Didn't sleep well Sunday night - awake for hours with hurty and coughing.  But went to work as I'd already taken too much time off.  Slogged my way through the backlog of tickets.  Had leftover antipasto for dinner, haven't made a dent in it.  And so. much. smoke!  Got lots done on my own todo list.  Was hoping for an early night but didn't finish the "urgent" stuff til 21:30.

Tuesday continued doing All The Things.  The wind swung around in the evening and blew in all the smoke from Braidwood, so sky went from relatively clear to smothered in the space of a few minutes.  Was pretty scary.  Had more antipasto for dinner.  In the evening I was looking at storage units - I just wanted to see what the things cost these days.  But the couple I looked at sure don't make it easy.  Instead of a simple table saying how much each size is per month, no, you need to fill in all your details before they'll give you any information.  And then they want to call you.  And message you.  Over and over again!!!  Sheeesh.  For what I want it's prohibitively expensive, will just get some tubs and stack things in the garage.  

Thursday was drinks for Noah's birthday.

Friday the sweetie went to the club for the night, so David and I watched The Hunt for Red October.

Saturday had a great day doing All The Things.  Got heaps done, but also relaxed and generally took my time.  Was a productive yet relaxing day.  I updated a couple of previous entries with photos if anybody could be bothered going back to look.  Watched Kit and Pete's ship leave Sydney on their honeymoon.

Watched Die Hard in the evening.

Today was pretty quiet.  Didn't get a whole done, which is a bit worrying because of how much is on the todo list.  But have been trying not to panic and take things easy this week, as I've been stressing myself out trying to do everything.  We did do some food shopping, lamb roast for dinner, then photos/blogging.

Bookending this entry with roast dinners.  The little brother came up Sunday night (a bit late because of the Kat) and we had roast pork for dinner.  The oven was chock-a-block full.

But before that I spent the afternoon doing photo stuff and blogging.  

The creepers are getting a bit out of hand..

We also changed Stumpy's bark.  He had fun burrowing around, even under his water/food plate.

And we got the spare room ready for David to live in (part time).

Before..

After..

Monday got home early, did some washing, photo labelling and cooked and ate dinner and suddenly it was like 8pm?? What the??  Cleaned the kitchen and continued photo labelling.

Tuesday saw this honeyeater in Target.  Aquila said it was nesting season - it was looking for new bedding ;)

And I saw this spectacular rainbow on the bus.

Evening was dinner, not so late this time, backed up my computer, photo labelling and oops there was a jigsaw.  Mum called so it ended up being mostly jigsaw and not photo labelling.  Also.  We have no idea what is happening at Christmas yet!  Just saying ;)

Tuesday night I had restless legs so couldn't get to sleep, so Wednesday was a zombie day.  But I did get caught up on Tuesday night's photo labelling.

Thursday we finshed BBT season 3 and started into season 4.  The boys talked me into making a Yum! Delicious! cake.. so much for low carb.  It was a nice idea, but I wasn't getting to keto - I was eating too much vegetation for that.  I know, weird right - I'm a self-confessed carnivore, but I was actually getting sick of eating meat!  I couldn't *not* eat vegetation - it just felt wrong.  Such a weird thing.  Anyways.  It wasn't doing anything at all for the weight, so went back to a more sensible diet.  Mostly so I can have cereal in the mornings and not stress about lunches (dinners are always easy for low carb - meat/salad or meat/vegetables, but breakfast and lunches are a killer).

Had a crazy insane busy week at work.  And it's been crazy insane busy at home too.  Le sigh.

I got a toasted sandwich maker on Tuesday and David used it for the rest of the week.  I had a go on Saturday morning.

He also heard me complaining about our Jamie Oliver Tefal frying pan that promised it was dishwasher-safe BUT WAS NOT and so had lost a lot of its non-stickiness and was destroying anything I tried to cook.. and bought me a new frying pan!

