Sunday.  Mayday.  The lemon potato bake I did was ok, but a bit undercooked and very watery.  Watched last Sunday's Lego Masters.

Monday.  Got to sleep ok but then woke up some time after 3 and never got back to sleep.  Sigh.  Learnt some networking stuff about some of our devices which was good.  Leftovers for dinner.  Finally emailed the cruise company and got them to apply our credit to an obstructed window room.  Completely grumpy about the whole thing.  But I certainly didn't want to give them any more of my money.  Pretty sure there were other things I wanted to talk about for Monday but didn't write them down straight away so forgot.  Oh well.

Such a sweet little daisy, but it will be getting ripped out soon.  These things pop up in any crevice they can find, this one in the middle of the pavers in the back yard.  They still make me smile though.

I had to laugh at Andrew and Crystal being clapped out, because this is exactly what we did at my cousin Andrew and Crystal's wedding :)

Had to go sleep in the other room because Stu's back was killing him and he was literally screaming in agony every time he moved.  Poor thing (it's somewhat better now though).

Tuesday.  Slept ok in the other room, in fact slept through til my alarm went off.  Documenting routing setup on some of our devices.  Cooked up a big batch of veggies to go with leftover burek.  There was potato, sweet potato, parsnip, zucchini and a veggie bake of cauliflower, carrots, parsley, peas, corn, cream and cheese.

Wednesday.  Slept ok until the smoke detector battery started bleeping around 5:30 due to low battery.  Had a crazy and frustrating day.  Why is it I get a couple of days in a row of being able to do my own thing and tinker around and do doco, and then everything happens at once and everyone wants everything at once and I'm in the office which makes it five times as bad.  Spent pretty much the entire day gathering evidence to prove that another team's problem is in fact their problem and not ours.  I even had a beer when I got home (which was super late).  Stu heated up some of the pesto I made on the weekend and we had it with some buffalo ricotta, porcini and truffle ravioli.  To which I then added a big pile of shaved parmesan cheese ;)  But then it was like bed time.

Thursday.  Another crazy busy in the office manic day.  Hate.  Good drinks (although once again we were only one of two tables).  KFC for dinner then bed.

Friday.  Woke up some time after 1am and didn't get back to sleep til maybe about 4:30, and then broken sleep waking up every few minutes because my hands were numb.  So I was a bit of a zombie, but being at home meant far fewer distractions and got a bunch of work done which was good.  I reheated the lemon potatoes from the weekend, which browned up the potatoes nicely and then added the sauce after, which turned out a whole lot better.

Watched the fourth episode of The Crown and last Sunday's Lego Masters.

Saturday.  At work all day doing stress testing of stuff.  Went quite well (Connor kept it perfectly on schedule) and really only stuff we were expecting to break did in the ways we expected it to as well.

I only had to bring home two of these as leftovers ;)

Stu made slow cooker pea and ham soup, without the ham, for dinner.

Then watched The Royal Tenenbaums.. which was.. strange...

Sunday.  Lego inventorying and part picking.  Chopped back some ivy growing on the side of the house.  Turns out the stuff is quite evil, and really really hard to prise off the wall.  Not helped by not having nearly a long enough ladder.  Also trimmed the hedge out the front.  Then cooking All The Food.  Except it was 3pm by this point and I was freaking out about how much I had to do to have dinner done on time.  I made a lime cheesecake, but forgot to mix in gelatine because I'm retarded.  Also a basa bake and a new potato bake recipe, which will get its own post eventually.  At least I managed to process photos and blog before 6pm...

Monday.  18th.  (Not backdating).  Yay for catchup days.  Pretty good sleep.  Went into battle with my computer trying to get the scanner and GPS to work.  Neither do in windows 11.  The GPS won't work in windows 11 because it complains the driver is no good.  Transystem hasn't put out any new software/drivers in years which is pretty upsetting.  So had to get the dam trip GPS off on my laptop.  Now dreading what will happen if something happens to the laptop and I have to replace it.  I'll have to find an alternative to my little PhotoMate 887 which is one of the best inventions in history.  Was also fighting with the scanner which fricken USED TO WORK in windoze 11, but just stopped one day.  I've yet to reconnect it up to my old computer to test it.  Hate Microsoft.  Hate hate hate.  Did some weeding, and a magpie came right up to where I was working to see if I'd disturbed any bug noms for it.  Very cool.  Potted some geranium cuttings.  In the afternoon we tidied up the shelves in our bedroom cupboard that had been getting messier and messier.  Did a water change in the upstairs two foot for the first time in forever (there's always babies in that tank I'm worried about sucking up).  Then got frustrated yet again with Apple because it dropped out while downloading my photos and refused to show up in windows afterwards.  Was thinking I was going to have to reboot my computer.  It certainlly meant I couldn't blog the previous week.  Hate Apple.  Hate hate hate.  Then cooked all the food.  I prepped a chicken marbella from Not Quite Nigella, cooked some mince/bacon/onion/garlic, and we had salmon and cabbage for Monday night's dinner.  Then we watched the first episode of The Crown which was pretty good.  Got pretty stressed out about having to go back to work.  Even four day weekends are just not enough time to get everything *done*.  Eventually managed to reconnect to the phone and was able to download photos, but bed time so no blogging.

Was digging under the old pool and found all this steel reinforcing.  Maybe to stop slippage of the pool???

Tuesday.  Slept ok until hurty kept me awake half the night.  Ok day trying to catch up on stuff.  Then demoing stuff to peeps and trying to deal with all the stoopid.  It was a wine and candle kind of a night.  Also made the chicken marbella which was nice enough but a little watery.  

Wednesday.  Woke up for a while a couple of times.  Was sick of the stoopid by 8:40.  Fairly busy day prepping a firewall migration and prepping rules for a big project.  Did some music, then did a red curry with mushrooms, asian greens and leftover sausages.  Did some work on Eurasia panoramas but still no blogging.  

Thursday.  Another busy day, and a tonne of interruptions and meetings.  Did a firewall migration after lunch which took all of ten minutes (including testing) and was one of the most anticlimactic changes I've ever done.  Pretty quiet drinks.  Tried McCains frozen pizzas which weren't really any better than Spar.  Need to stick with Dominos or Dr Oetker (Doc Oc/Dr Octopus).

