19.11.22.  It took me that long to get around to choosing some photos.  Whoops.

Everything is Awesome!

Especially when you pay the big bucks for VIP night, get all the drinks/nibbles you like and NO F*$&ING KIDS!!!  How good is this!!

There were some pretty spectacular dioramas

And models of buildings

All sorts of fun bits and pieces

This Christmas Dinner was made by Fleur (Legomasters)

Space Lego!!!

I loved these "Monochrome Habitats", although wonder if you really can get plain minifigs in all those colours.

Serkan and Chris and their epic Viking model

This Hogswarts Castle was spectacular

And Hogsmeade station

Neil and a Delorean

And this guy had every Lego Architecture set there is

Definitely worth paying for the VIP entry.

Day 2.  12 March.  Take 2.  I mean hey, I was awake early anyway, thanks jetlag.

It was actually quite windy and I was surprised the balloons went up at all.  And it was cloudy which meant for dull photos.  Especially with not much in the way of reflections due to the wind.

The sun did come out for a few minutes here and there so did end up getting some nicer photos.

Monday.  27th.  Backdating because ran out of time last weekend after blogging the previous two weeks.  Belly still hurting.  Managed to get an appointment with the doctor at 14:00.  APNIC training online for most of the day.  Doctor was like, eh, not sure, probably diverticulitis.  Don't have any fibre for a few days.  WTF.  I can't do that.  Especially since we just brought home a fridge full of salad stuff from the club.  

Tuesday.  APNIC training led training for the middle of the day.  It was a bit of a disaster really.  I struggled to keep up with the learning part, and the labs were a disaster, because they wanted forty people in two groups to configure twenty routers per group to all talk to each other with not very clear instructions.  The online learning and labs were much better structured.  Oh well.  John parked on our side again.  All fricken day.  Vodien got back to me about the perl/mysql issue.  They looked at it in https and said the problems I was having was because of mixed content (Movable Type hard codes my image urls as http://kazza.id.au/whatever and it's too hard to change it).  And I'm like, NO, it's a http site and you're not listening to me.  Sigh.  Stu reckons I should change blogging platforms, but my blog is such a behemoth nothing would be easy.  In other news I found if I sit close enough to my monitor I can see it better with my reading glasses.  And my main glasses are losing their coating and look all scratched up, so it's like trying to look through a dirty scratched window.  Sigh.  Had yoghurt for breakfast and a liquid diet all day.  If you google liquid low fibre diet, it's all crap like sugary drinks.  Gross.  Good luck if you're a diabetic.  So milk, oj, solo and some beef bone broth I found, and ended up with furry teeth and need to brush my teeth mid afternoon.  Beer for dinner, along with a bit of white rice and kewpie.  I went back to the beginning of the trip to try and figure out if other days had been affected by the time randomly changing on my phone.  Sure enough, it did.  Sigh.  My thought (at the time) was that maybe the phone was getting mixed up between ship time and gps time and just changing when it felt like it.  I. Hate. Everything.  

Wednesday.  So it's an epic disaster!!  Pialligo Estate has gone broke!!  No more streaky bacon!! Disaster!!  Completely traumatised trying to get a poop sample for the pathologist.  Nearly died.  But then forgot the form for the other tests.  Sigh.  Cleaning day at work.  Pizza for dinner because the sweetie wanted it.  It's low fibre right?  Watched some more of Avatar.  Turns out the Hallelujah Mountains are held in the air and float in the magnetic vortices due to the Meissner Effect.  There's a whole Avatar wiki page about that crap.  It was fun seeing the scene where they were flying around on the Ikran/Banshees because I'd just done that at Disney ;)

Thursday.  Took *forever* to get to sleep - stressing about All The Things.  Ok day at work.  More cleaning and working with Neil on cleaning policies.  Leftover pizza for dinner and watched episode 3 of Boba Fett.

Friday.  Woke up at 3:30 and never got back to sleep.  Sigh.  But!  THEY FIXED THE PERL/MYSQL PROBLEM!!  They never told me what was wrong, or what they did to fix it, or even admit that yes, they HAD in fact broken it.  I don't really care because my blog is working again hurray!!!!  Figured out that it's actually the time zone changing on my phone photos.  Most would be (say) GMT-5, but then others would be GMT-4.  If you look at the details of a photo the "top" time would (mostly) be correct.  If you drag it up, down the bottom you see the exif time, which would be wrong.  If you click Adjust, you can see the time zone, although you can't actually change it.  Sigh.  Watched You've Got Mail.  But just generally cranky and stressed about everything.  It's been a thoroughly crap week.  

Saturday.  Woke up early.  Cranky.  Stressing about phone photos.  There's no easy way in windows to see the time zone of the files in explorer.  I do have exif tools that show it, but nothing in a nice list.  I should probably script something to pull it all out with exiftool.  In the end what I did was do a dir /B, put the results in a spreadsheet, then use a simple formula to check if the numbers are out of order.  If the file number of one file is less than the one before it, it's out of order.  The first photo of the trip that was out of order was taken on the deck 9 forward deck.  Just one photo that day.  But more on subsequent days.  I have an exif editor that can do batch fixes.  So I have to pull out the photos that are wrong, run the tool over them to change their time, then use RenameMaster to fix the file naming.  Such a tedious process.  But the first few days that I'd previously geotagged had the old Date Taken hard coded in the files somewhere (in the XMP according to irfanview) and it was still using that, so for those ones I had to use Geosetter itself to adjust the times on the incorrect files before I could re geotag them.  Sigh.  By the time I got back to doing St Thomas on day 10 again (where I'd first discovered the problem and had already made some changes) it was a painstaking process to find the ones out of order, moving them out, fixing them up, and regeotagging.  So I spent all morning just fighting with iPhone photos.  Hate.  Apple is such a POS.  House stuff in the afternoon, and had sausages and salad for dinner (first real fibre all week and it was lovely).

Watched Simpsons (finished season 33) and Death In Paradise 4.3  Tried to watch Avatar on our tv, but Disney forced me to upgrade the app, but it wasn't quite at the right place and neither Stu nor me could find how to do any sort of seek other than in ten second increments.  Hate.  So gave up and watched it on my computer.  Not that I watched very much, then had an early night.

Sunday.  Woke up at ~4am.  Sigh.  (5am old time).  Had breakfast with the sweetie at U&Co which was nice.

Did a small food shop, then home to slog my way through the todo list.  No time for fun.  And too stressed about All The Things to feel like starting the next section of the Titanic.  But I did start a jigsaw.  Even though I don't have time for fun.  Roast chicken for dinner.

