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.  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.  Backdating a few days because life and birthdays and crap got in the way.  Had all the veggies and some chicken thighs for dinner.  Then watched more of The Crown.

Monday.  Um.  Probably a cleaning day.  Spent the evening looking at distances between places in Europe to see if we'll go over the daily allowance or need to buy unlimited kilometres.  And trying to plan an itinerary.  

Tuesday.  Woke up at 3 to pee, then started stressing about All The Things, then got hungry, then the hissing.  Sigh.  So tired, but still an ok day, mostly cleaning.  

Went to another Surprising Science talk in the Shine Dome.  There was Dr Chris Guppy from UNE talking about sulphur in soil, and Mahdokht Shaibani from RMIT talking about lithium sulphur batteries.  

The previous two photos of the Shine Dome were on my new G5X.  So is this next one.  This is hand held!!  Half a second.  Pretty impressive.

Had dinner at Master Bao but was disappointed they don't actually server bao!!?!?!  wtf!?

No bao at Master Bao!

Spring rolls

Dim sims

Shantung duck

Wednesday.  Ok sleep.  Busy cleaning day.

Thursday.  Okish sleep.  Another busy cleaning day.  Two days cleaning up stuff to get it all consistent and pretty.  And literally noone will care.  But I did fix something else that had been broken for a while (not by me) and did actually impact people so that was a win I guess.  Also got filled with rage at Outlook which by default only adds reminders to meetings created within Outlook, which means I keep missing stuff because I don't get reminders.  Hate Outlook.  HATE.  This was never a problem in Notes.  Just sayin!!

Homemade pizzas for dinner on Stu's low carb bases.  Then watched Careful, He Might Hear You.  I might have seen it once a very very long time ago.  I read the book ten years ago so was good to finally see the movie again.  I was disappointed they didn't have a shot of him on the train going over the Woronora Bridge (or in fact any shots at all of Sydney, I guess too hard with all the modern buildings).  

Friday.  Ok sleep until the hissing.  Had a fairly quiet day catching up on emails and stuff that had been slipping because I'd been busy the last couple of days.  Chicken Kiev for dinner, then watched Broadcast News.

Saturday.  Woke up at 2:22 with mild hurty.  Had a pain killer and some cheese.  An hour later I felt hungry again.  Then the hissing.  So a very slow morning.  I was trying to get things done in the afternoon but then more hurty so slow and painful.  But then that eased up and we had EffanC and Rob and Fiona over for dinner (brisket, blue cheese potato bake and roasted kale (I over cooked the kale :( )) which was lovely.  

Sunday.  Slept ok.  Finally booked a car for the first week of our trip.  Then spent like three and a half hours out and about running errands and doing shopping before we go into self-imposed quarantine.  Stu is not coming on this trip (sadly :( ) but I need him in quarantine as well in case he gets covid and brings it home to me.  I did get KFC for lunch, which is somewhat of a tradition, so that was nice.  Then tried to allocate seats on my flights.  For most of them this worked ok.  But the Sydney to Dubai leg I can't even tell which airline I'll be flying on.  Qantas say it's Emirates, and Emirates say it's Qantas, and neither will let me book seats.  Other than that, panicking over my todo lists.  Also.  Neil has covid.  He started feeling sick Thursday morning.  This was after I'd sat next to him all day Wednesday.  Sigh.  Felt like I was getting a sore throat Sunday.  As with every other time in the past two and a half years I'm sure it's just my imagination.  Suddenly it's 16:20 and it's like wtf happened to my weekend.  Managed to download my photos before giving up for the day and relaxing with the sweetie with some bubbles.

3.6.22

After seeing The Queen and Me exhibition we went into Palace Electric to see Top Gun: Maverick.

It was quite a last minute decision, so I never had time to go back and watch Top Gun beforehand.  Not that I really needed to.  I've seen it enough times to remember the gist of it.  And there's flashbacks as well to help.

Bottom line is, it's a remake.

But a great one!

The action is spectacular, using pretty much all real effects.

There's some great trivia on IMDB about how the actors basically had to be their own directors and camera operators because they were actually up in aircraft doing the stunts!

Amazing stuff.

And an F-14 Tomcat!! Wheee!!

So yeah, thoroughly enjoyed it.

Only gripes: I'm sure they never would have allowed someone who wears glasses to pilot a fighter jet.  And the only people that would get into a programme like Top Gun would be A-type personalities.  Anyone with lack of confidence would likely never have made it in.  And he never would have survived that high speed ejection...

