Results matching “Stress”

Sunday.  11th.  I actually blogged on time last week I think but a bit early for the evening.  Did a spaghetti rosa bake for dinner but I'll put that it its own post.  Turned out pretty well.  Then Simpsons and X Files and I might have watched Fantasia 2000 again.

Smoked rum in Queen Mary 2 whiskey glass

Monday.  Had to be Neil because he'd landed himself in hospital   .. !!!  Did some cleanup I'd been planning in test which all went well.  Otherwise just mostly being Neil all day.  

Early wattle

Early wattle with bee

Got onto Neil.  He was doing ok, just a bit wobbly on his feet, awaiting MRI results.  Did a stir fry with leftover pork for dinner.  Then watched the third episode of Brides of Christ, and more photo labelling.

Tuesday.  omfg such a busy day, mainly in the afternoon it just didn't let up - people talking to me and wanting me to fix stuff all at once *all afternoon*.  Actually nearly lost it a few times. Leftover roast pork for dinner.  Did some photo labelling, although spent entirely too much time trying to identify birds seen along the Nile in Aswan.  Fourth episode of Brides of Christ with a super young Russell Crowe.  Only managed to label 136 photos, so now a day and a bit behind.  

Wednesday.  Too much stress, not enough time, and that's *before* going to work.  Spent all day investigating a problem that Aquila alerted us to late Tuesday afternoon.  Not nearly enough time to be Neil.  I can't deal.  Watched the fifth episode of Brides of Christ in the evening and nearly lost it when I saw Naomi Watts, Lisa Hensley and a magpie thirty years before the Penguin Bloom movie!

Early penguin collaboration

Thursday.  Sharpie called me super early.  I didn't hear the phone ring (phone is on silent anyway).  I did hear the buzzes of smses but didn't wake up enough to look at my phone.  So woke up at normal time and saw the messages and figured out instantly that the problem that had been affecting dev had also affected prod (I was actually worried that this might happen).  So was able to put a workaround in pretty quickly, but it did mean for a day of insanity.  In fact I spent the entire day on the phone on support calls and even missed drinks.  Sigh.  But we did still have pizza and I had a few beers at home.

Friday.  Another day of being on the phone *all day* but at least this time just with Connor and Jim which was a lot less stressful, but just as intense.  My ears hurt from having my headset on all day :(

Stu worked from home too which was nice.  I even had some pomegranate "tea" I got from Turkey in 2014 in our nice Cunard tea cups.  And he made lunch (leftover mince on toast).

Pomegranate tea

It was definitely a candle and beer kind of an evening.

Friday Corona with candle

And I also finally tried Ray's method of reheating pizza - fried in a little oil with a lid on.

Ray's fried pizza

OMFG it was *so good* !!  Even better than the evening before and with a crispy base somewhat reminiscent of the old deep pan pizzas from the 80s.  Yum yum yum.

Simsons, X Files, and I watched Old Yeller, which I'd first (and last) seen a long long long time ago.  Thoroughly wholesome movie and super sad.

Saturday.  All the houseworks in the morning.  Checked on servers sporadically throughout the day (all good).  Spent ages rearranging pieces for the Disney behemoth jigsaw section.  We did pop out for some food shopping as well. 

Jim was talking about these on Friday so when we went out for lunch on Saturday we got one.  Delish!

Maccas custard pie

In the evening Jenn came over for dinner.  Stu actually cooked a pretty amazing Indian feast with four different dishes plus rice.  Only small amounts of most of them so not much leftovers though!

Stu's Indian feast

We played a couple of games of Fluxx, then a game of Carcasonne (which I won) and a game of Ticket to Ride (which I also won).  It actually ended up being a pretty early night.

The candles I'd lit for the evening still had a good hour to go after Jenn left, so I watched the final episode of Brides of Christ.  Definitely quality television from back in the day.  I did have to laugh at some of the Sydneyisms - "It's like painting the harbour bridge - you no sooner get to one end then it's time to turn back and start at the other" and "I was wondering if getting off at Redfern was a natural method".  The second one in particular amused me because it makes absolutely perfect sense to anyone from Sydney, but even in the rest of Australia it may not make sense.  

Today my neck hurt.  Actually it started hurting yesterday.  Much the same as a few weeks back.  Vaccine related??  First time it was nine days after, this time about twenty.  Weird stuff.  Annie and Lily and Immy came over for a bit around lunch time, and we did pop out to the chemist.  Otherwise a fairly quiet day.  

