Friday night we watched Arrival.  Stu enjoyed it but I found it rather .. boring .. People on IMDB either loved it or hated it, there was no middle ground.  

Saturday first thing we headed out to the club.  I did some jigsaw while the committee meeting was on, then there was a bbq lunch, then the AGM.  So by the time we got home it was dinner time and *blip* there goes half my weekend.  Went down to Kit's after dinner for a couple of drinks and caught up with Katie before she disappeared off to Queensland to live.

Sunday was just house and computer stuff in the morning, food shopping and lunch, then cooking and cleaning.  Cath came over for dinner (epic roast pork) which was lovely.  (and it hailed and later *snowed* on Sunday!!)

Monday morning I was stressed at the state of the house and the state of All The Things going on and literally thought "I don't have time to go to work".  Seriously I can't cope at the moment.  I'm just not getting enough time at home to get everything done.  Self inflicted though.  We keep socialising.  cf next paragraph.

Monday night we were going to meet Damien at the Pot Belly for drinks, but turns out it's not open on Mondays.  So we ended up at the Labor Club instead.  Was good catching up, but it meant all I managed to do all evening was run the dishwasher and do my clothes washing.

Last night I was awake in the middle of the night stressing about everything (mostly about the flat in Sydney as well as our bathroom) so I was a zombie today.  I did sneak out to go to Chrissie's ultrasound which was pretty cool though.

Tonight Pete had a bit of a look at our shower as well and thought that no we probably aren't going to need to rip out the shower just yet (when were chatting on Saturday night he was thinking that we might have to).  Especially if there's no evidence of leaking after regrouting and sealing.  So that was a bit of a relief.  But by then it was already nearly seven o'clock, and I still had to get through Sunday's Survivor and eat dinner, download all my photos, backup my phone and backup my computer.  But our domain controller died overnight so I couldn't get onto the NAS to back it up.  So that was all a drama and everyone ended up grumpy.  I cleaned the kitchen while Stu tried to get a monitor plugged in to see what was up.  It eventually came back by itself, looks like it had some bad blocks, and was probably running a checkdisk which is why it took so long. 

And now it's 9:50 and I'm completely wasted.  Stop the world, I want to get off.

Saturday morning was just cleaning the house.

The mother type person arrived around lunch time, and the brother type person arrived a little later.  We spent much of the afternoon doing a 3D jigsaw of the Sydney Opera House which was super cool.

Also it was decided that we all needed a cake.

In the evening we went to the Labor Club for dinner.

Came home and David dug out the dungeon roof to see what was up with our leaking shower.  We found a mixing bowl full of water with a copper pipe drilled into it draining to who knows where on the other side of the dungeon wall under the house.  

!!!

No idea what that was about.  We poked around and did some testing and we're pretty sure the leaking is actually in the corner where the grout has been breaking away.

Finished off the Opera House jigsaw, and did a 500 piece jigsaw.

Sunday morning we did another 500 piece jigsaw then David went home.  Mum and I went to Bunnings and got some silicone sealant, and then went to the markets to do some food shopping.

In the evening I did epic roast pork and had Chrissie et al over for dinner which was all very nice.

Monday morning mum went home, and at work I tried getting setup in my new desk, but it was all super stressful because stuff wasn't working and I don't have cubicle walls which I find pretty distressing.  I might have had a slight meltdown.

Had lunch with Chrissie - KFC - which is semi-traditional.

In the evening the sweetie took me out to Bella Vista for dinner which was excellent as always.

Arrancini con pancetta affumicata
Classic smoked bacon & onion risotto balls with cheese encased in golden panko breadcrumbs served with a creamy tomato sauce and miniature leaf salad.

Capesante e calamari
Pancetta wrapped Canadian scallops with butter poached calamari pieces on seasoned avocado puree, asparagus tips and roasted capsicum puree & pesto sauce.

Pappardelle alla Bistecca
Thin slices of Angus sirloin steak pan-fried with bacon and mushrooms finished in a caramelised butter, Pecorino Reggiano cheese and wilted baby spinach sauce tossed through Pappardelle pasta.
(note: I wouldn't say "when" to the parmesan cheese, so he gave me the whole lot ;) )

Maiale Arrosto
Twice cooked pork belly with a roasted mushroom, red onion, cherry tomato and scallop salsa served with prosciutto crisp and a garlic and thyme jus.

Orange cake (didn't get a photo of the description).

Tonight I had a go at trying to get the old silicone out of the corner of the shower.  I didn't have much luck, only managing to get silicone out of two tiles before my fingers hurt too much from using the only tool I had which seemed to do any good - an old file.  Sigh.

