Sunday.  10th.  Not backdating ;)  Leftover roast pork with a whole bunch of freshly roasted veggies for dinner.  Watched The Pursuit of Happyness which wasn't bad.  It did remind me of sometimes when we were kids getting home late from something, and we'd pretend to be asleep in the car so Mum and Dad would carry us upstairs and put us to bed :)

Monday.  Slept fairly well.  Day went pretty quickly - busy fixing up proxy profiles.  Saw all the birds at lunch.  Leftover chicken wings from a club night with rice and cabbage for dinner.  Finally hit 20000 photos labelled!!  197 done all up, only 15 behind (into Legoland Billund).

Tuesday.  Took *forever* to get to sleep - stressing about All The Things, holidays, health, having to go to the chemist etc etc etc.  Then I woke up at 3am hungry and needing to pee, so did that, then saw an email from the cruise company with bad news about our trip next year (I'm trying to get out of it because too many retarded Americans won't get vaccinated) so then it took *forever* to get back to sleep.  Zombie tired all day, didn't really get much done all day.  Was too tired and depressed to feel like weeding or music practise or labelling, so instead had a couple of beers, watched an episode of Connected (Clouds), and had an early night.  I really need to keep reminding myself that even if we lose all the thousands of dollars we've spent on our holidays we might not be able to go on, we're still a helluva a lot better off than so many other people this pandemic.  We still have jobs, food, a roof over our heads, and haven't gotten sick from covid (so far).

Wednesday.  After the early night actually slept quite well for a change.  Busy day, although didn't get to do the *one thing* I wanted to do because of interruptions and people wanting stuff.  Did some weeding and music practise, but had a tv dinner for dinner.  208 photos labelled all up, now 115 behind.

Sometimes I get down about fish keeping, because tanks get manky and fish die.  Then I get a tank like this which i super healthy and all the plants are growing like crazy and no algae and the little fishies are breeding like rabbits.  Such a joy this tank.

Thursday.  Somewhat broken sleep, not helped by a couple of storms rolling through.  Headed out early to get blood tests done for a checkup.  Got to see a bit of floriade in Belco.

Ok day.  Got rained on seeing the birds, but they were pretty eager.  No virtual drinks this week.  Started watching 50 Shades of Grey, but only made it about half an hour in.  Really didn't like the guy at all.  Watched Lie to Me instead.  

Friday.  Awake from 3-5am so zombie morning (although somewhat better afternoon).  Did manage to achieve some stuff too which was useful.  Watched Inferno in the evening which we hadn't seen before.  Pretty much just like the other two, and fun distractions with the been-theres in Turkey :)

Saturday.  Up at stoopid o'clock and then spent the entire day doing upgrades, first with HBZ then with Con.  A few hiccoughs along the way, but I think we got there in the end.  See what happens Monday I guess.  Did some weeding and music and talked to the mother type person.  She ended up cancelling our Oberammergau trip because the tour company were being pooheads.  I would certainly never travel with them again.  Mainly because they were *hideously* expensive for what you got.  Basically all it included was hotels, a coach and a tour guide - no lunches, very few dinners, and not much in the way of attraction entries either - it was all "free time in the town".  If I'm paying that much, I want them to take me to as many places as possible, not just dump us in a town and tell us to fend for ourselves.  If I wanted to do that I could take a train.  So we're actually considering doing that - taking trains around northern Italy, and maybe hire a car for a few days to see some harder to get to places in the mountains.  And even after all the money we lost, the trip will probably still be cheaper to do it ourselves.  The sweetie got Chong Co for dinner, and we watched Tora! Tora! Tora! (on Disney, even though I inherted Dad's DVD of it - shoulda watched the DVD though - Disney's subtitles were a bit hit and miss in places - like only flashing for a fraction of a second and not giving you enough time to read them).  

Sunday.  Today.  Up at stoopid o'clock to finally go do food shopping at Coles (first time since 8 September!!).  Then came home and finally got to have my weekend.  Spent all morning doing all the usual weekend stuff I need to get done, then weeding, lunch, music, photo processing and blogging.  And now's just after 3pm and I'm about to go spend a few hours cooking all the food so I don't have to do much in the next week or two.  

Sunday. 12th.  Backdating.  Doh.  Roast chicken dinner which was very nice.

Monday.  Ok day, was Neil all day because he took the day off to go to the dentist.  Which means I try and fix all the stoopid problems I see.  I can't help myself ;)  In the evening was looking for paperwork from the Eurasia trip to help with photo labelling.  Was actually feeling super panicky/anxious about the fact that there's just not enough *time* to get everything done.  Labelling Louvre photos in the evening.  Only managed 35 photos before dinner, which was a bit late (leftover brisket), and only 75 done by 8pm.  Turns out labelling things in the Louvre is hard work if you want to do it properly.  Still hadn't blogged for the week.  hrmm.  Managed 156 all up for the evening.

