Sunday.  2nd.  Tuna casserole for dinner then The Crown.

Monday.  Took *forever* to get to sleep - tired, itchy, restless.  Then it felt like too early a wakeup.  Sigh.  Finished migrating a server I started on Friday.  Also some more routing cleanup on some test devices.  TV dinners for dinner.  It was that kind of day (and we hadn't been shopping so there was barely any food in the house).  Then first pass culled our two days in the Cinque Terre.  

Also disturbed this huge wolf spider while weeding at lunch

Tuesday.   Took forever to get to sleep *again*.  I shouldn't be allowed to operate heavy machinery.  But then it was a crazy stoopid busy day.

Wednesday.  Slept mostly ok for a change. 

Not as crazy busy a day.  Had dinner at BONE .. oh sorry, B ONE.  They really need to fix their branding.

Pork belly bao - with kimchi, had a little bit of a kick to it

Chicken dumplings - ok, but very hard dough

Edamame - pretending to be a bit healthy with a little greenery

Tako karaage - after watching My Octopus Teacher I felt a little conflicted eating these guys..

Canberra winters..

Then saw Come From Away, which was funny and sad and sweet and very well done with such a small cast, I really enjoyed it.

Thursday.  Slept ok.  Hard to concentrate at work - too many people and too much noise and talking.  

These went up all over the building overnight at work.  Clearly some idiot fell over watching their phone and not the steps, which means now we all need warnings/instructions on how to use stairs.  Of course "three points" is utterly ridiculous (you'd need to have both hands on a hand rail) and we ALL mocked it.

Whisky night at work.  Super quiet though, didn't get many people come up for it.  Sigh.

Pizza and Picard (with the Enterprise D! haha)

Friday.  Another server migration.  

We're getting two trees planted on our nature strip.  Neighbour is going to have a sad he won't be able to park there anymore.

Lunch at Herbert's with the Chrises, Tony and Neil.  I had a chicken burger.

We had been planning to go out to the club after work, but Stu was in the office every day this week and so he didn't feel like leaving the house in the evening (and the pouring rain certainly did help with the motivation).  Chicken kiev for dinner, then the first two thirds of Amadeus Director's Cut, which we both hadn't seen in a very long time.

Saturday.  We were supposed to go the club working bee, but Stu's back was killing him (too many days sitting up at a desk at work).  To be honest I was a bit relieved, as these days I'm waking up on Saturday mornings in a bit of a panic about everything I have to do.  Freeminded out the next six weeks in terms of photo culling and house stuff.  Did some food shopping in the morning then didn't leave the house all day.  Did I mention the rain?  I did a bunch of stuff on my todo list, but there was more I could have done.  Stu cooked Coronation Oden for dinner.  

Finished season 3 of Picard which I really enjoyed.  Makes me wanna go back and watch all of Next Gen again.  Then we finished Amadeus.

Sunday.  Slept ok.  Continuation of All The Things.  Except I got distracted by one item on my todo list which was "Put Dad's slides away" except I couldn't do that without first trying to find where some mystery slides belong.  Which meant pulling out many rolls and trying to line up printed date/frame stamps.  There's still a few that just don't match up with anything which annoys me.  Dad's slides are probably at the lower end of my priority list, but still the one I end up doing when there's other things that need doing more. And I think it's because it's a *puzzle* that needs to be solved.  Getting them into order and figuring out where things should go is a challenge and there's a satisfaction from assembling an entire roll of film back into its original order.  

Some things I learnt this week (trying this as in idea to help me try and learn something new every day, let's see how long it lasts):  The sphincter at the top of the stomach is called the cardiac sphincter.  Well, it's *also* called that, as well esophageal sphincter which is what I always thought it was.  And the valve used on just about every bicycle/car/truck tyre is called a Schrader Valve.  There you go.

Monday.  26th.  Slept ok.  At work I was happily getting stuck into doing some cleaning, until all the people wanted all the things.  Busy day.  Finished getting the photos for the cruise holiday day entries done.  Then Amazing Race.

Tuesday.  More cleaning work.   Found some more devices to clean up routing on.  Then finished getting all my cruise holiday photos online!  (the food and hotels).  Now there's just a separate blog I want to do for Carnival Pride.  

Wednesday.  Dunno, no notes.

Thursday.  Rinse and repeat.  We did make our own pizzas for dinner though.

