Last Tuesday morning I started scanning Dad's slides. There's about 7000 of them. I'm aiming for one box of 36 a week (more if I'm not too busy), which should mean I could get it all done in about four years. If I don't die of Covid-19 first. I had a play with the dust and scratch filter and it pretty much works like magic. I should have used it on Mum's slides. Oh well. I'm still impressed how well my 14 year old scanner works (Christmas present from the sweetie in 2005). Tuesday evening was washing, blogging, Lego sorting, geotagging (some of Day 3 of USA 2004 trip). I also started to try and figure out the catalog numbers for the hundreds of Vic's minifigs, and what sets they go in. He sure has a lot that don't belong to any particular set he had, so he must have gotten large quantities of loose Lego not in sets.

Wednesday evening the sweetie took me out to dinner because he's the best sweetie ever.  Went to Kinn Thai and had softshelled crab again, and orange duck.  Yumm.  Then more Lego and minifig sorting and finished geotagging day 3.

It rained during the week.  A lot.  Looky at this - the new Belconnen swimming pool they dug out the past couple of weeks!

Thursday was Gin night. Four of them tasted like, well, gin. One was a bit more interesting. And there were two flavoured ones - shiraz, and earl grey. They looked, smelt and tasted of those respective drinks. Cool stuff. Well the shiraz one was, the Earl Grey tasted like tea. We had F over for pizza and tv after.

Friday evening I had to work. My work was only about a minutes' worth, but I stuck around in case they needed my help with anything (or if I'd missed a firewall rule somewhere). Bailed at 11pm.

Saturday I checked in at work and everything seemed to be going ok. So midmorning we headed down the coast (via Belco to pick up a present for Pete). The blackened bush started at Nerriga (most of the town was saved) and stayed black the entire way to the coast. Absolutely heartbreaking. It was actually amazing to see just how much property had been saved though. In places it was completely burnt bush all around, and in the middle there would be a house intact. Amazing job done by all involved, especially the firies.

And because it's Australia, you have bushfires one week, raging floods the next.

We headed straight for Huskisson and went to the beach briefly because, coast.

Then had some lunch, picked up some supplies, then headed for Kit's. Their place was basically completely surrounded by fires, but their street was saved.  At Bewong it looked like the firies stood on the highway and said "you shall not pass" .. 

We setup the house then waited for Pete to get home. It wasn't a complete surprise because his mum spilled the beans, but he was expecting just his sister and maybe a couple of his local mates, but instead he got a small crowd so that was pretty cool :) So yeah nice party, and only one tantrum haha.

We had dessert first.  Because that's what adulting is all about.

Akubra party!

The itty bitty bbq gas bottle ran out, so they hooked up the house one to it.

I was up at normal time the next morning, but then had to wait hours for everyone else. Eventually Kit got up and I could copy all the wedding videos for them. Had some brunch, then we headed home.

Was too tired to do much Sunday arvo/evening so just had a quiet one and an early night.

Monday it was full steam ahead rearranging the house. Stu had been wanting some study space for quite a while. He tried setting up a space downstairs last year but he never really liked it. So we emptied out the dumping ground room, brought up the couch and swapped the tables around. It took all day. And now everything from the room is spread all around the house. Which is stressful in itself. hrmmm.

We also went out at lunch to do our food shopping.  We hadn't been in three weeks so we were pretty bare.  Of course the empty shelves were something to behold.  No toilet paper, almost no tissues or paper towel (people thinking they could use that instead of toilet paper??).  Very little rice, pasta and long life milk, no flour.  Just madness.  

Cooked curried sausages for dinner (to use up some of the curry powder that's been sitting in the spice cupboard for ten years or more).  They were pretty good.  I'll put the recipe separately, because I have this feeling I'll be using it again heh.

Tuesday woke up at 1:30 with hurty and never got back to sleep :( So zombie day Tuesday. It took about 14 goes of disconnecting and reconnecting my phone on Tuesday night to download the seven videos I'd taken at the party. Fricken HATE Apple.

Wednesday we finished season 6 of Big Bang Theory - half way through!

Tonight I've been watching the 1970 Ned Kelly which I've never actually seen.  There's not much on IMDB about it, but it does note it was filmed in Braidwood, and look at that!  So it was!  Fifty years later and all the buildings are still there (screenshots from the movie and Google Street View).  Enjoyed it more than My Brilliant Career.

I brought some glow sticks home from the party.  Six days later and they're still actually glowing.  !!   Although very faint now.  The first couple of nights the phone could still take pretty decent photos of them.

