So as I've mentioned previously, the company that I helped build from the late 1990s to the mid 2000s has been bought out again and again, finally by Vodien, a Singapore company, and this week my website had significant outages.

On Tuesday night it went down some time in the evening.  The whole host was offline - no response on web, mail, ftp or cpanel ports.  Another site that I know about on that host was also down (graphixactivewear - the site they stuffed up the config for, which has broken people's rss feeds for any reader that tries https first).  I couldn't get to sleep.  This had every chance of not being just a regular outage, but a deliberate act to shut the server down.  Maybe other people were contacted to move their hosting but I wasn't?  I'd backed up my blog database relatively recently (only a month ago), but having to reconstruct it without the old one being online would be all kinds of stressful.  And my mail would start bouncing too.  

First thing Wednesday morning I checked on it.  The uptime on the server was fifteen minutes.  So I frantically started backing everything up.  I backed up the mysql database again.  And I tarballed my whole blog directory and downloaded it.  I screenshotted cpanel configs for future reference.

At work I asked Tony who he hosted with these days.  He said his club uses VentraIP - not cheap but good customer service and excellent up time.  So I had a look and they were actually even cheaper than the company Stu had recommended, and included unlimited addon domains (the other mob wanted $10/month per addon domain).  I read around the support pages, and with cpanel hosting it looked like they'd do everything I needed.  I had a bit of a chat online to confirm a few things, and as an added bonus, they were offering a half price special - for what I wanted it would only be $5/month for max of first twelve months, $10/month after that.  

Friday night I signed up!

I setup kazza.id.au as the main domain and johnson.id.au as an addon domain.  Then I started fiddling around with johnson.id.au - if I was going to break something it may as well be the less important one!  

I thought I would try staging the transition.  Move mail over first, then web.  Exept cpanel on Vodien wouldn't let me change my MX record - it would only let me change an A or CNAME record.  hrmm.  ok well let's try something else - create a test website just for fun, pointed over at VentraIP.  Except the DNS entry I created never ended up in DNS.  Currently it seems the cpanel integration with DNS is not working properly.  And I can't manage DNS with Vodien itself, because it's not hooked into the old CIA/Enetica DNS servers.  I could manage DNS on Vodien if I pointed at their nameservers, but that's not going to help cpanel.

So this morning I setup johnson.id.au the way I wanted it for mail, but still pointing web back at CIA.  Then I changed the nameservers for johnson.id.au to point at VentraIP's name servers.  Well other than the fact I struggled to find this option because it was unintutive, once I did it it worked swimmingly, and quite quickly too.  I sent myself a test email from Gmail and it worked!  Was able to see it on VentraIP's webmail!

So now to configure Eudora.  I use the lastest version - 7.1.0.9.  From 2006.

Yeup.

It only supports up to TLS 1.0, but VentraIP only support from TLS 1.1.  Grunt.  I tried it with Thunderbird and it worked fine, but really didn't want to transition all my mail.  But, internet to the rescue, there's a Sourceforge project called Hermes which has updated dlls for TLS.  Had to tweak things a little (eg changing the pop port in the ini file, and set SSL to Required, Alternate Port) but eventually got Eudora to download my mail!  Hurrah!

Then I spent the rest of the day getting my blog updated so I can do another snapshot/database backup.  

This will likely be the last entry I post on this host.  Now the drama of trying to move this blog begins.  If you post any comments I'll still get them, and if I could be bothered I'll try and reconstruct them on the new host later, but if not, they may be lost on the site.  If I'm not too worn out from it all, and if everything "works", I may take this opportunity to upgrade to the last free version of Movable Type, and get a mobile-friendly template installed.  We shall see!

Wednesday last week.

Flowers!

Saw Stumpy for the first time in ages.

Had leftover lamb for dinner.  I cooked it with broccolini, snow peas, dark soy sauce and some brown sugar, served with rice, cashews and sesame seeds.  For something so random it turned out ok.  Well Stu really liked it and he even went back for seconds.  Looked like crap but hey :)

Then spent a good chunk of the evening blogging.

Thursday.  Slept well!!  What a refreshing change.  Beer, pizza, and Naked Gun 2 1/2.

Stumpy kept Stu company for a while at work

Friday.  Slept well!  (with assistance).  Finished scanning box 14 of Dad's slides (three this week!).  It takes about ten minutes to scan a batch of four slides, but I can do other things while it's going.  Had a productive morning churning through tickets.

Did our food shopping at lunch.  OMFG Coles had toilet paper!!  First time I've seen toilet paper in Coles since the beginning of March.  Still depleted on the flour/rice/pasta/tomato section though.  

Had a pretty stressful afternoon.  Trying to help someone fix something at work.  Couldn't figure out why it had broken - by rights it should never have worked.  Came up with a workaround, but then had to go with David to get new taps.  Remember a few years back the shower was leaking, and I took a year to regrout and seal it?  Well the shower was still leaking.  Not as much, but it was still dripping downstairs.  And the bath had mismatched taps after our last attempt to get the vanity working, and the vanity taps (at least the cold water) was broken as well.  So really we needed to replace everything in the bathroom.  So David finally had some time to replace the taps, and normally I'd could flex off an hour or two with no problems.  But with the issues at work, plus all the other work I needed to do that afternoon, I was feeling super anxious about being away.  Never a good start to a shopping expedition.  So we went to Reece's first.  They have quite a large supply room, but you can't look at that, you can only look at the show room...  which only had a couple of different options, and we couldn't get any service.  The only person in the room was on the phone (on speaker phone no less) and wasn't going anywhere.  We waited about ten minutes before giving up and going to Bunnings.  So we found a bunch of taps but when we went to check fittings, realised the gooseneck for the vanity is a couple of millimetres too big for the new fittings.  ie, a new gooseneck would be too small for our current t-piece.  #grunt.  So asked someone if we could speak to a plumbing expert.  They called someone and they said he was with a couple of customers.  So we waited.  Eventually he turns up, says, oh there's more options at the back of aisle 58, and I'm leaving for the day, bye.  Great.  So sure enough, the back of aisle 58 has more options.  But the why the #$^@ couldn't all the taps be together???  Idiots.  So looked at the options.  Not really all that many.  Especially because I wanted those fancy taps where you *know* the tap is off, you don't have to grind into the washer to turn it off.  They're called half turn taps, did you know?  But there was only one gooseneck available that was "guaranteed to fit" - because it had the two different sized fittings - we could see it through the plastic.  But it didn't have the half turn taps.  We tried again to get a plumbing expert.  Eventually one came along.  We told him the gooseneck was a different size now.  And he was like.. oh..? really..?   So much for an expert.  Can you tell I was having fun being there just waiting around and not knowing if we were even getting the right thing?  hrmm.  So in the end decided to forego the gooseneck and just get three pairs of taps - two wall mounts, one vanity top.  All the same half turn style.  And also.. OMFG Bunnings was *packed*.  It wasn't even after hours, but I guess because of the long weekend everyone was there trying to get stuff for their home improvements.  Busier there that it normally is even on a weekend!!  Craziness!!

