Monday.  28th.  Slept fairly well.  Bit of BS.  Planned some new work but that got stalled (and too many interruptions anyway).  Phone is being a poo.  It was on the charger all night but it was only at 50% when I woke up, which dropped after I got up.  Rebooted and plugged it in on the computer but it took *ages* to fully charge.  But then it stayed at 100% forever and was at 99% at bed time.  Got it down to 95% by playing on it for a bit.

Apparently these are erlicheers .. early cheers!  They smell amazing!

Tuesday.  Phone was at 87%.  Rebooted.  85%.  Played on it for a bit while plugged in.  No change.  Rebooted.  80%.  wtf??  Left it plugged in and it came good in an hour.  Sigh.  Tried to look at some firewall cleaning.  Didn't get to do much because of all the interruptions and BS.  Roasted a haep of veggies for dinner and cooked a very nice steak that we shared.  Then I finished labelling my photos for the Europe blog!!!  Well, for the day entries, I still have the food/hotels/panoramas to do.

Wednesday.  Dunno.  Had duck at Symposium for dinner then went and saw Oppenheimer.  Which was very .. lonnnngggggggg....

On the way home we drove past this building that was all lit up which looked really strange.. 

Thursday.  Dunno.  Mulled wine (glühwein) at drinks, pizza and second episode of Ahsoka.

Friday.  Dunno.  Bit of house cleaning after work.  Leftover meatballs for dinner.  Futurama/Death in Paradise 5.6.

Saturday.  Breakfast at U&Co (eggs benny again, same as last time), then saw the Big Things in Store.

Made a cheesecake and ran the dishwasher and had a short break before more party prep.  Still felt rushed even though I had a lot more time and a lot less things to do.  Sigh.

Sunday.  Woke up at 6am cause that's what I do.  Cleaned up in the morning then worked on retouching/cropping all the photos for the blog, and even got some online.

Sunday.  20th.  Backdating.  Because dinner on the 27th took all afternoon. TV dinners for dinner (it was that kind of day after getting back from Sydney) on the 20th, then Futurama/Crown and an early night.

Monday.  Woke up at 3am for an hour and a half.. sigh.  The BS started pretty early.  Only got to decommission stuff late in the afternoon.  Cauliflower bake and veggies for dinner and photo labelling in the evening.

Tuesday.  Dunno.  Nice sunrise thought.  And there were flowers.  And slow cooker brisket for dinner.

Wednesday.  All the stoopid.  All the BS.  Beer and wraps for dinner.  But did get some labelling done.  

Moist...

Thursday.  Global warming is real y'all.  Our cherry tree doesn't normally flower til well into September.  But here it is starting a full week before the end of August.

Actually had a great day at work for a change.  Had a lovely day of deleting crap, and hardly any interruptions or BS.  Had some frozen stuff from the freezer for dinner - needed to clear some space for the sweetie to get some ice cream :)  Futurama then Death in Paradise 5.5.

I thought this shadow was cool

Hardly Normal opening here soon..

Friday.  Awake from two til four or so.  Sigh.  Zombie morning.  I finished a few glasses of Diet Coke leftover from the party to help keep me awake.  Another nice day of deleting stuff and not too much BS.  Made wraps again for lunch and leftover brisket for dinner.  Then watched the first episode of Ahsoka.

Saturday.  Slept a bit better but not super great.  Slept til 6:37 which pushed my whole routine back.  Did lots of Europe photos labelling and a bit of house stuff, some fish stuff, weeding and music.  Basically my ideal day.  I'd be happy with days like that for the rest of my life.  Got onto Ikea's chat to ask them about the shelves we want to get and when they're likely to be in stock.  Had to get past the braindead bot to get to a human who said, oh, it's discontinued.  Fricken sigh.  Now don't know if I should keep all the bins I bought or take them all back.  Stu cooked sausages for dinner and we had a romatic night in watching Romancing the Stone (after two weekends of chaos previously and another one next weekend we *needed* a quiet night).  

Sunday.  Slept fairly well.  Mostly photo labelling, bit of house stuff, food shopping, listented to Jurassic Park on Screensounds.  Then spent half the afternoon cooking meat balls from my new recipe book, but more on that in another post.  One day.  It was very nice but it was two and a half hours in the kitchen which is Too Long.  Then Futurama/Crown.

