Urgh high school hey.  Plenty of good memories .. plenty of bad ones.. 

2011 will be twenty years since we finished high school in 1991.  Our year was the last year to go through year 12 in the girls school, as after that they merged with the boys school across the road to become "The Jannali High School".

Sadly it looks like I never got around to labelling this photo.  Oh well..  Have uploaded them all to Friends Reunited anyway.

** EDIT: actually I think most of these were actually mum's originals.  When she pulled apart the old evil photo albums that destroy photos I think she separated them out for us, and gave my photos to me and my brother's photos to him **

So not a bad year all up :)

Let's see.  Where to begin.

The year started with me away from the sweetie - I was visiting old Sydney friends.  First year since we met that we weren't together on New Years, which was a bit sad.

Did a fair bit of other travelling during the year.  

The big trip of course was to Japan and the UK in September.  It wasn't the best holiday I've ever been on.  Japan was 34C for five days in a row, and I didn't have shorts.  And the UK was grey and/or raining for a good chunk of the time we were there, plus we missed out on going to Legoland which was pretty devastating for me.  But on the plus side, everything "worked" in terms of bookings.  We didn't get robbed.  We didn't crash the car.  We didn't miss any planes or trains.  We did see heaps of cool stuff.  So really I can't complain too much heh.

Had quite a few smaller trips as well.  Spent a couple of days in January at the coast with all of Stu's family.  Would have been better if I'd brought stuff to entertain myself with heh.  Went to Mogo Zoo then.  There was a quick trip to Sydney for my parents' 40th wedding anniversary.  Went down the coast to DaveC's house three times in March, August over my birthday and October where we had a great whale sighting.  Went to Melbourne over the Easter weekend to see Cats with Nat&Andrew.  That was a cool weekend, we'd love to go back and do more Melbourney things.  In July we went to Queensland for a long weekend to visit Chay and David.  Decided that July/August is definitely the time to go to Brisbane, so will probably do that again this year.  And another quick visit to Sydney on Boxing Day. 

Had a very busy year at work.  Rolled out new proxies at the beginning of the year, but they were fraught with problems from the start and it was very stressful.  After several patches during the year, they finally settled down, only to have the upstream proxies start playing up.  Blah!   

Semi work-related were a ball in March where I managed to squeeze into a ten year old dress, but only just barely!   I also made a slightly drunken bet that I'd wear a dress to a Melbourne Cup lunch if all the boys wore suits.  Our director unfortunately decided to take it seriously and made all the boys wear suits.  Reluctantly I had to go buy a dress and wear it.  We also ran a trivia night that I think went really well.  And attended work drinks pretty much every week I was in the country ;)

One of the big projects at work took several months and was so stressful I'm sure it led to a high blood pressure reading in July.  I've been working on relaxing at work (and at home) and subsequent readings have been a lot more normal.

Otherwise healthwise I had a great year - just a cold early in the year but nothing else.

Spent a lot of time with Nat and Andrew during the year.  Those guys are always so much fun to be around, we really enjoy their company.  Also did a few Singstar nights with Windy and DaveO and saw Damien and Amanda a few times as well.  JamesC came to visit a few times, and the whole family stayed with us a couple of weeks ago.  The Hokins clan came to visit, as did the parents a couple of times and the little brother a few times.  We've spent a lot more time with DaveC in the second half of this year.  Seems I get on with him a whole lot better now that we're not working together heh.  

Had another heat wave early in the year which meant us putting quite a bit of ice into the four foot tank to try and keep the temperature down.  Seemed to work and we didn't lose any fish from it.  I'd moved the danios downstairs so they wouldn't overheat, and found a couple of months later some baby danios that had been surviving quite happily unattented.  When I later moved the danios back upstairs, there were more babies in the downstairs tank.  Win!  Stu got a colony of duboisis for the four foot, which are great fun, and will follow you around when you go to look at them in hopes that you'll feed them!  Stu's also gotten back into killifish and has been diligent at looking after his fish again.  We're back up to fourteen habitated fish tanks now!

On the opposite end of the weather spectrum, we had a very cold winter.  This year the pool froze over probably a dozen times (it only froze over twice last year).  One of the days the ice was a full 3mm thick in places!  We even had snow in October.  Go figure!

On the Lego front, a whole stack of Toy Story Lego was released so had to get all of that.  And six new Harry Potter sets as well, although really only one of those is "new".  There's a few other cool sets I want to get too.  Went to BrickExpo in August which was very cool, and made me wonder if I should put anything in one of these years.

Other toys included an iPhone for me, a Blackberry for Stu, a video camera for Stu, a Canon 500D for me and a PS3.  

