault, but whatever I did cleared *all* of my cache/cookies/whatever, so I lost all my streaks on wordle etc. So I pretty much just stopped playing them altogether on the spot. Finally, I told iTunes/my phone to trust my computer. It still doesn't trust my computer.

I had two separate battles with email. Firstly gmail refused to accept mail from me without an SPF record on my domain. Internode very nicely have a page on their website which tells you exactly what to use (for Eudora on my computer). Optus not so much (for my phone). And Vodien's support pages were misleading because they say to do it via cpanel, which is dumb because the cpanel host doesn't host the DNS. Eventually figured out how to get the record setup on Vodien DNS. Then Internode (aka Epic Bastards) moved their SMTP "service" to AWS, and cut off the ability to use it AS A PAYING CUSTOMER unless you use your internode address as the From address. Which is utterly ridiculous because they're cutting off the ability to even use the internode address for email AND what if you have multiple people in your household trying to send mail, not everyone can use that address!! So then had to spend hours massaging my twenty year old mail client into being able to use my hosting for SMTP. But that also means I can't email Stu/David at their domains because I host the websites for those and so Vodien thinks it owns them. I really wish Stu would get us off Internode. Their service has been pretty trash since they got bought out by iinet then TPG. I complained to Internode about how trash it was, and they were like, "oh we're just trying to stop spam". Nothing about being an internet SERVICE provider. Bastards bastards bastards.

And in other tech crap. On Friday 13th January, Epic Tool (aka Elon Musk) turned off 3rd party Twitter access. So I stopped using it. Simples. Had to fight with Optus in February who in their wisdom split out my accounts and made me stuff up my payments so had to sort that out as well as figure out how to actually even access both my accounts which are now separate. Hopeless. Continued to get frustrated at the sheer absurdity of Windoze 11. Finally got a new battery for the UPS after over a year of them not being able to get stock. Dodgy Dyson struck again - this time it decided the battery needed to be replaced WHEN THERE WAS NOTHING WRONG WITH IT. David's Kogan iPhone cable got more and more flakey before I finally gave up on it in August.

The house caused no end of dramas too this year.

The Solar Edge solar system we got put in last December essentially was DOA. Sometimes it would work and we could see it doing 11kW which was great. Even though we were supposed to be maxed out at 5kW back to the grid sometimes we'd see it pushing more back, no idea how. But most of the time it didn't work at all. After many calls/emails that went unanswered (and I flat out refused to finish paying the sparkies until it was working) we finally left honest feedback (at their request), which finally got some action. They came and had a look in early January but didn't fix it. They rewired things so that the system would support working off grid (it was sold to us on the promise that it would but then the sparkies said oh no it doesn't do that, and later they were like, oh, Solar Edge says we can do that now). And they finally completely replaced the whole inverter in late January. We thought that would be the end of it, but the very first night it drained the battery to 0% even though it's supposed to only drop to 10%. So had to put in another support call for that. The app is great when it works, but oftentimes the system will lose connectivity and it'll be like "updated 4 hours ago". Dumb. And, upsettingly, the system never puts out more than 9kW now. I thought it might have been the angle of the sun so waited until December again (when it did 11kW last year) but alas not. So we'll have to raise *another* support call to find out what gives. On a lighter note, we did finally get a negative electricity bill in November. Separately, we got a new digital meter to replace the original analogue meter. This one has its own back to base internet connection for reporting, so noone needs to come read the meter anymore.

The night the sparkies came in early January I was turning the oven off and the power tripped. I was half wondering if the sparkies did anything. After a couple of times of the power tripping whenever we turned the oven off and on, we took to flipping the switch off at the board before turning the power to the oven on/off. Because the back element was fine, only the top element was broken, but there was no way to turn the oven on/off without going past a mode that activated the top element. I was totally pissed off though because the oven was less than three years old, and when I asked about it at Bing Lee and they said there was only a one year warranty. David eventually came to look at it in September, found the broken element, disconnected it, ordered a new one from TLE in Belco. On the same day we bought and installed a new stove (as mentioned further up). He came back two weeks later to install the element, only to find it didn't fit. I'd never buy a DeLonghi anything again - you can't get replacement parts for something that's only three years old. We still haven't replaced the element. Maynor and Cochran said they can get one, but I need to know that I can return it if it doesn't fit.

The garden is a neverending drama. I pulled back some of the ivy in February. It's grown back. And then some. Problem is our ladder is not long enough to reach it properly. We had a permaculture mob come out to talk to us about our yard. I was hoping they'd be able to talk to us and exchange ideas (that's what I assumed we paid them a couple of hundred dollars for). Instead she just said, oh well we'll need to do a cleanup first. That'll be 48 hours work just for the front yard. I'm like, WTF, there is NOT 48 hours of work in the front yard for professionals. So I did it myself. In a lot less than 48 hours. But because I focussed so long on the front yard, the back yard got out of control again. Sigh. I did manage to get all the bluestone moved to EffanC's though - thanks Tony and F!!

In other house crap. We got a new toilet seat in April as the old one was getting very yellowed and degraded. Went to Ikea in July and found a bin solution that would work. Bought all the bins but the shelves were out of stock. Turned out they were actually discontinued. Bought another shelf which wasn't exactly what we wanted. It looks sort of ok but is very flimsy. Finally ran some lines of sealant over the loose tiles in the shower in August. The leaking has finally stopped, although my future self will hate me as that's what the previous owners of my place in Sydney did and the sealent got all mouldy and discoloured over time. We got a couple of bottlebrushes planted out the front by the government. I took a chip out of the microwave platter in September. The cooler wouldn't turn the water on the first time we used it in November. But let it rest and it worked the next time. After I got past all the errors.

Our favourite restaurant of the year would still be Chong Co, with delivery from them four times over the year. Kinn Thai is another favourite, we went there a few times. Herbert's is a great local and had many lunches and some dinners there. We would often get Pattysmiths for lunch on shopping days. Their fries are awesome and the burgers pretty good too. Had dinner in March with EffanC at Hachiko which was expensive (got the banquet) but very nice. Went to Taki on our anniversary and had some delicious steaks. Dinners and takeaway from Raijin (average), 10 Yards (nice), Tiger Lane (meh), CBD Dumpling House (yummy and quick), BONE (stoopid name), Disappointing Sushi (gave us free KFC because the sweetie is a regular, although he mostly stopped going after he probably got food poisoning probably from there), Badger&Co (repeat of last time), Symposium (nice), Betty's Burgers (not bad), Happy's (sad cause of all the single guys hiding out there for dinner). Brunches at 54 Benjamin a couple of times, U&Co a couple of times, Cup of Joy, Deakin and Me, Coffee Club Gungahlin, Bunny Beans. Random lunches at Flavours of Jiangnan, Canberra Cafe and Burgers, Ramen O and Four Winds. You can now get potato on a stick in the mall, meaning I can get my two favourite street foods there (that and takoyaki). The problem is you have to wait for both of them, which is difficult if you're eating with people and don't want to make them wait.