Friday.  Finished typing up the extra info Dad had on cardboard into the slides doco.  So that's everything documented.  Now I need to get everything into the right order, geotag, process, rename and file everything.  Still a long way to go.  Tried to migrate a server to a new OS version at work, and was having fun doing it until All The People wanted All The Things.  Picard was cool.  They had all seven of the original (final) cast together in the same room for the first time in 25 years!  They even had a reference to Tasha Yar as a hologram.  I reckon it'd be cool if Wil Wheaton joined at some point too.  

Saturday.  The plan was to do All The Things.  Yeah I did none of it.  Instead I laid out all fifteen and a half rolls of Dad's USA 1983 photos so I could get them into chronological order (and find any mistakes he made in date labelling - I believe frame numbers over his date labels).  

Dinner at Rob and Fiona's in the evening with a bunch of peeps which was lovely, although another after midnight sleep doh

Sunday.  A day of actually *doing* All The Things.  In the bottom of a box of holiday crap I'd gotten from the parents at some point I found some photos and a letter from one of Dad's relations who had gone to Germany in 1992 and found the ancestral home (from 1788!) of some of my ancestors.  Will have to go there some time!  That was a rabbit hole I didn't expect to go down!  On my Mum's side I go back to the First Fleet, but I really don't know much about Dad's side.  So that was pretty cool.  Managed to blog last week and cook dinner this evening, but not music (there might have been Indiana Jones on Screen Sounds to listen to ;) )

Sunday.  18th.  Backdating.  Because, life.  Did a beef mini roast for dinner then Futurama/Crown.

Monday.  Slept ok.  Pretty happy to finish collecting all the extra metadata off Dad's slides (tidying up the branding of the slides, and noting whether the processing had red or black text).  Mainly so I can piece together where some photos fit into the order of things, since some aren't labelled.  Distracting day at work.  Labelled half a dozen days of cruise photos.  Creamy pasta for dinner.  Had to laugh at Amazing Race.  They'd already had one team off with covid, but this episode another team off *and* the host.  

Tuesday.  Slept ok (although took a while to get to sleep because I was cold).  

Got an early start on photo labelling, did a quarter of today's quota (~50) before work.  Crazy day at work.  Had lunch with Chrissie which was nice.  Labelled the other ~150 photos then Amazing Race.

Wednesday.  Woke up early with hurty.  COOOLLLLDDD!!!  

Smashed out more photo labelling before work.  Finished labelling before dinner, then sorting/culling hotel/food/ship photos (the latter taking ages because there were like 700 photos to sort into directories so I know where everything is).

Thursday.  Not as cold as yesterday.  Finished Carnival Pride photo sorting.  Ok day.  Had a team pub lunch which was nice.  Ok drinks. TV dinners for dinner.  On Amazing Race, two teams rejoined after covid, but FIVE other teams were out.  Craziness.

Friday.  Duck for dinner, then Paterson.  OMFG NOTHING HAPPENS.  Tedious.  And I argue that text without any sort of rhyme or meter is prose not poetry.  Just because you start new lines a lot doesn't make it poetry.

Saturday.  Cranky at annoying people.  But did get lots of cruise photos onto the blog.  Headed out to the club late in the afternoon for Ian and Chris's anniversary formal night which was lovely as always.

I last did my hair like this in 1985.  Now it just makes me look like my grandmother.

Stayed up past midnight.  Whoops.

Sunday.  Woke up a bit after 7.  Came home when Stu got up.  Got lots more photos online.  At lunch went down to see Jess and Uncle Doss at Herbert's.  They're pretty amazing.

Kiev twice in one day?  Whoops.

Then Futurama/Crown.

Sunday.  11th.  Lamb roast for dinner.

Then watched V for Vendetta.  Not nearly as scary watching this time as it was the first time we watched it.  The world is in a bit of a different place (in terms of who's in power in the UK, USA and Australia at the moment).

Monday.  Slept okish.  I finished culling photos from the cruise (the day entries, still need to do the Carnival Pride, food and hotels).  Got it down to 1042 photos.  Had a meltdown because the barrel vacuum cleaner is so damned hard to use.  I need two hands to hold onto it so it doesn't fall apart which leaves nothing left for moving furniture around, not to mention have to stop every two seconds to pull to barrel closer.  Hate hate hate hate hate.

