This first one took months.  3000 pieces and seemingly all browns.  I knew it wasn't going to be much fun when I got it.  I wouldn't have ever chosen this for myself, but a guy at work challenged me, so what can you do!?  I think I started it in January.  Once we'd slogged our way through enough of it, it was possible to do the Ravensburger trick of flipping half of it round 180 degrees and doing the top half on top of the bottom.  So it took months for the first half, and just a few days for the second.  We finished it over the Easter long weekend.

This is at the beginning of the weekend.

This shows how the pieces would line up flipped to the other side.  I did use this technique a little bit in some of the sky, but even know exactly what shaped piece you need, there'd still be a couple of hundred pieces that all looked the same to choose from.

I did all the sails on the ship on the left in a morning.

Filling in the left

All the sky (well, the standard shaped pieces anyway)

Once all the dark stuff was done, all that was left was plain sky.  So I cut it in half - see the line - to flip the top around onto the bottom.

Like so

Closer view

Even closer

And the next day it was done!

To have a fun break, I got out the cupcakes jigsaw.  I've done this before so let David do most of it.  I'm debating whether I should give it away or not - it's so fun.

Then we started another section of the Disney behemoth.

Annoyingly, the colour on the left matched the colour on the right so closely I kept putting in the wrong pieces.  

Just look at this crap!

This is actually wrong!!

Did a lot of this by sitting one half atop the other.

Had a break in between and did a jigsaw of Alpensee.  It didn't have the exact lake name on the box, but figured it out from Google Earth and found where the photo was taken from.

As a glutton for punishment, almost immediately after I finished that, I started The Little Mermaid section.  In some ways it was even tougher than Peter Pan.  There seemed to be unending blues.  It also suffered from colour being so similar on either side you could get things wrong.  I think the stars at the top were the worst for that on this one.

We started another one after that, but it got put downstairs when we had some people over, and hasn't been brought back since.  

Finally we have one I picked up at the Green Shed the other week.  This was on the stand to be distributed to the shelves, so had only just been dropped off.  Grabbed it as I was queuing to pay.  This was fun because you couldn't put it together until you'd completed each little section of nine pieces, and had to assemble them to allow a maze to be solved.  Quite fun.  I did it by myself, then showed David the finished puzzle, then pulled it apart for him to do.

Oh my what a week.

So back to last Sunday.  I forgot to mention we went to the markets for a little bit of food shopping, altho we didn't get very much.  Had chicken cordon bleu that we got that day for dinner because, yum.  Into season 11 BBT.

Monday just doing all the things and UK photo labelling.

Tuesday morning I felt like had way too much to do at home to have time to go to work.  But at work I was so insanely busy I actually felt a bit queasy in my stomach.  I was completely on edge all day.  Late in the afternoon I went downstairs to move crap out of David's side of the garage that we'd dumped there on the weekend and I stepped on an air packing bag in the dark (twice in three days - I'd done the same thing in the dungeon on the weekend) and it made a huge bang and I had a full on meltdown right there on the garage floor.  It was definitely a wine and candle kind of an evening.  I asked the sweetie to cook so we got pizza.  hrmm.

The boys put on another couple of episodes of Space Force, and I watched the start of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.  There was also this photoshop disaster on the Chromecast.  That bridge isn't even in that location next to the Golden Gate Bridge, and the one they've photoshopped in there is only half there, and is distorted in places too.  Epic fail!

Wednesday morning was up to 1500 of Dad's slides.  Then started some pretty full on AWS training (via Zoom).  Also, I'm too stoopid to be a network admin.  In the evening I redid one of the labs to try and figure out what I was doing wrong.  Got there in the end, but I did miss out on two nights of photo labelling this week :(

Thursday wasn't quite so intense.  We didn't have much food in the house, but I did have some sausages defrosted that I bought in March (I got three trays of meat to freeze before everything got really crazy, and figured it was time to use them up).  Managed to make up quite a nice dinner of sausages, cabbage bake and potatoes.