Tuesday.  Ok day, although I felt like I didn't get much done in between talking to people all day.  41 photos labelled before dinner (of leftovers), and 116 done by 8:04pm.  77 behind, hrmm.  Finished day 35 in Paris though.

Wednesday.  Ok day.  Finished up yesterday's slide scanning fixing, but hadn't brought up a new box yet, so scanned 12 of Stu's negatives that he took on a youth group boating trip on the Hastings.  Also managed to clean the kitchen.  Bit of a late finish, so no labelling before dinner (of filled gnocchi with sweet potato salad).  After dinner was trying to deal with my computer which had some stoopid windoze process running taking up all its energy.  Spent an hour trying to shut down as many things as I could, so didn't end up doing any labelling at all. 

"Filled gnocchi" - that I got a while back because Coles had sold out of regular fresh gnocchi.  Just fried in butter which was very tasty.  Salad is rocket and sweet potato, with toasted pine nuts and pumpkin seeds and feta, with a honey and olive oil dressing.  Yumm.

Thursday.  Ok day.  Pretty much a standard Thursday.

Friday.  Had an RDO (random day off), which was the first one I'd had since July (and I was definitely feeling it).  Spent the day trying to get on top of All The Things.  In the late afternoon put on Nanny McPhee and the Big Bang, which was a bit silly.  Leftover brisket and veggies for dinner.  In the evening watched Words Bubble Up Like a Soda Pop, which Stu described as Japanese Mall Rats.  Kinda sweet but a bit silly.

Saturday.  A day of All The Things.  Caught up on this week's photo labelling which I was behind on.  Other than that the normal Saturday of trying to do house stuff, project stuff, photo stuff and have a bit of fun in the middle.  Put on Bridget Jones's Baby later on while filing photos.  Stu cooked creamy pasta with mussels for dinner which was very nice.  In the evening watched Enola Homes which was a bit of fun but pretty silly, and too "modern" for a period piece.  (I've been a bit spoilt by a documentary we watched on our last cruise about anachronisms in movies, and how modern values colour period movies).

Sunday.  Much the same as Saturday but with fewer time limits.  

I might have bought myself a new toy during the week, which arrived in less than a week, from America, on a Sunday!

So I've actually been wanting to learn the clarinet for long time.  I learnt the recorder as a kid, but it has a very limited range which can be frustrating.  I read a bunch of reviews that said the Jean Paul CL-300 was probably the best value for money in terms of pretty decent quality for not a crazy price.  Turns out it's a lot harder than a recorder to play, who knew! I was expecting to be able to blow into it and make a sound, but it's a lot more complicated than that.  And I'm really going to need a neck strap so I don't get RSI in my thumb/hand.

Cooked All The Food in the evening - roast pork for dinner, and some mince for dinner during the week.

Watched the second episode of Connected (Poop) (we watched the first episode - Surveillance a little while ago), then I watched another episode of How the Mind Works, on memory.  

Sunday.  5th.  Backdating.  Sorry. ;)  Cooked all the food - some mince to have however, as well as roast veggies and a cauliflower bake.  Into season 15 of The Simpsons.

Monday.  Ok day.  Spent the day trying to do *one thing* but not getting anywhere because of interruptions and people wanting stuff.  Sausages and leftover veggies for dinner.  113 photos labelled before dinner, 213 all up, up to my first day in Paris.  Then Air Crash Investigations.

Tuesday.  Slept relatively well.  Stressful day because I was in meetings for hours and hours and hours, but still had heaps of work to get done as well.  Ended up working a bit late and only managed to label 54 photos.

Wednesday.  Slept ok.  Got up a bit early, and this time I checked the Covid exposure sites *before* I went out to do some food shopping.  First time doing a proper shop in three weeks - our pantry list was getting super long from things that had run out or were running out.  Oddly, there were no bags of any kind for bagging up veggies, so I ended up using a shopping bag to get mushrooms.  Once again, Coles was depleted of different odd things, like almost no eggs (didn't need any this week), and mint ice cream.  But they did have bacon and cheese rolls out early this time.  I bought one pack thinking it would last me a couple of days, but the sweetie had other ideas and they lasted a day.  I shoulda bought two ;)  There was plenty of toilet paper, but I didn't need any this week either (been getting it from Chris's).  Ok day, busy afternoon, again in meetings but also trying to get work done.  Salmon and salad for dinner - hurrah for fresh food!  Managed to label 155 photos, only 52 behind now, should be easy to catch up.

Thursday.  Slept ok.  Horrible day - spent over half of it on the phone :(  So sucky and draining.