Monday.  20th.  Backdated cause of blog sadness.  Woke up at 4:19 on account of going to bed at 20:30.  Sigh.  But I'm only going to bed so early because I can't SEEEE anything on my computer in the evenings.  Had a look at the errors on my blog with Perl and MySQL.  Even my addressbook is broken with a similar perl->mysql error.  I'm just hoping that someone else running Perl/MySQL complains about it.  For now, we wait.  

Tuesday.  Ok sleep.  I think.  I started geotagging my holiday photos.  Also did some APNIC training on routing.  It takes ages when you stop to take notes, check mail queues, have to talk to people etc.  More geotagging after work.  Just before bed I was doing day 10 iPhone photos in St Thomas, and realised the phone had been an hour out in the morning, and had changed time half way up the cable car we did in the morning.  So I'll need to go fix the exif times and file names for them.

How good are these?  Mini toasts with cream cheese or blue cheese, quince paste, slow roasted tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, salami and strawberries.  Doesn't take long to make and super tasty.

Wednesday.  Ok sleep.  Fixed up the St Thomas morning photos, only to find it's jumped back an hour part way through the day.  FFS Apple make up your mind.  Good thing I have the Canon to note what time we were *actually* in places.  #grunt.  Before we arrived it was an hour early.  It changed half way up the cable car.  Then later in the day it changed back again, and later again it went forward again.  Sigh.  And my eyes got tired very early today which didn't help.  It was raining after work so no weeding.  I can't SEEEE at night, so can't do any photo work because I need to stare at file names and figure out what's going on with them.  What else is there to do in the evenings if I can't work on my computer?  Drink and watch crap on the internet??  Sigh.  Started watching Avatar.  I first/last saw this at the movies in 3D and totally hated the 3D experience.  It's like watching a movie with sunglasses on.  So started watching it again since had just been doing a bunch of Pandora experiences at Disney recently.

Thursday.  Slept ok I think.  OMFG epic storm!!!  Lightning everywhere and it was so dark at 9am lights were turning on outside (I shoulda taken a photo!!)

Did some training, some Neil, quiet drinks, pizza, episode 2 of Boba Fett (really need to rewatch the first episode though, because I was so jetlag tired I can't remember much of it).

Friday.  Did one of the APNIC training labs.  Took a few hours oof!  Some tickets, documenting servers etc.  Pork and salad for dinner.  Then watched Glass Onion which was a bit of fun.

Saturday.  Got ready, cleaned the kitchen then went out to the club for a working bee.  With sore bowels hmm.  Not many people came and it was threatening to rain.  John gave us the job of cleaning the office.  He'd replaced all the insulation and so there was bits of the old stuff *everywhere*.  So we pulled everything out, Stu cleaned every surface, then I put everything back all neat and tidy, and threw a bunch of stuff out as well.  I should have taken a before photo, because the place was such a mess (not just with insulation but from several years of people dumping crap in there).  The after looks pretty impressive though!  It won't last though!!

The social was Mardi Gras themed, and someone said a rainbow vomited in the shed..

Dinner was build your own burgers.  

Noticed during cleanup that someone had left the small oven on.  hrmm.  After dinner was lots of fun music and karaoke, but I was finding it too loud so went to Ian's for whiskey.  Bit of a late night but not too bad.

Sunday.  Belly still hurting.  hmm.  I wanted to be gone by 8, but by the time I'd gone and spent over an hour cleaning up the shed (and noticing someone had also left the big oven on all night *sigh*) it was nearly 11:00 by the time we got home.  I brought home a tonne of food (mostly the salad stuff).  Since my blog was still broken, I decided to email Vodien support.  They basically tried to fob it off "did you get an email about any changes?" "no, and I never have in the past either but it seems unlikely that you *never* patch your systems".  Gave them some evidence of things changing on their end and all the errors I could find.  I did catch up on writing up the rest of my holiday blog entries, even though I can't post them yet.  Started a jigsaw too because too stressed to enjoy doing more of the Titanic.  And my belly hurts.  Chicken kiev for dinner and The Crown.

Monday evening.  13th.  Backdated cause my blog was broken (through no fault of my own).  Since I've gotten back my phone is still very confused about where it is.  I tried to set myself a reminder to do something at 8am the next day, but it tried to set it for 11pm, and when I tried to change it said it couldn't set it to the past.  I asked Siri "what time is it?" and she responded in Houston time.  Stoopid Apple.  So I rebooted it.  Which fixed that problem but broke my wallpaper - just a black screen instead of what I have set.  After a bit of fiddling it's come back, but it's happened every time I've rebooted - I have to go in, set the wallpaper to another set, then set it back again.  So dumb.  Roast pork for dinner then SImpsons and The Crown.

Tuesday.  Slept from around 20:30 til 5:00.  Got epic grunty at my bank because the international transaction fees I'd gotten since the beginning of March hadn't been rebated.  I asked why and they said it was because I hadn't put the requisite amount in that account that month.  Yeah CAUSE I WAS FRICKEN TRAVELLING!!  Other than keeping an eye on the balance I just wasn't thinking about that crap.  So lame.  Pretty pissed off.. but I guess it was only about $10 worth.  Still sux though.  Backed up David's photos onto the NAS.  He took 39568 photos on his Canon (234GB).  Craziness.  Continued being Neil (for the whole week).  Couldn't see in the afternoon, worst it's ever been.  Booked an optometrist appointment (a real optometrist this time instead of specsavers) but the appointment is a couple of weeks away :(  Chicken/feta/spinach sausages for dinner and another early night because I can't see my computer anyway and I'm tired.

Oh, I cut these oak tree suckers back before I went away.  In a month they'd grown back this much..

Wednesday.  Slept from about 20:30 to 5:45.  Windoze has made a bunch of crappy "upgrades" recently.  Liked tabbed Notepad.  Some things I like about it, some not so much.  But get this for a regression: it used to be that if you didn't have a file saved it would show you a * in the title bar so you could remember to save it.  They took this away in their latest "upgrade".  Another dumb thing.. well two.. with command prompt, I have this pinned to the task bar.  Except now when you start it it doesn't start in the pinned location, it starts all the way over on the right.  What's the point of pinning it if it's going to start up wherever it feels like??  Stoopid.  Also, whenever you paste more than one line of commands it brings up a popup that's like, are you sure you want to post more than one line of text?  YES DAMMIT!!  And.  (it keeps coming).  Now whenever I add or remove a USB drive, it collapses every explorer window back to the root.  How f%&*ing stoopid is that??  So I have to reexpand all my folders to where I was working on them.  Hate.  On a lighter note, the desktop wallpaper I have is being better behaved - actually working on all four desktops, and not randomly resizing on the second monitor.