On the cooking front, there was a few new things and a lot of old favourites. Stu really likes Cath's basa bake recipe so we make that semi regularly. Also tuna casserole and the 1kg frozen turkey roasts. In winter, favourites are Alan's beef stew, butt, er, beef cheeks and brisket. I also made a pea and ham soup in July which Stu likes but I'm meh about. We've had Luv-a-Duck Peking duck a couple of times which is pretty awesome. Kale "chips" are also great, but sadly we never saw kalettes for sale this year. We still often got pizza on Thursday, but sometimes made our own, and Fridays sometimes we'd have Ingham's chicken kievs. And I do like doing Sunday night roasts. I decided that roasting chicken "upside down" is much better than cooking it breast side up. Stu made a Japanese Golden Curry in March, and I made one later in the year. He also cooked "Coronation Oden" twice. I called it this because we first had it the night we watched the coronation of King Charles III. I made a really nice yellow curry out of a Coles magazine and liked it so much I've modified it slightly for my "official" recipe. Made a fairly nice apricot chicken to use up some old dried apricots, but would need to use a boneless cut of chicken I think. For my 50th, R&F gave me Nagi Maehashi's RecipeTin Eats Dinner book and I've so far made eight recipes out of it. They always take a lot longer to follow the recipe precisely, but they've all been very good, and I'd make them again even if just to streamline things a little. I've made several lemon cheesecakes, and also tried Milo cookies at Christmas.

Theatre/Shows/Exhibitions
* AWS at the Hellenic Club with Emma Pask and Ed Wilson
* Lego Brick Show in Wagga, caught up with David as well
* Jess and Uncle Doss at Herbert's
* Come From Away
* Australian War Memorial's Big Things in Store
* ANU Women's Revue with Jess aka Jeremy Laser

Movies (at the movies)
* Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny
* Oppenheimer

Movies (TV)
* Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade on NYE
* Laid Back Camp
* A Christmas Karen
* The Social Network
* Onward
* When Harry Met Sally / The Shop Around the Corner
* Avatar
* Glass Onion
* You've Got Mail
* Everything Everywhere All At Once
* 127 Hours
* Rocky Horror Picture Show
* Chernobyl 1986
* Amadeus
* First Man
* Raiders of the Lost Ark
* Dragonheart
* Innerspace
* Paterson
* Romancing the Stone
* Jewel of the Nile
* The War of the Roses
* Turning Red
* Pretty Woman
* Malcolm
* The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar / The Swan / The Rat Catcher / Poison / Fantastic Mr Fox
* Dumb Money
* Die Hard / Die Hard 2 / Love Actually
* Home Alone 2

TV
* Picard (finished season 2)
* You Can't Ask That (season 7)
* a series of Canberra Survivor on YouTube
* Origins of Us
* Bocchi the Rock
* The Crown finished (seasons 2-5)
* Death in Paradise (seasons 4-6)
* First two episodes of A Spy Among Friends. Stu was going to watch the rest himself but never did
* The Simpsons (seasons 32-34)
* The Book of Boba Fett
* Mandalorian (season 3)
* Futurama (all of it)
* Lego Grandmasters (season 5)
* Amazing Race Australia (seasons 3-4)
* War on Waste (seasons 2-3)
* Ahsoka
* The Orville (seasons 1-2)

Books
* The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar (well, I started it)

Other stuff
* tried to see the balloons but the wind was blowing towards the airport so they didn't lift off. Tried again the next day and saw them. Jet lag and being awake stoopidly early helped.
* saw a double rainbow in March
* went with Tony to RFS tour of the helibase at Hume in March
* Pialligo Estate went broke - no more streaky bacon!! Disaster!!
* Looking Back, Moving Forward nights at the Shine Dome
* Cotter Pumping Station Tour
* saw a partial solar eclipse in April
* Parliament House in May to see the Lego Parliament House and wander round. Probably the first time I'd been in there since 1990.
* saddened over the death of Heather Armstrong (dooce.com) by suicide in May
* magpies came to see me over winter after six months of not
* Whisky Live in May
* Hardly Normal started work at beginning of June, but didn't open til November
* ABC Classic 100 - your favourite instrument - all of mine made it into the top 100
* got to level 10000 in Candy Crush in June. Got to 12186 by the end of the year by completely changing the way I play it.
* found some papers from my Dad's family and how they'd found the family home of some my ancestors!
* gave blood for first time in about 32 years in July
* bookings247 got hacked - they had my name and last four digits of my credit card. I know it was them because the email they used was the one I used on their website, once, in 2019. I contacted them but they ignored me.
* my 50th!! Had a party the Saturday before; day of was pretty quiet, just KFC for lunch and Chong Co delivered for dinner; Sydney the Saturday after; another run for club peeps in early September
* made a new candle with old candle wax, but need to make it thinner next time
* evil neighbours that refused to train their dogs got another one that barks a lot from time to time, but at least not *all* the time
* our car clocked 100000km in August
* went for a drive in September to the Air Disaster Memorial, Molonglo Observatory Synthesis Telescope (MOST), and Canberra's weather radar outside Captains Flat
* Herbert's for Sunday jazz in October
* saw a cool double rainbow in November
* got a heap of strawberries off our strawberry plants in November

And that wraps up another year.  Have a happy and safe New Year!!

2020.

Oh my.

We started the year at EffanC's, suffocating in bushfire smoke. We didn't go out to the club because I was too nervous about bushfires, and in fact even suburban fires. In 1994 I saw spotfires go a full kilometre from the bush, just a couple of hundred metres from our house. So I wanted to stay close. The bushfire smoke hung around for much of January and the devastation the fires caused was just heartbreaking.

The bushfires ended, then we got a massive hail storm that wrote off thousands of cars. I know *lots* of people that had their cars written off. And then it rained. And rained. And rained. Just a few weeks after the fires finished, much of the landscape was flooded. Which apparently is exactly what the river ecosystems *don't* need. Coastal communities begged Canberrans to come down and spend some money to help them recover. So we did. Although just an overnighter for Pete's 40th.

But then.

The C word.

As it hit, coastal communities begged Canberrans to stay away. When we got back from the coast, we dropped into Coles at Gungahlin to pick up a few supplies, including toilet paper (we were down to our last roll at home). We managed to get one of the last packets of toilet paper on the shelves. It was the last time I was to see toilet paper in Coles for about six or seven weeks. Fortunately I was able to get it at Chris's, otherwise things would have been pretty messy. The panic buying extended to all paper products that could be used in lieu of toilet paper - all the tissues and paper towel was gone for weeks as well. Pasta, pasta sauce, rice and even flour and yeast all disappeared off the shelves. I really didn't understand the flour/yeast thing - bread was still freshly available throughout the whole thing. In the second week even fresh food was mostly gone. Long lasting vegetables such as potatoes were nearly all gone, as was most fresh meat. One day (22 March) we went to the Belconnen markets and all three butchers had closed by lunch time Sunday because they'd simply run out of meat to sell.

On Monday 16 March I had the slightest hint of a sore throat and a cough. So Tuesday 17 March I stayed at home. And there I stayed. For six months. Other than a couple of odd days, and dropping in on a couple of weekends to swap out my backup hard drives, I didn't work in the office in any regular fashion until September. As it turns out I love working from home. Who knew. Previously I didn't really like it, partly because of my monitor setup is a bit backwards, but also because if I didn't go into the office every day I would lose the claim to "my" desk. But with everyone else working from home as well, and in fact they had a sticker on my desk for most of that six months saying don't work here (trying to keep people further apart), it wasn't an issue. And I got somewhat used to the monitors being backwards.

By 22 March, most flights around the world had been cancelled. The government imposed a travel ban. For every country they said "Do not travel". Restaurants, bars, cinemas and anything "non-essential" was shut down. I was quite upset by the impact that would have on low income earners. And then I raged at people whinging about their pay raise getting delayed six months. My holiday to Oberammergau to see the Passion Play got postponed two years. They started doing that play to thank God for saving them from the plague. And this year they had to postpone. Because of a plague. There's got to be some irony there somewhere. Qantas grounded all their 747s - forever. I was super sad about this.