One of the champagne flutes I got for my birthday from M&M

Sunday.  6th.  Finished the leftover pork from the club for dinner with a bit of char siu sauce which made it very nice.  Early night.

Monday.  Slept ok.  Stu was still feeling uneasy in his bowels.  Had a not so insane morning which let me catch up on some tickets.  Spent an hour after work doing house cleaning.  Leftovers for dinner.  Did some culling but still didn't finish Verona/Venice.  Watched War on Waste 2.2 (saw third episode another night this week, don't remember which night though).  

Tuesday.  Took til like 1am to get to sleep - itchy and restless legs.  Still woke up before 6 though.  First thing in the morning they came by to dig holes for the new trees, then a little while later they came by to plant the trees.  Which look decidedly like bottlebrushes not English hawthorns.  Not that I'm complaining, just different to what they said.  Another day of non stop interruptions and all the stoopid.  Chicken kiev for dinner.  Because I didn't feel like leftovers.

Wednesday.  Got to sleep ok but then woke up at like 4 for like an hour an a half.  Stressing about All The Things.  Stu was somewhat back to normal with his bowels.  Very unpleasant week for him.  They came by to mulch in the trees.  Lots of being hassled again.  Made some pasta with some mince I dug out of the freezer.  Then I finished culling down the Italy trip!!!  And culled down the food and hotel photos as well.  1303 photos in the main section and a couple of hundred each extra for food and hotels.  Wondering if I had a scratchy throat...

Thursday.  Definitely feeling like I had a scratchy throat.  hmmm.  Decided to work from home.  Craziness in the afternoon.  Sigh.  Still not actually feeling sick, just a slight scratchy throat and an infrequent cough.  Took a RAT at some point today, I think.  Negative.  Pizza for dinner, Futurama, Death in Paradise 5.3.

Friday.  Throat still a bit scratchy.  The plan was to take an RDO and clean the house.  But at this point I didn't even know if I'd be going ahead with the party.  So I worked in the morning.  Did another RAT.  Still negative.  Finished up around 2 then did a quick bit of house cleaning, then went and did the food shopping for the party.  Tv dinners for dinner.  Just because.  5.4 of Death in Paradise.

Saturday.  Went to be early but then woke up at midnight for over three hours.  Stressing about All The Things.  Sigh. 

Spent all day cleaning.  All of this should have been done yesterday and Saturday was meant to be completely chilled with just the food prep to do.  Sigh.  Just before Kit left the coast I did a third RAT.  Still negative.  But messaged everyone anyway to let them know the situation and they didn't have to come if they didn't want to risk getting sick.  A few people did pull out and I don't blame them.

I'll save the party for another post.

Sunday.  Woke up at 6:30.  Because that's what I do.  No matter how late I go to bed.  Saw Kit off at 8.  Tried to get more sleep but failed.  Slow day just doing a big cleanup - two loads of washing up, sorting the rubbish and recycling and vacuuming the lounge room.  Not much else.  Did start a jigsaw in the afternoon because didn't feel like doing anything else.  Cooked up some of the leftover party food for dinner with some brussells sprouts.  

Saw a cool video on sesquizygotic twins this week, in which twins share all of their maternal DNA, but only about half their paternal DNA.  They're stoopidly rare and they're not quite sure how it happens.  One theory is that an egg gets two sperm, and somehow they still manage to divide up the chromosomes successfully so as to not get duplicates.  Cool stuff!

Six months ago today I headed up to Sydney to start my America trip.  The one that cost me stoopid amounts of money and I couldn't get out of because Bare Necessities are utter buttwads and I would never ever ever ever travel with them again.  Despite their suckiness we had a pretty awesome time.  Well other than (probably) getting covid.  Because dip$#!+ Americans won't wear a mask or use hand sanitiser when they're sick.  

Anyhoo.

I actually managed to get photos online about a month ago, but left it til today (the six month anniversary (semi-anniversary??)) to post a link.

So here you go, enjoy all the photos from that trip!

Sunday.  30th.  Veggies with leftover lamb for dinner, Crown, early night.

Monday.  Slept okish.  Still woke up a few times.  Spent some time trying to find a pub to go to for my Sydney party.  I wanted to go to the Argyle again (had a nice time there last time) but it doesn't open til like 4pm which is way too late.  Sigh.  Busy day.  Again.  Leftover turkey and veggies for dinner.  And spent some more time looking for a pub.  

