Whoops so I didn't post all weekend..

This ring tail possum was at the club on NYE.  I touched its tail because I could.

Friday was super hot.  The birds were suffering.  Crows and magpie larks were coming to the fountain at the Labor Club to get a drink and cool off in the shade.

Did our food shopping and came home.

Saturday I did some housework, and got a bit annoyed that it feels like I'm *always* cleaning the house.  It's just never ending :/

We did jump in the pool to cool off though which was nice.

In the evening we went over to EffanC's to have a glass of bubbly and some cheese before we went to the movies.  

Wine at the Palace

Then back to their place for a fairly late dinner (of some very nice quiche and salad).

Sunday was more suffering in the heat.  

In the afternoon mum came down from Sydney to stay.  She *finally* had a swim in our pool (for one reason or another it'd never happened before).  I had a beef stew going in the slow cooker all afternoon.  For dessert we had Heston Blumenthal's Hidden Orange Pudding.  I'd seen these advertised on tv before Christmas, but didn't get one.  Then on Friday saw them for half price so grabbed one.  It was pretty good.

And today was back in the deep end trying to stay afloat again.  

The other month, Dave2 resurrected his FridayQ posts.  I did many of these ten years ago (holy crap has it been that long ???) but I also missed a lot because I actually often found them too hard!  Often it required thought and brainpower that I just didn't have.  Anyway, I thought it might be fun to work through them for the next year (until I forget) and compare answers with ten years ago.  And I even still have a "category" in my blog, which is pretty disturbing in itself!

Friday, June 4th 2004...

FQ Topic: Escape

FQ1: What is your favorite way to escape from everyday life?
Movies, tv (to some extent), internet.  Jigsaws, although that gives me plenty of time to let my brain wander, which sometimes goes into fantasyland, sometimes about life in general.  Alcohol to some extent.  Travel, but not nearly enough of that :)

FQ2: When was the last time you made an escape? Where did you go?
Well our last proper holiday was to Hong Kong and Taipei.  Given that I did almost no planning for it, I guess you could say it was an escape.

FQ3: If you could escape to anywhere on earth right now, where would that be?
Gosh.  Probably Europe somewhere.  I love Europe.

FQ DARE: Post your passport photo (or your driver's license photo if you don't have a passport).
I *hate* my passport photo.  These days you're not allowed to smile for your passport photos which makes me look completely retarded.

Compare with last time ...

So 2014. We survived.

Probably the most significant event of the year was that my Dad died in February. Mum handled it fairly well, as she'd gotten used to the idea over the course of nearly a year. And in the end it was a relief of sorts, knowing that he was out of his misery and in a much better place. I continued doing trips to Sydney to help clear out the garage of all dad's stuff. We took many car loads to metal recycling and made a couple of hundred dollars out of it. We also freecycled quite a lot of stuff. In October mum got accepted into a retirement village and the next two months became a whirlwind of trips to Sydney, a trip to Hong Kong and Taipei, a trivia night that I had to prepare and run, a work ball I had to prepare for as well as life in general to be lived. I only just survived til December 16, then was able to collapse in a heap. It was pretty sad saying goodbye to the family home of forty two years.

So I actually had three big holidays this year. The first mum and I decided to go on when it was pretty obvious dad wasn't going to last much longer. That was for two weeks in Turkey. That was a pretty awesome trip and we saw heaps of amazing stuff. Then I did another trip with my mum in September. That was an Outback Spirit tour from Cairns to Brisbane via Mt Isa and Longreach. It was a good trip, but hideously expensive - as expensive as the Turkey trip, but didn't include international airfares, fancy hotels every night or restaurant quality meals for every meal. At the end of that trip we spent nearly a week with Chay and David which was a lovely chance to chillax after being go go go for two weeks. And the last big trip was to Hong Kong and Taipei for two weeks. I was in the middle of chaos at the time, so Stu did all the planning for it. That was a pretty good trip too, although we did struggle at times to find the best balance of going and seeing things and doing nothing and relaxing. Other than that, we went with DC to his coast house in January, to Bermagui in March, and also stayed at the coast briefly to go to Scott and Kerry's combined 40th.