Thursday.  Early night again, woke up around 5.  Did a bit of a rework of my backup plan, because the 2T drives keep filling up.  So some files will go from having three backups to only two.  Being Neil, as well as some decom work.  Quiet drinks, early night.

Friday.  Had an early night but very restless, then hurty.  Managed a bit more sleep then finally woke up around 6:30.  Did some APNIC training on routing.  Another storage blowup in the afternoon (completely unrelated but similar impact).  Plus I couldn't see.  Might have been talked into a drink at the pub after work.  Had some hazy leprechaun, aka soylent green.

Then dinner with EffanC at Hachiko which was expensive but very nice.

Saturday.  Another early morning session of hurty.  Sigh.  Spent ages making sure I have everything off the laptop (for this trip but other stuff as well).  Did some more on the Titanic.  Caught up on some holiday blogging (typing up, not online yet).  Watched The Shop Around the Corner with a very young Jimmy Stewart.  I didn't even know this existed until recently.

Sunday.  Helicopters!  Will put that in another post. More holiday writeups.  As always Sunday is a battle to get my photos off my phone.  But when I went to blog I got this error:

Got an error: install_driver(mysql) failed: Attempt to reload DBD/mysql.pm aborted.
Compilation failed in require

FFS.  Wondered if this had anything to do with other crap they've been doing recently.  For example, all our websites were offline for several hours while we were away.  Then David lost his ftp account - it was literally gone, and I had to recreate it.  Sigh.  Too hard to SEEE so too hard to deal with, but there appeared to be changes on the Saturday night, because some symlinks for libmysqlclient were touched on 18/3.  So possibly that's when it broke.  Not happy Jan!

Wednesday.  8th.  Arrived home mid morning.  Had a shower and put on a load of washing.  Then spent ages unpacking and putting everything away.  Then I went into battle to get my photos downloaded.  The SD cards are easy enough, they "just work", well, when windows recognises them after inserting/reinserting several times before it'll read the cards.  The iPhone on this computer does seem to be at least presenting all my files (when I was away, I was finding that the phone simply wasn't even presenting all the files to windoze so I couldn't actually even back everything up properly.  Very frustrating).  At least they seem to work on my home computer.  Well, except for the odd jpg and mov file that refuse to copy - they copy with 0 bytes for jpgs, or simply unreadable for the movs.  At least I got most stuff off.  Managed to stay awake all day which was actually pretty impressive.  Washed my hair before dinner because I didn't think I'd feel like it after.  The sweetie got Chong Co for dinner which was nice.  Then I went to bed.

Thursday.  Slept from about 20:20 to 5:12.  Got up and backed up files to memory sticks.  Also got the last of the GPS tracks off.  Had breakfast with the sweetie at 54 Benjamin which was nice.  Had a good chat about a few things.  Had to be Neil at work, as well catching up on the over 500 emails I got while I was away.  Sausage sizzle at drinks so didn't need dinner, so the sweetie made himself a pizza.  Another early night.

Breakfast Roll at 54 Benjamin

Friday.  Went to bed at 19:30 and slept til a bit after 3.  Tried to get more sleep for another hour but gave up and got up after 4 to continue backing things up and catch up on RSS feeds.  Continued being Neil and catching up on emails at work.  In the afternoon a big disk array had a sad which took a bunch of stuff offline which kinda wrote off my afternoon.  And I couldn't see either so that wasn't much fun.  Called it at 16:15.  Tried to do some weeding but it was too hot.  Went through holiday receipts to start sorting out our holiday expenses and what David and I owe each other.  Chicken kiev for dinner.  We started watching the first episode of The Book of Boba Fett but I was struggling to stay awake because i was so tired.

Caught this super cute little gecko hiding under our recycling bin

Saturday.  Went to bed early again, but this time woke up around 1am and never really got back to sleep.  Sigh.  Used the fact I was awake to go see the balloons.  Except by 6:50 there were still no balloons aloft, which wasn't a good sign.  Sure enough, they weren't flying because the wind was blowing towards the airport.  Oh well.  So went and said hi to Neil.  Also stopped at the arboretum to see the commercial balloons that were out there.  Then home to do All The Things.  Did some washing and got the problematic jpgs and movs off my phone.  Also fixed the timestamps on all the movs and pngs because Apple messes with them.  Had lunch at Pattysmiths with the sweetie then did our food shopping.  Unboxed the Titanic and made a start on it.  Had Asian style salad for dinner, since we'd had such a big late lunch.  After whatever the last patching did, Notepad in windows is now tabbed.  But.  If you have multiple Notepad windows open, windows doesn't actually tell you the name of the file, they're all just labelled "Notepad".  Far out I hate windows.  Turns out this new "feature" is in fact a bug.  Sigh.

Crispy bbq chicken burger at Pattysmiths

Sunday.  Went to bed at like 7:50 and slept til after 5 hurray!  Still awake early enough to go do balloons take two.  It was quite breezy so I was surprised they took off at all.  And it was quite cloudy so not great for photos, but did get the sun a couple of times here and there so got a few nice shots.  Worked on photo renaming and filing (and fixing exif time data on photos where the time zone hadn't been set right).  Also did a bit of weeding.  Stu cooked a Japanese curry for dinner which was quite nice.  Then watched When Harry Met Sally. 

I decided to use the tin of blueberries in the pantry before they were like ten years out of date.  This tin was only six months past its best before..

Stu made Japanese curry for dinner

Monday.  Slept from about 21:30 til around 5:44 which was nice.  Had another day of doing All The Things.  Lots of house/fish stuff, photo processing, cooking, and a couple of sections of Titanic.  Such a busy day and nowhere near done on my todo list.  I don't have time to go to work there's just too much to DOOOOOO!!!  Super frustrating.  

Sunday.  8th.  Backdated.  Had pork and turkey fried in pork jelly with salad for dinner.  Then The Simpsons and The Crown.

I actually forgot to get these shapes out for Christmas.  This to me is the flavour of Christmas - Savoury Shapes with french onion dip.  Yum yum yum!

Compare the pair!  No forced perspective here - these are side by side!

Monday.  Got the house down to 16C with just the fan running overnight.  The blog publish was still going.  Did half an hour of weeding before work.  That makes it beer o'clock right??  Oh, did I mention I cleaned out the Dyson?  Pulled it apart and cleaned everything I could.  And it worked again!  Hurray!!  Cleaning at work.  Basa bake for dinner.  Then started watching A Christmas Karen.  This came on after the carols on Christmas Eve but it was way too late to start watching it then.  

