Kazza the Blank One - Search Results

Thirty Years in the Making?

Thirty years ago this month our family took a five week holiday to the USA. It was the first of four "flying" holidays that the were the most memorable and exciting of my childhood.

So I created a blog for it :)

I took a combination of my parents' photos and added some of my own memories.

It took me ages to scan all mum's photos at 600 dpi. But I've decided my scanner is retarded. Mum's photos are a bit age-coloured, but not as bad as the scans make it out. I think its colour balance is way off, scanning way too much yellow :(

Dad's slides were scanned thirteen years ago by Dad on a flat bed scanner that wasn't really designed for slide scanning - the pictures are very pixelated. But when you resize them to a max 500 pixels you'd never notice and generally the colour is a lot better in those. Unfortunately with Dad's photos, he put everything in theme and "show" order, which meant things weren't in chronological order, which made it super annoying to try and fit into the nice chronological order that my brain likes! Spent ages and ages trying to figure out where to put his photos so they were in the right order!

And I might have spent entirely too long trying to find the *exact* locations of some of the photos. I may as well have geotagged the whole lot and be done with it! heh

Also, Movable Type is completely retarded, and it won't save the blog to a nice chronological order of entries. So you'll just have to start at the beginning and click your way through. If you even care. I'm suspecting that noone apart from my brother and mother will. The rest will end up as Google Image Search fodder. (Not to mention the blog using the butt ugly "Rainier" theme which came with Movable Type 5.2. I really hate it but don't have the energy to fuss with it).

If anyone cares, here it is:

http://kazza.id.au/usa_1983/1983/04/day-1---sydney-to-los-angeles.html

..Oh, and the guys and work didn't believe it was me in all the pictures - they couldn't believe I could have been so skinny as a kid!

Nana and Anzac Day

This morning I was all set to head up to Sydney to visit the parents, but mum rang me just before I was due to leave to tell me the news that Nana had died overnight. The staff at the nursing home found her first thing in the morning, so it sounds like she went peacefully in her sleep. She'd been wasting away for years, and the last few years the dementia really took over and she barely recognised her own children.

So I didn't go to Sydney. I'll go up next week for the funeral instead.

Instead I ended up in a very strange mood. I guess family members dying will do that to you.

Growing up we didn't see my grandparents all that often, maybe every few months. When we were kids sometimes we would stay there for a few days at a time during the school holidays.

Grandpa died many years ago. He fought in the war in the middle east and PNG. He would never buy a Japanese made car because of that. My mum was born just after the war, but her real mother died of asthma when mum was just three years old. My grandpa remarried (my nana) and that was the only mother my mum ever knew.

Grandpa used to march in the Anzac Day march every year (when I was a kid I thought the march should be in March, not April heh) and we always used to look out for him and a man from our church who happened to be in the same battalian (and he's still alive!!).

So this afternoon (after being inspired by Lisa) I decided to bake some Anzac biscuits. And I used some bicarb soda that used to belong to Nana - even the tupperware container is labelled with her writing.

Rest in peace.

Ten Years

So this little blog turned ten years old today!

Happy blogiversary to me! heh

Ten years, or a quarter of my life in writing and online. Ten pretty big years with a lot of ups and downs, four big overseas holidays, a wedding, a new house, a new job. And mostly all chronicled here, to varying levels of detail.

I had no idea when I started this blog how dependent on it I would become. Simply as an easy place to find when I did things or find a photo to show someone. A place to put photos online for friends/family/strangers. My only regret with the blog is not starting it earlier (even though there really wasn't such a thing much before 2003).

I had wanted to update the style/design of the blog, but ran out of time, on account of being away the entire Christmas holiday, and having last weekend taken up by simply FTPing files up and down. So I may get something new online in the next little while. Maybe. The best I could do was update a few things like the footer, my blogroll and the site description, add navigation links to each entry, and republish the whole site (took twenty seven minutes this time).

Thanks to everyone that's come along for the ride, it's been great!

Home

So we're home after nearly a week away.

And after having spent just about every Christmas since I left Sydney either in Sydney, or in Queensland, or had family etc staying (except 2009 I think), I had a dummy spit the other day. I want the week off next year. I don't want to go anywhere or do anything. I just want a week at home. Is that too much to ask? After sixteen years I still miss my uni three month long summer holidays. And yet for the past five years I don't think I've had more than four or five days in a block at home since I moved here. So yeah. Next year will be going on strike!