Tuesday.  Slept okish.  Morning of All The Hassling All At Once.  Did some weeding at lunch.  Then an afternoon of all the BS.  Cranky at everything.  

Wednesday.  Dunno, no notes, but it was another busy day.  

Thursday.

Completely defeated by Microsoft "security".  Cranky and stressed yet again.  After drinks it was all too much and the stress of the week just exploded and I literally had a meltdown all the way home.  Made pizzas for dinner.

Friday.  Had an early night, but then woke up at Dentist Time and never got back to sleep.  Stu on the other hand was sick all night and didn't get *any* sleep.  He was eventually actually sick but that didn't help him feel any better.  Poor thing.  I took an RDO and spent the day cleaning the house.  Hurray.  Well actually the morning was mostly tidying up and weeding etc in the front yard.  The afternoon was mostly tidying inside.  In the middle was a pub lunch at Herbert's with the Chrises, Tony, Frank and Karen.

Saturday.  Had an early night and slept somewhat better.  Spent the entire day cleaning the house.  Hurray.  Hardly any culling which was on the todo list though. 

Dinner at Badger&Co (literally the same thing I ordered last time I was there a year ago).

Then saw "Jeremy Laser" at the ANU Women's Revue.  They also played recorder (!!  Titanic  !!) and trombone.

After twenty minutes of just them getting setup and the band playing, just before the show started a group of five people walked in (twenty minutes late!!!!) and then demanded that people move around to accommodate their group of FIVE.  Tossers.

I had just about the perfect seat, but alas they asked us not to take any photos, so just got a sneaky one at the end.

Highlights from my crap memory (I was desperate to take some notes but didn't want to get out my phone)

* We Didn't Start the Movement (to the tune of We Didn't Start the Fire)
* Never Gonna Give them Up (Rickrolled!!!  regarding returning museum artefacts)
* cute little in-between-skit music including the Wii home screen music, ABBA's SOS, and Jess playing Titanic music on recorder
* Fixer Upper (from Frozen)
* three lines from Do you Wanna Build a Snowman, except I can't actually remember the question.. go away Anna, ok bye.. must ask Jess what they asked
* a parking skit where they complained about campus parking, which I had to laugh at because when *I* was at uni there was no such thing as student parking on campus
* Jess singing I'm Too Sexy
* Let's hear it for Canberra
* ANU / Xanadu

Scotland forever!!

So yeah quite a bit of fun, but it did make for a very late night :(

Sunday.  Spent All Morning FINALLY putting some sealant over the cracked grout around the loose tiles in the shower.  $20 solution to a $20000 problem.  Hopefully.  Remains to be seen if it works.  But OMFG caulking guns are hard work.  My forearms are going to ACHE tomorrow.

Then did some more cleaning.  Even managed some music.  But didn't finish my goal of culling Verona and Venice photos this weekend.  Sigh.  And the poor sweetie is still sick.  His entire gut is on strike and he felt miserable all weekend.  He's eaten like four pieces of toast in three days.  Eeep!

Some random things I've learnt lately..
* the fact that the sun is made up of hydrogen and helium was first discovered by a woman - Cecilia Payne - but of course because she was a woman she never really got the credit
* a Camera Lucida is a super cool optical device which allows an artist to superimpose a real life scene onto paper so they can trace it out.  I want one!! haha

Sunday.  23rd.  Roasted some veggies to have with some leftover meat.  Watched The Crown then had an early night.

Monday.  Slept mostly ok except for numb hands every five minutes overnight.  Been really fricken annoying lately.  Sadly my ancient cory (that I got as one of five in 2015 and was the only survivor of the Two Foot Tank of Death Fiasco) had died.  This was it a couple of weeks ago when it was starting to look like maybe it was on its way out..

Day was ok.  Trying to document some stuff but finding problems.  Man I really shouldn't look at things.  Saw three of my birds at lunch.  Then it was all dingbats and numbskulls in the afternoon, including some sheer incompetance.  Leftovers for dinner (mmmmm end bits from the roast pork we did at the club Saturday night).  Finished culling days 15/16 of Europe photos.  Day 15 wasn't too bad but day 16 was pretty hard.  Too many photos that look similar and hard to choose the best.

