Sunday.  31st.  Leftovers from Saturday night for dinner.  Finished watching Obi-Wan.  I liked that they had James Earl Jones voicing Darth Vader.. only .. they *didn't* ..!! they deep faked him!  And having Ian McDiarmid was pretty cool too.

Monday.  Slept ok-ish but woke up early.  Started panicking over my todo list.  Started trying to get in control by giving the house a bit of a tidy.  But had a meltdown as soon as I logged into work because people were making mess and it was all too much.  Had a cleaning planning day.  Leftover pork for dinner.

Oh, the other week my everyday walking shoes split (I bought these in 2015 and worn them almost every day since) so last week I bought some new ones.  Almost the same, look slightly different.

In the evening I tried to book flights to Europe with Qantas.  Big mistake.  I tried to book the exact same itinerary as I did three years ago (when it failed epically and I spent *hours* trying to sort it out and in the end said "screw you" and went with Emirates).  Well in three years QANTAS STILL HASN'T FIXED THEIR BOOKING SYSTEM!!!!  As with last time, you select a multi city trip (I only had three legs, nothing too complicated), it lets you get all the way through including doing seat allocations, but when you go to pay you get this error:

Sorry, an error seems to have occurred, and this page cannot be displayed (15079, 23951, 420)

Thanks a fricking lot QANTAS.  I can't believe they're still so bad at this crap.  It's like they're actively trying to deter business and alienate customers.  Literally every time I have to deal with Qantas I have to go through the sheer agony of their booking systems (if it wasn't for their AMAZING flight crews I'd probably boycot them completely).  

I used Webjet to hunt around for alternatives.  But THANKS COVID.. NOT.. there's very limited options at the moment.  Etihad had no flights available at all for the legs I wanted, and Emirates for the same legs was going to cost three thousand dollars more.  Yikes.  Lufthansa would have been ok except they had some really crazy connections that totally blew out the travel times.  So I booked the flights through WebJet, which was going to cost $200 more.  And sure enough, their APIs had the same issues with Qantas.  I got this error:

Customer Service Advice
We have been unable to confirm your requested itinerary, but have retained a copy of your requirements under Webjet Booking Reference: <redacted>
We will now process your itinerary manually and confirm your booking within 48 hours.
If you are departing within the next 48 hours we will contact you today. Please do not attempt to make another booking on this site or another, as this may result in a duplicate. Please wait for us to contact you.
Thank you for your co-operation.
Customer Service Centre

So I left it.  At least someone at WebJet will have to deal with Qantas and not fricken ME!!   

The next day I got an email from WebJet that everything was sorted and the flights had been booked.  Hurray.

Tuesday.  Cleaning day and holiday research.  Did a basa bake for dinner which was lovely.

Wednesday.  Rinse and repeat of Tuesday.  I had a whole commentary in my head about how getting older makes you more *fearful*.  I really noticed this a while back riding Kit's horses (I literally had no fear about riding horses when I was younger but now they're so *big* and it's a long damned way down!) and let's not mention The Nerve Test.  So I was stressing about all the ways things could go wrong with our holiday.  Although in the grand scheme of things, mostly all we'd lose is money.  I really need to keep that perspective.  

I did an experiment with the brussels sprouts - would they crisp up better "right way up" or "upside down"?  Turns out, didn't really make a difference!

Thursday.  Lay awake until like midnight stressing over All The Things (mostly holiday stuff).  Then woke up at 1am by the storm for an hour or so.  Then woke up early too.  Sigh.  Zombie day.  Farewell for Alex at lunch.  Quiet drinks.  All The Water!!!

Friday.  Slept a lot better.  There was even a lovely sunny day after the wild weather all day yesterday.  I needed milk for breakfast so went over to Chris's to get some.  I didn't have enough for the eftpos minimum so thought I'd get a bottle of cab sav.  But he didn't have any singles out of the one I like so he was going to open a box but I said I'd buy the box.  It was on special too, so that was a bonus.  Except carrying it back home the box split and smashed all over the car park.  Lost two bottles of wine right there.  And then I was trying to clean up the mess and pricked myself with a shard of glass and started bleeding.  Sigh.  Another customer came up and I asked her to ask Chris for help.  So he came out and took away all the broken glass and gave me a bag for the other four bottles and the milk.  They say not to cry over spilt milk but you can cry over spilt wine, surely?  Another cleaning day. Chicken kiev for dinner.  Watched Kingsman: The Secret Service which was a bit of silly fun.  

