Monday.  12th.  Backdating.  No notes other than "blogged".

Tuesday.  Super crazy busy day all day.  Went with the hills to another Surprising Science talk.  The first talk was by Professor Naomi McClure-Griffiths about uses of colour in nature, not just for visible light but also near infra-red, and how that might have applications in heating and cooling control.  The second one was by Professor Drew Evans and was a lot more physics-based, looking at invisibility, and he did mention about how most butterfly wings that look blue aren't actually blue from chemistry but physics.  

Wednesday.  Had a go at picking up some work I started before my last holiday (that I had to stop looking at cause the proxies blew up).  Went into town and had dinner at Chez Kimchi.  They've simplified their menu which is *much* nicer.  Then went to Coles to do some Christmas shopping.

Thursday.  Work.  Christmas party planning.  Posted a package to Potty.  $16 for regular, $20 for express.  They said regular *might* get there by Christmas.  hrmm.  Last drinks of the year.  Cheese kransky and salad for dinner.  Then it was getting ready for the Christmas party and cleaning the house.  Into season 31 of The Simpsons.

Our non-functioning solar setup.

Is Don!  Is good!  I miss those things, we used to have them all the time when I first came to Canberra.

Friday.  My Christmas party!!  Had about forty people come.  Once again I overspent on booze, although did bring home quite a lot of leftovers so hoping it'll even out.  It was slightly windy but otherwise it was a very pleasant afternoon.  That was my tenth year running it!!  Didn't catch any ducks, but did catch a honeyeater in flight, so to speak.

Went and picked up Mum from Jolimont.  Had toasted cheese sandwiches for dinner then pretty much just collapsed.

Saturday.  Proxy upgrade first thing.  Still haven't fixed any of their bugs.  Lame.  Had a look at Mum's last two holiday slideshows which was nice.  Then headed down to the Burns Club (had to join #grunt) for Kellie's family Christmas lunch.  They did a Kris Kringle thing where the budget was 5c to $30 .. and I was like.. um what?  Weird.  Stu ended up getting some cash and I got a bottle of Apple Pie Baileys yummm :)  And I ate too much.  All. The. Food.  !!

This time like three.. whoops..

Came home and collapsed in a heap from too much food and too much people.  David/Kellie/Hayley dropped in on their way back to Junee after they'd been to Ikea.  Had a super healthy dinner, then an early night.

Sunday.  Decided to drop in unannounced to see Chrissie.  I haven't seen her since before Covid!!!  It's been a running joke over the last three years that whenever I messaged them to see about catching up one of them would be sick.  And sure enough, Chris was sick this time.  So we all wore masks.  And had a nice long chat.  Dropped off Mum at Jolimont then headed home.  Stressed about people drama.  Stressed about the solar system not working properly and noone responding to our emails/smses.  #grunt.  But forgot about all that for a while and went to Herberts with Frank and Karen and Tony which was nice.  

Watched the third episode of Picard in the evening.

Sunday.  27th.  Backdating this, because, life.  Basa bake for dinner which was very nice.  Then watched the last episode of Andor.  Which didn't wrap anything up, just left it all there for season 2.  Then I finished watching last year's Lego Masters Bricksmas Special.

There was a whole heap of hail in this storm

Monday.  Slept ok.  Although feeling panicky about my todo list.  Did some washing and washing up and dusting and vacuuming before work.  We'd brought home the Electrolux cordless from the club where we'd had it for the past year or so.  After spending ages trying to vacuum up christmas tree needles, I then emptied it and it wouldn't start again.  hrmmm.  Weeding in the evening and went and picked up a wok from someone on Freecycle (to replace our one where the non-stick surface is coming off).  Stuffed capsicums for dinner.

Tuesday.  Vacuum cleaner worked again after a charge.  Had a cleaning planning day mostly at work.  Weeding after work and tried out the wok to do a pork stirfry.  It's definitely not as "fast" as the old one - keeps turning off even with the heat up fairly high.  May need to max it out.