In late March I went out at lunch time on a Monday to do the food shopping, when Jamo was a lot less crowded, and did that a couple of times. Still not much in the way of pasta/rice etc. We did big shops fortnightly to minimise having to go out. And I did the shopping by myself for a while too which was no fun because I like going with the sweetie. Every time I went shopping I swore I was getting a sore throat straight after. It was late April before I saw toilet paper again in Coles. June saw an outbreak in Melbourne, and panic buying started up again. In July I finally got my money back from Emirates for my Europe trip, although not the extra I paid for seat allocations.

Things eased up a lot in the second half of the year with no community transmission in Canberra since March. Restaurants opened and stayed open. We were able to start seeing our friends again. It hit Melbourne pretty hard in the middle of the year.  By December it looked like Australia was getting on top of things again. But then a driver of international flight crews got it in December and started spreading it around Sydney. Sydney went into lockdown of sorts and Mum couldn't come visit us after Christmas.

So a pretty wild year on that front.

Very little travel this year, for obvious reasons. I flew up to Sydney in February for Ryan's 21st birthday. But with all the delays it would have been quicker to take the coach. And that turned out to be my only flight for the year. I stayed with Mum and went to the 21st, where I put up a video of all the photos I'd taken of Ryan every week/fortnight/month/year since he was born. Caught the coach back the next morning. In March we went down the coast to stay with Kit and Pete for a surprise party for Pete's 40th. That was a bit of fun. Came home the next day. Did a quick trip to Sydney in late June to inspect my flat after the previous tenants decided to move out. We also dropped in to visit Luc and Lizzi, and on the way back I saw Nepean Dam. My flat ended up being empty for a month, and I had to drop the rent *a lot* which was pretty sad. In late August we wandered around the Snowy Mountains to Tumut, visited several dams and had a lovely afternoon at the Tumut River Brewing Company for Stu's 50th. In November Stu's brother convinced us to go up to Port Macquarie and South West Rocks to visit him and his father.

In lieu of actual travel, I did a *lot* of work on my travel photos. Throughout last year I'd gotten our Hong Kong/Singapore 2016 trip labelled, and had the blog ready for the fourth anniversary since we went. I geotagged my USA 2000 trip, fixed up all the labels, and got photos into the blog. I started geotagging my USA 2004 photos in February, but ran out of steam with that after about a week's worth, because it's *really* hard to geotag photos taken out of a moving car in the middle of outback USA. Next I labelled all twelve and a half thousand UK 2010 photos, finishing in December. I registered a Geonames account, and a Google Cloud account so I could use the Google Maps API in Geosetter.

Work was work. Still doing mostly internetty type stuff like firewalls and proxies. As mentioned previously, it turns out introverts like me like working from home. It's just so much more flexible and it *feels* like I'm home, even though I'm working. It means I can pop something in the slow cooker at lunch time, or something in the oven a bit earlier than I would if I got home at nearly 6pm. Or if it's a quiet Friday afternoon I can flex off for a bit without having to wait for the sweetie to go home or catch a bus. I got a bunch of our gear finally converted over to SNMP v3. I shut off access to an entire old environment. I fought with a particular firewall for months, including spending three hours on the phone to support one weekend trying to fix it. Still no resolution in sight on that one, but Wardie, bestest guy ever, has basically taken over, because he's awesome. Did a bit of training here and there, mostly free stuff. Got a new service desk tool in December, and had a lot of fun making shiny dashboards for it, which a bunch of other sections copied for themselves!  Socially, we had a gin night in early March, just before the lockdown. I actually missed the last work drinks before shutdown because of the slight sore throat I had. In August the guys started going to the Pot Belly for drinks, which we did for a little while before actual work drinks started up again. And I got to run my Christmas barbeque at the lake for over forty people. It was a lovely cool day, which made nice change from so many years where it's been crazy hot or shrouded in bushfire smoke.

Healthwise I was generally pretty good. Bouts of insomnia came and went a few times. Completely frustrating and debilitating. From mid March I felt like I had a permanently sore throat and slight cough for like a month or two. It was likely all in my head though. Got a flu vaccination in April. David came home with a cold in late August. He went home but it was too late - Stu caught it about a week later, and I caught it about five days after that. I was sick for a weekend. Stu was sick for a month. At least. I decided to go on short walks around the neighbourhood every day at lunch to get a little bit of exercise and vitamin D. I passed a lot of magpies, and decided to bribe them to not swoop me in spring by feeding them little bits of roast meat. All through winter they would see me coming and fly over. So cool! But come spring time they lost interest - there was obviously plenty of their own food around which they were more interested in. I also never got swooped :) Went up Mt Rogers once with David. Got some new reading glasses in December (should NOT have gone to Specsavers).

On the friends front, really things only went quiet for about two months from mid March to May. Other than that it was actually pretty much business as usual. We saw our fair share of EffanC at ours or theirs, including drinks over Zoom. We caught up with Kit and Pete when they came up in January to avoid the fires, and in February when they came up again, as well as Pete's 40th at their place in March. Had a few games of Kismet with them as well. We went to Rob and Lynne's with a bunch of peeps in January and again in December, and had them over in May. Went to a bbq at Brett and Sharon's in January, and the middle of the year we saw quite a bit of the A/M/C group, including some dinners, parties and walks. Got to see Rob and Fiona a couple of times too which was nice, as they really went into hibernation during the lockdown. Unfortunately didn't see much of Scott. Also didn't see much of Chrissie. Saw her on her birthday in January and I think that was it. Doesn't help that they are all always either crazy busy or sick. We didn't end up having a hanami lunch with Nat and Andrew.  I invited them but never heard back.  I would have chased them up but Stu was too busy and stressed with a uni assignment.  Had a lovely time at Aquila's 60th in January. Had Nelson and Susan over in August for vegan lasagna and games. Had drinks with Damien in September, I think that was the only time I saw him all year. We were supposed to go to Ben and Sarah's wedding in Queensland in October. Yeah that didn't happen. But Ben was able to have a nice 40th at Gungahlin Lakes on the day. We also had them over for dinner in December. And Doc organised drinks at the George for a bunch of work peeps between Christmas and New Year which was nice.

On the family side, well my family has been here the whole time! David has been living with us for a little over a year. While it can be challenging sometimes (mainly menu planning and trying to remember to vacuum around a shiftworker) it's generally been pretty good. And he fixes things! While he was here he replaced the light fitting in our ceiling fan (I think that might have been before he moved here), fixed the leaky ensuite toilet, installed new taps in the bathroom, installed LEDs everywhere, including some smartlights in the loungeroom that are pretty cool, installed a new extentible clothes line, installed a new oven, fixed the display on Stu's CD player, fixed the frequency on our digital radios, fixed up the bedroom curtain string which had come off the rails, fixed our back fence which had been pushed out by vines and photinia and finally broken in strong winds, phoned up and ordered and picked up a new fix tank lid for me, installed a bracket for the clothes line so we can extend it half way instead of the whole way, helped Stu build his new shelves, rewired the LEDs in Stu's four foot tank so it'd work with a standard transformer, installed a couple of new smoke detectors, fixed my scanner (cable had come loose, and I would have eventually figured this out because I would have moved it to test it on another computer). And he mowed the lawns. Seriously, most awesomest brother ever!!! And super handy having a qualified electrician in the family! About the best we could do to thank him was cook lots of roasts. Including roast lamb on his birthday, and he had a few friends over to help celebrate. I stayed with Mum in Sydney a couple of times - when I went up for Ryan's 21st, and when I inspected my flat in June. We saw a bit of Stu's family as well. Went and visited a few times in August, October and Christmas.  And we saw Scott and Kerry and the family and Jeff and Ruth in November.

