Tagged by CC, also seen on Blogography (and probably elsewhere that I haven't caught up with yet :) )

Four jobs you've had in your life:

1. packer of pies at Loftus Pies
   
2. answerer of phones at ozemail
   
3. answerer of phones at cia
   
4. babysitter of servers at uni
   

Four movies you could watch over and over again (not to be confused with favourite movies):

1. Peter Pan
   
2. The Princess Bride
   
3. The Hunt for Red October
   
4. The Sound of Music
   

Four TV shows you love(d) to watch (among many others):

1. MacGyver
   
2. Airwolf
   
3. The Mole
   
4. The Amazing Race
   

Four places you've lived:

1. here
   
2. marrickville
   
3. my parents
   
4. nowhere else really
   

Four places you've been on vacation to:

1. USA (x3)
   
2. Canada
   
3. Lots of Australia in lots of holidays
   
4. New Zealand (when I was 18 months old)
   

Four places you would rather be (or where you'll like to visit?):

1. Austria/Switzerland
   
2. The rest of Europe
   
3. East half of USA
   
4. Lord Howe Island
   

Four of your favourite foods:

1. roast pork
   
2. peppermint chocolate
   
3. potato crisps
   
4. roast chicken
   

Four websites you visit daily:

1. tv guide
   
2. weather pixie (via active desktop and my pixie page)
   
3. kazza.cia.com.au (as my default page on my browser)
   
4. google
   

Four tagged:
I don't tag people. It's a policy. :)

I'd done this the two other New Years I've had this blog, but last New Years I was away from home and my computer, and it was too hard. But I did spend quite a bit of time reading through my blog and picking out highlights, and it seems a shame to let all that effort go to waste. That and I've spent some time today reading the icq log with Stu from June last year - that momentous June where I fell in love with him. It was certainly a roller coaster year.

I'm going to back-date this, so probably only people that get this via a news feed will see it (Stu and Dave I guess heh).

Some highlights:

* By far the biggest highlight was meeting Stu. I knew very early on that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with him
* Dave & Yvonne engaged (well technically they got engaged in 2004)
* Jumped out of a perfectly good aeroplane (with parachute attached). It was great, but too expensive to do regularly. That and the risk of dying and leaving Stu is perhaps a little high
* Had a great night in January where I had about 15 people over to watch a "slide night" on a data projector of my USA photos
* Installed apache on my photo server conspiracy so I could put in referer rules and stop people bandwidth-stealing my pics
* Went rock climbing with Campbell
* Saw Peter Jackson in person talking about the Lord of the Rings and King Kong
* Went snorkling a couple of times with Campbell
* Went to quite a few BookCrossing meetups, mostly to see Yvonne and me brother
* Lost many many hours of my life staring at the world from space with Google Maps and Google Earth
* Had a second lot of krib babies in May (six of which are still alive - would have been more if I'd taken better care of them)
* Watched all six star wars movies in order in one night. Probably a once in a lifetime but a must for any Star Wars geeks
* Got a blackberry and used it primarily for communicating with Stu
* Read Harry Potter 6 in a day
* Went live with a new website/cms at work after half a year of work
* Lots of trips to Queensland, one to Noosa, one to Yass to meet Stu's family
* Took up guppy breeding
* Saw Fiddler on the Roof and Topol live
* Took ~1500 photos of the renovation process of Luc's place

Some lowlights:
* Grandma Coates died in January, which was expected but still really sad
* Wasn't invited to George's birthday, came very close to never seeing her or her family again
* Expensive fire-safetyifying of the building
* Three days sick off work from two different flus, the most sick I've been since 1999
* Had a server get compromised from a week-old exploit in Backup Exec. Found within half an hour and rebuilt it that night
* Regular video nights pretty much stopped, as Striker was working over the weekends

In the fish tank department, got a brand-new-second-hand tank off a neighbour, and all its fish. Lost the biggest (4cm) tetra (which was 2 1/2 years old - old for a neon tetra!), a black angel, and the parent kribs. Took a tank to work for the krib babies and added guppys to it later. Somehow got ich in the big tank.

Was commenting to Stu today on what a mad year the past year has been. Certainly meeting him has been one of the highlights of my entire life.

heh, it seems I've used that title before :)

Saturday.
Unpacked 13lb of lego I got from Canada in the post this week. There's a couple of cool space sets, but the rest of it is just classic lego, not terribly interesting. Took over three months to get here by surface mail - yuk!