Thursday night we went down to Kit's to play Cards Against Humanity which was a bit of fun.

Friday night Neil and I went along to Roz's 60th at the Abbey.  It was quite a nice night, although she asked me to be photographer which I wasn't super happy about - I like taking photos for myself, but doing it officially for someone else is way too stressful!

Saturday morning after waiting for the sweetie to get up and do some stuff for work, it was suddenly a lot later that I wanted it to be.  We went out to do food shopping for the evening - where we cooked a roast dinner for forty people at the club!!  Four kilos of pork, two kilos of turkey, a big potato bake, roast veggies, brussel sprouts with bacon, grilled zucchini, minted peas, and carrots, with my own apple sauce, and gravy using all of the pork drippings :)  It was pretty epic, but for forty people it was *just* enough food.  Still, everyone seemed happy, even though the turkey was a little dry on top because I forgot to put foil over it for the first part. 

We didn't get home til lunch time today.  I was a bit tired this afternoon so didn't get a whole lot done.  I did finally finish watching through Monty Python series four, so I've now half watched all of it, although it really is rather silly.

Tonight we just watched Voyager, and the new Ghost in the Shell, which I could actually follow, on account of it being dumbed down for American audiences, and me.

And just like that the weekend is over.  Sad times.

I could really get used to four day weekends!

Friday night we watched Innerspace, since we didn't manage to see it last weekend.

Saturday we walked around Palmerville, and we watched Airport in the evening.

Sunday we went food shopping at the markets.  Saigon Street Food was closed, so we went to Heng Hing.  It was all a little overwhelming.  The door by the mushroom doesn't have a clear path to the counters, you have to weave your way through tightly-packed tables.  And the ordering system is information overload with pictures all over the walls.  I found it all quite stressful.  The food was nice enough though.

In the evening Stu thought we could find something to watch on Netflix, but it took so long we gave up and went to bed without watching anything.

Monday the sweetie and I both took the day off.  I cooked roast beef with an epic veggie bake of zucchini, carrot, cauliflower and broccoli and then we watched Gladiator.

Today I did cheesy hash browns for brunch and made up a batch of Anzac biscuits in the afternoon.  The first batch didn't have a chance to get cold..

And other than that I've been gluing lots of little paper triangles.  And fighting with MovableType.  But I do have a new blog coming soon, stay tuned!

We've had a pretty quiet week.  We did go down to Kit's for a little while last night though which was nice.

This morning we got up relatively early .. scratch that.. Stu got up relatively early .. I'd been awake since 5:30am on account of having a sore spine from our dumb mattress.  Anyway.  Got ready and went to the farmers markets.  I actually find the farmer's markets somewhat stressful - too many crowds and too many transactions to get stuff from multiple vendors.  We had pies before we started, which were stressful in themselves due to having nowhere comfortable to sit to eat them.

Did a load of linen washing, fixed the hinge in the laundry door (the pin had almost worked its way out), and fought with our network for ages.  I still can't get the NAS working on the Cisco switch (which turns out to be unmanaged, so can't see any sort of logs), and one of the network cameras (which I swear was working this morning) is also being a poo.

Went to Coles in the afternoon and remembered why I hate it so much - there's still no trolley bays in much of the car park, so you have to walk your trolley all the way back into the shopping centre to get your money back.  Fills me with so much rage.

Got invited over to EffanC's, but we're still potentially contagious, so decided not to go.

Have been resizing holiday photos, but geotagging is super painful due to our super awful internet right now.  Our SNR Margin is 15.  Our loop attenuation is 66.  According to Draytek our internet shouldn't work at all....

Well not much really.

Wednesday night we ran the trivia night which was pretty well attended and enjoyed.  Only two questions that noone got right, but twenty-three that *everyone* got right - whoops!

Thursday had a training day which I always find a bit draining, but learnt some things, even if I won't get much exposure to them in real life.

Friday night we had dinner at Hero Sushi and did some clothes shopping.  The girl at City Chic was quite nice and unthreatening which made the whole process of clothes shopping not *completely* stressful.  And only spent nearly $300 on four items.  Hrmmmmmmm!!  (Vinnies was *much* better value!!)

The weekend was pretty much just *getting things done*.  Had dinner at Annie's last night, but really the weekend was just getting things done that hadn't been gotten done on account of trivia nights and stuff...

Tonight we watched some Voyager, and Particle Fever, which was pretty interesting.

And I made a zucchini bake using one of Serena's epic zucchinis

Late Thursday afternoon Ben invited us over for dinner (lamb roast, with Serena's awesome gravy) so that was nice.

