Monday. 25th. Backdating because last week's blogging time was taken up with blogging the previous week. Sigh. Awake from 2-5 or so. Sigh. Zombie morning. Did some work on getting stuff backing up to a new server.  Did some weeding while Stu cooked dinner - gyozas, yum.  Tired.  So tired.  But then hardcoded my style sheet to https so at least the blog will render ok in either http or https.

It's a bit hard to tell from the angle what this is.. I was taking a plate out of the microwave and it caught on the rim of the microwave plate and took a great big chip out of it :(  Not happy Jan!

Tuesday.  Slept much more betterer.  Fighting with backups all day.  Weeding and cooking after work so no time for music.  Finished blogging Europe food and drinks pages.  Then watched War on Waste 3.2.

This was fresh ravioli.  From Milan.  Which we didn't realise til we opened it up.  Carbon footprint on this a little ridiculous.  This was right before I dumped a tonne of cheese on it :)

Wednesday.  Took ages to get to sleep.  Still woke up early though.  Fighting with stuff on our DR laptop.  Had a 1.5 hour meeting with a vendor in the afternoon which left me completely wasted, but then had to wait another 1.5 hours for the sweetie.  Sigh.  Beer and homemade pizza for dinner.  Mum got a new computer cause her old one died, but they didn't just install everything fresh and copy data across, no they migrated the c: drive as is and massaged into working on the new hardware.  Which is a shame because she could really do with a clean install of windows in case of any lingering malware and nuisanceware on there.  Didn't get anything done in the evening because we got home so late and then I just wanted to collapse into bed.

You know you're around equinox when the sun is due west at sunset..

Thursday.  Stoopidly busy day.  Trying to get everything wrapped up for a long long weekend.  Ok drinks but very quiet.  Watched first episode of Inside Central Station.

We had a mini team lunch to Ramen O which I haven't been to in ages.  I had Yuzu tonkatsu ramen

Friday.  Slept ok although awake before 5.  Productive morning doing fish stuff and house stuff.  Finished the panorama posts for Europe, which means that whole blog is done!  Go check it out! :)  Also finished Starry Night and worked on Europe costs.  Then watched 1.5 of Ahsoka and 6.1 of Death in Paradise.

Frank and Karen gave me the very last can of Tex Mex for my birthday!!

Saturday we went for a drive but I'll post that separately.  Watched Jewel of the Nile in the evening.  

Sunday.  House and hobby stuff all morning.  Spent some time planning out all the things I always need to get done before Christmas and trying to come up with a plan for getting it all done.  Met up with various peeps at Herbert's for Sunday music.  Basa bake for dinner, then The Orville 1.4 and Death in Paradise 6.2.

Sunday.  17th.  Backdating because, life.  I need to retire.  I had a nice day doing house stuff and hobbies, but I need a day like that every day for the rest of my life.  Just to keep up.  Cooked RecipeTin Eats garlic roast potatoes to go with some roast lamb (that was sadly very gristly). 

Chrome is being super annoying.  My blog is http only.  Because when Movable Type was invented noone used https.  And it hardcodes everything with full urls.  But https is enabled on the domain, and because of that, Chrome will try to use the https site EVEN IF THE LINK YOU CLICK ON IS HTTP!!!  The problem with that is the mixed content.  It renders the images ok (clearly browsers have decided it's "safe" to allow mixed content images), but the style sheet is not rendered so the site looks dumb.  It's pissing me off.

Monday.  Slept ok.  I think.  Stoopidly busy day.  Late finish (doing doco! hurray!) then some weeding.  Leftovers for dinner.  Then spent an hour waiting for the support peeps at Vodien to actually pay attention to the call they're on and reset my cpanel password after the great upgrade fiasco of the other week.  What should have taken all of a few minutes took over an hour.  Sigh.  Gave up using the nice long Kogan iphone cable because it kept not working.  Either not even registering at all, or saying it was charging but wasn't.