Our social club events had to be curtailed somewhat, and I missed out on doing Christmas in July which I've done for a few years in a row now, but at least I got to do Christmas for something like fifty people (a whole bunch had to stay outside due to capacity restrictions). We had a few weekends out there while Stu was on the committee, including in January where I did some cleaning out of the "tool shed", a night in June, our first since February, where we really appreciated the little wood fireplace, and in July where I stared priming the cabinetry. Also had some time in early October. We went out for the last event before lockdown - an epic Mexican feast in February. One of the raffle prizes that night was a six pack of Corona beer with an attached N95 mask. There was a working bee in July where I scraped concrete off a glass door. That night would have been the Christmas in July night, and the alternative was going to be a bonfire, but it rained, so we cooked marshmallows in the wood heater in the shed. The first event post lockdown was a halloween party where I got to be Lego 80s Classic Space guy again. And then my Christmas party. And we finished the year there with a few friends and a lot of bubbles.

Another fairly quiet year with the fish. I bought ten zebra danios in April and put a few in my three tanks. Half of them died, some fairly quickly. I lost the angel in my 620T tank in September, and Chrissie's catfish was looking super depressed. I stuck my hand in to see if it was still alive, and the water was COLD. The heater had died, taking my angel with it. Pretty upset about that. I took a random day off in September, thinking I'd do some fish stuff in the morning and other things in the afternoon. But I ended up doing fish stuff *all day*. And I managed to break the lid of the upstairs two foot while I was trying to clean it. Stu got some little sucking catfish and some guppies at the end of the year. So Stu's four foot has ten congo tetras, one loach, one siamensis and four tiny sucking catfish. My 620T has Chrissie's huge sucking catfish, a huge old cory and two female danios. My upstairs two foot has two male danios, one who has been sick since shortly after I got him, but refuses to die. Little trooper. It also has a sucking catfish, and six of the guppies Stu got at the end of the year. My downstairs two foot has four of the male guppies and two sucking catfish from Stu's purchase. Also downstairs are five little tanks, all with two or three guppies in them to cycle the tanks.  No change with Stumpy.  He's just as much a gumby as ever.

Not much going on with the Lego. I'm still sporadically sorting Vic's Lego but it's just so painful. If sets were complete it would be a joy, but none of them are, so it's just depressing. I think the only sets I built all year were the set of Shanghai Stu got me for Christmas, and Neil's International Space Station.

The year started slowly with jigsaws - most of the first quarter was taken up with a three thousand piece jigsaw of The Bombing of Algiers. I did two sections of the forty two thousand piece Disney behemoth - Peter Pan and The Little Mermaid. Very few at work thanks to the lockdown, and not too many at home because I'm just too damned busy all the time.

I continued working on labelling and sorting photos. As mentioned above I geotagged and labelled thousands of photos. I also did a lot of filing of photos, but there's still sooo much to be done in that space. In March I started scanning Dad's slides. I started out doing a box a week, and at that rate it was going to take me four or five years. But working from home during lockdown gave me an extra half hour in the mornings that I used to scan a box a day. I managed to get all his slides scanned by Christmas, although I still had a bit of work to rescan slides that had dust on them on the first pass. Didn't quite complete that by the end of the year. In December I had a bit of a play with a gallery generator. The only reason I'm labelling all my holiday photos is because I want to get the majority of them online. I did consider Flickr, but I just have this feeling they're not going to last. Too many buyouts and changes of conditions. Most likely I'll just use S3 and pay the few cents a month it'll likely cost.

I continued to rage at Apple and the crappy things it does. It still messes with the timestamps on my files. I can't download movies first go, or second or third or fourth in a lot of cases. And can't download timelapse videos *at all* to my PC, I have to save them to Google Drive first and then if I'm lucky the encoding/dimensions will be right for me to play them on my PC. Calendar and contacts refuse to sync to Google like they used to (I don't think it's worked since I got my new phone two years ago and I've tried *everything*). The contacts don't even sync to Apple Cloud. I'm about ready to give up on Apple.

Most of the stuff around the house was done by David. Because he's awesome. Our oven element died in March. I cleaned the oven while he investigated getting a new element, but in the end we got a whole new oven. While I was on a work break. With no sleep. Yeah really not the best mental state to be buying home appliances. In April we went out to buy half turn taps. Again, while on a work break, from a situation at work I probably should not have left. The anxiety of that day was terrible!! But the new taps are amazing, I love them! Unfortunately the dripping shower was still there. Guess it's not the taps that are leaking. We had a plumber come look at it, and he did a whole heap of tests, and decided the membrane was gone (duh) and most likely just leaking through the grout. I could have saved myself four hundred dollars if I'd just done the "cover the drain and splash water on the walls" trick which I did just after and proved the same thing. We got a resealer to come have a look and give us a quote. But he was confused about why there would be so much leaking through the grout, promised to send a quote for a complete retile/reseal, but never did. Even when I mailed them again and asked. In March we cleaned out the dumping ground room so that Stu could have his own office. He'd been wanting to do that for ages. The timing was great, as it meant he had a private office during lockdown. He got new shelves later in the year and a whole heap of toys, and he really loves his little space. I spent a weekend tidying up the dungeon and under the house and rearranging everything to keep it clear of the drip. We had to get the Chinese pistachio tree removed in August because the trunks were sagging apart and it was in danger of falling down (onto Kit's garage). I was super sad about that because it was such a beautiful tree, and the birds absolutely love it, and as it turns out it was a great shade for the eastern side of the house, so our house is a lot hotter in the mornings now. We also got the tree guys to be brutal on our photinia which was getting out of control. Again. We had a roof restoration done in October and the roof looks very shiny now. Next up: solar. The garden continued to stay out of control. Although we did get a few strawberry plants off Michelle and got some very nice strawberries off them in October (the ones the slugs didn't get at).

We still managed to eat out a little bit this year. We took Kit and Pete out for dinner in January to Bella Vista. Went to Kinn Thai in January, February and March (which was our last eating out before lockdown). It's always fast service and the food really good. Had some very nice pizzas at Grease Monkey in January. Went to Grill'd with Neil in January to avoid the food court during school holidays. Tried Malatang Hotpot in January too. The one I had was fairly bland, and the one Neil had was super epic spicy, even for him. Need to try something in the middle, but then there was lockdown, and they're still not allowing you to handle the tongs to choose your own food. Tried Wild Panda in Civic when I got back from Sydney, but I don't remember it being anything special. Had lunch with the sweetie at Gus's in May - first eating out post lockdown. Had brunch at Rocksalt in June. Had some nice pork belly with crackling at the Lake George hotel a week before my birthday. It was going to be my birthday meal, but we ended up going to Chong Co on my birthday. And KFC for lunch of course. Went to Happy's a couple of times with the sweetie in September and October. Met up with a bunch of N-Gang people for dinner at Indian Pantry in October for a feast. Tried out Herbert's in November, and went there a couple of times in November and a couple in December with Tony and/or the Chrises. Had drinks a few times with the sweetie at the Beirut Bunker Bar. Had Disappointing Sushi, aka Hero Sushi in Civic in December. It lived up to expectations. It's literally a running joke with us now. You can be guaranteed that the hot food will be cold and everything has avocado in it.