Tuesday.  More weeding in the morning (pruning out the front).  Went back to my work on certificate management.  There was an email from Digicert the other day that said something like 80% of companies have had outages because of expired certificates.  And I'm like.. pfft.. more like 100%.  If 80% were true it'd mean the other 20% don't use certificates for anything.  Anyways, I'm working on not letting it happen to our team.  Sure we have tools, but they don't cover everything so it's good for a human to just keep an eye on things.  I made a tuna casserole for dinner using up stuff in the pantry and freezer that needed using up.  I'll post that separately I think.  We also started a new anime series - Bocchi the Rock.  And then I finished A Christmas Karen.  Which I actually thought was rather sweet.  As well as filing of photos.  Also, the blog publish finished.  This is why I hate doing any sort of design changes that require republishes of the whole site.

Wednesday.  Mostly finished my certificate management stuff.  Music after work.  Dug out some leftover chicken out of the freezer for dinner.  Also the ftp backup I did of the snapshot of my blog finished (that took multiple goes as well cause the ftp client would grind to a halt).  

Thursday.  Working through the test plan for the weekend's work.  Went looking for a drink after work with Dave 5 and Neil, but the Pot Belly was closed so we went to the Bavarian.  Because it was closest.  Because it was HOT.  Bavarian wasn't too bad.  I'd never actually been in before.  Had a couple of German beers which was nice.  Into season 32 of The Simpsons.

Friday.  Woke up at ~1am and couldn't get back to sleep until like 4:30 then kept waking up.  Sigh.  Which was a bit of a shame because I had an RDO.  Went and did a bottle and cardboard recycling run first thing.  Then dropped into Bing Lee to ask about the oven (whenever you turn the dial past a setting that has the top element, even when it's cold and there's no power otherwise, it trips the entire circuit).  They reckon there's only a two year warranty.  The thing is nearly three years old.  Epic #grunt.  Spent the entire rest of the day pulling out all the fish tank stuff downstairs, sorting it all out, pulling out stuff to give away or throw out, and putting it all back together again.  The corner looks pretty good now, but I didn't do some of the work I really wanted to do, and ended up hot and sweaty.  More leftover chicken for dinner, then watched The Social Network, which I hadn't seen since i saw it on a plane somewhere.

Before I stated

Everything spread out for sorting

Part way through

Finished!  

The pile of stuff to give/throw away

Saturday.  Loaded Echofon and got a popup saying I needed to authenticate with Twitter.  But that brought up an error page.  hmmmm.  Went into work to do some firewall upgrades.  Went fairly smoothly but took all morning.  Pattysmiths again for lunch.  Then spent most of the afternoon looking at all the shore excursions for my cruise.  And only looked at three ports.  Sigh.  Lamb for dinner then more of Origins of Us - on Guts.  Only they didn't mention what I thought they would - that our guts are shorter than a lot of animals because we cook our food.  And started on Brains as well.

I had the Crispy Chicken burger at Pattysmiths this time which was quite nice

Stu might have also bought himself a new toy!  Just so long as he lets me play it too haha

This is three seconds hand held on the phone.  I really need to try and find a tripod mount and test it out properly

Sunday.  Spent most of the morning looking at shore excursions.  Then we did our food shopping.  Then some music.  Then All The Cooking.  And suddenly the weekend is over.  Sigh.

For dinner I cooked roast chicken.  Except as an experiment I decided to cook it "upside down".  That, is, with the breast down and the back up.  I really don't know why this way isn't the preferred way to roast chickens.  This way all the little fatty bits on the back render down, while the breast stays moist at the bottom.  I reckon it turned out better than the traditional way.  Although it does look rather disturbing in photos.

Saturday.  New Years Eve.  What was meant to be a nice quiet evening didn't quite work out that way.  We did have a nice turkey roll roast for dinner.  And I watched Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.  But the sweetie ended up talking to Kit and Pete most of the night (I talked to them for a while too).  Watched the Sydney fireworks at midnight and then Rage til way too late.  

Sunday.  New Year's Day!  Too late a night for me.  Doh.  Did sleep til around 8ish though.  Had bacon and eggs for breakfast.  Then spent all morning catching up on the last of the blog entries for last year.  Spent all afternoon hacking a copy of my blog to test out (and log) all the changes I'd need to make to refresh the design on it for its 20th blogiversary.  Had Dominos for dinner (first time in a long time) and watched 8th episode of Picard, somewhat of a strange one.  Then we watched the Laid Back Camp movie which was .. eh ok.

Monday.  Slept well enough.  Spent most of the day hacking my blog.  Stu went out and did some weed hacking so I did some work outside as well.  Watched the second episode of season 7 of You Can't Ask That (saw the first episode the other day).  Refried leftover pizza and salad for dinner then just watched crap on the internet.

Tuesday.  Woke up at ~4:45 and never got back to sleep.  Sigh.  Back at work, being Neil.  Cleared the queues by lunch time.  That means I'm done for the day right?  hrmm.

Wednesday.  Ok sleep.  Some sparkies came to replace our ancient analogue meter with a fancy new digital one.  Need to get a login for it.  They were all done by 8:30.  Tried to do some cleaning but all the people wanted all the things.  Stu finally responded to the solar guys request for feedback, and he wrote a very diplomatic response telling them the system was borked and they can't communicate to save themselves.  That put a fire up their butts and they sent someone out that afternoon.  Right as a storm rolled through.  They left eventually but the system still wasn't working.  At all.  Sigh.  Made a fancy potato bake to have with some refried pork in pork jelly.  As I was turning the oven off the power to it tripped.  WTF?  What's the deal with everything electrical being borked??  Either the sparkies have done something dodgy with all their fiddling, or one of the elements is faulty (and when you turn the dial to go past it, even with the temperature dial off, it will sometimes try to turn on another element as you go past it).  Sigh.  Finished watching Survivor Canberra. 

Thursday.  Slept ok.  Went into work.  Pretty quiet, and started collating a bunch of cleaning jobs.  Did mention the solar isn't working.  AT ALL.  #grunt

Friday.  Couldn't get to sleep in forever, then woke up before 5.  Sigh.  So a zombie day.  I was going to do some cleaning work but then remembered I needed to put in paperwork for a firewall upgrade.  So spent most of the morning doing that.  But I was too braindead to do some of the cleaning I wanted to do.  Didn't want to break anything hehe.  Raijin takeaway for dinner but it was pretty average.  The beef don was nice enough but the karaage chicken.. well wasn't really.. karaage chicken.. at all.  XL's from Champion Chicken and Tea at the mall on Thursday was much much nicer.  