The last week of our break was overshadowed, quite literally, by the catastrophe of the bushfires.  I watched them get closer and closer to Kit and Pete's place, then it skirted round their town, but they're not out of danger yet.  It's still very close to David's place at River Island.  It got very close to DC's place at Malua Bay, and Fiona's place in Newcastle.  @CLBradley's place at Kangaroo Valley is still under threat.  Lisa's family lost a farm house and a camper.   Connor's inlaws' land was burnt out, but the shed was ok.  Chloe's land got burnt out and their shed and tractor are gone, but the house they are building was untouched.  And that's just people I know.  People have died.  Many homes, farms and historic buildings have been lost.  The toll on the bush and the wildlife is incalculable.  The smoke we've been breathing for the past few weeks is the remains of millions upon *millions* of plants and animals.  It's utterly devastating and heartbreaking.  I really fear that this weather is the new "normal" and wonder if it will ever properly rain again...

So New Year's Eve was very hot and very windy, and I was *super* nervous about fires starting.  We were going to go out to the club but decided not to.  EffanC also decided not to go, so we went over to their place instead as conditions eased. 

So it was fairly quiet evening of just chatting and watching the Sydney fireworks.  Even David joined us after his shift finished which was nice.

The smoke got thick again as the wind changed in the evening.  My first photos of the new year are of the smoke on the way home..

It was a pretty late night so Wednesday, New Year's Day, was a slow, quiet day.  Did a bit of photo processing, blogging, some jigsaw, and we watched Die Another Day in the evening.

Thursday ended up being another quiet day.  Didn't get a whole lot done.  Stu signed up for Disney+ and we watched The Force Awakens in the evening.  Of course our introduction to Disney+, literally the first thing on the screen, was Error 43.  Fricken useless.

How cute are these!?  Stu got them in the mail (before Australia Post stopped deliveries because of the smoke).

Friday with the cooler weather I took the opportunity to check on the gutters.  They weren't too bad.  David also couldn't help himself and pulled apart our cooler and gave it all a good scrub.  Bestest brother ever!

After lunch Kit called.  They were in Canberra - they'd come up Thursday night with all the animals (two dogs, a cat, two birds, three frogs and a snake) leaving behind the chickens and the fish.  They came over in the afternoon and just chilled out for a couple of hours which was nice.  Pete had a lot of fun watching the wedding videos, while Kit monitored the fires and social media.  We dropped their car back at her mum's and had a drink.

Then Stu picked us up and we all went to Bella Vista for dinner.  

We had Garlic and cheese foccacia to share $9 which was delicious (Kit said it was the best cheese and garlic bread she'd ever eaten heh).

For dinner I had Vitello Saltimbocca: Veal escallops with sage, Prosciutto and mozzarella cheese in a white wine reduction sauce served with creamy mash and green beans. ($35)

Then back to our place to chat for a while.  It was nice that they felt they could just come and hang out and relax with us.  We think they made a sensible decision getting to safety ahead of the predicted craziness on Saturday.  

So Saturday.  The hot north-westerly winds picked up again, fanning the flames of all the fires going on at the coast.  I was tense again.  I spent the morning putting away all the Christmas decorations.  Didn't get much done in the afternoon, although I did finish blogging our Melbourne trip, where we went and saw Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.  Link is here - http://kazza.id.au/oz_holidays/ - if you wanted to have a look (last entry is first on that page so scroll down to see it in order).  We watched Casino Royale in the evening.  

The wind did blow all the smoke away for the day, but it came back again around 10pm.

And when I say it came back, I mean it *really* came back.  We could smell it as soon as it hit, and it was swift and all consuming.  In the morning it was like waking up in hell...  the phone wouldn't get the white balance right, I had to fiddle with the DSLR to get this.  

Played through an escape game on my phone, but otherwise only got little bits and pieces done during the day.

In the evening a bunch of us went over to Rob and Lyn's for dinner which was lovely.  The temperature had cooled down significantly so it was nice outside, just very smoky, so we stayed inside, which was a lot hotter.  But had a very pleasant evening.  Rob cooked some quite delicious steaks and there was heaps of other food.

So back to some sense of reality on Monday.  My "essential" todo list kept me going til 10pm but then I couldn't get to sleep (a mosquito buzzing around certainly didn't help, not to mention where the f@#$ did it come from, given there's no standing water anywhere in Canberra at the moment).  So today was a bit of a zombie day, but was able to do lots of cleaning which was good.  And tonight processed photos, and have spent an hour writing up this entry.  

Stay safe everyone...

The new year started for us in the Bermuda Triangle! It was 9am Caribbean time, 12am AEDT time. Stu was in bed and I was eating breakfast. And I watched the Sydney fireworks. Live. On an ocean liner. In the middle of the North Atlantic. I love technology :) We actually managed to stay awake til midnight ship time and heard them sound the horn to mark midnight.