Saturday.  Went food shopping first thing.  Then a bunch of house work.  Then dropped off my backup drive at work, bought some new fish tank lights for the 620T, and accidentally bought myself an early birthday present.

Got home and then it was time to do All The Cooking.  I made a low(ish) carb, vegetarian lasagna.

Slightly over done, whoops..

Had the hills over to enjoy it and Jess had a lot of fun playing Stu's instruments.  Wait, that sounds wrong.  ;)  Specifically, his cornettos.. cornetti?  After dinner Jess and I played a whole bunch of stuff together and she played all the harmonies around me trying to keep up with her awesomeness.  It was so much fun :)

Sunday.  Did a bunch of research on countries that we plan to visit on smartraveller.  Should all be fine.  Then a whole heap of fish tank stuff.  Also some camera side-by-side testing.  The new camera is much on par with my Canon and my iPhone for most things, but it does excel in extremelly low light.  Read: under the house with just vent holes for light.  It's not so great on closeups (but some of that may be me needing to get used to the settings) and it does struggle to focus.  The iPhone probably wins on difficult lighting (with pretty decent HDR), and the Canon wins on speed and focus (except in very low light).

It's almost completely dark under the house, so this shot is actually pretty impressive.

Then it was cooking All The Food.

Sunday.  17th.  Lamb roast and drinks with Kit.

Monday.  A fair bit of inbox tidying and decommission cleaning.  Got travel insurance for the cruise next year, but trying to get an ESTA was a pain in the poo poo hole.  When it came to putting through payment I clicked on the link and got a browser pop up saying it was going to leave the page.  Which I clearly didn't want to do.  So tried again and this time got a popup from the site saying I was going to leave the page.  So went "back" to see if there was something I missed but then it complained I already had an application in process.  So got to the end again and it was all "THE PAYMENT STATUS COULD NOT BE DETERMINED AT THIS TIME. PLEASE CHECK BACK LATER FOR THE PAYMENT STATUS."  and literally no way to pay.  Tried different browsers with no luck.  #grunt.  So that was a waste of a good chunk of the evening.  

Tuesday.  Slept ok.  Reloaded my ESTA application and it came straight up with the option to pay.  So just needed to wait for it to sort itself out.  Fighting with all the stoopid.  Had some mulled wine, and cooked sausages, cauliflower, bacon and these little kale sprouts I got off Tony which were fricken *amazing* - little crunchy leafy balls of goodness.  Also blogged last week.

Lunch: toasted cheese sandwich with pizza blend cheese to take it to next level

This photo cannot possibly capture how awesome those little sprouts of kale were!

Wednesday.  More dealing with all the stoopid, and frustration with people that don't respond to messages and/or disappear for hours at a time.  Also had to finally start using Outlook for the first time, ever.  And my welcome to it was a two hour delay in mails arriving because of "issues".  Seriously whoever thought that cloud would be a good idea for this crap??  Was watching stoopid crap on the internet in the evening and backing up my computer when I found out my desktop no longer existed (I have robocopy scripts that save the output to a folder on my desktop).  And I'm like WTF??  I had actually noticed the other day that everything on my desktop had little OneDrive icons.  Turns out Microsoft had taken upon itself to backup my desktop, documents and downloads directories to OneDrive.  EXCEPT IT HADN'T!!!  Half the files were actually missing.  I even looked online and they simply weren't there.  It had badly synced my files and chunks of them were missing.  So I turned off backup, at least for desktop, and will need to restore my files from last week's backup.  Fricken HATE.  Microsoft is doing an Apple and doing things of its own accord WITHOUT MY PERMISSION.  HATE HATE HATE.  Literally the second time this week my files have been screwed with by others (last time was on Friday when a rogue backup script deleted everything at work).  

Thursday.  Farewell for Casey who's moving to Melbourne, then Christmas in July drinks at work.  There were so many snackages I didn't need dinner, and in fact brought home all the leftovers that were going to be thrown out otherwise.  

