See 2020. Rinse and repeat. Another crazy crazy year. Wondering if life will *ever* get back to any sort of normal.

Our year started out at the club with friends. It likely would have finished there too. Except Omicron. So it is going to just be the two of us for a lovely quiet night.

Life for the first seven and a half months in Canberra was actually relatively normal. Then in mid August (two days before my birthday) someone tested postive (thanks Delta) and we got put into a snap seven day lockdown. That lasted a couple of months. For us it meant the bliss of not having to go into the office. Things did start to open up again in October/November/December but case numbers here and in NSW and Victoria are higher than ever right now due to Omicron (the numbers are staggering - 21000 per day in NSW at the past couple of days - twenty times higher than at the peak of Delta.  462 today in Canberra - it's basically been doubling every couple of days, and now also ten times higher than Delta). We got put into lockdown in August for one case, yet now we have hundreds of cases per day but there's basically no restrictions other than having to wear a mask indoors. Craziness. I mean sure, 98.5% of 12+ year olds are fully vaccinated here, but most of us haven't had boosters yet. Stu and I plan to hide from people as much as possible over the coming weeks.

We couldn't go overseas in 2021, so our only travel was within NSW. We went to the coast to Kit and Pete's for Pete's birthday in March. We got to see their new house, went for a drive to the coast, had a ride on Elle, went out for Pete's birthday, went to Myrtle Beach, and saw Old Blotchy on the way home. We also visted them in May for Kit's birthday, going to Mollymook for lunch and having snacks and drinks by the fire in the evening. In April we had a five day long weekend over our anniversary and went to Bathurst, Lithgow, Newnes, Glen Davis, Gulgong and Dubbo. We tempted fate by having Mum come down at Christmas, and went to Junee on Boxing Day to visit David. The tour company we'd booked Oberammergau through was being difficult, so in the end we cut out losses and cancelled our trip with them. I booked tickets for the show itself later next year, and if things work out we'll plan a trip around it closer to the date. We're still desperately trying to get out of a cruise out of Florida early next year, but again, the tour company is being buttheadful and are refusing any sort of refund. Our only hope is that the whole thing is cancelled and we can get our money back. Come on Omicron, you can do this!

At work I did an awful lot of *cleaning*. Tidying things up, documenting, deleting old crap. Helped shut down an old environment and migrated to new firewalls. A floor shuffle in April meant an annoyingly loud team moved in next to us which was all sorts of stressful. But then another floor shuffle in July moved us away. Rereading blog entries for most of the year it was amazing how stressed out I was just having to go into the office. Things were so much nicer from August once in lockdown. In October we had a farewell lunch for someone at the Lighty - which was the first time I'd seen any of my colleagues in person in two and a half months. Went back into the office to work for a day a week in November. I did a whole heap of overtime from October to December doing upgrades and migrations. There was a whiksy night in June, and we had "virtual" drinks a couple of times during lockdown. We tempted fate and had our usual Christmas bbq by the lake (in the rain!).

Healthwise, the main problem for me is still bouts of insomnia every so often. I thought I might have been getting sick in April but fought it off. I got my vaccines in June, with basically no side-effects at all, other than a sore arm, and perhaps a sore neck a couple of weeks later (both times). We both got colds in July, probably from someone at the club the previous weekend. Stu got tested (negative), I didn't bother, I just isolated.

Our biggest change in home life this year was David getting a job driving freight trains out of Cootamundra, so he moved out in January. Mum came down at Easter and Christmas to visit both us, and David in Junee. We saw David for about half an hour in February, and he came and stayed the night before the air show. I finally got to meet Kellie, who I found out about in about August. A lovely, thoughtful person who has a lot of the same thought processes/opionions/life outlook as me - freaky! We saw Stu's family a few times during the year including a couple of visits by Immy to see Stumpy, an afternoon tea at Annie's in October (first human contact we'd had with any of our friends/family in two months), a visit in November, and Christmas afternoon with them. We saw a bit of the N-Gang, although not so much as previous years. There was Rob's 51st in May, dinner at EffanC's in June, a couple of virtual drinks with EffanC during lockdown, and dinner with all those guys at Hachiko in July and Indian Pantry in October. I was feeling like noone liked me in July, but these guys reminded me I do have some pretty great friends. Who needs stinking young people anyway. We had brunch with Kit in June when she was up, and had Kit stay overnight in November - first time she'd been here in probably nearly two years, and the two visits to their place as well. Jenn came over a couple of times in February and July (the latter for an Indian feast that Stu cooked). CRD came over for dinner in February, and we had her at the club a couple of times too.

At our social club we went out for most of the social functions in the first half of the year (except April because we were in Dubbo). There was Robert's Chinese New Year feast in February, Matt & Michelle's Mexican feast in March, Italian night in May, Ian and Chris's anniversary dinner in June, and we did Christmas in July. CRD came out with us in May, and I did some more priming of the cabinetry. I haven't done any more tho because we've just had so little free time. There was a bbq in late October which was the first time we'd been since lockdown, and we went a week later as well for the working bee. Then for Rob and Fiona's Christmas party in late November.

I got a massive amount done on my photos this year. Early in the year I thought I was done doing fixup scans of Dad's slides, but as I started processing them I realised how bad a lot of them still were. So I spent the rest of the year (well, from March to October) redoing them *again*. Even then, a lot of the early ones still have lots of fluff on them, but I'm kinda over it now, and they can stay as they are now. I did come up with CLI commands (in Excel) to add a whole heap of exif data into his slides. If he went to the trouble of recording the aperture, shutter and F stop, then why not add it into the data files! I also have commands to add the date (if known) and captions for them. I've started (well restarted for some of them) processing them with aforementioned scripts and cropping/colour correcting, but it's still a lot of work to try and sort out the mess he's made combining things that probably shouldn't have been combined, not to mention geotagging them as I go ;) I'm basically happy with 18 boxes so far, which is about 10% of the way through them all. If I'm lucky I'll be finally finished mid next year. Just in time to start scanning Mum's negatives which started in 1983 :) I won't be scanning all of Mum's negatives that's for sure - just the ones I care about, such as holidays and family photos. A lot of the early prints are pretty crap and discoloured. In the first week of January I started labelling my Eurasia 2012 photos. At five hundred per week it was going to take most of the year. But I did it! Twenty four and a half thousand photos in eleven months. In fact I actually finished one day early :) I had a play with some gallery generating apps, and even got my USA 2000 photos online with it. The main blocker for getting more online (other than time) is deciding where to host it (likey it'll just stay on my current host), but also how to integrate it with the blog. Seems silly to have two different sites that are very similar yet one has just highlights and the other has almost everything. Because it also means the gallery doesn't have the blog detail. It's a bit of a dilema. I finished filing all my club photos into directories by event/category. One of these days they might go into some sort of club archive, but need to get permission from people first. I spent months on and off tagging people in work photos with Picasa. Still not sure how to get that data into a useful format, but at least the data is there. Still need to get Wello and Ray over to help me tag people I don't know. I also realised only last week that I hadn't been backing up the Picasa DB directories, so if my C: drive had died I would have lost all that work - yikes!