Tuesday.  New iphone cable also playing up - saying it was charging but then not doing anything.  Replug it in and it'll actually start charging.  #grunt (although as of nearly two weeks later it's been ok).  Busy day.  Did some firewall cleaning.  Weeding after work.  Some frozen stuff from the parties for dinner.  Finished writing up hotel posts for Europe trip.  And finished season 23 of Air Crash Investigations.

Cape weed may be an invasive species but it is quite pretty

So.  Many.  Weeds.

Two kiev balls left, and those carbonara bites are yummy but the box is a rip off, only like half full.

Wednesday.  Missed three calls in quick succession while the phone was in the bedroom while I was having breakfast.  Sigh.  Then a stoopidly busy day. 

Apparently these are called scilla.  I had one plant of them last year.  This year I have like ten.

David came after work to install the new oven element.  Except.

The design is different.  It wasn't going to fit.  #grunt.  We all had a sad.

Watched The Orville 1.3.  

Thursday. 

Returned the element in the morning.  So back to square one.  Slightly more productive day.  Trivia night in the evening.  We came fourth.  Some of the rounds were "normal" and therefore fun.  But some of the rounds were just plain evil.  And badly done too.  Like there'd be five-part questions/answers with text so small you could barely read it.  Like this BS.

How do you even mark that crap??  What if you get one out of order but the rest in order, do you get four out of five or none?  And they did badly acted readings, this time from tv shows, but they didn't learn a damned thing from the previous people that ran it, AND YOU COULDN'T HEAR A DAMNED THING.  Ridiculous.  

Friday.  Hurty in the middle of the night.  Zombie day.  Back to cold weather which was nice. 

I actually had a really nice day because hardly anyone bothered me all day so I could concentrate on some decommission works. 

Did some weeding after work.  Before and after.  

Went over to Ben and Sarah's for dinner which was lovely. 

Saturday.  Productive morning, and did some food shopping.  Did RecipeTin Eat's mac and cheese for dinner, which was yummy but took two hours.  hrmmm.  It was too late and we were too tired to watch a movie so watched some Death in Paradise.

These cherry tree suckers are like a week or two old.  Sigh.

I guess they're pretty .. but still..

This cracked me up - a lineup of Teslas!  Two parked, and a third one just happened to come alone while I was taking a photo of them!

Sunday.  24th.  Somewhat better sleep.  Weeding, Lego inventorying and building, blogging, tax.  Man, financial crap is such a pain in the @$$.  You have to go into battle with every damned website and fight to get the information you need out of it.  I really hate the ones that don't let you right click to save-as (which is like all of them these days).  One site wouldn't let me download *anything* - you'd click on the link and nothing would happen.  Sigh.  Hate hate hate.  Roast pork for dinner which was yummy.

Then watched the last episode of season 5 of The Crown, which was actually the last episode aired so far.

2nd September.

Due to my scratchy throat I did a "rerun" party for club peeps three weeks later but to also celebrate the sweetie's birthday as well.

I didn't need to buy much, as most of it was leftover from the previous party.

I made a lemon cheesecake.  I was going to top it with lemon butter I got from Chris's but it was too thick to spread so it was just plain.  But still very lemony.

I also got to use the lovely lead crystal wine glasses Matt and Michelle gave me.  

Fourteen people came and it was a lovely night!

Monday.  September 11th.  Lest we forget.  Busy day.  Spent over an hour on the phone working out some naming schemes and procedures.  Leftover fricassee for dinner.

Tuesday.  Busy day.  Fixing problems.  Looking at another server migration.  Leftover fricassee for dinner.

Wednesday.  Busy day.  More server migration and naming scheme work.  Leftover fricassee for dinner.  Finished labelling food and hotels from Europe trip.

Thursday.  Dunno.  Stuff.

