Sunday.  13th.  Roasted up some veggies for dinner and had it with some leftover lamb.  Watched Logan's Run in the evening.  Kinda like Soylent Green meets The Time Machine.  I want to go to the Fort Worth Water Gardens that'd be cool.  

Monday.  Epic insomnia.  Went back to sleep for an hour after the alarm went off.  Then it was just house/photo/jigsaw stuff.  

My aim here wasn't so much to completely get rid of the periwinkle this go, but give the area some light so the freesias will grow.  I'll keep going at it when I get the energy.

Special fried rice I made for lunch - leftover rice, fried up with a chopped up sausage, peas and corn, some of Stu's teriyaki sauce, and topped with kewpie mayo

Cheating

Didn't get to do more important things, like putting ratsak into the roof.  Made stuffed capsicums for dinner.  The sweetie doesn't even like capsicums much but he went back for seconds haha.  Then the last three episodes of the girl on the train in the rear window.  Completely ridiculous of course.

Tuesday.  Slept ok-ish. 

Had to be Neil at work.  Except I can't help myself and try and deal with problems that he's just happy to delete heh. 

An hour and a quarter of weeding after work.  Whoops.  Then had to go to back to work late in the evening to do a cert replacement.

 

I don't think this is all going to fit in the green bin..

Wednesday. Took forever to get to sleep - cold and still too wired from working late.  So pretty tired day.  Was Neil again.  Did music but no weeding after work.  Eh, it was wet anyway.  Late dinner of lefover lamb, cabbage and rice.  Did some photo culling (onto London now).

Cheating on the edges

Thursday.  Slept well for a change!!  Another day of being Neil.  Did some fun mail stuff I wouldn't have gotten to do if Neil was around.  Really not comfortable being in the office.  Too many people off with covid (which means they've likely been in contact with people in the office).  And at drinks someone was sniffling away.  omfg if you're sniffling stay home!  Even if it's "just a cold" I don't want to get your germs.  I guess it could have been hay fever but sheesh..!  Stu want home feeling sick during the afternoon (not covid related), so let him get pizza for dinner.

Friday.  Woke up some time after 3 and never got back to sleep.  Epic sigh.  Pizza=>insomnia?? 

Saw Tico out the window

Zombie day.  Did a bit of cleanup for Neil because I can't help myself.  And more of the fun mail stuff.  TV dinners for dinner.  Finished Bambi!  And not just Bambi, but the entire Disney Memorable Moments Behemoth!!  40320 pieces!  DONE!!!

Watched Flying High in the evening (after seeing Zero Hour! last week we had to)

Saturday.  Peed once but otherwise slept through from ~10pm til 5:30!! Hurrah!!  House stuff in the morning, and some weeding.  Then just photo culling.  Well other than going out late morning to do a chemist and bakery run for Annie's family, several of which have covid at the moment.  

This sweet little geranium is flowering even though it's just sitting in a glass on the window sill, and had been mostly eaten by an epic caterpillar.

Remember that cute little cow from last week?  This is the scene it went into.  So cute!

Got this off Chris and Glenda.  Any guesses what it is? :)

I was going to do some greenery with this.  Really I was.  But the chicken kievs were pretty big and this old bread needed using up, so it ended up being a pretty big meal.  And it was so awesome!!!

Sunday.  Today.  I swear brown meals cause insomnia.  Last night took *forever* to get to sleep because I was restless/itchy/uncomfortable.  And then I woke up around 5 and took forever to get back to sleep.  When I went to pee I could hear a pipe running and water dripping.  I thought it was the cooler dripping down the roof.  Slept til about 7:15 but it wasn't enough.  Sigh.  Realised after I got up the dripping was actually from the tap in the bath.  I must have turned it on slightly when I wiped down the bath on Friday night.  This is the only drawback of half turn taps - they are *very* easy to accidentally turn on!  Went out to do ten minutes of periwinkle hacking in the morning but John saw me and couldn't help himself.  He dug into the worst of the roots and pulled out all the rocks and suddenly (an hour and a half later) there's no periwinkle left there at all (I'll have to spray any shoots that come up).  Whoops.  I gave him a couple of beers but he definitely deserved a whole sixpack!!  Maybe a case!!