Fish. So many baby fish! I got five platies in January - first time I'd ever had platies. They had some babies, of which two survived to adulthood, but all five original ones died, so I currently just have the two babies left. Stu's tank is still overgrown with algae, but I have a solution to that - guppies!! The two foot I have upstairs (and now the one downstairs as well) is basically algae free, which I put down to having so many guppies in those tanks. So as babies (so many babies!) get big enough, I'm transferring them to other tanks, including the big one, to work on the algae.
Inventory:
Angel tank (the 620T): 1 ancient cory, 2 platies that were born in that tank (the twins!), 1 zebra danio, 2 guppies
Two foot: guppies! - a bunch of adults that we mostly got a year ago, and a tonne of babies. Some of the juveniles have been moved to other tanks
Four foot: 14 congo tetras, about half a dozen guppies I moved in fairly recently, some suckers (we think), a loach (sadly his siamensis friend died recently)
Chrissie tank: 2 clown loaches and a sucker (really need to move that medium sized sucker into the angel tank and bring one of the little ones up from downstairs, because Chrissie's big sucker in the angel tank died)
Downstairs two foot: four adult males, two adult females, and a tonne of babies, and two small suckers
Nursery tank: a few babies and juveniles, including a couple of very pretty spotted ones I'm hoping will be female
Other one foot tanks: more guppies
Stumpy is still doing well. I do think he got hungry earlier this year though. And now at the height of summer he's barely coming out at all. Silly lizard :)

No Lego building this year. We (David) moved the four-baseplate mosaic into the hallway so Stu could have the wall back for his things. I had a play with Gimp for making Lego mosaics (you feed it the colours you have in stock into a pallette file, then apply that pallette to your photo - voila! Mosaic pattern!), but haven't actually made one yet. I wanted to make one this break. Maybe I still will. If I can think of a picture that would work. I had some fun playing with Lego Digital Designer to continue working on the Lego model of our house. I got pretty much all the main floor done, but got stuck when it came to doing the roof design. The slope of the roof matches approximately a 1:4 slope brick, which you can get, but you can't get corner pieces, so doing corners would be messy. Might have to look into making the roof slops with plates/tiles. I still really haven't done any more work sorting out Vic's Lego. It just got too time consuming and depressing (because so much of it was missing). I did spend a bit of time sorting/constructing minifigs (so we can get the dungeon room back) but that was short-lived too. I might spend another couple of weekends trying to finalise another few sets, then just give up and start buying Lego to replace what's missing. Because after that is the really fun part - actually building sets.

This year was a year for *big* jigsaws. I did three sections of the Disney Behemoth - Dumbo, Snow White and Fantasia. Only one section to go now. I could have gotten it done by Christmas but it's very distracting and I had a tonne of other things that needed doing. Did a bunch of jigsaws at work too, although a lot slower on account of not being there as much (or at all). David and I made a 3D jigsaw model of the Titanic at Easter. I'm totally drooling over the Lego Titanic. I reckon I could do it, wait for it to not be on sale anymore, then sell it, and probably make a profit. Maybe I'll keep an eye out for sales ;) Very slow progress on the paint by numbers I got last Christmas. The main blocker there is the difficulty just *seeing* it - even with reading glasses I still need a magifying glass to see the tiny numbers. I took the plunge and bought myself a clarinet in September. I've been practising most days, but I still really struggle with bridging the register and the upper register notes. And reading music. I'm ok with the notes but not the tempo, so really struggle with playing music I don't know the tune to already.

Tech. Our NAS power supply died in March (someone let the smoke out). Stu bought a new one and replaced it himself. At some point we should probably get something more modern (with a higher version of SMB). The E: drive died in my computer, and since it was nine years old decided to get a new one. Haven't used it much but it seems pretty snappy. Continued frustration with Apple. Apple decided after one update this year to arrange all photos on the phone by month. This was great! But in the next update they reverted to a thousand photos per folder. And it's *still* messing with the datestamps on my photos. Hate Apple. Hate. Other purchases. Had to get new jeans. Eventually found some that are mediocre. Hating the fact that they don't make girls jeans with decent pockets. We also got a frame made (online) for my last paint by numbers, but the mounting bracket was mounted off-centre. Sigh.

Around the house. Had a lot of frustration at the beginning of the year with bathroom sealer companies not getting back to me. Eventually got a shower sealing company to come have a look. They confirmed loose tiles/cracked grout, but wouldn't replace them because there's asbestos in the walls. We bought a new mattress and then a new frame. King size which is great, but ultimately disappointed with it all. We watched a bunch of videos from Solar Quotes, but a year later we still haven't done anything about solar. Before winter I was doing a little bit of weeding, and got back into it when it warmed up. I make piles and piles, but everything grows back faster than I can get rid of it. I'm really really looking forward to getting green and organic waste pickups every week. It'll be easier to stay on top of garden waste, and our regular bin might go out like once every six months instead of every month or so like it does now.

Didn't eat out much this year. We did go to Ramen O a few times, and Koku Super Kare a couple of times, but would be good for both of those to have a cheaper, smaller lunchtime option. I went to Herbert's a few times, mostly with Tony and/or the Chrises and Neil. The sweetie and I tried KorBQ in the mall for our last work lunch together. We went to Pizza Artigiana once, and Dumpling Inn seems to be closed permanently which is sad. Had brunch with Annie at The District in April. We had Chong Co in May, and delivery from them a couple of times. Had brunch with Kit at Stellas by the Lake in June (it's no longer Black Pepper). Went with EffanC and R&F to Hachiko in July and Indian Pantry in October (which was our first outing post lockdown). Had Charnie's Noodle and Dumplings delivery in November, which was somewhat underwhelming, and Sichuan Chinese takeaway a couple of times in December, which is expensive but nice. Subway did a "cheesy garlic bread" (garlic butter, plus extra cheese) for a while which was awesome.