As always, I do quite a bit of interesting cooking. I don't quite know how I manage that, since I'm not really a very good cook. Actually I'm basically a lazy cook. I like cooking things that don't require a lot of fiddly preparation or a lot of cleaning up. I cooked two pavlovas in January. I think this was the first time I'd ever made a full pavlova. I thought I'd have another go at Christmas and failed miserably. Twice. We had cheese and bacon sausages we got from Coles a few times. They're great to have in the fridge because they last ages, so we can use them when we've run out of other food. Made curried sausages in March to try and use up some of the many tins of curry powder we have in the house. We tried out Dominos "deep pan" pizzas a couple of times. They were pretty disappointing. Nothing like the crispy doughy deep fried goodness of pizzas in the eighties. Tried a slow cooked marinated beef in March to try and use up some of the mustard powder we have in the house. It turned out pretty well. Made nachos in late March, probably the first time I've ever made nachos myself. Several of our lunches during lockdown consisted of various types of puff pastry scrolls - cheese and vegemite and pizza scrolls being favourites. Did a coq au vin in April. Cooked a couple of "Yum! Delicious!" cakes and a cashew slice with Mum's peanut slice recipe. I also did Anzac Biscuits on Anzac Day which has become somewhat of a tradition in recent years. I did a few tomato based stews as we went into winter, and we think all the extra tomato set off David's gout, so we had to cut those right back. There was Sizzler cheesy toast a couple of times, and taco Tuesday multiple times - soooo bad but soooo good!! Did an epic lasagna in May. Tried a pulled pork in May. It was pretty amazing, but such a waste of crackling ;) David obliged me with a Country Cheese and cheese sauce craving and had quite a bit of that over winter. Whenever a packet is open it evaporates very quickly. Tried a couple of non-tomato based bakes from my gratins and bakes book - a broccoli and cheese penne with garlic and lemon crumbs, and a potato, bacon and blue cheese bake, both were very nice but also quite similar to my regular veggie bakes. Made an Irish stew in July - Stu was going to make it but life got in the way so I did it.  It was nice enough. Tried slow cooking beef brisket in July and fell in love with it, and did it several times. As well as some slow cooked pulled beef and NQN's beef cheeks as well. Slow cookers are amazing for hearty winter cooking! David reminded me of our youth and Dinner Winner, and we had Coles' One Pan Dinner a couple of times, and even had authentic Dinner Winner once. There may have been a rocky road in there at some point, and a fairly nice gingerbread cheese cake I made at Christmas. There were several weekends where I spent several hours cooking up meals for a week or more, to save cooking during the week (which is really no fun at all when you don't heat up the kitchen to save money on heating costs).

I saw exactly one movie/theatre/show/exhibition this year -
* Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker

As usual for recent years I/we worked my/our way through a lot of movie series. This may have been aided *a lot* by Disney+ !
* finished up watching through all the James Bond movies
* watched Star Wars episodes VII and VIII before seeing IX at the movies
* finished up the Pixar series with Coco and Toy Story 4
* watched a *lot* of original/remakes of Disney movies - Aladdin, Dumbo, Lady and the Tramp, Freaky Friday, The Lion King, The Parent Trap (just 1 and 2 they don't have 3 yet), 101 Dalmatians and Mulan
* saw a few "Australian classic" movies - My Brilliant Career, which I really didn't like, and Ned Kelly, which I thought was better
* in March was the 30th anniversary of seeing Labyrinth for the first time, so we watched it on David's Bluray
* we had to watch some pandemic disaster movies, so watched World War Z first up because Contagion had been pulled from Netflix, but David had Contagion on DVD so we all watched that later too
* Frozen II
* Airport series
* Naked Gun series
* Star Wars - I think we saw all nine this year
* almost all the Ghibli movies, except Grave of the Fireflies which wasn't on Netflix. Some of them are amazing. Some of them are crap.
* a few of the Herbie movies (still a couple to go, it's a bit of a struggle since they're very silly)
* Die Hard 1 and 2 and Love Actually at Christmas. David dissed Love Actually on Facebook, but he had the choice to leave but didn't and he seemed to be enjoying himself. Just sayin ;)

And again, somehow we managed to watch our way through a lot of TV. I always feel like I don't have time to watch tv/movies, and yet somehow we see a lot. Mostly from Thursday to Sunday, as Monday to Wednesday is "work" nights.
* first episode of Who is America
* Star Trek: Picard
* The Mandalorian (season 1)
* Big Bang Theory - finished mid year, took a little over year to watch all 12 seasons
* Brooklyn 99 until it ran out of episodes (up to season 6?)
* Fuller House (last seasons)
* Lego Masters (second Australian season)
* Unorthodox
* Filthy Rich
* The Dismissal
* The Miraculous Mellops
* The Simpsons (most of the way through season 5)
* High Score (documentary)
* Against the Wind
* Discovery (season 3)
* The IT Crowd (all of it)
* The Mandalorian (season 2)
* The Queen's Gambit

Not a lot of reading this year. I don't catch the bus much and I mostly feel too tired to read when I go to bed.
* Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, by J.K. Rowling
* Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy (all five books in the trilogy), by Douglas Adams
* Penguin Bloom, by Cam Bloom and Bradley Trevor Greive (I also started Heartache and Birdsong)

Other stuff!
* Started "This day in history" posts
* Got Disney+ and watched a *lot* of Disney
* Got some cute "living stones" - succulent plants that grow extremelly slowly
* Played with Picasa for Ryan's 21st "morph" series
* Got our NBN fixed in January - because last time they did work they broke one of our connectors so we were only getting half the speed we should. David organised that because he's awesome.
* Used Picasa to tag people in a lot of work photos, still a long way to go on that
* Collected the next batch of Stikeez - got all but one of the specials
* Our rose bush and rhododendron out the front put out just a couple of flowers right at the end of summer when it finally rained
* Had cheese and nibbles with bubbly, and Chong Co delivered for our anniversary
* Went bed shopping in June but didn't find anything we really liked
* Went to Ikea and bought storage cubes for David and drawers for stu
* My domain - kazza.id.au turned 18
* Had a big outage of my web hosting in late June. Went looking for a new host and found VentraIP, but they didn't support Perl DBD::mysql so had to cancel it all again. But it did force me to do an upgrade of a dll in Eudora which allows secure downloads without ssl errors, so that's a win
* Had issues with the vacuum cleaner - it kept getting jammed - with my hair :(
* Got so much rain in August all creeks and rivers around Canberra flooded a bit
* The boys bought me a Dyson cordless for my birthday
* Couldn't get on the Qantas 747 joy ride flight out of Canberra, because Qantas' website sux donkey balls. So I watched it fly over central Canberra from Mt Ainslie instead (arguably better for photos anyway!)
* Listened to some podcasts with the sweetie - The Eleventh, Winds of Change, Thirteen Minutes to the Moon
* Got super sad at all the 747s around the world being retired
* A neighbourhood yappy dog pissed me off by barking non stop for literally hours at a time
* The winter was so warm our potatoes survived the whole winter without freezing
* Enjoyed Floriade in the suburbs!
* Went for a drive with the sweetie around Denman Prospect and out to Cotter
* Had a Bunnings sausage in October for first time since lockdown
* Voted in the ACT elections early so I didn't get a Democracy Sausage (most places I don't think were doing them anyway)
* Had a free run to the tip because what we took was mostly all metal
* Had to fight with windoze to maintain access to our NAS - its ancient version of SMB is making windoze super sad
* Tidied up all the packing materials in garage, with the idea to use it all to sell stuff
* Vodien moved my blog to a new host, but didn't tell me. Well, apparently they did tell me - to an email address that doesn't actually work anymore.
* Failed at jeans shopping
* Tried out Return-It's bulk facility which is only marginally better than their drop off system
* Saw the moon and Saturn and Jupiter near each other, but not at their closest point

Our year was finished off at the club. We headed out there on New Years Eve eve and stayed two nights, and had a fairly relaxed New Years.