Tuesday.  Couldn't get to sleep til past midnight :(  Then numb hands again.  Sigh.  Another crazy day with all the peeps talking to me.  Cooked creamy pasta for dinner which was nice (added a bunch of leftover peas which didn't really work texturewise but did add some vegetation).  

Finished culling up to day 19.  There's a third series of War on Waste on iView, but I realised I haven't seen season two, so went back to start watching that.  Booked tickets for Indiana Jones, but seriously why TF do they charge booking fees to book online??  Surely they'd be encouraging that to save having to pay box office staff?  Dodgy Dendy strikes again.  Hate.  I probably didn't even need to book in advance, it was clear it wasn't going to be anywhere near full.

Wednesday.  Slept a bit better.  Busy day again.  Went and did a screen test at work.  I doubt they'll want me for any sort of video, but you never know for audio.  After work went and had Disappointing Sushi with the sweetie (so called because the hot stuff is *always* cold).  But because the sweetie is a regular at lunch, the owner brought out a complimentary plate of KFC, which was fresh out of the fryer and pretty awesome, so that was really nice :)

Then we went and saw Indiana Jones, which I'll put in another post.

Thursday.  Slept ok.  The sweetie didn't though.  Several nights in a row of not being able to get to sleep til like 1, 2 or 3 o'clock, stressing about All The Things (mostly work).  Poor thing.  Yet another crazy busy day.  Had a vendor meeting in the afternoon so was late to drinks :(  Pity because it was busy too.  Pizza for dinner (mac and cheese! which was actually pretty decent) then into Season 5 of Death in Paradise.

Friday.  Completely overwhelming day.  Had to just STOP at one point and list All The Things that people had been hassling me about to I could prioritise to get things done.  Did manage to get a lot done (once I had a chance to breathe) and finished up at 16:00 so could head out to the club.  Slightly more relaxed this Friday than last, but not by much.  Had to have a laugh at some point because I said "Hey Siri, tell me a story", and she spouted out half a dozen bizarre little short stories.  Straight out of AI, as the text isn't Googleable.  Also, funny fire is funny..

Oh, I also finished making an iceberg out of Vic's huge pile of 1x4 bricks

Saturday.  Slept ok (and the sweetie slept somewhat better as well).  Did a bit of work around our van tidying up leaves and such, then joined the club working bee.  Just ended up helping load/unload trailerfulls of logs, and helping distribute road base on the main driveway.

Anyone know what this is??

Came home and cooked a basa bake and a cauliflower bake (I won't mention the massive pile of MOLDY CHEESE I had to pick out after throwing on top of the cauliflower bake, WTF Woollies???) and then watched Indiana Jones, Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Sunday.  Woke up after 1 for over three hours.  Sigh.  Then ended up sleeping in til past 8 - two hours of my day WASTED to insomnia.  Felt completely overwhelmend with life - culling is just so damned HARD and there's so much HOUSEWORK TO DO.  In the end really all I got done was to tidy a bunch of surfaces and rearrage all the clutter somewhat.   Sigh. 

Oh also, bookings247 has been hacked!!  I got an email to the email address I use only for that site (which I've actually only ever used once, to find accommodation for Kit's wedding) telling me I'd signed up for Norton antivirus.  It had my name and last four digits of my credit card.  I left a comment on their website, but bet you any money they fob me off.

Here's the email:

This is a receipt for your order.

Order ID: #<redacted>
Order Date: 28-07-2023
Transaction ID: <redacted>
Amount: 499.99 AUD
Payment Method: Auto Debit
Card Number : ********<redacted>

Product Details
Product Name: #<redacted>_NRS_Ultimate-Desk
Powerful protection for your device and the personal information it stores.
License Type: 1 Year
Devices: Unlimited

One Sale, Many Things
Payment Details

Taxes & Duties: 0.00 AUD (all taxes & duties included in product price)
License Type: 1 Year
Devices: Unlimited
For cancellations or complaint regarding this order. Please contact directly at our service department at - +61 2 6176 1229

Thank you,
Norton Scr.
+61 2 6176 1229

*This is an auto-generated email. Please do not reply.
Save a tree. Don't print.