So got home, and I got back into work.  Figured out how/when/why aforementioned problem had occurred (the shopping break was probably good for that).  Ploughed through my work for an hour, then gave David moral support in the bathroom.  The new flanges don't quite cover things on the vanity, we'll need some extenders, and the old ivory gooseneck does look a little odd with the chrome finished taps.  But it does seem that the leak has stopped!  And the new taps are *amazing*.  You can turn them off with just a finger.  Bestest brother in history! :)

I told him he could have anything he wanted for dinner (that was practically possible) .. takeway, delivery, or I could cook anything we had in the house.  He chose the butterfly lamb roast :)  So it was a late dinner, but very nice.  Photo makes it look scary, but it was pomegranate and rosemary marinade, so looked very pink even when cooked.

Saturday morning I woke up at ~1am.  Lay awake for two hours.  Got up for a while.  Still couldn't get back to sleep.  So Saturday was a zombie day.  

First real fog of the year

I was too tired to concentrate on anything much.  Did a couple of loads of washing, did a bit of tidying downstairs, and a bit of time on the jigsaw (annoyingly there's places where the picture on either side of the jigsaw is almost identical, and because the cut is identical either side, you can actually put in pieces that are wrong, and it takes a bit of effort to figure out which bits are right).  

I got this book when I was a little kid..

When I got to this page I literally blew on it!

Progress shot on the dungeon.  See that floor?  So can I!  First time since 2014 I've been able to see that corner.  It's been filled with Dad's slides, DVDs and records.

Oh, and I made Anzac biscuits.  Photo was a bit of an afterthought, but they were pretty awesome, and still chewy, despite looking brown in the photo.

Had a few drinks with EffanC before they Zoomed someone else, then had a blissfully early night (asleep by 9pm).

Going to have to call it there for now.  Need to wash my hair.  With any luck I'll finish this tomorrow :)

Backdating this because I'm a slacker .. again..

As of Tuesday last week I'd slept ok the past couple of nights.  Although I realised I probably shouldn't say such things as I'm likely to jinx myself.  I'd been stressing on the weekend about the neverending housework and how many times a day I cleaned the kitchen and I'd had to run the dishwasher *twice* on the weekend and again that Tuesday night, but then the little brother cleared the floor for me and the sweetie did some washing up and I felt better about life again :)  I cooked a bunch of veggies for dinner (a tomato bake - roasted halved tomatoes topped with basil and melty cheese at the end, asparagus caesar (asparagus, butter, lemon juice, parmesand cheese) and carrots).  And I made a Yum! Delicious! cake because David and found me self-raising flour.  

Wednesday I finally finished part picking the six sets I started on the weekend.  Sometimes it really does take all weekend (and then some) which is why I stopped for so long - if we had anything at all on the weekend I didn't commit to starting, because there'd be a good chance I wouldn't finish.  Cooked some pork leftovers up with some broccolini which was quite nice.

Thursday turned up to problems with SSO in the morning, and having to fight with router ACLs in the afternoon, so pretty crappy day.  Had some Corona with the sweetie.

We were going to try and get Chong Co delivery but their website wasn't showing up as available, and they didn't answer the phone either.  So had more deep pan pizza (getting a bit thicker) - but the second pizza that week - blerf.

And then watched Prisoner of Azkaban.

Tell me what this reminds you of..

Good Friday I started on Vic's Life on Mars part picking.  I thought there were twelve sets.  Turns out there was 22.  He had many copies of some of the smaller sets - eight of one of them!  Spent time on Saturday and Sunday doing that as well.  Also made some good progress on the big jigsaw we've had going since January.  It took us about three months to do half the jigsaw, and we did the second half pretty much over the Easter long weekend.  Helped by Ravensburger very nicely using the same cutter on either side of the jigsaw, so I flipped the top (mostly sky) round, lay it over the bottom, and smashed it out.  

On Friday we went for a walk around the block.  People were actually really friendly, everyone smiled.  I saw happy tree a bit closer up, but it's in someone's back yard, so can't get close.  Cooked sausages for dinner and watched the 1970 Airport movie.

Took ages to get to sleep Friday night - super restless.  House stuff, food shopping, jigsaw and Lego.  I went food shopping fairly early on Saturday, but Coles was depleted of different thing.  Like there was hardly any orange juice, frozen food, or bananas.  Still no toilet paper or liquid soap available, but I did manage to get some paper towel, garlic/echinacea/zinc/C tablets, and some brown rice.  And then felt like I was getting a sore throat all day.  Cooked pork leftovers red curry, and watched Airport 75.

Sunday, mostly just Lego and jigsaw.  There may have been pizza scrolls for lunch.  

I took a "before" photo of our dungeon room.  It's not before Stu started pulling out books to give away so that's why there's an empty few shelves.

Watched Airport 77 in the evening.

Monday was mostly just house stuff and rearranging shelves.  I put out a fun jigsaw for David to do to have a break between one hard one and the next.

And then made runny poo for dinner!

Actually beef stew, which looks digusting but tastes amazing

Finished up the Airport box set with Airport 79 - the Concorde.  The Concorde they used in the movie was the same one that crashed - so sad!!

Tuesday I woke up at Dentist Time and never got back to sleep :(:(  Started on the next section of the Disney behemoth jigsaw.

Wednesday was cranky day due to Skype sucking donkey balls.  I hate being on the phone at the best of times, but it kept dropping out and at one point left me with a big black square in the middle of the screen and I had to restart my vm to clear it.  Not happy Jan.  I asked the sweetie to cook dinner, so he ordered Chong Co, successfully this time.

How good is this?

(From @JessHarwoodArt)

Stu and I are definitely owls.  Other than working from home and not catching up with friends on weekends, everything is much the same.

So our COVID-19 routine is not too different to general reality.  I started working from home on March 17.  Mainly because I had the hint of a sore throat and cough, and while it was extremelly unlikely to be Coronavirus (what with only about half a dozen cases in the ACT at the time), I didn't want to be *that person* that spread it around. 

My home setup is *ok* for working from home.  The biggest problem is my monitor setup.  At work my primary monitor is on my left, and the secondary is to the right.  At home my primary monitor is straight in front, and the secondary is smaller and off to the left.  So everything is a bit backwards for me.  Also I'm in what would be the formal dining room of the house, between the kitchen and the living room.  So just need to be a bit mindful of having Stu or David seeing stuff they shouldn't (which really isn't much).  We're lucky because our work is very well setup for people to work remotely, and our infrastructure supports it quite happily.  The only tricky situation came with all staff broadcasts flooding our internet links, but they've started streaming those to an external website, so even that is not such an issue anymore.  Skype, however, sux donkey balls.  It's fine for text chat, but that's about it.  Anything more is just asking too much of it.