Before and after

Old and new

Wednesday.  More cleaning planning mostly.  Some music in the evening.  Have pretty much given up on the idea of getting my Europe photos online before Christmas.  Maybe all I'll be able to manage is filing my photos for the year and getting a year in review post done on time.  Watched the second episode of this year's Bricksmas special.  With eggnog!!  So that was a lot of fun.

Thursday.  First of the work Christmas parties in the afternoon which was quite pleasant.  I may have gotten a beer advent calendar from Plonk!

Friday.  Spent the afternoon cleaning up a whole heap of firewall rules.  Hope I don't break too much ;)  Chicken kiev for dinner then Die Hard 2.  The more I watch it the more plot holes I find :)  Still fun though.

Saturday.  Got lots done during the day.  Leftovers for dinner.  Watched Enola Holmes 2 in the evening, which was silly but a bit of fun.

This thing is probably at least fifteen years old.  Whoops.

Sunday.  Did a recycling and green shed run in the morning.  And only brought home five jigsaws.  Don't tell Stu ;)  Then went and did food shopping.  Had Kingsleys for lunch for the first time all year.  But then it's already after 13:00.  Sigh.  Did up some hotel reviews of Europe hotels, and read more for my year in review post.  Then some music.  And then it's dinner time.  Sigh.  Had leftover roast pork for dinner with some potatoes and a whole heap of kale chips.  Simpsons then first episode of the second season of Picard.

Sunday.  20th.  Yummy roast pork for dinner.  

Monday.  Slept ok.  Run/sun/rain/sun all day.  I managed to get the G5X photos off the SD card, but not the Canon (got them later).  Weeding after work.  Honey mustard chicken for dinner.  Used cream that was two weeks past its use-by date, and chicken that was use-by today.  It'll be fine right? :)  Culled a few days worth of photos (first pass anyway).  Then watched the first episode of the Lego Masters Bricksmas special which was a lot of fun.

Another paver weed strawberry

Remember early this year I completely cleared this?  Sigh.

Tuesday.  Took a while to get to sleep because I was COLD!.  Then I was awake in the middle of the night for no good reason.  So a relatively slow day.  It was COLD again in the house.  14C on the heater thermostat.  We would normally turn the heater on at that temperature, except someone opened all the cooler vents the other day because it was getting hot enough to turn the cooler on.  So we suffered all day.  I had a coat around me some of the day.  My boss has covid!!!  But I haven't seen him since Thursday last week so I'll be fine.  But he was in the office yesterday so worried about other people getting sick.  More weeding after work.  Stu cooked sausages for dinner.  More photo culling.  I was going to watch the second episode of Bricksmas, but that's not til next Sunday.  Then I found out they did a Bricksmas last year!  So watched the first episode of that.  

After half an hour of cleaning yesterday

Wednesday.  Started working on something new to clean up.  Home late so nothing useful, other than a bit of culling.  Started watching the second episode of last year's Bricksmas but didn't finish it.

I love how these poppies can live where there's like, no water

Thursday.  More cleaning.  Bought a new phone at lunch.  It might turn up in January if China doesn't have too many more lockdowns.  Sigh.  Frank and Karen came to drinks which was nice.

Friday.  Catching up on bits and pieces, and more cleaning.  Stu cooked "chorizo mince" for dinner.  Started the Christmas movie season a little early with Die Hard.

More paver weed strawberries

Stu's chorizo mince

Saturday.  Panicking about my todo list and my lack of time.  So I squandered the little time I had with music and jigsaw.  Hrmm.  I was hoping the Lego Titanic might have a Black Friday discount, but it didn't, so decided to just buy it anyway.  They had stock when I looked at the price on Thursday/Friday, but when I sat down Saturday morning to buy it, it was "out of stock".  Sigh.  There goes my other Christmas present.  Sigh.  Headed out to the club after lunch and helped a bit with the setup and a bit of food prep.  Chilled for a bit then had a swim with the sweetie.  Dinner was pretty amazing as always.  Didn't stay up too late so that was good.  A lovely night as always.

