In early 2017 we bought an Electrolux Ergorapido cordless vacuum cleaner.  It didn't get used much for the first six months, but then I started doing a couple of rooms every weekday morning before work and once I got into the routine the whole house would get vacuumed every week.  This changed my life.  Before that the house would go months between vacuums because I *hated* dragging the barrel vacuum cleaner around, and the attachment to catch dust outside the main cleaner never fitted properly so you'd be vacuuming along and suddenly the whole head would fall off.  Drove me nuts.  What I did hate about the new Electrolux was the rolly brush on the head.  I knew before we even bought it that it would just get tangled in my hair.  Stu promised he would clean it out for me, but that happened very rarely, and a couple of times the motor got jammed.  The second time recently David was around for and decided this meant it should be replaced.  So he got me a Dyson v7 origin for my birthday!

So how do they compare?

I find the Electrolux more comfortable to use.  The action is a bit more natural.  It has a nice flexible head on it so gets around corners easily.  And it has a nice light on the front so you can see even in a darkened room.  With the Dyson you have to hold it like a gun and keep the trigger squeezed for it to run which makes it all a bit more awkward.  Going mostly straight is fine, but going around corners can be quite difficult.  Also, if you lift the head off the floor it snaps open fully extended, and you really have to push it down to get it back onto the ground.  The Dyson's head is also a bit higher so doesn't get under things quite as well.  Although when it can get under it can go further, because it lays completely flat past the head.  The Electrolux gets wider and wider as it goes up so can't keep going under things for very long.

The Dyson is definitely more powerful and does a much better job of sucking stuff out of corners, and heavier items that the Electrolux would just not manage.  Which, yanno, is the whole reason for a vacuum cleaner, so it's a winner there.

The Dyson has a max fill line on the barrel, but that assumes that the barrel is sitting horizontal.  When you're using it, it's usually greater than 45 degrees on its side, so dust accumulates in the front of it, much higher than the fill line.  Stoopid.  

Emptying the Electrolux was always a bit of a pain.  You pulled off the collector barrel which was easy enough, but then you had to pull out the filter and sort of shake it around to get the dust out.  The Dyson is a lot easier, but you really have to be careful to get it over the bin, otherwise dust goes everywhere.  And when you snap it shut, dust goes everywhere.  I've had to vacuum around the bin just to collect it all - several times.  

No word yet on battery life.  The Electrolux still seemed to be going strong after three years and would easily do several rooms without even getting down to one bar.  The Dyson says it will go for 30 minutes (vs the Electrolux at 45 minutes) so hopefully it'll still manage to do a couple of rooms as the battery ages.

Finally, the Dyson is a lot quieter than the Electrolux which is super nice on my sensitive ears, and is less disturbing for Stu as well.

I'll take the Electrolux out to the club for general usage out there.  There is a vacuum cleaner out there which works pretty well, but did I mention I hate dragging around barrel vacuum cleaners?  The cordless will mean the place will get vacuumed more regularly, even if I have to get the bits of twigs and bark from the fireplace with a dustpan and broom ;)

Backdating.. cause I'm a slacker!!

Monday.  Definitely not enough hours in the day.  Had the tree people out.  The pistachio is slowly splitting at the base and one part of it is leaning on the fence to Kit's place.  The dude was like, this has to go sooner rather than later.  Took more time off work when David got home to help him sort out the fence.  We cut away more vines and weeds, and he was able to get the panel pulled back up and held in place with string until we could get some screws.  Cooked (not) Dinner Winner (Coles don't sell Dinner Winner) for dinner.  Was quite nice, although I could probably do something pretty similar myself.  

In the evening passed half way in my UK 2010 photo labelling.  Still on track to have everything done by the end of the year.  Next year I want to label my Eurasia 2012 photos.  Twenty three and a half thousand photos.  At five hundred photos per week that'll take forty eight weeks to do!!  Craziness.  But the idea is to have all the work on in complete by the time it's ten years since we went in 2022.