Stu started working from home about a week and a half after me.  It took him a while to get the hardware/software he needed from his work setup.  But once he got that he's been doing ok.  We had started to setup my Lego room as a study for him before any of this started (with David mostly taking over the other desk in the dining room study, Stu wanted his own desk and private space).  It worked out really well for him to work in that room.  This weekend we've done a whole heap more rearranging.  Stu pulled out *lots* of books to be given away (sadly Lifeline are not currently taking donations due to covid-19 so they're just piling up at the moment).  I took all my models (well, all the ones from the big shelves) downstairs, and Stu took all his work/study and some of lifestyle books upstairs.  The bookshelves are super messy and unorganised right now due to all the rearranging, but I still need to get rid of the Lego minifig workstation on the table before I can pull out all the remaining books for sorting.  And it's starting to get really cold down there, so running out of time.  I suspect the bookshelves will stay messy for a while yet.

David has to keep going to work outside the house.  He's a shift worker, and unfortunately for him, we're home all the time now, which means he can't watch DVDs/Netflix while we're at work.  Well at least not on the TV.  He could probably setup his laptop to watch things with headphones if he was so inclined.  His work also means that if covid-19 does start spreading in Canberra, he's on the front lines for exposure, and it's probably inevitable that it hits our house at some point over winter.  

Lunches during the week are almost always leftovers of some description.  Pretty simple.  What has been suffering though is any sort of exercise and vitamin D.  Usually I would get a ten minute walk each way to go get food for lunch, but if I'm just heating up leftovers I don't get that.  So I've started going for a little walk at lunch.  Usually only about ten minutes, but enough to get me out of the house, get the blood circulating, and get a little vitamin D.  

Probably the single nicest thing about working from home is the lack of commuting.  I've been using the extra time in the mornings to scan more of Dad's slides.  I've been smashing out two boxes a week.  The evenings are a little less structured.  I've got a little list of things to do in the extra time between 5pm and 6pm, but haven't really done too much constructive with the extra time.  I am able to knock off work when I want to though, and not either have to wait for the sweetie or catch a bus.  So that's really nice.  My flex time is a bit too high at the moment, so will try and ease that down a bit, then will keep mostly fairly regular hours, which will also be nice.

Shopping is the biggest challenge of all of this.  I want to minimise how often I go out, so need to do bigger shops when I do go (and go by myself which is super sad - the sweetie and I have always gone shopping together).  There's three people eating here, two of us eating all meals at home, which means we need a lot more food in the house.  If I'm shopping fortnightly I have to get stuff for the first week that has to be eaten quickly, and stuff for the second week that lasts longer.  Fridge space is a huge issue at the beginning of the fortnight.  The supermarkets are out of various things at various times, so there's no guarantee that when you do go shopping you'll be able to get what you need.  I haven't seen toilet paper in Coles since we got one of the last packs when we got back from Pete's 40th at the beginning of March.  Fortunately I've been able to get it at Chris's so we haven't run out.  As I mentioned in another blog entry, we don't eat a lot of packaged food, mostly fresh food.  But the stuff that we do use all the time (tinned tomatoes, tomato paste and rice) has been difficult to get.  Again, I've been able to get things from Chris's when really needed.  

The rest of my routine hasn't changed.  I still get up at the same time (Stu plays on his phone a little longer before getting up).  I still shower and wear the exact same thing - my uniform of jeans a tshirt, with a jumper when it's cold.  I do the same things on the weekends - housework stuff and whatever projects/hobbies I'm working on.  I don't have any more time on my hands than normal, so it's not like I have time to binge watch anything.   Maybe if we do get sick we can binge watch stuff.  

The clutter is getting to me though.  We have things that need to go to the tip (like our old oven), or the Green Shed, or Lifeline.  But while I think the tip and the Green Shed are still open, I would classify them as non-essential.  So we have piles of stuff around the house.  And Stu could really use a better desk in his study, but we can't just go shopping for a new one.  Well, again, we probably *could* but we're trying to be good about this whole staying at home except for essential stuff thing...  

The only other significant change is not catching up with friends.  We would go out or have people over I guess on average every other weekend.  So that's not happening (other than a couple of virtual catchups).  It's a little sad, but remember, we're owls.  We like keeping to ourselves :)

In all of this we have been extremelly lucky/blessed.  We haven't had to stress about losing our jobs, or have to take care of kids as well as work, or wonder where the money for our next meal is going to come from.  2020 is sure going to be one hell of a year .. 

Gosh what a crazy week and a half.  The world has gone mad.  Toilet paper hoarders should be shot.  

So Saturday a week and a half ago.  I can't even remember it.  Spent all morning tidying the bedroom end of the house and clearing the lounge room floor of all the stuff that got dumped in there when we cleared out space for Stu's study.  Did mostly minifig sorting of Vic's Lego.  Had salmon for dinner and watched Spectre.

Sunday morning I got up early and headed in to see the balloons.  I thought I'd go to the north side of the lake this year.  But as soon as I got out of the car I knew they wouldn't be going up - far too windy.  I was right.  Checked on Twitter and Events Canberra said it was off.  Oh well.  Ended up spending most of the day doing minifig sorting.  In the afternoon Stu tried to make some of his low carb bread but the oven wouldn't work properly.  Also, strangely, there was a light on in the back of the oven that I'd never seen before.  He finished his bread, and I cooked dinner (roast beef with veggies), with the bottom element, but I managed to burn the bottom of the veggies and the beef was a bit overdone.  I had made a marinade to try and use up some of the mustard powder we'd had in the house forever.  Soy sauce, olive oil, ginger, garlic, mustard powder, brown sugar.  Was actually really nice.  

Watched BBT and Picard in the evening.

Monday I woke up at Dentist Time and probably only got another half hours' sleep, so zombie day Monday.  We did do our food shopping in the evening.  Even the fresh food was mostly sold out this time.

Got home quite late, but still made a zucchini noodle "carbonara" (not actually carbonara, but cream, bacon, mushrooms, garlic, herbs, cheese).  Yummo.  

Tuesday had the slight hint of a sore throat and cough.  Ordinarily I would have gone to work anyways, as I felt ok.  But in these uncertain times I decided to work from home because I could.  It was highly unlikely to be covid-19, as there were only like half a dozen cases in the ACT at the time, but you never know.

Managed to get some toilet paper from Chris's and made pasta bolognase for dinner.  After dinner we watched Labyrinth, to celebrate 30 years ago to the day that I first saw it on St Patrick's Day in 1990.  I've seen that movie probably fifty times, and yet I somehow never knew that Kenny Baker was in it as part of the goblin corps!!

Oh I forgot to mention we finished the Mandalorian at some point last week.  Remind me I need to put on the last two episodes for David some time.

Wednesday I worked from home again.  Not sure I was really sick or just imagining it.  No fever.  Still only the slightest hint of a cough/sore throat.  If it was a cold it was the mildest cold I've ever had.  The day was crazy busy.  Finished geotagging day 4 of our USA 2004 trip in the evening.

Thursday.  Not sick anymore.  But still at home.  I suspect I'll be working from home for the next several months.  Although I might have to pop into work every so often on the weekends to rotate out my backup drives.  Missed drinks (which as of writing tonight was the last drinks until further notice).  Sad times.  Watched The Big Short in the evening.  Somewhat topical at the moment with the economy in freefall.  While noone can really quantify how many people die as a result of increased unemployment, it's very likely a thing, and even if people don't die, the misery caused by losing jobs/houses/marriages would be immense.  I do wonder about the mass unemployment caused by shutting everything down because of the coronavirus pandemic and how many people will die as a result of that, versus from the virus itself.  