Then watched Origins of Us - Bones

Saturday.  Slept a lot better.  Had a super super busy day doing All The Things.  I did 6000 steps without even leaving the house!  Chong Co for dinner then watched the last episode of Picard.  Aww man I love Q so much (I even had a dream last night I kissed him haha).  And the traveller!!  I'd forgotten that!  Of course then we *had* to watch Encounter at Farpoint.  OMFG everyone thirty five years younger :)  Except the aspect ratio from the DVD was wrong, and not sure if we have to hack the DVD player or the TV, but ended up just watching it on streaming.  Slightly late night, oops.

The new phone struggled with this.  Dunno what the old one would have done...

Sunday.  Today!  My 20th Blogiversary!!  I started off by backing up my blog - first the database, then a snapshot of the files.  Took an hour and twenty minutes cause there's two and a half gig of it!  Yipe!  I got the design refreshed but I'm getting 405 errors when posting.  I'm not sure if that's just cause it's not in a fully published state, or if there's errors in the template.  But the entries posted, so will look into it more later.  So then I started publishing the old pages.  There's over 5000 entries and it's going to take hours and hours and hours to do it (as of 17:45 it's ony 38% of the way through the individual entries).  Did some holiday planning and some other stuff around the house.  Tried to backup my new phone, but since it's a new device it wants to do a full backup.  Which filled my c: drive.  Whoops.  Will have to look at moving the backup somewhere else.  And I really need to clear out some of the 35000 photos on there ;)  

Not sure how I'm going to survive a full week of work...

Twenty years ago right this very minute I created my very first blog entry.

TWENTY YEARS AGO!!

I had no idea back then I'd still be blogging in twenty years time.  It's been a crazy twenty years.  Even though I feel like I don't do a lot, you just need to read my year in review posts to see that I actually do heaps.

I only wish I'd started blogging sooner.  My 20s are the dark ages in my life because I have really no record of what I did.  I have a few photos of things, but there's plenty of events where I didn't take photos (not getting a digital camera til I was twenty seven was a big part of that).

To celebrate my 20th Blogiversary I've given the blog a design refresh (publish is still in progress and will take *hours* so you may notice issues on archives pages at the moment.  And there's issues with searches but don't know how much of that is because everything is still publishing and taking up all my resources).  

Stu will appreciate the mobile-friendly styles.  I'm not 100% happy with the final design, there's a few little changes I'd want to make, but I have so little experience with CSS it's just a pain in the butt and this might just have to do.  

The banner picture is a photo I took of Belconnen from Mount Rogers.  It also has Black Mountain Tower in it, which was a prerequisite.  I thought Belconnen and Lake Ginninderra was more fitting than Lake Burley Griffen.  And if you look closely you can see a hot air balloon :)

Here's to another twenty years of blogging.

Also, happy birthday David Bowie, and as always we remember the January 1994 bushfires in Como.

Wow, another strange year. Another crazy busy year.

Our year began very quietly with just the two of us. We didn't go out to the club because of Omicron taking the country by storm.

Travel-wise this year has been.. interesting. It started off with us desperatly trying to get out of the cruise we were due to go on. The charter company had postponed it a year, but with Omicron raging, government travel bans still in force, and lack of insurance for covid-related hospitalisations, we just couldn't justify it. The travel bans did get lifted and insurance companies started insuring for covid, but we still didn't think it was worth the risk. In the end, something like two weeks before the departure date, Carnival were like, ok fine, we won't charge the charter company if people don't want to come. Great. So we didn't go. The charter company were still @$$holes and would only provide a cruise credit for next year's cruise not the year after. It's caused me so much stress and angst and I would NEVER deal with them again. So plan B for February was Tasmania. But with Omicron raging and mandatory lockdowns for testing positive, we decided against that too. If we'd gotten sick while in Tasmania we would have nowhere to go and no way to get home. So plan C was regional Victoria. We only booked motels a night in advance, and if we'd gotten sick we could be home from anywhere in Victoria in a day. So that's what we did. And we actually had a lovely time with almost perfect weather (if a tad hot!). We had a very busy first week, cramming in lots of things, but took it a lot easier in the second week. In April there was a day trip to four Sydney dams to see three of them spilling which was super cool. In May was another sneaky trip to Sydney to see Woronora Dam spilling, and Brickman's Lego Jurassic World. I hadn't been planning to go see the Lego, but then was inspired by Lego Masters so went when it only had a few days to go. And then they extended it. Oh well. And then back again to Sydney in June for Mum's birthday where Kellie had organised to see Mary Poppins. Met up with Tony the next day and wandered the city and went out to Cockatoo Island, then met up with Mum again and saw Vivid. Finally a visit to Ansto at Lucus Heights which was very cool. We only made it down the coast once this year, in July, to see Kit and Pete. In September I went overseas for the first time in nearly four years. Mum and I went and saw the Oberammergau Passion Play, which I'd been wanting to see since the late 80s. We then drove through Austria, Liechtenstein and Switzerland (four countries in one day!!) and into Italy, where we ditched the car and toured northern and central Italy by train. We saw *heaps* of stuff, much more, and for much cheaper, than if we'd done it with the tour company like originally planned. I got filled with rage how Qantas and Emirates won't talk to each other to do seat allocations on code share flights. Jet lag hit me in a major way when I got home. It certainly didn't help that I got a cold as soon as I got home and so didn't go outside and see the sun in days. I was awake for hours every night for a week, and a complete zombie for much of it. Finally, we went back to Tumut for the Tumut 3 Power Station Open Day and another TRBC tour.

Work was, well, work. It's not that I don't like it, it's just that it takes up so much time out of my days. I have way too many things on my todo list to have time to go to work every day. Sigh. But at least working from home a few days a week makes it tolerable. I didn't actually go into the office at all until March (with Omicron raging and minimising people contact before we went on holidays). Then when I did eventually have to go back in I found it super loud and stressful and distracting and PEOPLE!! I had to be Neil a few times during the year and did some doco on his stuff (which he won't keep up to date heh). There were a couple of firewall migrations that went quite smoothly. A couple of load testing days in May and June. A few proxy upgrades which introduced more bugs than they fixed. But we did PoC a proxy from another company that actually looked pretty good. Migrated some servers. And All The Cleaning. Just call me Sadie. There was a whiskey night in July (which I actually missed, but was able to try everything the next week), and I ran my Christmas bbq at the lake for the tenth year in a row.