Tuesday.  Had the ACT Government tree inspector out (I put a form in on the weekend).  He also took one look at the tree and said it had to go sooner rather than later.  Got verbal approval to remove it straight away.  So talked to the tree peeps and they rearranged some customers so they could come out the next day.  Later, David and I went round to the neighbour's side to pull away more vines and weeds, and he was able to strap up the fence to pull it back into position to be screwed.  Poor neighbours, we keep hassling them!  But did I mention I have the bestest brother ever? :)  Cooked beef cheeks for dinner.  Not as dark this time for some reason.  David really liked this version.

Wednesday.  Tree guys came first thing.  Such a shame to see such a beautiful tree taken down, but the thing was in danger of falling down so had to go :(  Kit was sad as well, although I think she'd have been sadder if it had fallen on her garage!

They came back later in the afternoon to grind out the stump.

Had our pizza night a night early, then played Kismet with Kit and Pete.  I got not one but *two* kismets - the first with 1s, the second with 6s.  I ended up winning.

Thursday morning.  Emirates refunded our Europe flights (although not the extra we paid for seat allocations hmmm).  Still, can't complain too much, we're lucky to have gotten anything back at all.  Packed up to go out to the club.  Lit the fire and collected more firewood before the predicted rain.  

Hey look!  I saw a 747 in flight!

This is what we came out for so early - to seal this sawdust board MDF

They'd put this cabinetry in but hadn't sealed it, so a single drop of water would make the whole thing swell up.  Which is really great right next to the kitchen sink.

I sanded and sanded it, but it didn't get smooth, just all fluffy.

Had drinks and leftover roast pork by the fire.  Listened to a podcast on the possible CIA origins of Winds of Change (part 1 of 8).  

Friday morning.  Got stuck into the first coat of primer.  Things were going well until the fumes made Stu sick :(  So stopped after an hour and a half and washed out the brush.  In the afternoon did some tidying and organising of the "tool shed" in the van.  Also did some work on the tapestry.  Stu had some pretty chilled out music going so it was a nice pleasant afternoon just chillin.  I also sanded the cabinetry again.  This time got things somewhat smoother.  Cooked curried sausages for dinner.  I don't think I'd really want to cook much from scratch out there in future.  I mean I can, but there's no range hood, so steam from cooking just goes everywhere.  Think we'll just stick to leftovers, or bbq.  Listened to another episode of Winds of Change and had an early night.

Saturday.  Stoopid fricken insomnia.  Lit the fire again, had a bit of a sleepin.  Did another coat of primer while Stu was at the committee meeting.  I think another sanding and another coat of primer (just on the horizontal surfaces that had been damaged) and it'll be as smooth as I can get it. 

We were meant to meet up with EffanC after for lunch, but we went to the wrong hotel, 20km away.  This is what happens when you use the PHONE, people, instead of MESSAGING!!!  If I'd seen it in writing would have been less likely to get it so wrong.  #grunt !  Anyway, Stu and I had a nice enough lunch at the Lake George Hotel.

This time they got the pork belly right - with crackling!  

Finished watching the end of Herbie the Love Bug in the evening.

Sunday was housework all fricken morning.  After lunch went and visited Annie, but we were running a bit early, so Stu drove me around to look at the flooded Ginninderra Creek.

So seeing Annie and Immy, and later Noah and Stu, was nice.  Haven't seen them in forever.  Did our shopping at Casey Supabarn, I think for the first time since 2017 when they ripped us off.  This time they wouldn't do any bagging, which is a massive pain when you're trying to wrangle a large trolley load full of shopping at either end.  At least I had Stu's help this time, it would not have worked *at all* if I'd been by myself.  I swear if they try and do that sort of crap again I would send one bag and what I wanted to go in it through, go to the other end and load it, before coming back to pass the next bagful of stuff through.  Got home and cooked for hours.  Roast chicken and veggies, chicken to make up some honey mustard chicken during the week, and mince for tacos.  Dinner and BBT.  I went to go clean up after dinner and Stu put YouTube videos of various BBT stuff.  While I'm fricken working and everyone is just sitting around watching videos without me.  Might have had a meltdown.  There is no way I could be a mother, I'd lose my $#!+ every fricken day.