Saturday was a super busy day of doing stuff around the house.  The todo list went on and on and on. I did quite a bit of tidying in the lounge room and dungeon and garage.  Collapsed in the afternoon in front of The Amazing Race (yayy the "influencers" are gone!!  I had taken an instant disliking to them (not only because the term "influencer" actually means "narcissist" (have you seen her pics - they're all of her in a bikini), but also because they played dirty right from the get-go).  Moving on.  Ash actually seemed like a nice enough person and tv shows never show the full story, but was still glad they're gone).  In the evening watched The Secret of NIMH.  I read the book in 1985.  When I was in year 7 in 1986 it came up in conversation in my English class, and I told my teacher (Mrs Fox?) it was the second best book I read last year.  She asked what was the best?  And I said Star Wars.  :)  All I remembered about it were the rats learned to read after being experimented on, and they had to move "to the lee of the stone".  

I might have also started putting up Christmas decorations.  On account of I'm going to be way too busy next weekend.

This week the ribbon grass has been flowering.  Such sweet little flowers that only last a day.

Today I (mostly) finished putting up decorations, helped Stu clean off his desk, did food shopping, and suddenly it's time to start prepping dinner.  The little brother came back and lamb roast and BBT were had, then blogging and *blink* it's bed time.  Life is going way way way too fast!

So never managed to blog last weekend.

So two Mondays ago there was Good Place, photo labelling, downloading and processing photos, and suddenly it's 21:45.  #grunties

Tuesday.  Twelve years on the job.  Phone is a year old.  Boycotted the Melbourne Cup lunch and went had our own with Dave5 and Connor.

At some point I saw an ad for the Amazing Race, so went home and watched the first three episodes.  10 Play has really lifted their game, and the ad experience is 100 times better than it used to be.  Different ads during each break, and much fewer repeats in the same hour.

Later that evening the ISS flew over.

Nothing much of note for the rest of the week, just a trip to Melbourne ;)

Monday just catching up on All The Things - both at home and at work.  More fighting with Apple to get the timelapse video off my phone.  I still haven't been able to get it to play.  Microsoft will happily charge $1.45 for a codec download.  hrmmmm.

Tuesday filled the green bin and watched another Amazing Race.  Continued battling with Apple.  Literally spent the entire Amazing Race episode trying, and then *still* not getting the file.  No more photo labelling either.

Wednesday I tried Google Drive to get the file off my phone.  Was able to get it, but still has the same codec error.  I did catch up up photo labelling, but nothing else.  Noted after @kapgar was talking about pillows that my pillow is probably forty to fifty years old, depending on when Mum got it.

Thursday evening did food shopping.  Aquila suggested VLC to play the timelapse file.  It was a jerky disaster.  Had a bit of a talk to Kit, who is super stressed about All The Things, with the wedding only three weeks away.

We got these for the Christmas Punch when we went shopping.  They look suspiciously the same, and the only difference in the ingredients is that one contains pectin (!?)

Friday had been hurty overnight so very tired Friday.  Picked up the sweetie and watched Tomorrow Never Dies.

Saturday I made a delicious cheesy beef casserole for breakfasts based on this recipe but with no pasta and only half the tomato puree.

Then got stuck into All. The. Things.  Had a super busy day getting the house cleaned and ready for the little brother to move in.  

Installed this new towel rail

Stu chopped back the periwinkle

I cleaned out a drawer and shelf in the bathroom, and hangy cupboard and a shelf in the spare bedroom, and cleaned off the computer desk in the spare room.  It was storage for a *lot* of stuff!

Collapsed late in the afternoon with more Amazing Race.

Then we picked up Neil and went to Cisco's for @CLBradley's 60th.  Was a nice night, but we both ate wayyy too much (we shoulda just done our own thing, not the banquet.. oh well..)

Today I went mountain climbing, then we ran some errands in the morning.

I spent the entire afternoon processing and geotagging photos from the past week.  Yeeeeshh.  

The truth is I never read you ..

Not on the internet.  This is what happens when stuff is broadcast on the radio before the internet was a thing.. 

Moving on.

Monday the sweetie cooked dinner because he was home all day.  He called it cabbage hash - cabbage, halloumi and egg.  Starting getting a cold sore.  In a spot I haven't had one in in like thirty years.  I thought I was pretty much immune to the ones I had as a kid.  I normally get them in a spot I first had them in in 1999 when I got one off Marc when he was two.  So this is either a relapse, or potentially a new strain from somewhere.  The horror.