2020 sure was one crazy year. Here's hoping 2021 settles down quickly into the "new normal".

Happy new year!! 

Gosh what a crazy week and a half.  The world has gone mad.  Toilet paper hoarders should be shot.  

So Saturday a week and a half ago.  I can't even remember it.  Spent all morning tidying the bedroom end of the house and clearing the lounge room floor of all the stuff that got dumped in there when we cleared out space for Stu's study.  Did mostly minifig sorting of Vic's Lego.  Had salmon for dinner and watched Spectre.

Sunday morning I got up early and headed in to see the balloons.  I thought I'd go to the north side of the lake this year.  But as soon as I got out of the car I knew they wouldn't be going up - far too windy.  I was right.  Checked on Twitter and Events Canberra said it was off.  Oh well.  Ended up spending most of the day doing minifig sorting.  In the afternoon Stu tried to make some of his low carb bread but the oven wouldn't work properly.  Also, strangely, there was a light on in the back of the oven that I'd never seen before.  He finished his bread, and I cooked dinner (roast beef with veggies), with the bottom element, but I managed to burn the bottom of the veggies and the beef was a bit overdone.  I had made a marinade to try and use up some of the mustard powder we'd had in the house forever.  Soy sauce, olive oil, ginger, garlic, mustard powder, brown sugar.  Was actually really nice.  

Watched BBT and Picard in the evening.

Monday I woke up at Dentist Time and probably only got another half hours' sleep, so zombie day Monday.  We did do our food shopping in the evening.  Even the fresh food was mostly sold out this time.

Got home quite late, but still made a zucchini noodle "carbonara" (not actually carbonara, but cream, bacon, mushrooms, garlic, herbs, cheese).  Yummo.  

Tuesday had the slight hint of a sore throat and cough.  Ordinarily I would have gone to work anyways, as I felt ok.  But in these uncertain times I decided to work from home because I could.  It was highly unlikely to be covid-19, as there were only like half a dozen cases in the ACT at the time, but you never know.

Managed to get some toilet paper from Chris's and made pasta bolognase for dinner.  After dinner we watched Labyrinth, to celebrate 30 years ago to the day that I first saw it on St Patrick's Day in 1990.  I've seen that movie probably fifty times, and yet I somehow never knew that Kenny Baker was in it as part of the goblin corps!!

Oh I forgot to mention we finished the Mandalorian at some point last week.  Remind me I need to put on the last two episodes for David some time.

Wednesday I worked from home again.  Not sure I was really sick or just imagining it.  No fever.  Still only the slightest hint of a cough/sore throat.  If it was a cold it was the mildest cold I've ever had.  The day was crazy busy.  Finished geotagging day 4 of our USA 2004 trip in the evening.

Thursday.  Not sick anymore.  But still at home.  I suspect I'll be working from home for the next several months.  Although I might have to pop into work every so often on the weekends to rotate out my backup drives.  Missed drinks (which as of writing tonight was the last drinks until further notice).  Sad times.  Watched The Big Short in the evening.  Somewhat topical at the moment with the economy in freefall.  While noone can really quantify how many people die as a result of increased unemployment, it's very likely a thing, and even if people don't die, the misery caused by losing jobs/houses/marriages would be immense.  I do wonder about the mass unemployment caused by shutting everything down because of the coronavirus pandemic and how many people will die as a result of that, versus from the virus itself.  

Contrails crisscrossed the sky all day Thursday, this is a set of five of them in the evening.

Friday was playing with SNMP V3.  In the evening I watched both versions of Lady and the Tramp.  All the reviewers on IMDB on the remake generally hated it.  It was actually quite similar to the original in terms of plot, just fleshed out a little in places.  I was pretty impressed with the CGI generally.  Did they use real dogs and just superimpose the faces?  Or were the dogs all CGI?  I should Google that crap.  But what I did find a bit jarring was the interracial marriage in 1909 Missouri.  Just wouldn't have happened. That and just some of the dialogue was too "modern" ("I missed you guys"). (And how could a "poor" musician afford such a huge house anyway?).  If they'd set it in modern times and not tried to make it look like a period piece, I think it would have worked better.  

Friday night couldn't get to sleep for hours, so ended up sleeping in a bit, which made me feel like half Saturday was wasted.  Grunt.  But did a bunch of house stuff, and picked more parts for another six Lego sets in the afternoon.  "Watched" the Blue Danube on YouTube, followed by Rhapsody in Blue, and then put on my Fantasia 2000 DVD, and finally The Planets.  Was a pretty great afternoon actually.  We felt like a pandemic movie in the evening.  Netflix has taken down Contagion, so we watched World War Z.  "Zombies" aside, I found it all a little what the?  I mean, why would the UN send out a rescue mission for someone that didn't even work for them anymore?  Doesn't make any logical sense.  

And it was a blood bath.  Ok so wine.  And it wasn't even mine.  What a waste of wine ;)

Sunday kept our social distance but had Maccas for brunch.  But Stu wasn't feeling the best (he probably got whatever I had, but again, a super mild case of whatever it was), so he stayed in the car while I did the shopping.  All three butchers at the markets were closed because they'd all run out meat, and chicken shop was closing up.  And it wasn't even lunch time!!  So got all our fruit and veg.  Then popped into Bunnings because David wanted me to get a new light for the oven, but they didn't have what I needed so I ended up getting the wrong thing, le sigh.  Also needed some cockroach and moth deterrants.  Then to Coles to get meat and some other bits and pieces.  There was some meat there, certainly more than last time.  I told the checkout chick that all the butchers at the markets were closed, and she said they'd sold out of meat completely on the Saturday as well.  I will be really pissed if I hear of people throwing out fresh food because they hoarded too much and couldn't get through it.  That would be so wasteful and so WRONG when there's people that can't even get food at the moment.  Put on dinner when I got home (slow cooked beef stew). 

David pulled the oven apart and found the cause of the mystery light - it was the back fan force element arcing.  We were lucky it didn't burn the house down or electrocute the sweetie.

He also installed a new clothes line for us, because the old one was falling apart (we'd already had one of the four lines break and the others were looking fragile).

Bestest brother ever!!

Spent all afternoon cleaning the oven, and had the beef stew for dinner, followed by Robot Chicken's Star Wars episode.

Monday I woke up at Dentist Time.  Again.  I got up for a bit this time, but didn't help much.  Blah morning.  Meanwhile David was sourcing parts for the oven.  He found a place he could get an element, but he also wanted to replace the cooling fan, which I think died years ago.  He wouldn't be able to get that for another two days, so it'd mean extra work and delays and would it really be worth fixing a probably nearly thirty year old oven?

Also.  Ewww.

So we bought a new one.  Whoops.

I wasn't in any fit mental or physical state to be out buying home appliances.  So I don't know if I did the right thing.  But we did get a fairly good discount on a discontinued De Longhi, so maybe??  The worst part?  Those hours wasted cleaning the old one :(:(:(

The afternoon was filled with too many dumb meetings and by the end of the day I really just needed a drink and an early night (which I had).

Monday night I slept really well, felt good all day.

Tuesday night (last night) I woke up at 1:20 and stayed awake for over four hours, mostly stressing about All The Things.  Mostly whether we'll be able to get food in the coming weeks/months.  And what all those unemployed people are going to do about food and rent and mortgages and kids.  At 5am, after a massive meltdown, I got up, had a double shot of Baileys, turned my alarm off, and eventually fell asleep a bit after 5:30 for two hours.  I was still super tired today though.  