Think people are here for our new years eve celebrations!

Five million

Shoes are wonderful things. Let me explain.

On Friday I clocked over five million steps on "10000 steps". That's over a couple of years and two overseas holidays. The majority of that (let's call it four million) was done in one pair of shoes - my black walking shoes. That's two million steps per shoe. That's two million flexes back and forth. And they're still going. I just think it's pretty amazing that *any* material would survive two million flexes and not break. Cool stuff!

It's like this you see..

I'm getting old.

My idea of a perfect weekend is to not leave the house at all.

I've been feeling pretty anxious/depressed the past couple of days because I have to go back to work. And not because I hate work. Actually work is pretty good, except for when there's so much to do that I can't keep up which is a lot of the time but moving on ...

No it's because when I have to go to work I can't be at home. I'd be perfectly happy spending all day every day at home. Like during my uni holidays. It's been, what, sixteen? seventeen? years since I had a three month holiday and I STILL MISS THEM!!! Oh they were bliss. To get up every morning for months on end and be able to do whatever you liked every day! It was magic!

Sadly, if I want money to be able to travel I have to go to work. But that doesn't make it any easier.

I'd still rather be at home.

Just sayin'.

Felt like I didn't do much today (because I didn't tick much off the todo list) but I suppose I did a reasonable amount. And the sweetie cooked dinner and we spent some time together which was nice so we're thinking maybe that should be more of a regular Sunday night thing heh.

Dropping the ball

Four days into the new year and I've already missed a day blogging. Mainly because even though I've been on holidays, I've been doing jigsaws and cleaning desks and going camping and sightseeing and shopping and watching movies.. so sitting on my computer in the heat hasn't been all that appealing (especially with a few thousand photos to sort through!)

More posts to come soon ... hopefully ;)

2011 Year in Review

So the year began with a small pool party at our house, with beer, pizza, games and good friends.

We didn't travel much this year. Well, we did a bit, but no big international holidays. We did a long weekend trip to Queensland in July to visit Chay and David which is always nice. The only other flying I did was for some training for work in Melbourne. We went to Dave's coast house in February, April, June and November. Again, always great weekends away.

Did several trips to Sydney throughout the year:

In August for my birthday to see a John Williams concert and visit friends and family
In September to play tour guide to Dave2 and be a tourist in my home town
In December to repeat the tourist trip with Kore

And a few smaller trips - to Yarrangobilly Caves, Parkes for The Dish 50th Anniversary open day, and Jindabyne to see the dam spilling.

At work I actually had a good beginning of the year. We got some new staff and for a few months I had time to step back from project work and get some operational stuff done. But then Phil went away for three months and it got super busy again - doh! Had a bowling night in June where I *didn't* come last! Team Blank went to three trivia nights: we came third in April, second in August and first in November! Of course that means we need to plan the next one! Planning to have that in March next year. Had a Hollywood-themed ball in October that I was sick for and was pretty miserable the whole night.

Speaking of sickness, it was one of the worst years I've ever had. Had a cold in February, with an ear infection and conjunctivitis as well. Got pretty severe gastro from Violet in March. Another cold in May and another in August. And then two months of various colds/flus/ear/eye infections from September to November. Finally healthy at the moment, but it hasn't been a great year :(

Didn't see as much of Nat and Andrew this year. The default activity for Saturday nights was watching Buffy and Angel with DaveC, so it took energy to do anything different, hence it didn't happen very often. We did have a couple of Singstar/video/games nights though.

Not a lot has changed on the fish front. We (I) made a rule some time back that we wouldn't buy any new fish until after Stu's Japan trip next year. So numbers have been slowly dwindling there. We had another heat wave that required regular dumpings of ice to keep tank temperatures down.

Although we had a couple of record lows in winter, the days were generally warmer, and the pool only froze over a couple of times.

The only new Lego this year was a few Harry Potter sets. Just trying to remember if the Toy Story 3 Lego came out this year or last year. It certainly didn't all get put away until just the other week! We went to the Lego Brick Expo in Woden which was pretty awesome. Also saw Nathan Sawaya's "Art of the Brick" exhibition in Sydney this week. And an unexpected bonus of lots of Lego displays at the Aquarium yesterday.