Tuesday.  Shine Dome talk after work.  They had Mr Dean Yibarbuk who is a ranger in Arhem Land talk about his work with fire management up there which was pretty cool.  And also a talk by Dr Jeremy Russell-Smith.

Dinner at 10 After.

Wednesday.  Dinner at CBD Dumpling House.  Get a seat at the bar and watch the kitchen action!

The pan fried shallot cake was fresh and crispy

The xiao long bao were nice, but not as good as Din Tai Fung

The other dumplings were decent too

The place was packed, but we were in and out in twenty minutes.  Pretty impressive!!

Thursday.  Quickie drink at work then into town for the third night in a row to catch up with Luc who was in town.  We had such a short time to catch up - like less than an hour.  Great to catch up but sad it was so short.

Mary's French, with a Frenchman!

Antebellum

Watched some more Picard.  I'm enjoying this season.  The last couple of episodes were directed by Jonathan Frakes and have four or five original cast members which has been a lot of fun.  It's like Next Gen only more "real" and better character development.

Friday.  Windows patched and rebooted overnight.  They've stuffed up window behaviour.  Now if you maximise a window it'll either completely cover the task bar, or it'll hide the bottom of your window behind your taskbar.  Completely retarded.  ** As of Sunday night this seems to have been fixed, even without another reboot **  Leftover lamb shanks for dinner, then Futurama, then finished season 4 of Death in Paradise.  Kit invited us down for a drink.  Then had sad cause we don't live next door anymore.  

Oh, the other week I made it to level 10000 in Candy Crush!!  Except then this week they completely changed the interface.  That coupled with a super hard level 10086 and I've lost all motivation to play.  Other than logging in to collect daily rewards I've all but stopped playing.  Maybe they'll nerf the level and I'll take it up again.

Also this week I spent several mornings fighting with Dad's slides.  Specifically his ones of Yerranderie.  He did a bushwalking trip in June 1985, and we went there as a family in December 1985.  Those two trips were easy enough to separate.  But within the December trip there were clearly two different rolls of film.  But the second roll of film had photos interspersed with the first roll.  The dates were right (when compared with Mum's photos) so it just didn't make any sense.  Then Stu said "maybe there were two cameras" which also didn't make any sense until I thought about it some more.  Dad had massive problems with his old camera in August 1985 - he lost half of his photos to the camera over-exposing them.  Maybe he got himself a new camera for Christmas?  Mum couldn't remember.  But it was certainly plausible.  Maybe the half a dozen photos in the middle were simply finishing off the last roll of film on the old camera?  I decided to go with that :)

Saturday.  Woke up in the middle of the night for like an hour and a half for no good reason.  Spent most of the day labelling holiday photos and inventorying Vic's Lego.  I did also spent an hour and a half cleaning out a manky fish tank, consolidating a couple of tanks, then arranging the power and lights so that only two tanks are active now, with another essentially just keeping heaters from drying out, running for just a few hours in the middle of the day while the sun is out.  Then I found the house battery simply didn't charge.  Flatline at 10% all day.  Solar Edge strikes again.  #grunt.  Leftovers for dinner then watched Innerspace.

Sunday.  Slept ok.  Spent the entire day (other than going out for lunch and food shopping) labelling photos and inventorying Lego.  The sort of nice quiet day I crave every day.  Oh, and the battery charged today.  Hurray.  

Sunday.  Roast beef for dinner, then The Crown.

Monday.  Slept ok.  Meh day.  Did some sneaky work for Aquila for another team and got everything consistent and documented.  Couldn't help myself.  Leftover turkey and veggies for dinner.  Started watching Amazing Race Australia from last year.

Seven magpies came to see me at lunch.

Tuesday.  Took ages to get to sleep.  Ok day I think?  Cooked up some mince for dinner, with a slightly Mexican vibe.  Continuing on the photo culling.  Wanted to get three days culled in two nights to keep up with the schedule.  Gonna be a struggle.

Wednesay.  Ok day I think?  Forgot to do a change after lunch, but managed to sneak it in later.  Whoops.  

After work met up with the sweetie and Dennis at Dolly's for a drink, then went to Tiger Lane for dinner.  I had Lucky Duck which was ok but not super epic awesome, and not really worth $18.  Stu had some fried chicken, but I think Kimchi's is better.