Contact Us:
Need Help? Support Helpline: +61 2 6176 1229
*Norton LLC* © All rights reserved 2023

I'm half tempted to call the number to see what BS they spin.  But that would require talking to people.  Which I hate.  Sigh.

Sunday.  9th.  Mini roast beef for dinner.  Finished season 4 of The Crown.  In Amazing Race the cops came back, after being out for two weeks.  !!  Turns out at that point they'd been racing for six weeks total.  In like sixteen legs.  Craziness.  You wonder where all the other days go.  Travel days?  Rest days?

The lemon cheesecake I made

Monday.  Slept ok.  More server migration work.  And lots of photo culling.

Tuesday.  Took forever to get to sleep.  Tried to do a test server migration, but only got about ten minutes of that done all day because of all the stoopid and all the rage and all the meetings.  Needed a drink by 15:20 but no time for that cause I had a prod change to do at 16:30.  Sigh.  But I did manage to cook a nice pasta bolognase for dinner.  Also finished first pass photo culling of Europe photos!

Wednesday.  Took forever to get to sleep.  Got to work super early, and left super late, so got a lot of stuff done (at least on either side, not so much in the middle because people).  I'd get so much more work done if I didn't have to GO to work or have to talk to anyone.  

Thursday.  Had to migrate to a new DR laptop to replace an aging one, and tried to do a prod server migration.  Didn't finish either.  Oh well.

Saw this at lunch.. wtf??

Drinks/pizza/etc.

Friday.  Slept ok.  Took an RDO!!  Trying to do all All The Things.  But then took like three hours out of it to do an Ikea run.  *sigh*.  Thinking of something like this for a bin solution (will have to move all the shelves up a bit):

Also had pork ribs nom nom nom

Saturday.  Slept ok.  Another day of All The Things.  

Do you reckon this will kill us?  

Looks disgusting right? :)  It was some beef dumplings that were being thrown at work (fridge clean: everything had been taken out of the fridges for cleaning.  Around 17:15 I claimed a couple of perishable things that would have needed throwing out if they'd been left out overnight.  These dumplings were a frozen solid ball that needed defrosting, but of course the dough can't handle that and they disintegrated).

But, they turn out quite nicely if you fry the heck out of them, and 24 hours later we haven't gotten sick ;)

Watched First Man in the evening.  So it was more a character study than a movie.  Not that there was much character to explore.  He says like three things the entire movie (ok exaggerating, a little, but not much).  It was told from mostly Neil's point of view, which means your entire experience of the movie is inside a dark shaky metal box.  Certainly none of magic of something like The Right Stuff (*that* was a good early astronaut movie).  This one was a bit lame.  AND FFS KEEP THE F#$&ING CAMERA STILL!!  OMFG such a terrible trend in filmmaking, oh let's just give the camera to a drunk cameraman to try and make the audience feel queasy.  Fricken hate.

Sunday.  Slept ok.  Another day of All The Things.  Except I felt blah about the fact that even long weekends are too short.  I can't keep this up.  There's just too much to do to have time to go to work.  Took some more stones to Cath's and made a bit of a dent in the periwinkle under the cherry tree.  Also finished sorting Dad's slides into some semblance of chronological order.  Going to have a break from that for a few weeks so I can finish culling Europe photos.  Then it will be geotagging, applying exif data, copying, touching up, renaming and filing.  

Some fun facts:
* this was from last week - Mozart actually had six children, but only two survived past infancy.  Neither married or had kids, although one did become a musician.
* Australia controls 11% of the world's air space!
* The name Arctic comes from the Greek arktos, meaning "bear." Anta is synonymous with anti, which means "opposite".  So you have Arctic (bear) and Antarctic (opposite bear).
* From the time Pluto was discovered until the time it was demoted from planethood, it still hadn't made one complete revolution around the sun (it still hasn't)
* Neil Armstrong had a daughter Karen (she died at the age of two from a brainstem tumor)

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

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

Wednesday.  Dunno, no notes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Stayed up past midnight.  Whoops.

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

Kiev twice in one day?  Whoops.

Then Futurama/Crown.

Sunday.  11th.  Lamb roast for dinner.

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

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

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

Dinner at 10 After.

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

The pan fried shallot cake was fresh and crispy

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

The other dumplings were decent too

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

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

Mary's French, with a Frenchman!

Antebellum

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

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

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

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

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

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