Had an ok year at work. Spent a good amount of time "cleaning" - decommissioning old services and doing massive cleanups of firewall rules. Also got chucked in the deep end on a couple of projects that required extra assistance, so they were a bit stressful at times.

Healthwise I was pretty good this year. I got a cold during the Turkey trip (a pretty nasty flu thing had been going around the whole tour group so I got off pretty lightly). And it seems I got a cold probably at the movies the other night as yesterday I started sniffling. Other than that I've been pretty healthy.

We've spent heaps of time with our "whiskey" friends this year which has been awesome. But we've not seen nearly enough of Nat and Andrew as I'd have liked. We had a few games nights at Mishi's in January, August and December, with lunch at Damien's in December. My Sydney visits meant lunches (Peking duck!!!) with @StuartCRyan which was awesome, but sadly that won't be happening anymore. We saw Josh and Ally a couple of times, and Gaelian and Stef as well. A Sydney trip for George's 40th. A fair bit of drinking with the neighbours and playing with the animals. Various people came to stay over the year including the little brother, Chris and Zac, and Marc and Jo a couple of times. We're continuing to enjoy our visits to "the club" and went to many of the social events on during the year.

Pretty quiet year for the fish. All the zebra danios in the angel tank have finally died. I got five rummy nosed tetras for the two foot, and they're lovely little fish and drew out the black neon tetras which otherwise just spent their life hiding up the back of the tank. A couple of the duboisis died, which threw off the dominance balance, so one of them became dominant and picked off the rest of them one by one, so he's the only one left in that tank now with a sucking cat fish. Most of the kribs and multis downstairs are gone now too. Really would like to get rid of a lot of our fishtanks and crap ..

I didn't buy any Lego this year, but throughout January I got to play with all of Jake's Lego - around eighty sets of it! Building and dismantling and checking for missing pieces, and documenting. Sooo much fun! Also dismantled the Star Destroyer which had been out for four years!

Continued doing a lot of jigsaws at home during the summer, and some at work, although not anymore there which is a shame. I finally finished the 24000 piece "Life" jigsaw, but still haven't gotten around to taking it to work to document it all laid out. Not much else in the way of hobbies, other than part of a paint-by-numbers which I got for last break but still haven't finished.

January had a run of very hot days which required lots of icing the fish tanks to keep them cool. But the rest of the year was surprisingly mild. Winter had some very cold nights, but the pool only partly froze over a couple of times. We've had some very hot days too, but again generally it's been fairly mild. In fact this whole Christmas break has been *lovely*. Because of all the travel and chaos, the pool was a mess until just before Christmas, but because it hasn't been super hot since then, we haven't gone in yet.

Tried a surprising number of new recipes during the year - almost one a month by the look of it.
* two different lasagnas - both awesome
* black forest slice - needs some modification
* Boeuf Bourguignon inspired by Julie and Julia
* Coq au vin
* various vegetables
* breakfast raclette - trying to perfect a recipe
* white chocolate caramel slice
* duck breast
* harissa roast chicken
* zucchini and cheese fritters

We ate out a bit. I didn't think all that often, but still a fair amount. Our favourites are still Dumpling Inn and Pulp Kitchen. Bella Vista as well, although only once this year (maybe twice?). Went to Grazing a couple of times and it was awesome both times. Went to Ace Sushi a couple of times when doing shopping at the markets, but it's pretty average. Revisted Asian Cafe, Wig and Pen, Iori. New this year included:
* Grazing - awesome
* Ellacure - not fussed
* Edgar's - ok
* Bellucci's - pretty good
* Mocan and Green Grout - interesting
* A Baker - good
* Kinh Do - good
* Beijing House - meh

At work, other than the mall, tried out Altitude Cafe (meh), got thoroughly pissed off at Samiuz, went to Sanurs for an after party dinner, 2 Yummy a couple of times for after drinks dinners, and Outback Jacks a couple of times for team lunches/dinners (quite impressed with their feasts). Probably lots of other places too undocumented.

In Sydney our regular for Peking Duck was Super Bowl, and Tako Tuesdays were at Sushi and Grill on York Street for takoyaki - not fresh, but better than other places I'd tried, and it was just downstairs from work.

