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.

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.  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.

Monday.  5th.  Not backdating!  Slept relatively well.  Woke up at 6:40 and didn't push myself to do any scanning.  Worked from home and had a pretty decent day, not too many stoopid problems bugging me, in fact even solved a few people's problems for them which was nice.  Stu was still sick though and stayed home.  Made an "instant" lasagna for dinner with stuff I made on the weekend (the mince and a bechamel/cheese sauce I did for the veggies).  Did a bit of jigsaw and watched the third episode of Diagnosis.

Tuesday.  Slept well again but still a bit sniffly so worked from home.  A lot more distractions today, and then hurty.  Stu worked from home which was nice.  Finally finished off the potatoes we brought home from the club (I think there would have been about thirty of them, all cooked, so it was a race to get them eaten before they went moldy).  This time I fried them with the last of the unfrozen mince from the club night, and a bunch of cheese.  I did them without mince for lunch and we liked them so much I did it again for dinner with mince.  So yummy, my favourite of the ways we got through those potatoes. 

Did my quota of photo labelling by 19:18 and even ran the dishwasher.  Watched a couple of episodes of Diagnosis.  Got quite frustrated with the mother in the fifth episode, but then I later found the girl's Instagram account, where she was pretty scathing of the show and how it portrayed them.  She'd also had a couple of surgeries for some vascular problems that had never been thought of in the show.  

Wednesday.  Slept well until I woke up with hurty at 1:15 and it kept me away til nearly 3am.  Sigh.  So another zombie day.  Vicki was in town which offered the perfect excuse to work from home again.  Got photo labelling done early so X Files and Diagnosis in the evening (after finishing off the last of the unfrozen club leftovers - some spring rolls and chicken wings and chipolatas).

Thursday.  Finally felt up to scanning slides again, first time in nearly a week due to insomnia or sickness.  It was also the first time in nearly a week we didn't have the heater on in the morning and it was *cold* in the house.  Ok day, ok drinks.  Feeling a general depression over not really fitting in and not getting on with people and not really being "friends" with anyone much I work with.  So felt a bit blah even at drinks.  Started watching I, Tonya.

Friday.  Slept ok.  Ok day.  Did up doco and change paperwork for next round of cleaning next week.  Finished watching Fantasia.

Saturday.  Quiet day, alternating with housework and jigsaw. 

Yet again, went into battle dealing with the government online.  This time I wanted to get a certificate of my covid vaccination.  But to do that you have to link Medicare or the Health Record (which I think I opted out of) to mygov.  But of course it refused to link my Medicare account didn't it.  It wanted the number and address details etc, but kept complaining I hadn't answered things correctly, at which point it prompted to fill in all the details of my bank accounts and my last doctor's appointment, including the date and how much it cost.  And I'm like wtf.  So I rage quit on that and called them.  Fortunately I pretty much got straight through, and they gave me a linking code I could enter and that worked and it linked up and I got my covid vaccination certificate.  Hurrah.  Now let's just hope they'll let us travel.  I'd be happy to do home quarantine when we get back if that's what it takes.  So long as I don't have to fight with tour companies about getting money back on trips...  

Found someone had uploaded Brides of Christ to DailyMotion, so watched the first episode of that.  We watched this when it came out back in 1991, and I blogged that I watched in when it was on tv again in 2003.  Downloaded and processed phone photos while that was on.  Dinner was some mince that I cooked last weeked, with tomato paste and tomatoes and pasta.  Into season 2 of the X Files, and then I finished I, Tonya.  It's actually not a bad movie.  Margot Robbie did a pretty good job (she even did a lot of the skating), although she's just a bit tall and *big* to pass for Tonya Harding, who was tiny. 

Sunday.  A quiet day of housework stuff, jigsaw, and blogging and computer stuff.  We did go out for lunch and food shopping/chemist as well.  About to go prep dinner.  

Monday.  28th.  Backdating.  No symptoms from my second Pfizer jab, other than a sore arm, which wasn't even as bad as the first time.  First day of "the mask" except I didn't actually leave the house.  A project forced the hand on a cleanup I'd been wanting to do in forever only I was hesitant to get approvals to do it - cause if it ain't broke don't fix it.  Except it was broked, so was going to have to do the cleanup which was a big win.  Finished all of my labelling by dinner time.  Same club leftovers as last night - empanadas, potato, salad.  Finished off day 21 labelling after dinner, then Alfred Hitchcock and first episode of Diagnosis (produced by someone who was actually a consultant on House!