Friday was pretty full on.  I didn't have time to go for a walk, and once I was done with the training I had to catch up on all the work I'd been neglecting at work.  Didn't finish til like 6pm.  Watched Howl's Moving Castle (the Billy Crystal english version on Netflix) with the sweetie, which I hadn't seen since we saw it at the movies in Brisbane in 2005.

Friday night I actually slept really well which was nice.  Saturday morning we did various medical things, had brunch at Rocksalt (really nice to have a nice brunch with the sweetie), dropped a boot full of clothes off at Vinnies and did a small food shop at the markets.  

Stu had the shakshuka.  He'd have liked a bit more feta but otherwise liked it.

I had eggs benedict.  Lovely crispy toast and bacon, well cooked eggs and a nice hollandaise sauce - great job!

Beautifully cooked eggs!

In the afternoon was catching up on blogging and house stuff.  Also David fixed the display on Stu's CD player which hasn't worked for years (one incandescent light bulb blew, putting too much voltage on the other two which blew as well).  Most awesomest brother ever!!

Watched some BBT and the next couple of Netflix corona virus documentary episodes (the race for a vaccine and how to cope).  The sweetie and I have been super lucky throughout this lockdown.  Even though we're introverts and actually prefer isolation, we still have each other (and David ;) ).  So we've been coping probably better than most people.  

Today was nice and quiet, mainly just cleaning and tidying the house.  Altho I did feel somewhat cranky this afternoon (the vaccuum cleaner being a bumhead certainly didn't help).  We do have some roast pork in the oven so that should hopefully be nice.

And it rained this weekend!  I put this glass out last night and look at all the rain it caught!

After feeling like I didn't achieve much on Monday, I ploughed through my todo list on Tuesday morning while scanning slides, and actually got probably more done before 8:45am when I went to work than I did all day Monday.  I also didn't do any photo labelling on Monday night, so had to catch up on Tuesday and Wednesday nights.  Got up to 2271 photos labelled.  I also might have ruined David's evening on Tuesday by putting out a new jigsaw for him to be distracted by ;)

Also convinced I was getting sick.  This is what happens when the only time we go out is for food, and have to encounter sick people.  Fricken heck.  Why can't we be proper hermits and never have to deal with people???

Thursday was Crust pizza, and we watched the first episode of Unorthodox which was interesting (although distracting with all the been-theres heh).

Friday I started cooking beef cheeks (which I'd tried to get the time before at Coles but couldn't, but did manage to get some on Monday) at lunch time and had A/M/C over for dinner which was nice.  Geeked out with C over ABC singing books and Monty Python.

Interlude with wine and cheese

A couple of tablespoons of dark soy near the end really blackens it up.

It looks pretty disgusting but it's oh so delicious!!!

Saturday the sweetie felt like food from the Scottish Restaurant for breakfast, so I obliged ;)  They were completely unorganised though.  The queue of cars wasn't moving, they tried to ask me what I wanted before I was anywhere near the speaker because of the cars not moving, then the person in the lane next to me got served first out of order, they didn't have the right order when I went to pay, they had to ask me what my order was when I went to pick up the food, and they *still* gave me food for someone else.  Basically a disaster all round.  Still, I did get the correct order eventually so all good.

Otherwise I didn't really do anything all day.  Spent all morning scanning my oldest ABC book.  Frittered away the afternoon.  Finished watching The Blues Brothers which I started possibly on Thursday night.  I didn't feel like standing in a cold kitchen cutting up chicken while everyone else slept, so got cranky and let the sweetie order vomit pizza and pepperoni and feta pizza, with these pretty amazing cheesy garlic scolls.  Then we watched The Phantom Menace.

Sunday was just Lego part picking.  All.  Day.

Sunday I tried out a recipe from Taste for pulled pork.  It was indeed extremelly easy - just some onion, garlic, and a dry spice rub, then stick in the slow cooker all afternoon.  I had no idea if it was going to work or not, but it worked just beautifully - fall apart tender meat.  The only problem is wasting the skin that I would otherwise make crackling with ;)  Might have to try with beef next time, and try some different combos of spices (this one had paprika, chili, cumin and fennel).

Oh, also on the weekend was ABC Classic FM's Hottest 100 Beethoven.  I actually know surprisingly little of his work, so just voted for the few I recognised.  And of course the 5th and 9th symponies.  The 9th was always going to win, but I was shocked with the 5th came 5th!  I thought it would have come second. 

