Except I'm not going to blog about that for now, because it really needs its own two or three (or more!) posts!

Sunday.  7th.  Leftover Dumpling Inn for dinner then we watched Turner and Hooch which I probably haven't seen since it came out at the movies or maybe shortly thereafter.

Monday.  Various coughing fits overnight. Lay in bed for a few hours in the morning, then a quiet day. Got some Dotz done which was nice. And we went out to Hall Cemetery so Stu could try and find some birds.

Found one!

I finished watching Pleasantville that I started watching the other night. Sounds like Toy Story in places, thanks Randy Newman. Leftover Dumpling Inn for dinner and Stu put on an episode of a YouTube birder he follows. Then episode three of 3 Body Problem. I'm still coughing, except my belly hurts too much from all the coughing so I can't cough properly.

Tuesday.  Took ages to get to sleep (coughing too much) and also coughing throughout the night. Logged on to work in the hopes of having a quiet day catching up on emails. Sent an email to the desktop guys thanking them for their help with the proxy rollout, and how smoothly it went. Like 30 seconds later (actually about fifteen minutes) people are complaining about the proxies not working. I literally jinxed it. Sigh.  Spent all morning stressed out about that, but Ward and Con helped and we fixed it by lunch time. Then watched a firewall upgrade for a chunk of the afternoon. Called it at 16:00. Leftover Dumpling Inn for dinner then more bird documentaries over dinner.

Wednesday.  Coughing for chunks of the night. Got to do a bit of decom work which was nice. Cooked up a potato bake and some veggies for dinner which was nice too. MacGyver then 3 Body Problem episode 4. Felt like I might *finally* be starting to feel a bit better and coughing a bit less.

Thursday.  Still awake for ages coughing overnight sigh. Nothing much morning but a nice quiet afternoon of prepping decoms which was nice. 

Tested out the external flash on my new camera.  Bizarrely it literally won't let you use the external flash unless you enable "shutter sounds".  Like WTF?  What a bizarre setting to have to enable for it to work.  The shutter sound is an artificial "clunk" like old mirrored cameras would make.  It's kinda nice in a way because without it the camera is utterly silent when it takes a photo.  But I also like being utterly silent when I'm taking photos.

Made a pepperoni, a cheese, and a potato and rosemary pizza for dinner, then MacGyver and 3 Body Problem episode 5.

Friday.  Packed up and headed off to Sydney!  As I said, that'll be another few posts.

Sunday.  17th.  My usual Sunday routine is to backup phone and download my photos. Two hours later the backup is still going.. hrmmm. Tried out the new DVD player (which we got cause the old Laser one was doing dumb things like putting out the audio but not the video. The new one is doing the same thing. Sigh. Tried turning the TV off and on again which fixed. Why is technology so crap? To watch the Chromecast we have to reboot the amp, to watch DVDs we need to reboot the TV. Probably also the old DVD player isn't actually faulty, it's probably the TV. At least the new one gets the aspect ratio right, without having to adjust the TV settings. Veggies for dinner (no photos because my phone is still backing up) and MacGyver (getting back into it now we have a workingish DVD player). Then watched These Pretzels are Making Me Thirsty. Cause that's my tagline at the moment. These proxies are making me thirsty. Gave up trying to backup phone after like FOUR HOURS of it being connected.

Monday.  Awake for a while here and there, partly stressing about the hottest 100. Not stressing, just my brain was stuck in a loop. The heater worked first go but then died after its second break. Proxy day. Stu heated up some leftover sausages and we had those with leftover for veggies. Watched a video on a birdwatcher who went to a few places we went to in Victoria. The been-there's were pretty cool. But what stunned me is they're allowing duck shooting in the Tower Hill Wildlife Reserve. What the actual F#$^??? A quick Google suggests they may have backtracked on that for the moment.. but seriously.. who the F#$% approved that in the first place???? Utterly outrageous!!!

Tuesday.  Okish sleep. Proxy day. No luck on the heater at all today. But we did get a dude from Voltair around to look at putting in a split system. Still nothing back from Climatrol about the heater though. Cloudloop have cut off cPanel/webmail/FTP due to vulnerabilities which don't have patches.. which is fine.. but they're talking about making that for "the foreseeable future" .. which would be super problematic for me (and I imagine a tonne of other customers) that are on ISPs that change IP addresses all the time.. hmm. ok they got back to me and said it should just be until they patch things (when they get a patch), so that's fine.  The new DVD player is a bit dumb.  Had reboot the tv this time to get it to work. Maybe there was actually nothing wrong with the old one (which was doing the same thing). hrmmmmmmm. At least this one sends the right aspect ratio to the TV, so no fiddling on the tv to make it show 4:3 for these ancient tv shows. Also today David sent me a link to a post by the Canberra Reptile Zoo saying that blue tongue lizards are no longer exempt from needing a licence. So then had to spend ages trying to figure out Access Canberra's website for information (there may have been some in some very long PDFs but nothing clear and simple that I could find about the changes until you actually load up the licence request form). I also don't really have any good photos of the whole enclosure so just sent the best ones I have to get it done.