Does anyone want these rocks?

Then just alternating photo and jigsaw stuff.  

Can you guess now?  Easy bit is done, the rest is going to be horrendous :)

In the afternoon I put on Bambi.  I swear I had a bluray of this.  But maybe I just had the VHS and hadn't gotten around to getting a bluray of it yet.  Anyway, I couldn't find my own copy to watch so put it on on Disney+

As per usual, the jigsaw doesn't actually match the movie.

I mean, there *is* shot of the three of them

But Thumper on the ground is a different shot

So is Flower being bashful

And the flowers overhead aren't even there until Bambi grows up

Silly really.

Then photos and blogging and rain!

Sunday.  Not backdating!  Lamb roast for dinner.  Except it was two small roasts not one larger one, so the cooking time was very much reduced.  Which meant the garlic didn't cook fully.  So I stuck it back in the oven.  This has to be among the tastiest things on earth ;)

Monday.  Even though I was zombie tired from not sleeping well Saturday night, I still took *ages* to get to sleep, but at least finally slept ok.  It was so *windy* today.  I put my washing out on the line, it was probably dry in about three minutes.  Scanned a roll of negatives.  Had an ok day, doing cleaning and deleting old production stuff :)  Did music but no weeding.  Sausages and salad for dinner.  Into season 22 of The Simpsons.  Did a "first pass" cull of three days of Eurasia 2012 trip.

Tuesday.  Slept ok.  The questions started as soon as I logged in and didn't let up for nearly an hour.  Found it super frustrating in the afternoon because everything was blurry and I couldn't SEEEEE.  I don't know if I was tired which made it worse, or if not being able to see made me tired.  Did some photo culling before dinner.

Wednesday.  Could see the screen in the morning, although it got worse during the day.  Clearly I'm too old to be sitting at work all day staring at a computer screen.  More cleaning with HBZ's help.  And finally sat down to plan cleaning of another set of firewalls (that a previous cloud admin completely botched up and made an epic mess of).  Uunifetapasta for dinner.

Thursday.  Had to *go* to work.  Blerf.  There's still way too much covid around for me to be feel comfortable doing that.  And the office is *noisy*.  People yapping away everywhere, super annoying.  I went to talk to Neil at one point and found myself on TWO people's cameras in two different meetings.  So I went and sat back down until they were off their calls.  Hate being on camera hate hate hate.  Still, the bar was open so that was nice, first time in three months.

Friday.  Ok day.  Grilled the last of some bread I got the other day in the toasted sandwich maker with some parmesan cheese each side (and leftover KFC). Epic good.  Late getting off work because Neil was stressing about upgrades, although turns out what he thought was a problem wasn't a problem after all.  Doc Oc pizzas for dinner, then finally watched Zero Hour! (which Tony took it upon himself to reencode for us, and this time it worked perfectly, even streaming straight off OneDrive and casting from my computer browser). OMFG it was HILARIOUS.  Not because it was actually funny, but because Flying High is pretty much identical to this movie.  I mean I already know there were chunks of it the same, but I had no idea almost the entire movie, from plot to character names to the dialogue was pretty much verbatim.  I mean I could even quote this movie in a lot of places because it was all the same.  My brother would probably appreciate this, you should have a watch :)

Saturday.  Urgh couldn't get to sleep for *ages*.  Maybe even non-Dominos pizza will cause me insomnia.  I still got up to go see the balloons though.  Except I really didn't like the new location (Patrick White Lawns, in front of the library).  It was all very cramped and there was no *view* - no landmarks (other than the library if you could make your way through the crowds to get to the north side) and surround on all sides by trees.  So went somewhere else instead, which worked out a whole lot better.  Pics in a separate post.  Went and said hi to Neil afterwards.  The day was just house/photo/jigsaw stuff.  At lunch we did a Bunnings run (to get vermin poisoning stuffs), as well as Asian Supa for some bits and pieces and Officeworks (to get a decent reem of paper - to try instead of the Coles paper we have which keeps getting jammed - not sure if it's the paper or the printer).  Mostly just jigasw in the afternoon.  