No energy for photo culling when I got home so watched a bit of Amazing Race (and was very confused when they started showing names for a whole new group of racers starting in Sydney.  It's not the first time channel 10 have mixed things up but surely they would have gotten it fixed by now??  Had to do a quick Google (and try and avoid spoilers) to realise that they actually had two sets of ten teams racing).

Thursday.  Slept ok I think.  Busy day.  Started working on a change for next week, but had to abandon that before 10 to deal with All The Things and never got back to it.  Ok drinks.  Around tonight got into season 3 of Futurama, but Disney are playing things out of order.  Started watching Picard season 3, which was fun, with Riker and Crusher.  

Friday.  Awake for a couple of hours stressing about All The Things.  Logged into work and my desktop session was gonnnnnne!!!  OMFG!!!  They'd sent an email AFTER I'D LOGGED OFF last night asking people to log off to test a new desktop.  I might have had a meltdown.  Fortunately it was actually still there, just hidden, so that was a relief.  Had a gardener come to have a look at the garden to give us a quote on weed cleanup.  Second episode of Picard, then started watching Chernobyl 1986, a 2020 Russian production.  Kinda like Titanic - fictionalised story around true events.

Saturday.  Slept fairly well.  Busy day of housework and photo culling, and fighting with Hilton Rewards who allowed a retard to sign up with my email address but refused to contact the person or change the email address or do anything to help me.  After they said "too bad so sad" (literally the last thing they said to me was "I request you to change your email so that you won't receive unwanted emails").  Bastards.  Also went out at lunch (Pattysmiths) and did some food shopping.  And all while listening to the Classic 100 Favourite Instruments.  Stu cooked sausages and mashed potato, then Futurama/Picard, and I finished watching Chernobyl 1986.

Sunday.  Slept ok.  Spent most of the day doing photo culling (and a few other bits and pieces) while listening to the Classic 100.

Sunday.  21st.  Had yummy basa bake for dinner, then Futurama, The Crown (Charles and Di's engagement and wedding) and Lego Grandmasters.

Monday.  Slept okish.  Cleaning and tidying day.  Photo culling and Lego Grandmasters in the evening.  The sweetie was having a day so we ended up getting pizza for dinner, including vomit pizza!

Tuesday.  Took forever to get to sleep - stressing about All The Things and restless.  Cleaning and decommissioning day.  Six magpies came to see me at lunch - three from either side of the ant hill demarcation line.  

Skipped doing any music to get an early start on culling.  Leftover butt beef cheeks for dinner.  Still took til 20:00 to cull three days of photos.  hmm.  

Wednesday.  Late getting to sleep, slept ok but woke up around 5.  Sick of the stoopid by 9am.  Sigh.  Did a cleaning change in prod which noone has yelled about so far.  

Thursday.  Slept ok I think.  

Ok day I think.  After work went with the hills to the Hellenic Club for dinner and AWS show with Emma Pask and Ed Wilson (I'll put pics in another post).  I had veal scallopene for dinner which wasn't on the menu but I saw the dude next to us eating it and asked for it.  It was yummy!

Friday.  Took me a while to get to sleep even though it was very late.  And then woke up early.  Sigh.  Surprisingly not a zombie day though so that was nice.  Lots of cleaning and decommissioning work.  Did some weeding at lunch.  A currawong was closely monitoring the situation and even came down right next to me to pick up a big juicy worm I must have dislodged.  After work was Whisky Live which was fun as always.  

Saturday.  Some cleaning of the bedroom in the morning, and did a sort of Dad's Tasmania photos (this time he'd only smooshed together two trips).  I also found a whole heap more photos of the Lego Brickshow from last year.  I swear I'd taken more photos than I had seen on the Canon and iPhone.  Yeah - they were on the G5X - over 500 of them!  So might post some more of those at some point.  Headed out to the club in the late afternoon for an "M" themed night, which I used as a good excuse to trot out my Minifig costume!

Marcanna and Greg did an amazing Mexican feast!

It was also the club's birthday this week, so they had a big cake.  John and Shirley told a heap of stuff about the early history of the club, would have been nice to get it on video actually.  Doh.

Sunday.  Somewhat broken sleep (the sweetie couldn't sleep and I was actually a bit hot under a couple of doonas even though it was literally freezing - our water pipes actually froze solid overnight).  Came home and put all the Tasmania slides away and finished the second section of the Titanic, and did some computer stuff.

