Monday.  29th.  Slept okish I think.  Got the first of the day's boxes of Dad's slides fixed pretty quickly, so tried for a second, but that took a lot longer, which pushed out my getting ready for work, and I still needed to patch and reboot the computer.  So I was a bit late starting for the day.  Hardly any tickets so did paperwork for another round of cleaning.  Went for a walk at lunch and saw all my birds, including the old one who is happy to eat out of my hand.  Hacked some periwinkle in the evening.  Had leftover enchiladas from the weekend for dinner - so good!  Labelled three hundred photos.  Although hard to label places like Masada if you want to try and label things accurately.  Finished watching Becoming.

Tuesday.  Messaged David about the air show, so he came up.  Pizza for dinner but no labelling.

Wednesday.  Went to the RAAF 100th Anniversary air show in the morning which was pretty awesome.  Later in the afternoon I had that feeling where your immune system is having a good serious crack at fighting something.  Did a mini food shop, backed up my computer, but not much else and no photo labelling.

Thursday.  Not really sure if I was sick.  Decided to stay home, and if I did start feeling sick or tired I could go rest.  But I actually felt fine all day, so I guess I must have fought it off.  Had Dr Octopus pizzas, then Simpsons (into season 9), Laid Back Camp, then watched The Lake House.  Plot holes you could drive trucks through and various inconsistencies of course, but a bit of fun.  And fun to see some of the things I picked up on in the IMDB goofs page as well.  

That'll do for tonight.

Before I start, this is the lemon cheese cake I made last weekend.  Similar to the previous one, except using light evaporated milk instead of cream, and made in a much bigger container to thin the base out a bit.  I also tried to melt some cooking chocolate (not baking bits), but it just wouldn't melt.  I then had flash back memories to have a similar problem with cooking chocolate when I was living in Sydney.  Note to self: never buy that again (I don't think I even bought it, I can't remember where it came from).

Monday.  22nd.  Got two boxes of Dad's slides fixed up before work (had some extra time, and not as many needed fixing up).  Being at home is sooo much better for my mental health, especially in the evenings.  I feel so much more relaxed and can get so much more done.  Even though it's only an hour and a half or so extra it makes such a difference.  Watched last night's Amazing Race.  The top three teams all really annoy me.  The girls are full of themselves and take every opportunity to tell everyone how awesome they are.  The sikhs I liked to begin with but they're just as mean to people they don't like as anyone else, and while they claim to have helping people ingrained in their culture, they really only help people they like.  The cowboys are ok, but were still out to get Chris and Aleisha.  No idea why those two are so unpopular with everyone.  Did get 346 photos labelled today, although 63 of them before work.  It'll certainly take the pressure off the rest of the week.

Tuesday.  All the stoopid.  Had dinner out with the sweetie which was nice.  Dumpling Inn was closed (have they even reopened since Covid?) so we went to Pizza Artigiana. 

Quattro Formaggi - SANDRA $22 - mozzarella, provolone, gorgonzola and shaved pecorino.  Yum yum.

Diavola - RINO $22 - tomato, ricotta, Nduja hot salami, and marinated red peppers.  Ok, spicy but not insane, just a bit meh.

Then we did our food shopping.  Watched last night's Amazing Race and was sad to see Chris and Aleisha go.

Wednesday.  Blerf day.  Had a stoopid meeting in the afternoon where they put me on the spot *on the phone* arggh.  But then Skype had a spack which saved me so I could troubleshoot offline.  Seriously DO NOT ask me to troubleshoot something over the phone, especially in a whole group situation.  Hate hate hate.  But we did managed to shut down a good chunk of the old network which was pretty awesome.  Didn't do a whole heap of work past four pm, chatting to peoples about all the things.  Super late home.  Salmon and salad for dinner which was very nice.  I stepped on one of those little bastard millipedes though while I was cooking and it popped and left a smudge on the floor.  So gross.  Labelled photos while watching Amazing Race.  Eyes felt very tired.

Thursday.  Despite being tired it took forever to get to sleep.  Sigh.  Good drinks, lots of peeps came.  Had Kingsley's for dinner (since we'd already had pizza this week), Simpsons, Laid Back Camp, Encore.  

Friday.  Awake in the middle of the night for hours.  Sigh.  So even more of a zombie than yesterday.  Which was a pity because I was having a random day off.  So I couldn't concentrate on anything that required brainpower.  But still, I had a super productive day getting things done around the house. 