Just a few weeks it was 181.9.  Just the other day it was 199.9.  Saturday 209.9.  omfg, madness.  See we should all be working from home to save petrol given the current crisis.

How cute is this teeny little cow that Stu painted? :)

Stu cooked dinner - a vegetarian Japanese curry which was very nice.

Watched Operation Finale in the evening.

Sunday.  Slept well for a change.  Forgot to have breakfast (routine was out of whack), so ended up having bacon and eggs (Pialligo bacon yummm) which was quite nice.

The day was house/photo/jigsaw stuff.. doing All The Things.

Monday.  31st.  Backdating.  Slept well.  I set off the stoopid hallway smoke detector while I was doing the dusting (I wasn't even anywhere fricken near it!!!) which gave me a heart attack because I was right under it, and then Stu couldn't get it to turn off.  He wanted to take it down, but the thing is a ten year battery life detector which has this incredibly stoopid feature that if you disable the battery you disable it PERMANENTLY.  So I'm not actually sure if the thing is even functional anymore.  Need to light a candle under it or something stoopid.  I swear I'd never buy another one of those things, I'd rather just replace the battery every couple of years.  Probably cheaper to do that anyway.  Super busy day at work, didn't get to do one of the things I wanted to.  Tax stuff in evening (figuring out my hours worked from home).

OMFG it's a disaster!  Something ate my little sunflower!! :(

Tuesday.  Woke up to fog.  It's been so humid the past few days it's been so disgusting.  Another super busy day at work.  *Still* didn't get to do the one thing I wanted to.

Wednesday.  Went to bed nice and early, but went to sleep late - like past 23:00 late.  #grunt.  Another super busy crazy day.

Thursday.  Yet another crazy day.  Sigh.  Pizza for dinner, then watched the second episdoe of the Girl on the Train vs Rear Window.

I took this on Thursday night, which was like the first photo on my phone in three days.  The larger horse on the left, Beau (or Bow, can't remember now) v2 replaced the one I dropped when I was in kindergarten or first class.  The smaller one I got not long after.  So they're like forty years old.

Friday.  Couldn't get to sleep for hours, sigh.  Woke up to 14C in the house which felt a tad cold for some reason.  Took the car to Woden for a service and got a lift back (thanks Tony!!).  Yet another crazy busy day.  As soon as I logged on there was an OMFG IT'S AN EPIC EMERGENCY thing that needed doing which they'd found out about out of hours the night before, and if someone had thought to call myself or Neil it wouldn't have been such an OMFG EPIC EMERGENCY.  Le sigh.  Picked up the car, then continued working trying to get stuff done.  Chicken kiev for dinner, and the girl on the train in the rear window, as well as packing ...   !!

Monday.  24th.  Slept well.  Went to go food shopping at 7am but the car wouldn't start.  We've had this happen before, and usually it comes good after a few minutes.  But this time it didn't.  We tried with both keys but no luck.  So gave up on the idea of doing any food shopping.  Later we tried both fobs, locking and unlocking it, opening/closing the boot, taking the keys *away* from the car, even disconnecting the battery for a while, but nothing worked.  Had a good day at work, deleting stuff which is always fun :)   But the more I clean, the more things I find to clean.  It's like a choose-your-own-adventure going off in tangent after tangent.  Oh I forgot to mention in last week's blog post, that the rear element of the oven is in fact working.  I have no idea what happened the other week, but the next time I tried it it worked fine.  Go figure.  Then geotagging my Victoria/South Australia 1994 photos.

Tuesday.  In the morning finished geotagging my Vic/SA photos.  At work was cleaning and writing up of what needs cleaning.  San choy bow for dinner.  Then I started geotagging Dad's Vic/SA 1994 photos.  We also finished season 20 of The Simpsons.