Contrails crisscrossed the sky all day Thursday, this is a set of five of them in the evening.

Friday was playing with SNMP V3.  In the evening I watched both versions of Lady and the Tramp.  All the reviewers on IMDB on the remake generally hated it.  It was actually quite similar to the original in terms of plot, just fleshed out a little in places.  I was pretty impressed with the CGI generally.  Did they use real dogs and just superimpose the faces?  Or were the dogs all CGI?  I should Google that crap.  But what I did find a bit jarring was the interracial marriage in 1909 Missouri.  Just wouldn't have happened. That and just some of the dialogue was too "modern" ("I missed you guys"). (And how could a "poor" musician afford such a huge house anyway?).  If they'd set it in modern times and not tried to make it look like a period piece, I think it would have worked better.  

Friday night couldn't get to sleep for hours, so ended up sleeping in a bit, which made me feel like half Saturday was wasted.  Grunt.  But did a bunch of house stuff, and picked more parts for another six Lego sets in the afternoon.  "Watched" the Blue Danube on YouTube, followed by Rhapsody in Blue, and then put on my Fantasia 2000 DVD, and finally The Planets.  Was a pretty great afternoon actually.  We felt like a pandemic movie in the evening.  Netflix has taken down Contagion, so we watched World War Z.  "Zombies" aside, I found it all a little what the?  I mean, why would the UN send out a rescue mission for someone that didn't even work for them anymore?  Doesn't make any logical sense.  

And it was a blood bath.  Ok so wine.  And it wasn't even mine.  What a waste of wine ;)

Sunday kept our social distance but had Maccas for brunch.  But Stu wasn't feeling the best (he probably got whatever I had, but again, a super mild case of whatever it was), so he stayed in the car while I did the shopping.  All three butchers at the markets were closed because they'd all run out meat, and chicken shop was closing up.  And it wasn't even lunch time!!  So got all our fruit and veg.  Then popped into Bunnings because David wanted me to get a new light for the oven, but they didn't have what I needed so I ended up getting the wrong thing, le sigh.  Also needed some cockroach and moth deterrants.  Then to Coles to get meat and some other bits and pieces.  There was some meat there, certainly more than last time.  I told the checkout chick that all the butchers at the markets were closed, and she said they'd sold out of meat completely on the Saturday as well.  I will be really pissed if I hear of people throwing out fresh food because they hoarded too much and couldn't get through it.  That would be so wasteful and so WRONG when there's people that can't even get food at the moment.  Put on dinner when I got home (slow cooked beef stew). 

David pulled the oven apart and found the cause of the mystery light - it was the back fan force element arcing.  We were lucky it didn't burn the house down or electrocute the sweetie.

He also installed a new clothes line for us, because the old one was falling apart (we'd already had one of the four lines break and the others were looking fragile).

Bestest brother ever!!

Spent all afternoon cleaning the oven, and had the beef stew for dinner, followed by Robot Chicken's Star Wars episode.

Monday I woke up at Dentist Time.  Again.  I got up for a bit this time, but didn't help much.  Blah morning.  Meanwhile David was sourcing parts for the oven.  He found a place he could get an element, but he also wanted to replace the cooling fan, which I think died years ago.  He wouldn't be able to get that for another two days, so it'd mean extra work and delays and would it really be worth fixing a probably nearly thirty year old oven?

Also.  Ewww.

So we bought a new one.  Whoops.

I wasn't in any fit mental or physical state to be out buying home appliances.  So I don't know if I did the right thing.  But we did get a fairly good discount on a discontinued De Longhi, so maybe??  The worst part?  Those hours wasted cleaning the old one :(:(:(

The afternoon was filled with too many dumb meetings and by the end of the day I really just needed a drink and an early night (which I had).

Monday night I slept really well, felt good all day.

Tuesday night (last night) I woke up at 1:20 and stayed awake for over four hours, mostly stressing about All The Things.  Mostly whether we'll be able to get food in the coming weeks/months.  And what all those unemployed people are going to do about food and rent and mortgages and kids.  At 5am, after a massive meltdown, I got up, had a double shot of Baileys, turned my alarm off, and eventually fell asleep a bit after 5:30 for two hours.  I was still super tired today though.  

Tonight I walked down to the end of the street and back.  Only nine minutes of walking, but I haven't done *any* walking in over a week.  Normally I get twenty minutes a day at lunch, so I've been feeling like a big fat blob.

In the past week, airlines have shutdown their flights, there's been travel bans, restaurants and "non essential" stores have been shut down.  My next holiday has been postponed for two years.  We were going to see the Passion Play in Oberammergau, which I've been wanting to see for over thirty years.  I find it somewhat ironic?  strange? weird twist of fate? that they've had to postpone due to a plague, when it was a plague that brought about its existence in the first place.  Luckily they've only postponed it and not outright cancelled it, as Mum might not be around for the one in ten years.  She might not be around in two years either if Covid-19 hits her.  Stay away from people Mum! :)

Stay safe (and home!) everyone!!

Last Tuesday morning I started scanning Dad's slides. There's about 7000 of them. I'm aiming for one box of 36 a week (more if I'm not too busy), which should mean I could get it all done in about four years. If I don't die of Covid-19 first. I had a play with the dust and scratch filter and it pretty much works like magic. I should have used it on Mum's slides. Oh well. I'm still impressed how well my 14 year old scanner works (Christmas present from the sweetie in 2005). Tuesday evening was washing, blogging, Lego sorting, geotagging (some of Day 3 of USA 2004 trip). I also started to try and figure out the catalog numbers for the hundreds of Vic's minifigs, and what sets they go in. He sure has a lot that don't belong to any particular set he had, so he must have gotten large quantities of loose Lego not in sets.

Wednesday evening the sweetie took me out to dinner because he's the best sweetie ever.  Went to Kinn Thai and had softshelled crab again, and orange duck.  Yumm.  Then more Lego and minifig sorting and finished geotagging day 3.

It rained during the week.  A lot.  Looky at this - the new Belconnen swimming pool they dug out the past couple of weeks!

Thursday was Gin night. Four of them tasted like, well, gin. One was a bit more interesting. And there were two flavoured ones - shiraz, and earl grey. They looked, smelt and tasted of those respective drinks. Cool stuff. Well the shiraz one was, the Earl Grey tasted like tea. We had F over for pizza and tv after.

Friday evening I had to work. My work was only about a minutes' worth, but I stuck around in case they needed my help with anything (or if I'd missed a firewall rule somewhere). Bailed at 11pm.

Saturday I checked in at work and everything seemed to be going ok. So midmorning we headed down the coast (via Belco to pick up a present for Pete). The blackened bush started at Nerriga (most of the town was saved) and stayed black the entire way to the coast. Absolutely heartbreaking. It was actually amazing to see just how much property had been saved though. In places it was completely burnt bush all around, and in the middle there would be a house intact. Amazing job done by all involved, especially the firies.

And because it's Australia, you have bushfires one week, raging floods the next.