Friday.  Awake for nearly two hours stressing about All The Things.  Because I was hot.  The world is hot.  We're all going to die.  Probably by starvation.  Because the weather will destroy food crops.  Knocked off work early and did a bunch of tidying and some music.  Picked up the sweetie (an hour late) then pizza for dinner and an early night.

Saturday.  Slept ok.  Had to deal with on call crap twice in te morning and twice in the evening sigh.  Had breakfast with Katie and Andrew at Little Bird.  I had the slow cooked pulled pork benedict which was .. interesting..

Then house stuff, panorama labelling and started Starry Night.  Sausages for dinner then Ahsoka ep 4.  Started watching Elemental but only got half an hour in before on call crap stopped that.  Sigh.

The purple poppies are out weeks earlier than last year too..

Sunday.  More late night alerts after I went to bed sigh.  But managed to sleep ok.  Then another day of all the things.  

It got to like 24 again today.  And it's supposed to be 28 tomorrow and Tuesday.  It's completely mental for September.  And Apple is daft.  I finally got around to figuring out how to authorise this computer to my phone.  That done, it said I was using five out of five.  But the only way to clear out other computers to deauth *all* of them.  Hopeless.  And this week I finally started from the beginning of Jamie and Julia (I'd seen a whole heap at random but decided to go through them methodically).  Did you know you can't watch a YouTube playlist in actual chronological order?  So I keep having to override the video selection if I want to watch from oldest to newest.  Dumb dumb dumb.  

Sunday.  3rd.  There may have been kiev balls.  Futurama/Crown/early night.

Monday.  Slept ok.  Distracting day.  Had to look at something that I knew wouldn't be our problem but had to help anyway.  Had a #grunt in our team meeting because I got talked over the top of WHILE I WAS ACTUALLY TALKING which pissed me off.  Often I get talked over the top of but it's difficult because of the one second or so delay over the VC when two people try to talk at once, and I get frustrated at that too, but this time I was already talking and just got interrupted which *really* pissed me off.  So then they were like "what did you do all week" and I was like "stuff".  Sigh.

But hey.  At least I can look out my front door and see this!

Did a heap of weeding at lunch - got rid of the periwinkle I wanted to... now to keep on top of it.. hrmm..  It was 22C today!!  Craziness!!

After work managed to finish blogging last week, and did a tuna casserole for dinner.  I took out some frozen cauliflower rice out of the freezer which was a bit clumped and gave it a whack on the stove.  But I must have hit the chip that's been there since we moved in and it shattered the entire stovetop from the chip in a few different directions.  Sigh.

And then just for fun the neighbour's dog was barking pretty much the entire fricken evening.  Pretty sure it's the same neighbours that had the staffies a few years back that barked non stop but evenutally killed each other returning the peace.  Sigh.  I even went for a walk to see and could hear it barking and trying to get out of the yard (as staffies do) and pretty sure it's the same house.

Tuesday.  Took ages to get to sleep.  On edge because of the dog. Then restless and awake every five minutes with numb hands.  Although apparently a storm came through that I slept through.  The other day I noticed the password to my main hosting account wasn't working (Eudora said password was failing).  So tried to figure out what was going on.  There's no way to reset a cpanel password from the interface so contacted Vodien support.  They reset the password which was great but no idea why it stopped working in the first place.  Ok day.  Lots of distractions though.  

Sour dough with leftover cheeses from various parties and some pepperoni

Housework and music after work and brisket for dinner.  Then I finished getting my Europe photos online!!  Well the main day indexes anyway, still have food/hotels/panoramas to go.  At 21:16 the dog started barking and didn't stop til I went to bed.

Wednesday.  Took ages to sleep.  On edge because of the dog, and restless legs.  And literally a day after the first issue, my cpanel account password stopped working again.  Talked to the same dude online who said they were doing CentOS migrations, and things would take "a few days" to sync and that they would email everyone when done.  Ok fine, at least it wasn't some sort of hacking attempt.  So will leave it a few days before contacting again.  And they NEVER email people about upgrades. And they still haven't.  Drinks with Dennis after work and dinner at Betty's Burgers.