Wednesday.  Took a while to get to sleep (restless) but then slept mostly ok. 12.4C in the house sigh. Proxy day.  Went to Hungry Cracks with Con and Jim and tried the Korean BBQ fried chicken burger which was pretty decent.  We even sat outside.

TV dinner for dinner.

Thursday.  Took a while to get to sleep (not restless, just awake). 11.1C in the house.  XL got a couple of KFC Hot Rods and gave me one - was pretty good!  Thanks XL!

In the afternoon the desktop guys released the new proxy to a bunch of peeps. Good drinks. Mills&Grills again and MacGyver.

Friday.  Logged onto work early to monitor for any problems from the proxy rollout. A few minor things but nothing too crazy. Well other than Microsoft's Whiteboard getting itself into a login loop. FFS why is Microsoft so BAD at literally everything?? Called Climatrol in the morning.  They never received my web form submission.  Sigh.  They're going to come next week to look at the heater.  Called POETS and we headed out to the club. Got the fire going and had tv dinners for dinner and afterwards Chris and Geoff came over and we just chatted for a while which was nice.

Saturday.  In the morning all around the toilet block and shed were all these big beautiful moths! I tried to save a couple of them from getting squished by people stepping on them in the doorways, but I actually sentenced them to death because a raven was watching me and was like "easy breakfast!!".

Went to the shed to see if they needed any help, but at the time the only thing going on was balloon blowing up. I don't do balloons. Having them overinflate and pop scares me too much, plus I can't even tie up the things, never have been able to. So left and raked leaves for like an hour. Then the sweetie and I went for a walk to look for birds. Saw a white-throated treecreeper which was pretty cool (it found a moth as well!).

Did some tapestry for a while. At 14:00 they had an afternoon tea. There was HEAPS of food, but I didn't eat too much - didn't want to spoil my appetite for dinner.

The shed looked spectacular!!

Just part of the afternoon tea spread

Then really just hang around chatting to peeps before dinner. Dinner was catered which was pretty cool. Quite a bit more expensive than self-catering but they do all the prep *and* all the dishes!!  (they did run out of a few things unfortunately).

I was hanging out for crackling but in the end they couldn't make much, but they were super sweet and gave it to me! I was honoured!

There were a bunch of speeches and cake cutting (three of them!!) and then we just hung out.

I also may have looked a bit like the Queen with my stoopid boofy hair and the "50" tiara that I wore that I got for my 50th.  Several people said so!

Bit of a late night, and we saw a tawny frogmouth outside, feasting on the moths.

Sunday.  Late night, but awake from 5:27. Hurray. Came home and had a pretty quiet day (super tired). Tried a few times to get the heater going but with no success. Stu did a power cycle on it and managed to get it to run for one cycle.  iTunes backed up my phone properly this week.

Sunday.  10th.  Chicken sausages and a bunch of roast veggies for dinner.

Watched the Lighthouses 2.3. Then I watched part 1 of a documentary on Hurricane Katrina.

Monday.  Awake around midnight for a while, then a somewhat delirious sleep stressing over the proxies. Day of trying to get things done, waiting for people etc. Leftovers for dinner, Lighthouses 3.1 on Beachy Head, photo stuff, then watched the next two episodes of the Hurricane Katrina documentary.

Tuesday.  Took ages to get to sleep and felt like I was awake half the night. On and off day.. filling in time for part of it, crazy busy for other parts. Stu cooked up a very nice Asian-style dinner with some leftover pork and veggies, and we watched the Lighthouses 3.2 on Muckle Flugga.  Did some photo stuff, and watched more of the Hurricane Katrina documentary.

Wednesday.  Took ages to get to sleep and somewhat restless night. Busy day of trying to deal with stoopid proxy problems. Our old one could deal with Mutual TLS, why can't the new one?? Lame. Leftovers of last night's dinner for dinner, then the last episode (3.3) of The Secret Life of Lighthouses, on the Boston Lighthouse.  Did some photo stuff and finished the National Geographic doco on Hurricane Katrina: Race Against Time. What an utter debacle. It's so sad looking at Google Earth/Street View and all the vacant blocks because so many people didn't have the resources to rebuild.

Thursday.  Took ages to get to sleep and somewhat restless night. Yeah after like four nights in a row of crap sleep I was a zombie today. Sure made it hard to concentrate on various proxy problems. Good drinks, a few other tables. Mills and Grills again for dinner. Death in Paradise 15.8 (end of season 15).