We headed straight for Huskisson and went to the beach briefly because, coast.

Then had some lunch, picked up some supplies, then headed for Kit's. Their place was basically completely surrounded by fires, but their street was saved.  At Bewong it looked like the firies stood on the highway and said "you shall not pass" .. 

We setup the house then waited for Pete to get home. It wasn't a complete surprise because his mum spilled the beans, but he was expecting just his sister and maybe a couple of his local mates, but instead he got a small crowd so that was pretty cool :) So yeah nice party, and only one tantrum haha.

We had dessert first.  Because that's what adulting is all about.

Akubra party!

The itty bitty bbq gas bottle ran out, so they hooked up the house one to it.

I was up at normal time the next morning, but then had to wait hours for everyone else. Eventually Kit got up and I could copy all the wedding videos for them. Had some brunch, then we headed home.

Was too tired to do much Sunday arvo/evening so just had a quiet one and an early night.

Monday it was full steam ahead rearranging the house. Stu had been wanting some study space for quite a while. He tried setting up a space downstairs last year but he never really liked it. So we emptied out the dumping ground room, brought up the couch and swapped the tables around. It took all day. And now everything from the room is spread all around the house. Which is stressful in itself. hrmmm.

We also went out at lunch to do our food shopping.  We hadn't been in three weeks so we were pretty bare.  Of course the empty shelves were something to behold.  No toilet paper, almost no tissues or paper towel (people thinking they could use that instead of toilet paper??).  Very little rice, pasta and long life milk, no flour.  Just madness.  

Cooked curried sausages for dinner (to use up some of the curry powder that's been sitting in the spice cupboard for ten years or more).  They were pretty good.  I'll put the recipe separately, because I have this feeling I'll be using it again heh.

Tuesday woke up at 1:30 with hurty and never got back to sleep :( So zombie day Tuesday. It took about 14 goes of disconnecting and reconnecting my phone on Tuesday night to download the seven videos I'd taken at the party. Fricken HATE Apple.

Wednesday we finished season 6 of Big Bang Theory - half way through!

Tonight I've been watching the 1970 Ned Kelly which I've never actually seen.  There's not much on IMDB about it, but it does note it was filmed in Braidwood, and look at that!  So it was!  Fifty years later and all the buildings are still there (screenshots from the movie and Google Street View).  Enjoyed it more than My Brilliant Career.

I brought some glow sticks home from the party.  Six days later and they're still actually glowing.  !!   Although very faint now.  The first couple of nights the phone could still take pretty decent photos of them.

Urgh.  I hate Apple.  But more on that later.

Monday I finished blogging our Hong Kong and Singapore photos and got them online which was good.  Finally I achieved something.  Hurrah.  Logged onto our Disney+ account and had a look around.  There's a bunch of the new live action movies I want to see (although not Lion King), and Toy Story 4 is coming in February.  But there's a bunch of things I want to watch before we take a break from it.

Tuesday.  Blerf.  Stoopid insomnia.  Couldn't get to sleep *and* woke up for ages feeling uncomfortable.  Spent the day deleting All The Things.  Had EPIC steaks for dinner (I didn't eat all this! Not even one of them! ;) ).

Wednesday I extracted all the geodata out of Google Earth (myplaces.kml) from the geotagging I did of our flights across America in 2000.  Used exiftool to take that geodata to geotag the files, and then fix them up slightly (because annoyingly the data has tilt and range, it doesn't have altitude in the geodata, although I did calculate it trigonometrically).  

And it rained!  A bit anyway.

And people that spit chewing gum onto the ground have to be up there with the most disgusting ferals on the planet.  Right up there with those who leave their dog turds on other people's front lawns.

Then Echofon lost its auth, and Internode started blocking me from sending mail via its smtp server.

So a bit of fun, but also a lot of pain.

Thursday we had a bbq at work to finally finish off all the sausages from the Christmas Party.  Stu wanted to have drinks after work so I went to get him, but first we had dinner of pizzas at Grease Monkey.

The lake was very low last week...

Friday might have shared some wine with Neil at Grill'd.  Made tacos for dinner.  Watched the first episode of Who is America, which was extremelly cringey (especially the gun fanatics).  

Saturday morning (after waking up at 3:50 #grunt) I spent much of the morning filing and organising my old photos (mainly the ones taken on my Olympus camera between 1999 and 2004, as well as a bunch taken on the Sony in 2004).  Making sure everything had the date in the file name (so I can find them for the This Day in History project) and just general neatness.  Also with a view to sorting out all the kids' photos for Ryan's 21st.. hrmm.. 

Then we headed out to the club.  Had a swim then a bit of an antisocial with a bunch of people that were out there.  The new carpet and kitchen bench are amazing.

Sunday morning I spent ages going through the "tool shed" in our van, taking of stock of what's there and sorting things out.  Then came home and spent the rest of the day doing photo filing and sorting.

Monday had a super intense hail storm.  Luckily our car was under cover, and it all missed our house.  But the carnage in Canberra was crazy.  Hundreds if not thousands of cars, awnings and gardens damaged or destroyed.  I'll put up some pics in another post.

Did some food shopping in the afternoon and marvelled at the blue sky, which we really haven't seen in nearly two months.

Came home and then went into battle with Apple.  As per usual, downloading even regular videos caused the device is not attached to the system error.  Had to reboot the phone because it refused to show me the file system at all afterwards.  Twice.  Had to do *multiple* reconnects of the cable to even show the file system.  Then when I got (most of) the files, most files' timestamps were changed by Apple on the phone and had to be manually fixed.  Took literally all evening to get all most of my files.  Transferred some with Google Drive, but even one of the regular videos (not a timelapse) won't play. F#%$ I hate Apple.

Tonight I got home and did a water change in Chrissie's tank and cooked and ate dinner and then it was like 20:00.  #grunt  And then I spent the next hour or so continuing to fight with Apple.  I should paste the table of crazy inconsistent behaviour.  In the end David used his Macbook to recode the couple of videos that I couldn't get to play.

You're lucky you got this blog entry at all.  Two nights battling with Apple is killing my will to live, or in fact do anything.  And I have a billion things that need doing, and none of them are getting done.  I'm dying from the stress of it all.

I don't think I saw any movies this week.  Sad times.  

The new year started for us in the Bermuda Triangle! It was 9am Caribbean time, 12am AEDT time. Stu was in bed and I was eating breakfast. And I watched the Sydney fireworks. Live. On an ocean liner. In the middle of the North Atlantic. I love technology :) We actually managed to stay awake til midnight ship time and heard them sound the horn to mark midnight.