Clocked it!

Chips aren't good for magpies

Thursday.  Fairly decent sleep.  Too much BS at work.  Too many dumb people.  Nice drinks.  Even sat outside for a bit until it started raining.  Pizza/Futurama/Ahsoka 3.

Friday.  Ok day.  I think.  David came in the evening.  We had kiev balls for dinner and watch Futurama and Death in Paradise 5.7.

Saturday.  Bacon, sausage and eggs for breakfast!! (our staple meal in America in 1983 at Denny's).  I was going to scramble the eggs but they all broke whole so decided to fry them.

As it turned out, they were the very last thing I cooked on the old stovetop.

After that David pulled out the oven to see what's been causing the power trips.  

Turns out someone let the smoke out.

But because Canberra, there's no way to get a new element same day.  So when we were out we found a place that could get one in next week.  Then we went and bought a new stove.  

I seriously have the most amazingest brother in history.  And so nice to have a qualified electrician in the family :)

So I took him out for lunch.  All you can eat at the Star Buffet.

Afterwards we "dropped in" to Ikea.  And proceeded to walk around for like two or three hours.  Bought a few things.  But most usefully we walked off lunch somewhat which was nice.

I got a shelf to use for a bin solution.  Not exactly what we wanted and it's not as nice looking as the wooden shelf we wanted (which was discontinued) but it'll do.  The sweetie ordered pizza for dinner but I only had once piece.  Then watched some Futurama and the first two episides of The Orville which was better than I expected.

Sunday.  Had pancakes for breakfast - first thing cooked on the new stovetop.  Then David went home.  Did some cleaning in the morning.  After lunch did some food shopping. 

Then it was nearly 15:00 and time for my afternoon routine.  Dinner was chicken fricassee which I've never cooked before.  Fairly nice but a bit watery.  Then Futurama/Crown.

Monday.  28th.  Slept fairly well.  Bit of BS.  Planned some new work but that got stalled (and too many interruptions anyway).  Phone is being a poo.  It was on the charger all night but it was only at 50% when I woke up, which dropped after I got up.  Rebooted and plugged it in on the computer but it took *ages* to fully charge.  But then it stayed at 100% forever and was at 99% at bed time.  Got it down to 95% by playing on it for a bit.

Apparently these are erlicheers .. early cheers!  They smell amazing!

Tuesday.  Phone was at 87%.  Rebooted.  85%.  Played on it for a bit while plugged in.  No change.  Rebooted.  80%.  wtf??  Left it plugged in and it came good in an hour.  Sigh.  Tried to look at some firewall cleaning.  Didn't get to do much because of all the interruptions and BS.  Roasted a haep of veggies for dinner and cooked a very nice steak that we shared.  Then I finished labelling my photos for the Europe blog!!!  Well, for the day entries, I still have the food/hotels/panoramas to do.

Wednesday.  Dunno.  Had duck at Symposium for dinner then went and saw Oppenheimer.  Which was very .. lonnnngggggggg....

On the way home we drove past this building that was all lit up which looked really strange.. 

Thursday.  Dunno.  Mulled wine (glühwein) at drinks, pizza and second episode of Ahsoka.

Friday.  Dunno.  Bit of house cleaning after work.  Leftover meatballs for dinner.  Futurama/Death in Paradise 5.6.

Saturday.  Breakfast at U&Co (eggs benny again, same as last time), then saw the Big Things in Store.

Made a cheesecake and ran the dishwasher and had a short break before more party prep.  Still felt rushed even though I had a lot more time and a lot less things to do.  Sigh.

Sunday.  Woke up at 6am cause that's what I do.  Cleaned up in the morning then worked on retouching/cropping all the photos for the blog, and even got some online.