So our overseas trip of the year was just the tail end of our North Atlantic crossing and Caribbean cruise. Had four days in New York which is not nearly enough time. Came home via Singapore on the longest commercial flight you can take (for now) - 18 hours!. Early in February I went up to Sydney to visit Mum for a post-Christmas catchup. Went and saw a Lego show, took the River Cat to Parramatta and caught up with Pam, and later with Daniel and Fi. Didn't get to see the Cartans on the Sunday morning which was a shame because Doug Cartan died later in the year. Visited Luc and Lizzi for Ryan's penultimate donut photo and saw Cordeaux Dam on the way home. We went down to see Kit and Pete several times - in March to see their house and go to their engagement party, in July for a visit and to do some wedding planning and go to the zoo, in November to do some wedding planning and meet and ride Kit's new horse Jet, and in December for their wedding. Went and visited David in Junee in June. In August I went up to Sydney for Diana and Graham's funeral, and Chrissie and I geeked out at standing in the spot we met thirty years and a couple of weeks earlier. Came home via Dapto that trip to meet up with Kit who wanted to look at a horse (not Jet), and had a fun drive up Macquarie Pass. In November we went to Melbourne for the weekend to see Harry Potter and the Cursed Child with Hannah and Rita.

Work was pretty decent this year. My life is four things: source, dest, port, protocol. Simple. Except way too many people don't understand basic client-server communication which is pretty frustrating. Whenever I had the time I would clean things. Our section disbanded (or was announced it would be disbanded) around February 14 - exactly one and a half years after I started in that section. I went back to comms but kept sitting in the same place for a while longer until they did a bit of a floor reshuffle. Fortunately I was able to get a seat away from the corridor and things stayed pretty stable which is essential for my mental health. Socially there was a big event at the beginning of the year which included an Escape Room, and dinner at the War Memorial, Laser Tag, and I ran a trivia night for it (using mostly recycled questions). We won a trivia night in April which meant we ran one in September. Had a whiskey night in June and a ball in October. Our drinking buddies dropped like flies though - Lachie, then Doc, then Hannah. Very sad times. Ran our annual Christmas party at the lake again, but it was very smokey and numbers were down - only about 40 this year!

On Valentines Day I had my appendix out! My first ever general anesthetic and first ever hospital stay. Then in April Annie had hers out too - didn't know these things were contagious ;) After surviving the plague ship (don't travel in northern hemisphere winters with old people - everyone gets sick) and not even getting sick when Stu did, I had a very small cold in February, but then survived all winter without getting sick again, only to get one in September then another one in December. The one in December was the worst and I was coughing for a couple of weeks, including being sick at Kit's wedding. Insomnia was a lot better this year but still got bouts of it.

Saw a bit of my family. Saw Mum in Sydney in February. David and Kat came to stay in April. Took them out for a bbq at the new van. Mum came to visit in June and we went down to Junee to visit David. Later blacklisted Kat from ever coming here again - I can't stand the way she treats David and there's no way I could be civil to her if I saw her ever again. David came to visit in October and we took him out for his birthday and then on a tram because he was going to interview for a job driving them. David got the job, and moved in with us in November (had to clean out space in the bedroom, bathroom, pantry and study). Mum came down at Christmas for a couple of days. We saw a little bit of Stu's family too. The other Stu came over for dinner in January. Kerry and the kids came to see the balloons in March and dropped in to visit. Dropped in to see Annie and the kids in April and save Daisy's life (emergency cash supply). Scott and Kerry and the kids dropped in briefly in October. Saw Noah on his 18th birthday. Stu and Annie and the family came over for Christmas lunch. I saw a bit of Chrissie during the year. Went over for a couple of low key dinners in January (hot cross bun ice cream!) and December, saw her the night her aunty and uncle were murdered and we just tried to process, had a few lunches out and about, and a nice BBQ on Anzac Day which also included her Dad, siblings and their partners. Saw quite a lot of EffanC and the N-gang which was great, including a couple of dinners at R&F's, various visits back and forth and dinners out at Pot Belly and Malaysian Chapter with EffanC including an election night event and New Years. We're still missing Kit and Pete and the chickens although did see them a few times during the year. Other than the four times we went down to the coast, they also came to stay for Tarun's wedding in March. Went wedding dress shopping with Kit then had dinner at Old Canberra Inn for Pete and Leisa's birthdays. They came back again in April to see Kit's brother before he went home to Germany. Kit came up again in May for Katie's sister's funeral and her friend Sophie's wedding. I organised Kit's Hen's at the end of November - Laser Tag and dinner at George Harcourt with drinks after at Moby's. And I ended up being a bridesmaid at their wedding after it became too difficult for Audrey. We farewelled Stewie and Cath (again) in February. Fiona came to stay the weekend after I got my appendix out, but was pretty stressed about it because everyone was sick and I couldn't sleep in the spare bed. Jenn came over a week later for a Turkish feast, and we caught up for drinks with her in October. Went to see Doc's new place with a big group of work peoples which was lovely. Had a couple of dinners with Hannah, at Dumpling Inn and Pizza Artigiana so Stu could get to know her before we went away together. Had our annual hanami part with Nat and Andrew, although I was sick the original weekend and the flowers were mostly all gone by the time they did get to come over. And went to @CLBradley's 60th at Ciscos.