Friday.  Went to bed early and went to sleep early, but woke up around like 3 for a couple of hours. Tried to turn the heater on. It didn't even seem to want to turn on. Went back later with a light and was seeing "Busy 10 hi" and "Busy 46 hi" errors. Sigh. They errored out all day and we never did manage to get it going. Organised with Voltair for them to come and quote on installing a split system. Not quite as busy a day at work. Called it at 16:00. Kievs for dinner then we watched Rental Family which was.. touching. We both enjoyed it.

Saturday.  Took ages to get to sleep and awake a bit early but slept mostly ok in the middle. Turned the heater on and today it worked first go. Go figure. Definitely going to try and get it serviced/fixed soon though. We've lost one of Chrissie's clown loaches. It had been looking unwell for a couple of weeks with two large welts on either side of it. Now I need to decide what to do with the other one. I also need to decide what to do with the AR-620T. Both its lights have gone and they're getting hard to replace. Gem Aquatics still sell them but only the white ones, not the pink ones. Tony refitted his with a compact fluorescent fitting but I'm wondering if I should bother or just downsize our fish tanks. Climbed Mt Rogers, then went out birdwatching with the sweetie out the back of Weetangera.

Mt Rogers Trig Station

Airbus A380 VH-OQG flying over Canberra (QF93 MEL to LAX)

We may have stopped at The Scottish Restaurant for lunch.  They've got creme brulee pies at the moment (deep fried!) which are quite nice.

Finished the leftover pork for dinner then watched Catch Me if You Can, which I hadn't seen since 2003 (we tried to watch it a few years back but had to stop after like fifteen minutes and neither of us could remember why).

Sunday.  Actually slept relatively well for a change! The heater worked first go, but then died after its first break.  Reset it and gave it a rest and tried again later and it ran for a while before the house warmed up enough it didn't need to run again.  Quiet day of photo and house stuff. Even made a cake! 

Sunday.  26th.  Lit our anniversary candle and we had Chong Co delivered.

Had a couple of snackages from them as well (not pictured)

This cracked me up - the neighbours had setup a fire pit and they'd taken a tv out side to watch tv by the fire..

Then we watched Listers: A Glimpse Into Extreme Birdwatching. Uh oh, a two hour documentary on birdwatching? Well it was actually really good, and very funny. Very well done. I reckon even better than the Hollywood Big Year movie.  Worth the time!

Monday.  Slept ok until 4:30 then awake.

Quiet day of house stuff and photo stuff and dotz. Stu fried up more leftover sausages from the Christmas party and we had them with some leftover veggies. Death in Paradise 15.2.

Tuesday.  Slept okish but awake from 5:30. 30 years since the Port Arthur massacre, and 30 years since Como Presbyterian Church reopened after the 1994 bushfires. Crap day achieving pretty much nothing.

We had a mini team lunch at Bombay Duck.  I had butter chicken which was very nice.

Leftover Chong Co for dinner, Death in Paradise 15.3 (yeah maybe, like, test everyone for GSR), then going into battle with eBay again. Tonight they'd changed all of their postage options from last week. Utterly ridiculous. This time "letter" was an option though. Just not a small package. The smallest package option was "up to 3kg". Anything in between you have to use "satchel", but what the hell does that mean? The smallest is 40x20x15cm .. can I still use a box for that?? WTF?? Also last week's set didn't sell. But disturbingly at one point during the week there were two views on it. By the end of the week there were none. Are they like deliberately hiding the listing unless you choose to pay extra to "promote your listing"?? I wouldn't put it past them. ebay is evil. One of the worst companies in the world. Got Tony to search for it. It came up ok so there's that.

Wednesday.  Super restless sleep.

Chaotic day. I have a task I really want to get done but I can't because I keep having to go to BS meetings or people keep asking me questions. It's getting crunch time and I'm getting more and more stressed about it. Just fricken leave me alone to do my work!!! Leftovers for dinner then Death in Paradise 15.4.

Thursday.  Took ages to get to sleep and awake early. Another crazy busy day. Fairly quiet drinks. Pizzas and garlic bread for dinner.

Death in Paradise 15.5. Like, no physical evidence at all, just conjecture.  How would that even get to trial?

Friday.  Mayday! Not great sleep. Spent most of the day working through all the scenarios of the proxies with AWS. I have like ten or fifteen use cases to figure out. We also had the tree dudes out to chop back the ivy, photinia and pittosporum.

Carnage!  I really liked having the ivy on this wall as it offered some sun protection, but I couldn't manage it because it just got too high and we don't have a ladder long enough.

Kievs for dinner then Death in Paradise 15.6. Then watched Matilda which I haven't seen in probably 20 years (and last read the book in 2009).

Saturday.  Slept okish. But cranky with the world all day. Headed out to the club via Queanbeyan.