Tuesday smashed out my photo labelling.

Wednesday someone rang me up, started ranting at me, and I'm like *breathe*, and then she hung up on me.  I hate hate HATE the phone, HATE talking to strangers and can't deal with being put on the spot like that.  Everyone around me was all WTF too, apparently she has a reputation for being rude.  Welcome to my black list.  Couldn't concentrate properly the rest of the afternoon.  Didn't do any photo labelling that night, just watched For Keeps?

Thursday was still feeling delicate.  My computer had a spaz and wouldn't unlock and ended up having to reboot it.  So was feeling like everything is awful on Thursday too.  

Friday I took a Random Day Off, but spent most of it doing housework.  Met up with the sweetie and Jenn for a drink at Hippo Bar (very slow service, I gave up, eventually Stu got me a drink).  Had Grill'd for dinner.  Went into the Canberra Centre to wash my hands while the sweetie minded my bag.  Tried to buy dessert but the buttplugs at the little macaron/dessert bar near the gym don't take cash (remember I didn't have my bag with me so no credit card).  So I literally said "too bad so sad bye bye" and walked off.  Cranky the rest of the evening.  

So generally a pretty damned crap week.

On a lighter note.. seedlings!

Stumpy has been *starving* this week.  He'll often see me in the morning and come running hoping to be fed.  This week had BBT's first visit to the comic store, and the first use of "bazinga" (at the end of season 2).

Saturday took my bridesmaids dress to the seamstress to get fixed up (this is why I never buy clothes on the internet).  In the afternoon we headed out to the club.  Had a bit of a life planning meeting with the sweetie, then had an Oktoberfest feast.  Not of the wombat though!  

Today I got photos online for the five Caribbean island shore days we had on our last trip, check them out in the links.  

Stu had some "protein pizza" bases delivered this week, so tried those out tonight.  Not bad.

Tonight just BBT and The Good Place, blogging and an early night.

So Monday was a much appreciated day off.  Caught up on all my blogging.  The internet died for three minutes between 13:22 and 13:25.  Didn't get a whole lot done in the afternoon, although did tidy up the plants on the kitchen window sill and plant some more seeds.  Started season four of The Good Place, and watched Oblivion which was a little confusing, but not too bad a movie.  

Tuesday went and got photos for my new passport and submitted the form, although botched my signature and wished I could redo it - I'll be stuck with that for ten years hrmm.  In the evening we were going to go to Raijin in McKellar with EffanC, but they were full so we ended up at Malaysian Chapter.  Which was somewhat disappointing because I was looking forward to Japanese and I really don't like the menu at Malaysian Chapter (I never remember which curries are which, and which are hot or not (and they don't indicate how hot they are on the menu)).  And it was nearly 7:30pm and I was *hangry*.  Grunt.  But did get some food into me and felt a lot better.  For reference I had the Chef's Special Curry with fish, and Stu had the Mamak Mee Goreng which was very nice.

Wednesday was a Lighthouse farewell for our director, and churning through Hong Kong photo labelling in the evening.

Oh we also finished season 5 of Brooklyn 99 this week, and I watched a couple of episodes of Murder in the Bayou at a recommendation from someone at work, but listening to that much bad english got very grating and I found it hard to sympathise.  Getting through season 2 of Big Bang Theory.

Friday was a Lighthouse farewell for a contractor, two pub lunches in one week, oops.  But did share a pizza with Connor both times to avoid overeating.

Saturday morning I did all the houseworkey stuff then did the design for the invitation for Kit's Hen's.  My ~23 year old copy of Photoshop wouldn't run on this computer (it loaded but just spinning wheels and stopped responding) so I downloaded Gimp.  All the tools are much the same as Photoshop, but I had to dredge up the memory on how to use them (and Google a few too).  Mid afternoon David came to visit, and we started a jigsaw.  A couple of hours later Scott and Kerry and the kids came over (they'd been planning to stay a lot longer but got stuck doing a longer bushwalk than they intended, so only stayed for a short while).  Then we headed out to dinner.  Labor Club, with Chicken Kiev for me yumm.