Friday.  Awake for a while in the middle of the night but not too bad.  Another day of trying to stay on top of things and fighting with peeps over all the stoopid.  Did some cleaning in the afternoon though which was good.  Knocked off a little early and tidied the house a bit, then tried to wrangle my insanely huge todo list.  Honey mustard chicken for dinner.  Then we watched Never Let Me Go which was kinda interesting and depressing.

Saturday.  All. The. Things.  Just a day of getting things done around the house.  Bolognase and salad for dinner, then we watched Gandhi, which I'd never actually seen before. 

Sunday.  Busy doing stuff, although no idea what, the todo list I ticked off didn't have much on it.  

Roast chicken for dinner, then watched Nanny McPhee which I'd seen a while ago.  Actually quite a sweet movie.  Although a bit like watching Love Actually.  Or Harry Potter.  Or Bridge Jones' Diary.  So much cast overlap :)

Sunday.  15th.  Backdating this, but only by a day :)  Cooked All The Food for dinner (lots of veggies, that went with some pulled pork I dug out of the freezer). 

Simpsons/X Files, then watched some commentry on John Williams' music.  Seriously the guy is a genius.  Check out Listening In's commentry on Jurassic Park, Prisoner of Azkaban, Star Wars and ET.

Monday.  Woke up at ~1am for a couple of hours.  Sigh.  Ok day. 

Even if we don't get to go to Floriade this year, I'll have my little neighbourhood patch of it.

Sausages and leftover veggies for dinner.  Managed 49 photos before dinner.  Had to do a fixup of geodata on some too.  Managed 192 all up, and an episode of Air Crash Investigations.

Tuesday.  Slept well for a change.  Not a bad day, looking at more cleaning to be done.  63 photos labelled before dinner - finished Day 29 Canon photos.  Still a long way behind :(  Managed 177 all up and an episode of Air Crash.

Wednesday.  Decided yesterday I'd do a mid week food shop, and go early to minimise exposure to potentially infectious people.  Worked pretty well, and the carpark was deserted.

Took me longer than I thought it would because I had to keep stopping to go back and push my own trolley (normally Stu drives).  There was plenty of toilet paper (I didn't get any cause we still had over half a pack left).  But there were a couple of fresh things I couldn't get (like cabbage and basil).  So did all that, as well as getting a bag of fresh veggies, milk and eggs for EffanC.  They'd been down the coast when lockdown was declared in both the ACT and NSW, so they had to come home and were still waiting on a Coles delivery.  

Was just getting ready for work when Stu said our nearby IGA was a covid exposure site.  And guess who was there during one of the specified close contact times last week?  Yeup.  All because Stu wanted ice cream we can't get at Chris's ;)  OMFG I was a nervous wreck all day.  We'd have to go get tested, although couldn't go during the day because Stu was busy doing interviews for work, and we weren't sure if we'd even get in after work, with the EPIC testing site having been closed at like 4pm on the Tuesday due to high demand.  We were worried we'd have to wait around all night and still not get tested and have to go back, or even get turned away completely.  Plus if we did test positive, then Coles would be an exposure site and I'd have put EffanC at risk too.  Yeah I was a mess all day.  Although my stress did turn to anger.  We should have been notified *immediately* once the IGA was listed.  We both checked in with the CheckinCBR app, so they would have known we were there at the specified time.  Was pretty pissed off about that actually.  Anyway, as soon as Stu was finished up with interviews we headed out.  Stu wanted to try Kambah first.  One website said it closed at 5pm, another 4pm.  So we weren't sure when it would close.  Turns out it closes at 4pm and it had already closed by the time we got there.  (as it turns out, the 5pm closing time was from last year but I'd missed that when I was looking because I was so stressed).  So headed to Brindabella.  I was expecting traffic to be banked back around the airport, but we got all the way to Brindabella and were wondering where all the cars were.  Turns out it simply wasn't crowded (even though half an hour before we left home they'd tweeted it would be a three hour wait).  We took a whole stack of food.  We didn't need it.  We got to the first triage tent at 17:07 then joined the queue.  It took til about 18:00 to get to the big tent, then about twenty five minutes to get to the front of the line to get our tests.  It was unpleasant, but not as bad as I thought it would be.  So an hour twenty and we were out of there.  Got home, had some salad for dinner (hurrah for fresh food), then had a Zoom drink with EffanC.  Needed it.  Collapsed into bed for an early night.

Thursday.  Woke up at ~1am til past 3am.  Sigh.  Busy day, mostly dealing with interruptions.  Beer, pizza, Simpsons, X Files and an early night.