Only real toys this year were a new random camera, and a little Eee PC for use when travelling (and in fact I'm using it now!). I had a play with a macro lens and an L series lens. Still using my original lens though. On my phone I played with HDR and Instagram apps, as well as doing my first time lapse videos of Lego building, jigsaw building and clouds.

I had a lot of fun with origami this year - making several "phizz" balls of various sizes. Also some smaller geometric shapes (technically not origami).

I did some big jigsaws this year (and a stack of little ones). I did my 3000-piece one that I've had for years but never made. And then the first quarter of an amazing 24000 piece jigsaw! Hoping to do the next quarter early in the new year.

After the big La NiÃ±a of last summer, got to see Bendora Dam overflowing in January, as well as the aftermath of the floods at Coppins Crossing. Watched the progress of Cotter Dam and went to an open day in April (didn't go to another open day in November because it looked like they weren't preselling time slots and that didn't work very well at the first open day I went to).

In culinary adventures this year, I tried my hand at quite a few new recipes (and a few old ones). These were mostly desserts - Anzac Biscuits, Violet Crumble cheesecake slice, Apple pie, Caramel slice, Melting moments, Chocolate dipped fruit, Christmas cookies, Gingerbread. That was a lot of fun and will continue next year. Also did quite a few slow-cooked dishes, and rediscovered the simplicity of roast vegetables. Another new favourite of ours this year was okonomiyaki, thanks to Lisa. I also tried crocodile for the first time (it was a bit tough) and had my first McFeast (pretty good). Our favourite restaurants are still Black Pepper, the Dumpling Inn and Bella Vista. Tried a few new places as well including Courgette for our anniversary, Rice, Alice's and Kingsley's.

Shows seen this year:

Weird Al Yankovic
Folk Festival
Much Ado About Nothing
Jesus Christ Superstar
John Williams at the Opera House
Za Kabuki
Floriade Nightfest

Movies seen this year (at the movies):

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Part 2)

Books read this year:

Hook by Geary Gravel (and got a comment by the author!)
Lord of the Rings trilogy
Mallorean series by David Eddings
National Velvet by Enid Bagnold

Other Stuff:

Got lots of my photos onto the RiotACT
Saddened by the Queensland floods
Lots of scanning of old photos
Got a GPS and had some fun
The little brother came to stay a few times with various people in tow (or by himself)
Balloon fiesta including going up in one!
Skyfire
Walk around Government House
Saw Peter Russell-Clarke at the mall
Enjoyed the third season of Masterchef but decided not to watch the second kids series
Walked up Black Mountain again in May and went up the tower this time
Watched Amazing Race Australia
Did the Mount Majura to Mount Ainslie walk
Missed two lunar eclipses (4am the first time, clouds the second time)
Met Fiona again (x2), and Lisa and Chris
Radio silence in July when our internet went out for two weeks
Skiing in July
Trivia night for Stu's work
Geotagged UK photos, but didn't get them all online
Walked up Mount Taylor
Stu's sister bought a new house in Canberra which makes visiting somewhat easier
Hanami party in September, would have been better a week later
Two games nights at Mishi's (only played games on one of the nights)
Blog got screwed over (again) by my hosting company
Saw the Queen
Saw Air Force One come to land at Canberra
Got some cool photos of lightning

As usual I don't really make new years resolutions. I think if anything I'd still like to try and spend less time on the computer - eg two hour chunks in the evenings.

We're having a quiet party in our hotel room tonight. Just a little champagne and nibblies in our room. The thought is to watch the 9pm fireworks from the hotel pool, and maybe go out at 11pm to see the main fireworks from Lavender Bay....

Happy New Year!!

Sydney Day 5

Beer Line Walk

So after pondering over beer bottles and brewing equipment in Haymarket and the pink dots, I went online and found out the little pink dots all over Sydney were part of a street art project called "Beer Line - from Barley to the Bottle". It started in Haymarket with some real barley planted in planter boxes. Unfortunately the barley had been harvested when we were there and it was just grass left. This morning I went to the start of the line and found some more information. It was partly in memory of the Castlemaine Brewery, and went in two directions - right towards Redfern, and left towards Circular Quay. I had intentions of walking the entire line, however I only managed to get as far as Wynyard before I had to get back for Art of the Brick, and then the rest of the week was too busy to finish it.