Friday night we watched a German movie - Look Who's Back - about what might happen if Hitler existed in modern day Germany.  It's labelled a comedy, and yes there are some funny moments, but it was all just a bit *scary* for me about the possibility of history repeating itself.

Saturday morning we headed out to Fyshwick to go to Material Pleasures to see if I could get some clothes for this boat trip we're going on.  Except the place was shut down until Monday for Christmas.  So that was a waste of a trip.  So we went to Hardly Normal to look at vacuum cleaners.  Except every fricken cordless vacuum cleaner comes with a roller brush head that would get tangled up instantly with my hair.  So that was all very frustrating.

Came home and just did a bit of house stuff.  Not much, just taking down Christmas decorations. 

This morning I woke up at around 3am and I've been awake ever since.  Stressing about vacuum cleaners (the one Stu is looking at is basically a glorified dustbuster, which I can't see how would be any improvement on the vacuum cleaner we already have, aside from easing the hurdle of actually *starting*), and that my bowels hurt (I think I'm dying).

Sigh.

New Year's Eve night we had Ben and EffanC over.  Hung out in the pool for a few hours, ate lots of cheese, then came up and watched Ghost in the Shell (I had no idea what was going on) and then most of the second season of the Katering Show, then watched the Sydney fireworks.  We paced ourselves nicely and had a lovely evening.

Today was just trying to catch up on life (I'm nearly done with the year in review post) then the hoardes descended - all of Stu's family came over and there was much loudness and chaos.  Annie brought a banquet of Turkish food, although I ended up eating very little of it.  

After everyone left we had Ben over for a relaxing swim to destress.

So 2016. Not too bad a year for me personally. But memorable for a spate of celebrity deaths (two I'd seen in real life - David Bowie and Carrie Fisher) and two overseas trips.

My first trip of the year was by myself to Sydney to see mum and the uncles/aunties for a Christmas party in early January where I cooked a big baked dinner for everyone. Also saw two Lego exhibitions on the same day while I was up there. Came home from that trip to a pool party in full swing. In January we did a two week trip to Hong Kong (to see Chris and Anne one last time there before they came home) and Singapore. The weather was the biggest downer of the trip - grey and rainy in Hong Kong, and unbearably humid in Singapore. In April we went to Sydney again for my cousin Ben's wedding. Later in April I went to Europe for six weeks with mum. The first two weeks was for a "reformation tour" of sites pertaining to the protestant reformation. That was a really interesting trip and a good group of people. Had a couple of days in Salzburg before heading up to Scandanavia for a three week tour. We saw some amazing things on that tour, but the size of the group (forty people) made it incredibly draining for me. In June mum and I went down to Junee to visit David and celebrate mum's 70th birthday. We only went down to the coast once this year in July. And we did our yearly trip to Queensland, but in November, which was a lot later in the year than I wanted to (Stu had uni work making it to hard to go any earlier). Fortunately the weather wasn't *too* hot and humid.

At work my most interesting work was some firewall migrations. Our first attempt in the test environment though was a bit of a disaster. It took the cleverer network guys about a month to solve a super weird MTU issue in the switch infrastructure they were plugged into. After that, the migrations went very smoothly. I also did an authentication system migration which also went well. So the first half of the year I was pretty busy and the work was interesting. In the second half of the year though I had to deal with the proxies again which drains my will to live. Is there actually such a thing as a *good* proxy? I'm beginning to think not. They caused me a lot of stress this year, including *three* failed attempts to upgrade them to the lastest version. Other than that I was feeling way too dumb to be in the team I'm in. But things picked up towards the end of the year with another firewall migration that went pretty smoothly and a stocktake, which is kind of my super power.

Socially at work I ran another trivia night in March which was packed. We won the next trivia night in June, but luckily the second place getters agreed to run the next one. Which we then won in September, so now I have to run the next one. Had a Gatsby ball in June, although I didn't get with the theme. Had a whiskey night in July. And for our section Christmas party (with various hangers on) I organised a bbq for nearly 40 people.

Healthwise I've been ok. I find lying down uncomfortable due to my deformed spine, which results in a lot of insomnia due to not being comfortable. Early in the year I did some proactive stuff that I'd been putting off forever - I got my skin checked, went to the dentist for the first time in twenty years and got new glasses. I got a minor cold in July, and a more severe one in November.