Here's a couple of photos of a hot air balloon a couple of weeks ago that were in the wrong directory so got missed...

When we went to Victoria last year I bought a whole heap of snack food for the driving, including a bag of dried apricots.  We only opened them recently.  Even though I do actually like dried apricots, I never seem to eat them, so decided we needed another way to get through them.  Apricot chicken to the rescue!  I found a simple recipe on https://bakeplaysmile.com/apricot-chicken-slow-cooker/  (but don't go there - there's so much advertising and videos and crap it'll destroy your CPU).  

It's super simple - a bunch of chicken, a tin of apricot nectar, a packet of french onion soup, and a handful of dried apricots, chopped.  I didn't use all the ones here in the photo - maybe only a third of them.

Chuck it all in the slow cooker with a bit of water to cover

At the end I mixed in a few teaspoons of corn flour so it'd thicken up a bit.

It doesn't look like much but it was very nice

Next time I'd probably do boneless pieces, as bones are annoying in the slow cooker.

Monday.  8th.  Backdating because spent too much time last week blogging the week before.  Took a while to get to sleep Sunday night, woke up a bit early.  Ok day I guess.  Cooked creamy mushroom fettuccini for dinner, but it took over an hour.  Sigh.  Not enough TIME.  Cruise photo culling and Lego Grandmasters.

We caught this in the lounge room on the weekend

There's snow on them thar hills!

Tuesday.  Slept ok.  Started off fresh and getting things done, then the hassling started, one thing after another after another.  I never did get item 2 of my todo list done.  Such a busy day.  Logged off, then five minutes later Con messaged me that work that had originally been planned for the night and had since been cancelled, had been uncancelled but noone bothered to tell me.  Brisket for dinner (the thing was making me hungry all afternoon.  

Wednesday.  Slept ok.  Well other than waking up from a traumatic dream where I couldn't get my Subway lunch.  The dude serving me was speaking jibberish and also couldn't understand me.  I begged for someone else to help.  The manager tried but he made a footlong sub that also had seafood in it.  And I'm like, I'm not paying for a footlong with seafood because it'll be soggy and disgusting by the time I get to the second half later.  So he went to start a new one but then wandered off half way through and I'm getting super upset because I'm hungry and just want my lunch and noone else would help either and I was trying to come around to make it myself.  Silly really.  Another day of people coming to me with problems and not able to get my own work done.  But did have a good documentation session while waiting for the sweetie.  Leftover curry for dinner and photo culling.

This is a fun pic - the count of blog entries I've made per month over the past twenty years.  I used to blog more frequently back in the day, but didn't include photos nearly as much.  It's the downloading and processing of the photos that takes the most time and energy and was always the barrier to posting them more often.  And why I mostly only blog weekly now, so I only have to download and process my photos once a week.

Thursday.  Slept ok.  Woke up to the news that Heather Armstrong of dooce.com had died.  Literally the first thing I saw on Instagram, and somehow I just knew it would be suicide.. the Black Dog finally caught up with her.  I feel bad for Leta, Marlo, Pete and all her family and friends, pretty awful thing for them to go through.  Rest in Peace.  Work/drinks, then mostly reading about Heather and some of the comments on her last post.

Friday.  Slept ok other than waking up a bit early.  I think.  Ok day.  I think.  Sigh.

Saturday.  Did a few things at home before we went out for breakfast and food shopping.

This overpass in Gungahlin wasn't here last time

Coffee Club brekkie burger

I'm a sweet pickle? what?

Of course it was nearly midday by the time we got home.  Then it was mostly cleaning the house all afternoon.  Sigh.  Had Nick and Tab over for butt beef cheeks for dinner which was nice.

Sunday.  Slept ok.  Did a bottle/tip/Green Shed run.  At least it didn't take too long.  But then spent the entire rest of the day sorting out Dad's photos of various Queensland and northern NSW trips.  He'd mixed up like four entirely separate holidays all together into ten boxes of slides.  Oddly he'd also included some from a 1978 trip, but not all, and he'd also put some of the slides from one of the earlier trips into the 1978 trip.  Such a mess.  But think I got it all sorted out in the end.