Then went out for Thai with J&G and a bunch of their friends (which is impressive in itself since neither of them will eat spicy food). Experienced the joys of going to places alone.. after being held up behind an accident for fifteen minutes, so was running late, then had to navigate as well and try to find out where I was actually trying to go to, then had to park right in front of everyone which meant I hit the curb - twice, and after all that couldn't drink because I was driving. Except then James offered to drive my car home for me, so I finally relaxed and enjoyed the night. Which went very late. Didn't get to bed til 2am - whoops.

Sunday.
Today after church (through the pouring rain) and a bit of a chat to Stu, I cursed undergravel filters, as I had to pull the entire tank apart to clean it. Pulled out the undergravel filters and am going to stick to power filters. This was after the second tiger barb died, probably due to fetid conditions in the tank.

And tonight I went to the parents with Dave & Yvonne for dinner. After dinner we played Scategories (which mum won) and Star Wars Trivial Pursuit, which is a heck of a lot harder than I thought it would be. We didn't use the dvd because mum was watching telly, so just did all the questions from the cards. I declared the game finished when Dave finally got all six wedgies (I had five). Think I need to watch the movies a few more times. And read the books. And watch any making of specials (one of the questions was what did they mix with glass beads to make fake snow for Hoth). Much fun to be had with that game methinks. And I kept getting annoyed at Dad & Dave getting easy questions all the time. Oh, and if in doubt answer "Obi-Wan Kenobi" - it's seriously the answer to half the questions in the game ;)

Actually I saw this meme from Karla, thought I'd do it, noticed there was stuff missing from it, googled it for other versions, found more, and found the Chinese whispers effect that memes undergo. People change little bits to suit themselves. So now I'm merging two together. The other is from here.

10 Favorites.

1. Favorite Color: Aqua
   
2. Favorite Food: Roast Pork
   
3. Favorite Song: hrm tough one. Maybe Pressure by Billy Joel, We Didn't Start the Fire by Billy Joel, Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen, Ray of Light by Madonna.. lots though
   
4. Favorite Movie: Also variable. Labyrinth and Peter Pan were both long time favourites.
   
5. Favorite Sport: er. not really into sports.
   
6. Favorite Season: Spring
   
7. Favorite Day Of the Week: Saturday
   
8. Favorite Ice Cream Flavor: Mint
   
9. Favorite Alcoholic Drink: Baileys
   
10. Favorite Word: Antidisestablishmentarianism. Or Mystical.
    

9 Currents.

1. Current Mood: Light
   
2. Current Taste: Cointreau
   
3. Current Clothes: Jeans and a t-shirt
   
4. Current Desktop Picture: Stu!
   
5. Current Hair Color: blonde
   
6. Current Time: 19:54
   
7. Current Surroundings: my study
   
8. Current Annoyance(s): lazy neighbors that dump rubbish *in front of* the bins
   
9. Current Craving: mmmm stu ;)
   

8 Firsts.

1. First Best Friend: Donna Bonnefin, from Kindy to about year 2. Then she dumped me for Kerry Williams.
   
2. First Kiss: Charles, at the National Science Summer School in Canberra in 1991. I've never seen him since.
   
3. First Screen Name: Kazza
   
4. First Pet: Bluey, a budgie, I got for my 7th birthday
   
5. First Piercing: my ears, in 1988
   
6. First Crush: dunno. Maybe Mr Jirsa my maths teacher in year 7
   
7. First CD: the Labyrinth soundtrack (I didn't actually own a cd player at the time)
   
8. First Car: a brown 1984 Ford Laser. It was kidnapped and murdered in 2001.
   

7 Lasts.

1. Last Cigarette: Never had one :)
   
2. Last alcoholic beverage: Cointreau, just now
   
3. Last Car Ride: well my drive home from work just now. Last time I was in a car and someone else was driving was on the way home the other night and Stu drove my car for a bit.
   