Healthwise I've been pretty good. Had a very slight cold in June and another one when I got home from Europe. Had booster jabs in January and July. The one in January caused a strong immune reaction so had to take a half day off and have a little lie down. Other than that just a sore arm so far is all I've had from the shots. Other than that just the usual bouts of insomnia, waking up with numb hands, and going blind.

We've been pretty slack at keeping up with friends and family this year. Although we have seen some friends a bit. We've seen Tony and Jess a few times for games and music. Damien came over in January, April and June for games. Jenn came over a couple of times in April and December. I had heaps of lunches at Herbert's with various Chrises and Tonys and other peeps as well. David came to stay before the Canberra Airport Open Day. Kit came to stay in July. Mum came to stay in December and we did our family Christmas with Kellie's family at the Burn's Club. We saw Annie and the family a few times - for Annie's 50th, Mila's 21st and Christmas, as well Immy coming over a couple of times to hang out. EffanC and R&F came over they day before my birthday. Had a lovely housewarming for R&F in November (it was cold and wet). Caught up with Aaron in December, probably as long as ten years since I last saw him. Finally saw Chrissie for the first time since covid in December. And met up with James and George and the kids for lunch in December on their way to Melbourne.

We only made it out to the club four times this year. It's been that kind of year. With quarantining and being on holidays for several events, the only times we made it out were for the Mexican night in March, the formal night in June, our Christmas in July and the Christmas party in November. We didn't even make it out in any non-event weekends which we like doing over winter.

I did a bit of work on processing Dad's slides early in the year but that fizzled out. I geotagged all of Mum and Dad's Tasmania photos in case we ended up going there. I also geotagged all our Victoria and South Australia photos from previous holidays to try and reproduce those. I started to scan Mum's Minolta negatives from the beginning (1983) and got some spectacular results, but that ground to a halt when I got up to 1994 and got into a batch of badly discoloured negatives that were unscannable. Not that there's even all that many past 1994 that I'm interested in keeping so no big deal I suppose. I managed to cull and label and get some photos onto the blog for the tenth anniversary of my 2012 Eurasia trip. That was a lot of work for the first few months of the year but it was so good to get it done. I also got 719 Victoria photos (plus bugs/flowers/panoramas) labelled and online in time for the six month anniversary of us leaving on that trip. After that I got really slack in the evenings - with no pressure or deadlines nothing much got done. For this year's Europe trip it took me a good six weeks just to geotag everything, then I got slack again. I was thinking I might be able to get the photos online by Christmas. Yeah right. Instead I used the evenings to start filing by 2022 photos and taking notes for my year in review post.

Stumpy is still doing great. We've had him (her?) nearly five years now! He'd be at least 13 by now. The fish are puttering along. My two main guppy tanks (the two foot upstairs and the two foot downstairs) look amazing - lots of plants (at least upstairs) and hardly any algae. But our guppies are two years old now and getting inbred. We really need to get some new genetics for them. I still have my "angel" 620T tank with a guppy, a platy, and an ancient cory. I still have Chrissie's tank with her two clown loaches and a guppy, but I'm considering moving them and getting rid of the tank. It's got horrible black hair algae which is not fun. I have the two two foots, as well as several small tanks downstairs, all with just guppies. And Stu has his four foot which is still full of algae. Really must move more juvenile guppies in there.

I lost heart in trying to complete any more of Vic's Lego sets, so decided to inventory what was left (I'm going to need to do that at some point anyway before selling it). I found a website called Basebrick which integrates with Bricklink which is super useful. Did heaps but ran out of time to finish it before I went overseas and haven't been back to it. For my birthday I got 10497 Galaxy Explorer and 75329 Death Star Trench Run Diorama which are pretty cool. I decided to sell the box of "MISB" Harry Potter Lego I got from 2003-2006. There were ten sets and they sold for quite a lot (I probably made the buy it now too small), but ebay makes it so you have to jump through all their hoops otherwise you can get totally screwed over buy the buyers. As it was I got totally screwed over by ebay who not only take 12.5% of the sale, but also 12.5% of the *postage* which I think is a complete scam. Not to mention the stress. If things go well it's actually quite simple, but if anything complicated happens (like people pay for everything and *then* want combined postage, or come to pick up from your house but don't mark online that they've done so, or the value is over the $100 Australia Post will cover you for) then it's a nightmare. I calculated how much profit I made, taking into account the cost of interest for not having the money in my mortgage all these years and all the fees, and I figure I made a total net profit of about $50. But, I'm sure I made a lot of people very happy they could get their hands on 15-20 year old brand new Lego sets. For Christmas I was going to get myself the Lego Titanic. But after not getting a Black Friday special on it, I decided to sit down and buy it on the Saturday. By which time it was out of stock. Sigh. But I did get a different Lego set for Christmas - in a manner of speaking. Neil lent me his Saturn V rocket that he bought a few years ago but had never done. So I've been having fun with that. Then will pull it all apart and give it back to him :)

I finally finished the Disney 40320 piece behemoth this year - finishing up with the Bambi section. I still haven't assembled the whole thing yet because I lost access to the really useful skybridge so don't know where I'm going to assemble it. Maybe Damien's driveway. Other than that, the usual jigsaws at home and work, although feeling like I really don't have time to do them.

They said La Niña would finish by the end of summer. It didn't. There was a massive storm in January which caused a lot of chaos in northwest Canberra. There were power outages all around Belconnen and Coles lost all their fridge and freezer stock. Chris kept power to his store, but his house had no power for days. We were lucky and just had a couple of small outages while they were fixing things. And the water. All The Water. In spring half of NSW was flooded. Insanity. And there was so much water there was no lettuce in Australia for a while. Craziness.

