(The title of the book Stu is reading at the moment :) )

Mmmm my lovely holiday continues. Slept lat(ish), then had a relaxing morning doing not much, before heading up to Noosa! Took a while to figure out how to get into the hotel, which is on Hastings Street, but found it eventually round the back. Went and had a very late lunch at the foodcourt in the main street, wandered up and down the beach for a bit, before going back to the hotel for a swim. Had a bit of a siesta, then watched Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban on cable. Then we went out for dinner - to Copenhagen ;) But heck, I'm on holidays, I can have ice cream for dinner if I want to, right? :)

Sigh, Stu can't think of a title for this entry, so going with the NWN option of generating a randomly generated one ;)

Another lazy morning sleeping late and pottering about - gotta love holidays :)

Late morning we went to Aquariums R us, which we thought Would be a store, but looked more like a big old house that someone was trading out of. There were houses all around it and a tiny little sign on the building meant we drove right past the place. Silly really. But we did pick up quite a few bits and pieces for Stu's tank.

After lunch (haloumi cheese yummmm) was a trek to another store, the time to get fishies. Stu wanted to get some cardinal tetras, but this place wanted $10 each for then :( So instead he got some Harlequin Rasboras which were cute too (see below)

Then it was a trip into town to attend a drinks thingie at Stu's work. It was great to put some faces to names for people like Shazzy and Tash and Geoff. And it was hawaiian shirt themed, for which Stu fit the part well and was suitably praised :) I of course had the excuse that I didn't know it was on :). Had a couple of pina coladas and have had that damned song in my head all night. Might have to go think about llamas or something :)

After drinks we went and saw Howl's Moving Castle which was really sweet and quite enjoyable.

Then finished off the evening with a slice of pizza from the New York Slice Pizzeria - yummm, and a gelato - also yummm - highly recommend the apple pie one!

And now in bed on the blackberry for another late night oops :)

Had a really good day at work today. Got lots done, and solved a few problems that had been nagging us for a while. Even solved a crazy javascript problem by changing "value" to "text" .. go figure! Jim did a demo to the powers that be in the faculty office and didn't get any complaints, so it's getting there.

Then hung around for a bit and finished off my flight from DC to LA in 2000 on Google Earth, finding every one of my photos, even one I'd given up on during the last effort - a freeway interchange somewhere in Pennsylvania I think. The only photo I haven't placed is somewhere over Colorado or Nebraska, and as you can see, the whole point of the photo is to show what a whole lotta nuttin is in the middle of the country.

Got home late and didn't do much. Still haven't cleaned up the kitchen from cooking on the weekend. Maybe I'll do it tonight. Maybe tomorrow.

I was tagged by Fiona ten days ago with this, and have only just now gotten around to doing it! (sorry!)

Name 5 things you miss about your childhood:

1. Big family holidays. We did quite a few cool holidays when I was a kid. The four best were the "flying" holidays - America in 1983, Western Australia in 1984, Central Australia in 1985, Lord Howe and Norfolk Islands in 1987
2. Good vision. When I was 12 I could read the smallest counter on the VCR from way across the other side of the room. My eyesight started deteriorating after that.
3. Ability to sleep anywhere. I had no trouble sleeping on the plane to America in 1983. No such luck these days.
4. Nicky Vasek. My best friend in year 7. Haven't seen her since 1986. She's sent me some emails after reading this blog, but has disappeared into obscurity again when I asked if we could meet up :(
5. Bluey. My budgie for three years. The only one we had that actually talked.

Gosh, that was harder than I thought it would be. I realised there's not a whole lot from my childhood that I actually miss. Being extremelly shy and introverted I had few friends. There was no internet. I wasn't good at anything in particular, especially not anything that required coordination. I was good at school work, but nobody appreciated that except my parents (and my teachers I guess)

This meme was a tag your friends meme, but as I said in a previous post, I don't *do* that ;)

It's getting a bit late now, so this whole entry was a little rushed. It's surprising the effort it takes to resize, save, upload and label several dozen photos.

In an extended entry I've put together a bit of my Queensland trip. There's about 2.3mb of photos. Hover your mouse over them for labels.

Enjoy!

27.1.25 - moved the content of this entry to my Australian Holidays blog.

So two nights before Easter, I noticed that the light was on in the neighbours place directly opposite my bedroom and up a level in the next block of flats. It was on all night. It kept me awake because every time I looked out the window the light was on. Something was wrong.

At first I thought that perhaps the flat was up for sale or lease, and someone had left the light on while showing people around. It stressed me that the light was going to be on all Easter weekend using up electricity. Saturday I looked up on Domain to see if it was for sale or lease. No sign of it.