But by the time I'd done that it was after 15:00 and I hadn't done anything else on the todo list and then I started freaking out how short weekends are and I how much I have to do.  I did some music, then photo downloading and processing.  But it takes like an hour to blog each week and I still hadn't blogged last week.  Sigh.  And I also think I might have accidentally found out the winners of Lego Grandmasters.  hrmm.  Stu cooked some mince for dinner, then Futurama/Crown.

Sunday.  30th.  Backdated because once again I ran out of time.  Tacos for dinner and watched the last episode of season 3 of The Crown.

Monday.  Woke up at like 1:30 til like 4:30.  Sigh.  I don't even really know what I did all day.  But my birds came to see me after six months of not.  Got stuck in a call from 14:00-15:00 which meant I was super late putting the dishwasher on - missed the sun and cut into the battery :(  Had kale chips and chicken kiev for dinner and did a bunch of photo filing.

Tuesday.  Decent sleep hurray!!  Cleaning/migration stuff at work.  But getting super frustrated at all the stoopid.  Then did some doco for another team.  Because that's what I do.  Yellow curry for dinner - used up a bunch of stuff in the fridge.  But still ended up with a heap more as leftovers.  Was good though.  Photo filing then started (finally) on Lego Grandmasters!!

Wednesday.  Took ages to get to sleep because of cold feet.  But then slept ok.  A day of not getting anything done, just sitting there and dealing with everyone else's problems.  More photo filing, and my bowels started hurting again.  Sigh.  Honey mustard chicken leftovers for dinner.

Super low rainbow!!

Thursday.  Took ages to get to sleep - stressing about all the things - mostly about my belly.  Star Wars day, and they had two pieces of John Williams music from it between 7 and 8.  Cleaning planning and doco then just people distracting me.  Very quiet drinks, pizza for dinner.

Friday.  Slept ok.  More cleaning work.  Had lunch at Herbert's with the Chrises, Glenda, Neil and Tony.  We're getting to that age where our main topics of conversation are our health issues.  Sigh.  More Lego Grandmasters after dinner.

Satuday.  Slept ok.  Super productive morning.  Lunch at The Scottish Restaurant (got a double cheeseburger but it didn't have any pickles!  How rude!) then food shopping.  Fired up my old computer so I could scan some stuff and download the GPS for the Berrima trip.  Then music and suddenly it's dinner time.  What??  Sigh.  The sweetie cooked dinner though which was nice - oden - Japanese winter comfort food.  It was very nice. 

Then we watched the coronation.  Nice that it's prime time here.  We started off watching the ABC coverage but got bored of the republican debate beforehand, and the commercial coverage was pretty crap so ended up watching the BBC stream. The dude doing the deaf translation looked to be having a lot of fun heh.

Sunday.  Slept in!  A whole half hour!  Sigh.  Had breakfast at Deakin and Me which was nice, then dropped into Parliament House to see the Lego.  I haven't been in there like thirty-something years.  Also stopped into Bunnings to get some gum boots.  

Barely seemed to get anything done.  Did blog the Berrima weekend which took like an hour and twenty minutes.  Ran out of time for main blog of course.  Need. More. Time.  Leftover lamb roast for dinner, Crown, Lego Grandmasters.

The original plan for our 15th wedding anniversary was to have a long weekend in Hobart.  But then life got in the way and we never organised anything and then Stu wouldn't have been able to take the time off from work anyway.

So plan B was organised a lot closer to the date, and we decided to just do a quick overnighter somewhere nearby.

So last Saturday we got ready and headed off.  We stopped at the Scottish Restaurant for breakfast.

Then out through Bungendore to Tarago.  Just a quick stop there because it was raining, and we'd stopped there before recently, and there's not much there anyway.

"The Morass" lakes are very full at the moment.

Next stop was Bungonia.  It was market day so there were *people* around.  There's a lot of historic buildings there so it would be interesting to take more time to explore there.  We didn't see much this time because it was raining.

We had to stop at the railway viaduct near Tallong.  Because bridge!

There was even a train!

At Tallong I had a look at the station, and had a WTF moment when Stu pointed this out!!  Stu stayed in the car.  Because it was raining.

We also found the Big Apple

Wingello station wasn't very interesting, but walking on the tracks is still kinda cool.  Stu stayed in the car.  Because it was raining.

We stopped in Bundanoon and had pies for lunch.

I went to find a loo, and went for a wander, while Stu sheltered from the rain.

Abbey Road, Bundanoon?