Friday.  Finished prepping a big ruleset, and even managed to deploy them the same afternoon which was good.  Had a craving for mac and cheese for lunch.  Lazy Su pickup for dinner and watched third episode of Gunther's Anatomy.

Saturday.  Basically got ready then Damien came over.  We chatted for ages, had frozen spring rolls and chips for lunch, then played Jaws in the afternoon.  After playing for a little while we put the movie on in the background (because I don't seem to have the soundtrack).  Stu has never actually seen it?!?!  Will have to watch it properly with him some time.  Damien and I played Brody/Hooper/Quint, and Stu played Jaws.  Stu got a really good start, pretty much totally evading us and getting lots of points for act 2.  But somehow we managed to survive and Quint finished him off with the machete.  Just as the movie was finished, amazing timing.  As soon as Damien left we both collapsed in a heap - seven hours of socialising is super super draining, who knew.  Had sausages and cabbage for dinner, then Simpsons, Black Books and second episode of The Crown.

I actually spent cash that day too - to get the shiny on the right here.  And in the same change got all four head designs of the Queen.

Sunday.  Went and climbed Mt Rogers, did some music practise, did some cleaning, and filled the green bin.  And suddenly the morning was gone.  Went to the markets after lunch to get some fresh veggies, came home and cooked some Anzac biscuits and prepped dinner.  And suddenly the afternoon was gone.  Sigh.  Jenn came over for dinner (a cheese and spinach burek we found at the markets) and then we played Carcassonne which I won.  Was going to have an early night, but then Stu tried to print something.  It did a whole lot quite happily, then went back to jamming in the same place at every damned page.  So got super cranky about the whole thing.

I nearly rage quit at one point because the pantry is so full of crap I can't get at anything without everything all falling over

Unfortunately these were a bit dry

Burek and veggies dinner

Monday.  Got a reminder to go look at planets.  Because I was awake, I did.  It was actually worth getting up for, with the moon, Saturn, Mars, Venus and Jupiter very obvious (although not so much in the resized photo).  I'll take peoples' word for it for Neptune and Pluto.

Then it was all morning trying to catch up on photos and blogging.  Yet again, even with a long weekend I'm struggling to keep up with life.  Stop the world I want to get off.

Sunday.  27th, not backdating although late.  Where were we.  I left off with hints of pork crackling and tomatoes.  Well the tomatoes were epic awesome!  It was all I could do to not just scoff them all in one sitting.

The pork crackling was ok, but not as thin and crispy as doing it on the meat

Monday.  Slept ok.  Did my quota of photo culling before work, which gives me hope I'll actually get this done.  Last day of being Neil hurrah!  I fixed a mail problem in the afternoon that had been there since December, so that was good.  Did nine minutes of weeding at lunch.  Better than nothing I guess.  Music after work and Stu made a nice salad of lettuce, cucumber, spring onion, some of the slow roasted tomatoes, minced fresh garlic, olive oil, lemon juice, salt, pepper and bacon bits I cooked on the weekend, to go with salmon I cooked.  

I was trying to do photo culling, but the sweetie was trying to print stuff for uni, but the printer was being a big fat poo.  It was flashing all its lights and once so we had to battle trying to get around than, but then it was continually getting jammed, so it was super annoying because I couldn't concentrate on photos because I had to stop every two seconds to unjam the printer.  So I got cranky and Stu got cranky.  We just want a quiet life and AND WHY THE F@#% WON'T THINGS JUST WORK!?!?!?  I gave up on photo culling after a while.  Then I was wondering why I don't seem to have any photos of the Walkie Talkie building in London.  Turns out it wasn't even built until after the last time I was there.. (which was ten years ago!)  I think I've got photos of its lift core under construction.  For some reason I thought it was built in the 70s!  I really need to get back to London some time..

Tuesday.  Took forever to get to sleep (nearly midnight) but then slept ok.  More photo culling in the morning, now only three days of final culls to go (Leavesden Studios, Brussells and Legoland Billund).  Ok day, not being Neil yayy.  Approvals came much too late to get much cleaning done.  Did an hours weeding after work but no music oh well.  Chicken caesar salad for dinner.  After dinner I finished photo culling!!!  I was worried I wasn't going to get it done, but I did.  Now just need to process the photos and get them on the blog.

Wednesday.  Slept fairly well.  Did some tweaking of dashboards for our workflow.  Salmon and salad for dinner again (probably should have bought two pack not a four pack).  Blogged the Balloon Fiesta. Into the third (final) season of Lie to Me.

Thursday.  Slept ok.  Ok day.  Started thinking about another firewall migration.  Finally finished the salmon heh.  Watched random stuff on YouTube including Robin Williams on Don Lane in 1979.  There was a quote from him along the lines of (this is a direct quote but it's a bit rambly) "to keep performing live .. it keeps me alive.. and just.. it just.. keeps contact with people is very important, cause if not you get just get dead you don't take chances anymore, and for me that's very important."  Kinda sad really.

Friday.  Slept ok.  I wonder how much of my insomnia is dietary.  I've been *trying* to eat better.  Not sure it's helping or not.  Probably salmon and veggies is going to sit better than pizza or kfc...  Ok day, cleaning in the afternoon (always takes a lot longer than you think).  David arrived and we had beef cheeks for dinner.  It doesn't photograph well but it's oh so delicious.

Watched Zero Hour! with David in the evening.  It was kinda law that he had to see it :)  We also saw a bunch of his holiday photos/videos (before I called it cause I was exhausted and needed sleep).

Saturday.  Slept ok, although lately every time I wake up I have numb hands which is super annoying.  Did a chemist/groceries run in the morning and did some jigsaw, as well as finishing watching David's holiday photos/videos.  Made a lemon cheesecake in the afternoon, and did a pork roast for dinner (felt like I was on my feet most of the day).  Watched 6 Underground in the evening.  Eh, Michael Bay, and very violent.

Sunday.  Slept ok.  Canberra Airport Open Day.  Will save that for another post.  Came home utterly exhausted.  The sweetie ordered Chong Co for dinner and I had a super early night.

My phone has better eyesight that me.  Spot the mistake :)  This is our country's $50 note.  Silly really.

David helped with the village on Saturday.