Friday.  I dunno.  Mostly trying to get organised.  Declared POETS and we headed down the coast to see Kit and Pete.  The top of Clyde Mountain was pretty foggy, but it cleared up lower down.  I really wanted to get there by dark, but that didn't work out.  Oh well.  Had steak and salad for dinner and had a few drinks and chatted.  

Arthur, King of the Britons

Saturday.  I went to bed relatively early (altho an hour later than usual) but didn't get to sleep til like super super late (like after everyone else went to bed haha).  Had a bit of a sleepin though so wasn't tooo bad.  Watched Kit feed all the animals. 

Al and Kerry Paca

Kit and Pete hand-raised Lolly when she was abandoned.  She's very friendly and so damned cute!

Ricky the tiny horse

Then we had breakfast which was at nearly lunch time. 

I started a jigsaw and got a chunk done on it before we headed down to Bawley Point.  The river mouth was a bit too deep to cross, so we headed all the way down to Kioloa.  There was a fairly lethargic seal dozing on the rocks, which everyone thought was very unusual.  Walked all the way up the beach and back.  The seal was still there, but some others had already called some experts to get it checked out. 

Had a lamb roast for dinner, with one of Kit and Pete's sheep. 

Then we played a game of Squatter.  Which, like real life with sheep, is basically a case of what Bad Things will happen at every turn.  Kit won.  I think I was doing ok, but it was a bit hard to tell since it was all so random and Bad Things kept happening. 

Slightly earlier night.

Sunday.  Slept a lot better.  Bacon and eggs again for breakfast, then we watched Biscuit herding sheep which was pretty cool. 

Then headed home.  Unpacked and tidied up the house.  Did a bit more on the jigsaw.  Then put on dinner (roasted a bunch of veggies to have with leftover lamb) and did photos and blogging stuffs.  

Sunday.  10th.  Cooked a massive tray of brussels sprouts and bacon, cauliflower and broccoli bake, and reheated some brisket in jelly.  So good.  Hardly any leftovers!  Whoops!

Monday.  Slept ok.  Another proxy cleaning/documenting day.  Music after work, and made honey mustard chicken for dinner.  Worked on Victoria photos - flowers and resizing the iphone panorama set - all 258 of them!  Yipe!

Tuesday.  Slept ok I think.  More proxy stuff.  Music, brisket and veggies for dinner.  Victoria photo labelling - flowers and bugs.  Started watching The Silver Brumby.  A kids film, but beautifully filmed.  The cinematography is awesome.  The lead lady character was pretty cool, although that story arc is not in the books at all apparently.

Wednesday.  Slept ok, although had *two* dreams stressing about the trivia night - both dreams I turned up in the room where everyone had already turned up but we had nothing prepared.  The second dream I was telling everyone about the dream I'd literally just had.  Salmon and cabbage for dinner.  Labelled all the Victoria panorama photos.  Then finished The Silver Brumby.  So it was a bit silly in that they had a very well groomed palomino mare playing a "silver" brumby stallion.  And to be honest it was hard to feel any sympathy for the brumbys' story - they really don't belong there anyway.  I was hoping Russell Crowe's character would win .. or at the very least get his own horse back.  

Thursday.  Slept ok I think.  Another proxy day.  So for me it was pretty peaceful.  Stu on the other hand went to the dentist because he'd been in agony for a few days, and came home minus a tooth!!  Nice enough drinks.  Opened an ancient Midori Crush Neil threw out from a Christmas party a few years back.  It was fine :)

The travel insurance people also got back to me - they were happy to simply cancel the old policy and reissue it with the new PDS.  Hurray!

Friday.  Woke up at 01:50 when the sweetie got up in pain.  But then stayed awake til like 04:00.  Sigh.  Had a bit of a cleaning day - mostly cleaning out my inbox(es).  Also playing with proxy settings to prevent uploads of certain files.  Kit arrived late in the afternoon.  Had drinks and pasta/mince for dinner and a lovely catchup.

Saturday.  Kit went out to go shopping and catch up with Katie, so I did a heap of work on my Victoria photos.  And made a lemon cheesecake.  In the evening was Christmas in July at Herbert's.  I might put that in another post.  It was quite fun, if very loud.  