For Mum

Wednesday.  234 years ago some poms got off their ships a few hundred k's away so we get a day off work.  Spent literally all day geotagging photos.  Leftovers for dinner (butter chicken out of the freezer because that's Strayan surely ;) ).  Watched Sleeping With the Enemy, which I'd seen but didn't remember when (and it wasn't on the blog) but Stu remembered watching it with me.  Oh well.  

Thursday.  Random day off.  More geotagging.  Basically finished geotagging all the photos that I wanted to for this round. 

Stu called the service people about the car, they just said get it towed to them (we were going to have it serviced next week anyway).  So I was going to call the NRMA, but then the neighbours went out, and was worried we wouldn't be able to get a tow truck in with their other car in the driveway.  #grunt.  Watched Munich: Edge of War in the evening which was interesting (if fictitious).  

Made arribbiata bake for dinner (sans anchovies cause apparently we'd run out, oh well ;) )

Which do you reckon will be hotter?  The Coles one I bought the other week, or the little ones off our plant?  Hint: even after washing my hands a couple of times with soap, I could still get a burnt tongue from licking my fingers.

Friday.  Another random day off.  Awake for ages in the middle of the night stressing about All The Things.  Got cranky at Gmail cause for a while you haven't been able to search for exact phrases using quotes anymore, and it sux donkey balls.  Tony came over at 9am because he's chainsaw qualified (it's a thing! and everyone fricken should be!!) and I wanted him to chainsaw back the oak tree suckers on our big stump.  But he couldn't help himself and chopped back our hedge as well and took three trailer loads to greenwaste!  Meanwhile I hacked weeds in the front garden.  And hacked and hacked and hacked.  Suddenly it was midday and our front yard looks amazing (thanks Tony!!!!!), and I was *wasted* haha.  I didn't even take any before/after photos - I'm a slacker I know!!  But I did get some photos of him hacking at the stump.

This is one of our roses - which unusually has opened - usually they just die before opening

After lunch I called the NRMA and they sent someone out.  He took one look and said, yup, it's the battery.  And I'm like, but everything lights up like a Christmas tree, and the headlights work and and and.. but it seems this is likely the original battery (Ford branded) so would be seven and a half years old, so decided to just replace it.  And it worked!!  The car started!!  What a relief!  

Saturday.  Got up early and went and did our food shopping.  OMFG the humidity though!!  It was intense!!  Fortunately it didn't get too *hot* and in the afternoon we just ran the cooler on fan only mode.  The sweetie talked me into Chong Co for dinner (he didn't have to try hard!) and then we watched The Laundromat, which is very similar to The Big Short in terms of trying to explain some crazy finance-world events.

Sunday.  Today.  Just a day of trying to get organised really.  Went to the chemist in the arvo (although really should have left it til tomorrow morning cause it was *crowded* #grunt). 

They're taking down the mushroom!

And suddenly my little short break is over.  Sad times.

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.

Sunday.  9th.  Not backdating ;)  During the week I bought these mini capsicums, so thought I'd do a stuffing for them - a bit of mince, some brown rice, and feta.  Topped with a bit of shredded cheese and roasted for like 40 minutes.  Yummy!

Monday.  Woke up at ~3:45 hungry and needing to pee.  At this point the sweetie hadn't actually been to sleep yet!  Poor thing.  I didn't get any more sleep after that either.  It seems on a given night one of us will be awake.  hmmm.  Spent all morning doing finance and tax stuff, and most of the afternoon checking receipts against bank statements.  Had to laugh - the RTA *finally* closed off my etag account, but funnily enough they refunded me the deposit for the tag, even though I never returned it (it was crushed with my old car).  Maybe they figured it was so old it wasn't worth it.  Shrug.  And guess how many times I went to the ATM last year?  Once.  ONCE!!  And that was only to get cash out for the kids' Christmas presents.  At least ACT covid cases were down a bit (well maybe - chances are a lot aren't being reported now because RATs are taking some of the load).  Leftover pork (refried in jelly) and cabbage for dinner.  Then I watched Die Hard with a Vengeance.

Stumpy is a bit retarded sometimes!