This jungle has to go.  Ten minutes at a time.

Another last chance summer flower seen on my walk

Our next door neighbour when I was growing up had one of these bushes.  So many little red berries!!

Watched more X Files in the evening, and started watching Becoming.  

Saturday.  Slept well!  Hurrah!  Except I spent the entire morning finding where photos on our Dubbo trip in 1981 were taken.  Some were easy, but others super tricky.  Like exactly whereabouts is the old platform at Newnes?  And did we drive along the new railway line being constructed between Sandy Hollow and Gulgong?  (since some of the places look a little tricky to get to by car).  After lunch we headed out to the club.  I wanted to do some painting, but Stu wanted a sleep, so no painting for me. 

I don't know which way up this flower goes...

Instead I worked on a tapestry by the fire. 

Matt and Michelle put on an awesome Mexican feast, we all had a lovely evening.

Sunday.  Today.  Slept okish, then we came home.  Spent entirely too much time trying to sort out Dad's slides (for anything that doesn't have a date on it - when were they taken?  What else was on that roll?  hrmm).  Michelle (a different one) came over for a while, and then we all went for a walk, but the magpies weren't around. 

Had slow cooked beef stroganoff for dinner with a packet mix from before 2000, was actually quite nice. 

Blogged while watching the Amazing Race finale (both took nearly two hours all up).  Just finished blogging as the race finished.  Pretty happy with the outcome actually.

No movies so no movie quotes.. 

Not backdating ;)  Watching Encore and blogging.

Monday.  15th.  Started back at the beginning with Dad's slides, starting to rescan all the ones that had lots of fluff on them from the scanner.  Probably redoing about a third of them per box.  Had a disjointed/distracted morning at work, not much better in the afternoon, but then lots of complicated and time consuming stuff came in late in the afternoon, hrmm.  Finished off the beef brisket we cooked the other week, and did some weeding.  Also managed to label four hundred photos!! (some in the morning, some before dinner, the rest after, including some during last night's Amazing Race).  Didn't blog though, had to backdate that ;)  Had to LOL at YouTube putting up ads for mens anti-chaffing underwear.. clearly Google thinks I'm a guy..

Also, these little buggers are everywhere at the moment, epic grunt

Tuesday.  Slept in a bit, whoops.  I just don't have enough time to do all the things in the morning.  Didn't finish scanning the box of slides for the day.  Another disjointed day, also it was very loud on account of being in the office.  Home late, but did manage to fill the green bin and clean the kitchen.  But then had to try and finish scanning slides (eventually did), label photos (didn't really get done, good thing I did so many last night), and watch last night's Amazing Race.  Need All The Time.  Really.  Had to LOL when a tv ad called out Hey Siri, and my phone answered!

Also, just on our way to work and there's a hot air balloon above our heads

Wednesday.  Couldn't get to sleep last night til well past midnight.  Then broken sleep til 2am.  Sigh.  Ok day I think.  Rinse and repeat of morning and evenings, nearly 8pm by the time I got to sit down at the computer.  Did get some photos labelled though and watched last night's Amazing Race.

Thursday.  Ok day I think?  Drinks and pizza, Simpsons/Laid Back Camp/X Files as per usual Thursday night TV.  

At drinks some guys brought some games along.  One was Tsuro which I played two games of.  I drew on the first game I played, and got booted off in the second.  Fun game.

This is why I'm fat, so much garlicy oily goodness!

Friday.  Hurrah for being at home.  Although did have to be on the phone half the day, blerf.  Leftovers of chicken and rice for dinner, some TV and Cool Runnings which I've never actually seen before, and an episode of Encore.

Saturday.  Got the housework done pretty early, then started work on processing Dad's slides.  I figured out how to add the shutter speed, aperture and focal length data of all Dad's slides into the files with excel to generate cli stuff to use exiftool to add it all.  Worked with all the processing of the photos, and got all the exif data added to all the files I'd rescanned in the past week.  Had cajun potato wedges for dinner, and then watched Seven Years in Tibet (which we'd never seen before) with the sweetie.

Should be fine right?

Sunday.  Another day of powering through getting the processing of Dad's slides up to date.  Ok so I didn't do much else all weekend, but I'm in a pretty good position to keep up with Dad's slides as I rescan them over the next couple of months, and then I'll be all done.  At least with his slides ;)  I might have also spent a bunch of time geotagging his photos from his holiday to Narooma in 1960.  And made a lemon cheesecake.  And planted some lemon seeds (that were sprouting inside the lemons).  And blogged.  And had some chicken from Robert's feast I defrosted and reheated.  And watched some more Simpsons, Laid Back Camp and Encore.  And blogged some more.  