Duck salad and pork belly - our favourites

Monday.  Today.  Slept ok but awake pretty early.  Got two loads of washing done before work.  More firewall migration planning in between all the things.  After work brought in all the washing and did some weeding and then did music while Stu cooked dinner - a pasta bolognase which was very nice.  Treehouse of Horror XXII in The Simpsons - we're into season 23 now.  Then phone/camera downloading and blogging.  I still haven't made the bed or put away the washing though.  Trying to cram an entire weekend into before and after work.  Doesn't work.  Too stressed.  Too much to do to have time for work.  Sigh.

As I mentioned in my previous entry, this weekend I started scanning Mum's Minolta negatives, which started on our trip to America in 1983, with her new brand new duty-free camera which she got to open on the plane.

The funniest thing I've noticed is just how much extra frame space is on the negative that was never on the print.  Check this out.. literally the first photo she ever took on that camera..

The negative scan (below) could do with a little tweaking, but is still pretty good.

Then there's this one which blew me away.  The negative scan (below) needs a bit less green in it, but you can actually see the snow now (a few others have been equally amazing).  

Or what about this??  The print faded so much over thirty years, the negative below just went a bit red (and hence a bit too much green in the scan)

Each strip of negatives is four photos, which means I can do eight at a time.  And that takes three quarters of an hour.  The good thing is I can pretty much just set and forget and come back to it later when it's done.  So while not as "quick" as doing slides, it probably won't be as much work.  Hopefully.  

Sunday.  16th.  Had sausages and cabbage for dinner, and geotagged Mum's Tasmania photos from 1968.

Monday.  Slept ok.  Ok day, busy doing every except the one thing probably should have been doing.  But I did upgrade our master network diagram which is always fun.  Did some weeding in the afternoon (couldn't use "it's too hot" as an excuse).  Music, "filled gnocchi" for dinner.  Finished geotagging what I could of Mum's photos.  Saw a link on Blogography to Wordle so clicked through and played it (I think I might have heard/seen one or two references to it at some point in the past week or two).  This is my first ever attempt, and I got it in three goes!  This is probably not the best starting word, it was just what popped into my head.

Then after I'd done it I saw tweets from my brother *and* Jake who have also been playing it.  Synchronicity!

Tuesday.  Slept ok.  All the rain!!  But I was in a meeting during the worst of it, so forgot about clearing out the drain sump so the garage wouldn't flood.  Oops.  Wasn't too bad in the garage, but the backyard flooded again.  

Just for giggles I thought I'd try Eudora again, and this time it fricken worked and downloaded all my mail.  NFI why it didn't work before, or what made it start working.  In other windoze 11 crapfullness, "printscreen" (or alt-printscreen) no longer works.  I mean WTF??  Closest equivalent I can find is windows-shift-s which loads snippy which I can then capture a bit of the screen.  Windows 11 is a piece of crap.  And I'm still finding it super irritating that I can't drag a file onto an open application on the task bar and have it pop up so I can drag the file into the application.  I have to resize windows and have them out of the way so I can drag the file into the app.  Was super cranky about travel and everything was all too hard.  I give up.  Beer and pizza.  And Tuesday's Wordle was tricky - took all six goes!  (another not great starting word, I've since changed my strategy somewhat and start with more common letters).

Wednesday.  Couldn't get to sleep for ages, still depressed about travel.  My sneakers really started falling apart making it difficult to walk around.  These ones I bought in about 2005-2006 (while Stu was still living in Queensland).  But how am I meant to go shoe shopping without having to be around people?? 

Weeding, slide labelling and the sweetie cooked dinner (of some of the leftover mince, and cabbage and rice).

Thursday.  Couldn't get to sleep for ages again - stressing about the cruise.  Was sitting at my computer first thing in the morning pondering my shoes and decided to go into the mall to get some new ones.  I left a bit early and went to Kmart first to get some undies (I've been needing new ones for ages but haven't been shopping really at all in five months).  Then still had some time so went to Target and got an extra fitted sheet and pillow cases (which always wear out a lot faster than a flat sheet).  Then to Athlete's Foot and walked out in new shoes!  Just for giggles I went to Amcal to ask about RATs, and they had some!  So I bought a two pack (if there's any chance of us going to Tasmania we'll need to get tested before we go).  So a super successful morning, and only an hour late to work.  Had a play with deleting old domains out of our IP management tool which was a bit of fun.  

Friday.  Depressed about cruise.  Then the brother type person called - they've offered a get out of jail free card!  Can transfer credit to next year's cruise.  I'd rather go the year after, so I'll try and negotiate that, but it means we're not going to (at least for now) lose all our money!  But in not so great news, Lily has covid and is not doing well.  Ok morning, although a bit bored in the afternoon waiting for people to do stuff so I could do my stuff.  Chicken kiev for dinner and then watched Six Minutes to Midnight, which was a little far fetched, but the school was actually a real thing.  

Saturday.  Spent all morning at work doing a firewall migration, which went quite smoothly for the most part.  Then seemed to spend the afternoon not getting much done, other than sorting out some of my music.

Sunday.  Really just house bits and pieces.  Weekends are far far far too short.. hrmmm..

This afternoon has been making cheesecake (we have lemons coming out the wazoo) and photos/blogging.  And Stu put on the Hottest 100 from 2001.  I know a few of the higher (lower) numbered songs.  Have cauliflower bake and veggies in the oven to have with some lamb I dug out of the freezer.

See 2020. Rinse and repeat. Another crazy crazy year. Wondering if life will *ever* get back to any sort of normal.

Our year started out at the club with friends. It likely would have finished there too. Except Omicron. So it is going to just be the two of us for a lovely quiet night.

Life for the first seven and a half months in Canberra was actually relatively normal. Then in mid August (two days before my birthday) someone tested postive (thanks Delta) and we got put into a snap seven day lockdown. That lasted a couple of months. For us it meant the bliss of not having to go into the office. Things did start to open up again in October/November/December but case numbers here and in NSW and Victoria are higher than ever right now due to Omicron (the numbers are staggering - 21000 per day in NSW at the past couple of days - twenty times higher than at the peak of Delta.  462 today in Canberra - it's basically been doubling every couple of days, and now also ten times higher than Delta). We got put into lockdown in August for one case, yet now we have hundreds of cases per day but there's basically no restrictions other than having to wear a mask indoors. Craziness. I mean sure, 98.5% of 12+ year olds are fully vaccinated here, but most of us haven't had boosters yet. Stu and I plan to hide from people as much as possible over the coming weeks.