Then I thought that perhaps the owners were on holidays and had left the light on and gone away. But it's now been two and a half weeks. And school holidays have only just started.

So then I started thinking bad things. Like perhaps someone died in there and noone has noticed yet. Presumably the neighbours would have noticed the smell in the stairwells by now, so it's probably not that. But certainly a possibility. Was wondering if I should try and get into the building and have a look.

So anyway. What can you do hey.

And two days go by.

Blink.

Not quite sure what happened.
Yesterday morning seems an eternity ago. I think I was sitting bored in the morning yesterday wondering what to do with myself because the flat was clean (tidied it before the fire inspection the other morning). Decided to pull out an old paint-by-numbers that I'd never finished (because some of the pots had crap paint in them and it was all too hard). So did that for a bit then the parents called me up and asked if I wanted to go to Yvonne's for dinner. So then went shopping (and reminded myself why I never go shopping on Saturdays, especially on Saturdays between public holidays) and headed over there. Thanks Yvonne for putting up with us even though you were sick :)

Long drive home. Went to bed at something like 1:30am old time, which worked out at 12:30am new time. Set my phone to wake me up for church, but realised when I woke up that I'd set it twelve hours wrong. Fortunately I'd woken up before it was due to go off, or I'd have missed church :)

After church helped Luc move some bricks (only 100 of them, but they had to be moved a couple of times each. Then came home, chatted to Chris briefly (he invited me to the pub with him and Alison, which made me grumphy cause I was having the family over for roast meat, er pig, er pork :) ), then slaved over a hot stove essentially all afternoon. Had another round of three hands of 500 - tonight I won all three woohoo :)

And now it's Sunday night, and I'm going to just collapse into bed!

At least it'll be a short week. Go public holidays!

Has anyone had any experience with digital tuner cards? I imagine an analogue tuner card would work well enough here, but ultimately digital would be better. But being in a flat with a common antenna which has an amplifier, John reckons it may not work. I'd like to borrow his setup at some point to try it out here. Still a toss up between dvd recorder or a puta with a tuner card.

Triple episodes of Nip/Tuck tonight. One more episode left to finish off the season. It just gets worse and worse, descending into incest in the last couple of episodes. Sigh. Must not watch next season. Must not watch next season.

As seen at Blogography, a saturday-8

1. if you celebrate christmas, do you have your tree up yet? if not, what's your excuse?
Yep, and it looks lovely

2. christmas is in a week ... do you have you holiday shopping done?
Pretty much. Still one person I want to get something for

3. do you take time off during the holidays, or do you work straight through?
We have a compulsory holiday between Christmas and New Years. I still sorely miss the three month holidays I used to get as a student

4. do you take a winter vacation to go skiing or do the iditarod?
mmmmm snow. Sorry we don't get snow in Sydney, even in winter

5. in your neighbourhood, are there a lot of holiday lights up?
A few. If you really want to see a lot of lights, go visit Bonnett Bay. Practically every house in the suburb is decorated. I did see on one of those lifestyle shows a couple of years ago a house in Newcastle that was just *covered* in lights. Can't remember whereabouts tho.

6. do YOU put holiday lights up? if so, are yours up this year? if not, why don't you do it?
"You can never have too many fairy lights"

7. describe the most gaudy/tacky/cheap holiday display you've seen. where was it?
I'm a huge fan of bright shiny coloured things, so you're really asking the wrong person. I did see something this year though - a front yard full of mega-sized inflatable santas etc. They look ridiculous.

8. for this holiday, mr. laura is gutting my dining room and adding on a computer room, so my house will be full of drywall dust instead of holiday house trimmings. have you had a year in which you didn't or weren't able to decorate your house for the holidays?
Never! Although I still haven't managed to get a small tree up at work - I've just been so busy :(

For once, a Friday Q topic I don't have to think too much about! :)

FQ1: Describe your morning routine on work/school days, from the time you wake up until you leave.
* get up
* check mail
* have breakfast while reading whatever webpage takes my fancy
* have shower
* brush hair
* have drink of oj and wash up my cereal bowl
* put shoes and socks on
* feed fish

FQ2: Now describe your morning routine on NON-work/school days (weekends, holidays, etc.).
* sleep till whenever I can (unfortunately this is rarely very late)
* waste time on the computer
* delete over quota mailboxes
* eventually get breakfasted/showered/ready

FQ3: And finally, describe your night-time routine before you go to bed.
* check ebay (although I do this when I get home)
* blog - write mine and then read others
* brush teeth
* get into pjs

FQ Fantasy: You've won 100 million dollars in the lottery! Re-write your morning routine one month from now!
Actually if I won 100 million dollars my morning routine wouldn't change much at all. I'd still have to have breakfast and a shower etc.