Of course we then watched Top Gun again the next weekend :)

Another very quiet quarter on the jigsaw front.  The only one I did was Starry Night that Glenda gave me. 

After that Stu wanted me to work on getting rid of Vic's Lego so that's what I've been doing on the weekends.

So this past weekend was ABC's Classic 100: Music for the Screen.  I missed a chunk of it on Saturday morning because I was at work, but listened to the rest of it.  Fortunately I didn't miss too much Saturday morning.

Of note: Hans Zimmer definitely had more entries.

But.

John Williams well and truly got the top scores.  He had FIVE in the top eleven!!  Amazing!!

He had Jaws at 57, Superman at 55, ET at 42, Indiana Jones at 11, Jurassic Park at 8, Schindler's List at 5, Harry Potter at 4, and Star Wars came in at number 1.  The Mission dropped down to third this year, and Lord of the Rings was second.

Titanic was 45.  I actually thought I'd voted for this, but apparently I hadn't - whoops!!  I'm glad other people did!  Love Actually was 53.  I didn't even think to vote for this, but was so excited when it came up.  Babe was 24.  I love the music from Babe, but the main thing I like is actually written by Saint Saens, not Nigel Westlake, so I didn't count it.  It feels like cheating :)  Zorba the Greek, another piece I like, was 20.  I didn't think to vote for Shakespeare in Love, but sadly that didn't make it.

These were my votes.  Eight of them came up!  Proving that I like popular music haha.  I strategically *didn't* vote for Star Wars (I had to drop *some* John Williams to get a few other things in!!) knowing that other people would.

Harry Potter (John Williams) #4
Jurassic Park (John Williams) #8
Jaws (John Williams) #57
Indiana Jones (John Williams) #11
Superman (John Williams) #55
Star Trek (Jerry Goldsmith) didn't place
Gladiator (Hans Zimmer/Lisa Gerrard) #19
The Man from Snowy River (Bruce Rowland) #33
The Princess Bride (Mark Knopfler) #59
The Hunt for Red October (Basil Poledouris) didn't place

Sunday.  5th.  Leftover photos from last week..

Slow roasted a couple of punnets of tomatoes.  So awesome!  (just a bit of olive oil, salt, pepper, and maybe mixed herbs, can't remember)

Dinner was beef cheeks and a heap of roasted veggies

Monday.  6th.  Slept ok.  Ok day, thinking about more cleaning and upgrading.

Tuesday.  Got up to find I'd left a big pillar candle burning all night 😱  The monitors were still in standby too (not off) so obviously I'd been planning to go back.. just never actually did.  Scary!! 

Then the fun began.  The plumbers came in the morning to dig up the front foot path to get at the blocked pipe beneath it.  

So the horizontal pipe was completely full of roots.  But below this is concrete pipe which is in a poorly state.  And the bottom of it is filled with grout from tilers washing their buckets out probably thirty years ago.  Or maybe more.  Possibly from when the house was built (because how would they do it otherwise when it was all sealed up??).

Otherwise a cleaning planning day.  Stumpy was playing peekaboo.  Leftover beef cheeks for dinner.

Wednesday.  The plumbers came back and declared war on the stair case so they could completely re-lay the pipe.  They stopped when the concrete saw died.

Stu cooked tomato-mince-gnocchi for dinner which wasn't as tasty as the one he did the other week, but was still nice because I didn't have to cook :)  

Also, our front left stove element has died (it died while I was cooking on the weekend, and confirmed dead tonight).  Sad times.  Not sure how hard it will be to find/replace the element, vs buying a whole new stove.  Hmmmm.  Victoria photo culling in the evening.  

Thursday.  Plumbers finished ripping out the stairs and dug dug dug a massive trench by the side of the house.

Worked from home in the morning, but went into the office (via crowdedest Chemist Warehouse visit ever) in the afternoon.  Pizza for dinner.

Friday.  Azure training all day.  The plumbers rendered the wall (since the concrete in the bricks had disintegrated to the point of allowing all the blocked up water to flow right into the bin area). 

Slow cooked honey rosemary chicken for dinner (which will be in a separate post.  One day.).  Then we had to watch Top Gun.  For reasons which will become apparent eventually.