Sunday.  Slept okish.  Up fairly early and came home.  Started to do All The Things, but didn't get very far before we went out to the chemist and Bunnings.  Also had a look at the Cameron Offices demolition, and tried out Pattysmiths which was nice enough.  Then home and did some more Christmas tree stuff.  Had out the fairy lights and there were enough blown bulbs to take out too many strings, so decided to rearrange the bulbs to get working strings in the middle.  Had gotten a fair way through it when Stu brought out Stumpy.  Who then proceeded to poop right where I was working.  Sigh.  So went and cooked dinner and download my phone photos (tried a few times but still can't get the SD card).  

Today's haul

Cameron Offices demolition

Pattysmiths Cheeseburger

Sunday.  23rd.  Backdating cause I'm a big fat slacker.  Roast chicken for dinner.  

Monday.  Super busy day.  Finished or at least documented another sneaky birthday present I got.  Crumbed salmon and leftover veggies for dinner.  Geotagged days 9 and 10.

How cute is the little x-wing!?

Tuesday.  Had a fit of rage at all the email I get that I never read.  So unsubscribed from everything that's sent me mail in the past few weeks.  Built a new trial proxy with Connor which was a bit of fun.

Wednesday.  Woke up at 2am and never got back to sleep :(  Cooked up a batch of mince and picked up the sweetie.

Thursday.  Broke the prod proxies while trying to setup the new trial ones.  Sigh.  But did learn some stuff about our implementation of kerberos so that was handy.  Two episodes of Andor in the evening.

Friday.  Spent all morning writing up the incident report from yesterday as well as updating the doco so we don't make the same mistake again next time.  Herbert's with the Chrises and Tony at lunch.  Leftover chicken for dinner and more Andor in the evening.

Zucchini fritters and halloumi fries

Saturday.  We were meant to go out to the club but Stu wasn't feeling it (having been in Melbourne half the week) and I was stressed about the loss of weekend as well so we didn't end up going.  I spent all day doing All The Things.  Leftover beef stew and a bit of Andor in the evening.

Sunday.  Some geotagging in the morning.  Went out for brunch (I had the same potato fritters I had last time I was at Market St Eats and they were just as awesome!) and then did food shopping and a Bunnings run.  Then spent the entire rest of the day photographing, packing and weighing Lego and then listing it all on ebay.  Ten Harry Potter sets from 2004-2006 that I've been saving MISB.  I was about to relax for the evening when six of them sold to one person.  But they put through five together in one transaction and one in another and paid for it all and *then* wanted to combine postage.  *sigh*.  eBay sure don't make that scenario easy to deal with.  No time for music.  Stuffed capsicums and roast kale for dinner.

Saturday.  8th.  Arrived home from our overseas adventure zombie tired.  I partly unpacked.  Had a nap but didn't really rest because I was too stressed about wasting a weekend day.  Went to Chris's to get some milk.  Did some clothes washing.  In the afternoon I started to feel the twinges of a sore throat.  The sweetie ordered Chong Co for dinner.  Then had an early night (20:30).

Sunday.  Woke up around 12:30 and stayed awake til around 06:00.  With a sore throat.  I got another couple of hours sleep after that, but it wasn't good quality and I was stressed about losing half the day.  Took a RAT which was negative.  The sweetie did the food shopping.  Had to fight with my phone to get all the files off it (I decided to recopy in case I'd missed any doing it piece-meal while I was away). And fighting with windows and memory sticks.  Cooked roast pork for dinner with heaps of crackling, so that was nice.  But basically achieved nothing much all day.  Simpsons and saw the first episode of Andor.

Monday.  Woke up at ~1:15 and stayed awake until like 4 or 5.  Sigh.  Slept til about 8:30 but again not good quality and felt zombie tired all day.  I flexed off most of the day, but could maybe have taken it as sick leave.  On account of I was sick.  Fortunately not super sick.  Just zombie tired.   Fought with SD cards and windows explorer - my computer kept showing the old card even with the new one plugged in.  Tried rebooting.  Then it wouldn't read my SD cards at all.  Sigh.  So got the files off using my old computer.  Gonna be pissed if the SD card reader is dead, the computer is less than a year old.  Nothing much else.  Logged onto work for a couple of hours in the afternoon to check my emails and catch up with Con.  Cooked san choy bow for dinner.  