Spent a bit of time at our social club. There was a Finnish night in March, with a wallaroo joey. Not to eat - that's Australian, not Finnish ;) In April we bought a well-established van off another member to give us some space to move (our old van was just barely big enough to sleep in, and even then not really). Sold the old one for a lot less that we paid for it because it had a leak that we never fixed and wasn't in great condition. Spent a bit of time cleaning and decluttering the new one, but there's still a long way to go. Had Chris and Ian's anniversary there, it's been a shame that I've had to miss two of them over the years. We did Christmas in July again for a huge crowd. Had a couple of nights there in August, including the AGM on Stu's birthday (doh!), and another night in September. September was a Chilean night, which was great, but some people really need to learn to better estimate catering. I mean a bit of overcatering is fine, you don't want to run out, but you also don't want an entire fridge full of leftover food - both cooked and uncooked! Went for Oktoberfest in October. We missed the Christmas party because we were down the coast at Kit and Pete's wedding. We were going to go out at New Years, but I was too nervous about the weather and potential for fires.

Pretty quiet fish year. I discovered my angel is a girl - she laid a couple of batches of eggs! At the end of the year I had four active tanks. The angel tank, with the angel, a cory, and a sucking catfish. The two foot, with three black neon tetras and a sucking catfish. Chrissie's little tank, with two clown loaches and a sucking catfish. And the downstairs two foot, with one large danio. Stu has his four foot which is always covered in algae because the lights are too good and there's not enough algae eaters, a tiny tank on his desk with a white cloud, and a little tank downstairs with a white cloud. There's also four empty tanks that were for killifish but they all died. I want to restock my tanks, but needed to prove I can take care of them first (ie, making sure at least one of them gets a water change every weekend, so no more than four weeks between water changes for each tank).

Nothing much on the Lego front either. I'm still working on sorting out Vic's Lego. It's extremelly slow going. It takes a good chunk of the weekend to do pick parts for six sets, so if there's anything on on a weekend nothing would happen. Really need to get back into it, as I really want my tubs and floor space back.

Not so many jigsaws this year either. I feel like there's too many other important things to do to "waste time" doing jigsaws :( Similarly with any of my other hobbies.

The weather was *hot* when we got back from overseas in January. We had the cooler running for three weeks straight. There were a lot of thunderstorms at the beginning of the year too. Had a duststorm in February. Then drought with a dry winter and super dry November and December, and the shroud of bushfire smoke for most of December.

Around the house.. I took a few days off at Easter to have a ten day break, and we Marie Kondo'd the house - well, clothes, linen cupboard, under the house a bit, some of the garage, and the pantry. David came during that break and replaced the light in the fan light, and also the kitchen lights, with LEDs. Had the sewer pipes eeled in May and he cleared a blockage at the same spot twelve metres in as last time. For Christmas I treated us to new towels - the first time in my life I've ever had matching bathroom linen - loving it!

Considering it feels like we don't eat out all that often, it seems like we ate out a lot. I tried Master Hin Dumplings at the mall. Very average dumplings. I'm surprised they're actually still there. Went to Chong Co on Australia Day and had their delivery a couple of times. Went to Gus's with the sweetie in February. Malaysian Chapter and Pot Belly a couple of times with EffanC, and for a work farewell lunch. Indian Pantry with Cath. Had Pho Hub with Neil. A couple of work lunches at Chompy's. Had Yat Bun Tong at least once with the sweetie. Possibly only made it to Dumpling Inn once this year - to meet up with Hannah so she and Stu could meet and we could discuss Harry Potter. The sweetie took me out to Temporada on our anniversary which was expensive but excellent. A group of us went to Rashays for their $5 lunches in May. We haven't been back since. Tried Tasting China and Akiba which were both pretty good. Went to Chez Kimchi a few times. They're ok but their menu is just a mess. Had Disappointing Sushi (aka Hero Sushi in Canberra Centre) a couple of times. It always meets expectations - it's always disappointing. We had Pizza Artigiana a couple of times. The first in July to meet Hannah's flatmate Rita who we were going to see Harry Potter with, and again with Stu in August. Tried lunch at 54 Benjamin a couple of times. Nice, but a bit expensive to do too often for lunches. Had Alice's in July, the Lake George Hotel in Bungendore in August with EffanC, Bella Vista on my birthday, Happy's in December. Tried out Yarralumla Kebabs' new store in Belco. Pro tip - take a knife and cut one in two and split it with someone - otherwise you'll feel to stuffed at the end (even Stu finds them too big!!). And went to Bharat International with some work guys. And there were several treks to Kingsley's ;)