Tuesday.  Did the cleaning I planned yesterday.  Took my lunch so I wouldn't need to go to the mall and wear a mask.  Had a big outage in the afternoon although luckily I wasn't affected so pretty much business as usual.  Leftover club potatoes (one tray thinly sliced, one try a bit smashed, then baked - the smashed ones needed to be more smashed) and wings for dinner.  Labelled 220 photos after dinner.

Wednesday.  Woke up at 1:47 and didn't get back to sleep til well after 5am, stressing about All The Things.  I might have actually gone back to bed, except I had a dentist appointment in the morning - first in two years since I didn't go last year because of covid.  This was the first time of wearing a mask indoors.  Except I'd just been out in the freezing cold air, and as soon as I went inside the mask made my glasses fog up instantly.  I hadn't been to the dentist in their new location, and so I was trying to figure out where to go but I literally couldn't see.  No wonder people don't like wearing masks.  Zombie day.  Took my lunch again so I wouldn't have to go to the mall.  Did some bits and pieces of work but not terribly efficient.  Late home.  Even had a beer, tv dinners, and watched Fantasia 2000.

Thursday.  Woke up at 2:20 and didn't get back to sleep til nearly 5am.  Sigh.  Although strangely didn't feel as much of a zombie as yesterday.  Wearing the mask and having it fog up my glasses the whole time got pretty old pretty quickly.  First time at the mall, and (almost) everyone wearing masks.  Such a strange sight to see in Canberra!  There were police patrolling too, although they didn't pull up the one guy we saw not wearing his mask properly.  But also school holidays which made the mall all kinds of horrendous.  Neil bought a pack of ten reusable masks, so I bought a couple off him.  Pretty quiet drinks, then pizza, Simpsons, X Files, and the start of Fantasia.

Friday.  Woke up at 12:40 and didn't get back to sleep til around 3am.  Epic sigh.  During that time I felt like I was getting a bit of a cough and sniffle.  Started to work from home in the morning, but definitely sick, so gave up and went back to bed.  Spent most of the day in bed.  Not a single minute of sleep though.  Like I've missed about seven hours of sleep during the week and I was sick, you'd think I'd be able to sleep.  Nope.  My body simply refuses to sleep.  So fricken annoying.  Loaded potatoes with mince, parsley, cabbage, cream and sour cream for dinner then just watched crap on the internet.  Stu also started getting sick in the afternoon.  Most likely we both picked it up at the club on the weekend.  Hurrah. 

Saturday.  Took forever to get to sleep - couldn't breathe and restless.  But then did sleep okish after that til after 7am.  Stayed in bed all morning (aside from getting up for breakfast, and later cheesy hash browns with club potatoes for brunch).  Not sleeping of course. 

Spent the afternoon just watching stuff on the internet (a fair bit from Oversimplified), and puttering through rss feeds. 

Performed surgery on one of the masks I bought off Neil - simply threaded a paper clip through the top of it to make a nose bridge, to see if it'll make any difference to my glasses fogging up.

Tried to make NQN's accordion potatoes for dinner, but I think they really need to be raw first so they didn't really work.  Simpsons/X Files/stuff on internet in the evening.

Sunday.  Another very slow day, mostly just watching crap on the internet.  Cooked roast pork for dinner, although pretty fail on the crackling - possibly because I was using the deeper dish, so not as much air flow.  Also some mince to use with whatever, and lots of veggies.  Early night (didn't process photos or blog though).

Monday.  21st.  Accidentally slept in til my alarm because when I woke up earlier I thought it was 5:08 not 6:08 because my glasses were blocking the clock.  Had an ok day.  Fought with Powershell and XML.  Put on beef brisket at lunch time.  Labelled 166 photos before dinner and another 60 after dinner and cleaning up the kitchen.  Then watched the second episode of Netflix's Pandemic documentary (I think I watched the first one Sunday night).  It was filmed in 2019 and released in January 2020.  Which makes the timing of it especially eerie.  But omfg I can't stand anti-vaxxers.  They're fricken dangerous.