Tonight I walked down to the end of the street and back.  Only nine minutes of walking, but I haven't done *any* walking in over a week.  Normally I get twenty minutes a day at lunch, so I've been feeling like a big fat blob.

In the past week, airlines have shutdown their flights, there's been travel bans, restaurants and "non essential" stores have been shut down.  My next holiday has been postponed for two years.  We were going to see the Passion Play in Oberammergau, which I've been wanting to see for over thirty years.  I find it somewhat ironic?  strange? weird twist of fate? that they've had to postpone due to a plague, when it was a plague that brought about its existence in the first place.  Luckily they've only postponed it and not outright cancelled it, as Mum might not be around for the one in ten years.  She might not be around in two years either if Covid-19 hits her.  Stay away from people Mum! :)

Stay safe (and home!) everyone!!

Tonight I watched a special Dad taped off channel 9 back in 1988 called "The Spirit of Expo" about World Expo '88.  I wanted to go to Expo but Dad didn't want to go to Queensland because of "Bezerky" (Joh Bjelke-Petersen).  When he was no longer premier I was like *now* can we go to Expo?  We went in the September school holidays.  The soundtrack of the holiday included "You'd Better be Home Soon" and "Perfect", which I listened to on repeat on account of having to change radio stations every hour or so on my walkman on the drive up.  "Two Strong Hearts" also reminds me of the trip because the music video was filmed at Expo.  I think there about sixty pavilions (ok wikipedia says a hundred) and I saw in all but five of them.  The only one I was annoyed about missing was the China pavilion.  Apparently it had a 360 degree cinema.  Mum and David managed to see all of them, but Mum sneaked in the back door I think it was of the Germany pavilion.  (We mostly stuck together as a family for the first day of the three, but went our own separate ways for the second two days). David collected passport stamps from more places than me because he asked at all the restaurants for their stamps.  I remember seeing a *lot* of laser light shows.  And a lot of queuing.  

Here's photo taken of Dad on that holiday.  So typical of Dad.  Thinking of him (and Mum) tonight, on account of him going and carking it four years ago tonight.

I've been watching ABC's War on Waste over the past week.  Some of the waste depicted is pretty staggering.

The thing that upset me most was seeing the huge waste of food right on farms because supermarket cosmetic policies. Banana a few millimetres too long?  Goes to waste before it even gets to stores.  Just heartbreaking.

Then there was the disturbing news that Woolworths don't necessarily recycle the soft plastics people put in the store bins in good faith that it will be recycled.

And in the What The..? files: the girls in the third episode who don't wear the same outfit twice!!  What the actual f@#%??

"Fast fashion" completely pisses me off because I buy clothes and wear them until they wear out.  Except these days things wear out after just a couple of wears in some cases.  T-shirts and even jumpers that can't be worn after not very long because the collar buckles and looks ridiculous.  Years ago Millers did plain-dyed t-shirts that I'm still wearing twenty years later!  But they stopped selling them, and now, practically any t-shirt you buy will wear out very quickly.  With jeans, I got sick of paying $100 EVERY YEAR for Jeans from JeansWest because the "denim" is so thin and flimsy that it simply wears through.  So last time I paid $7 per pair in KMart.  The material is just as thin and crappy, but it's only a fraction of the price.  I'd be happy to pay more for quality, but it simply doesn't exist anymore!

Since discovering relatively recently that Coles do soft plastic recycling, our waste has been reduced dramatically.  Most of our food scraps go over the fence to the chickens, soft plastics go to Coles, and the majority of the rest of our rubbish is recycling.  We typically only put about a bag of rubbish *or less* a week out in the bin, and so the bin doesn't go out for collection most weeks. 

* Fast food restaurants (Subway I'm looking at you) stop giving out more than one serviette. I keep mine and use them at home as paper towels but I'm sure most people just thrown them straight out unused
* McDonalds do you really need to give me my burger in a huge paper bag?  No, if there's one item, I can carry it - save the paper!
* The huge rolls of junk mail we get are such a waste - please stop!
* Canberra needs green waste bins for garden waste.  Drop rubbish collection to fortnightly and use the savings to collect green waste fortnightly instead.
* Supermarket shopping online needs to stop using plastic bags.  We did a shop a few weeks ago and got enough plastic bags to last us six months!  At one point they were loading things into crates and then just emptying the crates once delivered.  Much better option.
* If they really want to stop people wasting plastic bags, put a significant tax on them.  Instead of free or even 15c, give them a real cost - like $1.  People would definitely think twice about getting a bag if it became a significant cost.
* People still need bags for bin liners.  I've got several years stocked up because I never throw away shopping bags that we do end up getting from time to time, but with a complete bag ban we'd have to buy bin liners. 
* Use a keep cup
* *Please* can we get decent quality clothing back?
* Coles you need to empty your plastic recycling bins more often.  I've never once been able to easily get my bag in the bin, and often I've had to leave my bag next to the bin.
* Tom's Super Fruits (and every other grocer) please stop packing a couple of things on a polysterene tray covered with glad wrap.  So wasteful!

I'm sure I'll think of more..

In the meantime, I'm going to start using up my stash of plastic bags for fruit and veg - they've been building up for a while and there's no good reason not to reuse them.

So 2013. Busy year!

We saw in 2013 with a small pool party at our place with Nat and Andrew and also Steve for a while.

  
We did a bit of travelling this year.

In January we went up the coast to South West Rocks to a school reunion of sorts for Stu and to visit Stu's dad. We drove up and down the coast, swam, visited Trial Bay Gaol, and caught up with Fiona and Margie on the way home.

We only managed to get to the coast once this year, in May. It was somewhat of a disaster with the spa being too cold on Friday night and too hot on Saturday night and a few other things that made it all a bit unpleasant (except for during the day on Saturday which was pretty good). Almost went again later in the year but had to go to Sydney and otherwise we've just been too busy.

We went to Queensland in July for a lovely long weekend to visit Chay and David.

At the end of July we flew up to Sydney for my Dad's 70th and one of my 40th parties (see below).

In October we decided at the last minute to go to Hong Kong for a week at the end of October. It was a great week, even if a little too humid. It's the most spontaneous holiday I've ever taken. I didn't do too much planning for it, because the more I researched, the more things I found of interest to see. So I stopped researching altogether and we took it as it came.

  
At work I had a mostly good year. I started off the year cleaning and pretty much cleaned all year. I started with the knowledge base articles for our team, then moved onto the log transfer system, then the load balancers. I also rehashed an old domino database for documentation which brought back a lot of memories of my last job. For the rest of the time it mostly felt like I was the "goto" person for any and all problems that came along. We were partly restructured, but the powers that be didn't really have a clear idea of what they wanted, so things didn't change as much as we originally thought they would. I made Stu drag out his tuxedo again for the work ball which was a lot of fun.

Healthwise I felt like I was sick the whole first half of the year - with colds in January, March, April, May and June. So that was pretty horrible. Not flus though, just annoying colds. Got another one the night before we went to Hong Kong too - yay :( But have been ok otherwise.

  
We had a super busy social year this year. In fact it was so busy that we went from May to September without having a free Saturday night. As a consequence our Buffy and Angel watching was almost non-existent. There were plenty of visits to/from Annie and Potty and the families. Various people came over for dinner and/or swims at the beginning of the year. Nat and Andrew came over a few times, as well as Andrew by himself when Nat was travelling. There were various after works drinks with my colleagues and Stu's and family and friends. Various Singstar/Mario Kart nights were had. Several BBQs at @CLBradley's. Several games nights at Mishi's. Had a video night at our place with work people. We visited people for lunches/dinners such as Matt and Helen, Andrew and Jen, Chris and Geoff, Josh and Ally, Windy and Nanette etc. We saw Daniel and Fi a few times when they came down. Several people came to stay including David and Yvonne, Ken and Jeanine, Fiona a couple of times and Stu's old school friend Tom. I met up with @StuartCRyan a few times in Sydney (we met in real life for the first time at my birthday). I also went to visit David in Junee.