Cooking-wise, tried a few new things and some old favourites. There was zucchini spaghetti early in the year from some epic zucchinis we got from Con. I tried oven baked feta pasta (Uunifetapasta) from Tik Tok which wasn't too bad (but all that feta is way too salty for my blood pressure). I had a go at replicating Dominos puff pastry pepperoni and feta pizza. It was almost identical to the Dominos version - so amazing. But did someone say something about salt and blood pressure? We had Cath's crumbed basa a couple of times. I tried Ray's method of reheating pizza - frying it in a little oil with the lid on. OMFG this was so good - even better than it eating it fresh. Had that 80s deep pan vibe about it. Sooo good. I had a go at san choy bow in September which worked pretty well (Chris only has iceberg lettuce, so thought I'd have a go at doing something with that since I hadn't been to Coles in forever). I made meat jelly rice a few times - to use up meat jelly that you can't think of a better use for, mix with water and rice to make quite a flavourful rice. I experimented with slow cooker lamb roast (which I tried at the club for Christmas in July but only managed a mouthful of it because the rest of it got snapped up by everyone - I *think* it was really good?? :) ), and also slow cooker turkey (the first time it was fairly dry; it was better the second go but really works better with fattier meat). I made three new things from my Women's Weekly Gratins and Bakes book - Seafood Mornay Lasagna (expensive and fiddly and, well, seafoody), Spaghetti Rosa Bake (nice, but spaghetti is messy), Penne Arribbiata Bake (good, even with anchovies, and easy enough that I've done it a few times). We got a few nice strawberries off our strawberry plants, and there's chillis coming. I made a couple of different lemon cheesecakes in February and March, and combined them to come up with a definitive, easy to make recipe (that I tried before Christmas) that I'll probably use moving forward. I made a rocky road in February. I made Not Quite Nigella's mint slice in August, which was pretty good so made it again for Christmas.

And now for the lists!

Theatre/Shows/Exhibitions
* Hamilton (on Disney+ so you may not want to count it ;) )

Movies (at the Movies)
* Penguin Bloom

Movies (TV - not all movies, but I've included series)
* Studio Ghibli movies
* Honey I Shrunk the Kids series
* A whole heap of true stories and spy movies, which is what Stu tends to pick when it's his turn
* The Poseidon Adventure (saw the remake at some point earlier, the original is way better)
* Some old Australian movies - Playing Beatie Bow, Gallipoli, The Shiralee
* Fantasia 2000 a few times, and Fantasia
* Nanny McPhee 1 and 2
* The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel 1 and 2
* Snow White original and remake
* Dan Brown series
* Some Bette Midler movies
* Some Tom Hanks movies
* The Matrix trilogy
* Die Hard 1 and 2 and Love Actually in December

TV
* Discovery (finished season 3)
* The Simpsons (started off in season 5, ended up nearly finished season 19)
* The X-Files (seasons 1, 2 and a bit of 3)
* Laid Back Camp (seasons 1 and 2)
* Hibike! Euphonium (seasons 1 and 2)
* Encore!
* Amazing Race Australia
* Lego Masters
* A Place Further than the Universe
* The Surgeon's Cut
* Aircrash Confidential
* Alfred Hitchcock Presents (a bit of it)
* Human: The World Within
* Pandemic
* Diagnosis
* Brides of Christ
* The Movies that Made Us
* Air Crash Investigations (some recent seasons I hadn't seen)
* Love on the Spectrum
* Connected
* How the Mind Works
* Lie to Me (season 1 and most of season 2)
* You Can't Ask That (seasons 1 to 6)
* Sex Education (seasons 1 and 2)

Books
* Heartache and Birdsong by Sam Bloom, Cameron Bloom and Bradley Trevor Greive
* To Catch a King by Harry Patterson
* Seizure by Kathy Reichs
* Doctor No by Ian Fleming

Other stuff
* neighbourhood dog barked nonstop for hours on end for months. It make me super cranky all last summer break and well into the new year
* scanned a whole heap of stuff in the filing cabing
* Disney+ launched "Star" with a whole heap of new content it could take me a lifetime to watch
* saw the RAAF 100th Anniversary airshow which was pretty amazing
* went down to Lake Burley Griffin for a wander round with the sweetie on Easter Monday
* saw my magpies throughout the year
* voted for and listened to ABC Classic FM's top 100 "Music You Can't Live Without"
* had to start wearing masks indoors for two weeks in June - my first time was in July for seeing my dentist. I continued wearing a mask in the mall even though I didn't have to, because you can't trust people to stay home when they're sick.
* snap 7 day lockdown in August that lasted three months
* had a lovely quiet birthday at home with nice food and hobbies and had Chong Co delivered
* we were in an exposure site the Wednesday before the lockdown, but didn't find out until Wednesday a week later. Had to get tested but it meant only a week of full lockdown at home. It was a good thing I'd done a big food shop that morning. The Saturday after that we got an sms from Canberra health that we'd been in an exposure site - literally a week and a half after we'd been there. Fricken hopeless.
* I missed the earthquake! (in September)
* in September I found out the super annoying yappy staffies down the road killed each other. No more annoying barking!!!!
* the first of October was an epic news day. 52 covid cases recorded - highest ever in Canberra for one day. ScoMo announced opening of international borders a lot sooner than we first thought. Gladys resigned.
* saw the remains of Floriade in Belconnen, but missed out on seeing it sans-crowds in Commonwealth Park
* would often go three weeks between Coles shops during the lockdown, getting essentials at Chris's
* went to the online funeral for Win Cartan. Still annoyed I didn't get to see them when I was at church in early 2019. Oh well, will see them in heaven soon enough.
* planted sunflowers across the road. One sprouted and is still going (last I looked)
* petrol prices hit an all time high in November
* mask mandate reintroduced just before Christmas (I reckon it should have been weeks earlier)

So there we have it. Another epic year. And for once I have this review done *before* the end of the year! It took *hours* :) Have a happy and safe new year. Get your booster. Eat less. Drink less. Sing. Floss. Stretch. Dance. Wear sunscreen.

This entry will likely get photos in a few days, so check back then :)

Tuesday.  28th.  Woke up at ~2am with hurty then stayed awake til like 5am.  So a slow and grumpy morning.  Mum went home.  Stu didn't sleep well either so we though we'd get food from the Scottish Restaurant for breakfast.  The queue was super slow moving.  And there were no eggs.  wtf??  So I'm like, can you put a hash brown in the muffins instead of an egg but she couldn't comprehend that, and I could barely understand her accent and a truck pulled up with a delivery making a lot of noise so making it even worse.  So I eventually get to pay but couldn't get a receipt because she said the printer wasn't working, and she said I could ask at the next window.  So I asked at the pickup window, but they say they can't print receipts for drive though.  FFS.  Then when I got home, the neighbour was trying to get her car out so I had to back out onto the street but there were cars coming so we all had to wait.  Finally get inside, of course there's no hash browns.  I bet we've still been charged for eggs but we'll never know because there was no receipt.  Fricken hopeless.  So I was tired and now even more cranky, and then the neighbour was running the little digger machine he's hired which makes this drone that goes on and on and has been going most of the break.  Epic #grunt.  Tried to catch up on All The Things but it was slow going.  I found a directory of 800+ work photos that I thought I'd tagged but apparently hadn't.  Cooked up some veggies to have with leftover turkey for dinner. 