Also found a couple of speakeasys. The Baxter Inn in Sydney which is awesome. Went there by myself first up, then later with Luc and again later with Neil. Went to Molly with the sweetie as well.

Movies:
* The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug
* The Lego Movie (x2)
* Lucy
* The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies

Books:
* Deadly Décisions, by Kathy Reichs
* The Earthsea Quartet, by Ursula LaGuin
* The Delinquents, by Criena Rohan
* Fatal Voyage, by Kathy Reichs
* Animal Farm, by George Orwell
* *batteries not included, by Wayland Drew
* Palomino, by Danielle Steel
* Star Wars Episode I, by Terry Brooks
* Dewey, by Vicki Myron
* A Wrinkle in Time, by Madeline L'Engle
* Thunder Dog, by Michael Hingson
* Star Wars Episode II, by R.A. Salvatore

Other Stuff:
* Multicultural Festival aka meat on a stick day!
* Hall Markets for first time
* Mapping Our World exhibition at the National Library
* Balloon Fiesta in March
* Inherited Dad's camera
* Inspected the Sentinel apartments in Belconnen
* Inspected my flat in Sydney. Got depressed over deadbeat tenants who don't take care of other people's property
* Won another work trivia night. Ran the next one
* Airport open day - flying visit as could only spend an hour there
* Went to the War Memorial but was disappointed the WWI exhibition was closed for renovations
* Whiskey Live - 44 whiskeys oh my!
* Stu's Japanese classes cultural nights twice
* Poultry show at epic
* Had to buy a new lens because I'd smashed my other one in Turkey. Bought the same one
* Drama with cooling problems with my car. Found a new mechanic who I think might have fixed it
* Had to buy a new dishwasher as the last one burnt out
* Fired up Stu's old Android and started playing Ingress. Got a sim for it seven weeks later but the damage to my iPhone battery was done.
* Took a random day off and cleaned half the garage
* Zone 3 with work
* Bought Stu a new car on a very good finance deal - cheaper than our mortgage!
* BBQs at @CLBradley's. On one of them I borrowed Frozen and have been slightly obsessed with it ever since
* Chucked out years of receipts
* Birthday dinner of Chinese takeaway in Sydney
* Whiskey tasting night on my birthday, Bella vista for dinner
* Skiing in August
* Chickens and duckies next door (and lizards and frogs and cats and dogs)
* Total lunar eclipse
* Pulled off a semi-convincing Queen Elsa at our work Halloween Ball
* Mum tried to electrocute herself but thankfully failed
* Carols service at Como Church

So that's 2014 done! I know some of my readers have had a tough year (especially my brother). Hope things improve in 2015.

Happy new year!

Friday morning I cooked dinner.

But because I didn't have time to fry down the mushrooms, there was a *lot* of liquid in it.  So it was very watery :(

Still, our dinner guests (EffanC) enjoyed it.

After dinner we watched Rocky Horror and then Frozen.  Yeah same movies as we watched with Marc and Jo the other week!  Silly really.  Stayed up quite late chatting.

In the morning we all went out for breakfast to A Baker.  The celeriac didn't work that well for me, but the whipped feta and bacon were great.

In the afternoon I did some organising of our filing.  Still a long way to go though!  In the evening we watched The Railway Man.  I wasn't in the right mindset to begin with, so found it a little tough going at the beginning, but once I'd settled into it I thought it was pretty good.

Today was more organising of finances.  We went for a walk to hack some portals and then got laughed at by the fairy wrens who wouldn't stay still to be documented.

Weird ..

Then had lunch at Fortune Box (a rather nice dish of pork, duck and more pork, with duck egg) before doing our food shopping.

George came by while we were cooking

This was dinner - a recipe out of my newest Women's Weekly cookbook - harissa roast chicken.  It also included a stuffing of Stu's suggestion, of butter, mushroom, thyme, garlic, lemon zest, sunflower and pumpkin seeds.  

The harissa was a tad burnt, and a tad too spicy for me, and the stuffing didn't really add much.  But the chicken and veggies were certainly yummy.