Tuesday.  Awake for a while around dentist time - probably from the neighbourhood dog barking at a possum.  Depressed about losing all our money on the cruise, depressed about going back to work.  So my tolerance for the stoopid was at rock bottom.  After work went and got my booster jab.  They had plenty of people working the family queue which seemed to move quickly, but there was only one person processing the adult queue.  So I was waiting for over half an hour in a queue.  I think they moved a few nurses across from the family section once that queue quietted down, because they had a few people going by the time I got seen.  

Picked up Crust pizza on the way home, but they don't keep their pizzas in the oven like Dominos do, so one was a bit cold by the time I got there and got it home.  Bit sad to find out that Bob Saget died.  In the evening tried to file photos, but I just can't *see*, especially at night.  Super frustrating.  And my resized to 1280 wide photos only take up a quarter of the screen now.

Wednesday.  Dog was barking in the middle of the night again, but not for too long.  Otherwise I think I slept ok.  Felt in a much better mental state about work.  Decided to document Neil.  After lunch I started feeling trippy - the feeling you get when you're having an immune reaction.  Went and had a little lie down.  Didn't sleep of course, but did rest.  Felt weak and floppy all afternoon/evening.  But at least my immune system is *doing* something about covid, which is a relief.  Leftover lamb and salad for dinner.  As usual we put on The Simpsons over dinner, and as soon as it started I was like OMFG wide screen!  This episode (Take My Life, Please) first aired in February 2009.  And it was glorious!  Clean and crisp, so much nicer than the old animations.  Didn't feel like doing anything much, so put on the Disney 2003 version of The Young Black Stallion, which was ok for a kids movie, but short and sweet.

Thursday.  Felt much better after a decent sleep.  Ok day, more being Neil and documenting him.  Leftover stuffing mix and cabbage for dinner.  Started geotagging Mum and Dad's 1971 Tasmania trip photos.

Friday.  Took *forever* to get to sleep, but slept ok after than.  Ok day, more documenting and writing test plans.  Chicken kiev for dinner, and watched The Grand Budapest Hotel.  I'd seen it before and thought it was quirky but overly violent.  Stu thought it was weird.  Except I swear they sanitised the violence, because it wasn't nearly as violent as I remember it.  

This is the saddest thing.  These booties were on my baptism cake!  Mum had them in her china cabinet until she moved, then they'd been on top of my computer desk gathering dust.  They had already started to absorb moisture and collapse, but when I cleared off the top of my computer desk I moved them temporarily to the dining table.  Where they sat under the cooler vent.  And promptly melted into a puddle.  Sad times!!

Super annoyingly, the rear element of our oven seems to have died - it just didn't heat up the oven when I turned it on.  The thing is less that two years old which is a big stinking poo!!!

Saturday.  Spent much of the day geotagging Mum and Dad's Tasmania photos (and I got as many of them geotagged as I could of their trip).  In the afternoon I went down to Tony's to look at / pick up some maps and brochures for Tasmania.  Ended up staying for dinner which was nice.

Sunday.  House stuff and music in the morning, and looking at Tassie locations in the afternoon.  At lunch time we were sick of our usual lunches so went out for a drive to get some takeway.  Drove past the shop where a gas leak blew up the building. 

Then picked up some Oporto drive through and went to Diddams Close park to eat it by the lake.  That quite nice, although we did have a very captive audience watch us the entire time!!

Of course now I have to go and geotag all Mum's slides from her YHA trip to Tasmania in 1968 :)

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.

I slept relatively well on the inflatable mattress.

In the morning Mum and David and I played a few rounds of "Pub Trivia" game he had which was a bit of fun.  Kellie came over, then we headed down to Wagga Wagga.

Our first stop was the Bidgee Strawberries and Cream strawberry farm.

I'd never been fruit picking so I had no idea what to expect.  Kellie said you can buy punnets to fill your own, and eat as many strawberries as you like as you went.  It was $3 each entry, and $5 for a small punnet.  We had to meet up with a staff member who took us down to the strawberries and answered questions and got us to try a couple of different varieties they have growing there, then let us go.

The strawberries are elevated which keeps the snails off, and are hydroponically grown.