We couldn't go overseas in 2021, so our only travel was within NSW. We went to the coast to Kit and Pete's for Pete's birthday in March. We got to see their new house, went for a drive to the coast, had a ride on Elle, went out for Pete's birthday, went to Myrtle Beach, and saw Old Blotchy on the way home. We also visted them in May for Kit's birthday, going to Mollymook for lunch and having snacks and drinks by the fire in the evening. In April we had a five day long weekend over our anniversary and went to Bathurst, Lithgow, Newnes, Glen Davis, Gulgong and Dubbo. We tempted fate by having Mum come down at Christmas, and went to Junee on Boxing Day to visit David. The tour company we'd booked Oberammergau through was being difficult, so in the end we cut out losses and cancelled our trip with them. I booked tickets for the show itself later next year, and if things work out we'll plan a trip around it closer to the date. We're still desperately trying to get out of a cruise out of Florida early next year, but again, the tour company is being buttheadful and are refusing any sort of refund. Our only hope is that the whole thing is cancelled and we can get our money back. Come on Omicron, you can do this!

At work I did an awful lot of *cleaning*. Tidying things up, documenting, deleting old crap. Helped shut down an old environment and migrated to new firewalls. A floor shuffle in April meant an annoyingly loud team moved in next to us which was all sorts of stressful. But then another floor shuffle in July moved us away. Rereading blog entries for most of the year it was amazing how stressed out I was just having to go into the office. Things were so much nicer from August once in lockdown. In October we had a farewell lunch for someone at the Lighty - which was the first time I'd seen any of my colleagues in person in two and a half months. Went back into the office to work for a day a week in November. I did a whole heap of overtime from October to December doing upgrades and migrations. There was a whiksy night in June, and we had "virtual" drinks a couple of times during lockdown. We tempted fate and had our usual Christmas bbq by the lake (in the rain!).

Healthwise, the main problem for me is still bouts of insomnia every so often. I thought I might have been getting sick in April but fought it off. I got my vaccines in June, with basically no side-effects at all, other than a sore arm, and perhaps a sore neck a couple of weeks later (both times). We both got colds in July, probably from someone at the club the previous weekend. Stu got tested (negative), I didn't bother, I just isolated.

Our biggest change in home life this year was David getting a job driving freight trains out of Cootamundra, so he moved out in January. Mum came down at Easter and Christmas to visit both us, and David in Junee. We saw David for about half an hour in February, and he came and stayed the night before the air show. I finally got to meet Kellie, who I found out about in about August. A lovely, thoughtful person who has a lot of the same thought processes/opionions/life outlook as me - freaky! We saw Stu's family a few times during the year including a couple of visits by Immy to see Stumpy, an afternoon tea at Annie's in October (first human contact we'd had with any of our friends/family in two months), a visit in November, and Christmas afternoon with them. We saw a bit of the N-Gang, although not so much as previous years. There was Rob's 51st in May, dinner at EffanC's in June, a couple of virtual drinks with EffanC during lockdown, and dinner with all those guys at Hachiko in July and Indian Pantry in October. I was feeling like noone liked me in July, but these guys reminded me I do have some pretty great friends. Who needs stinking young people anyway. We had brunch with Kit in June when she was up, and had Kit stay overnight in November - first time she'd been here in probably nearly two years, and the two visits to their place as well. Jenn came over a couple of times in February and July (the latter for an Indian feast that Stu cooked). CRD came over for dinner in February, and we had her at the club a couple of times too.

At our social club we went out for most of the social functions in the first half of the year (except April because we were in Dubbo). There was Robert's Chinese New Year feast in February, Matt & Michelle's Mexican feast in March, Italian night in May, Ian and Chris's anniversary dinner in June, and we did Christmas in July. CRD came out with us in May, and I did some more priming of the cabinetry. I haven't done any more tho because we've just had so little free time. There was a bbq in late October which was the first time we'd been since lockdown, and we went a week later as well for the working bee. Then for Rob and Fiona's Christmas party in late November.

I got a massive amount done on my photos this year. Early in the year I thought I was done doing fixup scans of Dad's slides, but as I started processing them I realised how bad a lot of them still were. So I spent the rest of the year (well, from March to October) redoing them *again*. Even then, a lot of the early ones still have lots of fluff on them, but I'm kinda over it now, and they can stay as they are now. I did come up with CLI commands (in Excel) to add a whole heap of exif data into his slides. If he went to the trouble of recording the aperture, shutter and F stop, then why not add it into the data files! I also have commands to add the date (if known) and captions for them. I've started (well restarted for some of them) processing them with aforementioned scripts and cropping/colour correcting, but it's still a lot of work to try and sort out the mess he's made combining things that probably shouldn't have been combined, not to mention geotagging them as I go ;) I'm basically happy with 18 boxes so far, which is about 10% of the way through them all. If I'm lucky I'll be finally finished mid next year. Just in time to start scanning Mum's negatives which started in 1983 :) I won't be scanning all of Mum's negatives that's for sure - just the ones I care about, such as holidays and family photos. A lot of the early prints are pretty crap and discoloured. In the first week of January I started labelling my Eurasia 2012 photos. At five hundred per week it was going to take most of the year. But I did it! Twenty four and a half thousand photos in eleven months. In fact I actually finished one day early :) I had a play with some gallery generating apps, and even got my USA 2000 photos online with it. The main blocker for getting more online (other than time) is deciding where to host it (likey it'll just stay on my current host), but also how to integrate it with the blog. Seems silly to have two different sites that are very similar yet one has just highlights and the other has almost everything. Because it also means the gallery doesn't have the blog detail. It's a bit of a dilema. I finished filing all my club photos into directories by event/category. One of these days they might go into some sort of club archive, but need to get permission from people first. I spent months on and off tagging people in work photos with Picasa. Still not sure how to get that data into a useful format, but at least the data is there. Still need to get Wello and Ray over to help me tag people I don't know. I also realised only last week that I hadn't been backing up the Picasa DB directories, so if my C: drive had died I would have lost all that work - yikes!