Stu went into Coles to shop for the bbq, and I went to return the frames I got from Homebase the other week.  Turns out Homebase Queanbeyan is dodgy as hell.  The frames I got the other week were meant to be 40cm x 50cm.  Except they weren't.  They were 38cm x 48cm - way too small for what I needed them for.  You'd think it would be a simple matter to return them, since were literally not what was on the label.  But noooo Homebase Queanbeyan tried to pull some BS "store policy" crap even though the product was clearly not what was on the label.  They said it was "more than seven days" so they have a no returns policy.  Well, I pretty much had to go full-on Karen on them and they begrudgingly gave me a store credit valid for three months.  Not really what I wanted, as I really never want to set foot in that store ever again.  DO NOT SHOP AT HOMEBASE QUEANBEYAN - they will try to rip you off!!  I told Stu about it after, and he agreed that Australian consumer laws override store policy in the case of products not matching descriptions.  

Made it out to the club and Stu cooked up sausages for lunch while Dominic and I raked and carted leaves off the tennis court. 

After lunch a half dozen or so of us raked and carted leaves off a big chunk of land below the toilets.  Pretty impressive effort actually.  Was aching by the end of it - sore back and ankles in so much pain I could hardly walk.

Got home and had a shower and washed my hair (again) and the sweetie got Crust pizzas for dinner.  I may have almost had a meltdown when I was too weak to open a bottle of Henkell...  It really was that kind of day..

Crust truffle beef rossini pizza

Peking Duck pizza.  This was great until I hit a landmine of really hot chilli chunks

Watched Okja which has been on my Netflix to watch list for years.  It was.. interesting.. 

Sunday.  Slept like crap - took ages to get to sleep (upset and stressed) and woke up at like 4:20 for ages. Quiet day of photo stuff.

Apparently this is a plume moth.. who knew?  Found it on one of the walls this afternoon

On Friday we all headed to Braddon to go to Bentspoke to celebrate Neil working 50 years!

The booking was super stressful.  They force you to give you a credit card so they can charge you $40pp if you cancel within 24 hours of the booking.  So that was a bit offputting.  But it all worked out.  I booked for 18 in the end and I think we had 16 for the main part of lunch, but another four people came over the course of the afternoon.  

I tried a bunch of beers with a couple of these taster paddles

For lunch I had the Southern Fried Chicken Burger ($25) with Americano mayo, American cheese and iceberg served with chips & choice of sauce.  I asked for regular mayo but they talked me into the chilli mayo which they said wasn't very hot.  Yeah it was hot.  Took me ages to get through it and didn't each much of the sauce.  Otherwise it was very nice.  Their chips are pretty good.

Very nicely the kitchen doesn't close between lunch and dinner, so we were able to get more food over the course of the afternoon to stop us getting too silly.

A lovely afternoon.

Sunday.  19th April.  Leftover curry for dinner then Professor T 4.3. Then I continued watching a Disney series The 90s Greatest, which has been a bit lame but a bit of memories. What was freaky is the second last episode looked at the Waco seige and the Oklahoma City bombing.. both 19th April.. woah!!!

Monday.  Slept okish I think. Was looking at ways to download the URL categories for our new proxies.  They literally don't have a way to do it.  They just say, oh use this third party python script that someone has written to call the APIs yourself.  Lame.  Then I found they'd upgraded our version of Postman to a cloud version which forces you to create an account on their cloud and sign in to use most features.  Except we block that because it's a massive security risk to, you know, save your passwords in clear text on remote servers.  Not to mention that by upgrading they blatted all my collections which filled me with all kinds of rage.  Then I got home and found the Chinese ebayer I bought a lens cap with a string off, sold a plain cap with no string.  Like how hard is it??   Filled with rage at that too.  Later she partially refunded me (it was only like $5 to start with) since it didn't match the photo.  It does seem to be a genuine Canon lens cap too, although can you believe "Made in Japan" printed on it if it came from China?  Stu cooked up some broccolini in a nice sauce and we had that leftover sausages from the Christmas party, which was very nice.  Then Professor T 4.4.

Took ages to get to sleep, woke up early, and Stu was SICK in the middle of the night! He never gets sick (almost never). He was feeling slightly nauseous before dinner. No idea what set him off. Fighting with the new proxies all day. Trying to get my head around their dumbness. Although did find one super useful feature in their URL categories (which is utterly needed to do the daftness of how their URL categories actually work) - it lets you find other places that has a wildcard (because you need to add an explicit URL to the wildcard category, otherwise it won't be included in the wildcard.  Don't even get me started on that trash). Cooked up some brussels sprouts, capsicum and potato gems for dinner.