So we were all having a bit of fun enjoying the strawberries (they were delicious!) when this lady hobbled down and told us off for eating the strawberries..!!  and we were all like.. WTF..??  She said we were only meant to have a couple, and we're like, um, noone told us this.  The guy who first showed us around *knew* this was our first time there, and he never mentioned it.  So we all felt like criminals.  It certainly put a dampener on our visit, and there's no way I'd ever go back.  As value for money it kinda sux too - essentially you're paying $8 for a punnet, which is a lot more than supermarkets.  I mean sure they're nicer, but they also haven't had to have anyone pick them or transport them or store them or sell them.  In the end I was glad I ate the extra few dollars worth of strawberries, otherwise I'd have felt pretty ripped off.

We did stop for shakes/ice cream.  Again, the ice cream was very very nice, but it was $5 for a *tiny* tub.

Moving on.

Headed into Wagga Wagga for lunch.  We went to G.Thai for the lunch specials.  I had the cashew nuts and chili jam (number 10) with beef which was quite nice, and great value at $11.

Then David drove us past Wagga Beach

And then back to Junee

Mum and I packed up all our stuff and headed home.  Came back the way we went down, stopping in Bethungra for petrol (151.9c/L).  Idiots on the Hume became apparent immediately, including the Victorian driver who insisted staying in the right lane, even when not overtaking.  And the Barton wasn't much better, in fact a lot more crowded.  We had leftover turkey and potato bake and veggies for dinner, then watched Wag the Dog (I let Mum choose which movie she wanted to sleep through ;) ).

Christmas 1981

There's actually no photos of this Christmas!

Christmas 1991

I got my first camera for Christmas in 1991, and the first photo I took on it was off our balcony

Then I took it to church and took a photo of Chrissie in front of Red Car

Obligatory family photos Christmas morning

On boxing day we had Mum's family over for lunch

My camera

Mum's camera

All the cousins on Mum's side

Me with Lauren, Rebecca and Rachel

Don't know what we did with Dad's side of the family - no photos

Christmas 2001

Christmas Eve we went and visited Grandma at her nursing home

Christmas Day David and I went home for Christmas lunch at Mum and Dad's

This was taken on my first digital camera - the Olympus

Sydney was covered in bushfire smoke and the sky was quite eerie (but my camera didn't really capture it)

Christmas 2011

Stu and I headed up Boxing Day morning for lunch with my family.

We then had a touristy holiday in Sydney with Kore.

Christmas 2021

Woke up quite early, so put a turkey roast into the slow cooker for the morning.  Still experimenting with using slow cookers to do the turkey for the club Christmas in July events instead of the bbq.  Had a lovely relaxed morning with the sweetie, although probably a bit too relaxed - by mid morning I was feeling under a bit of pressure to get all the veggies on.  Ended up only six minutes late getting stuff into the oven - not too bad ;)  But we also had to work through quite a long todo list to get the house organised, as we only had a day's notice for plans with Mum and David to be established.  Also the huge siamensis in Stu's tank died which was pretty sad.  

All the veggies - sweet potato, parsnip, carrot and potato; potato bake; asparagus caesar

The slow cooker turkey (after I'd yanked out a chunk to see if it was done).  This was a "festive edition" turkey roast so it had stuffing.  I also added about half a litre of stock and a couple of tablespoons of corn flour to keep it moist and make its own gravy.  I also turned it down to low for maybe an hour and a half in the middle, and turned the turkey half way.  It was fall apart tender and it had lots of mush we could eat as well.

Christmas lunch!

The table decorated for Christmas

All the leftovers!

Mid afternoon we headed over to Annie's for dessert and drinks

Stu thought it would be fun to take Stumpy over as well.  He reacted by pooping all over the lounge.  Ha.

Daisy

Immy took this "selfie" of me

So that was a lovely afternoon.

On the way home we saw this funny cloud

Then Mum arrived.  We had snackages for dinner as we were all quite full, and watched an episode of The World According to Jeff Goldblum on fireworks.

Merry Christmas!!

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.