Took these last weekend.  Biggest fattest siamensis I've ever seen..

And these Congo tetras school and can actually be quite colourful.

Don't mind all that algae, it's cause Stu has really good lights but runs them for far too long ;)

Backdating cause I'm a big fat slacker ;)

So Monday. 8th.  Got home from the coast and tried to catch up on the weekend.  Managed to get all the videos off my phone first go which was a miracle.  Did a bunch of photo processing and blogging.  Watched last night's Amazing Race and was pretty happy to see Holly and Dolor go.  Dolor just rubbed me the wrong way, claiming to be smart and fearless but really just coming across as dumb, and squealing like a girl at every opportunity.  

Tuesday.  Ok day I guess, busy with all the stoopid.  Late home so dinner and tv and it's 7pm and I haven't cleaned the kitchen, labelled photos or blogged.  Hardly enough time to get all that done in an hour so I could watch the Amazing Race.  Sigh.  So cleaned the kitchen, sat for a moment, and suddenly it's 19:30.  Continued to get upset at all the neighbourhood barking dogs.  It's just never quiet.  So did my labelling for the evening, realised we forgot to do any weeding, and there was no Amazing Race from last night anyway, so started watching the Harry and Meghan interview.  

Wednesday.  Rinse and repeat of yesterday really.  Feeling fat and ugly.  Was 7:30pm by the time I could finally sit down, although at least we'd done some weeding and I'd backed up my computer by that time.  And I did manage to label 171 photos and watch Amazing Race and wash my hair.

Oh, this was a before and after of three nights of doing some weeding:

Thursday.  Our vacation student takes off Thursdays now, so I have to my own job again ;)  At drinks there was an exec event, so I actually had all six of my bosses all the way to the top there!  Although Ray had to leave early, which was a shame because otherwise I probably would have tried to line them all up for a photo ;)  Finished Hibike season 2, and the Harry and Meghan interview.

Friday.  Stu didn't sleep pretty much at all all night, and I didn't sleep well either, so he didn't go to work, trying to catch up on some sleep.  Had leftovers for dinner - we finally finished off the last of the unfrozen Chinese banquet of Robert's.  Started watching season two of Laid Back Camp, and I also watched The Untouchables, which I'd seen a long time ago but wanted to watch again.

These were some flowers I saw while out for my walk on Friday:

I also opened all the Stikeez that Kaibrya sent me.  She collected them all last year just before Covid, but then I wasn't in the office forever.  So she sent them down with Vicki :)  Sadly I didn't get any of the missing specials, but I did get almost an entire new set that I could probably sell off and then buy the specials..

Saturday.  All. The. Things.  Found out our NAS had died some time after Wednesday night.  Probably *something* happened on Thursday, as our Fing box also went offline for a bit.  Although my computer was fine.  We think it's a dead power supply as it just won't turn on.  And it smells like someone let the smoke out (electrical devices don't work unless the smoke is inside).  I have all of my stuff on the NAS backed up but Stu isn't so good at organising his files, so we'll try and get a new power supply and hope that fixes it.  Watched Alita: Battle Angel in the evening, which wasn't too bad.  Except her eyes were just too disturbingly big.

Sunday.  Had a good long play with galleryifying my USA 2000 photos.  Got a couple of days all htmlified with it.  Still need to work on the general design a bit.  Did a bit of paint by numbers as well but that was about it for the day.  I think we might have started watching The X Files either tonight or around here somewhere.  Eleven seasons though - yikes!

Sunday was roast dinner - roast chicken with a very nice shiraz we shared some of.

Or night one really.  We packed up after work last Friday night and headed for the coast.  Being the Canberra Day long weekend, I was dreading a car park on the Clyde, but actually traffic flowed quite well the whole way down.  

The sunset was quite pretty, even in the rear view mirror.

I think I heard they're going to chop down these poplars outside of Braidwood?  So got some photos of them.

It was nearly dark by the time we hit Clyde Mountain, so we couldn't really see the bushfire damage, but we could make out ghostly silhouettes.

We finally arrived at Kit and Pete's.  They have a new fireplace so Pete had it running.

Pete and Jasper

Frankie the fully grown tiny cat

Arthur and the fire

Had a couple of drinks, but didn't wait up for C&T, we just went to bed.