Tuesday.  Work up some time after 1, til past 3.  Sigh.  Went to work (well, logged on), but brain dead.  Not as sick though.  Did a bit of weeding after work (attacking the huge growth of weeds next the lemon tree).  Was making good progress when John came and helped me and we ploughed through the rest.  Stu made pizzas for dinner.  And I made a coconut cake.  It was that kind of day.  

Wednesday.  Woke up a bit after midnight, didn't get back to sleep til like 4.  Sigh.  Zombie day yet again.  Went out and did some weeding at lunch for like 3/4 hour to get some sun to try and convince my brain that day time was actually day time.  Took some extra vitamin D as well.  Possibly being a bit sick and zombie tired meant not even setting foot outside the house, so not seeing any intense sunlight so not resetting the circadian rhythms??  Red curry with leftover pork for dinner.

Thursday.  Slept relatively ok, if restless.  Went into work for the first time in two months.  Had sort of farewell drinks for Jim, although not many people came, and dinner at the Brindabella/Magpies.  

Friday.  Ok sleep.  Our home internet died in the morning.  Unplanned outage.  Not that Internode ever bothered to update their status page.  They've gotten really bad since being taken over by iinet.  Flexed off the rest of the morning then headed down to Herbert's for lunch with the Chrises and Tony.  Except that Braddles had a Floriade shift conflict, and then Aquila got caught up at work, so ended up being just Tony and me.  The internet still hadn't come back after lunch, so got a bus to work for the afternoon (although the internet came back shortly after I got to work, doh).  Leftover san choy bow for dinner, finished season 28 of The Simpsons, and watched second episode of Andor.

Saturday.  Woke up at 6.  First time since I'd gotten home a week ago that I'd woken up naturally at normal time and actually felt human.  Did some house tidying in the morning, did our food shopping (we went together for like the first time since covid, but at Woollies Kippax where everything is *different*).  Then got stuck into organising photos from the trip (reorienting, and renaming with date/timestamp).  In the end I took 3727 on the big Canon, 5486 on the G5X, 3467 on the phone, and Mum took 1997.  Also 41 videos (11 on the G5X, and 30 on the phone).  So 12680 photos all up from me,14677 total.  Whoops.  Stu cooked sausages for dinner.  Also couldn't find my memory stick purse (that had backups on usb sticks, as well as the orginal SD cards not in the cameras).  Grunt.  Reread the travel brochure I wrote.  That was a bit of fun.  We did make a few changes to it, and missed out on a few things.  Did some weeding while Stu mowed the jungle.  Put the clarinet back together and had a bit of a play.  Was surprised I could still remember how to play.  Then Simpsons and Matrix Resurrections (which I'd seen on the plane on the way over, but was good to see again on a big screen).

Sunday.  Ok sleep again which was nice.  Did some house stuff in the morning, and a Bunnings run.  Dropped into work and found my memory card purse.  Also did some weeding and photo processing. And fish tank stuff and planted some seedlings and seeds.  Made some Lego.  Did some music.  Had to clear some space on one of my backup drives which is full, in order to backup holiday photos.  Basa bake for dinner.

When the weeds in your pavers are actually strawberries..

Why can't all days be like the last two??  I don't have time to go to work, I have far too many other things to do!!!

Sunday.  28th.  Roast chicken with all the veggies for dinner.  19:15 is bed time right?

Monday.  Ok sleep.  Noone screamed over the proxy upgrades.  Got stuck into some other work that needs doing.  Spent the entire evening organising one day in Milan and Cremona.  Just when I thought I was done I found out that Leonardo Da Vinci's "The Last Supper" is in Milan.  And that tickets are nearly impossible to get.  And that the only day that you could get tickets in the next two months was the day we were going to be there.  For 26 euros I thought why the hell not.  And rearranged our day around it.  