Then back home to work on the jigsaw for a little while.

We also finished off a couple of liqueurs that had been in the house *forever*.  That bottle of Midori I bought when I first moved out of home.  In the year 2000.  The Creme de menthe I've had for nearly as long.  Silly really.

This morning David and I headed out to Gungahlin for brunch (and was shocked to discover the parking under BigW is now paid parking (first two hours free) even on Sundays - how rude!)  David had a chicken and camembert grill and I had a rosti eggs benedict with chorizo that was quite nice.

Then we moved the car up to the Coles carpark and went and hopped on a tram!

I'd still never been on the tram, so thought it would be a fun thing to do with David.  Do you think he's having fun? ;)

I remember when this was just a grassy field.  Now there's apartments and a Woolworths..

Passing the Mitchell depot.  I was shocked that there wasn't a tram stop at Mitchell.  Why on earth not?

Ticket inspectors got on around Dickson.  In twelve years of catching buses I don't think I've ever had my ticket checked, but today they checked it on my first ever tram ride (and indeed my second ride on the way back!)

In the city we got off and took some photos, couldn't think of anything worthwhile to do in the city, so jumped on again for the ride back.

It was a little less crowded on the way back.  The ticket inspectors gave a warning to the drughead behind us who didn't have a ticket.  We wondered how many "warnings" he'd been given.

All up from start to finish it took an hour to go into the city and back on the same tram.

On the way back on the tram we saw a house bedecked for halloween, so went and had a closer look at it.

While we were there the owner came home and we were chatting and she said we need to come by again at night to see it all lit up.  

And we saw another tram go by :)

Then back home, finished the jigsaw, and David went home.

This afternoon mostly finished up the hen's night invitation, but didn't get a whole lot more else done, which was a bit distressing as I've got a *lot* that I *need* to do (like tax).  We did do food shopping though.  And I cooked a lamb roast.

And so endeth the weekend.

So Monday.  Sick.  Had a bit of a lie in, but again no extra sleep.  Blobbed around.  Watched New Moon, which was pretty lame, and the start of Eclipse, which was a little better.

Realised I had fifteen different cheeses in the fridge.  Plus powdered parmesan in the pantry and some colby jack in the freezer.  To be fair some of those were nearly empty, or just different brands for the same thing.

This is not quite as good as with the thick toast, but still pretty darned awesome.

Tuesday I worked from home, although I really should have taken an extra day off.  Even though I was just *sitting* so not physically exerting myself, the drain on my brain was a bit much.  Watched the end of Eclipse and Breaking Dawn Part 1 in the evening.

Wednesday was starting to feel better, but worked from home again.  Watched the start of Breaking Dawn Part 2.

Back at work on Thursday.  Watched end of Breaking Dawn Part 2.  After Twilight which was ok, New Moon was pretty lame, and they slowly got better as the series went along.  Also talked to Mum and Chrissie (which was a bit random - she'd gone up to help clear out Diana and Graham's house and pick up a few things she'd given them over the years, and was staying with Mum).

Friday a bunch of us went over to Doc's for drinks after work which was all very pleasant.  He certainly has a great entertaining space.  I showed Stu an aerial view of the house and he said "that's not a house, it's a complex" hehe.

Saturday Nat and Andrew came over for hanami lunch, although the petals were mostly all gone from the tree.

I even beat Nat at Mario Kart!

Oh hai Stumpy

Watched A View to a Kill in the evening.

Sunday was a nice home catchup day, doing All The Things.  Went to the markets in the afternoon to pick up a few things.  Turns out takoyaki man is there on Sunday afternoons (or at least he was yesterday) but Stu wouldn't buy me any booo

Got frustrated with the George Harcourt trying to book Kit's hen's night.  I'd tried to call on Friday but the first thing they say is they have an online booking system now.  So I had a look but there's only "indoor" or "outdoor" but Kit wants to specifically book the little room at the end of the restaurant.  So I called again on Saturday.  They really really don't want to talk to you though.  They say if you need to book "today or tonight" to press 1.  For all other enquiries press 2 to leave a message.  Or to book a function call a mobile number, which they rattled off really quickly without repeating so I had to call back to get it.  So I called that mobile number.  And had to leave a message.  I fricken HATE the phone so this caused me all kinds of stress.  And I still haven't managed to book the place.  