Friday.  Hurty for a bit in the night.  Woke up in the morning to find we'd been smsed our test results - negative.  Phew.  Ok day.  Had another Zoom drink/catchup with EffanC.  Salmon and salad for dinner, then Simpsons and Moneyball.  An odd choice for the sweetie I thought, but based on a true story and not a bad movie, for a sports movie ;)

Saturday.  Slept ok for a change.  Although that didn't stop my clumsiness trying to put out our pills/vitamins for the week, spilling things *three fricken times*.  Very upsetting.  Alternated between house stuff, photo labelling (still trying to catch up from a crazy couple of weeks), and jigsaw.  Made Dominos pepperoni and feta on puff pastry pizza for lunch.  

In the afternoon we got SMSes from ACT Health - "Check In CBR has identifed that you may have attended a COVID-19 exposure location".  Yeah no kidding guys, this was the message I should have gotten THREE AND A HALF DAYS AGO!!!!!  Fricken hopeless.  Chicken kiev and roast veggies for dinner.  Then watched Wall Street, which I'd never actually seen before.

Sunday.  Slep ok.  Another day of house stuff, photo stuff, and jigsaw.  My ideal weekend really.  And literally no different to a non-lockdown weekend (well other than not having to do food shopping, and not being able to go see my birds, on account of being in strict lockdown). 

Got a call from WA Health in the afternoon - taking some of the load off ACT Health and calling people in exposure sites - making sure we'd been tested and were quarantining.. yes and yes.  We'll have to get tested again this week, hopefully won't have to wait as long this time. 

Another afternoon of cooking all the food (mince to have with whatever at some point, and an arribbiata bake sans basil). 

Downloaded my phone photos.  Apple has gone back to arranging photos into a thousand per folder.  I mean why change to arranging them by month (a change for the better I thought) if you were just going to revert it a couple of months later??  Far out I hate Apple.  Watched The Movies that Made Us episode on Forrest Gump, and then the first half of Forrest Gump.  And blogged this Monday, ssh don't tell anyone!

Sunday.  8th.  Filling in the evening after I blogged :)  Cooked All The Veggies for dinner.  Had all the roasted veggies, with mince and cheese and sour cream on the potato wedges.  Yumminess.

Simpsons, X Files, Air Crash Investigations.

Monday.  Ok day.  Got practise looking at traffic spikes and figuring out what they were.  Labelled 182 photos - have finished Egypt and onto London, day 28.

Tuesday.  Pretty quiet day, although didn't get much done.  Leftovers/Simpsons/jigsaw/cleaned kitchen/backed up computer and suddenly it's 8pm.  Hrmm.  And labelling goes super slowly when you need to identify every building in Legoland Miniland (eg Covent Garden, which I'd never been to before, so that took a bit of flying around Google Maps trying to find it).  So I only managed to label 26 photos before dinner, did a few more while watching tv, managing 48 all up for the evening.  hrmmm.

Wednesday.  Started off ok, but then felt like a failure because I couldn't solve some stoopid problems with stoopid firewalls and stoopid proxies.  Then arguments with people who made me feel like everything I do is wrong.  Sigh.  It was a wine and scotch and no photo labelling kind of an evening.  

Thursday.  Woke up at 3am but didn't get back to sleep ~5am :(  So I was tired and grumpy.  The bathroom sealer people called me in the morning - the asbestos test came back positive (duh) so they won't do minor works, they'll only do a complete bathroom renovation so the asbestos can all be removed.  Sigh.  More fighting with stoopid firewalls and feeling like a failure and people hate me cause I hate everything.  Felt miserable all afternoon.  

But on a lighter note, before lunch it was announced Canberra would go into a snap seven day lockdown due to our first local cases of covid in over a year (it finally happened).  And my first reaction was woohoo.  I mean literally.  To just stay at home and not have to deal with people (at least directly) for a week - heaven.  I mean don't get me wrong, I do actually feel really bad for peeps in the hospitality and "non-essential" retail whose anxiety levels will go through the roof not knowing where their next pay check will come from, or anyone that had a wedding or something planned for this weekend - that'd be pretty devastating for them.  Neil and I had lunch at the mall as usual, then we went for a walk through the fresh food section to laugh at all the people panic buying milk and toilet paper.  About half the trolleys we saw had toilet paper in them.

I should point out that after all the panic buying of toilet paper finished last year and it was readily available again, I bought a pack of 24 and put it downstairs.  Then I've continued to buy it normally ever since, knowing that if we ever did have a snap lockdown, we'd be set.  In fact we'd just opened a pack of 12, so won't need any in the short term.

At 12:49pm there was already a queue to get into Woollies

And there was a queue at Baker's Delight too

HBZ also went shopping just after lunch, and already all the toilet paper was gone, and it took him an hour and a half to get through the checkouts.  Yikes!

On the way home we stopped for essentials - read - beer! ;)  Although tragically, Chris had sold out of Corona! *gasp*  ;)

Beer and pizza for dinner.  This is why I'm going to die young:

Friday the 13th.  Got somewhat better sleep, and actually managed to achieve some stuff at work.  Went for a walk at lunch and saw my birds. 