Professor T 4.5. OMFG I hate ebay so much. I've been needing to sell some of Vic's Lego, but ebay make it as painful as they possibly can. They don't *do* letters, so even though I can fit stuff in a large letter box (<2 cm thick) if you try and choose that it blanks out what the local postage will be and only shows you international (at $13-$30). So you choose regular package which is like $7-$9 which isn't toooo bad considering it has tracking, but they don't give you any provision to charge for packaging (the box cost me like ~$1). And then they will charge like 13% FEE on POSTAGE, which is money they literally steal out of your profit. But if you don't jump through eBay's hoops (and include tracking) then you're at the mercy of the buyer whether they'll just lie and say the package didn't turn up, and ebay will literally take your money back off you. Then you have to go to Australia Post and argue with them to try and get a refund which they'll only do up to $100 unless you buy insurance. It's the most stressful thing ever. I hate it. I really really wish there was a better alternative to ebay. And don't even get me started on Windoze 11. If I'm on another desktop and click to open windows explorer, it takes me to ANOTHER DESKTOP ENTIRELY!!! Same with Notepad. Double click on a text file on one desktop, and it opens notepad ON ANOTHER DESKTOP!! How is it that windows is STILL SO BAD???

Wednesday.  Slept mostly okish I think. Didn't get much done all morning - too many meetings. Tried out Gianni's with Neil at lunch and had their lunch special. Managed to get something working on the new proxies that I'd been fighting with. Turns out someone else just hadn't done their job properly and my stuff worked once it was fixed. Sigh. Leftover Japanese curry for dinner (we're almost through it!), then Professor T 4.6 (end of season 4).

Thursday.  Took a while to get to sleep but okish sleep after that. Lots of doing doco today and testing the new proxies. Quiet drinks, only one other table. Made pizzas and garlic bread for dinner and watched Death in Paradise 15.1 since Professor T season 5 isn't on Prime yet.

Friday.  Restless sleep. Distracted morning. For lunch we went to Bentspoke to celebrate Neil having worked there 50 years!! It was actually last year that the anniversary came around, but he was recovering from knee surgery so it got put off. Lovely afternoon and around twenty people came.

Saturday.  Anzac Day.  Went to bed as soon as I got home last night, okish sleep, considering. Nice quiet day just doing house stuff and photo stuff.

I may have made some Anzac biscuits.  These were a lot drier than last time (I measured everything properly for a change) so they held their shape a lot better (the last ones melted everywhere). 

Kievs and gems for dinner (since we missed out last night) and then watched Amelia which was somewhat interesting.

Sunday.  Mostly ok sleep but awake super early (half an hour earlier than normal) to go out to Mulligan's Flat for a bird walk of sorts. I've never actually been out there. Didn't see a huge number of birds (we were really just scoping out the place and went for a walk round the dam) but there was a little flock of red-rumped parrots having a bath which was pretty cool. Then we went to Cafè Luzon, a Filipino inspired cafe for brunch. I had the eggs benedikto which was quite nice although the spinach left that weird spinach feeling in my mouth long after. Then just a quiet day, and did some dotz and some music.

Our friend at Cafè Luzon...

We may or may not have Chong Co coming for dinner... :)

Monday.  6th.  Stu cooked up some veggies and I fried up some lamb and then we watched Professor T 2.5, then I just watched crap on the internet.

Tuesday.  Slept okish I think. Spent the day working on getting the last of the vips migrated off the old load balancer. Stuff is mostly ready to go, just need to quadruple check everything and do a heck of a lot of testing. Leftovers for dinner, Professor T 2.6 (end of season two), then labelling Europe panorama photos. The internet died around 21:40. Hurrah.

Wednesday.  Slept mostly ok (although woke up around 5:20). The internet was still dead but came back before I went to work. Continued work on the last vip migration, only to find out someone else is doing another change to the back end of the system I want to work on around the same time. So I'm going to have to wait a couple more weeks. Also got pulled into a couple of blergh meetings which took up a bit chunk of the day.

Turdhead neighbour has parked his massive ute on our land. I left a note asking to please not park on our side. Finished labelling my Europe 2016 panorama photos.

Thursday.  Mostly awake from 3 except for a couple of short patches of dream sleep. Busyish day again, but waiting for people, so moved onto trying to solve a problem on the new proxies. Everything said to do something a certain way for HTTP/2 but it just wouldn't work and I had to raise a support ticket sigh. Not sure how busy drinks was, I don't think very (we were outside). We got Dominos pizzas for dinner. Shockingly, they've shrinkflated their pizzas. When I opened the first one I thought it was a joke, or a "special" pizza that was supposed to be smaller. Nope. They were both like 2/3 the diameter they should be. #grunt.  Will be boycotting Dominos til they fix their $#!+  I should have measured these..

Professor T 3.1. Bed.

Friday.  Restless night, weird dreams. Woke up cranky with the world. Also the neighbours still have one of their trucks parked on our side - it's been there for *days*. #grunt. The note I left the other night was gone. Talked to J in the morning who said he'd told T not to park there. At work I'm still angry they took away my Visio licence while I was on leave and refuse to give it back. Pissed off with the world. Busy day not achieving much including more meetings and having to deal with vendor support. Kievs for dinner then Professor T 3.2.