Tuesday.  Trying to concentrate on one thing, only to be hit with another big important thing, (it never rains but it pours) then had to go to a BS meeting in the middle of it all which was the biggest waste of my time ever.  Third episode of Pandemic in the evening.  Yesterday I'd had pain in my hamstrings, I'm guessing from all the weeding I did on the weekend, but Tuesday night my neck hurt if I turned my head side to side.  Very strange.

Wednesday.  Neck still hurt.  Mostly worked on the two big projects that needed rules.  Then the same firewall that caused me so much grief last year stitched me up again.  Sigh.  But did get caught up with photo labelling.

Thursday.  Woke up at dentist time but didn't get back to sleep til after 4 :( Neck slightly better.  But omfg all the stoopid.  All the firewalls being stoopid and people being stoopid made me lose it.  But there was cheesy garlic Subway for lunch and drinks.  Finished up season 11 of The Simpsons.  X Files, and 5th episode of Pandemic.

Friday.  Neck slightly better.  Busy day trying to get *one thing* done in between interruptions and questions and people wanting stuff. Lunch was pesto pasta I made (using jar pesto).

It rained a few times in the afternoon.  At 4pm this was the light level in my study..

Finally got it done a bit after 5pm and tested it and it worked!  Into season 12 of The Simpsons, then X Files.  Then I watched Black Swan, which was pretty intense.  I think I'd lose if I didn't know what was real...

Saturday.  Did some washing but really nothing much all day :(  Headed out to the club in the afternoon for a winter solstice carnivale.  The brief was "colourful dressups", and, being winter solstice, I figured I could do Elsa again and get another wear out of the dress ;)  (and finally got to use the hair pins that hadn't turned up in time last time).  Numbers were down because of all the cancellations because of Covid.

Lots of food..

I had a relatively early night (maybe 10:30), but I couldn't get to sleep for hours.  Felt too cold which probably didn't help.  I lit the fire when I woke up after 7, but didn't get much more sleep.  Got up and cooked bacon and eggs for breakfast, then went back to bed to try and get some more sleep.  Think I got a smidgen.  So didn't end up getting up til after 10:30 :(  Went up to see if anything needed cleaning, but it had all been done, so just took away heaps of the leftovers.  With assurances from people that the rest would get taken (last month I didn't take it all, but noone else took any, so a whole bunch of food ended up getting thrown out :( ).  We put orders in online for Chemist Warehouse, but they still weren't ready by the time we got home.  It was at least an hour and a half after putting the order in that we got smses.  Hopeless.  Headed out again (via the chemist) to Garran so I could get my second Pfizer jab!!!

They were a lot better organised (and had more staff on) so I was in and out in twenty minutes (five minutes signing in and answering questions and fifteen minutes after to make sure I didn't keel over).  Had leftover club empanadas and potatoes and salad for dinner. 

Watched the last episode of the Surgeon's Cut which I realised I hadn't seen, The Simpsons and the X Files with the sweetie, then the final episode of Pandemic: How to prevent an outbreak.  Which really didn't have a whole lot on actually how to prevent an outbreak, only that we're underprepared if there is one.  Covid-19 anyone?

And download and processed my photos from the week, and blogged.  Last week my phone wasn't taking photos sometimes.  This week I found it took like five in a burst a couple of times.  Fricken hopeless Apple. 

So far no symptoms from my jab, although I did warn people I may not be in tomorrow...

Monday.  Day after first covid shot.  Just a sore arm, but otherwise felt fine - oh well, no day off! ;)  Labelled most of my quota of photos before dinner, and all 193 by 19:19.  Watched some Alfred Hitchcock Presents and Netflix Human: The World Within.  

Tuesday.  Took ages to get to sleep - just super restless.  Had most photos labelled before dinner, but had to stop and turn the computer off because of the passing storm (One Drive was being a poo, and so was FTP to my hosting server and I hadn't backed up the computer that night yet).  Finished labelling day 18 by 19:33 then watched some more Alfred Hitchcock and Human show.  CSS is evil.

Wednesday.  Slept ok for a change.  Cleaning day when I wasn't getting distracted by stuff.  More Human show.  CSS is definitely evil.  I gave up fighting with it to get things how I wanted for my USA 2000 gallery.  I've pretty much finish it for now.  I'm not entirely happy with the design of it, but it'll do for the moment.  Now to start on the next holiday gallery ;)

How dumb is Whittaker's chocolate?  This salted caramel dark chocolate is very nice, but it refuses to break where it's supposed to, instead breaking through the middle of the pieces, making an awful mess, even after I attempt to cut through with a knife!