Sunday.  Slept like crap.  Apparently eating and drinking too much will do that to you, who knew.  Kit went out most of the day with her brother and his family.  Finished off Victoria photos, hurray!!  Did some music in the afternoon then All The Cooking.  

3.6.22

After seeing The Queen and Me exhibition we went into Palace Electric to see Top Gun: Maverick.

It was quite a last minute decision, so I never had time to go back and watch Top Gun beforehand.  Not that I really needed to.  I've seen it enough times to remember the gist of it.  And there's flashbacks as well to help.

Bottom line is, it's a remake.

But a great one!

The action is spectacular, using pretty much all real effects.

There's some great trivia on IMDB about how the actors basically had to be their own directors and camera operators because they were actually up in aircraft doing the stunts!

Amazing stuff.

And an F-14 Tomcat!! Wheee!!

So yeah, thoroughly enjoyed it.

Only gripes: I'm sure they never would have allowed someone who wears glasses to pilot a fighter jet.  And the only people that would get into a programme like Top Gun would be A-type personalities.  Anyone with lack of confidence would likely never have made it in.  And he never would have survived that high speed ejection...

Of course we then watched Top Gun again the next weekend :)

Sunday. 26th.  Backdating this on account being out the Sunday evening this was due.

Starting with the epic blue cheese potato bake I made.  I hated blue cheese for the longest time, but having it cooked adds such a wonderful savoury flavour.

Monday.  Went to bed nice and early, but then hurty kept me awake from 3-5 :(  Spent all day documenting proxy policies.  Leftover pork ribs and vegies for dinner.  Labelled 160 Victoria photos.  Then watched Martin Bashir's Diana interview, which in twenty five years I've never actually seen.  

Tuesday.  Took a while to get to sleep - feet were cold.  Didn't achieve anything much useful all day.  Too many problems and people talking to me.  Labelled another 100 or so photos.  Then watched "The Diana Interview: Revenge of a Princess 2021" which was a documentary about the interview mentioned previously.  

Wednesday.  Slept ok.  Did a bunch of test proxy cleaning.  Then dealing with more problems.  Leftovers from the club for dinner (which Stu was decidedly unimpressed with).  I might have had a sad.  Labelled another hundred photos.  Then watched Epstein's Shadow: Ghislaine Maxwell (part of it anyway, finished it later).  After seeing Filthy Rich I'm so glad they went after her too.

Thursday.  Took ages to get to sleep.  Had a good morning doing proxy stuff.  Optus had a Very Bad Day in the afternoon, cutting work off from the world.  I hadn't gone into the office on account of all the covid floating around, so had a couple of drinks with the sweetie in the evening, including my own little whisky tasting, on account of missing the work one.

We watched the first episode of Obi-wan Kenobi which wasn't bad.  Then I watched The Man from Snowy River.  Such a glorious Australian film.  Don't think I've seen it in years though.

Friday.  More proxy work.  Made "special fried rice" for dinner which was qute nice.  Then watched An Affair to Remember.  I've been wanting to see this movie for ages because of its references in Sleepless in Seattle.  I probably should have not wasted a couple of hours of my life on it.  It was pretty silly.  And dumb.  Like Ken is the sweetest guy ever, even standing by her and taking care of her even though she admitted an affair and wanted to leave him.  Why would you give up someone like that to run off with someone who's a playboy and has already proven his willingness to cheat and run off with someone else??  Stoopid.  But what was funny about it was they agreed to meet on July 1st.  Which just so happened to be the night we watched it.  Synchronicity!

Saturday.  Tried to tidy the pantry in the morning because we keep losing stuff in there.  Then did some food shopping at the markets and chemist.

Yikes!

Stu was sad the markets fish is in pieces (I think this thing was in the Sydney 2000 Olympics opening ceremony).  They might still be planning to put it back.

Then spent most of the rest of the day cooking.  hrmm.  Put on a brisket first, then made up a breakfast lasagna for the sweetie, and also cooked up a bunch of chicken.  And all the veggies.  