Watched another two episodes of Unorthodox in the evening.

Today I felt like I didn't really get much done, but there's a reasonable amount ticked off the todo list.  Including scanning slides, finishing part picking for the last six sets, dusting, vacuuming, putting away washing, more washing, and we even went for a nice long walk around Palmerville with A&M (all the way up the highway and back).  Finished watching the Netflix series on Jeffrey Epstein that I'd been watching over the weekend.  Guy was a sleaze.  And how come they haven't charged anyone else???  Lunch was a packet pumpkin soup from Coles, and dinner will be that chicken.. in that very cold kitchen....

Backdating again.. I'm such a slacker!!

Monday/Tuesday/Wednesday nothing eventful, just UK photo labelling and jigsaw.  By Wednesday I'd labelled 1706 photos in three weeks.

Thursday morning I passed 1000 slides of Dad's scanned.  Was up to episode 7 in Lego Masters.

Friday morning I found a date on one of Dad's pieces of RADOS paper.  The ABC used to print out the runsheets/programmes on paper and the system was called RADOS.  I'm sure Mum/David could correct me on the details.  The point is they only used the paper once then it was scrap.  So Dad used to bring it home for us as scrap paper.  All the time I was living at home I used that paper.  So did the rest of the family.  In the back of each slide box, Dad has used RADOS paper to summarise what is in each box.  The box I opened on Friday had the date - December 1980.  I already knew that Dad had rearranged slides somewhat from their original order, but this put a date on it - after 1980.  Fun times.  

Friday also happened to be the fifteen anniversary of when the sweetie and I first met in real life.  We had chicken kiev for dinner and watched Lego Masters.

Saturday I had a body corporate annual meeting for my flat in Sydney.  I've been to a couple over the years, but this year because of COVID-19 they did it as a phone meeting.  Which made it great for me - I could attend one without even leaving home!  The strata lady reckoned it was good because they got people calling in that wouldn't or couldn't normally come (like me!) and she even had one call in from South Africa for one of her buildings!

I also might have finished The Little Mermaid section of the jigsaw.  I cooked two trays of home-made potato wedges for dinner, which were epic awesome.  Then we watched some Lego Masters, which was the episode under water.  Which all tied in nicely with "Under the Sea" theme because we also watched The Little Mermaid that night.

Sunday was bits and pieces of housework, epic pizza scrolls for lunch, Lego part picking, and bribing the magpies not to swoop me come spring time (they came flying over before I'd even seen them - so fricken cool!)

Pretty sure we finished Lego Masters that Sunday night.  Was really happy the guys that won did, they looked like they were having fun the whole way through and their builds were amazing.

Monday we went food shopping.  Did a bit of housey stuff.  Cooked "lemon butt chicken" for dinner (just a roast chicken with a whole lemon as stuffing).  Turned out really nicely.  Didn't get a lot of leftovers though ;)

Long weekends are great.....

Backdating a week cause, well, I'm a slacker ;)

Sunday we watched the second episode of Lego Masters where everything when kaboom!  Fun times.

I remembered on Monday that I hadn't posted a funny I found in the new Lion King movie.  In the original movie during the song Hakuna Matata, Pumbaa sings "And I got downhearted, Every time that I .." and Timon cuts him off and says "Pumbaa not in front of the kids".  Well in the new one he actually sings "farted" which cracked me up ;)  Got my quota of UK photos labelled early, all the more time for the jigsaw!  Frustratingly slow though, because even if you know the *exact shaped piece* you still have to search through hundreds and hundreds of pieces to find it.  Also started season 10 of BBT.

This was on my walk on Monday.  I'm bribing these guys not to swoop me come spring time ;)

Tuesday I worked from home in the morning, then went into the city with the sweetie.  We had lunch at Gus's which was really nice (both being able to go out and share a meal with the sweetie, and lunch wasn't bad either ;) ). 