Monday.  First of March.  Got in a bit early to deal with the outage on the weekend.  But Sharpie already had because he's awesome.  Got started on working on change paperwork for the cleaning I wanted to do during the week.  Evening the usual of photo labelling, all the houseworks, photo processing for last week's blogging, Amazing Race and blogging.  We also fitted in some weeding.  Even ten minutes a day I think would and up making a serious dent in the weeds if we're just consistent with it.  

Tuesday.  Took ages to get to sleep, then woke up at 5am needing to pee.  Was just getting into bed when the sweetie reached over, but I didn't hear him coming because I was still rustling the sheets, and so I freaked out slightly when he touched me.  Doh.  So don't think I got much more sleep.  Had an ok day of all the cleaning.  Did a bit more weeding in the evening.  Into season eight of The Simpsons.  But by the time everything was done it as 19:44.  Sigh.  So no photo labelling, just Amazing Race.  Although I did do a bit of labelling during the ads.

Wednesday.  Ok day I think.  Work, home, cooking, dinner, 7pm.  And still haven't done any weeding yet or any photo labelling, which I'm not behind in.  hrmm.  Got a bit caught up on photo labelling while watching Amazing Race.  But still no blogging.

Thursday.  Ok day I think.  Ulach turned up for drinks which was nice.  Watched more Hibike.  Second season is pretty much a teenage girl soap opera.  Too complicated, nowhere near as good as the first season.  Watched Encore - Fiddler on the Roof.

Friday.  A few weeks or so ago, Apple changed the behaviour of closing apps.  Instead of seeing the screen swipe up and shrink down into the icon that had it open, it started closing super quickly, so you couldn't really tell which app you'd just closed.  I have three Flow apps I play every morning, and this was a pain because I'd be like, which app did I just close.  And more than once I'd go back in just to make sure I'd done that one for the day.  Anyways, last week Apple changed the behaviour back again, which is now much more betterer.  More cleaning in the afternoon, and hopefully I didn't break anything this time.  hrmm.

All the pictures for this week are in other entries.  

These are the couple of days I was going to blog last week but it got too late then it was all too hard.

Saturday.  27th.  In the morning did a cutover of prod firewalls, and everything seemed to go well.  Made a rocky road.  Not much else though.  Headed out to the club in the afternoon for Robert's epic Chinese New Year feast.  Just did a bit of paint by numbers because there were already plenty of people in the kitchen.  Sharpie messaged at one point - apparently I'd broken something I hadn't even thought to test because there shouldn't have been a need.  Whoops.  Took them *all day* to get onto us though, and then it was fixed in minutes.  

Robert's feast was spectacular as always.  A restaurant quality banquet.  I've only included photos of *some* of the dishes!

But.  As always, this guy over caters to the extreme.  He could have easily fed at least double the people that were there.  Which meant for an insane quantity of leftovers.  Which I packaged up as much as I could and *begged* people to take some home.  I took an esky full of food.  I couldn't even look in the fridge in the morning to see what was left, I knew I'd be too upset if there was a lot. 

I did actually manage to sleep ok though.  But I was pretty grumpy and didn't get much done on Sunday (other than a bit of playing (and fighting) with galleries). 

I'm trying to think of there's a word for "hates seeing anything wasted".  Specifically in relation to "core values".  I couldn't really think of a word for it.  If I had to pick my top core values, this would be one of them.  Unwasteful ??

I cooked up a brisket in the slow cooker for dinner.

And said hi to the bird at the window

And finished watching The Poseidon Adventure.

Monday.  Took ages to get to sleep.  Then woke up at 5am needing to pee.  Hurrah.  So tired and cranky.  Had a super crazy busy afternoon.  But did get over two hundred photos labelled and the kitchen cleaned by 20:20 so watched last night's Amazing Race.  

Tuesday.  Another super crazy busy day.  Managed to get photos labelled before dinner (of leftover pork).  Spent a fair while looking at gallery applications, but in the end decided I think I'll stick with Simple Photo Gallery.  It'll take a little bit of fiddling, but then any of them would.  But it behaves the way I want for the most part.  Then watched last night's Amazing Race.  

Wednesday.  Managed to catch up at work on some things that had dropped off from being so busy for the past two days.  At lunch the sweetie and I had our "last" lunch together.  So we went and tried out KorBQ.  

We didn't have bbq on the table, so didn't get to use the funky exhaust pipes.