It seems I wasn't terribly creative in the kitchen this year. Or maybe I just didn't document things. We ate one of Kit's little roosters and made a couple of lasagnas with her tomatoes. I had a lot of fun with puff pastry - making cheese and vegemite scrolls, pizza scrolls and cheese twists. Made tacos a couple of times. A large kit works a lot better with three people than two ;) Made a gnocchi carbonara bake a couple of times. Also made cheesy hash browns which are always pretty awesome. And made a huge batch of gingerbread biscuits for Christmas.

The only theatre/shows/exhibitions I saw were two Lego things (Lego Cities by Ryan McNaught in Sydney, and a private Lego Christmas Show in Ngunnawal), and Harry Potter and the Cursed Child in Melbourne.

The only movie I saw in theatres was the Lego Movie 2 - the Second Part.

Saw a lot more movies on TV. As well as invididual movies which I won't list, we (or I) also carried on watching movies in series. Including:

• Kung Fu Panda 1 and 2
• Sherlock Holmes 1 and 2 (Robert Downey Junior version)
• The Hobbit 1, 2 and 3
• James Bond movies, starting in April, still haven't quite finished
• Paddington 1 and 2
• Bridget Jones 1 and 2
• Molly Ringwald teen movies (except Breakfast Club cause that's kinda boring)
• A few Tom Hanks movies
• Twilight saga
• Die Hard 1, 2 and 3 (haven't had a chance to see the rest yet)

Watched a surprising amount of TV too!

• The Good Place Season 3
• Tidying Up with Marie Kondo
• Discovery Season 2
• Fuller House Season 4
• MacGyver Season 1, start of Season 2
• Homeland Season 7
• Brooklyn 99 - up to season 5
• Death in Paradise Season 3
• Lego Masters
• Veronica Mars Season 4
• The Good Place Season 4
• The Amazing Race
• Fuller House Season 5

I'm not a big reader but did get through some books:

• Heaven is for Real - Todd Burpo
• The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and six more - Roald Dahl
• Silicon Snake Oil - Clifford Stoll
• Little Brother - Cory Doctorow
• The Cult of LEGO - John Baichtal and Joe Meno
• You Always Remember the First Time - edited by B.S. Johnson
• The Reader - Bernhard Schlink
• On the Road - Jack Kerouac (never finished)

And as always, I finish off with a big list of other bits and pieces..

• Started blogging weekly on Sunday nights, as that seems to happen more consistently, and get my photos online in a more timely manner
• Still raging that Apple sees fit to modify the timestamps on my photos and screenshots - on the phone!!
• Posted my Canberra 1986-2016 blog to Reddit and got a lot of nice comments
• Android (at least the last two Stu's had) has a SUPER annoying bug where the forward facing camera has no date taken exif data saved. Makes it harder to geotag the photos.
• Finally filled up my 2T drives with backups, had to split them out. Also bought a 4T drive to have room for everything. Took nearly a week to copy everything
• Found "Tent Go Bye Byes" on the internet so Mum could finally see what all the fuss was about in 1983
• Finished scanning all of Mum's photo prints
• Saw the Balloon Fiesta
• Took a stack of Tupperware to the Green Shed
• Read all of Julie Powell's "Julie and Julia" blog (started and got a good chunk of the way through in February after I had my appendix out, finished in September)
• Collected all the Coles Stikeez. And Little Shop 2
• The neighbours got ducks, although they didn't keep them for too long
• Got asked to be a bridesmaid at Kit's wedding. Got the shoes for the girls
• Finished scanning all of Mum's analogue photos. Started on her slides.
• Got our democracy sausage in May
• Finished labelling all 10000-odd photos from our last trip
• Created an S3 bucket for holiday photos. Still haven't gotten around to doing anything with it.
• Filled with rage at Qantas' website and general customer service, booked my next trip with Emirates instead
• Three cats we know - Pookie, Celeste and George - all had to be put down
• Processed and labelled all our Hong Kong and Singapore 2016 photos and got them into the blog
• NBN screwed us over - disconnected us during upgrades and never bothered to reconnect us. Had to get a tech to come out and fix it. Found out a while later they'd downgraded our speed from about 25mb to 12mbit. Bastards. (Edit: they broke the connector, hence only half the speed, later we got it fixed)
• Microsoft FINALLY enabled control-backspace in Notepad!!
• STILL raging at Apple and the inability to copy timelapse (and even regular video) files to my computer
• Bought a toasted sandwich maker - loving that
• David bought me a new frying pan (and another one at Christmas)
• Had my hair trimmed. Trimmed is an understatement.
• Got my North Atlantic trip fully labelled and blogged
• Didn't see blue sky in Canberra from before Kit's wedding til the end of the year
• Saddened by the bushfires that raged through south-eastern Australia
• Played some escape games on my phone which are a lot of fun
• Watched both Christmas Carols events. Carols in the Domain are pretty tacky but Melbourne's Carols by Candlelight is still ok.
• Spent the last couple of days of the year tidying and organising the house, and catching up on blogging