I've had a whole stack of problems with Windows 11 on my new computer. I hate it (windoze 11) so much. Like the fact you can't ungroup task manager icons which makes it so damned slow to switch between windows now. Before you could just click on the icon. Now you have to click or just hold and *wait* for the popup before you can switch windows. I took to making whole new desktops for the browser and explorer windows I need for different hobbies (such as music or lego) but even that has its bugs - like not displaying the wallpaper at the right size at random and then fixing it and then breaking it again all without me changing anything. Or that after a reboot only two of the desktops will display the right wallpaper at all, and if I switch between the working and non working one it'll put the wall paper from the working desktop onto the non working desktop I've just switched to. And after a few days it'll come good. Utter trash. Then there's the fact my GPS won't work at all (and there's no replacement drivers for it), my scanner won't work (even though it originally did), Eudora wouldn't work to begin with, then came good. My SD card reader only works intermittently. The front USB ports take at least thirty seconds to recognise there's anything plugged into them. My second monitor wouldn't work so had to buy a new one. It's great but the resolution is so high it's difficult to see. Windows 11 *still* only ever puts the screensaver on the left-most monitor, even if that is not the primary monitor. Excel 2003 dates wouldn't work, so had to put on Libre Office instead. You can't drag a file onto the application on the task bar, have said application pop up, and open the file in that application. That just doesn't work at all anymore. Similarly I can't drag anything into Eudora to attach it, I have to go to a menu and manually attach files. Printscreen didn't work to begin with, then started working. Hate hate hate hate hate. I've been playing a lot of Wordle style games, although cut back on those while overseas and only play a few of them now. I like Symble because you have to think more about it. Redactle is challenging. Wheretaken is a new favourite. Also Worldle, Waffle and Framed. In February Google changed one of their apis to enforce https, so had to hack Geosetter to get it to work again. Then in December Google finally killed the IE api, killing Geosetter completely. A few weeks later they released a new version of Geosetter which still has some issues, but at least will display the map again. Our printer is having a tonne of issues with jamming and poor quality printouts. It might just need a clean. Or a new printer. hmmm. Had to setup an app password in June for Eudora so it can backup my gmail. In July OneDrive took it upon itself to backup/sync all my desktop, documents and downloads directories to OneDrive. But all it succedded in doing was making a complete mess of things, bringing back files from my old computer that had long since been filed. Turned off backups everywhere and I minimise use of those directories completely. IOS 15.3.1 (or thereabouts) went back to putting photos into files by year/month (which I actually prefer). But Apple is STILL messing with the timestamps on my files. I got myself a 14 Pro for Christmas (it arrived instore literally the Friday night before Christmas, I was thinking I'd have to wait until January). Its camera has.. issues.. I lot of the first photos I got off it were utter crap. Primarily because I was using the 2x lens a lot to compare with my old phone. Firstly. Don't. The 2x "lens" is a digital interpolation of the 1x optics. So it's crap. The macro setting will work (if the stars align) but while it's good for getting actual closeups, it's crap at taking photos of flowers where you want the background all out of focus. Use the 3x lens as before just be far enough away for it to focus. Optus charged me 50c for an international SMS I didn't make in July. I got onto their online chat and they gave me a credit, but firstly said they couldn't find out the exact date/time and number, which was a total lie, because when I pressed them for it they could, and then I figure out what it was (it was a reply to a string of text, not a number, so it got translated to an international number). I bought myself new sandshoes in January, for the first time in like fifteen years. And new black shoes in August for the first time in seven years. I bought a G5X before our overseas trip. And got a brand-new-second hand wok on freecycle (to replace ours whose non-stick surface was coming off).

Around the house. I needed to move all the ornaments off the top of my desk to setup my new computer and rearrange monitors and crap. I moved them all into the shevles I bought for David in the spare room. I can see everything there a lot better, so I'm enjoying having them all there. The top of the desk has remained clear all year, although I do currently have my birthday presents up there at the moment. Tony came over in January to chainsaw off the oak tree sprouts and the front hedge. And then in December to attack the photinia. In between is all the weeding. Never. Ending. Weeding. Except in winter cause it's too damned cold heh. When the big storm went through in January water was coming out of places that water should not be coming out of. Like bricks next our bins, and bricks on one of the back steps at the back of the house. So got the plumbers to come out and do all the eeling. The sewage pipes were the easiest because we know the deal with them. The front courtyard was easy when we realised it's not a proper drainage pipe, just a 50mm pipe that goes just across the courtyard and drains off to the side. Looks to have been an afterthought. Then the stormwater. They went in via the sump next to the garage and it was like thirty metres down before they found the blockage. So they cleared that. Like the sewage, we'll just need to do that every couple of years. Finally they looked at the drainpipe near the bins. Under the concrete the pipe had come adrift and was full of roots, so the drain from the roof was just pooling under the stairs, and then going through the bricks next to the bins. So they dug up the front stairs, dug a wholly new trench, resealed, relaid the pipes, filled it all in, and got someone to put in some new stairs. Fifteen thousand dollars later. Ouch. Mice were scritching around the roof in March, which caused some sleepless nights. But then they went away. Which was good because I practically had a panic attack trying to figure out how I was going to get across to the far side of the roof without falling through it and getting covered in disgustingness. I tried to cut back the ivy in May. It's now covering more of the side wall than ever. Our largest stove element died. But we still haven't replaced the element or the whole stove. Found out in early spring that a pair of crimson rosellas had been chewing through the beams holding up our roof. Tried plastic sheeting, tinsel, scaring them, and scat. Nothing much seemed to work very well. They've found more interesting things to eat for now but I suspect they'll be back again next winter. We moved a shelf out of the dungeon because Stu wanted to put in a proper shelf there. Underneath was a massive growth of dark brown mold. We don't know if it's current or historical. hrmmm. The Dyson I got for my birthday two years ago stopped working. Don't know if it just needs a clean, or if the battery is dying, or if the Dyson is just a dud. My money is on the latter. Brought home the Electrolux from the club where we'd had it to use until I can get around to cleaning the Dyson. Got lots of strawberries from plants around the back yard. Including some from our paver weeds. The snails clearly didn't get the memo, so we got the strawberries instead of them. We had solar panels and a battery installed in December. They still don't work.

Our favourite restaurant this year was still Chong Co - we got deliveries from them in January, twice in April, twice in August, and October. Herberts is also popular for work Friday lunches (and their Christmas in July was a lot of fun). I didn't get to have any workday Kingsleys lunches because the building opposite blew up from a gas leak and they've never gone back, or been allowed to, not sure which. I did finally have some Kingsleys from Kippax a few weeks ago. We had Sichuan Chinese pickup from Belco a couple of times and were pretty impressed with them. We had brunch a few times at Market St Eats. Some others we went back to after long breaks included Mills and Grills (Stu went low carb so hardly any Dominos this year either), Chez Kimchi and Bella Vista. Tried out SpudBAR and 1919 Langzhou Beef Noodle which opened in the mall. Other one-offs included Co Dung (fried chicken wings were awesome), Lazy Su, Turqoise Turkish, Edgar's, Flavours of Jiangnan, Teddy Picker's, Badger & Co, Little Steamer, The Howling Moon, Mr Shabu Shabu, Little Oink, Master Bao (which had no bao), Magpies (for Jim's farewell), Pattysmiths, and Chinese Inn (from Kippax, just as bad as last time).