Wednesday.  Slept relatively well which was a relief, so I could finally get stuck into my holiday.  In the morning I spent some time on things that I want to do every day to chip away at.  Then the afternoon was blogging and copying files.  USB 3 is a whole lot faster than USB 2, who knew? ;)  (I did but it's quite nice).  With omicron in the wild we'd been pretty dubious about going to the club at New Years, but then we found out from someone that there's actually heaps of people at the club, including a bunch from Sydney, so that made the decision for us.  Made creamy pasta for dinner.  The green stuff was a half-hearted attempt to pretend to be healthy!

Thursday.  Another day of doing All The Things, including some of the daily stuff, and got our Dubbo holiday blogged.  Lamb roast for dinner and finished season 2 of Sex Education.

Friday.  Today!  Last day of the year!  Spent ages processing box 18 of Dad's slides (this one he'd mixed three trips to the Blue Mountains together, and two trips to Kurnell, and only a few of them dated, so had to figure out which ones were which and guestimate dates).  Also looks like he hadn't dated any of his slides from late 1962, all through 1963, and into 1964.  Fortunately with those he was still writing roll and frame number, so at least they can all be put into order.  Then spent the rest of the day (pretty much) writing my year in review post.  The plan for the rest of the day is probably to do a few bits and pieces, including music practise, get Chong Co delivered for dinner (might need to get in a bit early) then try and stay awake til midnight, just need to find the right movie(s) that will keep us entertained ;)

Happy New Year!

Sunday.  12th.  Backdating because life got in the way, and then some.  BBQ leftovers for dinner.  Into season 2 of Sex Education.  Got my RSS feed down to 1.  1!!  (the pic I posted the other day).  I'd gotten heaps of stuff done around the house, but I was feeling super anxious about all the computer stuff I didn't get done over the weekend.

Look at all the lemon marmalade Stu made!

Monday.  Woke up at like 5:20 #grunt.  Ok day I guess.  I renewed Stu's domain name, booked a covid booster and bought a new computer.  Although nothing on the regular todo list - this was just catching up from stuff I should have done on the weekend.

Tuesday.  Dunno, I don't have any notes.  But here's a photo of Stumpy doing pushups.

Wednesday.  Spent all morning explaining to people how email works.  Le sigh.  Spent all afternoon doing all the doco for all the rules I deleted recently (and not many interruptions which was nice).  Then weeding, music, leftovers, work photo labelling and year in review reading.

Thursday.  At work, blerf.  We had a morning tea which sufficed for lunch, so I worked through lunch on the jigsaw in a push to get it finished just in case it was the last time I was in for the year.  And I did finish it!  Had a nice last drinks of the year, then pizza and tv.  Dominos was hit by a ram raid, which I thought was totally bizarre, I mean who even pays in cash anymore.  Still, it's one of the busiest Dominos stores in Australia, so if there was the one to get with even a small percentage of cash payments that'd be it.

Friday.  Helped with some prep for some Saturday work.  Die Hard 2 in the evening.  

Saturday.  A day of All The Things, and even some overtime.  Had quite a productive day, including making a lemon cheesecake, although my todo list is still years too long.  Matrix Revolutions in the evening.

Sunday.  Too stressed about everything to sleep.  And the storm certainly didn't help.  Woke up at 6:05 so decided to get up and go do some food shopping.  I was a bit slow getting everything put away, and then suddently it's mid morning.  hrmm.  I did get a litt bit of stuff done in the morning, and finished season 6 of You Can't Ask that at lunch.  Then in the afternoon I went down to Herbert's to join Tony and a bunch of his friends for an early birthday celebration for him.  The walk down was in the rain, but that didn't stop me from taking lots of photos of flowers.  There was some nice jazz music going at Herbert's, and a few of us went back to Tony's after for another drink (including a very green blackberry sour).

No notes for the evening, but I certainly didn't feel up to fighting with my phone and blogging.

Sunday.  28th. Backdating because I'm a slacker.  And my weekends are too short.  Just adding a few photos for the day.

Most expensive petrol I've ever seen in Australia

Finished decorating the Christmas tree on Sunday

And played with light

Monday.  29th.  Slept ok.  Finished doing the risk assessment for the bbq.  Did some planning for a new firewall.  After work was gardening and music and suddenly it's 18:30.  Ploughing through tagging people in work photos.  I want to get the first pass done by Christmas.  Along with everything else on my todo list.  

Did you know whitetail spiders will live in a container at least two weeks?  That's how long it took me to release the biggest whitetail I've ever seen.  So gross.

Tuesday.  Slept ok, although woke up early again for the second day in a row (~5:40am).  Spent most of the day auditing unneeded firewall rules.  It was 25C in the study by mid afternoon.  Stu decided it was hot enough to turn the cooler on.  Leftovers for dinner (Stu cooked while I did weeding and music practise).

Wednesday.  December.  How'd that happen??  Stu had to *go* to work which was no fun.  I spent a chunk of time helping someone with a problem, which if they'd followed my damned doco they wouldn't have had in the first place.  #grunt.  So many hours wasted.  It was a frozen pizza kind of an evening (although Chris didn't have any Doc Oc pizzas, so we had McCains).  Because all the weeding.  And Stu was exhausted after work.  It threatened to storm but never did, got like three drops of rain.  Then paying bills and doing All The Things like photo labelling and emailing people and sorting out backups and registering for rates by email (*again* because I'd done this previously but they stuffed up the whole system last year).  And I'm really really looking forward to weekly green bin pickups.  

Thursday.  Woke up at like 4:30am hrmmm. 

Did a whole bunch of deleting of rules in the afternoon which felt realy good.  Had Sichuan Chinese takeway for dinner.  It was very nice, but also very expensive, something like $66 for this.

Simpsons, X Files and first episode of season 1 of Sex Education.  We watched season 1 independently a while back (I think I might have watched it while recovering from having my appendix out), and I'd seen all of season 2, but Stu only got to see bits of season 2 when David binge watched it here.  So we're going back to the beginning to freshen up for season 3.  

Friday.  Another fairly early wakeup.  Finished up writing up my next round of deletions.  Did some doco in the afternoon.  Weeding and frozen dim sum for dinner.  Watched The Matrix in the evening.  Lolz www.whatisthematrix.com redirects to Matrix Resurresctions site.

Stu got a tea advent calendar for Christmas from Annie, so we've been working our way through it.  Not that I actually drink tea, but I've been trying all these.  Some are actually interesting.

Saturday.  Super productive morning cleaning and organising and stuff.  Not so productive in the afternoon.  Finished season 5 of You Can't Ask That.  During the week I started getting popups that I should run a chkdsk to fix some drive issues.  hrmmmm.  I finally decided to reboot and let it do it on Saturday afternoon.