These things are so good - just cream cheese and fried bacon bits rolled in chives.  So simple but so tasty!  Had to hide them so the sweetie wouldn't eat them all ;)

Breakfast lasagna I made for the sweetie

Brisket and veggies for dinner.  I might have served myself way too much meat.  Whoops.

Watched A Clockwork Orange in the evening.  Strange strange movie.  Although not as disturbing as the book apparently.

Sunday.  A bit of fish stuff, but mostly Lego counting and scanning.  Scanning is being problematic now.  I'm getting through more rolls because I'm not scanning everything in them.  But it does mean it's more hands on which I don't have the time for during the day (when doing a whole roll you stick two sheets in at a time and come back half an hour later to swap them out.  But I don't really have time to sit and choose which ones to scan and swap them out more often).  The other problem is that the negatives from 1994 have started to go very blue.  Which means they scan bright yellow.  hrmmm.

Finally got to try out drinks at The Howling Moon, a lovely rooftop bar with great views at sunset.

Oh yes, there were noms - olives (unfortunately not pitted) and arancini balls

Tried for dinner at Bentspoke but it was *packed* - don't come the first night of school holidays!!

So ended up at Mr Shabu Shabu

Couldn't be stuffed blogging when I got home, and then the week kicks in and it's all too hard... 

3.6.22

A couple of months ago there was a thing on the Riot-ACT asking for submissions for people's memories/experiences of the Queen's visits to Australia.  I sent in a couple of photos I took of her on Lake Burley Griffin in 2011.

Anyway, I got an invitation for an afternoon tea at the National Capital Exhibition to celebrate the launch, so thought why not.

No idea who this is, does anyone know?

Roslyn Hull and Sally Barnes

Notice anything wrong with this photo?  Neither did we until we went to try and find it, and realised they'd printed the photo backwards!!  But the story gets even funnier.  That tree was stolen a couple of days later!!  They had to replace it.  The replacement tree was pulled down earlier this year.  Check out the story!

And here's my contribution (which we had to go back and find because we missed it the first time).

Thursday.  16th.  Fairly uneventful drive up to Sydney.  Stopped at Weemeeraa Lookout to see Lake George full of water.  Also at Sutton Forest for a loo break and some morning tea.

Got to Mum's just after 12:00.  Had some lunch (bubble and squeak), then setup her new printer (which didn't come with a USB cable, so had to use her old one), and had a bit of a look at our itinerary for Italy.

Later in the afternoon we took a train into Central.  OMFG I HATE people!  The train was full of noisy Caringbah high school kids not wearing masks (they all got off at Hurstville then it was quieter).  

Then took a tram up to Star City.  Again with people not wearing masks.  #grunt.  The tram took *forever*.  I swear it would have been quicker to walk from Town Hall.  We arrived pretty early, so found the restaurant then wandered down to the harbourfront.

I wanted to go to one of the bars and have a drink (to be more relaxed meeting a whole bunch of strangers) but nothing opened til 17:00.  Sigh.  So had to meet people sober which was pretty stressful.  Dinner was at Cucina Porto.  I had crumbed veal which was quite nice.

The lemon sgroppino was also very nice

It was nice to meet Kellie's family, although mostly ended up talking to her Mum's friend Annette.

So that was all nice enough, but we had to wait for Kim and Laila (Kim couldn't get off work til late) and by the time they'd ordered and then had to reorder (because their first pizza was undercooked) and then everyone (not me! ha) got dessert it was getting really damned close to 19:00 and I was getting epic stressed because theatres often don't let you in if you're even a minute late and I had visions of us missing a chunk of the show.  Everyone had to rush through their dessert so we could race across the way to the theatre and we sat down literally at 19:00.  I was not happy.  Just sayin.  But it all worked out in the end, and the show started a few minutes late anyway, and it was actually pretty awesome!  It was somewhat different to the Disney movie, but it seems it was probably more similar to the first couple of books.  They had a bit of a singalong of Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious which was a lot of fun, and I maintain that Mum was singing louder than me during the other bits ;)  (Mum wasn't *quite* surprised, on account of her friends guessed for her what the surprise might be)

After the show a bunch of the group wandered off to find a convenience store and I NEEDED to get home to sleep, so decided we should walk to Town Hall rather than waiting fifteen minutes for the next light rail.  They did all come back just as we were about to leave so did get to say goodbye.  