We finished out the year at EffanC's for a quiet evening with great friends.

Three weekends ago we headed down the coast for Kit and Pete's wedding.  We left on the Thursday after lunch.  I was still sick and coughing and had been in bed all morning.  Hurrah.  

Driving down Smith's Gap we saw the fires over at Braidwood.

This was the last weekend we were to see blue skies this year.  As I write it's been three weeks since we saw properly blue sky (except maybe a day or two).

This C-130 water bomber (N134CG) had just left HMAS Albatross.  

We stayed at the Springs Shoalhaven, quite close to the wedding venue.  Pleasant enough place.  It had a pool although I didn't have a swim (Stu did).  Both those beds were *very* soft.  I took the single to give myself a bit of distance from the sweetie with my coughing.  

We chilled out for a bit, then went next door to the Ex Serviceman's Club for dinner.  It had a lovely aspect, facing north over the golf course.  At the far northern end of the golf course was the venue for the wedding. 

Pasta I had for dinner

Spent half the night coughing.  Of course.

Stu thought it might be nice to have room service breakfast on the Friday, so we ordered that the night before.  Unfortunately because I'd had so little sleep I really wasn't hungry when it turned up at the appointed time.  It was nice enough though and I would have enjoyed it on another day.  

I pretty much spent the morning in bed.  We were waiting for word from Kit to see if they needed our help transporting anything or setting anything up, but they were running late and a bit frazzled.  In the end the sweetie and I went into Nowra to get some supplies (I still wasn't very hungry) and stuff for the wedding.  Then we headed all the way down to the end of Greenwell Road to have a look at the water.  That was quite nice.

Dropped the sweetie back to the motel, then met up with Chloe, Katie and Kit so we could all get our nails done.  I've never had my nails done professionally before.  

The result!

Picked up the sweetie, then it was off to the rehearsal.  There were quite a lot of people there and it was a little bit chaotic, so took quite a while to get through.  

Dropped off the sweetie again, then to Kit and Pete's to load up the car with food.  Swung by the motel on the way back and got Stu to drop me at the venue with all the gear/food.  He'd had a rotten time at the Ex-Serviceman's club - it was super noisy and crowded and he had to wait *forever* for food and couldn't even go get another drink because otherwise he'd have lost his table.  Poor thing.  Then he headed back to the motel while I stayed at the venue.

At the venue four of us girls stayed in the "Bunk House", while Kit stayed by herself in her own room (at Chloe's recommendation to get a better night's sleep).  

Chloe got us some takeaway burgers for dinner (and very nicely got me a kids meal so it was a lot smaller ;) ).

Chloe and Audrey made up little bubble blowers.

And Katie and Kit made up decorations.

I supervised ;)

I slept on my inflatable mattress.  Or rather, I *didn't* sleep on the mattress.  I was so stressed about my coughing/snoring keeping Katie awake, that I couldn't get to sleep til very very very late.  And then I woke up early.  I think I might have gotten about two hours sleep.  How to recover from a cold - get lots of rest.  Yeah right.  Vowed never to sleep in the same room as anyone else (aside from the sweetie) ever again in my life.

Anyways.  I'll leave the day of the wedding to the next post.

This magpie was hand raised by the owners of the venue, and hung around while we cleaned up.  Very cool.

After driving Pete's ute back to their place late morning, with everyone's cars full of *stuff* that we'd spent all morning packing up, we finally headed home.  

We couldn't even see Smith's Gap through all the smoke.

This was leftovers of a massive antipasto platter that we had at the wedding (I put it in the fridges overnight, everyone thought I was mad heh).  We didn't need to do any food shopping that week - we just ate this all week!

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!

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.

Such a busy week this week.

Monday was crazy epic busy.  Had leftover lasagna for dinner, finished day 28 of holiday photo labelling, although was too exhausted to do the full quota for the day.