Yep, it's rooted.

After the reboot there was a whole bunch of directories on that drive I couldn't actually get into at all anymore.

Fortunately it's my E: drive which only gets touched once a week when I process my photos for the week.  And I'd backed it up the night before it had a spack so I didn't lose anything.  So now the decision is, do I get a new drive, or a whole new computer.  Given my computer is over nine years old, I'm thinking new computer.  

Arribbiata bake for dinner, tv and Die Hard (it's Christmas!).

Sunday.  We were going to go shopping together at some point on the weekend, but with Omicron in the wild and only a few weeks til Christmas, I decided to play it safe and go shopping super early Sunday.  I also dropped into work to pickup the hard drive I'd last backed up my E: drive to, so I could copy it to another local location (so that I have copies in two physical locations).  All The Things in the morning.  Into season 6 of You Can't Ask That.  Cooked All The Food in the afternoon - roast chicken, beef cheeks, mince and a heap of veggies.  And blogged.  Just not the past week.

Sunday.  21st.  Backdating because I was just too busy last weekend.  Had slow cooked lamb shanks for dinner, and finally finished watching through Dug Days.  Then I watched Ciao Alberto.  If covid doesn't stop us I might be going "there" next year :)  Watched the first episode of Squid Game.  The english dub was super annoying, so put on the Korean subtitles, although that was annoying too because it felt the need to subtitle all the sound effects as well.

Monday. Ok day, did some cleaning.  Did some weeding after work although no music practise - making a final push to get the last five hundred-odd photos labelled this week.  Did 124 before dinner.  Dinner was some frozen dim sum pieces we got so we could use up the bucket of sweet and sour sauce we got with the Chinese we had the other night.  Finished labelling my quota by 19:17, but then kept going - doing 307 all up - all of day 53 - Sapporo to Tokyo.  Only 247 to go!!  Then watched Lie to Me and into season 5 of You Can't Ask That.

Tuesday.  Ok day, planning for more cleaning.  Started thinking about the risk assessment for our Christmas party.  Weeding, music, leftover mango chicken for dinner.  Then the final push to finish labelling photos from my Eurasia 2012 trip.  At 500 photos per week, I was schedule to finish Wednesday, but I was so close I pushed through and finished it Tuesday!  Twenty four and a half thousand photos labelled, taking nearly all year.  What an epic achievement :)  The flight from Sydney to Canberra on that trip was pretty cool - I managed to get photos of all three of my previous homes in Sydney :)

Wednesday.  Rain!  I shoulda put the deck chairs out in it for rinsing.  Did more cleaning planning at work, and leftover lamb shanks for dinner.  Have been doing a whole heap of tagging of people in work photos now using Picasa.

Thursday.  Had to go to work *at* work, which meant taking the bus which was a bit awful.  But everyone was wearing masks at least so that was good (it's still mandatory on public transport).  But it was humid and disgusting and they didn't turn the air conditioning on in the office, so it was pretty miserable in the morning.  Went to the mall with Neil at lunch, but maybe only 20% of people are wearing masks there.  Blerf.  The bar was open for the first time in over three months, so that was nice.  Although not many people there.  In the evening I put on Fantasia 2000 to get a photo of The Sorcerer's Apprentice with the jigsaw.  Yeah yeah I know the jigsaw was from the original Fantasia, but the original is pretty boring, I like Fantasia 2000 much much better.  Might have also put up the Christmas tree (just the tree though no decorations).

As usual, it's really not quite right

Friday.  OMFG.  Practically had a meltdown because I was trying to concentrate on *one thing* but literally every time I tried I would get interrupted again.  I felt like just giving up on trying to do any work and just sit there staring at my screen waiting for the next question.  #grunt.  Eventually got some peace and quiet so got some stuff done, and some cleaning in the afternoon too which was nice.  In the evening we watched the 80s version of Dune.. which was.. strange.. hmmm.  

Saturday.  Did the most essential weekend housework stuff before heading out to the club for the Christmas party.  Did a bunch of work helping prep all the food and serve lunch, then drank and chatted all afternoon so that was all quite nice.  Although I really hope noone brought covid along, that could be quite messy.  Leftovers for dinner and an earlyish night.

Sunday.  Slept relatively well.  Got up early and came home so I could log onto work for an upgrade.  Then spent the rest of the morning putting up Christmas decorations.  But then by the time I'd done gardening and music practise it was late, so managed to download and process photos but not blog.  Whoops.  Roasted some veggies for dinner then pretty much just collapsed.

Sunday.  14th.  Cooked All The Food for dinner.  Started into season 18 of The Simpsons.  Started watching the 2020 version of The Witches but didn't end up finishing it (finished it later in the week).

(dinner was basa fillet bake, although I probably cooked it a bit too long - it was pretty dry)

Monday.  Awake for a couple of hours in the middle of the night, feeling hot, even tho it was *cold* (13C in the house when we woke up - cold enough to turn the heater on!).  Saw my birds at lunch - needed my jacket because it was *cold* !  And noticed one of the sunflower seeds had sprouted (didn't see any others though).

Also picked the first strawberry off the plants Michelle gave us last year.  I considered splitting with the sweetie but in the end ate it all myself ;)

Weeding after work, and 78 photos labelled before dinner.  I figure I have time for two out of three things between finishing work and dinner - weeding, music practise, photo labelling.  Had time after dinner/Simpsons for a bit of music practise, and managed 182 photos labelled all up.

Tuesday.  Slept ok.  Was Neil for the morning.  Did a whole pile of doco for some rules which had never been documented before, so that I could do doco for my one simple little rule that needed adding.  Also did some thinking about the next round of cleaning that needs doing.  Lunch was leftover tacos.  Taco Tuesday!

After work was weeding and music, with mango chicken I cooked on Sunday for dinner (the chicken is somewhat buried under all that rice)

Managed to label 353 photos! Although Aaron called, which stopped me finishing day 53 in Asahiyama Zoo.  

Wednesday.  Spent all morning writing up details for cleaning out of a super complicated system no longer in use, but may come back one day, so want to be sure we have a good record of what we would need to do for it.  

Not much in the afternoon, spent too much time helping people with stuff.  Then worked late, had a quick break for dinner, then back online for work for more upgrades.  So behind in labelling for the week after all.

Thursday.  Couldn't do any fixup scanning in the morning because the computer wouldn't talk to the scanner.  I mean I know I really needed to reboot my computer but it takes so damned long to do it.  Started the process at 7:54am.  It was 8:28 by the time I'd saved/noted/closed everything, patched and rebooted, and 8:31 by the time I'd gotten Chrome loaded.  Le sigh.  The sunflower hasn't changed much in a couple of days..