As always I end up doing quite a bit of cooking and trying new recipes, as well as doing old ones a few times. One new favourite is stuffed baby capsicums - fill with whatever mince you like and lots of cheese and roast. Yum yum. I made a few lemon cheesecakes, as well as a lime one and a cherry one. One of Stu's favourite meals is Cath's basa bake we've done that a few times. We did san choy bow a couple of times. We really like the potato, onion, blue cheese and bacon bake from my Gratins and Bakes book, but with Stu going low carb we only did it like once all year. The slow cooker gets a workout over winter. Favourite recipes for that are Alan's beef stew, brisket, and even pulled pork. And we tried slow cooking pork ribs (nice but lots of little fiddly bony bits). Beef cheeks are slow cooked on the stove. After doing turkey rolls that actually turned out this time at the club Christmas in July (on account of doing them in the oven instead of on the bbq), we tried one ourselves in August and also November (and likely New Years Eve as well). They turn out really nicely and we'll probably always keep one in the freezer to do when we feel like it. From Not Quite Nigella I tried a chicken marbella but wouldn't bother again, from the Gratins and Bakes book I tried potatoes with lemon and tomato but wouldn't bother again with that either, and from my Slow Cooker Kitchen book I tried honey rosemary chicken which was too salty. Completely evil meals included uunifetapasta, cheese nachos, and no-carb pizza (made with no base at all, just cheese). Slow cooked mini tomatoes are amazing, really must do them more often. Tried pork crackling by itself but I do prefer it done on the meat. A favourite lunch is grilled cheese sandwiches - but with shredded pizza cheese on the outside as well. Favourite veggies (well other than my favourite which is potato bake) include brussels sprouts with bacon. Over winter we discovered kalettes which when roasted for 35-40 minutes turn into little bliss bombs. Almost as good is kale chips, but it's a bit too easy to overcook those and have them go bitter. I made pesto with the last of the summer basil, and tried cheese biscuits in June (but need to find a better recipe). And made a coconut cake (Yum! Delicious!) in June and October.

Theatre/Shows/Exhibitions
* Australian Wind Symphony in May at the B (next to the Q)
* Lego Jurassic World in Sydney
* The Queen and Me exhibition at the National Capital Exhibition
* Mary Poppins in Sydney
* Canberra Lego Brick Show at Thoroughbred Park
* Australian Wind Symphony in November at St Andrews

Movies (at the movies)
* Top Gun: Maverick

Movies (TV)
* The Courier
* The Young Black Stallion
* The Grand Budapest Hotel
* Six Minutes to Midnight
* Sleeping With the Enemy
* Munich: Edge of War
* The Laundromat
* 1917
* The Mauritanian
* Zero Hour (twice) / Flying High
* Dr Strangelove
* No Time to Die
* Operation Finale
* Logan's Run
* 6 Underground
* The King's Speech
* Encanto / Luca
* The Death of Stalin
* The Royal Tenenbaums
* Gladiator
* Knives Out
* Edward Scissorhands
* The Monuments Men
* Pride and Prejudice (the Keira Knightley version)
* Mary Poppins / Saving Mr Banks
* The Little Mermaid II / Ariel's Beginning
* The Man from Snowy River
* An Affair to Remember / Sleepless in Seattle
* A Clockwork Orange
* The Constant Gardener
* Top Gun
* The Silver Brumby
* Kingsman: The Secret Service / Kingsman: The Golden Circle / King's Man
* Careful, He Might Hear You
* Moulin Rouge!
* Shine
* Blue Murder
* Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (twice - before and after Italy)
* Breaker Morant
* Matrix Resurrections
* Romeo+Juliet
* The Butterfly Effect
* Die Hard 1/2 / Love Actually
* Enola Holmes 2
* Operation Mincemeat
* Herbie Goes Bananas

TV
* Sex Education (season 3)
* The Simpsons (seasons 20 to half way through 31)
* The Girl on the Train in the Rear Window, or whatever it's called
* Mentour Pilot (about 3/4 of the air crash investigations episodes)
* Gunther's Autopsy
* Lie to Me (end of season 2 and season 3)
* Black Books
* Gunther's Anatomy
* The Crown (season 1 and most of season 2)
* Lego Masters (season 4)
* Martin Bashir's Diana interview
* The Diana Interview: Revenge of a Princess 2021
* Epstein's Shadow: Ghislaine Maxwell
* Obi-wan Kenobi
* Super Cub
* Andor (season 1)
* Lego Masters Bricksmas special (last year's and this year's)
* Survivor Canberra (fan produced)
* Picard (season 2, haven't finished)

Books
* Read the first four books of the New Testament, but got behind in February when we travelled and never really caught up. Will try again next year for the rest of the New Testament.

Other stuff
* Tried to catch up on This Day in History posts, but there's still too much work to be done with Mum's photos to do it properly, so that stalled
* Car wouldn't start in January. Turns out it was the battery, which was probably original, so it would have been nearly eight years old
* Petrol got insanely expensive
* Balloon Fiesta in March
* Canberra Airport Open Day in April
* Dam Busters trip to Sydney in April
* Climbed Mt Rogers a couple of times
* Saw the planet/moon alignment in April
* Jupiter and Venus were having a sneaky early morning kiss in April
* Sneaky trip to Sydney in May to see Lego Jurassic World (and Woronora Dam)
* Got a democracy sausage in May
* Climbed Mt Ainslie in May (hadn't been planning to it just happened)
* Whiskey Live in May
* Queen Elizabeth II 70th Jubilee in Canberra - all the purple lights on buildings around Canberra
* ABC's Classic 100: Music for the Screen in June
* Inspected my flat, went to Cockatoo Island, saw Vivid and visited Ansto in June (after seeing Mary Poppins for Mum's birthday)
* Surprising Science at the Shine Dome in June, August, and December
* Walked up Mt Painter
* Stu cracked a tooth and needed it taken out
* Fought with Qantas' booking system again. I hate Qantas. So. Much.
* Had a hair cut in August
* Stu got a 3D printer which he's been using to make little models for his wargamming
* Total lunar eclipse in November
* Took a drive out the back of Dunlop/Holt to see the West Belconnen Pond
* Got a beer advent calendar from Plonk
* Went to the Green Shed a couple of times, dropped off a few things, came home with more jigsaws
* Continued to practise the clarinet

Have a very happy and safe new year!!