Thursday.  Annual whiskey night at work.

The Midleton was very smooth but the Kilchoman was smokey which made it the winner.

We also bought snackages for people to have on their tables 

Afterwards Con and I went over to Lachie's mate's place cause it was Lachie's thirtieth.

Friday.  Felt like peppermint tea in the morning.

Met up with the Chrises and Neil for lunch at Herbert's

I gave myself all week to do a bunch of doco I needed to do for the next round of cleaning, yet still didn't manage to finish it by Friday arvo :(  X-Files with the sweetie in the evening, and I watched Gifted, which was very sweet, and Mckenna Grace is pretty awesome.

Saturday.  Didn't get a whole lot done because I was somewhat distracted listening to the Classic 100.  

We did pop out in the morning so Stu could pick up a package, and get petrol, and have brunch with Kit.  My phone is playing up at the moment (iOS 14.6 maybe??) and sometimes just doesn't save a photo when you take it.  So it never saved the photo I took of my eggs benedict I had a Stella's by the Lake (no longer Black Pepper).  

Got home and put dinner on.  We found this cut of pork the other week and got it - because I feel like it's a waste of all that crackling to use it in a pulled pork.  Also made it a lot less fatty!

Sunday.  Rinse and repeat of radio listening.  Stu and Immy came over for a bit to play with Stumpy.

I pulled out some pens to test them.  These Pentel pens I've had since 1986.  They don't work too well, but all of them at least wrote something.. thirty five years later!!!

These gel pens are somewhat newer.  Although they could be as old as ten or fifteen years old.  None of them work properly (in fact some of them had issues from day one).  So sadly they all got tossed.

In the evening we went to EffanC's for dinner which was nice - first time we've really caught up with them all year.

Stu really liked this crumbed basa (so did I actually) - lemon juice, basa, then a thick layer of breadcrumbs, parmesan cheese and spring onions.

Monday.  Today.  Alternated between house stuff and photo stuff and even started a new section of the Disney behemoth jigsaw. 

Made pizza scrolls for lunch, with tomato paste, three cheeses, herbs, garlic powder, mushroom, olives and sundried tomato, but my phone didn't save the before photo I took, and stuffed up one of the after photos, so this is all I got.

Stoopid useless Apple.

Download photos off my phone this arvo for first time since 14.6  Photos are now arranged by month, instead of being in a new folder every time the phone clocks a thousand photos.  But Apple is STILL messing with the timestamps on my files.  I don't think they're EVER going to fix that bug.  Thinking my next phone is more likely going to be a Samsung.

Managed to get photo downloading and processing done, a bunch of Eurasia photo labelling done, cooked dinner (lots of roast veggies and some steak for me) and cleaned up, and watched the last episode of Human: The World Within (although Netflix played them in reverse order for reasons unknown) by about 20:45.  An hour later and I've also managed to blog.. hurrah..

Monday.  24th.  Not backdating ;)  Slept ok I think.  Had an ok day.  Updated our network diagram because it was WRONG, and we can't have that!  (discovered while trying to fix some monitoring dashboards).  Got 174 photos labelled before dinner and another hundred after dinner - past 10000!!!  Also downloaded and processed my phone photos from last week but didn't have time/energy to blog.

Tuesday.  Couldn't get to sleep for *ages* stressing about All The Things.  Had a big lunch (oops - people kept telling me to eat their chips! .. and I'm a seagull.. soo..)  Connor helped me take home three pallets from downstairs - just so that I can store some boxes in the garage without worrying about them getting water damaged for the once every year or two flood that we get through the garage.  

Wednesday.  Woke up at 5:30 from a dream where the sweetie had died during brain surgery.  I was so upset I couldn't get back to sleep.  Spent hours and hours during the day in meetings. Fun. Not.  Super late home but still managed to label all Dad's day 16 photos (nearly two hundred of them), even while watching Aircrash Confidential (watched all six episodes on 9Now this week).  Only a hundred behind in the photo labelling now, should be able to catch those up on the weekend.

Thursday.  More meetings.  Neil's beer(s) of the week this week were two from Moondog - the white chocolate white ale I first tried at Herbert's the other week, and a chilli vanilla stout (which didn't taste like chilli or vanilla or stout!).  