Went to the sweetie's doctor's appointment, then chucked one in for me as well.  Went into work for a bit in the afternoon while I waited for the sweetie to do stuff at his office.  They'd just put a sticker on "my" desk saying don't sit there.  The disadvantage of hotdesking (with TINY desks) is you don't get proper social distancing.  So whateves - whilever that sticker is on my desk I'll continue working from home.  So being "at work" for the afternoon meant that I really didn't feel like cooking when I got home.  So the sweetie got pizza.  Hrmmm.  The sweetie and I are relishing our time at home and working from home.  We'd very happily never go into the office again.  Of course we'd be even happier just being hermits and having a quiet life and not ever having to deal with people :)

Wednesday was too cold and miserable for a walk at lunch.  And crazy crazy busy.  And too much stoopid.  Wasn't til after 5pm that I could actually leave all the busyness and get stuck into prep work I really needed to do for Saturday.  For dinner I cooked the last of the leftover pork from the weekend with the last of a cabbage that I bought like six weeks ago, a sausage from the other night, a handful of green beens and the last of the pork jelly.  It was a pretty random meal but tasty enough and used up a bunch of stuff in the fridge.  And there was even leftovers for David!  That morning I scanned 28 of Dad's slides, and in the evening got up to 1094 photos labelled from UK 2010.  Nothing on the jigsaw though.

Thursday was chicken kiev for dinner (since we'd already had pizza this week).  And watched Lego Masters episode 3.

Friday hurty kept me awake from 12:30 to 3:00 so was pretty tired all day Friday.  Although I did manage to finish scanning a third box of Dad's slides for the week.

Saturday I was at work all day watching graphs during some DDoS testing.  Stu made pea and ham soup for dinner from a soup packet mix I got from Chris's last year some time. I actually liked it better because it had chunky bits in it that didn't all just disintegrate like the peas do.  Watched more Lego Masters.

I think Tassie is a little out of scale...

Sunday I alternated between the jigsaw and housework.  Had Rob and Lynn over for roast lamb for dinner which was nice.  

Monday morning I actually scanned a whole box of 36 of Dad's slides all before work.  I still wonder if I should have (or should) invest in a slide scanner.  Rob and Lynn said they did and managed to get through thousands of slides in just a few weeks.  Dad actually did, and I have it downstairs, but I haven't really played with it and not sure how good it is (or how fast it is).  I'm actually really happy with the results that I'm getting from the scanner Stu got me for Christmas in 2005.  It's slow, sure, but the quality seems pretty good (to me).  And if I continue to scan a box a day I'll be done by Christmas.....!  In the evening I did another 200 UK photos.  All of them in Japan.  hrmm :)   Also roasted a couple of trays of potatoes to have with the leftover lamb.

And that's up til then.  No movies to quote though for the blog subject.  Guess I'll just have to use one from last week ;)

So where were we?  Saturday night.  Asleep by 9pm and slept for nine hours.  Bliss!!

Sunday I felt alive again after so much insomnia.  Mostly just house stuff and Lego part picking.  Made Sizzler cheesy toast for lunch.

In the evening we had some celebratory bubbles and cheese, had Chong Co delivered, and watched BBT (three episodes from end of season 8, beginning of season 9) and Flying High.  A lovely evening with the sweetie.

Sunday night slept well again.  Finished Lego part picking the sets for the weekend.  A bunch of house stuff.  A bit of jigsaw.  Chicken kiev and veggies for dinner.

I actually had good sleep every night this week, until we got to the weekend....

Tuesday was spent in Do Not Disturb mode catching up on everything from Friday, as well as the ten or so new tickets that we had because the rest of the country didn't have the day off.  Taco Tuesday!  And USA photo geotagging - fricken hard work.  

Wednesday night spent an hour blogging, but only got half way through the week.  Continuing on now ;)

Thursday traditional beer and pizza, and watched Naked Gun 33 1/3.

Friday woke up at 5:30 and couldn't get back to sleep.  Cooked honey mustard chicken for dinner and then watched Contagion that David had brought up on DVD.  I didn't know Stu hadn't actually seen it, and neither had David.  But epic blogging fail - I didn't record the first time I saw it!  I assumed I saw it with Stu, but I don't remember when or in what format.  It was pre Netflix (I saw it for the second time on Netflix in June last year).  Maybe I saw it on TV ???  Very cool movie, underrated in IMDB.  Only gripe is they compressed the timeline somewhat, presumably for dramatic effect.  