Tuesday.  The start of the proxy problems.  Well really just one problem (two actually but the other one was an easy fix) that manifested itself in a bunch of different ways.  I was dealing with the first of them when I started getting hassled by other people about the second.  Which of course made my brain explode.  Stoopid proxies are big fat poos and hate me.  Oh yes, there was another problem with memory leaks and crashes.  Sigh.  

Wednesday.  Without people hassling me I had a look at aforementioned second problem, and was able to resolve it quite quickly.  I work so much better when I can just tinker away at stuff without people hassling me.  Had to redo the plastic sheeting around the beam the birds were eating because it had come loose.  The sweetie got bacon and eggs for breakfast, pizza for lunch, and Chong Co feast for dinner (I cooked the first two).  In the evening I was closing off travel browser tabs in Chrome, noting anything useful in them if need be.  

Thursday.  Woke up at 4:20 stressing about All The Things.  And an awful day at work fighting with the proxies.  So not much planning in the evening.  Watched a bunch of videos on Italy (a few on typical scams - which is really just common sense stuff for any city).  We also started watching Super Cub, which is a bit like Laid Back Camp in that nothing much really happens but it's still lovely to watch.

As I feared, the birds discovered there's another beam at the other end of the balcony they can get at.  So this time I wrapped tinsel around it.  So far so good.

Friday.  Had an early night and slept ok, but was super stressed out about All The Things and even ended up in tears before I'd even logged on to work.  The stoopid place in Ortona I'd booked responded to my question about getting a taxi from the station with "ok". wtf??? So I asked them again.  I couldn't get SSL in Eudora to work on the laptop, even doing everything I did for this computer.  The kitchen was a disaster.  There were no clean plates or cutlery left in the house but the dishwasher wasn't even full.  The day didn't improve.  Well, until I declared POETS, had my last music practise for a while and had chicken kiev for dinner.  Watched some more Super Cub in the evening.  

Saturday.  Slept like crap.  Sigh.  Woke up some time after two stressing about All The Things, and didn't get back to sleep til probably around four.  Had a bit of a sleepin (til 6:38!!) but still tired.  The place in Ortona didn't even bother to respond, so I cancelled it and booked somewhere else.  If someone can't even respond to a super simple question, then there's no way I can trust them to respond to any sort of problem should it arise.  Then just holiday planning all day.  The new place in Ortona I booked got back to me about a taxi - no such thing in Ortona, but they'd be happy to pick us up from the station.  Only problem is they charge an extra 15 euro to make up two beds for two people, even in a three-single bed room for two people.  A bit dumb.  If I ever rate it it'll lose marks for that.  Started writing up a "brochure" for the holiday to get me excited about the trip (and to make everyone totes jelly) which was a bit of fun.  Roast pork and veggies for dinner and more Super Cub.

Sunday.  Slept a lot better.  Finished the holiday brochure.  Puttered through the todo list.  Had a go at packing my suit case.  I wanted to see if I could fit my fully loaded backpack into it.  Turns out I can!  (a lot of places won't let you take backpacks, and so on quite a few days we'd be needing to leave our bags either at hotel reception or stations.  So I wanted to be able to lock my laptop away inside the suitcase).

This is pretty much everything I want to take.. yipe!!

Believe it or not I actually travel fairly light.  This is the suitcase fully packed - heaps of room!

And this is with my fully loaded backpak inside!  Winning!

Our last overseas trip was much much harder to pack for, in that in addition to summer and winter regular clothing, we also needed a stack of formal and smartwear.  This trip will be sooo much easier!

OMFG I will be going overseas again this week!!  Link in blog :)  And OMFG I'm going to miss the sweetie.  Like in Dresden in 2016, I'll probably feel it most acutely in places I've been to with him - probably in Neuschwanstein this time.

Sunday.  21st.  I forgot to complain about travel stuff last week.  I messaged Emirates to see about seat selection on their codeshare flight.  But they said it was a Qantas ticket and they couldn't do anything, other than request a window seat.  Then I phoned Qantas (Qantas still lives in the dark ages and doesn't have web chat).  While on hold I realised they'd actually allocated seats for me (the booking had been updated since I last looked).  So that was good.  But I stayed online to get them to confirm and also ask them about our smooshed up names, but they said I had to talk to WebJet about that.  Sigh.  Had roast turkey and veggies for dinner.  Then we watched the second half of Blue Murder.