So our overseas trip of the year was just the tail end of our North Atlantic crossing and Caribbean cruise. Had four days in New York which is not nearly enough time. Came home via Singapore on the longest commercial flight you can take (for now) - 18 hours!. Early in February I went up to Sydney to visit Mum for a post-Christmas catchup. Went and saw a Lego show, took the River Cat to Parramatta and caught up with Pam, and later with Daniel and Fi. Didn't get to see the Cartans on the Sunday morning which was a shame because Doug Cartan died later in the year. Visited Luc and Lizzi for Ryan's penultimate donut photo and saw Cordeaux Dam on the way home. We went down to see Kit and Pete several times - in March to see their house and go to their engagement party, in July for a visit and to do some wedding planning and go to the zoo, in November to do some wedding planning and meet and ride Kit's new horse Jet, and in December for their wedding. Went and visited David in Junee in June. In August I went up to Sydney for Diana and Graham's funeral, and Chrissie and I geeked out at standing in the spot we met thirty years and a couple of weeks earlier. Came home via Dapto that trip to meet up with Kit who wanted to look at a horse (not Jet), and had a fun drive up Macquarie Pass. In November we went to Melbourne for the weekend to see Harry Potter and the Cursed Child with Hannah and Rita.

Work was pretty decent this year. My life is four things: source, dest, port, protocol. Simple. Except way too many people don't understand basic client-server communication which is pretty frustrating. Whenever I had the time I would clean things. Our section disbanded (or was announced it would be disbanded) around February 14 - exactly one and a half years after I started in that section. I went back to comms but kept sitting in the same place for a while longer until they did a bit of a floor reshuffle. Fortunately I was able to get a seat away from the corridor and things stayed pretty stable which is essential for my mental health. Socially there was a big event at the beginning of the year which included an Escape Room, and dinner at the War Memorial, Laser Tag, and I ran a trivia night for it (using mostly recycled questions). We won a trivia night in April which meant we ran one in September. Had a whiskey night in June and a ball in October. Our drinking buddies dropped like flies though - Lachie, then Doc, then Hannah. Very sad times. Ran our annual Christmas party at the lake again, but it was very smokey and numbers were down - only about 40 this year!

On Valentines Day I had my appendix out! My first ever general anesthetic and first ever hospital stay. Then in April Annie had hers out too - didn't know these things were contagious ;) After surviving the plague ship (don't travel in northern hemisphere winters with old people - everyone gets sick) and not even getting sick when Stu did, I had a very small cold in February, but then survived all winter without getting sick again, only to get one in September then another one in December. The one in December was the worst and I was coughing for a couple of weeks, including being sick at Kit's wedding. Insomnia was a lot better this year but still got bouts of it.

Saw a bit of my family. Saw Mum in Sydney in February. David and Kat came to stay in April. Took them out for a bbq at the new van. Mum came to visit in June and we went down to Junee to visit David. Later blacklisted Kat from ever coming here again - I can't stand the way she treats David and there's no way I could be civil to her if I saw her ever again. David came to visit in October and we took him out for his birthday and then on a tram because he was going to interview for a job driving them. David got the job, and moved in with us in November (had to clean out space in the bedroom, bathroom, pantry and study). Mum came down at Christmas for a couple of days. We saw a little bit of Stu's family too. The other Stu came over for dinner in January. Kerry and the kids came to see the balloons in March and dropped in to visit. Dropped in to see Annie and the kids in April and save Daisy's life (emergency cash supply). Scott and Kerry and the kids dropped in briefly in October. Saw Noah on his 18th birthday. Stu and Annie and the family came over for Christmas lunch. I saw a bit of Chrissie during the year. Went over for a couple of low key dinners in January (hot cross bun ice cream!) and December, saw her the night her aunty and uncle were murdered and we just tried to process, had a few lunches out and about, and a nice BBQ on Anzac Day which also included her Dad, siblings and their partners. Saw quite a lot of EffanC and the N-gang which was great, including a couple of dinners at R&F's, various visits back and forth and dinners out at Pot Belly and Malaysian Chapter with EffanC including an election night event and New Years. We're still missing Kit and Pete and the chickens although did see them a few times during the year. Other than the four times we went down to the coast, they also came to stay for Tarun's wedding in March. Went wedding dress shopping with Kit then had dinner at Old Canberra Inn for Pete and Leisa's birthdays. They came back again in April to see Kit's brother before he went home to Germany. Kit came up again in May for Katie's sister's funeral and her friend Sophie's wedding. I organised Kit's Hen's at the end of November - Laser Tag and dinner at George Harcourt with drinks after at Moby's. And I ended up being a bridesmaid at their wedding after it became too difficult for Audrey. We farewelled Stewie and Cath (again) in February. Fiona came to stay the weekend after I got my appendix out, but was pretty stressed about it because everyone was sick and I couldn't sleep in the spare bed. Jenn came over a week later for a Turkish feast, and we caught up for drinks with her in October. Went to see Doc's new place with a big group of work peoples which was lovely. Had a couple of dinners with Hannah, at Dumpling Inn and Pizza Artigiana so Stu could get to know her before we went away together. Had our annual hanami part with Nat and Andrew, although I was sick the original weekend and the flowers were mostly all gone by the time they did get to come over. And went to @CLBradley's 60th at Ciscos.

Spent a bit of time at our social club. There was a Finnish night in March, with a wallaroo joey. Not to eat - that's Australian, not Finnish ;) In April we bought a well-established van off another member to give us some space to move (our old van was just barely big enough to sleep in, and even then not really). Sold the old one for a lot less that we paid for it because it had a leak that we never fixed and wasn't in great condition. Spent a bit of time cleaning and decluttering the new one, but there's still a long way to go. Had Chris and Ian's anniversary there, it's been a shame that I've had to miss two of them over the years. We did Christmas in July again for a huge crowd. Had a couple of nights there in August, including the AGM on Stu's birthday (doh!), and another night in September. September was a Chilean night, which was great, but some people really need to learn to better estimate catering. I mean a bit of overcatering is fine, you don't want to run out, but you also don't want an entire fridge full of leftover food - both cooked and uncooked! Went for Oktoberfest in October. We missed the Christmas party because we were down the coast at Kit and Pete's wedding. We were going to go out at New Years, but I was too nervous about the weather and potential for fires.

Pretty quiet fish year. I discovered my angel is a girl - she laid a couple of batches of eggs! At the end of the year I had four active tanks. The angel tank, with the angel, a cory, and a sucking catfish. The two foot, with three black neon tetras and a sucking catfish. Chrissie's little tank, with two clown loaches and a sucking catfish. And the downstairs two foot, with one large danio. Stu has his four foot which is always covered in algae because the lights are too good and there's not enough algae eaters, a tiny tank on his desk with a white cloud, and a little tank downstairs with a white cloud. There's also four empty tanks that were for killifish but they all died. I want to restock my tanks, but needed to prove I can take care of them first (ie, making sure at least one of them gets a water change every weekend, so no more than four weeks between water changes for each tank).

Nothing much on the Lego front either. I'm still working on sorting out Vic's Lego. It's extremelly slow going. It takes a good chunk of the weekend to do pick parts for six sets, so if there's anything on on a weekend nothing would happen. Really need to get back into it, as I really want my tubs and floor space back.

Not so many jigsaws this year either. I feel like there's too many other important things to do to "waste time" doing jigsaws :( Similarly with any of my other hobbies.

The weather was *hot* when we got back from overseas in January. We had the cooler running for three weeks straight. There were a lot of thunderstorms at the beginning of the year too. Had a duststorm in February. Then drought with a dry winter and super dry November and December, and the shroud of bushfire smoke for most of December.