Saturday.  In at work in the morning for load testing.  Then Lego inventorying all afternoon.  Later in the afternoon I felt like I might be getting sick - slight sore throat and cough.  Stu had had an immune reaction on Monday but then had been ok for a couple of days, but Thursday/Friday he was a little congested in the evenings, and moreso on Saturday afternoon.  hmmm.  Leftover beef cheeks for dinner, then we watched The Monuments Men which was actually quite a bit of fun.  Very fictionalised but still pretty cool what they did.

Sunday.  I actually felt better but the sweetie felt worse.  So he took a RAT - which was very clearly negative - which was a relief.  Pretty much just Lego all day again.  Cooked slow cooked pork ribs and roast veggies for dinner (for which I used my brisket wet/dry rubs with the addition of a bit of apple cider vinegar and garlic powder).

The sweetie went back to his uni work (to finish his last essay, maybe for his last uni subject forever.. maybe..) so I watched Pride and Prejudice (the Keira Knightley version) which wasn't too bad.  One of these days I might read the book.

Monday.  Today.  Did a few house things in the morning.  Setup an app password so Eudora can backup my Gmail.  Then spent the entire rest of the day culling photos and blogging.  I only managed three blog entries out of all of that.  What an exhausting day.  

Sunday.  22nd.  Backdating cause long weekend aren't long enough.  Cooked up a bunch of veggies for dinner to have with the last of the leftover chicken.

Monday.  Slept ok.  Spent some time planning another firewall migration and tested it with some test traffic.  Filled the green bin with leaves while Stu cooked dinner - some gnocchi I got last time I went shopping, and using some of the mince I cooked last weekend with some tomato paste and cabbage.  It was very tasty.  Then photo culling and watched the Lego Masters finale which was fun.

Tuesday.  No notes.  Whoops.

Wednesday.  Sneaky trip to Sydney to see Brickman's Lego Jurassic World exhibition at the Australian Museum.  Will get that posted.  One day.

Thursday.  Not great sleep.  Nachos for dinner.  Soooo bad but soooo good.

Friday.  Slept ok.  Had a fun afternoon updating some diagrams.  In the evening was Whisky Live.  I hadn't been in a few years because we went two years in a row and it was a bit repetetive.  But this time there was *heaps* of new stuff I'd never even heard of before.  Took notes on lots of things.  I prolly better not mention how many different whiskys I tried :)  It was definitely not covid safe and I was worried about that for a while.  Then I started drinking and stopped worrying.  But as of a week and a bit later I'm still ok, so all good ;)

Saturday.  Slept relatively well considering. 

Mostly doing Lego stuff all day.  For dinner we went into Dickson for dinner.  We tried out Flavours of Jiangnan and had some very tasty brisket and pork.

Slow cooked beef brisket and noodle ($16)

Jiangnan specially cooked dongpou pork ($28)

Then watched Knives Out which was a bit silly but a bit of fun.  I loved one character's description of Daniel Craig's kentucky fried foghorn leghorn chicken southern drawl.  So true haha

Sunday.  Slept pretty well.  Lego and house stuff.  We're into season 25 of The Simpsons.  Then watched Edward Scissorhands which I hadn't seen since I saw it at the movies.  In 1990.

Monday.  Slept well enough.  Did a Green Shed run (dropped a bunch of stuff off and "only" left with six jigsaws) and a bottle drop off (finally took the Christmas party leftovers), and brunch at Teddy Picker's.

Eggs benedict at Teddy Picker's

The wall of cheese at Ainslie IGA

Lego and photo stuff in the afternoon.  Chicken kiev from Chris's for dinner.

No idea for the evening.  Probably depressed about how short long weekends are :)

Sunday.  15th.  Realised I didn't actually set foot out of the house all day.  Dinner was roast chicken and veggies.

Monday.  Woke up at like 1:40ish for like three hours.  Sigh.  Ok morning, but a crazy intense afternoon trying to do all the things and fix all the problems and answer all the questions.  Still going at 17:40 and Stu cooked dinner of Asian greens and rice.  Did some photo culling, then back online to do more work, including fighting firewalls doing strange things.

Also, wtf, I was actually actively using my computer in the evening and it suddenly rebooted for patching.  So much for "active hours".  Microsoft is crap.

Tuesday.  No notes for the day.  Cooked mushroom pesto pasta for dinner.

Wednesday.  No notes again.  Whoops.  