Monday.  Slept ok.  All the stoopid at work.  Proxy upgrade planning and paperwork.  

Tuesday.  Crap sleep.  Woke up at 3:30 needing to pee.  Then my brain wouldn't shut up.  Then I got an irritated eyelid (which was irritated all day).  Then I got hungry.  Got maybe forty five minutes more sleep.  But I was a zombie all day.  Too tired to do any real holiday planning, although I did have a bit of a look at Europe road rules, and read a bit about the Passion Play.

Wednesday.  Dunno, no notes.  Probably all the planning.  But you know how all the birds have been hanging around?  Well I heard something funny and I was wondering if they were nesting in the eaves or something.  Turns out THEY'VE BEEN EATING THE HOUSE!!!

I kept shooing them away but they kept coming back.  I doused the area with spray and wipe. That made no difference.  So at lunch we wrapped some plastic sheeting around it until we could think of a more permanent solution.  

Speaking of lunch.. epic garlic bread!!  This stuff is SO GOOD!!

Thursday.  Long slow day of bits and pieces.  The birds were like.. heyyyyyy...!!   I wanted to watch Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade to get screenshots of the Venice locations.  It's not on Netflix or Disney+ at the moment.  I swear it used to be.  Oh well, good thing I have it on DVD.

Friday.  Proxy upgrade planning.  And fixing other team's problems for them (person was off and it was a slow news day anyway).  Watched King's Man in the evening.  I actually enjoyed this one more than the first two.  The first two were over the top, this one felt a little more.. real.. and it was kinda cool how they weaved the story into real life events, playing it out as if they were involved.  Kinda like Titanic in a way.  Good fun.  

Saturday.  Proxy upgrade.  Con did it, I supervised.  This was to avoid the curse of proxy upgrades never going well when I do them.  Then we tested, then did a bunch of policy tidyup, then more testing.  Done by 11:20.  Booked the last of our hotels in the afternoon.  Got onto WebJet's line chat (QANTAS PAY ATTENTION - EVERYONE ELSE IS DOING ONLINE CHATS WHY CAN'T YOU????) to ask them about the smooshed up names, and they were like, eh it'll be fine.  Also asked them why Emirates things we're booked onto *two* flights from Singapore to Sydney, and they were like, um, well you're booked on one.  Also asked them about seat allocations, and they were like, all we can do is request a window seat.  IT'S 2022 WHY CAN'T AIRLINES ALLOW YOU TO DO SEAT ALLOCATIONS ON CODE SHARE FLIGHTS?????  F&$*ing HATE.  Sausages and salad for dinner and watched Breaker Morant (based on a true story) which I'd never actually seen before.

Stu's 3D print station and work bench

Sunday.  Woke up at 4:00 and never got back to sleep.  Yet even though I had the same amount of sleep as I had the other night when I woke up early, I was actually ok today.  Fleshing out the holiday planning.  Neglected the fish.  Decided I should use up some of my flex for some long lunches and/or early finishes to try and keep up with everything.  The sweetie wanted to get out of the house this afternoon so we went for a drive.  Couldn't get to the river the way he wanted (all private roads) but it was a nice drive anyway.

Belconnen's Republic tower looks somewhat transparent in this shot

Remind me I need to login early tomorrow to see if I've broken anything...

Sunday.  14th.  Celebrated with some bubbles and a Chong Co delivery feast.

Watched Moulin Rouge! in the evening.

Monday.  Slept ok.  Documenting more things to clean.  Plus being Neil on account of him having covid.  Had a go at playing some of the music in my new John Williams book.  John Williams is *hard* !!  Stu cooked a big bag of spinach which we had with some chicken.  Ordered an International Driving Permit.  At least you can do it all online now and upload a digital photo, so no need to go to NRMA.  Although you do have to pay $9 postage, which negates the saving of getting photos done at the post office.  Doh.  