'

We walked right onto a Waterfall train at Town Hall, and definitely got home earlier than if we'd taken the light rail.  But bed time was nearly midnight.

Friday.  17th.  Slept ok but still woke up at 6:30.  Because that's what I do.  We decided we'd drive to go see my flat, because a few years ago the RETARDS at Transport NSW decided that you can't get a direct train to Kogarah anymore (NFI why) so it was going to take an hour by public transport or less than half an hour by car (even in peak hour traffic).  We ended up getting there pretty early so went for a walk around the block.  Then we waited for the real estate agent to turn up.  When she hadn't by 9:05 I called them and hassled them and then had to wait while they tracked her down.  Meanwhile the tenant is waiting for us so she could go into work.  Eventually (like twenty minutes late) the real estate agent turned up, spent most of the time on her phone, I think said "apologies" once, and we got to go in.  The tenant is quite lovely and the flat is fine.  But pissed that we were so late because of the agent. 

Took Mum home then hopped on a train into the city.  Found a sign that says that masks are in fact still required on public transport, but Transport NSW is doing NOTHING to enforce it.  The train trip was horrendous - again people not wearing masks, and some guy making an absolute racket on his phone.  I hate people SO MUCH!!!!

Met up with Tony at Central.  

Had a light lunch at the Great Southern Hotel

Took a tram from Central to Circular Quay.  Had my mind BLOWN that all of George Street is now trams-only and no cars!!  Such a bizarre thing to see!!  (and I didn't even get any photos!)

We got to Circular Quay thinking we might go to Cockatoo Island, but OMFG Transport NSW information is ABYSMAL.  Other than an electronic "which wharf?" sign there was no details whatsover at the wharf about timing of ferries to Cockatoo Island. 

Transport NSW information is so bad, they literally have laminated A4 printouts telling you to go find a human to talk to

So (after waiting to see if the next Manly Ferry that came in was a Freshwater class ferry (they're retiring them but I thought a couple might still be running)) we abandoned that idea and headed for the Harbour Bridge Pylon. 

Anti-vehical barricades - looks nasty if you try to drive over them!

Chips on a Stick truck!!  I wanted to get one of these, but they weren't open in the afternoon and later I was way too exhausted and wanted to go home.

So on the way to the pylon we looked up their website and they close at 14:00.  WTF??  It was about 13:20 at that point and wouldn't be worth the $19 to get just a quick view and no time in the museum so abandoned that idea and went back to Circular Quay.  

Talked to a human at Circular Quay and got a bit of info and caught a ferry to Cockatoo Island (which I'll save for another post).  

Got back to Circular Quay and took a train to Central.  Had some drinks at the Covent Garden Hotel, then met up with Mum at Super Bowl for Peking Duck!  I haven't been there since the last time I was there with @StuartCRyan at the end of 2014, but nothing had changed and the Peking Duck was amazing (and Mum enjoyed it too - she'd never had it before!! *gasp*).

After dinner we did Vivid, which I'll save for another post.  Another night of getting to bed after midnight.   *sigh*.

Saturday.  18th.  Slept ok but still woke up 6:30.  Because that's what I do.  Picked up Tony at Sutherland and headed out to Ansto.  I'll save that for another post too.

Got lunch at Maccas drive through at Menai, then came home, via a quick stop at Sublime Point and Lake George.

I think this is the fire at Bluescope Steel

LAKE George!

It was *so awesome* to get home to the sweetie, we sooo just want a quiet life.  Chicken Kiev for dinner and then a super early night.

So this past weekend was ABC's Classic 100: Music for the Screen.  I missed a chunk of it on Saturday morning because I was at work, but listened to the rest of it.  Fortunately I didn't miss too much Saturday morning.

Of note: Hans Zimmer definitely had more entries.

But.

John Williams well and truly got the top scores.  He had FIVE in the top eleven!!  Amazing!!

He had Jaws at 57, Superman at 55, ET at 42, Indiana Jones at 11, Jurassic Park at 8, Schindler's List at 5, Harry Potter at 4, and Star Wars came in at number 1.  The Mission dropped down to third this year, and Lord of the Rings was second.