So contrary what the date on this entry says, I didn't blog that night, in fact like three weeks behind in blogging by that point.  *sigh*

Backdating.. cause I'm a slacker...!

Monday after two late mornings on the weekend I slept in til 7:10am!  Whoops!  So no slide scanning.  Deleted lots of stuff at work which always makes me happy.  Dinner and kitchen cleaning and took all night to label my quota of photos.

Monday night I couldn't get to sleep til after midnight - restless legs/itchy skin.  Then woke up at 3:20 and couldn't get back to sleep for over two hours, then broken sleep til 7:10.  Got up and had breakfast, then attemped to get some more sleep, but failed.  *sigh*.  So another day of no slide scanning.  Had a 2.5 hour marathon session with Ward doing all the Sharefilez.  Taco Tuesday, then took all night to label 145 photos of the Tower of London.

At least I slept well Tuesday night, sleeping in til 6:40.  Put on an Irish stew at lunch, but the recipe Stu gave me could have used a slow cooker twice as big as ours.  I did realise this and cut it down a lot, but it was still very full (and as I write this on 28/7 there's *still* some leftover in the fridge!).  Into season 2 of IT Crowd.  By the time we'd had dinner and watched some tv and done the washing up by the time I sat down it was like 8pm.  *sigh*.  Kinda struggling a bit.. hrmmm..

Thursday.  Slept ok again, even woke up on time.  Finished watching the original One Hundred and One Dalmatians.  And started getting a cold sore.  Hurrah.

We're onto our sixth case of Corona since the lockdown.  I calculated we've drunk about 7.4 beers each week between the two of us.  We're saving the boxes for filling up with books if Lifeline ever start taking donations again...

Let Stumpy out for a walk.

Wait what?  Am I watching One Hundred and One Dalmatians here?  Or Peter Pan?  I call shenanigans!!

Friday I took a long lunch to go see Qantas' last 747 fly over Canberra.  If I get Coronavirus it'll be from the guy who came and stood right next to me upwind of me and was sniffling and coughing (only very quietly, but still..).  Epic #grunt.  

Had chicken kiev for dinner and watched My Neighbour Totoro.

Didn't really do much on Saturday.  Nothing noteworthy anyway.  In the evening went over to EffanC's for dinner.

Sunday also not much.  I did scan a box of slides - of me as a baby.  Had C over for a music session and dinner.  Did slow cooker beef brisket based on this recipe.  I've never cooked beef brisket before, but it turned out pretty well.  Very fatty though!!  I'll append an after shot once I've gotten it off the phone, although it really wasn't very photogenic!!

Also how funny is this - the bottle on the left was best before 2004.  !!  It was the second bottle Stu owned when I met him, and after finishing the first I moved onto this one.  Except it was so dehydrated it was pretty much a sticky mass that wouldn't pour.  So we got a new one.  Best before 2022.  :)

Today would have been Doug and Win Cartan's 70th wedding anniversary.  Sadly Doug didn't quite make it - he died last year.  I've known the Cartans all my life - they were members of our church from before I was born.  Funnily enough I always remember them as being "old" - they were late middle aged from when I was a kid.  And in a case of it's a small world, Doug fought with my grandfather in the same battalion during WWII.  Wonderful generous people.  

This was from their 40th anniversary in 1990

And this was from their 50th anniversary in 2000

Backdating again.. I'm such a slacker!!

Monday/Tuesday/Wednesday nothing eventful, just UK photo labelling and jigsaw.  By Wednesday I'd labelled 1706 photos in three weeks.

Thursday morning I passed 1000 slides of Dad's scanned.  Was up to episode 7 in Lego Masters.