Watched The Living Daylights in the evening.  During the movie my phone died.  Just wouldn't respond to any touch or key press. Plugged it in for a while but still nothing.  My usual trick of holding the volume down and unlock button didn't work.  Eventually I googled and one thing to try was volume up, volume down, hold unlock button.  I tried that but it didn't work.  Tried it again later and fortunately it did.  Very upsetting though.

And there we are, finally caught up.

So when I left you on Sunday night I was frustrated at the whole experience I'd had with Qantas that afternoon.  In the end my booking hadn't gone through properly because of a problem with my credit card (I never use it, in fact I don't think I'd used this one since activating it, so wasn't really surprised).  On Monday I tested the credit card worked (it did) so in the afternoon I called Qantas.  Where I got in a queue that said I would be on hold for THREE HOURS.

!!!!!!!

Are you freaking kidding me?  Most companies have different queues for sales and support.  Sales *want* your business and so put on more staff to handle the calls.  Not so Qantas.  So I complained on twitter.  As you do.  There was a bit of back and forth during the afternoon, and they said they'd call to try again with the credit card.  Which they did - while I was in the other room having dinner and watching Brooklyn 99, so didn't hear the phone.  

While I was waiting again, I got onto Emirates' site. I put through the same itinerary, which 1) actually seemed to let me do (I got all the way up to the payment page), 2) had a much better connection to Singapore, giving us a few extra hours there, and 3) was THREE HUNDRED DOLLARS CHEAPER.  I asked Qantas if we could please cancel.  I was too upset/stressed from the whole thing to concentrate on anything much, so I went and cleaned the kitchen.  Of course as soon as I left the room Qantas called again.  Sigh.  But confirmed my wish to cancel the booking and eventually they did.

On Tuesday I put the whole booking through Emirates.  I still had issues with the credit card (the two-factor code wouldn't come through to my phone), so I just used a different card.  And that was that.  Done.  

Although Emirates do price gouge with seat selection - $20-$30 for regular seats, $120 for the little pair of two at the back of the plain, who even knows how much for exit row seats.  There goes that saving...

So Qantas had three lost opportunities to get my money.  If their multi city flights were actually usable I would have booked on the spot, using whichever credit card had worked.  If their booking management system had actually made a provision to "pay now" and let me pay online, I would have.  If they didn't make me wait THREE HOURS in a phone queue I would have done it over the phone.

Qantas really need to lift their game if they want to stay competitive in 2019.

Sigh.

Monday morning I cleared a massive backlogs of tickets due to me being away on Friday for the funeral.  Started to panic at the sheer volume of work facing me for the week.  And I couldn't get anything done on Monday afternoon due to nonstop interruptions.  Every one of them tore my concentration away so the *one thing* I was trying to do I couldn't get done.  In the end I managed to get it done between 5pm and 6pm when everyone else had gone away.

Tuesday not *quite* so busy, but did get stuff done.

Wednesday I was in race condition mode.  That is, too many high priority tasks competing, which meant I actually didn't get anything meaningful done at all in the morning.  Sigh.  So did some stuff for Henrch, and then Shane saved me by pushing back on the people that haven't done their docos :)

Also on Wednesday I had just stood up and was looking out the window and saw a Tarago back into a car in the car park, bumping it so I saw it move.. and then it drove away.  I grabbed my camera and took some pics.  And then went and left a note :)  I did get a call from the police asking for the photos, but no word of thanks or even acknowledgement from the owner of the car that was hit.

Aldi proved themselves once again to be a bunch of scammers.  Neil saw an ad for some scotch that he thought he'd get for the bar.  So we had a look at lunch.  But not only was there none of that scotch to be seen, but there wasn't even an empty spot on the shelf for it.  There was no price tag at all for that scotch.  Which clearly meant they never had it for sale at all.  SCAMMERS!