In the afternoon I went to check the mailbox and this daisy was there to greet me

So I got photos of some of the other flowers out already as well

Picked up TV dinners from Chris's (we actually have a freezer full of leftovers, but I really didn't feel like cooking) - he said it had been pretty quiet. 

Watched the 2008 Get Smart with the sweetie, which was completely ridiculous but I was snorting all through it - just a bit of fun :)

Saturday.  I'd had an early night, but woke up a bit before 5 and never got back to sleep.  Turned 30.  I'll let you figure out what base (thanks DC :) ).  Stu cooked breakfast of Pialligo bacon and cheesy hash browns. So brown but so good!!!!

Then had a lovely day just pottering around the house, doing jigsaw and the like.  Stu also had fun, building his little morse code thingie...

At lunch we went for a walk to see the birds, and saw this very smelly burnt out car.

And the sweetie took a photo of me in front of the same wattle tree I had photos of the other day.

In the afternoon I did a 500 piece jigsaw as a break from the agonisingly slow Dumbo.  Sadly it was missing a piece, but that's what you get for Green Shed jigsaws.  The sky was pretty at dusk too.

We may have shared some bubbles.

We got Chong Co delivered for dinner!

We had the wagyu salad and the duck salad (I asked for everything "medium" but the beef was a bit hot for me - endorphins!)

As well as the pork belly prik pao (not crispy anymore from being in transit) and satay chicken

Delicious!

After dinner we put on Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, which we enjoyed with heated Gluhwein and candles.

And all through the day (except the 10 second blackout and time taken for the router to reconnect) Stu put on a John Williams playlist which added a wonderful soundtrack to actually quite a wonderful day.

Sunday.  Another nice quiet day.  Took ages to do slide fixup scanning because every time I rescanned a bunch of slides, they'd get dust in different positions :(  

Late in the morning we went for a walk and saw these tiny flowers

With bee!

For lunch I made salami and olive pizza scrolls

My lockdown lunch is better than yours!

In the afternoon I alternated between Dumbo jigsaw and Legoland photo labelling (including geotagging a bunch I'd taken on the train but hadn't set the location) - managed 113 photos - so I'm still *way* behind where I need to be.  I also pulled everything out of the freezer and did an audit of what we have.  There's quite a bit of leftover meat (including a bunch of food from various club nights), and some frozen veggies.  I'm thinking I might do an early morning shopping trip one day this week to get more fresh food.

Then put on dinner (all the veggies, with some pulled pork from the freezer) - finished off most of our fresh vegetables, and blogged.

My 8th birthday in 1981

Me on roller skates on the morning of my 8th birthday.  These things weren't boots but let you put your shoe in, and they were adjustable.  They were a nice idea to give more years of use, but they weren't all that great bearing-wise, and not as stable on your feet/ankles as boots so they didn't get a lot of use.  Of course Mum's crappy camera at the time cut things off, including the roller skates!

Me with my 8th birthday cake (with a marshmallow petal design based on the "4" cake in the Women's Weekly Children's Birthday Cake book).

 Kerrie Williams, Nicole Pederson, Karen, Donna Bonnefin, David, Melissa Mackay, David Owen.  Again with the crappy camera.

My 8th birthday party. Back: Nicole Pederson, Melissa Mackay, David Owen; Front: David, Kerrie Williams, Karen, Donna Bonnefin

The next day we went pony riding at Cecil Park. I'm on Bubbles and Donna is on Pebbles.

David on Bubbles, Karen on Pebbles and Donna on Sparky

After the horseriding we dropped in to see Nana and Grandpa

In the evening we went to Grandma and Grandpa's at Hurstville

My 18th birthday in 1991 was pretty quiet I think - I don't remember having any sort of party.

Me and my 18th birthday cake

Me and Nana

Me and Mum

My and my 18th birthday cards and presents.  I asked for a CD player/tape deck so I could listen to CDs in my room (and tape them to tape for flexibility).  I actually still have it, although from memory I think it's got issues with the volume of the CD player.  I'll have to pull it out and try it again one day.  There were also some David Bowie CDs and a Billy Joel LP (I think we found that second hand somewhere).

My 28th birthday in 2001 has no photos so I have no idea what I did.  Most likely I went home for dinner (although that seems unlikely because Mum would surely have taken a photo), but was otherwise I was probably depressed because I was single and nearly 30.  Possibly it was the year I went clubbing with Ding in the city somewhere. 

My 38th birthday in 2011 was actually in Sydney.  We'd gone up the Saturday to see a John Williams concert at the Opera House which was awesome, and had dinner at Tradies with my family.  On the Sunday (my birthday) we went to Miranda Fair for tea and cupcakes and Stu bought my birthday present (a food processor), then to Sizzler with James/George/Luc/Lizzi and the kids.