After dinner we went over to Annie's for a while to say hi and have some dessert.

Last Sunday morning we headed home from Sydney with a car load of crap in tow.  Caught up on housework/washing etc in the afternoon.

On Monday I finished packing up and inventoring Jake's Lego.  

On Tuesday I suffered from major lack of sleep.  We went to the Dumpling Inn for dinner (mixed chow mein and shredded beef peking style) then did our food shopping.  Came home and dismantled most of the Star Destroyer (that had also been constructed at Christmas 2009) while watching TV.

On Tuesday night I still couldn't get to sleep, so Wednesday was more misery.  Watched some pretty cool rainstorms out the window at work.  When I got home however, there was a small stream of water going across the garage floor.  Which would have been fine, except it intersected with my old desk that I've had for thirty five or so years, and the chipboard at the bottom all swelled up :(:(:(  So that was pretty annoying.  My parents still have the matching beds, and I still use the matching set of drawers.  I was hoping to sell/give away the things as a set one day so that's a bit of a poo.  In the evening it poured with rain again, so I collected a whole heap of it and put it in the pool.

Wednesday night I finished dismantling the Star Destroyer, and started the remaining section of my Life jigsaw. 

Thursday night we got pizza and watched The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy which I hadn't seen since I saw it at the movies in 2005.

On Friday a bunch of us got pork knuckles from Zierholz.  Omigosh they were *huge*.  I got through all the meat/crackling on mine (but only just) but didn't quite finish the sides.  Pretty much everyone said the experience of it was good, but noone would really be interested in having it again - simply too much food.  I reckon it'd go well shared between two people.  I didn't have any dinner that night.

Friday night was more jigsawing while watching Angels and Demons, which I hadn't seen.  

Saturday morning I cleaned the gutters and flushed the downpipes which were all completely clogged.  Then we headed out to the club, but I'll leave that for another post.

Today was catching up on housework as well as doing more jigsaw and tv show catching up.

So 2013. Busy year!

We saw in 2013 with a small pool party at our place with Nat and Andrew and also Steve for a while.

  
We did a bit of travelling this year.

In January we went up the coast to South West Rocks to a school reunion of sorts for Stu and to visit Stu's dad. We drove up and down the coast, swam, visited Trial Bay Gaol, and caught up with Fiona and Margie on the way home.

We only managed to get to the coast once this year, in May. It was somewhat of a disaster with the spa being too cold on Friday night and too hot on Saturday night and a few other things that made it all a bit unpleasant (except for during the day on Saturday which was pretty good). Almost went again later in the year but had to go to Sydney and otherwise we've just been too busy.

We went to Queensland in July for a lovely long weekend to visit Chay and David.

At the end of July we flew up to Sydney for my Dad's 70th and one of my 40th parties (see below).

In October we decided at the last minute to go to Hong Kong for a week at the end of October. It was a great week, even if a little too humid. It's the most spontaneous holiday I've ever taken. I didn't do too much planning for it, because the more I researched, the more things I found of interest to see. So I stopped researching altogether and we took it as it came.

  
At work I had a mostly good year. I started off the year cleaning and pretty much cleaned all year. I started with the knowledge base articles for our team, then moved onto the log transfer system, then the load balancers. I also rehashed an old domino database for documentation which brought back a lot of memories of my last job. For the rest of the time it mostly felt like I was the "goto" person for any and all problems that came along. We were partly restructured, but the powers that be didn't really have a clear idea of what they wanted, so things didn't change as much as we originally thought they would. I made Stu drag out his tuxedo again for the work ball which was a lot of fun.

Healthwise I felt like I was sick the whole first half of the year - with colds in January, March, April, May and June. So that was pretty horrible. Not flus though, just annoying colds. Got another one the night before we went to Hong Kong too - yay :( But have been ok otherwise.