And then on Friday Dan's tried to charge me $14.99 for a bottle of Henkell.  I knew when I saw the price tag there was going to be trouble, so I took a photo of it, and got it for the cheaper price ;)  

When we got home on Thursday night I was in the family room doing up my hair and talking to the sweetie when I heard something and saw something move out of the corner of my eye.  One of Chrissie's clown loaches was flopping on the top of the book case next to the tank.  It must have been startled when we got home, but it had somehow managed to get out between the loosish lid and the tank wall (might have to weight it down heh).  Grabbed the fish and plonked it back in, and it's been fine ever since.  It was lucky I saw it too, I don't normally linger at that spot for very long, it would have been just as likely for me not to even have noticed til the next day.

I really wanted to have a random day off on Friday but there was just too much work all week.  I think I closed something like 30 tickets which is *huge*.  I did manage to leave at 4pm tho.  Started watching Friends with Benefits until the sweetie got home, then we watched For Your Eyes Only.  I haven't seen most of the early James Bonds in probably twenty years or more - when Dad used to put them on while I was still living at home.  But with the early ones I could still remember bits and pieces and even the odd lines of script and one-liners.  But I have no memories at all of For Your Eyes Only, except for dropping the dude down the chimney at the beginning. 

Saturday morning was the usual house work type stuff.  Not too much in the afternoon.  Finished watching Friends with Benefits.  Silly and predictable, but hey, New York.  Watched Jackie with the sweetie.  It wasn't bad, but had a very disjointed filming style.

Today was Lego picking, trivia night planning, photo culling, lunch out and food shopping, more of the same in the afternoon.  Watched Parenthood before dinner and finished after. Roasted a stack of veggies for dinner and watched some Veronica Mars.

And blogged.

Wednesday's Big Bang Theory had the first instances of three knocks Penny, and Thursday's had the first Soft Kitty.  Although I'm surprised the Roomate Agreement didn't come up in another episode I saw this week where Penny wanted to stay over.  Also into season four of Brooklyn 99.

Also Thursday was the vomit pizza. Again.

Friday had a very nice pork soup with Connor at 54 Benjamin.

Then had a super frustrating afternoon fighting with one of our firewalls which was being retarded.  Didn't get to do all the changes I wanted to do because it was being a big poo.

Had dinner with the sweetie at Alice's - crying duck salad and pork larb.

Then did all the food shopping for the club Christmas in July.

Saturday morning we went to pick up the pork for dinner.  Now last weekend I asked if I could book some pork but the dude said two four kilo pork shoulders wouldn't be a problem they'd always have them.  So I went in yesterday and asked, and another dude was all like, well I only have this 3.3kg one, and oh I guess there's also this 5kg one out the back.  And I'm like, no that won't work, I can't cook a 3kg and a 5kg one it'll stuff up all the cooking times.  But Stu was trying to avoid confrontation and I really really didn't want the hassle of such different sized cuts and wanted to go somewhere else and OMFG it was so stressful.  In the end we got the 3.3kg one and the bigger one cut down to 4.2kg.  I was still PISSED though.  Wish I'd gone somewhere else.  So my happy mood turned into crankiness for the morning.

Got out to the club and then had the usual hassle of telling people no I really don't want any help right now.  I appreciate the offers, really I do, but having extra people in the kitchen actually just stresses me out.  It's only in the last half hour that I really need any help.  Until then it's like, well you can go decorate the hall if you like.  Anyway.  It all went pretty smoothly (the 3.3kg pork was somewhat overdone, even though I took it out half an hour earlier than the other one.  And the turkey rolls got slightly burnt on the bottom by the bbq as well.  People really liked the salad I made from a recipe out of this month's Coles magazine).  About 45 people all up.

Today was pretty quiet.  Tidied my desk and did a few bits and pieces.  Stumpy was being a bit spuddy.

Watched an episode of BBT late in season 1 where they talked about trying to get "the girl from Blossom who is actually a neuroscientist" to join their trivia team, which cracked me up.  I wonder if they knew at that point (a full two seasons before Mayim Bialik first appeared on the show) that she'd ever join the cast.  Were they talking to her about it at an earlier point?  Pretty cool anyway.  