Spent the day cleaning all the things.  Creamy fettucini for dinner.

Simpsons, whisky tasting, Speed Cubers

Then I watched The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.  I'm not usually a fan of Adam Sandler/Ben Stiller movies, and this one started off pretty silly, but the scenery in Iceland was stunning and it turned out to actually be quite sweet a movie.  Even managed to label 57 photos.  

Friday.  Another day of cleaning.  Watched Soylent Green in the evening.  It was made in 1973 but set in 2022 (we should have watched this next year!).  I reckon they could have at least *tried* to not make it look like the 70s in terms of fashion and decor :)

Today's pickings!

Saturday.  Did all the Saturday morning things.  Downloaded my email and found out they wanted to charge me another $1000 for the cruise I'm trying to get out of (for port fees or some such crap).  Had a little freak out and ended up calling them (don't know how much that's going to cost me).  At least I managed to get them to defer it til the end of December, but this whole covid thing has really put me off ever booking a holiday in advance if there's no option of refunds. We've already lost thousands on Europe, and likely to lose even more on the cruise. Makes me sick thinking about it actually.  

But then.

I've had this in my rss feed for a couple of weeks that I can't bring myself to mark as read.  It's a reminder to me that my problems are First World Problems.  So What if I lose $10000 dollars on some holidays I can't take.  At least I'm not displaced from my country due to or war or famine or whatever.  Life is good.  Really.

Then I spent the entire day alternating between the jigsaw and filing club photos (I've been sorting 9 years of club photos into folders for posterity).  Actually managed to finish photo filing!

This was the jigsaw progress mid afternoon.  A bit difficult to see what's going on, because I'm doing one half literally on top of the other half.  

Leftovers for dinner, and in the evening watched Official Secrets - a really interesting telling of the story of Katharine Gun and her efforts to prevent the 2003 war in Iraq.

Sunday.  Today.  Really just spent the whole day on the jigsaw (and finished season 4 of You Can't Ask That at lunch).

This is the progress in the morning.  Already I've done heaps since last night.

By late morning I'd done every piece that was on top of the other half.  So everything here is identical on either side.

Once that was done, I twinned up all the "special pieces"

At lunch I put on dinner - devilled lamb shanks (with de-boned meat I found at Coles)

And by mid afternoon I'd finished the jigsaw!!  Amazing that it took about seven weeks to do the first half of the jigsaw, then two days to do the second half!

Then did some music practise before Annie and the girls came over to chat for a bit.  Then it was photo downloading and blogging and dinner is just about ready!

Sunday.  7th.  Not backdating for a change ;)  This was the slow cooker turkey we had.  I literally just plonked the thing in the slow cooker all afternoon, but it was a bit dry.  Will add some stock next time I think, and turn/submerge it half way through.  Had it with potato bake and veggies.

Monday.  Slept ok.  Spent the morning patching stuff we'd upgraded the other week.  The fighting with the proxy in the afternoon.  No music practise (still giving the wrist a rest), so labelled over 200 photos - the ones I was behind in from last week because I had no time on the weekend to catch up.  That was all of day 50.  Then Lie to Me and You Can't Ask That.

Tuesday.  Slept ok.  Last week I said I thought I'd finished rescanning Dad's slides, but I'm still finding a lot of fluffy ones at the beginning where I wasn't diligent/fussy/perfectionist enough.  I can't help myself, I *need* to rescan them to make them better.  Sadly these are ones I'd already processed as well, so that means I'll have to reprocess *again*.  Sad times. Busy busy day, too much stoopid.  Fun episode of The Simpsons in the evening (The Poseidon Adventure one).  Still managed 167 photos, into day 51.

Wednesday.  Another busy day.  Only 128 photos labelled - day 52 in Hokkaido.  Finished the week still 182 behind.  

This is me cheating on Mickey - doing one half literally on top of the other half.

Thursday.  Dropped into work to swap out my hard drives.  Then did our food shopping.  Coles was definitely quieter at 7am than it has been previously during lockdown.  I guess more people are relaxed about going at a more normal time and not sparrows fart.  Couldn't log into work for over an hour because the auth app on my phone had a spaz, then I got locked out, then I had to wait for the service desk.  It did make the morning pass a bit quicker though :)  Tacos for dinner.  Finished watching the Jim Carrey version of Fun With Dick and Jane that I started the other day/week.  Well half watched it really, it was a bit silly.  Rain!

Friday.  Rain! 

One of the baby magpie larks that's been hanging around our yard for a while.

Picked up the clarinet for the first time in a week.  I really need to get a neck strap to save my wrist.  XL was headed off to Sydney for the weekend, and Ward said something about getting her to eat something for him, and I was like, I want Din Tai Fung!  Of course then I had cravings for dumplings, so the sweetie had some delivered from Charnie's Noodle and Dumplings.  It was all nice enough, nothing super special though.

Watched Red Sparrow in the evening, but it was very violent, making it quite unpleasant.  I also get annoyed at spy movies because you can never know what side someone is really on, and quite often it's both.  Probably like real life, but still annoying to watch.

Saturday.  Got housework done first thing, then doing upgrades all morning.  But I'm dumb and don't know how to fix anything when it breaks.  Sigh.  Didn't get much done in the afternoon other than geotagging some of Dad's photos from sixty years ago.  !!  Did a bit of jigsaw and music practise and then suddenly it's nearly dinner time.  hmmm.

Moved the stuff on the left aside to take a progress photo

Finished season 3 of You Can't Ask That, then leftover dumplings for dinner, then watched Hachi: A Dog's Tale, an Americanised version of the story of Hachiko.  I think I started crying when Hachiko tried to stop him getting on the train that last time, and then for much of the rest of the movie.  hrmmm.

Sunday.  Today.  Wrote a massive long todo list for the day.  Did a small fraction of it.  I'm going to be dead before I finish my todo list.

Got the internal "edges" done today, and the left bubbles are back on top of the right side.  This weekend I also finished laying out *every* piece on boards, so all the pieces are on six boards for the six different shapes (plus one board of leftover twinklies).  So now every piece has to be there to find and put in.

Started photo processing and blogging early enough today to get it done, because now I need to go cook dinner for tonight and a few other nights this week.

Stop the world, I want to get off!

Sunday.  31st.  Backdating this because Kit was here and I ran out of time in the afternoon on the 7th.  Leftover lamb and all the veggies for dinner (I left those bits of sweet potato in the oven for a few days, we ate them a few days after that, we didn't die).  Lie to Me and You Can't Ask That.  