Dumbo pieces

Lamb roast for dinner tonight.  Used up some cauliflower and broccoli, finished up some cream, parsley and basil that were in the fridge.

Sunday lamb roast

Sunday lamb roast

Simpsons (into season 13) and X Files and aiming for an early night.

Monday.  28th.  Backdating.  No symptoms from my second Pfizer jab, other than a sore arm, which wasn't even as bad as the first time.  First day of "the mask" except I didn't actually leave the house.  A project forced the hand on a cleanup I'd been wanting to do in forever only I was hesitant to get approvals to do it - cause if it ain't broke don't fix it.  Except it was broked, so was going to have to do the cleanup which was a big win.  Finished all of my labelling by dinner time.  Same club leftovers as last night - empanadas, potato, salad.  Finished off day 21 labelling after dinner, then Alfred Hitchcock and first episode of Diagnosis (produced by someone who was actually a consultant on House!

Tuesday.  Did the cleaning I planned yesterday.  Took my lunch so I wouldn't need to go to the mall and wear a mask.  Had a big outage in the afternoon although luckily I wasn't affected so pretty much business as usual.  Leftover club potatoes (one tray thinly sliced, one try a bit smashed, then baked - the smashed ones needed to be more smashed) and wings for dinner.  Labelled 220 photos after dinner.

Wednesday.  Woke up at 1:47 and didn't get back to sleep til well after 5am, stressing about All The Things.  I might have actually gone back to bed, except I had a dentist appointment in the morning - first in two years since I didn't go last year because of covid.  This was the first time of wearing a mask indoors.  Except I'd just been out in the freezing cold air, and as soon as I went inside the mask made my glasses fog up instantly.  I hadn't been to the dentist in their new location, and so I was trying to figure out where to go but I literally couldn't see.  No wonder people don't like wearing masks.  Zombie day.  Took my lunch again so I wouldn't have to go to the mall.  Did some bits and pieces of work but not terribly efficient.  Late home.  Even had a beer, tv dinners, and watched Fantasia 2000.

Thursday.  Woke up at 2:20 and didn't get back to sleep til nearly 5am.  Sigh.  Although strangely didn't feel as much of a zombie as yesterday.  Wearing the mask and having it fog up my glasses the whole time got pretty old pretty quickly.  First time at the mall, and (almost) everyone wearing masks.  Such a strange sight to see in Canberra!  There were police patrolling too, although they didn't pull up the one guy we saw not wearing his mask properly.  But also school holidays which made the mall all kinds of horrendous.  Neil bought a pack of ten reusable masks, so I bought a couple off him.  Pretty quiet drinks, then pizza, Simpsons, X Files, and the start of Fantasia.

Friday.  Woke up at 12:40 and didn't get back to sleep til around 3am.  Epic sigh.  During that time I felt like I was getting a bit of a cough and sniffle.  Started to work from home in the morning, but definitely sick, so gave up and went back to bed.  Spent most of the day in bed.  Not a single minute of sleep though.  Like I've missed about seven hours of sleep during the week and I was sick, you'd think I'd be able to sleep.  Nope.  My body simply refuses to sleep.  So fricken annoying.  Loaded potatoes with mince, parsley, cabbage, cream and sour cream for dinner then just watched crap on the internet.  Stu also started getting sick in the afternoon.  Most likely we both picked it up at the club on the weekend.  Hurrah. 

Club loaded potatoes

Saturday.  Took forever to get to sleep - couldn't breathe and restless.  But then did sleep okish after that til after 7am.  Stayed in bed all morning (aside from getting up for breakfast, and later cheesy hash browns with club potatoes for brunch).  Not sleeping of course. 

Club potato hash browns

Spent the afternoon just watching stuff on the internet (a fair bit from Oversimplified), and puttering through rss feeds. 

Performed surgery on one of the masks I bought off Neil - simply threaded a paper clip through the top of it to make a nose bridge, to see if it'll make any difference to my glasses fogging up.

Mask surgery

Mask surgery

Tried to make NQN's accordion potatoes for dinner, but I think they really need to be raw first so they didn't really work.  Simpsons/X Files/stuff on internet in the evening.