  
We had a super busy social year this year. In fact it was so busy that we went from May to September without having a free Saturday night. As a consequence our Buffy and Angel watching was almost non-existent. There were plenty of visits to/from Annie and Potty and the families. Various people came over for dinner and/or swims at the beginning of the year. Nat and Andrew came over a few times, as well as Andrew by himself when Nat was travelling. There were various after works drinks with my colleagues and Stu's and family and friends. Various Singstar/Mario Kart nights were had. Several BBQs at @CLBradley's. Several games nights at Mishi's. Had a video night at our place with work people. We visited people for lunches/dinners such as Matt and Helen, Andrew and Jen, Chris and Geoff, Josh and Ally, Windy and Nanette etc. We saw Daniel and Fi a few times when they came down. Several people came to stay including David and Yvonne, Ken and Jeanine, Fiona a couple of times and Stu's old school friend Tom. I met up with @StuartCRyan a few times in Sydney (we met in real life for the first time at my birthday). I also went to visit David in Junee.

Speaking of birthdays, I turned forty this year. To celebrate I had *three* great parties - one in Sydney, a big one at home the Saturday before my birthday, then a big lunch at work on my birthday followed by a nice dinner and seeing Phantom of the Opera. I was certainly in a different place mentally for my fortieth. During the whole run-up to my thirtieth I was very depressed, and my actual birthday was pretty meh. Such a different story this year though.

  
In sadder news, my Nana died of old age earlier in the year. And then I found out at the funeral that I have another cousin that I'd never heard about before!

Also in sad news, my father got diagnosed with a brain tumour in March. He had surgery immediately (and they had to cancel a holiday to New Zealand), followed by chemo and radiotherapy. Unfortunately it didn't really help, and he was hospitalised in July because he kept falling over and wasn't able to walk properly. He's been getting progressively worse and has been in a nursing home since September. In August I started going up to Sydney fairly regularly to see Dad and help Mum with the mammoth task of clearing out the garage and workshop. We've mostly been sorting things so far as I don't want to get rid of things until Dad goes. Fortunately I've been able to work out of the Sydney office so not having to take leave at the moment.

  
We've been enjoying a lot of visits to our little social club. We camped there over the Australia day long weekend, and the new tent survived a storm and massive downpour fairly well. But then a caravan came up for sale, so we bought it! We went to most of the club nights during the year, and plenty of other times as well. It's Stu's little get-away-from-the-world place and he thoroughly enjoys it.

With work people or the sweetie, tried out a few new restaurants. Continued going to Black Pepper for brunches and also Pulp Kitchen a few times. Went to Dumpling Inn a few times and Bella Vista as well. Didn't try too many desserts this year, although did make a Mars Bar slice and a peppermint rocky road, as well as an apple crumble and caramel slice that we tried at the club.

  
We bought another four baby angels for the angel tank. One died but the other three survived, so now have four angels and about seven danios in that tank. We got a lovely little betta for the macquarium, but he never thrived and died in six weeks. So thinking I'll probably give the macquarium away. The four foot still has a school of duboisis, two multies, a lelupi and a J.transcriptus. There's three multis downstairs, but after breeding once, the single baby I saw disappeared and haven't seen any since. There's still three or four quite old kribs downstairs as well.

Not much Lego action this year. I did get a cute little plane from Fiona, and a small City set from Ric for my birthday. I went with Nat and Andrew to Brick Expo, but was very frustrated with the crowds. I dismantled the Millennium Falcon which had been out for four years! Also over the Christmas break got to sort out and build all of Jake's lego which has been fun.

I did a lot of jigsaws this year. Mostly downstairs until downstairs got too cold. Mostly little ones, but also another section of the huge "Life" puzzle. Gave up on the skies of two jigsaws because their quality was just too poor.

I celebrated my tenth blogiversary this year. To mark the occasion I upgraded to Movable Type 5. But got very frustrated with the fact that I now cannot SSH to my host. Also with Movable Type which is *very* buggy. Next year my domain is up for renewal and I'm thinking about moving my domain to a new host with a new blogging platform. But the whole idea is pretty scary, so we'll see about that...

Shows

• The only show I saw this year was The Phantom of the Opera on my birthday.

Movies
Not many movies this year either...