Saturday woke up at 4:30 and couldn't get back to sleep.  Other than washing the towels, I didn't really do anything else except for the jigsaw.  Sausages for dinner and watched Identity Thief that the boys chose.  Typical Melissa McCarthy - completely silly, but with heart.  My biggest gripe is that people who commit identity theft are sociopaths with no heart.  

One of the sets I was part picking for was actually complete, so just for fun David built it.  Then I pulled it apart again, because I don't have the space to keep built models around for years ;)

Today I woke up at 2:45 and never got back to sleep *sigh*.  Did a bunch of bits and pieces on the todo list, but not nearly enough.  Had slow cooked lamb shanks for dinner which were nice enough, but it's quite a lot of work for not much meat (it's mostly all bone).  

*yawn* .. must be bed time...

Wednesday last week.

Flowers!

Saw Stumpy for the first time in ages.

Had leftover lamb for dinner.  I cooked it with broccolini, snow peas, dark soy sauce and some brown sugar, served with rice, cashews and sesame seeds.  For something so random it turned out ok.  Well Stu really liked it and he even went back for seconds.  Looked like crap but hey :)

Then spent a good chunk of the evening blogging.

Thursday.  Slept well!!  What a refreshing change.  Beer, pizza, and Naked Gun 2 1/2.

Stumpy kept Stu company for a while at work

Friday.  Slept well!  (with assistance).  Finished scanning box 14 of Dad's slides (three this week!).  It takes about ten minutes to scan a batch of four slides, but I can do other things while it's going.  Had a productive morning churning through tickets.

Did our food shopping at lunch.  OMFG Coles had toilet paper!!  First time I've seen toilet paper in Coles since the beginning of March.  Still depleted on the flour/rice/pasta/tomato section though.  

Had a pretty stressful afternoon.  Trying to help someone fix something at work.  Couldn't figure out why it had broken - by rights it should never have worked.  Came up with a workaround, but then had to go with David to get new taps.  Remember a few years back the shower was leaking, and I took a year to regrout and seal it?  Well the shower was still leaking.  Not as much, but it was still dripping downstairs.  And the bath had mismatched taps after our last attempt to get the vanity working, and the vanity taps (at least the cold water) was broken as well.  So really we needed to replace everything in the bathroom.  So David finally had some time to replace the taps, and normally I'd could flex off an hour or two with no problems.  But with the issues at work, plus all the other work I needed to do that afternoon, I was feeling super anxious about being away.  Never a good start to a shopping expedition.  So we went to Reece's first.  They have quite a large supply room, but you can't look at that, you can only look at the show room...  which only had a couple of different options, and we couldn't get any service.  The only person in the room was on the phone (on speaker phone no less) and wasn't going anywhere.  We waited about ten minutes before giving up and going to Bunnings.  So we found a bunch of taps but when we went to check fittings, realised the gooseneck for the vanity is a couple of millimetres too big for the new fittings.  ie, a new gooseneck would be too small for our current t-piece.  #grunt.  So asked someone if we could speak to a plumbing expert.  They called someone and they said he was with a couple of customers.  So we waited.  Eventually he turns up, says, oh there's more options at the back of aisle 58, and I'm leaving for the day, bye.  Great.  So sure enough, the back of aisle 58 has more options.  But the why the #$^@ couldn't all the taps be together???  Idiots.  So looked at the options.  Not really all that many.  Especially because I wanted those fancy taps where you *know* the tap is off, you don't have to grind into the washer to turn it off.  They're called half turn taps, did you know?  But there was only one gooseneck available that was "guaranteed to fit" - because it had the two different sized fittings - we could see it through the plastic.  But it didn't have the half turn taps.  We tried again to get a plumbing expert.  Eventually one came along.  We told him the gooseneck was a different size now.  And he was like.. oh..? really..?   So much for an expert.  Can you tell I was having fun being there just waiting around and not knowing if we were even getting the right thing?  hrmm.  So in the end decided to forego the gooseneck and just get three pairs of taps - two wall mounts, one vanity top.  All the same half turn style.  And also.. OMFG Bunnings was *packed*.  It wasn't even after hours, but I guess because of the long weekend everyone was there trying to get stuff for their home improvements.  Busier there that it normally is even on a weekend!!  Craziness!!