Club accordion potatoes

Sunday.  Another very slow day, mostly just watching crap on the internet.  Cooked roast pork for dinner, although pretty fail on the crackling - possibly because I was using the deeper dish, so not as much air flow.  Also some mince to use with whatever, and lots of veggies.  Early night (didn't process photos or blog though).

July roast pork

July roast veg

July roast leftovers

Monday.  24th.  Not backdating ;)  Slept ok I think.  Had an ok day.  Updated our network diagram because it was WRONG, and we can't have that!  (discovered while trying to fix some monitoring dashboards).  Got 174 photos labelled before dinner and another hundred after dinner - past 10000!!!  Also downloaded and processed my phone photos from last week but didn't have time/energy to blog.

Tuesday.  Couldn't get to sleep for *ages* stressing about All The Things.  Had a big lunch (oops - people kept telling me to eat their chips! .. and I'm a seagull.. soo..)  Connor helped me take home three pallets from downstairs - just so that I can store some boxes in the garage without worrying about them getting water damaged for the once every year or two flood that we get through the garage.  

Wednesday.  Woke up at 5:30 from a dream where the sweetie had died during brain surgery.  I was so upset I couldn't get back to sleep.  Spent hours and hours during the day in meetings. Fun. Not.  Super late home but still managed to label all Dad's day 16 photos (nearly two hundred of them), even while watching Aircrash Confidential (watched all six episodes on 9Now this week).  Only a hundred behind in the photo labelling now, should be able to catch those up on the weekend.

Thursday.  More meetings.  Neil's beer(s) of the week this week were two from Moondog - the white chocolate white ale I first tried at Herbert's the other week, and a chilli vanilla stout (which didn't taste like chilli or vanilla or stout!).  

Friday.  Hurrah for working from home!!  Did a bit of cleaning, pretty quiet day.  Watched Gallipoli in the evening - forty years old this year and yet I've never actually seen it.  Hurrah for peeps uploading stuff to Youtube!

Saturday.  Had a pretty relaxing day.  ie, got practically nothing done around the house/computer.  Stu had a migraine in the morning so it was a pretty quiet day all round.  Headed out to the club in the afternoon and lit the fire and it was all very cosy, then we headed up for the evening's events - an Italian themed night.  All the food!

Club Italian night

Evil jet engine heater

Club Italian night

Club Italian night

Club Italian night

Sunday was pretty much just *work*, almost no fun.  Feel like I'm drowing in housework.  Did a couple of loads of washing, fish tank stuff, clothes sorting and a bunch of blogging.  Started watching the remake of Rebecca in the afternoon (I saw the Alfred Hitchcock version on the plane from New York to Singapore in early 2019).  Watched Lucy with the sweetie in the evening.

Today was much of the same.  All these boxes had been up in my "hobby" room until Stu converted it into his man cave, so they got moved downstairs, but it blocked up the whole dungeon room so we couldn't move in there, so now I had those pallets I could move them onto them in the garage.

Garage pallet

Other than that just food shopping, all the work, caught up with photo labelling (finished day 16, into day 17), cooking an epic dinner of almost all veggies (ok so also a bit of leftover lamb i pulled out of the freezer) and some tv with the sweetie.  Finished up watching Rebecca in the evening.  Not entirely sure if I liked it or not.  It had more modern "values" but they could have written Maxim a bit better, altho apparently it did have Daphne du Maurier's ending not Alfred Hitchcock's censored version (I can't remember the book it was like thirty years ago).  

Monday.  17th.  Backdating this.  Super busy day of people asking me stuff as soon as I logged on, and All The Tickets (4 incidents and 13 requests!!) so no cleaning time.  Cooked dinner (beef cheeks) at lunch time, as well as after work.  I seriously don't have time for work, just too much to do.  Also roasted a bunch of veggies for dinner, so lots of leftovers so no more cooking all week.  Only a bit of photo labelling (66 photos) because it was the Lego Masters finale.  Was actually surprised Scott and Owen didn't win in the end, I reckoned they could have won it from about episode one or two.  

Tuesday.  Another busy day.  Lost it when I was over talking to Neil and after ages realised I was standing right in the middle of Duncan's meeting.  Far out I hate going into the office.  Noone ever goes to meeting rooms anymore, they all just sit at their desks.  So whenever I get up I run a gauntlet of walking through three or four meetings on my way out.  Hate hate hate.  Sad there was no more Lego Masters to watch, but did label some photos.