Tuesday I had my quota of photos done by 19:30, so started watching Big Bang Theory from the beginning now that it's on Netflix.  Then I watched Kramer vs Kramer which I'd never seen, while fighting with my backups (my 2T external hard drive is really full, need to rework the backup schedule a little).

Wednesday was mostly fighting with the proxies.  I had it good for a year and a half when I didn't have to touch them, but now I'm back it's mostly my responsibility.  Was exhausted and sick of cooking and sick of leftovers so relented and let the sweetie order pizza.  Which of course made me feel like a big fat blob.  I did get over 9000 photos labelled (86% done), but we forgot to get milk.

Thursday I put on It Takes Two, because I don't think I've ever seen any of the Olsen Twins movies.  It was all a bit of fluff, much like Parent Trap only they weren't sisters.  I was all squee about the New York been-theres though.  One of the shots was of the Metlife building (this was a 1995 movie) and I was like, it was the Pan-Am building in 1979 in Kramer vs Kramer hehe.

Sailed under this six months and one day before seeing the movie

Went up there in 2000

And there

Walked past this statue of William Sherman in Central Park exactly six months before seeing this movie

Was there in 2000 too

Fun times.

Friday had a drink with the sweetie at the Waldorf.  Took photos of the pretty arch.

We went to Hero Sushi for dinner, but as always it was disappointing.  They did have plenty of takoyaki out this time, but it was just barely warm :(  No other interesting hot food to speak of.  Did our food shopping on the way home.

Saturday was pretty quiet.  Didn't do much in the morning.  Had the second last ancient hot dog roll out of the freezer and made pizza subs with it (slowwwwly getting through all the ancient food in there).

Stumpy even came out for a while in the afternoon and stayed til the heat turned off.

Saw these wispy clouds when I was bringing in the washing.

Mostly just Lego picking in the afternoon.  Watched Made of Honor in the afternoon/evening.  Again, fluff, but I really didn't like the title.  If he was *actually* "made of honor" he wouldn't try to break up the wedding.  Lame.  And get this, the opening shot in the movie was filmed BACKWARDS!  Completely retarded.  Here's a screen grab vs reality.

Watched The Rocky Horror Picture Show after dinner, need to try and brush up on the songs for the club night in a couple of months.

Today I did a bunch of housework in the morning and achieved quite a lot.  Just nothing on my todo list :(  Stumpy was out the entire time the heat was on.  Maybe he thinks winter is over.  Lego picking all afternoon - finished picking for another six sets.  Had slow cooked lamb shanks for dinner as per this recipe.  The recipe is nice enough, it's just lacking .. *something* .. Not sure what.  I had heaps of corn flour so it wasn't as watery as it's been in the past.  Just lacks a certain mouth feel.  hrmm.

Continued Brooklyn 99 and Homeland.

Then fought with Apple again.  After several weeks of it not screwing around with my files, this week it trashed most of my PNGs

Hate Apple.  Hate.

And there we are for another week.

Just a few books I've read over the past few months.

Heaven is for Real - Todd Burpo.  A book Mum lent me a couple of years ago but hadn't gotten around to reading.  Read this one in bed.  Whether to believe as-is or not, it was a great read.  I'd like to see the movie although apparently the movie focusses a lot more on the doubts of the father, which didn't really come across so much in the book.

The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and six more - Roald Dahl.  I bought this on Kangaroo Island in 1994 and have read it all before.  I don't think I've read it since actually seeing the Mildenhall Treasure though, so that was pretty cool.  

Silicon Snake Oil - Clifford Stoll.  I read and loved The Cuckoo's Egg by Clifford Stoll years ago so looked forward to reading this.  Except the dude spend literally an entire book complaining about how hard to use and what a waste of space computers and the internet are.  And Facebook hadn't even been invented when he wrote it.  Honestly I have no idea how it got published.  Sure he had some good points (computers shouldn't/can't ever properly replace teachers) but some of his predictions were laughably bad (noone will ever bother to try and hack databases because they're all different and rely on people to enter the data correctly, and video streaming will be too hard to ever achieve).  I really should have taken more photo snippets like this, but I ain't going back to find them again!

bwhahahah - omfg a quarter of a megabyte or more for a picture is b-i-i-i-g-g-g!

I slogged my way through to the end of it, but it was many hours of my life I won't get back.

Little Brother - Cory Doctorow.  I used to read Boing Boing and remember when this first came out (I remember he published it online for free).  Stu actually bought a copy so I read it before bed recently.  Basically an essay on privacy wrapped in a pretty good story.  I really enjoyed it.  It's over ten years old now, but just as topical as ever.