Fish. So many baby fish! I got five platies in January - first time I'd ever had platies. They had some babies, of which two survived to adulthood, but all five original ones died, so I currently just have the two babies left. Stu's tank is still overgrown with algae, but I have a solution to that - guppies!! The two foot I have upstairs (and now the one downstairs as well) is basically algae free, which I put down to having so many guppies in those tanks. So as babies (so many babies!) get big enough, I'm transferring them to other tanks, including the big one, to work on the algae.
Inventory:
Angel tank (the 620T): 1 ancient cory, 2 platies that were born in that tank (the twins!), 1 zebra danio, 2 guppies
Two foot: guppies! - a bunch of adults that we mostly got a year ago, and a tonne of babies. Some of the juveniles have been moved to other tanks
Four foot: 14 congo tetras, about half a dozen guppies I moved in fairly recently, some suckers (we think), a loach (sadly his siamensis friend died recently)
Chrissie tank: 2 clown loaches and a sucker (really need to move that medium sized sucker into the angel tank and bring one of the little ones up from downstairs, because Chrissie's big sucker in the angel tank died)
Downstairs two foot: four adult males, two adult females, and a tonne of babies, and two small suckers
Nursery tank: a few babies and juveniles, including a couple of very pretty spotted ones I'm hoping will be female
Other one foot tanks: more guppies
Stumpy is still doing well. I do think he got hungry earlier this year though. And now at the height of summer he's barely coming out at all. Silly lizard :)

No Lego building this year. We (David) moved the four-baseplate mosaic into the hallway so Stu could have the wall back for his things. I had a play with Gimp for making Lego mosaics (you feed it the colours you have in stock into a pallette file, then apply that pallette to your photo - voila! Mosaic pattern!), but haven't actually made one yet. I wanted to make one this break. Maybe I still will. If I can think of a picture that would work. I had some fun playing with Lego Digital Designer to continue working on the Lego model of our house. I got pretty much all the main floor done, but got stuck when it came to doing the roof design. The slope of the roof matches approximately a 1:4 slope brick, which you can get, but you can't get corner pieces, so doing corners would be messy. Might have to look into making the roof slops with plates/tiles. I still really haven't done any more work sorting out Vic's Lego. It just got too time consuming and depressing (because so much of it was missing). I did spend a bit of time sorting/constructing minifigs (so we can get the dungeon room back) but that was short-lived too. I might spend another couple of weekends trying to finalise another few sets, then just give up and start buying Lego to replace what's missing. Because after that is the really fun part - actually building sets.

This year was a year for *big* jigsaws. I did three sections of the Disney Behemoth - Dumbo, Snow White and Fantasia. Only one section to go now. I could have gotten it done by Christmas but it's very distracting and I had a tonne of other things that needed doing. Did a bunch of jigsaws at work too, although a lot slower on account of not being there as much (or at all). David and I made a 3D jigsaw model of the Titanic at Easter. I'm totally drooling over the Lego Titanic. I reckon I could do it, wait for it to not be on sale anymore, then sell it, and probably make a profit. Maybe I'll keep an eye out for sales ;) Very slow progress on the paint by numbers I got last Christmas. The main blocker there is the difficulty just *seeing* it - even with reading glasses I still need a magifying glass to see the tiny numbers. I took the plunge and bought myself a clarinet in September. I've been practising most days, but I still really struggle with bridging the register and the upper register notes. And reading music. I'm ok with the notes but not the tempo, so really struggle with playing music I don't know the tune to already.

Tech. Our NAS power supply died in March (someone let the smoke out). Stu bought a new one and replaced it himself. At some point we should probably get something more modern (with a higher version of SMB). The E: drive died in my computer, and since it was nine years old decided to get a new one. Haven't used it much but it seems pretty snappy. Continued frustration with Apple. Apple decided after one update this year to arrange all photos on the phone by month. This was great! But in the next update they reverted to a thousand photos per folder. And it's *still* messing with the datestamps on my photos. Hate Apple. Hate. Other purchases. Had to get new jeans. Eventually found some that are mediocre. Hating the fact that they don't make girls jeans with decent pockets. We also got a frame made (online) for my last paint by numbers, but the mounting bracket was mounted off-centre. Sigh.

Around the house. Had a lot of frustration at the beginning of the year with bathroom sealer companies not getting back to me. Eventually got a shower sealing company to come have a look. They confirmed loose tiles/cracked grout, but wouldn't replace them because there's asbestos in the walls. We bought a new mattress and then a new frame. King size which is great, but ultimately disappointed with it all. We watched a bunch of videos from Solar Quotes, but a year later we still haven't done anything about solar. Before winter I was doing a little bit of weeding, and got back into it when it warmed up. I make piles and piles, but everything grows back faster than I can get rid of it. I'm really really looking forward to getting green and organic waste pickups every week. It'll be easier to stay on top of garden waste, and our regular bin might go out like once every six months instead of every month or so like it does now.

Didn't eat out much this year. We did go to Ramen O a few times, and Koku Super Kare a couple of times, but would be good for both of those to have a cheaper, smaller lunchtime option. I went to Herbert's a few times, mostly with Tony and/or the Chrises and Neil. The sweetie and I tried KorBQ in the mall for our last work lunch together. We went to Pizza Artigiana once, and Dumpling Inn seems to be closed permanently which is sad. Had brunch with Annie at The District in April. We had Chong Co in May, and delivery from them a couple of times. Had brunch with Kit at Stellas by the Lake in June (it's no longer Black Pepper). Went with EffanC and R&F to Hachiko in July and Indian Pantry in October (which was our first outing post lockdown). Had Charnie's Noodle and Dumplings delivery in November, which was somewhat underwhelming, and Sichuan Chinese takeaway a couple of times in December, which is expensive but nice. Subway did a "cheesy garlic bread" (garlic butter, plus extra cheese) for a while which was awesome.