Dewey spider web

Wednesday.  Dusting around the hallway smoke detector and it went off and wouldn't stop (until Stu got out of the shower to press its button).  Ok fine, so I must have gotten some dust in it.  But ten minutes later it went off again at random.  Was a bit stressed about going to work if it was just going to beep all day - it'd distress Stumpy and the fish *a lot*.  But got Damien to listen on his way in and he couldn't hear it, so think it's ok.  Stressful day.  Labelled 196 photos, so only 260 behind - half a week's worth.

Thursday.  Generally depressed about Microsoft and its complete nonsense with how everything of it works.  Literally nothing it does is standard and we've had to make an *awful* mess of our network to try and accommodate it.  Hate.  Was astounded at the price of new vinyl in JB's .. like $50 for popular records!?  Insanity!

Will stop here.

The 16th of May 2001 was the day my flat settled.  I'm pretty sure I had to go into the city to do something for the settlement.  Man that was a stressful couple of days.  I needed a bunch of extra cash to pay for all the little bits and pieces for settlement, but I wasn't going to get the cash I was counting on from the First Home Owner's Grant until a bit later.  So I needed a few thousand dollars in a hurry.  Luc and Lizzi came to the rescue and transferred some money for me, but there was no guarantee it was going to come through overnight.  So I actually rang up the bank to see about getting a short term loan.  Luckily the money came through overnight, I could pay all the bills, and pay them back again a few weeks later when the dust settled.  

So I snapped this photo of Sydney Tower.  As you do.

Sydney Tower

Last weekend we had a five day long weekend and went to Bathurst, Lithgow, Newnes, Glen Davis, Gulgong and Dubbo.  When I've chosen some photos I'll get it up on the holiday blog.  We arrived home Tuesday afternoon maybe a bit before 4pm.  The neighbourhood dogs were yapping.. non stop.. til well after 6pm :(  Very upsetting.  Spent quite a while downloading and processing photos from the trip.  At 5pm I went to cook dinner, but by the time we'd eaten and cleaned up it was after 7pm :(  I put on Sunday's Lego Masters and started writing up the holiday blog entry text.

Hanging chrysanthemums

Wednesday.  Slept fairly well.  Didn't try to do any slide scan fixing, just too stressful, so just finished writing up the holiday blog text, finished unpacking, and tidied the house.  Felt a whole lot more in control.  At lunch I had another look in Kmart for jeans.  They had a whole new stock, and actually managed to find some that sort of fitted.  Apparently the fashion trend at the moment is for "high rise" or "extra high rise" which is utterly ridiculous.  So found some that were "mid rise" which are still a lot higher than they should be but look only somewhat ridiculous.  They have pockets that will hold my phone, but only just, and if I don't get it jammed all the way in it's likely to fall out.  Sigh.  In the evening I didn't try and do any photo labelling - just caught up on blogging from two weeks ago while watching Monday's Lego Masters.  Was hoping to have last week's blogging done too but that was not to be.

Thursday.  Caught up on last week's blogging in the morning.  Going into the office is pretty miserable at the moment.  Another team have decided to move themselves into our area, but they're super noisy (Thursday they talked literally non stop about mostly non-work stuff for the first full half hour I was in), and they're always in meetings, which means I'm in their meetings, which makes me *super* uncomfortable.  *Hating* going into the office at the moment.  Drinks was good though, and we made more Mexican pizzas for dinner.

Friday.  The sweet relief of not having to *go* to work.  My mornings are so much more relaxed, and I had time to put on my washing and hang it out and do some slide fixing before work.  Did a heap more cleaning in the afternoon.  In the evening Stu put on a new anime series - A Place Further than the Universe - which was a bit silly but ok.  

Saturday.  May Day.  How'd we get to be a third of the way through the year already?  A day of All The Things. 

We ordered a frame online for my paint by numbers.  It was all quite nice except they'd mounted the mounting bracket off-centre.  Idiots.  So it doesn't hang straight, I'll probably need to get some rubber feet or something to stop it moving.

Uncentered

I also dismantled the Titanic model, and got to look at the innards that David mostly did. 

Titanic model

Titanic model dismantle

Titanic model dismantle

Titanic model dismantle

I pulled it apart in sections to make it easier to do next time.  There was no way it was all going back in the box though!

Titanic model pieces

Late in the afternoon I'd had enough so put on Playing Beatie Bow, which I saw a long long long time ago (we read the book in school), which someone had put on YouTube. 