Sunday.  20th.  Backdating.  Because dinner on the 27th took all afternoon. TV dinners for dinner (it was that kind of day after getting back from Sydney) on the 20th, then Futurama/Crown and an early night.

Monday.  Woke up at 3am for an hour and a half.. sigh.  The BS started pretty early.  Only got to decommission stuff late in the afternoon.  Cauliflower bake and veggies for dinner and photo labelling in the evening.

Tuesday.  Dunno.  Nice sunrise thought.  And there were flowers.  And slow cooker brisket for dinner.

Wednesday.  All the stoopid.  All the BS.  Beer and wraps for dinner.  But did get some labelling done.  

Moist...

Thursday.  Global warming is real y'all.  Our cherry tree doesn't normally flower til well into September.  But here it is starting a full week before the end of August.

Actually had a great day at work for a change.  Had a lovely day of deleting crap, and hardly any interruptions or BS.  Had some frozen stuff from the freezer for dinner - needed to clear some space for the sweetie to get some ice cream :)  Futurama then Death in Paradise 5.5.

I thought this shadow was cool

Hardly Normal opening here soon..

Friday.  Awake from two til four or so.  Sigh.  Zombie morning.  I finished a few glasses of Diet Coke leftover from the party to help keep me awake.  Another nice day of deleting stuff and not too much BS.  Made wraps again for lunch and leftover brisket for dinner.  Then watched the first episode of Ahsoka.

Saturday.  Slept a bit better but not super great.  Slept til 6:37 which pushed my whole routine back.  Did lots of Europe photos labelling and a bit of house stuff, some fish stuff, weeding and music.  Basically my ideal day.  I'd be happy with days like that for the rest of my life.  Got onto Ikea's chat to ask them about the shelves we want to get and when they're likely to be in stock.  Had to get past the braindead bot to get to a human who said, oh, it's discontinued.  Fricken sigh.  Now don't know if I should keep all the bins I bought or take them all back.  Stu cooked sausages for dinner and we had a romatic night in watching Romancing the Stone (after two weekends of chaos previously and another one next weekend we *needed* a quiet night).  

Sunday.  Slept fairly well.  Mostly photo labelling, bit of house stuff, food shopping, listented to Jurassic Park on Screensounds.  Then spent half the afternoon cooking meat balls from my new recipe book, but more on that in another post.  One day.  It was very nice but it was two and a half hours in the kitchen which is Too Long.  Then Futurama/Crown.

One of the champagne flutes I got for my birthday from M&M

Friday.  11th.  The plan was to have everything done on the Friday, and it would just be a last minute tidy up and food prep on the Saturday.  Yeah that didn't happen.  I worked most of Friday not even knowing if the party would go ahead.  Took a RAT.  Negative.  Decided to do the food shopping.

This isn't even everything.  I delegated a bag of frozen stuff as there was no way it was all going to fit in our freezer.

Saturday.  12th.  So most of Saturday was cleaning.  Sigh.  But.  I had a saviour.  Tony came up a little early and did all the food prep while I finished up.  (Took a RAT at lunch time - still negative).

From 4pm peeps started arriving - it felt like all at once!!  It made my brain explode heh.

We did cake at 6pm, which Tab made, because she's awesome.

And there was the funniest rendition of Happy Birthday I've ever heard in my life - everyone sung in different keys and at different speeds.  Think the Hogwart's school song from the first book.  It was just like that.

Duncan pointed out that I'd be competing with the soccer, so I warned the sweetie that we'd likely need to put it on.  And sure enough we did!  It was a pretty epic finish with a penalty shootout.

Tony also brought a massive glowstick he'd had since Jess was little.  We had no idea if it would even work - but it did!

And I put candles in the bathroom because don't candles in bathrooms look awesome!?