My 40th birthday in 2021 was in covid lockdown, but the sweetie and I still had a lovely day at home with Chong Co delivered for dinner.

The other week I had a go at Not Quite Nigella's Chocolate Peppermint Slice.  It was quite easy, save for the fact my food processor doesn't work all that well - it doesn't have a good enough cyclone action, so it blends the bottom really well but leaves the top untouched.  Super frustrating and makes everything take a lot longer than it should.

The base is meant to be 300g plain "cookies".  I ended up using a pack of Milk Arrowroot, plus about a third of a pack I had leftover from something else.  2 tablespoons cocoa powder, a bit of coconut (the recipe called for 35g of dessicated coconut - who sits and measures out 35g??), 150g melted butter, 150g sweetened condensed milk (Coles were out of the 150g tubes, so I used about half a 400g tin).  Blend the whole lot together (remember aforementioned horrible blender, so this was pretty painful) then spread out into a pan (Lorraine used a 20cm x 20cm tin, but I wanted to make it thinner).

Then 500g (!!!) of icing sugar (not mixture), blended with water, and with a little splash of peppermint essence.  I don't have food colourings in the house, but you could use green food colouring here.  More frustration with the food processor here.  Be sure not to add too much water at a time.

Then a block of dark chocolate and a tablespoon or two of oil (I used some coconut oil).

Tip: don't let the chocolate fully set before trying to cut it up!  Possibly I didn't use enough coconut oil, but in the end I had to let it warm up quite a bit in order to cut it without it shattering in odd ways.

But in the end it actually turned out really well.  The thicknesses of everything was a little uneven - some pieces had a very thin layer of icing.  And there felt like *so much* of it because I cut it up fairly small on account of All The Sugar :)

Monday.  26th.  Backdating.  Frustration and grumpiness at work *all day*.  Finished up day 25 labelling (which I should have done on the weekend).  In the end labelled 261 photos in the evening, so mostly caught up to where I wanted to be.

Tuesday.  Not much better day than Monday.  Ended up worse, and feeling depressed cause I suck and noone likes me.  Had leftover pasta bake for dinner (and got a yuk taste of anchovies).  Backed up my computer but didn't do any photo labelling.  Did jigsaw and played 2048 for the first time in a couple of years.  Even got up to 4096.

Wednesday.  Woke up at 3:23 and never got back to sleep.  So it was a zombie day.  Couldn't really concentrate on anything, not helped by people interrupting every five seconds.  Doc Oc pizzas and wine for dinner.  Started watching Queen: Days of Our Lives (2011).

Thursday.  Slept quite a bit better (went to bed at 20:30), other than being awake for an hour or two in the middle of the night cause of hurty.  In what world is a monthly cycle 21 days???  FFS.  Ok day.  Mulled wine at drinks for a Christmas in July night.

Then met up with EffanC and R&F at Hachiko for dinner which was lovely.

It was a lovely night and a great reminder that I do have some pretty great friends.

Friday.  Ok day.  Knocked off work a little early but then spent the evening prepping for tomorrow - for the club Christmas in July.  Struggled to get onto the butcher to order the pork - firstly couldn't find a phone number online, ended up having to resort to Yellow Pages.  But then they wouldn't answer the phone :(  Then I started stressing about fitting CRD into the car with all the foods and gear.  Sigh.  Finished the first episode of Queen: Days of Our Lives, and started episode two.  

My little patch of floriade is sprouting!

Saturday.  Headed out early and did the shopping for dinner.  Finished the Coles shop quite quickly, then headed back to the butcher.  Turns out their phone handset was broken which is why they weren't answering.  Luckily was able to get enough pork.  Then picked up CRD and headed out to the club.  Set everything up and took a photo of all the food.

First up was getting the lamb ready and into the slow cooker.  I'd never done lamb like this in the slow cooker so had no idea how it would turn out.  It actually turned out really well - lovely and moist.  

I had to wash pretty much everything before I started.  All the cooking gear was covered in white dust.  And I literally had to leave the kitchen a couple of times while other people wandered in and started fussing around and washing things up.  I actually can't concentrate with people buzzing about, super stressful.

Then I prepped all the pork - just oil and salt.

Then made a couple of epic potato bakes.

I also made up a sweet potato salad, and some lactose-free roast potatoes

The oven is the slowest oven in the world, so I probably should have left the foil off a lot longer on the potatoes

I delegated making the roast turkeys in the bbq.  So we had a bain-marie full of pork, the slow cooker full of lamb, and another bain-marie with the turkey.  The pork and lamb turned out beautifully, but the crackling didn't work so well (slowest oven in the world) and the turkey was over done on the bottom (really need a better way to do it than on the barbeque).