Cooking-wise, tried a few new things and some old favourites. There was zucchini spaghetti early in the year from some epic zucchinis we got from Con. I tried oven baked feta pasta (Uunifetapasta) from Tik Tok which wasn't too bad (but all that feta is way too salty for my blood pressure). I had a go at replicating Dominos puff pastry pepperoni and feta pizza. It was almost identical to the Dominos version - so amazing. But did someone say something about salt and blood pressure? We had Cath's crumbed basa a couple of times. I tried Ray's method of reheating pizza - frying it in a little oil with the lid on. OMFG this was so good - even better than it eating it fresh. Had that 80s deep pan vibe about it. Sooo good. I had a go at san choy bow in September which worked pretty well (Chris only has iceberg lettuce, so thought I'd have a go at doing something with that since I hadn't been to Coles in forever). I made meat jelly rice a few times - to use up meat jelly that you can't think of a better use for, mix with water and rice to make quite a flavourful rice. I experimented with slow cooker lamb roast (which I tried at the club for Christmas in July but only managed a mouthful of it because the rest of it got snapped up by everyone - I *think* it was really good?? :) ), and also slow cooker turkey (the first time it was fairly dry; it was better the second go but really works better with fattier meat). I made three new things from my Women's Weekly Gratins and Bakes book - Seafood Mornay Lasagna (expensive and fiddly and, well, seafoody), Spaghetti Rosa Bake (nice, but spaghetti is messy), Penne Arribbiata Bake (good, even with anchovies, and easy enough that I've done it a few times). We got a few nice strawberries off our strawberry plants, and there's chillis coming. I made a couple of different lemon cheesecakes in February and March, and combined them to come up with a definitive, easy to make recipe (that I tried before Christmas) that I'll probably use moving forward. I made a rocky road in February. I made Not Quite Nigella's mint slice in August, which was pretty good so made it again for Christmas.

And now for the lists!

Theatre/Shows/Exhibitions
* Hamilton (on Disney+ so you may not want to count it ;) )

Movies (at the Movies)
* Penguin Bloom

Movies (TV - not all movies, but I've included series)
* Studio Ghibli movies
* Honey I Shrunk the Kids series
* A whole heap of true stories and spy movies, which is what Stu tends to pick when it's his turn
* The Poseidon Adventure (saw the remake at some point earlier, the original is way better)
* Some old Australian movies - Playing Beatie Bow, Gallipoli, The Shiralee
* Fantasia 2000 a few times, and Fantasia
* Nanny McPhee 1 and 2
* The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel 1 and 2
* Snow White original and remake
* Dan Brown series
* Some Bette Midler movies
* Some Tom Hanks movies
* The Matrix trilogy
* Die Hard 1 and 2 and Love Actually in December

TV
* Discovery (finished season 3)
* The Simpsons (started off in season 5, ended up nearly finished season 19)
* The X-Files (seasons 1, 2 and a bit of 3)
* Laid Back Camp (seasons 1 and 2)
* Hibike! Euphonium (seasons 1 and 2)
* Encore!
* Amazing Race Australia
* Lego Masters
* A Place Further than the Universe
* The Surgeon's Cut
* Aircrash Confidential
* Alfred Hitchcock Presents (a bit of it)
* Human: The World Within
* Pandemic
* Diagnosis
* Brides of Christ
* The Movies that Made Us
* Air Crash Investigations (some recent seasons I hadn't seen)
* Love on the Spectrum
* Connected
* How the Mind Works
* Lie to Me (season 1 and most of season 2)
* You Can't Ask That (seasons 1 to 6)
* Sex Education (seasons 1 and 2)

Books
* Heartache and Birdsong by Sam Bloom, Cameron Bloom and Bradley Trevor Greive
* To Catch a King by Harry Patterson
* Seizure by Kathy Reichs
* Doctor No by Ian Fleming

Other stuff
* neighbourhood dog barked nonstop for hours on end for months. It make me super cranky all last summer break and well into the new year
* scanned a whole heap of stuff in the filing cabing
* Disney+ launched "Star" with a whole heap of new content it could take me a lifetime to watch
* saw the RAAF 100th Anniversary airshow which was pretty amazing
* went down to Lake Burley Griffin for a wander round with the sweetie on Easter Monday
* saw my magpies throughout the year
* voted for and listened to ABC Classic FM's top 100 "Music You Can't Live Without"
* had to start wearing masks indoors for two weeks in June - my first time was in July for seeing my dentist. I continued wearing a mask in the mall even though I didn't have to, because you can't trust people to stay home when they're sick.
* snap 7 day lockdown in August that lasted three months
* had a lovely quiet birthday at home with nice food and hobbies and had Chong Co delivered
* we were in an exposure site the Wednesday before the lockdown, but didn't find out until Wednesday a week later. Had to get tested but it meant only a week of full lockdown at home. It was a good thing I'd done a big food shop that morning. The Saturday after that we got an sms from Canberra health that we'd been in an exposure site - literally a week and a half after we'd been there. Fricken hopeless.
* I missed the earthquake! (in September)
* in September I found out the super annoying yappy staffies down the road killed each other. No more annoying barking!!!!
* the first of October was an epic news day. 52 covid cases recorded - highest ever in Canberra for one day. ScoMo announced opening of international borders a lot sooner than we first thought. Gladys resigned.
* saw the remains of Floriade in Belconnen, but missed out on seeing it sans-crowds in Commonwealth Park
* would often go three weeks between Coles shops during the lockdown, getting essentials at Chris's
* went to the online funeral for Win Cartan. Still annoyed I didn't get to see them when I was at church in early 2019. Oh well, will see them in heaven soon enough.
* planted sunflowers across the road. One sprouted and is still going (last I looked)
* petrol prices hit an all time high in November
* mask mandate reintroduced just before Christmas (I reckon it should have been weeks earlier)

So there we have it. Another epic year. And for once I have this review done *before* the end of the year! It took *hours* :) Have a happy and safe new year. Get your booster. Eat less. Drink less. Sing. Floss. Stretch. Dance. Wear sunscreen.

Sunday.  12th.  Backdating because life got in the way, and then some.  BBQ leftovers for dinner.  Into season 2 of Sex Education.  Got my RSS feed down to 1.  1!!  (the pic I posted the other day).  I'd gotten heaps of stuff done around the house, but I was feeling super anxious about all the computer stuff I didn't get done over the weekend.

Look at all the lemon marmalade Stu made!

Monday.  Woke up at like 5:20 #grunt.  Ok day I guess.  I renewed Stu's domain name, booked a covid booster and bought a new computer.  Although nothing on the regular todo list - this was just catching up from stuff I should have done on the weekend.

Tuesday.  Dunno, I don't have any notes.  But here's a photo of Stumpy doing pushups.

Wednesday.  Spent all morning explaining to people how email works.  Le sigh.  Spent all afternoon doing all the doco for all the rules I deleted recently (and not many interruptions which was nice).  Then weeding, music, leftovers, work photo labelling and year in review reading.