In the evening we went over to Rob and Fiona's for Rob's 51st (we couldn't do a 50th last year because covid).  A lovely evening but a couple of hours past my bed time..

Food at Rob's party

Rob's 51st

Food at Rob's party

Fireplace

Rob's cake

Two blog entries done tonight, third right now, so not backdating!!

Monday.  18th.  Slept ok on the new mattress I think.  It's quite firm!  I was a bit worried it was going to be *too* firm.  The tencel sheets I bought in the middle of last year are *very* slippery, which is a bit odd.  Had another long day at work being on the phone for most of the day again.  Did my quota of Eurasia photos in the evening.  Also added a couple of things to the year in review post that I'd missed.  Since I was done with labelling, I watched the first episode of Into the Unknown - a documentary on the making of Frozen II.

Neighborhood greenery

Oh hai little bird

Tuesday.  Quiet day at work until it all happens at once in the afternoon.  hrmmm.  Filled up the green bin in the evening.  Then the yappy dog started barking again for an hour or more, after a week or so of peace.  Got a cold call from a mob called Sunny Money (seriously WTF, would you do business with a company called that??).  I hate being cold called at the best of times, so I'm like, wait, who are you? how did you get my number?  And when he was like "how long have you owned your home", I was like "a while" and made it all kinds of difficult for him.  So I'm like well fine, I have your details, when we've done a bit of research maybe we'll call you, and he's like but then I won't get my commission.  #grunt.  Hard slog getting through photo labelling.

Wednesday.  Slept ok I think.  Dog was barking again this morning.  In fact I think that was why I was cranky/on edge for most of the break - that damned dog.  Caught up with the backlog from yesterday in the morning.  Then had a day of failure because I'm dumb.  

Thursday.  Ok sleep (woke up 5:30ish).  No progress on all my failures of the previous day.  But there were work drinks which was nice.  Got pizza, and watched some Simpsons and more Laid-Back Camp.

Friday.  Okish day I guess.  Avoided looking at all the things that make me a failure.  Had a bit of a play with Powershell in the afternoon.  Really really need to learn Powershell more bettererly.  

Pretty pink flowers

In the evening watched the 2018 version of A Wrinkle in Time.  Disney's problem is trying to do a movie from a book that people cherish so dearly.  If you read the reviews on IMDB, it's literally all one star ratings from people who can't stand how much it deviated from the book.  I'm lucky in that I have dementia.  I read the book as a late teen or early twenties, then again in 2014.  I saw the tv movie in 2003.  So I don't have a lot of memories of any of it.  I do remember enjoying the Dumbledore quotes in the tv movie.  And the brain from the book.  There should have been a brain.  So the new one I didn't think was terrible if you'd never read the book(s), but otherwise yeah it's a bit of a fail.  And it was written by Jennifer Lee - who wrote Frozen!

Saturday.  Typical weekend day just doing all the things.  David took it upon himself to clean the bathroom fan and light fitting.  Have I ever mentioned I have the bestest brother ever?  He also helped us rehang the Lego mosaic in a new spot (out of Stu's study).  This mosaic has been there since 2009.  I *really* need to make up a new picture!!

Lego in new hangy spot

Stu cooked his gnocchi carbonara again (with actual egg!).  And we finished watching Laid-Back Camp.  I watched a Titanic bluray documentary of David's and then a Netflix documentary on Anne Frank - Parallel Stories, about a series of survivors with similar stories to Anne Frank.  

Sunday.  Today.  !  Got up to fog!  Which is quite surreal at this time of year.  Also meant having the cooling on with water made the 99% humidity even humider, if such a thing were possible ;)

Very early fog

But we did keep the cooler on all day, and it didn't get above 25C in the house all day!  Hurrah!

In the morning David packed up his car with the last of his stuff and left for good.  As staunch introverts we would stress over *anyone* in our space for so long, but having my brother here was still ok.  I probably get on better with him than pretty much anyone else except the sweetie, and I guess for the sweetie it's a bit like having two of me ;)  Plus, as a houseguest he was pretty awesome.  Not only was he respectful of our space, but he was super helpful around the house.  I will miss his generous heart.  