Tuesday.  Tried to get back into the swing of planning proxy upgrade during the day.  Stuffed capsicums for dinner (using leftover veggie mince from the lasagna from last weekend). Switzerland planning in the evening.

Wednesday.  Dunno, no notes.

Thursday.  Tried to do more proxy planning but all the people with all the problems stopped that.  Homemade low-carb pizzas for dinner, with epic awesome garlic bread (Chris was selling it cheap as it was past its use-by date).  Watched Shine in the evening.  I saw it once a long time ago.  I swear you used to be able to see Geoffrey Rush's doodle on the trampoline!  Coincidentally, David Helfgott's second wife (not his first as shown in the movie) died just two days earlier.

This is the output of Stu's birthday present to himself

Friday.  Bad sleep.  Too much hissing.  Super tired All Day.  Deleted 3-5% of our ruleset from decommissioned apps that noone had bothered to tell us about.  That was fun.  Kiev and kalettes for dinner.  So awesome.

Roast the kalettes for 40-45 minutes and they go all crispy on the leaves and chewy in the middle.  So damned awesome!

Watched Kingsman: The Golden Circle in the evening.  Silly fun.  With Elton John!  And The Mandalorian!

Saturday.  Super good sleep which was lovely.  Holiday planning literally all day.  Got about half the hotels booked.  Although the Florence hotel was a bit of a poo and after I booked it was like, oh we *might* be able to give you a double bed.  So I cancelled.  Cause I aint sleeping in the same bed as my mother! ;)  Was too busy to do any music or even light a candle.  Stu heated up some minces for dinner with some spinach.  Watched the first half of Blue Murder, which I'd never actually seen before.  Richard Roxburgh was so young.  And Gary Sweet with hair was a bit disturbing! :)

Sunday.  Slept well enough.  Booked a different hotel in Florence.  This one is bigger, but they also were like, we can't guarantee two single beds.  Are you freaking kidding me??  Sigh.  More planning in the morning.  Fish stuff, music, photos, blogging and a bit more planning in the afternoon.

Sunday.  31st.  Leftovers from Saturday night for dinner.  Finished watching Obi-Wan.  I liked that they had James Earl Jones voicing Darth Vader.. only .. they *didn't* ..!! they deep faked him!  And having Ian McDiarmid was pretty cool too.

Monday.  Slept ok-ish but woke up early.  Started panicking over my todo list.  Started trying to get in control by giving the house a bit of a tidy.  But had a meltdown as soon as I logged into work because people were making mess and it was all too much.  Had a cleaning planning day.  Leftover pork for dinner.

Oh, the other week my everyday walking shoes split (I bought these in 2015 and worn them almost every day since) so last week I bought some new ones.  Almost the same, look slightly different.

In the evening I tried to book flights to Europe with Qantas.  Big mistake.  I tried to book the exact same itinerary as I did three years ago (when it failed epically and I spent *hours* trying to sort it out and in the end said "screw you" and went with Emirates).  Well in three years QANTAS STILL HASN'T FIXED THEIR BOOKING SYSTEM!!!!  As with last time, you select a multi city trip (I only had three legs, nothing too complicated), it lets you get all the way through including doing seat allocations, but when you go to pay you get this error:

Sorry, an error seems to have occurred, and this page cannot be displayed (15079, 23951, 420)

Thanks a fricking lot QANTAS.  I can't believe they're still so bad at this crap.  It's like they're actively trying to deter business and alienate customers.  Literally every time I have to deal with Qantas I have to go through the sheer agony of their booking systems (if it wasn't for their AMAZING flight crews I'd probably boycot them completely).  

I used Webjet to hunt around for alternatives.  But THANKS COVID.. NOT.. there's very limited options at the moment.  Etihad had no flights available at all for the legs I wanted, and Emirates for the same legs was going to cost three thousand dollars more.  Yikes.  Lufthansa would have been ok except they had some really crazy connections that totally blew out the travel times.  So I booked the flights through WebJet, which was going to cost $200 more.  And sure enough, their APIs had the same issues with Qantas.  I got this error:

Customer Service Advice
We have been unable to confirm your requested itinerary, but have retained a copy of your requirements under Webjet Booking Reference: <redacted>
We will now process your itinerary manually and confirm your booking within 48 hours.
If you are departing within the next 48 hours we will contact you today. Please do not attempt to make another booking on this site or another, as this may result in a duplicate. Please wait for us to contact you.
Thank you for your co-operation.
Customer Service Centre

So I left it.  At least someone at WebJet will have to deal with Qantas and not fricken ME!!   