I was so excited Chris had potato gems!!!  Haven't had them in ages

Saturday.  Took ages to get to sleep - stressing over the neighbours. Then restless sleep. I was gonna go yell at turd neighbour to move his ute, but he'd already left for work. So I put some bins in the spot so hopefully he'll get the hint. Went for a walk, finished htmlifying Europe 2016 panoramas, watched the Artemis II splashdown.

Look how green everything is at the moment!

Food shopping in the afternoon, don't know what else I did. Neighbour came home and parked on his side. Hurray! Stu cooked a Japanese curry for dinner. Professor T 3.3.

Sunday.  Early night. Slept mostly ok. Went for a walk again. Got jumped on by TWO dogs. Seriously people if you have a dog that's likely to jump on people KEEP IT ON A LEASH!!! It's not that hard!! Busy day getting lots of stuff done around the house including washing, weeding, mowing, and even some music.

I'm so excited my chrysanthemum has got some life on it!!!

We also went out to West Belconnen Pond to go birdwatching but it was super windy - feels like 6C whoops.

Windoze didn't remember my iPhone in tray settings, but it did remember the date order sorting on my blog posting directory.

Yeah it's been a week...

Sunday.  18th.  Stu spent all afternoon prepping veggies for a spectacular tagine.

Only problem is our tagine is quite small so nothing fitted and he ended up having to resort to saucepans. We had Jenn over for dinner and we all enjoyed it.

Monday.  Slept okish. Paperwork for changes and changes. Stu cooked up the mince I cooked on Sunday with some tomatoey goodness and we had that with salad. Beyond Paradise 3.5.

Tuesday.  Slept okish.

We tried out Oishii Go at lunch.  It was *ok* but the takoyaki didn't have much octopus and both of them were cold, which is really not the way to eat takoyaki or tempura.

Cleaning and changes. They think I broke something, but I'm not so sure, and in the middle of it other stuff broke that I was worried would be me but it wasn't. Stressful afternoon so may have had a beer after work. Stu cooked up some leftover Christmas party sausages, with salad for me and sauerkraut for him. Beyond Paradise 3.6 - end of season 3.

There was supposed to be auroras.

There wasn't.

Not that me or my camera could see anyway.

I did get a hand-held shot of the Southern Cross though

Wednesday.  Slightly late night aurora hunting but then woke up early. Plodding my way through DC rules. Leftovers for dinner then watched part 1 of the Last Night at the Proms from 1984.

Thursday.  Um. Busy day not achieving much. Went to Yat Bun Tong with Neil and XL - first time since 2019!

Dry fried chilli beef $21.80

Steamed combination buns $17.80 and Pan fried pork dumpling $15.80

Nice drinks. Made a pepperoni pizza and a cheeseburger pizza for dinner. Watched the 2025 Beyond Paradise Christmas special.

Our usual pepperoni and feta pizza above, and a cheeseburger pizza below - tomatoey mince, pickles, and special sauce at the end

Friday.  Another busy day not achieving much.

Tried the crispy chicken El Maco at lunch which was quite tasty but a little messy

Got lots done at work between 4 and 6 though when the interruptions stopped. Stu cooked up some couscous and leftover tagine for dinner and we watched Ready Player One.

Saturday.  Headed out to the club fairly early for the committee meeting.

I did some cabinetry priming (pretty much done now), a bit of tidying and vacuuming, some tapestry, and just tried to not feel too miserable in the heat.  Oh and listened to ABC Classic FM's 50th birthday celebrations all day which was a bit of fun because they mostly played "popular" music.. ie.. crap I'd actually heard of.. so that was good.

At happy hour we went up and got in the pool for a couple of hours which was lovely. Dinner was pretty spectacular and then Chris's trivia which was actually quite reasonable this time.

Had another swim before bed (which was a bit late).

Orion as seen from the club (handheld on the Canon - 24mm, f/4, 0.8 sec, ISO 25600)

Sunday.  Woke up at 6:00. Because that's what I do.

Stu rescued this enormous longhorn beetle from the bathroom

Went up to the shed and did some washing up and tidying then we came home. Fairly quiet day doing some holiday thinking and photo stuff.

Sunday.  21st.  Got home from Sydney, had a little bit of leftovers for second dinner.  Then watched part 2 of the GameStop documentary.

Monday.  Slept somewhat better. Back to work though. After two loads of washing and tidying the kitchen of course. Sigh. Did up the finances from the Christmas Party. Ended up with ~$14 leftover to carry forward to next year. Not too bad. Fixed up the rest of our tickets and reports dashboards in the afternoon. Stu cooked up some yellow curry vegetables for dinner which were quite nice. Finished the GameStop documentary. Stressed at how little time I have for everything. The todo list I started in September for the end of the year is only like 1/2-3/4 done. Still heaps of photo stuff I never got anywhere near completing. And now I have a whole heap more photo stuff to do. And I have to spend all my days at work. Sigh.