We've had a super social year this year. We've continued our visits to "the club", going to events and committee meetings in February, March, June, did a Christmas in July, October, twice in November (one of them we fed seventy-plus people) and December. My best friend from high school Chris moved down to Canberra at the end of last year so we've seen quite a bit of her - either dinners here, there, or out, or just going for walks (she lives in stumbling distance which is super handy!). We've also spent a lot of time with Kit, and also Ben and Serena - mostly just hanging out in the courtyard, but the occasional parties, meals as well, and even a p0ker night. Ben moved into a new place earlier in the year and we had a small housewarming there. I did an impromptu hanami party with Chris, Kit and Serena, and another one a week later with Nat and Andrew and the sweetie. Unfortunately that was the only time we saw Nat and Andrew all year. We've seen quite a bit of EffanC and Scott this year as well which as been nice - alternating between our places and enjoying champagne or a local equivalent. We had games nights at Mishi's in July and August. Also caught up with Damien and Amanda at the Dumpling Inn, and Damien and Tom at the Durham on a trivia night. Managed to see Ding twice this year, although the second time was a lot more chaotic with a heap of people in the house. Luc came to stay a night in March, Stu's ex colleague Jenn came for dinner, and we had an afternoon tea at Chris and Glenda's.

Dave and Kat came to stay with us five times this year which was great - in February, April, August, November and December. Mum stayed in June and December. Kerry and the kids dropped in in April, and Potty and Jake came to stay a night on the way to the snow and ended up staying for several nights. Didn't see much of Annie's family, only saw them a couple of times. Graham and Pam came to stay in April as well, and we went to the Dumpling Inn for dinner. Uncle Colin dropped in to say hi in December.

Various people came to swim in the pool in the summer months. For Christmas we did roast pork for Mum, Dave, Kat, Chris and Zac.

In the fish tanks I had four baby angels at the beginning of the year but three of them died. One of them survived, and it shares the AR-620T tank with four huge danios and a cory catfish. The two foot tank was a disaster at the end of last year with toxic black algae. I moved the fish downstairs over summer and cleaned it out completely. The black algae did start to come back, but with a bunch of plants, snails and a siamensis the tank has stabilised nicely and looks really good. The two remaining black neon tetras died this year - but they'd had a good run - I'd had them for ten years!! Amazing for such small fish. I bought some danios to be dither fish for the rummy nose tetras which worked really well - you can see them and their colour a lot better now. So in the upstairs two foot I have the five rummy nose tetras, five danios and a siamensis. Downstairs I had four of Chris's platies that I looked after while she moved house, but three of them died so there's only one left now. It shares the tank with four danios. Stu also has a tiny tank with a betta and some really small fish, and his four foot which got overrun with algae for a while but it's settled down a bit now.

I did a 5000 piece jigsaw this year which was good, but the quality of it was shocking. Did other jigsaws as well, but not as many this year. I've been doing a lot of nonograms online ever since the GCHQ Christmas puzzle last year. And just a couple of days ago I rediscovered Loops of Zen. I didn't buy any Lego this year, but I did spend a couple of months sorting out all of Zac's Lego.

The weather was *hot* this year. Summer seemed to last *forever* this year - global warming anyone? Made good use of the pool, but suffered in the heat. Had a lot of heat-induced insomnia and generally felt miserable for months. We got some hail in January. The pool only froze over twice this year in late June. It actually snowed one morning in July, but then a week later had the warmest overnight July temperature in recorded history. The El Niño finished up and it rained *a lot* over winter and spring.

We did a lot of stuff with the house this year. We got all the guttering replaced (while I was overseas). No more flooding of the garage after heavy rain! We got gutter guards in one corner where the oak tree is, but probably should have gotten them along the back as well, as one end still clogs up from that tree. Our twenty five year old hot water system died in the middle of winter, luckily a plumber could come the same day to replace it. The same plumber came a month or so later to clear out the sewer pipes which had been blocked by roots. We put evaporative cooling in which has been amazing for the most part, except this whole Christmas break which feels like the humidest week in Canberra ever! And we got a solar blanket for the pool (basically glorified bubble wrap) which has made a small difference to the temperature, but also has added bonuses of keeping most of the light out so algae doesn't grow as much, and keeps most of the leaves and bugs out as well.

I got a bit frustrated with technology this year. Had to fight with Logitech's Harmony remote software again. In the end never got it working with our tv. Upgraded my computer to Windows 10, which actually went ok, but had some drama with Windows Defender, and got sick of it rebooting without permission whenever it feels like it. I thought I'd bricked my iPhone because the battery got so dead it wouldn't turn on, even after charging overnight. Warming it up fixed it. Did this several more times over the next few months before finally replacing the battery in late November. I would like to get an iPhone 7, but I want one as small as I have now. Still having issues with the scanner, but still haven't gotten around to testing it on another computer to see if it's the computer or the scanner. And this blog got moved to new hardware by my hosting company so it's a lot more responsive now.