Cooked potato bake for dinner, and watched the last two episodes of season 7 of Homeland.

Monday night the sweetie was home so he cooked dinner - salmon with a tartare sauce he made himself.  Very nice and very much appreciated.

After dinner and photo labelling I wanted to have some *fun* with Vic's Lego (after it all just being work so far).  So I started on the Cinderella Castle, because it was almost complete (likely because girls take better care of their things than boys do).  The palette sure is different to boys Lego too.

Tuesday lunch had lunch with Chrissie which was nice, although fairly brief.

Tuesday the sweetie was home but he didn't cook dinner.  We had leftovers.  

Then I finished the castle.

Wednesday the sweetie was home but he didn't cook dinner.  We had pizza delivered. 

Instead of photo labelling I spent all evening typing up all the notes from the last chat Kit and I had had about the wedding.  

Thursday we were going to go to Dumpling Inn with Hannah and Rita, but someone had the idea we should try Pizza Artigiana.  So we did that.  We had three very nice (and very thin!) pizzas - Patate e Salciccia - PAOLA - thinly sliced potatoes with mozzarella, Italian pork sausage (I think they forgot that ingredient) and thyme ($20); Quattro Formaggi - SANDRA - mozzarella, provolne, gorgonzola, and shaved pecorino ($20); Prosciutto Crudo - AMBRA - tomato base, prosciutto, mozzarella, rocket, parmesan and balsamic vinegar ($21).

And a nice Rocket and parmesan salad - rocket lettuce with shaved parmesan and a balsamic vinegar and virgin olive oil dressing ($10).

And we might have gotten the nutella pizza (which I don't think is on the menu).  

Friday I took a random day off, so used that do a bit of houseworky stuff, and then get ready to go down to the coast.

It was crazy windy on the drive.  All the wind turbines at Tarago were shut down.  I was a bit nervous about a tree branch falling on the car (and we did have to round a small tree partially blocking the road).  (edit: a father and son died when a tree fell on their car in Victoria on Sunday night :( )

Had dinner and just chatted when we got there. 

Pete has a new fish tank with nine neon tetras (Clone 1-9), six male guppies (red spotty tail 1 and 2, yellow spotty tail 1 and 2, blue and grey 1 and 2) and a sucking catfish (Dyson).

And Petal was very excited to see us.

Kit has a new snake.  She wants to call it Richard.  Pete wants to call it Monty.

And three of these are still going something like eighteen years later..

Saturday morning was more animal stuff.

Then we headed out to have a look at the wedding venue and ask questions and take notes.

Had lunch at the Australian Hotel in Nowra.  $10 for quite a nice steak (better than the Rashay's $5 ones).

Then we all went to the zoo.  It was still crazy windy.  I'll save that for another post.

Pete made pizzas for dinner (epic thick with toppings heh)

Chatted and played a game of Kismet (I won, somehow).

Sunday morning I showed Kit the bridesmaids dress.  We debated the best way to fix the problems with it.

Then I sat down and went through the wedding planning notes with them.  Well I tried to.  I'd been wanting to do it all weekend but getting the two of them to pay attention for more than thirty seconds at a time was like trying to herd cats.  Super frustrating.  So we left a lot later than we'd planned to, and just got chips and snacks at the servo for a very late lunch.

Got home and the house was freezing (10C when we got home, minimum of 6C).  Had chicken kiev for dinner and super stressed out by Apple.

Tonight I caught up on last week's photo labelling, as well as getting a good head start on this week's.  Was in a completely different mental state and was able to process all my photos from the past week.  I was so stressed out last night my brain couldn't *see* what I was doing.  Blinded by rage???  

So no movies at all this week.  Just a lot of feeling cold.  And a lot of pizza.  And a (mostly) nice weekend away.

We received the devastating news today that dear sweet George had to be put down.  He'd had urinary problems for years, likely since being trapped under the neighbour's house for a week when he was young.  Today, after a week of stress and thousands of dollars in vet bills Kit made the hard call.  We all loved that stoopid jerk face cat. 

Goodbye George