Tuesday.  Revelation 5:12 "Worthy is the Lamb, who was slain,
to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength
and honor and glory and praise!"
Awake from 4ish. Did some music before work. Instead of any housework or weeding. Tried to get a pac file working at work. Made one change that worked but couldn't get another change working, so that was pretty frustrating. Then looked at another cleanup job I want to do. Leftover pork for dinner then watched part 2 on the pirates - Grace O'Malley (we watched part 1 on Francis Drake the other night but don't remember which night). Did some processing of my Canon photos and did some writing up of the past few days.

Wednesday.  Christmas Eve.  Okish sleep. Fixed a couple of scripts that were broken at the last upgrade - they changed Display_Name to DisplayName. Thanks. Not. Probably need to check a few of my other scripts as well. Other than that mostly just tidying up. Made a peppermint slice after work. Possibly added a bit too much water to the icing as it didn't really set. Or maybe I was just too impatient. Probably that. 

Did some Christmas music on the sax. I can get through them without too many mistakes now. Leftover pork and potato bake for dinner. Then we watched Die Hard 2 and the Carols by Candlelight. The Melbourne carols are degenerating a bit these days into the silliness that the Sydney carols have. I haven't watched the Sydney carols in years because it's just too cheesy. And of course all the good songs that you could sing along to get played during the ad breaks.  Played Carols bingo..

Denis Walter..

Tim Campbell and Paulini..

Hallelujah chorus..

Casey Donovan..

Silvie Paladino..

Marina Prior singing Angels We Have Heard on High..

David Hobson singing The Holy City.. apparently his 13th time..

Uncle Doug Heywood..

Fun times!! We missed Ode to Joy and All I Want for Christmas is You at the beginning though.

Thursday.  Christmas Day. 
Revelation 11:15 "The kingdom of the world has become
the kingdom of our Lord and of his Messiah,
and he will reign for ever and ever."
The timing of reading that was pretty funny..!
Slept like crap. Spent most of the morning prepping and cooking lunch (even though I did a bunch of prep yesterday afternoon). We had an epic feast of roast turkey, blue cheese potato bake, brussels sprouts with bacon and hazelnuts, sweet potato, sage and onion stuffing, gravy and cranberry sauce and garlic bread (not shown).

There may have been a little bit of leftovers..

Note to self: don't follow the instructions on the box and put a frozen turkey in a baking dish in a hot oven...

Pretty annoyed about that, we use that baking dish all the time.  #grunt.

Did some Christmas music on the sax and did some dotz. Stu went over to Annie's (I didn't go because Lily was sick and I didn't want to then get sick for my only week off I get at home all year). I didn't even eat that much lunch but I felt full all afternoon and didn't feel like dinner. Dinner was a couple of beers and the last of the mulled wine. Watched Enola Holmes to see Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown).

Friday.  Slept okish. Went to Coles hoping to get some eggnog but sadly they'd sold out. Did pick up a few other things we needed though. Christmas stuff is not on special yet though.  It was super quiet both on the roads and at Jamo, so that was nice. Came home and tidied the house. Did some rescanning of Mum's slides. In the afternoon was Dotz and Lego, and watched David sailaway.

Leftovers for dinner I think, then Stranger Things 5.5. Tried for an early night. Failed.  Didn't help that I was getting ready for bed when I remembered to go look at some Christmas lights down the road.

Satruday.  Repeat of my ideal retirement day - getting house stuff and fish stuff and some photo stuff done in the morning, Lego and dotz in the afternoon. With going out for lunch for Tony's birthday in the middle.

I got the cheeseburger - w/ house pickles, American mustard, ketchup and diced spanish onion with salad ($23), only the photo I took never saved so you'll have to take my word for it.  Here's the sweetie instead with his fish and chips with apple slaw.

Neither of us were hungry after lunch so we just had a bit of garlic bread for dinner. Stranger Things 5.6. Managed a slightly early night.

Sunday.  Slept relatively well. Repeat of my ideal retirement day - getting house stuff and fish stuff and some photo stuff done in the morning, Lego and dotz in the afternoon. Also some music.

In the last couple of weeks windoze has changed its definition of sort by date.  It used to sort my in tray of photos to blog by the date taken in combination with the date modified timestamp, so I could view the folder in real chronological order.  Now it sorts by date modified.  Which is super annoying because now I can't view them as I want to blog them.  Funnily enough Chrome still does it the good way, which is dumb that it's different, but also good because otherwise it'd be a pain trying to figure out the correct order to post photos.