Around the house.. I took a few days off at Easter to have a ten day break, and we Marie Kondo'd the house - well, clothes, linen cupboard, under the house a bit, some of the garage, and the pantry. David came during that break and replaced the light in the fan light, and also the kitchen lights, with LEDs. Had the sewer pipes eeled in May and he cleared a blockage at the same spot twelve metres in as last time. For Christmas I treated us to new towels - the first time in my life I've ever had matching bathroom linen - loving it!

Considering it feels like we don't eat out all that often, it seems like we ate out a lot. I tried Master Hin Dumplings at the mall. Very average dumplings. I'm surprised they're actually still there. Went to Chong Co on Australia Day and had their delivery a couple of times. Went to Gus's with the sweetie in February. Malaysian Chapter and Pot Belly a couple of times with EffanC, and for a work farewell lunch. Indian Pantry with Cath. Had Pho Hub with Neil. A couple of work lunches at Chompy's. Had Yat Bun Tong at least once with the sweetie. Possibly only made it to Dumpling Inn once this year - to meet up with Hannah so she and Stu could meet and we could discuss Harry Potter. The sweetie took me out to Temporada on our anniversary which was expensive but excellent. A group of us went to Rashays for their $5 lunches in May. We haven't been back since. Tried Tasting China and Akiba which were both pretty good. Went to Chez Kimchi a few times. They're ok but their menu is just a mess. Had Disappointing Sushi (aka Hero Sushi in Canberra Centre) a couple of times. It always meets expectations - it's always disappointing. We had Pizza Artigiana a couple of times. The first in July to meet Hannah's flatmate Rita who we were going to see Harry Potter with, and again with Stu in August. Tried lunch at 54 Benjamin a couple of times. Nice, but a bit expensive to do too often for lunches. Had Alice's in July, the Lake George Hotel in Bungendore in August with EffanC, Bella Vista on my birthday, Happy's in December. Tried out Yarralumla Kebabs' new store in Belco. Pro tip - take a knife and cut one in two and split it with someone - otherwise you'll feel to stuffed at the end (even Stu finds them too big!!). And went to Bharat International with some work guys. And there were several treks to Kingsley's ;)

It seems I wasn't terribly creative in the kitchen this year. Or maybe I just didn't document things. We ate one of Kit's little roosters and made a couple of lasagnas with her tomatoes. I had a lot of fun with puff pastry - making cheese and vegemite scrolls, pizza scrolls and cheese twists. Made tacos a couple of times. A large kit works a lot better with three people than two ;) Made a gnocchi carbonara bake a couple of times. Also made cheesy hash browns which are always pretty awesome. And made a huge batch of gingerbread biscuits for Christmas.

The only theatre/shows/exhibitions I saw were two Lego things (Lego Cities by Ryan McNaught in Sydney, and a private Lego Christmas Show in Ngunnawal), and Harry Potter and the Cursed Child in Melbourne.

The only movie I saw in theatres was the Lego Movie 2 - the Second Part.

Saw a lot more movies on TV. As well as invididual movies which I won't list, we (or I) also carried on watching movies in series. Including:

• Kung Fu Panda 1 and 2
• Sherlock Holmes 1 and 2 (Robert Downey Junior version)
• The Hobbit 1, 2 and 3
• James Bond movies, starting in April, still haven't quite finished
• Paddington 1 and 2
• Bridget Jones 1 and 2
• Molly Ringwald teen movies (except Breakfast Club cause that's kinda boring)
• A few Tom Hanks movies
• Twilight saga
• Die Hard 1, 2 and 3 (haven't had a chance to see the rest yet)

Watched a surprising amount of TV too!

• The Good Place Season 3
• Tidying Up with Marie Kondo
• Discovery Season 2
• Fuller House Season 4
• MacGyver Season 1, start of Season 2
• Homeland Season 7
• Brooklyn 99 - up to season 5
• Death in Paradise Season 3
• Lego Masters
• Veronica Mars Season 4
• The Good Place Season 4
• The Amazing Race
• Fuller House Season 5

I'm not a big reader but did get through some books:

• Heaven is for Real - Todd Burpo
• The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and six more - Roald Dahl
• Silicon Snake Oil - Clifford Stoll
• Little Brother - Cory Doctorow
• The Cult of LEGO - John Baichtal and Joe Meno
• You Always Remember the First Time - edited by B.S. Johnson
• The Reader - Bernhard Schlink
• On the Road - Jack Kerouac (never finished)

And as always, I finish off with a big list of other bits and pieces..

• Started blogging weekly on Sunday nights, as that seems to happen more consistently, and get my photos online in a more timely manner
• Still raging that Apple sees fit to modify the timestamps on my photos and screenshots - on the phone!!
• Posted my Canberra 1986-2016 blog to Reddit and got a lot of nice comments
• Android (at least the last two Stu's had) has a SUPER annoying bug where the forward facing camera has no date taken exif data saved. Makes it harder to geotag the photos.
• Finally filled up my 2T drives with backups, had to split them out. Also bought a 4T drive to have room for everything. Took nearly a week to copy everything
• Found "Tent Go Bye Byes" on the internet so Mum could finally see what all the fuss was about in 1983
• Finished scanning all of Mum's photo prints
• Saw the Balloon Fiesta
• Took a stack of Tupperware to the Green Shed
• Read all of Julie Powell's "Julie and Julia" blog (started and got a good chunk of the way through in February after I had my appendix out, finished in September)
• Collected all the Coles Stikeez. And Little Shop 2
• The neighbours got ducks, although they didn't keep them for too long
• Got asked to be a bridesmaid at Kit's wedding. Got the shoes for the girls
• Finished scanning all of Mum's analogue photos. Started on her slides.
• Got our democracy sausage in May
• Finished labelling all 10000-odd photos from our last trip
• Created an S3 bucket for holiday photos. Still haven't gotten around to doing anything with it.
• Filled with rage at Qantas' website and general customer service, booked my next trip with Emirates instead
• Three cats we know - Pookie, Celeste and George - all had to be put down
• Processed and labelled all our Hong Kong and Singapore 2016 photos and got them into the blog
• NBN screwed us over - disconnected us during upgrades and never bothered to reconnect us. Had to get a tech to come out and fix it. Found out a while later they'd downgraded our speed from about 25mb to 12mbit. Bastards. (Edit: they broke the connector, hence only half the speed, later we got it fixed)
• Microsoft FINALLY enabled control-backspace in Notepad!!
• STILL raging at Apple and the inability to copy timelapse (and even regular video) files to my computer
• Bought a toasted sandwich maker - loving that
• David bought me a new frying pan (and another one at Christmas)
• Had my hair trimmed. Trimmed is an understatement.
• Got my North Atlantic trip fully labelled and blogged
• Didn't see blue sky in Canberra from before Kit's wedding til the end of the year
• Saddened by the bushfires that raged through south-eastern Australia
• Played some escape games on my phone which are a lot of fun
• Watched both Christmas Carols events. Carols in the Domain are pretty tacky but Melbourne's Carols by Candlelight is still ok.
• Spent the last couple of days of the year tidying and organising the house, and catching up on blogging

We finished out the year at EffanC's for a quiet evening with great friends.