• The Hobbit - An Unexpected Journey
• Star Trek - Into Darkness
• Garden of Words and Ghost in the Shell: Arise

Books

• Time Enough for Love by Robert Heinlein
• Polgara the Sorceress by David and Leigh Eddings
• Careful, he might hear you, by Sumner Locke Elliott
• To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
• Déjà Dead by Kathy Reichs
• A Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute
• I Hate You - Don't Leave Me by Jerold Kreisman and Hal Straus
• The Naked Husband by Mark D'Arbanville
• Death du Jour by Kathy Reichs
• Airport by Arthur Hailey
• Body of Evidence by Patricia Cornwall

Other stuff

• Had a full day at the War Memorial with Ken and Jeanine
• Had a jigsaw race with Nat
• Found my first geocache with Nat and Andrew
• Saw a Roller Derby bout
• Mum got her first mobile phone
• Had a random day off work to tidy up all the fish tank stuff in the garage
• Went for some walks around Palmerville with the sweetie
• Spotted the ISS a few times and waved to @Cmdr_Hadfield. Wasn't quite the same when he came back to earth.
• Went to the balloon fiesta on Canberra Day
• Watched the last couple of episodes and finale of House, which considering the timing with dad was pretty sad
• Took Stu's car for a drive up Mount Ainslie and got covered in lady bugs
• Our PS3 stopped playing DVD disks. Bluray is still ok though.  We considered getting a PS4 but the device isn't backwards compatible with old games.
• Went out to Captain's Flat on our fifth wedding anniversary
• Finished a cross stitch I got for Christmas in 1992
• Went up Black Mountain Tower
• Voted in ABC Classic FM's top 100 music in the movies, and most of my votes were in the top two hundred
• Did a blog for our trip to America in 1983
• Gave up reading Boing Boing, Life Hacker and Neatorama, Dooce and Dilbert
• Got extremely pissed off when Google Reader shut down. Destroyed my faith in Google.
• Looked at Comma Feed, Feedly and The Old Reader. Stuck with The Old Reader.  The Old Reader subsequently crashed from all the extra load of departing Google users, but was able to get funding to run on better hosting and has been fine ever since.
• Got more of my photos onto the RiotACT
• Cancelled Aussie Farmers Direct orders
• Had a look around Wintercon at EPIC
• Stu had a few car dramas that Melba Motors didn't fix
• I had a LOT of car dramas that Melba Motors didn't fix
• Saw the Skywhale
• Played through Diablo with the sweetie.  On easy mode.  Sue me.
• Did proper karaoke for the first time ever (and I've been to Japan four times!)
• Went to a Christmas Carols service at Como

So that's the end of 2013.  New Year's Eve will be spent out at the club with food and booze and friends and fairy lights and fireworks :)

I've been really slack with blogging this year, especially the second half.  Lots of trips to Sydney mucking up my routine and cutting deeply into my "home" time is certainly not helping.  And the lack of comments is also not helping either, I feel like noone's really out there anymore.  Since my birthday in August I've had a whole *two* comments from regular readers.  Not that I do this for you, I do it for me, which is why I'm a bit annoyed I'm not keeping up - as this provides a valuable record for me of my life.

Anyways.

Thursday night after drinks we went to the Lighty for dinner, and then onto Karaoke.  I've never done karaoke like this before.  And found it a lot more difficult than Singstar.  With Singstar the lead vocals are at full volume compared to the music, and the timings are on screen.  With karaoke the lead vocals are basically non existent, which means you're pretty much on your own getting the timing right.  And when people are singing very loudly and very badly, it's very hard to try and get it right.  In the end with a lot of songs I blocked an ear and closed my eyes and was able to keep the timing a lot better.  And the videos are crap - at least with Singstar you mostly get the original video clips.  But it was a great fun night - we stayed for two hour-long rounds.

Friday night I made the sweetie watch Love Actually with me.  Because, you know, Christmas.

Saturday morning I was up at normal time to go help out with the big work Christmas party.  Neil and Henrch and Windy had spent a couple of hours on Friday afternoon moving things up onto the loading dock, so in the end it only took half an hour to load the truck.  We had the whole place setup by about 10:30, and then just needed to wait for the booze to turn up and then we were done.  Quickest setup *ever*.  After everything was done, I went on a couple of rides and took a lot of photos, then had my lunch and came home.