Also annoyingly the turd neighbours that had the staffies that killed each other have gotten themselves another barky dog.. it was barking for ages again last night and today although has been quiet most of the afternoon.  Damien's wife three doors down yells at it sometimes to some effect.  But I was getting stressed today that this would be my new normal.  

Watched bits and pieces of the carols again on YouTube while posting this so that was a bit of fun!

Sunday.  30th.  

Stu finished cooking some potatoes from the club as well as some of the bread and we had that with leftover turkey and veggies. Stranger Things 4.5.

Monday.  December! Minimun 8.7, maximum 18, 2 predicted overnight! Welcome to summer! Took ages to get to sleep again. Then awake from 4:30 and never got back to sleep.

Busy day being NEIL for a while, then catching up on chats and emails then clearing the ticket queue.

Cracked open this year's beer advent calendar after work.  Which isn't any sort of official one.  Since I couldn't go to work drinks for months, Neil saved all the Beer of the Weeks for me.  I had almost enough to fill an advent calendar box (I still had the box from last year's Plonk advent calendar).  And I've been collecting them now that I'm going back to drinks.  I also asked @aquila to pick me up the Bridge Road Brewers Christmas beers, so this photo doesn't show the box as full, but I'll have more beers than will fit :)

Did some music after work, dinner, Stranger Things 4.6, geotagging holiday photos. The house is a disaster. I still haven't finished putting up Christmas decorations. I still haven't fully unpacked or put all my washing away. Need. More. TIME!!!!

This star light is probably 24 years old.  This year one of the lights has finally blown in it.  I do have one spare bulb but I'd have to pull everything out of the cupboard again to get at it.. next year.. 

Tuesday.  Took a while to get to sleep, awake at 4 but got back to sleep.

Welcome to summer in Canberra!!

Busy day. I decided I really wanted to get back to working on a project I started months ago, but it requires a lot of concentration, which I couldn't really do while being NEIL and working on proxies. So tried to get back into it. But was interrupted every five seconds by people wanting crap and distracting me. I even stayed back late after work to work on it because it's quieter then, and I STILL got interrupted by someone wanting crap. FFS. Stu cooked some pasta to go with some pesto I dug out of the freezer.

Stranger Things 4.7. Then it was pretty much bed time. Sigh. Also getting annoyed at my email which isn't downloading properly for some senders. It's like the messages are getting corrupted somehow. Or at least just not rendering correctly.  It started around maybe mid to late November. They view ok on the server in webmail. Maybe there's something in one of the headers that's confusing things. There's definitely content downloaded but it's just not displaying. And it's not everything, it's only some mails from some senders. Sigh.

Wednesday.  Okish sleep but awake from 4. Got into work early and was able to do a bunch of work before a morning full of meetings.

Connor tried the Stranger Things Upside Down Double at lunch

Got more stuff done in the arvo including fixing an ldap health check for TLS. Got home and the sweetie was cooking up leftovers from the club night. Stranger Things 4.8, then backed up my computer then it was basically bed time. hrmmm.

Thursday.  Took ages to get to sleep. Looking at traffic to domain controllers most of the day. Super quiet drinks - just our table.. oof! The sweetie felt like Dominos so that's what we got for dinner. Ate too much. Whoops. Stranger Things 4.9 (end of season 4). Some of season 5 has dropped so we'll be able to start watching that straight away. Although it's another three years later so the kids will be all grown up!

Friday.  Meh sleep.

More AD traffic checking. Lunch with the Chrises and Neil and Glenda at the Burns Club (aka Magpies) which was very nice.

Seniors Salt and Pepper Squid, with tartare sauce, lemon chips and salad, $20M $21.50NM.  At least the Burns Club is happy to serve anything off the menu, including seniors meals to non seniors.  See, it's not that hard, HERBERTS!!

Drinks with Luc and his mate Stephen (from AARNet) at Molly (Old Fashioned and a Rusty Nail)

Then dinner at Bamiyan - we had an epic feast of camel skewers, butter chicken, mantu (lamb dumplings) and lamb biryani. So good!! I ate way too much but did bring home some leftovers. Hasty goodnight as my bus arrived just as we got to the bus stop.

Saturday.  Crap sleep (bloated cause I ate (and probably drank) too much). It didn't cool down overnight either so had to have the cooler running with water all night. Spent much of the morning tidying the house.

Yeah it was stoopidly hot, but I'm trying to clear stuff out of the freezer

Then it was all afternoon at Mishi's for her 60th. Picked up TV dinners from Chris's for dinner, then watched Die Hard.

Sunday.  Awake from dentist time for a while. More house stuff and sorting out holiday finances.

Finished the puff pastry out of the freezer

Food shopping after lunch.

Ethos topped out this week (you can't see the tree in this pic)

And the Premier inn is gorrrrne, skyline replaced with The Residence at The Markets

And stressing over how little of my todo list I've gotten done this weekend :(