Titanic was 45.  I actually thought I'd voted for this, but apparently I hadn't - whoops!!  I'm glad other people did!  Love Actually was 53.  I didn't even think to vote for this, but was so excited when it came up.  Babe was 24.  I love the music from Babe, but the main thing I like is actually written by Saint Saens, not Nigel Westlake, so I didn't count it.  It feels like cheating :)  Zorba the Greek, another piece I like, was 20.  I didn't think to vote for Shakespeare in Love, but sadly that didn't make it.

These were my votes.  Eight of them came up!  Proving that I like popular music haha.  I strategically *didn't* vote for Star Wars (I had to drop *some* John Williams to get a few other things in!!) knowing that other people would.

Harry Potter (John Williams) #4
Jurassic Park (John Williams) #8
Jaws (John Williams) #57
Indiana Jones (John Williams) #11
Superman (John Williams) #55
Star Trek (Jerry Goldsmith) didn't place
Gladiator (Hans Zimmer/Lisa Gerrard) #19
The Man from Snowy River (Bruce Rowland) #33
The Princess Bride (Mark Knopfler) #59
The Hunt for Red October (Basil Poledouris) didn't place

Back in April the little brother came up and we went to the Canberra Airport Open Day.  We debated waiting at Brindabella Park for the more "interesting" planes to land, but decided against it and waited at Majura Park.  None of the advertised planes (except the 737) were there, so we thought we'd see *something* land.  But after waiting and waiting nothing arrived, so we went and joined the (by then very long) queue to get in. 

As it turned out, most of the advertised aircraft didn't bother to turn up.  No Connie, no Hudson (it did a fly-by later but never landed), no Grumman Tracker, no DC-3, no Caribou, no Orion.  It was pretty disappointing.

There were only two planes you could get onto - the Qantas 737, and a FlyPelican British Aerospace Jetstream 3212EP.  We decided to go on the 737 first up.  But because we'd waited so long for something to land, we were late getting in, which meant we had to queue for an hour to get on the 737.  Then we wandered around a bit and got a quick lunch (just a sausage sandwich) and queued to get on the FlyPelican Jetstream 32.  And there we sat.  For THREE F#$%ING HOURS.  There's only one door on that little plane, so no flow through.  So one group would go in at a time and stay for however long they felt like (the staff weren't moving people along at all).  So some would stay for a few minutes.  But one group we saw spent like fifteen minutes in there.  I was fuming.  But we stayed because there was literally nothing else to do.  The only other planes there to see were a few little general aviation planes and a couple of helicopters.  We saw those right at the very end of the day after we finally got off the Jetstream.  We saw all the air shows while queuing.  All in all a pretty frustrating day.

Qantas Boeing 737-800 VH-VXQ - Retro Roo II Livery

FlyPelican Bae Jetstream 32 VH-OTE

Paul Bennet and Glenn Graham Aerobatics

Air Force Roulettes

Lockheed Hudson Mk III

Link Airways Saab 340B+ VH-VEC

Helicopters

Robinson R44 Raven II VH-ROG

Robinson R44 Raven II VH-YTM

Eurocopter EC-120B Colibri VH-VCC

Bell 206L4 VH-HEH

Light Aircraft

The Runway

What was cool about the day was getting to wander up and down runway 12.