Speaking of birthdays, I turned forty this year. To celebrate I had *three* great parties - one in Sydney, a big one at home the Saturday before my birthday, then a big lunch at work on my birthday followed by a nice dinner and seeing Phantom of the Opera. I was certainly in a different place mentally for my fortieth. During the whole run-up to my thirtieth I was very depressed, and my actual birthday was pretty meh. Such a different story this year though.

  
In sadder news, my Nana died of old age earlier in the year. And then I found out at the funeral that I have another cousin that I'd never heard about before!

Also in sad news, my father got diagnosed with a brain tumour in March. He had surgery immediately (and they had to cancel a holiday to New Zealand), followed by chemo and radiotherapy. Unfortunately it didn't really help, and he was hospitalised in July because he kept falling over and wasn't able to walk properly. He's been getting progressively worse and has been in a nursing home since September. In August I started going up to Sydney fairly regularly to see Dad and help Mum with the mammoth task of clearing out the garage and workshop. We've mostly been sorting things so far as I don't want to get rid of things until Dad goes. Fortunately I've been able to work out of the Sydney office so not having to take leave at the moment.

  
We've been enjoying a lot of visits to our little social club. We camped there over the Australia day long weekend, and the new tent survived a storm and massive downpour fairly well. But then a caravan came up for sale, so we bought it! We went to most of the club nights during the year, and plenty of other times as well. It's Stu's little get-away-from-the-world place and he thoroughly enjoys it.

With work people or the sweetie, tried out a few new restaurants. Continued going to Black Pepper for brunches and also Pulp Kitchen a few times. Went to Dumpling Inn a few times and Bella Vista as well. Didn't try too many desserts this year, although did make a Mars Bar slice and a peppermint rocky road, as well as an apple crumble and caramel slice that we tried at the club.

  
We bought another four baby angels for the angel tank. One died but the other three survived, so now have four angels and about seven danios in that tank. We got a lovely little betta for the macquarium, but he never thrived and died in six weeks. So thinking I'll probably give the macquarium away. The four foot still has a school of duboisis, two multies, a lelupi and a J.transcriptus. There's three multis downstairs, but after breeding once, the single baby I saw disappeared and haven't seen any since. There's still three or four quite old kribs downstairs as well.

Not much Lego action this year. I did get a cute little plane from Fiona, and a small City set from Ric for my birthday. I went with Nat and Andrew to Brick Expo, but was very frustrated with the crowds. I dismantled the Millennium Falcon which had been out for four years! Also over the Christmas break got to sort out and build all of Jake's lego which has been fun.

I did a lot of jigsaws this year. Mostly downstairs until downstairs got too cold. Mostly little ones, but also another section of the huge "Life" puzzle. Gave up on the skies of two jigsaws because their quality was just too poor.

I celebrated my tenth blogiversary this year. To mark the occasion I upgraded to Movable Type 5. But got very frustrated with the fact that I now cannot SSH to my host. Also with Movable Type which is *very* buggy. Next year my domain is up for renewal and I'm thinking about moving my domain to a new host with a new blogging platform. But the whole idea is pretty scary, so we'll see about that...

Shows

• The only show I saw this year was The Phantom of the Opera on my birthday.

Movies
Not many movies this year either...

• The Hobbit - An Unexpected Journey
• Star Trek - Into Darkness
• Garden of Words and Ghost in the Shell: Arise

Books

• Time Enough for Love by Robert Heinlein
• Polgara the Sorceress by David and Leigh Eddings
• Careful, he might hear you, by Sumner Locke Elliott
• To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
• Déjà Dead by Kathy Reichs
• A Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute
• I Hate You - Don't Leave Me by Jerold Kreisman and Hal Straus
• The Naked Husband by Mark D'Arbanville
• Death du Jour by Kathy Reichs
• Airport by Arthur Hailey
• Body of Evidence by Patricia Cornwall

Other stuff

• Had a full day at the War Memorial with Ken and Jeanine
• Had a jigsaw race with Nat
• Found my first geocache with Nat and Andrew
• Saw a Roller Derby bout
• Mum got her first mobile phone
• Had a random day off work to tidy up all the fish tank stuff in the garage
• Went for some walks around Palmerville with the sweetie
• Spotted the ISS a few times and waved to @Cmdr_Hadfield. Wasn't quite the same when he came back to earth.
• Went to the balloon fiesta on Canberra Day
• Watched the last couple of episodes and finale of House, which considering the timing with dad was pretty sad
• Took Stu's car for a drive up Mount Ainslie and got covered in lady bugs
• Our PS3 stopped playing DVD disks. Bluray is still ok though.  We considered getting a PS4 but the device isn't backwards compatible with old games.
• Went out to Captain's Flat on our fifth wedding anniversary
• Finished a cross stitch I got for Christmas in 1992
• Went up Black Mountain Tower
• Voted in ABC Classic FM's top 100 music in the movies, and most of my votes were in the top two hundred
• Did a blog for our trip to America in 1983
• Gave up reading Boing Boing, Life Hacker and Neatorama, Dooce and Dilbert
• Got extremely pissed off when Google Reader shut down. Destroyed my faith in Google.
• Looked at Comma Feed, Feedly and The Old Reader. Stuck with The Old Reader.  The Old Reader subsequently crashed from all the extra load of departing Google users, but was able to get funding to run on better hosting and has been fine ever since.
• Got more of my photos onto the RiotACT
• Cancelled Aussie Farmers Direct orders
• Had a look around Wintercon at EPIC
• Stu had a few car dramas that Melba Motors didn't fix
• I had a LOT of car dramas that Melba Motors didn't fix
• Saw the Skywhale
• Played through Diablo with the sweetie.  On easy mode.  Sue me.
• Did proper karaoke for the first time ever (and I've been to Japan four times!)
• Went to a Christmas Carols service at Como

So that's the end of 2013.  New Year's Eve will be spent out at the club with food and booze and friends and fairy lights and fireworks :)

Last night, to try and get my money's worth out of my Entertainment Book (not going to be bother getting one next year - we're not going out as often so it's harder to get the value out of it), we went to Bella Vista for dinner.  One of our favourite restaurants, although we don't there as often as we could, not helped by the fact it's fairly expensive.  But oh so good!

For entree, the sweetie had "Capesante Alla Grilgia - pancetta wrapped canadian scallops grilled, served with a miniature cucumber and tomato salad and lemon butter sauce"

I had "Gamberi Impanati - parmesan and herb crusted king prawns deep fried to golden crunch, served with roman lettuce, prosciutto crisps and a garlic aioli"

For mains, the sweetie had "Piato Misto - lamb cutlets, pancetta wrapped chicken tenders and king prawns, served with mash, avocado tower, miniature salad and mustard, lemon and aged balsamic sauces"

I had "Filetto Di Agnello - grilled lamb back-strap fillet marinated in garlic and rosemary served with fresh pan-fried caponata (ratatouille) and creamy potato puree"

For dessert, the sweetie had "Creme Caramello - classic cream caramel served with a brandy snap basket and vanilla ice cream"

And I had "Morello Cheesecake - white cheesecake on a chocolate biscuit base topped with morello cherry compote, toasted marshmallows and a chocolate 'stick'"

The staff even took a photo of us :)

A lovely evening with my sweetie :)