Adrian Mole - the Cappuccino Years - Sue Townsend.  I read The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 3/4 years ago and I think I enjoyed it.  So picked this one up at a Bookcrossing meetup years ago, thinking it was an adult sequel.  I started reading it a few years ago on one of our trips to Queensland.  Problem is I just couldn't get into it.  And it certainly didn't help that I had to keep referring to the index of characters just to figure out who was who.  As it turns out it was the fifth book of the Adrian Mole series.  Maybe it would all make a lot more sense if I read them all together in quick succession.  Anyway after sitting on the shelf for years I gave up on it and put it back in the pile of Bookcrossing books I need to give away.  

Quite a busy quarter.

I came across this one that had just been started on the Queen Mary 2 at the beginning of the year.  I stayed and finished the whole thing, with another dude for some of it, before lunch on New Years Day.

And now for a whole series of jigsaws from the club office cleanout.

This one had fourteen pieces missing.  I'm usually willing to put a note in the jigsaw for future users, but fourteen was a bit excessive so threw it out.

A tiny little jigsaw (under 200 pieces) I did very quickly one evening.

Life on the Farm, another single-evening jigsaw.

1933 Leyland Fire Engine

This Goosebumps one glowed in the dark.

But the glow faded very very quickly it was so old.

And then I had my appendix out.  Sitting wasn't too uncomfortable so I could do smaller jigsaws where I didn't have to stand up to lean over to reach pieces.  This also glowed in the dark but I forgot and dismantled it before it got dark.

Another few fun little ones.

Ten days after surgery I was able to face bigger jigsaws again.  Of course I started with a very tough jigsaw.  Annoyingly the pieces were badly cut.  Not only had they not all been separated properly, but the cut was so similar you could have the piece be "correct" on two sides, but still be wrong.  Very frustrating, especially with all the very similar green at the bottom and blue at the top.

Struggling on..

Finally finally finished.  If it hadn't been so horrible I may have kept it, as I'm still vaguely interested in getting a keeper jigsaw for Neuschwanstein.  Here is also where I started using Office Lens to de-keystone the photos.

Egeskov Castle, Denmark

This looks small but is actually huge.  It's labelled as a floor puzzle and each piece is about 10cm square.  It glowed in the dark too but the glow lasted for like a second before completely fading.

A couple now my brother brought over at some point.  The first is a fairly horrible one of the Grand Canyon.  The building and sky were easy enough but the whole lower half is just trees and snow.  Tough going.

And this one of Hautefort Castle, France.  That green was pretty tough.

This one has been downstairs forever.  It may have come from when we cleared out Mum's place.  It's 1500 pieces, and there's a *lot* of blue, so it was looking like it'd be quite tough.

The water and ship were (relatively) easy.

But here's where I started cheating.  The jigsaw had been cut in two, then one side was rotated 180 degrees and then both pieces were cut into 750 pieces.  Meaning identical halves.

Which you could literally put on top of each other and then it was a hundred times easier to find the next piece of sky you were looking for.

The pieces all had "twins", so once I was done with all the pieces that I could by laying them atop each other, I paired up the pieces, and then only had to "half" the jigsaw.  You'd put the piece in one side, and put its twin in the same place on the other side.

And presumably a previous owner had decided all that sky was way too hard and drew blue and red lines all over the sky with pens.  That sure did make pieces easier to find!

But they didn't know about the pieces having "twins".  And a couple of times they got it wrong.  See the pieces and far left and right just below and above centre.  They're darker blue here.

But lighter blue here.  So they had it wrong before drawing lines all over it.

Finally finshed.

This one I got from the Green Shed last time I was there.  The box said it had 6 missing pieces.  It actually had 9 missing pieces.

And another one from the Green Shed.  The pieces of this were very small, so the whole jigsaw was quite small too.

And that's that for first quarter!

25.1.19

Io.  OMFG I want those hours of my life back!!  Nothing happens.  Slow.  Boring.  But mostly "yeah right".  Did not like.

26.1.19

Julia sans Julie.  Someone edited all the Julie Powell bits out of Julie and Julia, leaving just the Julia Child sections.  I enjoyed the original movie, although it seems they made the movie version of Julie nicer than the real life version.  But I never read any of the original blog, so no idea.  Did enjoy the version with just Julia Child.

The Usual Suspects.  I hadn't seen this since I first saw it at Luc and Lizzi's about twenty three years ago.  Even knowing the ending didn't help much.  I'd forgotten just about everything else about it.  And I think if I watched it again now I'd still struggle to keep up with what was going on heh.

2.2.19

Dunkirk.  Ok so I realised there were different time speeds happening.  But it was still a bit confusing to watch.  Otherwise not bad.

That's really not very many for nearly a month..