Friday morning I found a date on one of Dad's pieces of RADOS paper.  The ABC used to print out the runsheets/programmes on paper and the system was called RADOS.  I'm sure Mum/David could correct me on the details.  The point is they only used the paper once then it was scrap.  So Dad used to bring it home for us as scrap paper.  All the time I was living at home I used that paper.  So did the rest of the family.  In the back of each slide box, Dad has used RADOS paper to summarise what is in each box.  The box I opened on Friday had the date - December 1980.  I already knew that Dad had rearranged slides somewhat from their original order, but this put a date on it - after 1980.  Fun times.  

Friday also happened to be the fifteen anniversary of when the sweetie and I first met in real life.  We had chicken kiev for dinner and watched Lego Masters.

Saturday I had a body corporate annual meeting for my flat in Sydney.  I've been to a couple over the years, but this year because of COVID-19 they did it as a phone meeting.  Which made it great for me - I could attend one without even leaving home!  The strata lady reckoned it was good because they got people calling in that wouldn't or couldn't normally come (like me!) and she even had one call in from South Africa for one of her buildings!

I also might have finished The Little Mermaid section of the jigsaw.  I cooked two trays of home-made potato wedges for dinner, which were epic awesome.  Then we watched some Lego Masters, which was the episode under water.  Which all tied in nicely with "Under the Sea" theme because we also watched The Little Mermaid that night.

Sunday was bits and pieces of housework, epic pizza scrolls for lunch, Lego part picking, and bribing the magpies not to swoop me come spring time (they came flying over before I'd even seen them - so fricken cool!)

Pretty sure we finished Lego Masters that Sunday night.  Was really happy the guys that won did, they looked like they were having fun the whole way through and their builds were amazing.

Monday we went food shopping.  Did a bit of housey stuff.  Cooked "lemon butt chicken" for dinner (just a roast chicken with a whole lemon as stuffing).  Turned out really nicely.  Didn't get a lot of leftovers though ;)

Long weekends are great.....

Backdating a week cause, well, I'm a slacker ;)

Sunday we watched the second episode of Lego Masters where everything when kaboom!  Fun times.

I remembered on Monday that I hadn't posted a funny I found in the new Lion King movie.  In the original movie during the song Hakuna Matata, Pumbaa sings "And I got downhearted, Every time that I .." and Timon cuts him off and says "Pumbaa not in front of the kids".  Well in the new one he actually sings "farted" which cracked me up ;)  Got my quota of UK photos labelled early, all the more time for the jigsaw!  Frustratingly slow though, because even if you know the *exact shaped piece* you still have to search through hundreds and hundreds of pieces to find it.  Also started season 10 of BBT.

This was on my walk on Monday.  I'm bribing these guys not to swoop me come spring time ;)

Tuesday I worked from home in the morning, then went into the city with the sweetie.  We had lunch at Gus's which was really nice (both being able to go out and share a meal with the sweetie, and lunch wasn't bad either ;) ). 

Went to the sweetie's doctor's appointment, then chucked one in for me as well.  Went into work for a bit in the afternoon while I waited for the sweetie to do stuff at his office.  They'd just put a sticker on "my" desk saying don't sit there.  The disadvantage of hotdesking (with TINY desks) is you don't get proper social distancing.  So whateves - whilever that sticker is on my desk I'll continue working from home.  So being "at work" for the afternoon meant that I really didn't feel like cooking when I got home.  So the sweetie got pizza.  Hrmmm.  The sweetie and I are relishing our time at home and working from home.  We'd very happily never go into the office again.  Of course we'd be even happier just being hermits and having a quiet life and not ever having to deal with people :)

Wednesday was too cold and miserable for a walk at lunch.  And crazy crazy busy.  And too much stoopid.  Wasn't til after 5pm that I could actually leave all the busyness and get stuck into prep work I really needed to do for Saturday.  For dinner I cooked the last of the leftover pork from the weekend with the last of a cabbage that I bought like six weeks ago, a sausage from the other night, a handful of green beens and the last of the pork jelly.  It was a pretty random meal but tasty enough and used up a bunch of stuff in the fridge.  And there was even leftovers for David!  That morning I scanned 28 of Dad's slides, and in the evening got up to 1094 photos labelled from UK 2010.  Nothing on the jigsaw though.