At lunch we tried out using the new rice cooker we got for Christmas from David as a steamer to cook up some steamed pork buns

Rice cooker steamer

Steamed pork buns

We watched a few videos from Solar Quotes while we had lunch.  In the afternoon did a bit of cleaning and tidying.  And hunted through Mum and Dad's photos for photos for This Day in History posts, including processing another two hundred of Mum's photos for use in the blog/online.  And blogging.  All the blogging.

And so here we are.  Caught up on the current events blogging.  I still have This Day in History posts to do.. one day ..

2020.

Oh my.

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

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

But then.

The C word.

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

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

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

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

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

So a pretty wild year on that front.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Happy new year!! 

Backdating, because you wouldn't expect anything less!!

Monday.  Slept okish I think.  After the weekend this counted as the first day of our holidays.  I had the idea that I would "work" until Christmas - finish scanning Dad's slides and fixing them all up, get the house cleaned, get photos sorted out, get my year in review done, that sort of thing, and then after Christmas would be "holiday" time to do fun things.  So I spent All. Fricken. Morning. trying to fix up two boxes of slides.  Some slides I had to scan up to *seven* times to get them without fluff somewhere in the scan.  So was pretty cranky to start with.  Then stressed about having to cook all the time and deal with everyone's dietary issues.  I pulled everything out of the freezer and did an audit on it.  Pulled out a few things to defrost and eat before we're allowed to go shopping next.  It took all day to fix up seven boxes of slides.  Felt super annoyed that my first day of holidays was just doing this and nothing useful.  Watched Die Hard 2 in the evening.

Santa Stumpy

Tuesday.  Got morning stuff done then we headed out.  I dropped off the last of the tubs we'd used for the bbq back at work.  Took a drive through the Parliamentary Triangle and I got Stu to stop so I could take a photo of George - because I'd never taken a photo before!

George V Statue, Parliament House

Parliament House

Then continued on.  Went all the way to Kambah to a brewing supply store so Stu could pick up a CO2 cylinder for his fish tank.  Then back into the city so Stu could buy some pens and I could have a look for jeans in Big W (epic fail there as well).

Canberra Centre Christmas Tree

Had "Disappointing Sushi" at Hero Sushi.  It lived up to expectations - the first takoyaki plate I got was *cold*.  And everything has avocado in it.  Why can't you put cucumber in some of it??  Some of us don't like avocado!  #grunt.  By the time we got home it was mid afternoon.  Spent an hour fighting with slides and managed to fix one roll.  The sad story is there's dust and tiny hairs *under* the glass, so even though I wipe down the glass and practically scrub the slides before each scan, there's always dust in a few set positions.  But there's now so much fluff there I can't even flip the slides 180 degrees because there's fluff in all the corners, which means there's *always* fluff in the sky no matter which way I orient the slide.  So an hour and a half to fix two boxes.  Had leftovers for dinner.  Watched more of the Mandalorian documentary.  But basically I was cranky all day due to simply not enough hours in the day to get through the ever growing todo lists, not enough days in a holiday (still miss my uni three month holidays), being out most of the day, slide scanning being so painful etc.  I didn't even bother to try and go see Jupiter and Saturn on their second closest night.

Wednesday.  Finally finished scanning all Dad's slides (at least a first pass).  Took two hours to do one box.  Day was spent fixing slides, blogging, processing photos.  In the afternoon we met up with Tony and later Keira at Herbert's for a couple of beers and dinner.  I had the porcetta burger this time (which has crackling!!) and managed to mostly get through it.  Earlyish night.

Herbert's porcetta burger

Thursday.  Christmas Eve.  4:30 wake up - itchy and restless legs.  Just a day of all the things, although not as much as previous days.  Put on a video of Beethoven's 9th while wrapping presents and blogging.  In the afternoon watched the end of Jingle Jangle: A Christmas Journey, which I'd started the other night.  I'd watched the first half one night when I was feeling cranky, and as such didn't really enjoy it.  But enjoyed the second half a bit more.  It sure is pretty to look at, but basically a bit meh.  The kid who played Journey is pretty cool tho.  Pizza for dinner (Thursday!), then watched Love Actually (Stu endures it because he has no choice, David had a choice, and although he dissed it, he actually stayed and seemed to be enjoying it ;) ), and then the Melbourne Carols by Candlelight.  Such a strange thing to watch with no audience due to Covid, and most of the choir for the Hallelujah Chorus singing remotely.  

Anything that turned up at the house in December went under the tree.  Seemed little point rewrapping any of it, so that's how they stayed til Christmas morning ;)
Presents

Backdating.. cause I'm a slacker!