The next day I got an email from WebJet that everything was sorted and the flights had been booked.  Hurray.

Tuesday.  Cleaning day and holiday research.  Did a basa bake for dinner which was lovely.

Wednesday.  Rinse and repeat of Tuesday.  I had a whole commentary in my head about how getting older makes you more *fearful*.  I really noticed this a while back riding Kit's horses (I literally had no fear about riding horses when I was younger but now they're so *big* and it's a long damned way down!) and let's not mention The Nerve Test.  So I was stressing about all the ways things could go wrong with our holiday.  Although in the grand scheme of things, mostly all we'd lose is money.  I really need to keep that perspective.  

I did an experiment with the brussels sprouts - would they crisp up better "right way up" or "upside down"?  Turns out, didn't really make a difference!

Thursday.  Lay awake until like midnight stressing over All The Things (mostly holiday stuff).  Then woke up at 1am by the storm for an hour or so.  Then woke up early too.  Sigh.  Zombie day.  Farewell for Alex at lunch.  Quiet drinks.  All The Water!!!

Friday.  Slept a lot better.  There was even a lovely sunny day after the wild weather all day yesterday.  I needed milk for breakfast so went over to Chris's to get some.  I didn't have enough for the eftpos minimum so thought I'd get a bottle of cab sav.  But he didn't have any singles out of the one I like so he was going to open a box but I said I'd buy the box.  It was on special too, so that was a bonus.  Except carrying it back home the box split and smashed all over the car park.  Lost two bottles of wine right there.  And then I was trying to clean up the mess and pricked myself with a shard of glass and started bleeding.  Sigh.  Another customer came up and I asked her to ask Chris for help.  So he came out and took away all the broken glass and gave me a bag for the other four bottles and the milk.  They say not to cry over spilt milk but you can cry over spilt wine, surely?  Another cleaning day. Chicken kiev for dinner.  Watched Kingsman: The Secret Service which was a bit of silly fun.  

Saturday.  Went food shopping first thing.  Then a bunch of house work.  Then dropped off my backup drive at work, bought some new fish tank lights for the 620T, and accidentally bought myself an early birthday present.

Got home and then it was time to do All The Cooking.  I made a low(ish) carb, vegetarian lasagna.

Slightly over done, whoops..

Had the hills over to enjoy it and Jess had a lot of fun playing Stu's instruments.  Wait, that sounds wrong.  ;)  Specifically, his cornettos.. cornetti?  After dinner Jess and I played a whole bunch of stuff together and she played all the harmonies around me trying to keep up with her awesomeness.  It was so much fun :)

Sunday.  Did a bunch of research on countries that we plan to visit on smartraveller.  Should all be fine.  Then a whole heap of fish tank stuff.  Also some camera side-by-side testing.  The new camera is much on par with my Canon and my iPhone for most things, but it does excel in extremelly low light.  Read: under the house with just vent holes for light.  It's not so great on closeups (but some of that may be me needing to get used to the settings) and it does struggle to focus.  The iPhone probably wins on difficult lighting (with pretty decent HDR), and the Canon wins on speed and focus (except in very low light).

It's almost completely dark under the house, so this shot is actually pretty impressive.

Then it was cooking All The Food.

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

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

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

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

Wait what?

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

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

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

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

Did I mention it was cold?

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

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

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

Two epic potato bakes

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

8kg pork!  So good!!

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

The potato bakes cooked

Mulled wine anyone?

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

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

Stu and Chris helped decorate the pavlovas

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

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

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

Which is so damned true!!  

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

and this was at Jamo on Friday night

Merry Christmas in July!