Thursday.  After drinks and after dinner at Turquoise Turkish (some quite nice shish kebabs) we went to see Jess in the Australian Wind Symphony.  It was pretty fun even though I didn't know any of the music.  Turns out a few drinks helps with that, who knew.

Friday.  Slept like crap.  Had lunch with the Chrises at Herbert's which was nice.  

Yummy kiev balls

After work we went over the hills for a lovely chicken dinner and still managed an early night.

Saturday.  Slept a lot better.  House stuff, Lego stuff, scanning.  In the afternoon went and got our democracy sausage.  Then some music.  Dinner was pulled pork from a slow cooker recipe book I picked up at the Green Shed a while back.  Stu really liked it, although I found it a little watery.  Then watched the election coverage.

Sunday.  Slept okish but not great.  Went out in the morning to see some autumn leaves and it turned into a trip up Mount Ainslie, brunch at Edgar's, and a wander around the lake, and didn't get home til lunch time.  Ooops.  So then I just pretty much collapsed.  Sigh.  Didn't get any weeding or green bin filling or music done, although I did do more negative scanning (the ones from after the USA holiday don't seem to have the same magenta-shift so that's good) and some fish stuff.  Roasted a heap of veggies to have with leftover chicken from last weekend.  Downloaded photos but no energy for blogging.

Sunday.  8th.  Cooked a lovely basa bake, and a gorgonzola bake which I'll post separately (one day!)

Then watched more of The Crown.

Monday.  Kept waking up with numb hands, and even legs!!  Mostly my arm median nerve but even radial and ulnar nerves.  So frustrating!!  At least it's just numbness not pain.  Fighting with all the stoopid during the day, mostly microsoft crap.  Also had some of the cheesecake I made Sunday (wherein I forgot the gelatine, but it still set well enough because of the cheese).

 It was definitely a wine and candle kind of an evening after all the nonsense at work.  Had pesto pasta for dinner.  Did some photo culling and watched Lego Masters.

Tuesday.  Slept somewhat better.  Fighting with certificates on one of our devices, but all the fighting was because of our assumptions that another team had done work that in fact hadn't been done.  But we did learn some stuff so that was useful.  Ended up finishing late.  So late that I just felt like a tv dinner for dinner.  Lego Masters and photo culling.

Wednesday.  Took an RDO on account of having to work last weekend and this weekend.  OMFG it was amazing.  I had such a productive day.  I made a list of all the crap I really needed to do but just don't feel motivated to do on weekends.  And the proceeded to do it!  There was a whole heap of cleaning and tidying and also photo stuff and weeding and even some Lego part picking.  I setup the scanner on my old computer since Microsoft is a big fat poo and Windoze 11 sux donkey balls and is refusing to allow the scanner to work in windoze 11 (EVEN THOUGH IT USED TO WORK!!!).  Got back into scanning of Mum's negatives.  It was a pretty awesome day.  Cooked creamy mushroom chicken pasta for dinner (with chicken I dug out of the freezer).

Thursday.  Woke up at 3am (from hurty) but then never got back to sleep.  So zombie day. Fairly busy drinks.  Let the sweetie get pizza. 

Dude what? It's autumn and cold! Why are you eating my mail??

Friday.  Woke up at 2:45am (from hurty).  Did get more sleep but it was fairly broken and restless.  Spent the morning planning routing cleanups and writing up change paperwork.  Did some reports for another team on some of our devices.  Then doing All The Rulez for another team.  Chicken Kiev for dinner.  But then we had an epic crisis and couldn't decide what to watch.  We didn't feeling like watching anything the other wanted to.  So I spat the dummy and put on Gladiator.  But it's such a good movie that the sweetie hung around and watched it anyway :)

Saturday.  Slept ok.  Woke up early and went and did a big food shop.  Then mostly Lego part picking.  Logged in to do a prod change.  Change itself worked perfectly (four ping drops) but the preparing and testing took up most of an hour.  Had a play with basebrick (I tried to register the other week but my hosting is dumb and sometimes never delivers mail for reasons unknown, so I signed up with my gmail).  Salmon and cabbage for dinner.  Then Simpsons/Black Books/The Crown.  Then the dead drive in my old computer started squeaking which was super annoying so had to turn it off.  

Sunday.  Slept fairly well.  Turned the old computer on with a vision of disabling the broken drive in bios.  But it started squeaking straight away.  So turned it off again.  Will need to physically disconnect it.  Poop.  Mostly Lego inventorying all day. Then music and All The Cooking.