Friday.  Hurrah for working from home!!  Did a bit of cleaning, pretty quiet day.  Watched Gallipoli in the evening - forty years old this year and yet I've never actually seen it.  Hurrah for peeps uploading stuff to Youtube!

Saturday.  Had a pretty relaxing day.  ie, got practically nothing done around the house/computer.  Stu had a migraine in the morning so it was a pretty quiet day all round.  Headed out to the club in the afternoon and lit the fire and it was all very cosy, then we headed up for the evening's events - an Italian themed night.  All the food!

Sunday was pretty much just *work*, almost no fun.  Feel like I'm drowing in housework.  Did a couple of loads of washing, fish tank stuff, clothes sorting and a bunch of blogging.  Started watching the remake of Rebecca in the afternoon (I saw the Alfred Hitchcock version on the plane from New York to Singapore in early 2019).  Watched Lucy with the sweetie in the evening.

Today was much of the same.  All these boxes had been up in my "hobby" room until Stu converted it into his man cave, so they got moved downstairs, but it blocked up the whole dungeon room so we couldn't move in there, so now I had those pallets I could move them onto them in the garage.

Other than that just food shopping, all the work, caught up with photo labelling (finished day 16, into day 17), cooking an epic dinner of almost all veggies (ok so also a bit of leftover lamb i pulled out of the freezer) and some tv with the sweetie.  Finished up watching Rebecca in the evening.  Not entirely sure if I liked it or not.  It had more modern "values" but they could have written Maxim a bit better, altho apparently it did have Daphne du Maurier's ending not Alfred Hitchcock's censored version (I can't remember the book it was like thirty years ago).  

Friday 21st.  Backdating this.

Finished up work a bit early then got packed to head down the coast.  Took me an hour and a half to get organised.  hrmmm.

The sweetie was feeling super tired so I drove.  I felt pretty tense whenever anyone was behind me, because I wanted to take things a little slow on account of kangaroos, but also didn't want to be holding up traffic.  So went quite slow whenever there was an overtaking lane so people could pass me.  

Arrived at Kit and Pete's a bit before 20:30 and had a couple of drinks then went to bed.

Slept ok I think.  In the morning went and saw all the animals.  When I went outside the turkeys and guinea fowl all came over to see if I had food, but wandered off again when they realised I didn't.

Kit fed all the birds first.

Watched by an eastern yellow robin (raw pixels from phone)

The geese have gone - Solomon got eaten by a fox so Kit sold the two girls.  The goats have also moved on because they annoyed Kit too much.

Then down to the horses.  This is Scout, her newest horse.

Then to the sheep.

These are some of the new sheep

This lamb was born just after we were down there last time

More of the lambs - so cute!!

Then continued our wander.  How spectacular is their turpentine tree!

Over to the very dewey powerline paddock (my feet got very wet) to see the neighbour's horses.

How freaky are Rocket's eyes?

Then some brunch (good thing I had a light breakfast a couple of hours ago ;) )

Then Kit did a bunch of work with Scout while I supervised and played with Elle and Ziggy.

For lunch we headed up to Mollymook and met up with Chloe and had lunch at the golf club, which has a lovely outlook over the beach.

There was some very nice cheesy garlic bread

Kit was interested in the ribs for lunch, so I asked if she wanted to split it.  Turns out that was quite a sensible idea, as we ended up full enough without being stuffed silly.

After lunch we went for a bit of a wander

Then headed back to Kit and Pete's and hung out for a bit.

Then Pete lit a fire and we had snackages and roasted some marshmallows and had a bbq for dinner and a pretty chillaxed night.

There was even cheesecake for Kit's birthday

Kit blowing out the candles with her hand - very Covid safe ;)

Went to bed around midnight, but then woke up at 5:30 and couldn't get back to sleep for ages.  So a pretty slow start.

The turkeys and guinea fowl came over again when I went out.

Did all the animals stuff, then Kit cooked up an epic breakfast of buns, eggs, bacon, garlic mushrooms and hashbrowns.

Then we all wandered off.  Went into Batemans Bay to go over the new bridge and see if we could get a last look at the old bridge (didn't get a good view because they've only got the western half of the new bridge open at the moment).  We got home mid afternoon but didn't get much done and I was pretty tired.  I did cook up a cauliflower bake, potatoes, and broccolini with facon, so a relatively healthy dinner.