So I've had the 500D for four and a bit months and have already taken 15000 photos on it!  The majority of those in the UK of course ;)  I still haven't sorted my UK photos *at all*.  I did however manage to sort enough of our Japan 2009 and Europe 2008 photos to get the highlights into the blog entries.  One of my next projects will be making photo books of those trips.  I did make a photo book of our wedding as a Christmas present for parents.  Having seen the finished result (which I was stoked with) there's a few little changes I want to make and need to fix up some of the images before we get our copy printed.

Around the house, we bought a whole stack of bookshelves for the downstairs room and set those up.  So that room is quite well setup now.  The garden has gone slightly feral though, especially with all the rain we've had recently.

Shows seen this year:

Movies seen this year:

Books read this year:

And a few other bits and pieces:

Phewf.  Yup, busy year :)  I'm actually amazed I got this thing written *before* the end of the year - that never happens!! :)

Six hours to go.  Have a great 2011 peoples!  Happy New Year!!

*blink*

What the??

So tried to remember the plan .. couldn't remember a plan.. remembered a conversation with James last time he visited, but that was the last I'd heard of it.  So anyway, no I hadn't missed anything, they just hadn't confirmed any dates with us.  So we did a quick cleanup of the house (we'd been meaning to do it anyway - honest!).

So Monday after work we all went to Bella Vista for dinner.  It being a Monday night I didn't bother making a booking. Because really, what restaurant is booked out on a Monday night?  Turns out Bella Vista is.. that'll learn it for being good heh.  They've changed their menus again, and it's even pricier now (average meal price is over $30).  But still just as good as always.

I had lamb three ways.  Lovely meat on two of them, not bad on the third.  Could have used a little more sauce.  Was very meaty too.. nommm!

We all had dessert too.  I had a super delicious cheese cake.

The kids had gelato

Yes, we were outside because there was no room for us inside so they setup a table for us.  Which on an ordinary summer night would have been lovely.  But someone forgot to tell Canberra it was summer, and it was slightly freezing!  Still, once rugged up it was pleasant enough, altho they were so busy we think we got slightly forgotten about outside.  Oh well.  

But it was a really nice night catching up with old friends.

So then they all came back to our house for the night, and were off to Melbourne today.

Mix the dry ingredients and then the wet ingredients in a greased mug (I didn't do the greasing, that was too hard)

Microwave on high for three minutes

Serving suggestion:  serve with ice cream (which the sweetie did)

We used wholemeal sr-flour - which gave it a bit of a rough texture - probably would have been improved with refined sr-flour.

But it was pretty darned nomm for so little effort :)

And while we're here... two years ago today we flew across the wilds of Siberia and ended up in Frankfurt Germany..

Saw this rainbow on the living room carpet the other morning.  It refracted through the fish tank and looked pretty cool.

The first fog of the season.  I thought this was pretty early for fog (23rd March)

They're colour-coding the data centre at the moment, so they have all these cool coloured cat5 cables.

Wow.. two rainbows in one entry .. hrmm

I'll post coast trip photos tomorrow..

Today was just a quiet day at home.  I dusted nearly a half of my models, some requiring a damp cloth (the trick being not to wipe off decals with the dust).

This evening we went to All Bar Nun for Doc's birthday drinks and dinner.  Had a lot more drinks than dinner! :)  Doc jumped out of a perfectly good aeroplane this morning so was fun to hear about his experience with that.  The sweetie wanted to come home a lot earlier than I was ready to .. doh..!  But otherwise quite a pleasant evening :)

Yesterday morning Stu got up relatively early and we went into town.  

Got to see the new Canberra Centre parking light system.  This is so totally brilliant.  Rhodes shopping centre should pay attention to this!

Had some breakfast at Gus' in civic then I got a card for the parents while Stu got a hair cut.

Came home and packed, then headed off to Sydney.

Arrived at Luc&Lizzi's around five pm to take a donut photo of Ryan.

Then headed to the parents' place.  The plan was to go out to dinner so we decided to go to "Tropical Restaurant" Chinese in Jannali.  The food wasn't that bad (I actually really enjoyed the BBQ pork with garlic sauce) and service was pretty quick, but they enraged me by not providing free tap water (you had to buy bottled water or soft drink).  It was a BYO place, although "alcoholic beverages only".  So there was no way to get a free drink of water.  This, while perhaps not illegal unless they were licensed, is downright *rude*.  I refused to buy a drink at all, and will never be going back there.

This morning we went to church with the parents.  Then went and got Stu a coffee at a cafe in Jannali.  Then came back for a parish lunch, which my aunties and uncles and some of the parents' friends came along to for my parents' 40th (ruby) wedding anniversary.  Wasn't too painful heh :)

After lunch and dessert we came back to pick up out stuff and photograph parrots..

Then headed home, via the little brother's to say hello and happy anniversary to them.  Had a lovely long hold of Yingarna (she is sooo beautiful!) although didn't take any photos to prove it.