We didn't even stop in Sutton Forest.  Because it was raining.

We missed Exeter because the sweetie accidentally turned where he shouldn't have at Bundanoon and we ended up taking a different back way.

We continued past the centre of Berrima and out to the Berkelouw Book Barn.  Stu had been here once years and years ago when the Old Hume Highway was the Hume Highway.  But it was chaos because there was a wedding on the grounds, and the cafe area was *full* of annoying people that thought that congregrating next to doorways was a good idea (the place was emptying out while we were there).  I dunno if they were all part of the wedding or not (maybe waiting while photos were being taken??), but it seemed like a lot of people knew each other.  So the place was crowded and annoying.  Stu did buy a book on the art of war though.

Then headed back into Berrima and checked into the motel - the Bakehouse Motel.  It was just lovely.  I dunno why but Australian motels are often better/more comfortable/much better equiped than fancy hotels.  It almost seems standard that they have decent fridges and glasses and crockery.  This one didn't have a microwave in the room, but it had one in a common area, and you could also pick up cereal and milk for breakfast from there.  Plenty of power points around, and plenty of luggage rack space.  There was also aircon *and* a fan, although we didn't need either.  Just lovely.

The sweetie crashed for a bit and I did a sudoku.  Then I went out for a little wander around town.  In the rain.

I came back to the room and we had some wine and cheese (finished off a bottle we started last weekend).  All very civilised.

Then we went across the road to the Surveyor General Inn - Australia's Oldest Continuously Licened Inn - for a beer.

Then up past the gaol again.

And up to Escalot for dinner.  We were in the early sitting (17:45) and of course so everyone else in the same sitting all turn up at once and we're all waiting outside the door heh.  

We decided to go with the "Chef's feed me" ($95pp), which aligns with my usual philosophy of eating out - "bring food and I'll eat it".  

When they brought out All The Starters, I was like, we're going to need a doggy bag.  Or five.  Because look at this!!

So top left was cheese croquettes, then kingfish, and flatbread, with zucchini flowers bottom left and sweet potato on the right.  I don't know if the serving sizes are the same as the menu or just tasters, but here's the menu for them (I think, assuming they actually did the menu and not just made something up):

* actually I'm not sure about the croquette on the menu - might have been "manchego, leek and jalapeno croquette, yuzu aiolo, wakame" ($25)
* I think then "kingfish ceviche, cucumber consomme, sherry escalot, citrius, yoghurt" ($37)
* also not sure about the bread
* "zucchini flowers, smoked ricotta, honey, turffle pecorino" ($28)
* "dry aged sweet potato, almod, labneh and pomegranate ($25)

The mains were similarly amazing!

Up the back was fried chicken, then across the middle pork belly, salmon and carrots, and potato and salad at the front.  Possibly from the menu they were:

* "southern fried chicken, honey & sriracha glaze" ($35)
* "mead and miso glazed pork belly, pickled cucumber, caramelised radish" ($46)
* "sous vide king salmon, shoyu glaze, pickled radish, kimchi, rye" ($48)
* "local carrots, truffle honey, shaved manchego" ($18)
* "crispy chat potatoes, gochujang mayo" ($15)
* "eschalot garden salad, tomatoes, olives, white balsamic" ($15)

Dessert I'm not sure about, but I think it was a lemon tart, but doesn't line up entirely with either the example feed me menu online, or the general menu online (and didn't get a photo of the menu we saw).  She did say it had "fence berries" on it, and I'm like what, and she's like, yeah they're berries that grow on their fence.  haha!  It was nice though.  Although we probably would have enjoyed it more if we hadn't been stuffed silly with food.

My only complaint was that the pork belly skin wasn't crispy.  They didn't say it would be, so can't "complain", but I did say that it would have been sooooo much better if it was :)

Absolutely lovely meal, although we were both hurting from eating too much!!

Went back to the motel and crashed in a heap.

I actually slept reasonably well.  We had cereal from the motel for breakfast.

Then I went for another walk.  In the rain.

I went up to find the courthouse (right next to the gaol, easy)

And Harper's Mansion

And saw other cute buildings as well

But I didn't go to the south side of town.  Because it was raining.

Then we packed up and went home via the Hume.  

So yeah.  Lovely weekend.  But it did rain.  The. Entire. Weekend.  Maybe next time we'll have more luck with the weather..