I also made a big batch of gravy, and a pot of apple sauce

There was also a big pot of peas/corn/carrots.

Had a couple of helpers to serve it all up.  It was quite well received .. phew!!

Chris brought these great little puddings

And Tab brought puddings and pavlovas and fruit and ice cream.

Then there were some very noisy games so I went and hid because it was all too loud.  Later went out and had some whiskey and rum in the sun room.  This whiskey smelt like peanut butter and tasted like butterscotch schnapps.  Yum!  And the Master Mary rum tasted like Christmas.

Then loud people came out, so I went to bed.

Sadly after really concentrating on the food all afternoon and evening, I really didn't feel like I caught up properly with anyone.  I actually only sat down at the table for a few minutes to scoff my dinner.

Sunday.  Slept relatively well.  Went up to finish cleaning up and packing up.  Found out the cause of all the white powder around the kitchen - mice had been getting into the corn flour and tracking it all around.  I even saw a couple of mice running around the shelves.  I threw out anything that had mouse holes, which was all the corn flour and some of the regular flour.  Anything open but with no evidence of mouse activity I brought home to reassess.  And anything unopened and still sealed with no holes I put into a sealable plastic container. 

They pulled the pergola down while I was cooking on Saturday 

Then came home after dropping off CRD.  But it was still nearly lunch time by the time we got home, and I was my usual Sunday-after-a-club-event-depressed because of the lack of time at home on the weekend.  I did manage to clean out a shelf in the pantry and water change all the downstairs fish tanks and download photos, but not blog.  Used up some of the mince I cooked last weekend with some One Pan Dinner.  

Sunday.  18th.  Backdating.  Lamb roast for dinner.  With epic leftovers.

Monday.  Spent some time trying to get caught up with all the stuff that got dropped last week because of all the disasters.  Saw my birds at lunch which was nice.  From 5pm spent some more time working on last week's issue.  Stu was home late as well.  Finished some leftover pork for dinner and The Simpsons, but then it was only half an hour before I had to log back on to do even more work.  So no photo labelling.  

Tuesday.  Woke up at 4am to pee but never got back to sleep.  Sigh.  Managed to rescan half a dozen slides, but not the dusting and vacuuming.  Zombie day all day.  Certainly didn't feel up to any photo labelling.

Wednesday.  Even though I was zombie tired I still took an hour to get to sleep.  But slept through til 5:30 (helped by being a bit dehydrated).  Ok day.  Managed about 90 photos labelled, so a nearly a week behind now.

Thursday.  Accidentally knocked this off my desk while I was dusting and it smashed everywhere.  George gave me this years and years ago - it was sort of like a thermometer where the warmer it got the further through the piping the liquid would go.  

Ok day.  Fairly slow morning but crazy afternoon.  Dumb episode of the X Files (Ascension).  Dumb issues, like the guy had an all night head start, but they got caught up with him pretty quickly.  Or like a cable car operator being able to control the speed of the car, rather than from the terminals.  Is that even a thing?  Or being able to infinitely zoom and enhance low res pics (a pet peeve of mine).  Although it was cool to see Gillian Anderson's actual pregnant belly.

Friday.  Had a random day off which was pretty amazing.  Did all my usual "Saturday" morning stuff.  Then attacked some unpleasant stuff - organising a heater service, someone to look at the leaky shower, etc.  After lunch spent a couple of hours tidying up the garage and organising stuff to get rid of.  Fried leftover pizza for dinner, the Simpsons, and then we watched Nanette (CRD had invited us to she Hannah Gadsby's show Saturday night, but Stu had his first covid jab on Friday and we didn't want to commit).  

Saturday.  Woke up at ~3am, but didn't get back to sleep for ~2 hours :(  Slept in til 7:20 and a very slow start.  This is Dumbo progress as of Saturday morning.

This is showing how I cheat by doing one half atop the other.

Didn't get much else done in the morning.  Stu was tired too from his jab.  But we did head out - got some lunch, dumped some stuff at Lifeline and Green Shed, and did some food shopping.  But we went to Coles at Gungahlin so everything is a different place and it was super crowded and it was a pretty horrible experience.  Came home and pretty much just collapsed in a heap and didn't really get much else done all day.  Watched the last episode of Diagnosis and did a bit of photo labelling.  Watched Wild with the sweetie, based on a true story about Cheryl Strayed hiking the Pacific Crest Trail.  Even a few been-theres.

Sunday.  Slept ok for a change.  Cleaned the shower and tidied the house in the morning.  Managed to get Dad's day 25 photos labelled and a fish tank water change done. 

Mid Sunday jigsaw progress

From 3pm it was cooking non-stop for three hours.  Cooked up a kilo of mince with bacon, onion and garlic.  And made a peppermint slice.  And a penne arribbiata bake.  Listened to Fantasia 2000 soundtrack.  Twice. 