The Dumpling Inn was still our most visited restaurant this year. We went for Chrissie's birthday, again with Pam and Graham, again with Chrissie, with Chris and mum in June, and Damien and Amanda in July. I finally got to go to Smoque in Civic, fortunately, because it closed down later in the year. I went with Neil to a degustation dinner at Sage which was awesome. We went to Shogun for Ben's birthday, The Hungry Buddha with EffanC and Scott, and Casey Jones with Annie and the family for my birthday. With the sweetie we had dessert at Max Brenner in Civic, went to Chong Co, and tried Jamie's Italian and Pappa Rich. Generally we didn't eat out as much this year - trying to save a bit of money. Although we still had a lot of pizza! And bacon and cheese loaded fries from Maccas. omfg sooo good! Sadly the last time I tried to get some they didn't have them anymore :(

I didn't do a whole lot of creative cooking this year. I did make some cream cheese bacon balls which are so evil they're amazing. I made "epic" stuffed zucchini. I made some cheese and spinach pastries with some pastry inherited from Kerry before they moved which turned out pretty well. I did a zucchini lasagna. And a I tried a couple of different breakfast casseroles - one pretty evil and I made it a few times, and one I wasn't too fussed about.

Theatre/Shows/Exhibitions:
* Art of the Brick Exhibition in Sydney
* Sydney Icons in Lego in Sydney
* The Proclaimers

Movies:
* Sherlock - The Abominable Bride
* The Big Short
* Whiskey Tango Foxtrot
* Independence Day: Resurgence
* Finding Dory
* Star Trek: Beyond
* Rogue One

TV:
* Finished the last seasons of House
* Season 1 of Fuller House
* Documentaries on Netflix
* First four seasons of Homeland
* Most of Star Trek: the Original Series
* Australian Survivor
* Start of season 2 of Fuller House

Books:
* The Tower by Richard Martin Stern
* The Hindenburg Disaster by Jeff Rovin
* Raise the Titanic! by Clive Cussler
* Grey Mountain by John Grisham
* Penguin Bloom by Cameron Bloom and Bradley Trevor Greive

Other Stuff:
* Started off year with an impromptu neighbourhood party at Kit's
* Didn't dance on Lachie's table
* Saddened by deaths of David Bowie, Alan Rickman, Prince, Gene Wilder, Kenny Baker, George Michael, Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds, and the end of the world as we know it, ie, the US presidential election results.
* Went to the Mint open day
* Went to Canberra's new Ikea for first time
* Went to the Canberra Show with Chrissie
* Watched Das Rheingold with the sweetie, but still haven't gotten around to watching the rest of it
* Saw the Canberra balloon fiesta - twice
* Digitised my USA 2000 blog, although still haven't added photos to it
* Did the Granite Tors walk with Kit, nearly trod on a brown snake
* Ben and Stu fixed up the festoon lights out the back (only took seven and a half years to get around to doing!)
* Went to the Canberra Airport open day
* Installed Windows 10 on my travel laptop and my main computer
* Scanned ten of mum's photo albums
* Voted twice, but only got one #democracysausage
* Went out to Cotter Dam in August to see it overflowing, and went back again a week or two later to get it with better lighting
* Did a flying visit to Sydney in August to drop Stu off at the airport early Sunday morning, and saw the Sea Cliff Bridge on the way home
* Chrissie brought up her steam cleaner and made the bathroom all sparkly
* Saw James Turrell's Skyspace at the Art Gallery
* Kept myself busy in September with a massive photo project
* Popped into the War Memorial for an hour to look at the newly done WWI memorial halls
* Saw the first flight from Singapore to Canberra land, and the first flight from Canberra to Wellington depart
* Went to Costco for the second time. I think Coles and Aldi are actually cheaper.
* Did a massive photoshoot around Canberra to compare thirty years ago til now
* Photographed the super moon
* Spent several days over the break cleaning out cupboards

Way back in April we headed up to Sydney for my cousin Ben's wedding.  It was a very relaxed afternoon and evening and it was great catching up with the cousins.

We stayed the night at Oxford Falls nearby, and as we went to leave the next morning we discovered this..

Fortunately we weren't in any hurry and the weather was fine, so it was a relatively low stress thing to fix.  And our spare tire is a full tire, not one of those stoopid mini tires with an 80km/h speed limit which would have made our trip home pretty painful.