Stu choose a very meaty lunch but it was pretty good.

Chicken skin crackling.  Basically deep fried chicken skin.  Pretty epic.

Crunchy octopus.  A little tough but still good.

Korean cheesy chicken - yumm

Again I managed to label my photos before dinner.  Of salad.  Because we needed it after all that meat at lunch.  Continued playing with my galleries.  Then Amazing Race.  My least two favourite teams came first and second.  Hrmm.

Thursday.  Usual Thursday.  With garlic scrolls with epic pools of oil!

Friday.  Had an ok day until I had to deal with the MESS someone had made on my firewalls and then got super cranky which is never a fun way to end a Friday afternoon.  Had a look at Star.  A tonne of new content.  I have literally a lifetime of TV I could watch .. hrmm.  Continued with Hibike season 2.  This season is a lot more soap opera than the first season.  Then watched most of the original The Poseidon Adventure.  Which was partly filmed on the Queen Mary at Long Beach.  I've seen that ship (in 1983) but haven't been on her.  One day.  The original is a whole lot better than the remake I watched recently.  Still fairly implausible, but not nearly as bad as the remake.  Had a very young Leslie Neilson in it, and music by John Williams!  (which I only found out at the end heh).  And just about the whole group, maybe actually everyone, had blue eyes!

I'm going to stop here because it's bed time, will continue the weekend in blogging tomorrow.

Tuesday.  Spent the morning writing up rules for new prod firewall, and put in a change.  Had lunch with the sweetie at Ramen O.  We walked straight in with no queue!  This time I tried the Yuzu Tonkotsu which was very nice as well.  Be nice if they had a smaller/cheaper option for lunches..

The afternoon was non-stop distractions and interruptions so couldn't do up the rules I'd written up.  Had refried pork and cabbage for dinner.  Got my quota of photos labelled and watched Amazing Race.

Wednesday.  Couldn't get to sleep til after midnight for no good reason.  Got into work early to try and get some work done before interruptions.  Only got half way through.  Sigh.  Ok day otherwise.  At lunch had lunch with the sweetie again.  This time I finally tried out Koku Super Kare and had the wagyu "don".  At $15.90 it'd be awesome value for dinner, but too big and expensive for a food court lunch.  Another place that would benefit from a smaller/cheaper lunch option.  

But where's the chopsticks?? Who would use fork and spoon for this?

Was just getting ready to go home when had to help fix a problem that one of the guys had accidentally caused just before going home.  So was very late getting home.  But that was ok because of the big lunch.  Labelled all of Mum's day five photos (only 103 of them) before dinner (of leftover pork and veggies), and finished the last of the lemon cheesecake.  Backed up my computer and finished labelling day five.  Then cleaned the kitchen and watched some Amazing Race.

Thursday.  Got irrationally cranky at ABC news technicians who can't control volume (it's all over the place with loud (or soft) pieces next the main anchor), not the mention the sports reporter that sounds like he's spitting into his microphone whenever he talks.  Did a whole heap of cleaning work in the afternoon that I've been wanting to do in forever.  Simpsons/Hibike/Amazing Race (the "hanging" challenge was just like Survivor!).  

Friday.  All the stoopid.  I don't even remember what.

Saturday.  Just a day of doing All The Things.  In the afternoon the doorbell rang.  I was half expecting a delivery of some sort (we do sometimes get deliveries on a weekend, including on a Sunday once recently).  But it was David!  He was up to run errands in the Big Smoke and have dinner with some friends.  Cooked @notquitenigella's Asian Style Beef Cheeks for dinner and watched The Dig, about the discovery and excavation of the Sutton Hoo treasure in 1939.  I quite enjoyed it.  

Sunday.  Was hot and uncomfortable and awake for quite a while in the middle of the night.  Hurrah.  Pretty quiet day.  Didn't get a whole lot done.  Not sure I was depressed because I wasn't getting anything done, or wasn't getting anything done because I was depressed.  Shrug.  I did pull apart Neil's ISS though to take back to him while I waited for a storm to hit us, that basically just went around us. 

I was hearing thunder rumbling and wondering what the..

Had to look around about to see the incoming storm

One of the pieces I had to pull apart was a new piece I haven't used before.  And it sucked donkey balls to try and get apart.  Had to make up a rig of other pieces to push it out.

Cooked up a bunch of roast veggies to have with some leftover pork for dinner, then watched some Amazing Race.