In the evening felt like watching something fun, so we watched an episode of the new season of The Movies that Made us - this one on Jurassic Park.  Stu said he liked the content but not the silly way it was presented.  Oh well.  Also how good are TED-Ed talks - suits my attention span (five minutes haha).

Sunday.  11th.  I actually blogged on time last week I think but a bit early for the evening.  Did a spaghetti rosa bake for dinner but I'll put that it its own post.  Turned out pretty well.  Then Simpsons and X Files and I might have watched Fantasia 2000 again.

Monday.  Had to be Neil because he'd landed himself in hospital   .. !!!  Did some cleanup I'd been planning in test which all went well.  Otherwise just mostly being Neil all day.  

Got onto Neil.  He was doing ok, just a bit wobbly on his feet, awaiting MRI results.  Did a stir fry with leftover pork for dinner.  Then watched the third episode of Brides of Christ, and more photo labelling.

Tuesday.  omfg such a busy day, mainly in the afternoon it just didn't let up - people talking to me and wanting me to fix stuff all at once *all afternoon*.  Actually nearly lost it a few times. Leftover roast pork for dinner.  Did some photo labelling, although spent entirely too much time trying to identify birds seen along the Nile in Aswan.  Fourth episode of Brides of Christ with a super young Russell Crowe.  Only managed to label 136 photos, so now a day and a bit behind.  

Wednesday.  Too much stress, not enough time, and that's *before* going to work.  Spent all day investigating a problem that Aquila alerted us to late Tuesday afternoon.  Not nearly enough time to be Neil.  I can't deal.  Watched the fifth episode of Brides of Christ in the evening and nearly lost it when I saw Naomi Watts, Lisa Hensley and a magpie thirty years before the Penguin Bloom movie!

Thursday.  Sharpie called me super early.  I didn't hear the phone ring (phone is on silent anyway).  I did hear the buzzes of smses but didn't wake up enough to look at my phone.  So woke up at normal time and saw the messages and figured out instantly that the problem that had been affecting dev had also affected prod (I was actually worried that this might happen).  So was able to put a workaround in pretty quickly, but it did mean for a day of insanity.  In fact I spent the entire day on the phone on support calls and even missed drinks.  Sigh.  But we did still have pizza and I had a few beers at home.

Friday.  Another day of being on the phone *all day* but at least this time just with Connor and Jim which was a lot less stressful, but just as intense.  My ears hurt from having my headset on all day :(

Stu worked from home too which was nice.  I even had some pomegranate "tea" I got from Turkey in 2014 in our nice Cunard tea cups.  And he made lunch (leftover mince on toast).

It was definitely a candle and beer kind of an evening.

And I also finally tried Ray's method of reheating pizza - fried in a little oil with a lid on.

OMFG it was *so good* !!  Even better than the evening before and with a crispy base somewhat reminiscent of the old deep pan pizzas from the 80s.  Yum yum yum.

Simsons, X Files, and I watched Old Yeller, which I'd first (and last) seen a long long long time ago.  Thoroughly wholesome movie and super sad.

Saturday.  All the houseworks in the morning.  Checked on servers sporadically throughout the day (all good).  Spent ages rearranging pieces for the Disney behemoth jigsaw section.  We did pop out for some food shopping as well. 

Jim was talking about these on Friday so when we went out for lunch on Saturday we got one.  Delish!

In the evening Jenn came over for dinner.  Stu actually cooked a pretty amazing Indian feast with four different dishes plus rice.  Only small amounts of most of them so not much leftovers though!

We played a couple of games of Fluxx, then a game of Carcasonne (which I won) and a game of Ticket to Ride (which I also won).  It actually ended up being a pretty early night.

The candles I'd lit for the evening still had a good hour to go after Jenn left, so I watched the final episode of Brides of Christ.  Definitely quality television from back in the day.  I did have to laugh at some of the Sydneyisms - "It's like painting the harbour bridge - you no sooner get to one end then it's time to turn back and start at the other" and "I was wondering if getting off at Redfern was a natural method".  The second one in particular amused me because it makes absolutely perfect sense to anyone from Sydney, but even in the rest of Australia it may not make sense.  

Today my neck hurt.  Actually it started hurting yesterday.  Much the same as a few weeks back.  Vaccine related??  First time it was nine days after, this time about twenty.  Weird stuff.  Annie and Lily and Immy came over for a bit around lunch time, and we did pop out to the chemist.  Otherwise a fairly quiet day.  

Lamb roast for dinner tonight.  Used up some cauliflower and broccoli, finished up some cream, parsley and basil that were in the fridge.

Simpsons (into season 13) and X Files and aiming for an early night.