In the end thirty people came.  I had heaps of fun, and I think I managed to talk to everyone, even if only briefly for some of them.  But a massive shoutout to Tony, who'd had a bit of a big night the night before and so felt up to just helping out.  He managed all the hot food in the oven the entire night which was a *massive* relief for me, as I could just enjoy the party instead of being distracted dealing with the food (which is what happened last time).  Thanks Tony!!!!!!!

Sunday.  13th.  Woke up at 6:30am.  After getting to bed at 2am.  Because that's what I do.  Kit left fairly early to go have breakfast with her brother and SIL.  Then I cleaned up.  Did a couple of loads of washing up of glasses and dishes, and sorted the rubbish and recycling.

Other than that not much else.  My cough decided to go from just being a slight gentle cough to moving to my chest and being quite chesty.  Hurray.

Monday.  14th.  Slept from around 9pm til after 6am yayyy!!  But it was kind of a boring day really.  Took another RAT late morning.  Still negative.  Went into the office before lunch because Maddie had made me a cake (she didn't get the memo I WFH Mondays :) ).  It was really nice!

Then went to the chemist, and picked up takeaway KFC on the way home for lunch.  We had Chong Co delivered for dinner (didn't go out because the sweetie had to leave for Adelaide in the morning and it would have been all too hard).  They haven't had the "crying duck" style salad in ages, but turns out the wagyu salad is basically identical!  Also got satay chicken and crispy pork with chili jam.

Then I watched Dragonheart while the sweetie packed and got ready.

Saturday.  19th.  Syd-ah-nee bound.  I drove the first half.  We listened to a couple of episodes of The Lazarus Heist, about the alleged hacking of Sony by North Korea.  Swapped driving half way.  The GPS took us a bit of an odd way into Sydney - round the back of the airport and up through Alexandria (but not even the way the Murray's coaches do it).  Sydney keeps changing.  Like a lot.  New roads (the M8, never even heard of it!), new tunnels, new bridges.  Craziness.  Got to the hotel around 1pm, parked ($45, but still works out cheaper for the two of us than coach/bus/train/plane), and checked in.

Then headed off to the pub. 

I'd settled on the Keg&Brew in Surry Hills.  Simply because it looked like it had enough space to go to without a booking, had a rooftop bar, and it was right next to the station. 

We ended up on a decent sized table and nine people came, as well as us. It was funny though because there were *five* different streams - Mum's family, Dad's family, the Clan, CIA, and Uni, and not many people knew each other (but enough did so that noone had noone else to talk to).

The sweetie got a couple of pizzas (two for one FTW!)

And I had a lovely afternoon :)

We booked a table downstairs for dinner and the sweetie and Mum and Uncle Graham and I went down for dinner when the soccer started (it was a little bit noisy heh).  Mum and I split crispy pork belly and cripy potatoes which was very nice.

Then we went back to the hotel and crashed. 

After seeing the end of the soccer (4th place!!  Still pretty epic!!)

Sunday.  20th.  Was awake for many hours in the middle of the night.  Too hot.  The aircon wouldn't go down below 21C which was way too hot, and didn't notice the ceiling fan til the morning (the sweetie did but I wasn't paying attention when he suggested turning it on).  #grunt.  So slept like crap.  But then we got up and headed home.  

Got to go through the M8 tunnel this time.

There were people falling out of the sky at Picton.  Had some brunch at Sutton Forest.  Listened to some more of the Lazarus Heist.

And Lake George is still very full.

Sunday.  6th.  Finished the leftover pork from the club for dinner with a bit of char siu sauce which made it very nice.  Early night.

Monday.  Slept ok.  Stu was still feeling uneasy in his bowels.  Had a not so insane morning which let me catch up on some tickets.  Spent an hour after work doing house cleaning.  Leftovers for dinner.  Did some culling but still didn't finish Verona/Venice.  Watched War on Waste 2.2 (saw third episode another night this week, don't remember which night though).  