Beer bottles

Barley planter boxes (harvested, just grass now)

Start of the Beer Line

Space invaders in Haymarket

Footsteps on George Street

Hopscotch outside the QVB

Near Wynyard there was a branch off to the left with basketball lines

Here's some of the other stuff I stopped to take photos of along the walk

The hear/see/speak no evil monkeys had santa hats on

Queen Victoria statue outside the QVB

Dog sculpture outside the QVB

Art of the Brick

This was all kinds of awesome, but I'll put that in a separate entry

Bondi Beach

It seems Sydney Buses forgot that hundreds of people want to go to the beach during the school holidays, and were running a regular weekday timetable (actually there was probably a few extra buses that day otherwise we *never* would have gotten there). So we queued for like half an hour, then had to squeeze onto a bus and stand the whole way. I didn't have my swimmers since I'd been at Art of the Brick and was expecting Stu and Kore to have gone a lot earlier. So I sat under a tree. And got very grumpy at someone who was completely unsympathetic to my not being able to take photos at Harry Potter. So sat there feeling pretty miserable. Blah. Had a snack later with Stu and Kore before heading back to the hotel to recover.

Queue for buses at Bondi Junction

Squeezed onto a bus

Super crowded Bondi Beach

Sydney Aquarium

Too many annoying people, but there was a whole collection of nautical-themed Lego setup which made it pretty awesome. Apparently the company that owns that Aquarium also owns Legoland, so they were doing a promotion. Worked for me :):)

Triton in Lego

Freshwater crayfish

Some sort of dragon

Either a Murray or a Trout Cod

Eastern Water Dragon

Minifig with penguin

Red Indianfish

Cowfish

Little Penguin

Common Sydney Octopus

Jellyfish

Mermaid in Lego

Dory the blue tang

Fish in the dugong tank

Dugong

Stingray

Cuttlefish

Shark

Turtle

Nautical-themed cupcakes

Shark in the final tank

Sawfish

Fish in the final tank

Kore in the final tank

Kore about to be stabbed by a sawfish

Kore found Nemo (well Marlin actually)

Clownfish

Super awesome Lego display at the end - the white whale made out of Duplo and the biggest Lego mosaic I've ever seen in the background. The baseboards had been spraypainted with the colour to be used, and plates attached on top. But the plates weren't glued down, so there were patches around the edges (and even in the middle) where people had pulled off the plates and stolen them :(

Dinner at Eat Love Pizza

Had a few super yummy pizzas and a couple of drinks and had a nice chat

Crazy pizza stands

Salumi and prosciutto - sopressa, prosciutto crudo, mixed mushrooms, roast garlic and fior de latte. This pizza was awesome!

Kangaroo - potato base with marinated kangaroo, roasted pumpkin, pine nuts, feta and chopped parsley. I also really liked this pizza, and it was Kore's first taste of kangaroo.

Marinara - tiger prawns, mussels, vongole, calamari, chili, mozzarella and parmesan cheese. I didn't actually have any of this one, not a bit fan of seafood pizzas. I'm told it was good though.

Pyrophone Juggernaut

As we left Eat Love Pizza we saw a bunch of people seated watching the Pyrophone Juggernaut. There were people there testing the flames etc for tomorrow night. Unfortunately no show, we would have had to come back the next night :(

And so it ends...

I still miss my three month uni summer holidays .. I know, it's been fifteen years since I had one, but I still miss them!

Anyways.

So the end of the break and I actually had a really relaxing day. Was sort of at peace, so to speak. Got my desk mostly cleared. Paid some bills. Sorted out some finance stuff. Sorted some receipts. Played Loops of Zen. Played Canasta. Did some kirigami. Went through some newspapers. Edged some of the front lawn. Played with my magnets and made a buckyball. Played with HDR, Camera+, and Instagram on my iPhone. Cooked a nice red curry for dinner. Watched some Star Trek with the sweetie. Kept the kitchen cleaned up. Did some washing. Downloaded photos.

Really good productive day, with lots of fun as well.

I got this 7x7 cube for Christmas. I haven't been game to muck it up yet!

Bucky ball!

I'm really liking making my own red curries at the moment.

This one has:

A little bit of leftover pork, garlic mince and half an onion fried in peanut oil in a wok

Mushrooms and zucchini added next

Finally some red capsicum and pak choy

Add in three teaspoons of red curry paste and a tin of light coconut cream

Nomm! (I also added a small handful of cashews on top). The sweetie went back for seconds :)

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