If I had one word to describe today (and yesterday for that matter), it would be "sticky".

Hot + Humid = Sticky

The pic is of the star at the top of the 3-storey Christmas Tree inside the Queen Victoria Building. Isn't it purty? Snapped it coming back from dinner - Kin Hoong was in town for the weekend and invited a bunch of old friends out for dinner. Tonight's outing had him, me, Nicola and Paul, and we went to The Little Snail in Darling Harbour, which was lovely, but definitely on the pricey side. $50/head for dinner is a little silly in my opinion.

I also got a new fish today - another betta. He's gorgeous, and I'll take some photos tomorrow. I inherited a big bowl when I got the last tank, and needed to put *something* in it :) I'm a bit worried about it getting cold in winter though. How do people heat their betta tanks in winter? I wonder.

Had a very nothing day today. Had absolutely no energy at all to get anything done. It could have been that I only got five hours sleep last night; it could have been the 100% humidity (at least that's what it felt like). At any rate, I didn't get a lot done, and it was too hot to even have my monitor on in this room, so left it off for big chunks of the day and read Firestarter and cleaned the flat.

Last night I went over to Luc and Cynthia's with a bunch of their friends and family and we watched both sets of fireworks from their balcony and Minority Report in between. Much beer and merriment to be had.

Thanks to everyone who left messages on my blog, and happy new year to you all too :)

Although the purpose of breeding the tanks is so that the fish will breed :)

The other week I inherited Vic's old tank, last week I borrowed a light and a filter off Daniel and Fee, and today I got an air pump and hose. So now I'm all set to put the tank together and put some fish in it. Before I put my angels in, I want to test that the piece of fake slate I have is fish-friendly. It's not aquarium slate, it's actually an offcut of a roof tile from my friends who just had their roof redone. So will need to test it out with some canary fish for a few weeks before I let the angels near it.

You're meant to be able to sleep in on your day off, aren't you? Well not me. Come normal waking time and I'm up. Had to force myself to try and get more sleep.

Didn't quite achieve all I wanted to today. But did get one thing done that I'd been putting off til the holidays. Then I wandered into the city to do some Christmas shopping. It's starting to get chaotic there. In the end I hardly got anything that I couldn't have gotten in the 'burbs. Still, it was very cool to see some books in Dymocks that a friend of mine wrote. I hadn't realised she was distributing them through big stores, I thought it was mainly schools.

I want to learn to play the piano. Is it too late to start learning when you're 30? My friends' kids are learning, and they're five-ish and already know about chords. I want to be able to keep up with them. I would love to be able to buy sheet music and play it. For $24.95 you can get all the music for Harry Potter. I'd love to be able to play it all. Of course I'd need a keyboard then, and somewhere to put it, and some beginners music to practise with. Not to mention I'd probably want decent lessons. I'll have to ask Sami (author of aforementioned music books) what she thinks, and how much it would be likely to cost.

oh, and I also saw the largest commercial jigsaw puzzle ever made - 18000 pieces!! It has four antique maps of the world, so it'd basically be like mixing up four 4500 piece puzzles (which is bigger than anything I've done to start with) and doing them all at once. Yikes! I shoulda checked the dimensions. I doubt I'd even have floor space to do it :)

Onya Sandra for winning Survivor VII :)

And now for a Friday Five on a Monday..

1. Do you enjoy the cold weather and snow for the holidays?
Well let's see.. normally we have 30C+ days here.

2. What is your ideal holiday celebration? How, where, with whom would you celebrate to make things perfect?
Which holiday? Christmas is for family, New Years is for friends. Christmas should also include roast pork at some point, and New Years should include fireworks.

3. Do you do have any holiday traditions?
I like Christmas trees and fairy lights. And roast pork.

4. Do you do anything to help the needy?
Just through church if anything

5. What one gift would you like for yourself?
See a previous post .. probably a digital camera is highest on the list.

Another one of my exes gets married tomorrow. Well, strictly speaking he can't be called an ex, since we were never officially in a "relationship". But it was more than "just friends" for seven months, so I suppose that counts for something. I actually went to the weddings of my last two exes, and both times I felt a little weird, so perhaps it's a good thing I wasn't invited.

This is "for the record". If such a thing as this blog still exists in 20 years time, we'll be able to come back to it and either laugh or be scared if the predictions come true.

My friends were discussing what all their kids were going to be when they grew up. This is what they came up with:

Thomas - engineer - wide margin for error
Marc - doctor - has the memory for it, and can tell you stuff with such a straight face that anyone'd believer it
Josh - paleantologist - or something similarly single minded and antisocial
Ryan - architect - creative, and non-repetetive
Courtney - Jewish mother "you will do this and you will do it now"
Rachel - actress - or something relating to her talents as a drama queen

and a big shout out to sossuk, who doesn't allow posts to his blog, so I can't comment on any of his posts

I think the bus won, although not sure who was in the wrong. Bus was turning right and hit by oncoming van. Someone went through a red light or entered the intersection when it wasn't safe to do so. Ambulances and police everywhere.

Very tired. Not sleeping well.

Ordered the first three Harry Potter books online. Couldn't find a bookstore that didn't want you to go through a whole username and password registration setup epic, so chose the least user unfriendly one of the lot - Collins - to buy them through.

Aside from that, not much.
School reunion was good for one thing at least - catching up with my best friends from high school (who didn't go to the reunion, but at least now we're all in contact)

Another mindless day patching computers
Two floors down, still many to go.

Couldn't get the key into the ignition this arvo.. the thingie inside had twisted around and gotten stuck. Fiddled and fiddled and eventually gave up and called the NRMA. They fiddled and got it unstuck, yippee. Decided it was a good time to book the car in for a service anyways :)

My party has been loosely organised, and people have agreed to turn up.. woohoo!! Not that it will be a big thing, just a few friends over to James and Georges for a dinner party.

Trekked out to Strictly Aquariums today to get another light for the big fish tank. They didn't have the "purple" lights to fit my tank, but they had some "marine blue" ones. It'll be interesting to see how the plants grow under this light. The display tanks they have at the aquarium have fluorescent objects in the tanks because they fluoresce really nicely. I'll have to see if I can find anything around here to put in the tank.

After that I went out and had a look at the house my friends are interested in buying. It's a pretty cool house, with a stack of living space. It also turned out to be a bit of a family gathering, as many of their family also came out to inspect it.

Now I'm off to do family stuff. So much for getting any programming done this weekend :)