Thursday was chicken kiev for dinner (since we'd already had pizza this week).  And watched Lego Masters episode 3.

Friday hurty kept me awake from 12:30 to 3:00 so was pretty tired all day Friday.  Although I did manage to finish scanning a third box of Dad's slides for the week.

Saturday I was at work all day watching graphs during some DDoS testing.  Stu made pea and ham soup for dinner from a soup packet mix I got from Chris's last year some time. I actually liked it better because it had chunky bits in it that didn't all just disintegrate like the peas do.  Watched more Lego Masters.

I think Tassie is a little out of scale...

Sunday I alternated between the jigsaw and housework.  Had Rob and Lynn over for roast lamb for dinner which was nice.  

Monday morning I actually scanned a whole box of 36 of Dad's slides all before work.  I still wonder if I should have (or should) invest in a slide scanner.  Rob and Lynn said they did and managed to get through thousands of slides in just a few weeks.  Dad actually did, and I have it downstairs, but I haven't really played with it and not sure how good it is (or how fast it is).  I'm actually really happy with the results that I'm getting from the scanner Stu got me for Christmas in 2005.  It's slow, sure, but the quality seems pretty good (to me).  And if I continue to scan a box a day I'll be done by Christmas.....!  In the evening I did another 200 UK photos.  All of them in Japan.  hrmm :)   Also roasted a couple of trays of potatoes to have with the leftover lamb.

And that's up til then.  No movies to quote though for the blog subject.  Guess I'll just have to use one from last week ;)

Thursday last week I went into work to get myself a flu vaccination.  Most of our team did the same thing so I took a Yum! Delicious! cake to share.  First step was getting a parking spot.  The mall carpark was full.  ?!?!  I was like WTF Canberra??  Why aren't you all at home?? But as it turns out the mall parking is free at the moment.  So anyone still working in the area is parking there.  Anyways, got my new laptop (I'll need to go in soon to transfer some of my personal stuff off the old one, both are still in my locker cause I just use my home computer to connect), got my jab, then packed up and headed to the mall.  I needed to go to the chemist for supplies, and to Coles for some food supplies, and the post office to post a web cam to Mum, and Dan's to pick up some wine boxes so we can fill them with books to give away (one day...), and then pick up some lunch.  The mall is probably open about 50%.  And the food court much the same.  And they've taken away or blocked off all the seating throughout the mall.  Picked up Ali Baba for the sweetie and Subway for me, then headed home.  An hour and a half later.  Sheesh.  And even though it had been over a month since I'd been there, the lady at Subway remembered my order :)  Watched Naked Gun in the evening, which I don't think I've ever seen.  OK I lied, I saw at least one of them in Junee in 2015.

This the process of making the Yum! Delicious! cake.  Recipe here.  Because my life and blog are so boring all I post is photos of food.  Hi Manish!

This was the mall.  Strangely deserted food court, and queuing at the post office started outside went down under the escalators.

It rained Thursday afternoon.  And there were rainbows!

We did more rearranging of stuff in Stu's study this week too.  I pulled out my paper craft to take downstairs, and OMFG!  It's a disaster!!  This paper ball had been in the one position for nearly two years, and it had sagged!!  Sadmaking.  Will have to try and fix it.. somehow..

Slept pretty well on Thursday night with medical assistance.  Dragged the sweetie out for a walk at lunch.