Saturday.  Blogged my butt off trying to get everything caught up so I could move it all across to a new host.  Then backed everything up again.  Sausages for dinner, BBT and part 2 of The Dismissal.

Stu taking Stumpy for a walk

Sunday I moved the nameservers for kazza.id.au over to Ventra IP, while leaving the A record for the website pointed back at CIA.  Made sure mail was flowing ok.  Then I sat down to try and get the blog working.  Except it wouldn't work because VentraIP doesn't support DBD::mysql, and don't support perl module installation.  I did have a bit of a go at getting cpan to get it, but I'm too dumb for that sort of thing.  Got pretty depressed about it all.  Did some housework in the afternoon and setup beef cheeks to cook.  Had EffanC over for dinner which was nice.

Wine cheese and candles

Beef cheeks

Mulled wine and a cookie

Later on (at least I think it was this night, if not was around here some time) I was looking at IMDB for The Dismissal, and went to see what else Max Phipps had been in.  One of the things was The Miraculous Mellops.  It sounded vaguely familiar so I had a look - and I did remember watching it nearly thirty years ago!  Although all I could remember about it was the girl with the crazy hair and the Grand Baby, although I have a feeling I know who the next Grand Baby will be.  Started watching through it and have been watching episodes on YouTube here and there over the past couple of weeks.

Monday the usual.  There was supposed to be early fog and a top of 13 or 14.  But the fog never lifted and it only maxed at about 7!

Tuesday passed 2000 of Dad's slides.  Cooked a lamb roast for dinner.

Lamb roast with veggies

Tuesday I tried to have an early night but that didn't work because Stu was late in coming to bed, plus I was uncomfortable and stressed and I couldn't sleep and I was so frustrated I had a meltdown.  Twice.  Didn't get to sleep til well after midnight, and was awake in the middle of the night for a couple of hours as well.  So Wednesday was well and truly a zombie day.  At lunch time I tried to get tickets for the 747 joy flight out of Canberra, but once again, Qantas is EPIC FAIL to deal with as a company.  I couldn't find anything on their website mentioning the flights or tickets at all.  Eventually about twenty past twelve I finally saw an ad on the front page.  I clicked through.  By this time it said Sydney had sold out.  But Brisbane and Canberra seemed ok.  So "searched" for the flight but got an error.  After reloading a couple of times it said it had all sold out.  Fricken typical.  

Qantas fail

Moved some crap downstairs at lunch, but didn't go see my birds.  Had a bit of a look at different hosting providers.  Chicken kiev for dinner because I didn't feel like cooking.  But no BBT!!  Season 12 is not on Netflix!  Bastards.  Yay for a wonderful end to my day.  Not.  

Thursday I watched The Parent Trap, Linsday Lohan version.  I first (and last) saw it back in 2004 and quite enjoyed it then, and enjoyed it again.  I remember thinking Lindsay Lohan was actually pretty good in that movie, and was a bit sad when she went off the rails a few years later.  The remake was *very* similar to the original, except the ending, and the Concorde! :)  Oh we also started The IT Crowd.

Baby chives

Friday we finished watching The Dismissal.  I normally have little interest in politics, but this miniseries was very well done and educational (and if you haven't heard of it - go listen to the recent The Eleventh podcast - it was really interesting too).  Except we were ripped off because the most famous line uttered by Whitlam isn't actually in the movie!

(we got a little distracted by the 80s shots of Canberra, and this typo of November)

Novermber

Saturday had hurty overnight so slept in a bit.  House stuff, lunch, shopping (Coles had toilet paper! ha!), cooked dinner, and cooked up some taco mix to save having to cook it after work during the week.  Used chuck steak to make the Asian style beef cheeks, because Coles didn't have any beef cheeks.  I also doubled the recipe because we never seem to have enough of it.  Chuck steak was ok but not quite the same, just the wrong texture.  Watched Ready Player One, which we last saw on our last cruise.

I like how the glass here didn't fog up..

Antifog

Sunday I had a bit of a sleep in - til 7am!  Although didn't really get anything done all day.  Went for a walk around Aranda bushland with C in the afternoon.

Aranda walk

Aranda walk

Aranda walk

Aranda walk

Did roast chicken for dinner with a blue cheese potato bake.  Watched the first half of the original 101 Dalmatians.