Three weekends ago we headed down the coast for Kit and Pete's wedding.  We left on the Thursday after lunch.  I was still sick and coughing and had been in bed all morning.  Hurrah.  

Driving down Smith's Gap we saw the fires over at Braidwood.

This was the last weekend we were to see blue skies this year.  As I write it's been three weeks since we saw properly blue sky (except maybe a day or two).

This C-130 water bomber (N134CG) had just left HMAS Albatross.  

We stayed at the Springs Shoalhaven, quite close to the wedding venue.  Pleasant enough place.  It had a pool although I didn't have a swim (Stu did).  Both those beds were *very* soft.  I took the single to give myself a bit of distance from the sweetie with my coughing.  

We chilled out for a bit, then went next door to the Ex Serviceman's Club for dinner.  It had a lovely aspect, facing north over the golf course.  At the far northern end of the golf course was the venue for the wedding. 

Pasta I had for dinner

Spent half the night coughing.  Of course.

Stu thought it might be nice to have room service breakfast on the Friday, so we ordered that the night before.  Unfortunately because I'd had so little sleep I really wasn't hungry when it turned up at the appointed time.  It was nice enough though and I would have enjoyed it on another day.  

I pretty much spent the morning in bed.  We were waiting for word from Kit to see if they needed our help transporting anything or setting anything up, but they were running late and a bit frazzled.  In the end the sweetie and I went into Nowra to get some supplies (I still wasn't very hungry) and stuff for the wedding.  Then we headed all the way down to the end of Greenwell Road to have a look at the water.  That was quite nice.

Dropped the sweetie back to the motel, then met up with Chloe, Katie and Kit so we could all get our nails done.  I've never had my nails done professionally before.  

The result!

Picked up the sweetie, then it was off to the rehearsal.  There were quite a lot of people there and it was a little bit chaotic, so took quite a while to get through.  

Dropped off the sweetie again, then to Kit and Pete's to load up the car with food.  Swung by the motel on the way back and got Stu to drop me at the venue with all the gear/food.  He'd had a rotten time at the Ex-Serviceman's club - it was super noisy and crowded and he had to wait *forever* for food and couldn't even go get another drink because otherwise he'd have lost his table.  Poor thing.  Then he headed back to the motel while I stayed at the venue.

At the venue four of us girls stayed in the "Bunk House", while Kit stayed by herself in her own room (at Chloe's recommendation to get a better night's sleep).  

Chloe got us some takeaway burgers for dinner (and very nicely got me a kids meal so it was a lot smaller ;) ).

Chloe and Audrey made up little bubble blowers.

And Katie and Kit made up decorations.

I supervised ;)

I slept on my inflatable mattress.  Or rather, I *didn't* sleep on the mattress.  I was so stressed about my coughing/snoring keeping Katie awake, that I couldn't get to sleep til very very very late.  And then I woke up early.  I think I might have gotten about two hours sleep.  How to recover from a cold - get lots of rest.  Yeah right.  Vowed never to sleep in the same room as anyone else (aside from the sweetie) ever again in my life.

Anyways.  I'll leave the day of the wedding to the next post.

This magpie was hand raised by the owners of the venue, and hung around while we cleaned up.  Very cool.

After driving Pete's ute back to their place late morning, with everyone's cars full of *stuff* that we'd spent all morning packing up, we finally headed home.  

We couldn't even see Smith's Gap through all the smoke.

This was leftovers of a massive antipasto platter that we had at the wedding (I put it in the fridges overnight, everyone thought I was mad heh).  We didn't need to do any food shopping that week - we just ate this all week!

Sunday afternoon watched the finale of The Amazing Race.  I quite enjoyed the season, although with a limited Australian budget they only went to two other continents (Africa and Asia).  After "the influencers" went, there wasn't really anyone I *didn't* want to win, except maybe the nurses, they came across as a bit dumb.  Good on the guys that won!

Monday was too busy to actually achieve anything much at work.  hrmm.  I did manage to get dinner/washing/kitchen done by 19:25 which was nice.

Tuesday wasn't much better at work - so busy I don't know where to start, and when I do start it's just interruption after interruption.  So much smoke around too!  And I totally ruined David's day by preempting Christmas shopping on him.  

Tuesday evening went to Chrissie's for dinner - some yummy fried chicken, skewers and fried rice.

We started calling the smoke Five O'Clock Charlie because it keeps coming around in the evening.

Tuesday night I couldn't get to sleep - stoopid restless legs.  Then work up really early.  Hurrah.  Got cranky at Italian Bite putting the price of their small place up from $7.90 to $9.50.  So went to Ali Baba, only to get cranky at them because they've downsized their kebabs - meaning if you ask for a small you get a small, but it's the price of their "original".  So $9.90 for a small.  Not. Happy. Jan.  They'll go out of business at that rate, with Yarralumla kebabs offering about four times the food for only $5 more.  

Wednesday night I went to bed early, but another night of restless legs keeping me awake late.  Zombie day Thursday.  Finished BBT up to the end of season 4.  Had a wildly unhealthy lunch with the sweetie at Kimchi.

Friday I woke up at 4:15 stressing about the party.  Then. Smoke.  So. Much. Smoke.  One guy thought we should cancel, but I already had all the meat.  We thought about doing it on prem, but the poo-pooers probably would have had a hissy fit, so we went ahead with the lake anyway.  Noone did any running around, we just chilled and ate and drank and had quite a lovely time, and there was even a slight breeze to make it all less unpleasant.  At one point there was just me and twenty-eight other boys ;)  Unfortunately there was a *lot* of extra food as there were less people and it was so damned hot.  I caught my duck again, although I didn't catch her wings so she was a bit more stressed and uncomfortable.  Then she pooped on my hand haha.

Came home and we watched Die Hard 2.

Saturday morning I woke up at 5:00 stressing about the leftovers.  Because that's what I do.  Le sigh. 

Spent much of the day scanning mum's negatives and labelling Singapore photos.  David and I had some of the leftover sausages in the morning, and we didn't die of food poisoning, w00t. I might have made gingerbread cookies.

Went to the Green Shed in the afternoon and did a bit of shopping in Gungahlin.  Finished off last week's lamb for dinner, watched some BBT, then Carols in the Domain.  We haven't watched commercial television in literally months, and when we turned on the tv guess what, a commercial.  Le sigh.  I reckon there's more adverts and promotions and just *fluff* than actual singing.  Next year I might time it.  The Sydney one is always a bit lame.  No Ode to Joy or Hallelujah chorus, and only one or two hymns.  And I was surprised that they allowed candles during the total fire ban, but apparently they're allowed for "religious ceremonies" so long as there's suitable containment.

Today was pretty much all just housework and getting the place tidied up for Christmas and having peoples over.  I did play through the "Rime" escape game which was pretty good.  Got stuck in a couple of places where I didn't even realise you could click on certain things.  The "ending" was a little odd, and got a bit complicated, probably wouldn't have been able to solve it without walkthroughs.

And there's a big white bird outside our window eating Kit's plums.