4. Last Kiss: Stu on Tuesday night
   
5. Last Movie Seen: at the movies would have been Serenity
   
6. Last Phone Call: some telemarketer when I got home tonight
   
7. Last CD played: my cd player is on random, but the last cd I put in a player and played all the way through was Symphony No 3 by Camille Saint-Saens
   

6 Have You Evers.

1. Have You Ever Dated One Of Your Best Friends: well no, although the person I've dated has *become* my best friend
   
2. Have You Ever Broken the Law: yes
   
3. Have You Ever Been Arrested: no
   
4. Have You Ever Skinny Dipped: yes
   
5. Have You Ever Been on TV: yes, a few times
   
6. Have You Ever Been in love: yes
   

5 Things.

1. 5 Things You're Wearing: jeans, t-shirt, glasses, underwear, shoes (soon to be removed)
   
2. 5 Things You Did Yesterday: went to work, blogged, talked to Stu, watched a very cool episode of House, watched some scary medical shows
   
3. 5 Things You Can't Live Without: Stu, the internet, my computer (or *a* computer), food/drink/air, God
   
4. 5 Things You Can Hear Right Now: the tv (Survivor), fish tanks bubbling and powering, the keyboard, my feed reader bleeping, crickets or cicadas outside
   
5. 5 Things You Do When Your bored: Use the internet, play puzzle type games, clean my flat, watch videos, play my recorder(s)
   

4 Places You've Been To.

1. America (3 times)
   
2. Canada
   
3. New Zealand
   
4. lots of places in Australia
   

3 People You Can Tell *Almost* Anything To (in no particular order).

1. Stu
   
2. Luc
   
3. James
   

2 Choices.

1. Black or White: White
   
2. Hot or Cold: Cold
   

1 Wish.

1. That I could fly :)
   

This was in my TopStuff blog, but I'm nuking it, so moving it here.

Just a few of my favourite things :)
This was compiled from stacks of online quizzes, and then sorted into some sort of category order.

So when Aurelius came over last night, we went and hired Garden State because Stu had seen it and liked it. It's one of those rather odd movies, quirky and funny but kinda sweet. Then we took Aurelius home to Will & Javaira's and came back and crashed out.

This morning another sad farewell, although not so sad because it's only two weeks till he'll be down for our birthdays. And then a thousand kilometre commute to work. Aside from the fact that it took most of the morning, the flight is only an hour and a quarter.. I could handle a commute like that. It's all the fluffing around on either end that takes up all the time. But I still think a teleporter would solve all our problems. Well at least a few of the biggest ones anyway :)

Work was a writeoff. TTotM hit with a vengeance just as I got to work, and then I was just so whacked in the afternoon I couldn't keep my eyes open during a meeting on the new website. I'm sure I should have been paying attention, because I'm going to have use it for the project I'm working on.. but maybe Jim will do most of the hard stuff (given it's mostly in lotusscript).

And then tonight, spent over an hour trying to decide what carpet and edge runners to put in all the stairwells. Good thing there were only four of us there, or we'd have never made a decision!

And now, it's time for bed.

Watched Shrek 2 tonight (finally) with George. Was as good as it was cracked up to be. Thinking I might need to invest in the two of them on dvd, if only to watch them a few more times each to pick up all the references to other movies in them :)

And what's the deal with the weather today? So hot I had to take my jumper off, and even now it's still 19C!

Fairly busy day. Housework in the morning, then out to Yvonne&Dave's for some of the arvo then running around the city then finally getting a chance to take a breather in front of the telly tonight. Caught up on some videos, watched Air Crash Investigations which was a bit emotional cause they had quite a stack of real footage of a hijacked Air France plane being stormed at Marseilles airport. Then flicked over to Deep Impact, recognising instantly the score as being by James Horner, not exactly a remarkable feat, it being almost identical to the Titanic score. 1998 was a year for same-only-different movies. Deep Impact/Armageddon for the asteroid-about-to-wipe-out-earth and Antz/A Bug's Life for the animated-ants movies.

I suppose I should really do the washing up, make up my bed, wash my hair, go to sleep.. the usual.

Not sure what happened to my weekend. Well I do know, but it was just over all too fast.

Friday night, in bed, TTotM

Saturday, Luc's, shopping, Campbelltown (mini bookcrossing meeting up at krispy kreme), movies (saw Star Wars again with dad), parents' place for dinner.

Sunday, sleepin, chatted to Stu, caught up on videos.

I did get some scraping done in the shower, but didn't get tank five water changed.

And after all that, three days of feeling fine, this afternoon I started coughing. Guess I did come down with whatever it was on Thursday after all. Oh well.

These are 21 things that I want in a lover
Not necessarily needs but qualities that I prefer
      - Alanis Morissette

Or so the song goes. I thought about this entry on the way back from Queensland (when you're in the car for hours on end with nothing better to do). I thought of the first few things but hadn't thought too much about it since then.

Now as I procrastinate over doing USA pictures, I thought I'd put this together. No particular order (although the earlier ones are probably more important).