Was later filled with rage at people who don't know how to merge.  Apparently there'd been an earlier accident on the Hume Highway.  We drove maybe ten kilometres in first gear just crawling along north of Goulburn.  Then got to some road works where the two lanes merged into one.  At that point the traffic jam vaporised.  No trace whatsover of it.  How can you go from two lanes at 5km/hr to one lane at 100km/hr ??? Fricken fricken!!  I hate people.  Truly I do.

There was actually water in Lake George, but we were pretty exhausted and just wanted to go home, so just took some snaps from out the window.

Now it's nearly midnight.  Because we haven't spent nearly enough time at home this weekend :(  *sigh*

Just putting a placeholder here cause MT is pretty crap at back dating across months.

..

So. 2009.  

Certainly not as *big* a year as 2008.

We've been in our house over a year now, but it's still not really "settled".  We did buy a nice big dining table, but that's about it.  We still haven't fully organised the rumpus room (although shelves are finally on order!!), and so "my" hobby room has been held up because of that (and because I've been too lazy to try and Freecycle all the crap that's been dumped in there).  We've only put hooks in the wall for one thing (my big Lego mosaic) so most of our pictures are still waiting for somewhere to go.  The spare bedroom has continued to be really really useful, and we've had a steady stream of people staying the night (mostly my brother heh).  The pool has been *brilliant*.  Mostly got the hang of taking care of it, so hopefully we don't get any algal blooms this year.

Work has been variable again this year.  The first half of the year feels like a bit of a blur.  I got a couple of big projects completed mostly on schedule.  The second half of the year was mostly working on the one thing, which we tried but failed to get into production by Christmas.  All through the year it was just insanely busy.  Not as insane as Stu's work though.  He was essentially doing three people's work and the stress of it all was taking a toll on his health.  So when an ex colleague had a positition advertised, she said he should apply.  Which he did, and he got it.  So a new year and a new job for the sweetie.

Our big holiday of the year was a trip to Japan for two weeks.  It was a significant challenge to try and organise because we went with a total of six people.  In the end Nat and I did the majority of the planning which worked reasonably well.  The holiday was *fantastic*!! - had a really great time.  Wish we could have stayed longer - at least twice as long would have been the bare minimum I think.

Went to Sydney a few times - in January over the long weekend while Stu played in Cancon - just caught up with lots of my friends and family.  Also in October for a primarily touristy weekend - even stayed in a hotel!  And then for Christmas and again for New Years.  Went down to Malua Bay with DC three times in March, April and October.  Mostly just us and him, but we did get Neil down for the October weekend.  And to Kangaroo Valley for Chris B's 50th which was a lot of fun.

Our fish tank numbers remained stable at seven.  We did lose a huge number of fish in the heatwave in February (where we had three consecutive 40C days with no cooling down at night).  All the julis, all but one of the adult multis, and all the tetras and the other little fish died.  The young multies and my angel were the only upstairs survivors.  I replaced the tetties with some leopard danios.  The multis grew up and have been breeding like rabbits.  Stu brought home the three julis he had at work and got some leleupies too.  The kribs downstairs I think need to have their tank rearranged, as they just sit there and do *nothing* all day.  Guppy breeding has slowed down dramatically too, not sure what's going on there, maybe needs some new genes..

Fairly quiet Lego year.  Made a nice big mosaic of Australia, and now my mosaics have a hanging place in the spare room.  I dug out and sold a bunch of Space Lego which cleared a little space - but have a long way to go!  And over Christmas built the Star Destroyer and Millennium Falcon to have them on display together.

Had our Japan travelling friends - Nat and Andrew, Natty and Sandra over and ate lots and were quite merry.

Had a brilliant day for it.  If anything a little too hot heh.  There was even this storm that came through *after* we'd finished up.

Stu preparing some sushi (cucumber and pickled radish and tuna)

The hanami setup (a blue tarpaulin is a must!)

Stu's sushi

Nat arranging the Pocky and the Crunky

This random dog turned up and stayed all of lunch.  No idea where it came from - never seen it before!  It was very friendly but kept threatening to steal the food ;)

The food - sooo much food!  Lots of leftovers!

Everything and everyone setup

A bee

Andrew hanami-ing (yes Dave, that's my cap :) )

After lunch we played Trivial Pursuit.  We actually started with my very lame 80s trivial pursuit (which wouldn't have been so lame had any of us actually not been just kids in the 80s), but switched over to "real" Trivial Pursuit.  Lots of fun.  I think Stu won :)

Nat made this super awesome swirl cake with white chocolate icing :)

And then everyone went home.  And I got depressed cause I had to come down off somewhat of a high :(

But then we watched this cool documentary on Yellowstone National Park, and followed that with Fantasia 2000.  Really must get myself a copy of that Bluray some time.  Except for the very minor detail that we don't have a Bluray player .. hrmmm.

And so endeth the weekend.