Monday.  1st.  Couldn't get to sleep til like midnight.  Then woke up at 5:30 although got a tiny bit more sleep.  Didn't have many slides to fix up, although one I did like eight times before I eventually gave up because it was too hard and I was too tired.  I was feeling stressed that I was going to have to work both days next weekend, which made me double booked with a club working bee and Kit was coming to stay Sunday as well.  And my desk was a mess and the kitchen looked like a bomb had hit it in just a day since I last cleaned it, then I was hanging the washing out and I missed a phone call.  I mean who calls at 8:24am?? I might have had a bit of a meltdown because it was all too hard.  I did have an interesting day at work though, learning about timeouts on firewalls.  Popped into the mall at lunch because I needed to get my glasses fixed (the screw fell out of one of the arms on the weekend).  Also went to the post office to drop off a package for the sweetie, had some lunch and did a bit of food shopping.  Had to do some overtime in the evening, so no labelling.

Tuesday.  Slept a lot better - hurrah.  Brain was functioning a hundred times better than Monday.  I set a reminder to watch a few horses run around an oval, but was busy and missed the alert, and hence the horses.  Oh well.  Only managed to label 118 photos, so getting further behind :(  Also my wrist hurts.  Finished day 48, up to Hokkaido.

Wednesday.  Slept okish.  I *finally* finished fixup scans of all 181 boxes of Dad's slides.  I really wish I'd put more effort in the first round through, it would have saved most of a year's worth of effort to redo them this year.  Although it probably would have taken longer to do the first pass.  Will spend the "scanning time" for the rest of the year processing the slides (dating/labelling/renaming/processing/filing).  Managed to label 215 photos (used music practise time to do some - having a short break to give my wrist a rest).  Only 200 behind now.

Thursday.  Slept ok.  Ok day.  Very busy.  Rain!!

Friday.  Ok day - been there 14 years!  

Did some cleaning in the afternoon which made me happy.  That was done by 3pm and I'm like, I'm done for the week now right? hehe.  Had to hang around til late though to find out if Saturday work was going to go ahead or not, but in the end it got cancelled.  So I quickly gathered up a few things and headed out to the club with the sweetie.  It was cool enough to run the fire!  CRD came over to chat for a while too which was nice.

Saturday.  Slept okish.  Spent most of the morning de-nailing fence palings.  I got a message from Annie in the middle of it asking if I was in the queue for the Lego store opening, and I'm like, has she even *met* me?  hrmmm.  Did a few bits and pieces after lunch but it was getting hot and we were tired, so we just came home.  We basically collapsed when we got home.  Watched You Can't Ask That - on gamblers - I reckon the gamblers were more messed up than the ice users..  Pizza and X Files (finished season 2).

And how cool is this mask Tab made!?

Sunday.  Watched one of the guys doing some upgrades for a couple of hours in the morning.  Learnt some stuff which was good.  Then I finally got to have my weekend.  Spent the afternoon tidying up the house and doing all the weekend things.  Then Kit came over we chatted and had slow cooker turkey and potato bake and veggies for dinner.  The turkey was a little dry, will need to refine the recipe (I literally just chucked the thing in the slow cooker), and I should have had some gravy with it.

Sunday.  24th.  Not backdating :)  Butterfly lamb roast for dinner.  Put on Hocus Pocus, because Bette Midler, but wasn't watching it very closely.  Instead I was planning out an itinerary for Italy if we end up going.  

Monday.  Woke up a bit after 1am and never really got back to sleep (except for a couple of small sleeps between 4:30 and 6).  Zombie day.  Trying to sort out a big mess and not functioning very well didn't help.  It was a KFC drive through for lunch kind of a day.  Ended up rage quitting the day at 16:30 because I'd had enough and I was too tired.  Had beef cheeks cooked a week ago for dinner, and even managed to label 109 photos, which isn't as many as I need to do, but still better than nothing.

The garden is a riot of colour though!

Tuesday.  Slept much more betterly.  Still trying to sort out the mess at work.  Spent most of the day on it.  Short power outage at lunch.  I reckon they were prepping for Thursday and had a whoopsie.  After work was weeding (out the front), music, dinner, then spent ages trying to find some music files and I hadn't even started labelling by 19:39.  Hmmm.  I did manage to finish day 44 - arrived in Japan!  Was watching Lie to Me (Depraved Heart) and had to LOL at the house in Pasadena that I'd literally just seen in Beaches the other night!

I then managed to label day 45, which doesn't really count as a day - this was the trip from Tokyo to Osaka.  I also watched the first couple of episodes of You Can't Ask That on iView.

Wednesday.  Took like an hour to get to sleep, then woked up a bit after 3:30 and never got back to sleep.  I'm so fricken tired of insomnia.  Brain dead zombie morning.  It was a KFC good-thing-I-brought-extra-on-Monday for lunch kind of a day.  I don't even remember the afternoon.  It was a couple of beers and chicken kiev for dinner kind of an evening.  I did manage to label 84 photos though, so 205 behind for the week.  Hopefully can make that up over the next few days.

Thursday.  Slept relatively well.  Power went off around 9am.  Had a guy from some Not Registered for GST company show up to give us a quote on some garden work.  I asked if he was fully insured and he said yes, but I'm just worried.. all seems a little.. dodgy..   Then did some jigsaw and some paint by numbers, then we headed out to do some long-needed shopping at Bunnings.  Spent ages there trying to find All The Things.  Got maccas on the way home (the power had actually come back on around 11:35 - a couple of hours earlier than expected).  Did a bunch of gardening and planting plants with the sweetie in the afternoon but then not too much else, and some music practise.  Basically just a nice day off.  Watched a bunch of tv including Lie to Me and You Can't Ask That in the evening.

Friday.  Up at stoopid o'clock to do some upgrades, but testing was delayed because half the people testing had no power at home due to storms.  The morning dragged on because I started so early, and they finally gave us the go ahead to do the other half of the upgrades *very* close to lunch.  So got that done then headed out into covid-infected Canberra for a farewell lunch for Luke at the Lighty.  First time I'd seen any of my colleagues in two and a half months!  But I was a bit late arriving and so ended up sitting in the sun.  As soon as I finished lunch I asked to swap seats with someone who is not allergic to the sun, but the damage was done - I'd been sunburnt :(   Not that I knew that to start with, and it was actually a lovely afternoon catching up with all the guys.

Saturday.  Did some weekend stuff in the morning including a couple of loads of washing.  And cheesy hashbrowns for breakfast :)

Then late morning we headed out to the club for a bbq lunch (first time out there since late July).  Stu swam and I tidied up the van and finally setup the "pantry" - a chest of drawers I bought at the Green Shed months ago.  Brought home a bunch of food that had been sitting out there for years, tidied everything up and loaded a couple of the drawers with snackages and tea/coffee.  Then I was finally able to give the coffee machine a home, and could move the kettle off the only bit of bench space next to the sink.  So the whole space is a lot tidier.  There used to be a little table here with an oven on top of it and all the food and containers and crap on top of that, but the oven couldn't be used there because it needed a lot more space around it and we never cook out there anyway (we just take leftovers or bbq).  It's not quite what I wanted for this space (I wanted a cupboard that was a bit bigger), but it'll do for now.