Friday night I couldn't get to sleep for hours, but still woke up at the normal time (at least no insomnia *during* the night), so pretty cranky Saturday morning.  Did lots of house type stuff in the morning.  Went for a walk up Mt Rogers with David in the afternoon.  Stu put on several episodes of Picard for David to watch.  I do enjoy the show but it's all a bit too complicated.  Well not even that, it's just that you're expected to remember the significance of something that was said a full two episodes later.  With my dementia I'm lucky to remember anything past the end of the show.  So seeing the episodes again means things make a whole lot more sense.  

Had an early night Saturday and actually slept well.  Fricken hurrah.  So rare these days.  And the sweetie cleaned the toilets.  Bestest sweetie ever!!  Did an epic lamb roast for dinner.

Mornday morning I woke up at 1:10am and never got back to sleep.  Literally five hours of just lying there feeling miserable.  So zombie day Monday.  Too tired in the evening to concentrate on any photo processing, so just blogged and did the jigsaw.

Went to bed early Monday night, read for a little while, tried going to sleep around 9pm.  But couldn't get to sleep for like an hour and a half.  Woke up at 2:45 and was awake for at least two hours.  Too tired in the evening to concentrate on any photo processing, so just did the jigsaw.  Bed at eight thirty.

Tuesday night.  You'd think after two nights of very little sleep that I would fall asleep quickly.  But no.  Took ages to get sleep and then really restless til like midnight.  Sigh.  This insomnia is killing me.  

Cranky day today.  Too much stoopid.  Then other people breaking things that I couldn't figure out how to fix.  

So yeah, pretty crap week all up.  

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

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

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

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

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

And then watched Prisoner of Azkaban.

Tell me what this reminds you of..

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

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

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

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

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

Watched Airport 77 in the evening.

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

And then made runny poo for dinner!

Actually beef stew, which looks digusting but tastes amazing

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

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

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

How good is this?

(From @JessHarwoodArt)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I'm backdating this entry a week, because I've been a complete slacker and haven't blogged in two weeks, but it gets too hard to date things in the future if there are too many gaps ;)

I forgot to mention that David mowed our lawn the other day.  Have I mentioned he's the bestest brother ever? :)

Tuesday night we christened the new oven.

And then geotagged day 5 of our USA 2004 trip.

Took this of Stu's study space setup for him to work from home.  He's really enjoying his study.  There's still a bunch of work we want to do in there, hampered by our lack of ability to just go shopping or to drop off books at Lifeline or all the normal stuff that we'd do.  He's now working from home full time as well.

Wednesday night I blogged and ended up staying up a lot later than I wanted to.  Couldn't get to sleep til closer to 11pm, but slept well.

Thursday was hacking my way through Cisco idiosyncrasies (every style of device/ios works completely differently and commands that work on one device don't work on others).  Beer and pizza, but at home.  Started season 6 of Brooklyn 99.

Friday I work up at 4am and never got back to sleep.  Kept thinking I had a sore throat (hypochondria much???).  Watched Frozen II in the evening.  It was ok but not as good as the first.  The first half was pretty meh and the songs were pretty forced, but it got a bit better towards the end.  Afterwards had a drink with Kit and Pete.

Saturday I woke up at 2:15 for over two hours. Slept in til 8:30, but had a slow morning, just housework.  Then Lego part picking in the afternoon.  Made tamarind chicken for dinner (finally finished off the tamarind paste we'd had in the fridge since I got it off Kerry when they moved to the coast!!  .. what? four years ago?).  Also made meringues because Stu had some leftover egg whites from some hollandaise sauce he made in the morning.

Watched BBT and Fuller House and Picard.  

Saturday night I took a couple of melatonin-precursors of Stu's and slept the best I'd slept all week.  

Sunday mostly just houseworky bits and finished Lego part picking for another six sets.  In the evening I roasted a bunch of veggies for dinner (and grilled some cheese onto some corn chips ;) ), and watched the Lindsay Lohan/Jamie Lee Curtis 2003 remake of Freaky Friday, which I'd never actually seen.  Also saw another Picard and was a bit sad about Qantas grounding all their 747s, possibly forever :(