Saturday afternoon we headed over to Mishi's for a games evening.  We read a stack of Geek Battle questions which turned out to be great conversation starters.  Then we played a couple of games of Fluxx - Geoffrey won one game and I won another.  Then we watched Inception because Mishi had never seen it, and the sweetie and I hadn't seen it since we saw it at the movies.  Quite enjoyed it the second time around.

Sunday we went to Potty's for a big family BBQ.  Essentially it was the family Christmas gathering, as everyone was there, and won't be for Christmas itself.

And then back to work.  I have *sooo* much to do it's not funny.  And yet I got so many interruptions and problems to deal with that yesterday I barely got *any* of it done.  So much for a nice wind-down to Christmas ...

So Stu told me about this a couple of weeks ago.  I didn't bother nominating anything because it looked like it was pretty much all covered from a John Williams perspective ;)

Tonight I voted:

• Titanic by Horner, James as performed in Titanic
• The Hunt for Red October Score by Poledouris, Basil as performed in The Hunt for Red October
• The Man from Snowy River Score by Rowland, Bruce as performed in The Man from Snowy River
• Back to the Future Film Trilogy Score by Silvestri, Alan as performed in Back to the Future Film Trilogy
• Shakespeare in Love Score by Warbeck, Stephen as performed in Shakespeare in Love
• Music from Harry Potter Movies by Williams, Doyle, Hooper, and Desplat as performed in Harry Potter
• Jaws Score by Williams, John as performed in Jaws
• Jurassic Park Score by Williams, John as performed in Jurassic Park
• Raiders of the Lost Ark Score by Williams, John as performed in Raiders of the Lost Ark
• Gladiator Score by Zimmer/Gerrard as performed in Gladiator

omigosh it was hard!  My first cull had over thirty movies in it.  Got it down to twenty three.  Then cut out music that was not written for the film (which sadly included things like Symphony No. 3 by Camille Saint-Saëns from Babe, Finlandia by Jean Sibelius from Die Hard 2 and everything from Fantasia 2000).  Cut a couple more.  And eventually decided on the movies above.  

These were my runners up:

• Batman Score by Elfman, Danny
• Inception Score by Zimmer, Hans
• James Bond Theme by Norman, Monty
• Music from Star Trek Movies by Eidelman/Giacchino/Goldsmith/Horner/McCarthy/Rosenman  <-- be good if they'd narrowed this down to Jerry Goldsmith's
• Star Wars Score (includes music from all 6 films) by Williams, John    <-- I'm hoping this will be popular enough to make it in from other people's votes
• Superman Score by Williams, John  <-- and this too

Had a quiet Saturday morning.

In the afternoon we headed out to the club.

And we might have accidentally bought this.

Had a brief swim in the pool - it was a little too chilly to stay in long - before heading in for happy hour and dinner.

Graham and Anne cooked a delicious creamy pumpkin soup and the most amazing chicken and chirizo dish - it was fantastic!

Afterwards we had a music and movies trivia night.  Sadly I was separated from the sweetie (he's the brains in the family).  But as it was it didn't turn out too badly - our table lost, so we walked away with vodka cruisers anyway :)  And the sweetie's table came third, so he ended up with more vodka cruisers and a bottle of wine! Win!

A good fun night, and next time we don't have to drive home afterwards!

So I'm reading out a stack of movies that I'd be happy to watch with the sweetie tonight .. and it included the likes of Gladiator, The Hunt for Red October and Terminator 2 (amongst a bunch of others).  So initially the sweetie picked Gladiator.  But after we watched an episode of House, he said we could watch Gladiator or Terminator 2.  And I'm like.. holy crap, you'd watch a James Cameron movie?? But you're allergic! It says so on the label!  (him and DC think alike on this one).  So as soon as he said he'd watch it I put it on before he changed his mind ..! heh

Yeah so survived the week.. spent two days fighting with documentation in a new system that's html-based and not nearly as friendly as doing doco in Notes (give me notes any day **please** !! ) and only achieved four documents out of a possible twenty or so.  Guess what I'll be doing in the next couple of weeks (until other projects fire up again for the year) ...