Other Stuff

A human butterfly entertaining the crowds

Border Force dog

Me sitting on the runway while waiting to get onto the FlyPelican plane

Another entertainer

Monday.  18th.  (Not backdating).  Yay for catchup days.  Pretty good sleep.  Went into battle with my computer trying to get the scanner and GPS to work.  Neither do in windows 11.  The GPS won't work in windows 11 because it complains the driver is no good.  Transystem hasn't put out any new software/drivers in years which is pretty upsetting.  So had to get the dam trip GPS off on my laptop.  Now dreading what will happen if something happens to the laptop and I have to replace it.  I'll have to find an alternative to my little PhotoMate 887 which is one of the best inventions in history.  Was also fighting with the scanner which fricken USED TO WORK in windoze 11, but just stopped one day.  I've yet to reconnect it up to my old computer to test it.  Hate Microsoft.  Hate hate hate.  Did some weeding, and a magpie came right up to where I was working to see if I'd disturbed any bug noms for it.  Very cool.  Potted some geranium cuttings.  In the afternoon we tidied up the shelves in our bedroom cupboard that had been getting messier and messier.  Did a water change in the upstairs two foot for the first time in forever (there's always babies in that tank I'm worried about sucking up).  Then got frustrated yet again with Apple because it dropped out while downloading my photos and refused to show up in windows afterwards.  Was thinking I was going to have to reboot my computer.  It certainlly meant I couldn't blog the previous week.  Hate Apple.  Hate hate hate.  Then cooked all the food.  I prepped a chicken marbella from Not Quite Nigella, cooked some mince/bacon/onion/garlic, and we had salmon and cabbage for Monday night's dinner.  Then we watched the first episode of The Crown which was pretty good.  Got pretty stressed out about having to go back to work.  Even four day weekends are just not enough time to get everything *done*.  Eventually managed to reconnect to the phone and was able to download photos, but bed time so no blogging.

Was digging under the old pool and found all this steel reinforcing.  Maybe to stop slippage of the pool???

Tuesday.  Slept ok until hurty kept me awake half the night.  Ok day trying to catch up on stuff.  Then demoing stuff to peeps and trying to deal with all the stoopid.  It was a wine and candle kind of a night.  Also made the chicken marbella which was nice enough but a little watery.  

Wednesday.  Woke up for a while a couple of times.  Was sick of the stoopid by 8:40.  Fairly busy day prepping a firewall migration and prepping rules for a big project.  Did some music, then did a red curry with mushrooms, asian greens and leftover sausages.  Did some work on Eurasia panoramas but still no blogging.  

Thursday.  Another busy day, and a tonne of interruptions and meetings.  Did a firewall migration after lunch which took all of ten minutes (including testing) and was one of the most anticlimactic changes I've ever done.  Pretty quiet drinks.  Tried McCains frozen pizzas which weren't really any better than Spar.  Need to stick with Dominos or Dr Oetker (Doc Oc/Dr Octopus).

Friday.  Finished prepping a big ruleset, and even managed to deploy them the same afternoon which was good.  Had a craving for mac and cheese for lunch.  Lazy Su pickup for dinner and watched third episode of Gunther's Anatomy.

Saturday.  Basically got ready then Damien came over.  We chatted for ages, had frozen spring rolls and chips for lunch, then played Jaws in the afternoon.  After playing for a little while we put the movie on in the background (because I don't seem to have the soundtrack).  Stu has never actually seen it?!?!  Will have to watch it properly with him some time.  Damien and I played Brody/Hooper/Quint, and Stu played Jaws.  Stu got a really good start, pretty much totally evading us and getting lots of points for act 2.  But somehow we managed to survive and Quint finished him off with the machete.  Just as the movie was finished, amazing timing.  As soon as Damien left we both collapsed in a heap - seven hours of socialising is super super draining, who knew.  Had sausages and cabbage for dinner, then Simpsons, Black Books and second episode of The Crown.

I actually spent cash that day too - to get the shiny on the right here.  And in the same change got all four head designs of the Queen.

Sunday.  Went and climbed Mt Rogers, did some music practise, did some cleaning, and filled the green bin.  And suddenly the morning was gone.  Went to the markets after lunch to get some fresh veggies, came home and cooked some Anzac biscuits and prepped dinner.  And suddenly the afternoon was gone.  Sigh.  Jenn came over for dinner (a cheese and spinach burek we found at the markets) and then we played Carcassonne which I won.  Was going to have an early night, but then Stu tried to print something.  It did a whole lot quite happily, then went back to jamming in the same place at every damned page.  So got super cranky about the whole thing.

I nearly rage quit at one point because the pantry is so full of crap I can't get at anything without everything all falling over

Unfortunately these were a bit dry

Burek and veggies dinner

Monday.  Got a reminder to go look at planets.  Because I was awake, I did.  It was actually worth getting up for, with the moon, Saturn, Mars, Venus and Jupiter very obvious (although not so much in the resized photo).  I'll take peoples' word for it for Neptune and Pluto.

Then it was all morning trying to catch up on photos and blogging.  Yet again, even with a long weekend I'm struggling to keep up with life.  Stop the world I want to get off.