Tuesday.  Took til like 1am to get to sleep - itchy and restless legs.  Still woke up before 6 though.  First thing in the morning they came by to dig holes for the new trees, then a little while later they came by to plant the trees.  Which look decidedly like bottlebrushes not English hawthorns.  Not that I'm complaining, just different to what they said.  Another day of non stop interruptions and all the stoopid.  Chicken kiev for dinner.  Because I didn't feel like leftovers.

Wednesday.  Got to sleep ok but then woke up at like 4 for like an hour an a half.  Stressing about All The Things.  Stu was somewhat back to normal with his bowels.  Very unpleasant week for him.  They came by to mulch in the trees.  Lots of being hassled again.  Made some pasta with some mince I dug out of the freezer.  Then I finished culling down the Italy trip!!!  And culled down the food and hotel photos as well.  1303 photos in the main section and a couple of hundred each extra for food and hotels.  Wondering if I had a scratchy throat...

Thursday.  Definitely feeling like I had a scratchy throat.  hmmm.  Decided to work from home.  Craziness in the afternoon.  Sigh.  Still not actually feeling sick, just a slight scratchy throat and an infrequent cough.  Took a RAT at some point today, I think.  Negative.  Pizza for dinner, Futurama, Death in Paradise 5.3.

Friday.  Throat still a bit scratchy.  The plan was to take an RDO and clean the house.  But at this point I didn't even know if I'd be going ahead with the party.  So I worked in the morning.  Did another RAT.  Still negative.  Finished up around 2 then did a quick bit of house cleaning, then went and did the food shopping for the party.  Tv dinners for dinner.  Just because.  5.4 of Death in Paradise.

Saturday.  Went to be early but then woke up at midnight for over three hours.  Stressing about All The Things.  Sigh. 

Spent all day cleaning.  All of this should have been done yesterday and Saturday was meant to be completely chilled with just the food prep to do.  Sigh.  Just before Kit left the coast I did a third RAT.  Still negative.  But messaged everyone anyway to let them know the situation and they didn't have to come if they didn't want to risk getting sick.  A few people did pull out and I don't blame them.

I'll save the party for another post.

Sunday.  Woke up at 6:30.  Because that's what I do.  No matter how late I go to bed.  Saw Kit off at 8.  Tried to get more sleep but failed.  Slow day just doing a big cleanup - two loads of washing up, sorting the rubbish and recycling and vacuuming the lounge room.  Not much else.  Did start a jigsaw in the afternoon because didn't feel like doing anything else.  Cooked up some of the leftover party food for dinner with some brussells sprouts.  

Saw a cool video on sesquizygotic twins this week, in which twins share all of their maternal DNA, but only about half their paternal DNA.  They're stoopidly rare and they're not quite sure how it happens.  One theory is that an egg gets two sperm, and somehow they still manage to divide up the chromosomes successfully so as to not get duplicates.  Cool stuff!

Sunday.  16th.  Lamb roast for dinner.  Into season 5 of The Crown.  Then finished season 3 of The Amazing Race Australia.  I was really glad that (spoiler alert!!) Heath and Toni won.  

Monday.  Took ages to get to sleep.  Then kept waking up early thinking it was time to wake up.  Then people hassled me the entire fricken day and It. Did. Not. Stop. All. Day.  I hung my washing outside in the morning because it was supposed to be 16 and breezy.  Pfft, never dried.  Saw three of my birds at lunch and did some weeding.  Sausages for dinner.  Still behind on culling.

Tuesday.  Slept ok.  Could have had more sleep though.  Got some culling down in the morning.  Work wasn't *as* crazy as yesterday.  Pea and ham soup for dinner (took literally two minutes to make - ham hock, packet of yellow split peas, bay leaves, onions (that I cooked last night), pepper and water).  Weeding at lunch.  Got up to date with culling.  Windows 11 is so bad.  I have notepad pinned to the task bar.  And normally when it's open it's in the place I have it set.  But every so often windoze just moves notepad all the way over to the right of all my icons, and not where I'd originally pinned it.  So I have to move it back.  So damned retarded.  And don't even get me started on cmd, which is pinned right next to notepad, but when you actually start it, it leaves the pinned icon there, but opens the actual command prompt in another icon all the way to the right.  So you go looking for your open cmd window on the left but can't find it, because it's all the way over to the right.  