Also!  Flowers!

We actually didn't stay the night, but came home instead.  Both of us felt like it was a Sunday afternoon because we usually come home from the club on a Sunday.  Cooked some mushrooms and macaroni and had creamy mushroom mac and cheese for dinner.  We had salad at lunch.  Honest.  ;)

Watch Big in the evening, which I haven't seen since the late 80s.  And some episodes of You Can't Ask That.

Sunday.  Today.  Busy day trying to cram in two days of weekend into one essentially.  Stu even got lots done too which was nice.  Didn't have too much time for any fun, but did do a little bit of jigsaw and one short session of paint-by-numbers.  Had a second guy from Not Registered for GST company show up asking if we needed any work done, and I'm like, you guys came just the other day.  If this company can afford to have employees, surely they'd have enough turnover to need to be registered for GST?? hrmmmmm!!

Stu found this in his four foot tank - how cute is it!

The poppies have started flowering too

I guess I've filled in the gap in the middle since last week.. that's about it though.. 

Dinner will be leftover butterfly lamb, with a bunch of fresh roasted veggies.

Sunday.  17th.  Not backdating ;)  Spent about four hours cooking All The Food that I'd bought that morning - lamb roast, cauliflower bake and roasted veggies which was dinner, as well as some pork mince/bacon/onion to have whenever (froze half straight away), butter chicken (from a simmer sauce, made up five meals with rice, froze two of them), Asian style beef cheeks (which went into the evening because I was late starting, and froze some of that too).  Was quite exhausted by all the effort by the end of it.  Started watching Big Business (not sure that I'd ever seen it - if I had it was a very long time ago).  

Monday.  Slept relatively well.  Busy day.  I thought I'd have some time to sit down and clean up stuff on the proxies from the weekend.  bwhahahahah.  Yeah right.  Got pulled in every other direction including more upgrades and people wanting All The Things.  Not even enough time to consider some other cleanup work I'd planned for the week.  Then got asked to do some firewall rules in a new environment that I have ZERO experience with.  So much for an RDO this week.  Also got a letter saying they're planning on cutting off our power next Thursday.  Which means either going into the office, or having that RDO.  I think I'll take the RDO.  Because, jigsaws, paint by numbers, weeding, decluttering.  All those things I never have time to do because I spend so much time on the computer.  After work was weeding and music practise and dinner, but the sweetie cooked dinner (salmon and salad) which was lovely of him.  Managed 224 photos in an hour after dinner (mostly in Miniland in Legoland Billund).  But I still hadn't emptied the dishwasher from the morning or put away the towels from the weekend or my clothes from today.  Fricken stop the world I want to get off!!!  I don't have time for this whole going to work malarky.  Into season 17 of The Simpsons (which unusually didn't start with a Treehouse of Horror).  Also finished Big Business while continuing to label, managing 311 all up, finishing day 42 in Legoland Billund.  Not a bad effort.  Now mostly caught up.  Was putting away all the stuff from the dishwasher when I realised I was missing a baking dish.  OMFG I'd left it in the oven overnight!!  With potatoes in it!! (to give the potatoes a wee bit longer to cook).  Decided they'd be fine and chucked em in a container in the fridge.

Tuesday.  Slept ok.  But had a pretty horrible day.  Still no time to clean up from the weekend because busy doing upgrades, and freaking out over someone who may be leaving and leaving me with aforementioned firewall rules in new environment which I have ZERO experience with, then there was two and a quarter hours in meetings and stoopid tickets and people not cleaning up mess and I literally had a couple of meltdowns during the day because it was all too hard. 

But look! Exclamation point rainbow!

Did some weeding then headed out for dinner.  It was Cath's birthday so they'd decided to take up the easing of restrictions to go out for dinner with R&F.  We were a bit nervous about heading out into covid-infected Canberra, but we were the only group in the restaurant, other than three or four people that came for takeaway pickups.  It was actually a lovely night out, awesome to catch up with friends we hadn't seen in months, and lots of yummy food.

Wednesday.  OMFG epic insomnia.  Woke up a bit after 2am and never got back to sleep :(  So a complete zombie morning, although I did manage to get some stuff done so that was ok.  Did weeding and music practise after work and even managed 122 photos (from my afternoon in Copenhagen).  Was super epic tired though.  And also got the sad news that Mrs Cartan had died.  In bed by 9pm.

Thursday.  Slept much better.  Dennis (an ex-colleague of Stu's) came over for coffee and a croissant before week (which also made me nervous, because, covid).  But I was in a MUCH better mental state at work and got a great long primer from Sharpie on firewall rules in new environment which I have ZERO experience with.  Usual Thursday night.  Started watching Beaches.  Because Bette Midler.  

Friday.  Slept well enough.  Ok morning.   Took an hour out of work to watch Mrs Cartan's funeral.  Live-streamed funerals are pretty much commonplace now.  What a world.  I think I'll post some extra detail in a separate post.  A little after that was lunch time, and I finished watching Beaches.  Watching two funerals online in a couple of hours was quite surreal.  Busy afternoon, then weeding etc.  Started watching Down and Out in Beverly Hills, because Better MIdler.  Watched the first half of The Shiralee, which neither of us had ever seen.

This is part of the jungle I'm trying to clear with my weeding.

Saturday.  Slept well!  Then a day of All The Things.  Had a super productive day which was great.  Spent a few hours in the afternoon getting back into sorting Vic's Lego - this time all the minifigs so I can clear a space so Stu can do some sorting.  In the middle of that a couple of young magpies came down into the backyard and they were both singing which was lovely.  Watched the second half of The Shiralee in the evening.

Sunday.  Today.  Rinse and repeat of yesterday in some ways.  Spent a good chunk of the afternoon planning our Oberammergau trip.  After we decided to cancel the tour, I decided we should book just Oberammergau, lock it in, then see how things pan out.  If we have to cancel it'll be 36 Euros (I paid for cancellation insurance) and that's it. So booked that, and then started making maps of all the things we want to see.  I locked in all the places from Como, then I started going through the tour itinerary to see what they had planned to see, and made a map of those too.  Some days would have been good to do on tour (like Cinque Terre with a boat cruise) but other days would have been a waste, like the day doing a cheese factory tour (I mean sure, that would have be fun, but not really worth the money) and a tour of the Ferrari musem.  Not to mention the many half days given over to "free time".  Let's just hope covid has calmed down somewhat in Europe by then.  I have more confidence in that than I do in America early next year.  Dinner tonight will be some butterfly lamb with all the roast veggies.

Agonisingly slow progress on Mickey