Thursday.  At work, blerf.  We had a morning tea which sufficed for lunch, so I worked through lunch on the jigsaw in a push to get it finished just in case it was the last time I was in for the year.  And I did finish it!  Had a nice last drinks of the year, then pizza and tv.  Dominos was hit by a ram raid, which I thought was totally bizarre, I mean who even pays in cash anymore.  Still, it's one of the busiest Dominos stores in Australia, so if there was the one to get with even a small percentage of cash payments that'd be it.

Friday.  Helped with some prep for some Saturday work.  Die Hard 2 in the evening.  

Saturday.  A day of All The Things, and even some overtime.  Had quite a productive day, including making a lemon cheesecake, although my todo list is still years too long.  Matrix Revolutions in the evening.

Sunday.  Too stressed about everything to sleep.  And the storm certainly didn't help.  Woke up at 6:05 so decided to get up and go do some food shopping.  I was a bit slow getting everything put away, and then suddently it's mid morning.  hrmm.  I did get a litt bit of stuff done in the morning, and finished season 6 of You Can't Ask that at lunch.  Then in the afternoon I went down to Herbert's to join Tony and a bunch of his friends for an early birthday celebration for him.  The walk down was in the rain, but that didn't stop me from taking lots of photos of flowers.  There was some nice jazz music going at Herbert's, and a few of us went back to Tony's after for another drink (including a very green blackberry sour).

No notes for the evening, but I certainly didn't feel up to fighting with my phone and blogging.

Sunday.  28th. Backdating because I'm a slacker.  And my weekends are too short.  Just adding a few photos for the day.

Most expensive petrol I've ever seen in Australia

Finished decorating the Christmas tree on Sunday

And played with light

Monday.  29th.  Slept ok.  Finished doing the risk assessment for the bbq.  Did some planning for a new firewall.  After work was gardening and music and suddenly it's 18:30.  Ploughing through tagging people in work photos.  I want to get the first pass done by Christmas.  Along with everything else on my todo list.  

Did you know whitetail spiders will live in a container at least two weeks?  That's how long it took me to release the biggest whitetail I've ever seen.  So gross.

Tuesday.  Slept ok, although woke up early again for the second day in a row (~5:40am).  Spent most of the day auditing unneeded firewall rules.  It was 25C in the study by mid afternoon.  Stu decided it was hot enough to turn the cooler on.  Leftovers for dinner (Stu cooked while I did weeding and music practise).

Wednesday.  December.  How'd that happen??  Stu had to *go* to work which was no fun.  I spent a chunk of time helping someone with a problem, which if they'd followed my damned doco they wouldn't have had in the first place.  #grunt.  So many hours wasted.  It was a frozen pizza kind of an evening (although Chris didn't have any Doc Oc pizzas, so we had McCains).  Because all the weeding.  And Stu was exhausted after work.  It threatened to storm but never did, got like three drops of rain.  Then paying bills and doing All The Things like photo labelling and emailing people and sorting out backups and registering for rates by email (*again* because I'd done this previously but they stuffed up the whole system last year).  And I'm really really looking forward to weekly green bin pickups.  

Thursday.  Woke up at like 4:30am hrmmm. 

Did a whole bunch of deleting of rules in the afternoon which felt realy good.  Had Sichuan Chinese takeway for dinner.  It was very nice, but also very expensive, something like $66 for this.

Simpsons, X Files and first episode of season 1 of Sex Education.  We watched season 1 independently a while back (I think I might have watched it while recovering from having my appendix out), and I'd seen all of season 2, but Stu only got to see bits of season 2 when David binge watched it here.  So we're going back to the beginning to freshen up for season 3.  

Friday.  Another fairly early wakeup.  Finished up writing up my next round of deletions.  Did some doco in the afternoon.  Weeding and frozen dim sum for dinner.  Watched The Matrix in the evening.  Lolz www.whatisthematrix.com redirects to Matrix Resurresctions site.

Stu got a tea advent calendar for Christmas from Annie, so we've been working our way through it.  Not that I actually drink tea, but I've been trying all these.  Some are actually interesting.

Saturday.  Super productive morning cleaning and organising and stuff.  Not so productive in the afternoon.  Finished season 5 of You Can't Ask That.  During the week I started getting popups that I should run a chkdsk to fix some drive issues.  hrmmmm.  I finally decided to reboot and let it do it on Saturday afternoon.

Yep, it's rooted.

After the reboot there was a whole bunch of directories on that drive I couldn't actually get into at all anymore.

Fortunately it's my E: drive which only gets touched once a week when I process my photos for the week.  And I'd backed it up the night before it had a spack so I didn't lose anything.  So now the decision is, do I get a new drive, or a whole new computer.  Given my computer is over nine years old, I'm thinking new computer.  

Arribbiata bake for dinner, tv and Die Hard (it's Christmas!).

Sunday.  We were going to go shopping together at some point on the weekend, but with Omicron in the wild and only a few weeks til Christmas, I decided to play it safe and go shopping super early Sunday.  I also dropped into work to pickup the hard drive I'd last backed up my E: drive to, so I could copy it to another local location (so that I have copies in two physical locations).  All The Things in the morning.  Into season 6 of You Can't Ask That.  Cooked All The Food in the afternoon - roast chicken, beef cheeks, mince and a heap of veggies.  And blogged.  Just not the past week.

Sunday.  21st.  Backdating because I was just too busy last weekend.  Had slow cooked lamb shanks for dinner, and finally finished watching through Dug Days.  Then I watched Ciao Alberto.  If covid doesn't stop us I might be going "there" next year :)  Watched the first episode of Squid Game.  The english dub was super annoying, so put on the Korean subtitles, although that was annoying too because it felt the need to subtitle all the sound effects as well.

Monday. Ok day, did some cleaning.  Did some weeding after work although no music practise - making a final push to get the last five hundred-odd photos labelled this week.  Did 124 before dinner.  Dinner was some frozen dim sum pieces we got so we could use up the bucket of sweet and sour sauce we got with the Chinese we had the other night.  Finished labelling my quota by 19:17, but then kept going - doing 307 all up - all of day 53 - Sapporo to Tokyo.  Only 247 to go!!  Then watched Lie to Me and into season 5 of You Can't Ask That.