Wednesday.  Spent all morning on one ticket trying to figure out how we do our cloud crap.  Another crazy day.  Gave blood for the first time in about thirty two years.  The first time I gave blood I felt really quite unwell after (I felt really off in my 4 unit maths class, and Sarah F gave me a lift home).  And the second time at the Red Cross centre in Wynyard I threw up.  So I never did it again.  But I'm about a hundred kilos heavier now so thought I'd give it a go.  And I wasn't sick.  Hurray.  Met up with Dennis and the sweetie for a drink after work.  Well they had a drink.  I thought a drink might be a bit unwise with reduced blood volume.  Then we had Kinn Thai for dinner.  I had grilled beef.  Because iron.

Thursday.  Crazy busy day AGAIN.  Another morning trying to figure out cloud crap all for one ticket.  Trivia night in the evening.  We came 5th out of 10.  And I'm pissed at myself for getting one wrong that I should have known better.  If we'd gotten that one and just one more we would have come second, it was that close.  

Friday.  Crazy busy day AGAIN.  Sigh.  At one point in the morning I was so overwhelmed I had a full on meltdown.  Sigh.  Totally worn out by this week.  But did manage to knock off early so we could go shopping and go out to the club. Laid out all the food and prizes before holing up in the van with the fire going.  It took us both several drinks to start to feel relaxed after such an insane week.

Saturday.  Slept ok(ish) (kept waking up with numb hands).  Our feather/down doona sure is lovely.  I stoked the fire maybe a little too much in the morning, but did have a leisurely morning.  I even made a candle (which I'll put in another post).  Went and chatted to Chris and Geoff for a bit (saved them from a phone call to Chris's sister), then went up to start the dinner proceedings.  

I was pottering away almost all afternoon.   I did allow for some help making the "Christmas Skewers", and John very nicely carved the meat and I had several amazing servers as well.

Other than that, did all the prep/cooking myself. 

Eight kilos of pork (the crackling didn't turn out as well this year, probably needed to have it higher longer, but it did mean the meat was fall-off-the-bone tender)

Four kilos of turkey

Two epic potato bakes (annoyingly the baking dishes I normally use have disappeared so had to use smaller ones)

And winter salad (sweet potato, rocket, goats cheese, toasted pumpkin seeds, honey and olive oil) which I remembered to take a photo of this year (there were two of these)

Tab made some lovely Biscoff muffins and some puddings.

It seemed to go well and I think everyone enjoyed dinner.  There was just the tiniest amount of leftovers, which meant catering was perfect - anyone that wanted seconds got them and there wasn't a huge pile of leftover food.  Just enough for a meal or two for us.  And not too late a night.  

I'm always amazed at the STARS out at the club.  Being away from Canberra's light pollution is pretty cool.  On the way back to the van I could see the Milky Way and wondered if my phone could capture it.  It could!!  How amazing is this.. hand held, on a PHONE!!

Sunday.  Slept okish.  Did I mention how good feather/down doonas are?  Got up relatively early and went up and spent an hour or so tidying up the shed. 

Then we came home.  And I realised I'd left a bunch of food in the fridge in the van.  Pissed about that.  As per usual on Sundays after club nights I felt pretty flat all day.  All I managed to achieve all day was finishing the Titanic.  But hey, I guess that's a pretty cool achievement.  Because I mean look at this thing!  So cool!

Something I learnt this week: Weenus!  I'd never heard of it, but apparently it's a slang word for the flap of skin you get over your elbow (technically referred to as olecranal skin).  There you go!