Tuesday.  Ok day, planning for more cleaning.  Started thinking about the risk assessment for our Christmas party.  Weeding, music, leftover mango chicken for dinner.  Then the final push to finish labelling photos from my Eurasia 2012 trip.  At 500 photos per week, I was schedule to finish Wednesday, but I was so close I pushed through and finished it Tuesday!  Twenty four and a half thousand photos labelled, taking nearly all year.  What an epic achievement :)  The flight from Sydney to Canberra on that trip was pretty cool - I managed to get photos of all three of my previous homes in Sydney :)

Wednesday.  Rain!  I shoulda put the deck chairs out in it for rinsing.  Did more cleaning planning at work, and leftover lamb shanks for dinner.  Have been doing a whole heap of tagging of people in work photos now using Picasa.

Thursday.  Had to go to work *at* work, which meant taking the bus which was a bit awful.  But everyone was wearing masks at least so that was good (it's still mandatory on public transport).  But it was humid and disgusting and they didn't turn the air conditioning on in the office, so it was pretty miserable in the morning.  Went to the mall with Neil at lunch, but maybe only 20% of people are wearing masks there.  Blerf.  The bar was open for the first time in over three months, so that was nice.  Although not many people there.  In the evening I put on Fantasia 2000 to get a photo of The Sorcerer's Apprentice with the jigsaw.  Yeah yeah I know the jigsaw was from the original Fantasia, but the original is pretty boring, I like Fantasia 2000 much much better.  Might have also put up the Christmas tree (just the tree though no decorations).

As usual, it's really not quite right

Friday.  OMFG.  Practically had a meltdown because I was trying to concentrate on *one thing* but literally every time I tried I would get interrupted again.  I felt like just giving up on trying to do any work and just sit there staring at my screen waiting for the next question.  #grunt.  Eventually got some peace and quiet so got some stuff done, and some cleaning in the afternoon too which was nice.  In the evening we watched the 80s version of Dune.. which was.. strange.. hmmm.  

Saturday.  Did the most essential weekend housework stuff before heading out to the club for the Christmas party.  Did a bunch of work helping prep all the food and serve lunch, then drank and chatted all afternoon so that was all quite nice.  Although I really hope noone brought covid along, that could be quite messy.  Leftovers for dinner and an earlyish night.

Sunday.  Slept relatively well.  Got up early and came home so I could log onto work for an upgrade.  Then spent the rest of the morning putting up Christmas decorations.  But then by the time I'd done gardening and music practise it was late, so managed to download and process photos but not blog.  Whoops.  Roasted some veggies for dinner then pretty much just collapsed.

Sunday.  7th.  Not backdating for a change ;)  This was the slow cooker turkey we had.  I literally just plonked the thing in the slow cooker all afternoon, but it was a bit dry.  Will add some stock next time I think, and turn/submerge it half way through.  Had it with potato bake and veggies.

Monday.  Slept ok.  Spent the morning patching stuff we'd upgraded the other week.  The fighting with the proxy in the afternoon.  No music practise (still giving the wrist a rest), so labelled over 200 photos - the ones I was behind in from last week because I had no time on the weekend to catch up.  That was all of day 50.  Then Lie to Me and You Can't Ask That.

Tuesday.  Slept ok.  Last week I said I thought I'd finished rescanning Dad's slides, but I'm still finding a lot of fluffy ones at the beginning where I wasn't diligent/fussy/perfectionist enough.  I can't help myself, I *need* to rescan them to make them better.  Sadly these are ones I'd already processed as well, so that means I'll have to reprocess *again*.  Sad times. Busy busy day, too much stoopid.  Fun episode of The Simpsons in the evening (The Poseidon Adventure one).  Still managed 167 photos, into day 51.

Wednesday.  Another busy day.  Only 128 photos labelled - day 52 in Hokkaido.  Finished the week still 182 behind.  

This is me cheating on Mickey - doing one half literally on top of the other half.

Thursday.  Dropped into work to swap out my hard drives.  Then did our food shopping.  Coles was definitely quieter at 7am than it has been previously during lockdown.  I guess more people are relaxed about going at a more normal time and not sparrows fart.  Couldn't log into work for over an hour because the auth app on my phone had a spaz, then I got locked out, then I had to wait for the service desk.  It did make the morning pass a bit quicker though :)  Tacos for dinner.  Finished watching the Jim Carrey version of Fun With Dick and Jane that I started the other day/week.  Well half watched it really, it was a bit silly.  Rain!

Friday.  Rain! 

One of the baby magpie larks that's been hanging around our yard for a while.

Picked up the clarinet for the first time in a week.  I really need to get a neck strap to save my wrist.  XL was headed off to Sydney for the weekend, and Ward said something about getting her to eat something for him, and I was like, I want Din Tai Fung!  Of course then I had cravings for dumplings, so the sweetie had some delivered from Charnie's Noodle and Dumplings.  It was all nice enough, nothing super special though.

Watched Red Sparrow in the evening, but it was very violent, making it quite unpleasant.  I also get annoyed at spy movies because you can never know what side someone is really on, and quite often it's both.  Probably like real life, but still annoying to watch.

Saturday.  Got housework done first thing, then doing upgrades all morning.  But I'm dumb and don't know how to fix anything when it breaks.  Sigh.  Didn't get much done in the afternoon other than geotagging some of Dad's photos from sixty years ago.  !!  Did a bit of jigsaw and music practise and then suddenly it's nearly dinner time.  hmmm.

Moved the stuff on the left aside to take a progress photo

Finished season 3 of You Can't Ask That, then leftover dumplings for dinner, then watched Hachi: A Dog's Tale, an Americanised version of the story of Hachiko.  I think I started crying when Hachiko tried to stop him getting on the train that last time, and then for much of the rest of the movie.  hrmmm.

Sunday.  Today.  Wrote a massive long todo list for the day.  Did a small fraction of it.  I'm going to be dead before I finish my todo list.

Got the internal "edges" done today, and the left bubbles are back on top of the right side.  This weekend I also finished laying out *every* piece on boards, so all the pieces are on six boards for the six different shapes (plus one board of leftover twinklies).  So now every piece has to be there to find and put in.

Started photo processing and blogging early enough today to get it done, because now I need to go cook dinner for tonight and a few other nights this week.

Stop the world, I want to get off!