So got home, and I got back into work.  Figured out how/when/why aforementioned problem had occurred (the shopping break was probably good for that).  Ploughed through my work for an hour, then gave David moral support in the bathroom.  The new flanges don't quite cover things on the vanity, we'll need some extenders, and the old ivory gooseneck does look a little odd with the chrome finished taps.  But it does seem that the leak has stopped!  And the new taps are *amazing*.  You can turn them off with just a finger.  Bestest brother in history! :)

I told him he could have anything he wanted for dinner (that was practically possible) .. takeway, delivery, or I could cook anything we had in the house.  He chose the butterfly lamb roast :)  So it was a late dinner, but very nice.  Photo makes it look scary, but it was pomegranate and rosemary marinade, so looked very pink even when cooked.

Saturday morning I woke up at ~1am.  Lay awake for two hours.  Got up for a while.  Still couldn't get back to sleep.  So Saturday was a zombie day.  

First real fog of the year

I was too tired to concentrate on anything much.  Did a couple of loads of washing, did a bit of tidying downstairs, and a bit of time on the jigsaw (annoyingly there's places where the picture on either side of the jigsaw is almost identical, and because the cut is identical either side, you can actually put in pieces that are wrong, and it takes a bit of effort to figure out which bits are right).  

I got this book when I was a little kid..

When I got to this page I literally blew on it!

Progress shot on the dungeon.  See that floor?  So can I!  First time since 2014 I've been able to see that corner.  It's been filled with Dad's slides, DVDs and records.

Oh, and I made Anzac biscuits.  Photo was a bit of an afterthought, but they were pretty awesome, and still chewy, despite looking brown in the photo.

Had a few drinks with EffanC before they Zoomed someone else, then had a blissfully early night (asleep by 9pm).

Going to have to call it there for now.  Need to wash my hair.  With any luck I'll finish this tomorrow :)

The other weekend I was going through my recipe folder while David was doing the jigsaw, and came across the recipe for Mum's peanut slice.  Peanut slice was her signature dish - what she'd take if someone said bring a plate.  She would make it when there was going to be a roast for dinner.  David and I would fight over the icing saucepan.  Ok we didn't fight.  One would make a line down the middle and the other would choose which half to take.  Dad would take the slice to work in Tupperware square rounds to snack on.  David would eat them straight out of the freezer, still frozen.  

So David said I should make it.  And I said, well except for the fact that there's no peanuts in the house.  We have cashews though.

So I made one.  With cashews.

:)

So 250g butter, melted (leave the saucepan alone when done - make the icing in it later).  2 cups self-raising flour, 1 cup brown sugar, 1/4 cup coconut, 1 cup peanuts.  Mix all the dry ingredients, then mix in the melted butter.

Bake for 25 minutes.

Ice with 1 cup lemon icing - which is icing sugar and lemon juice - and only a teeny amount of lemon juice - you need less than you think.  1 cup was very thin though, possibly this pan is bigger than Mum's.  I should use a bit more icing if I were to make it again.

It was a bit crumbly though.  Possibly I need to reduce the cooking time a little if the pan is bigger and therefor the mix is thinner.  Or possibly be a little stingy on the dry ingredients.  

Still tasted ok though :)

Backdating this because I'm a slacker .. again..

As of Tuesday last week I'd slept ok the past couple of nights.  Although I realised I probably shouldn't say such things as I'm likely to jinx myself.  I'd been stressing on the weekend about the neverending housework and how many times a day I cleaned the kitchen and I'd had to run the dishwasher *twice* on the weekend and again that Tuesday night, but then the little brother cleared the floor for me and the sweetie did some washing up and I felt better about life again :)  I cooked a bunch of veggies for dinner (a tomato bake - roasted halved tomatoes topped with basil and melty cheese at the end, asparagus caesar (asparagus, butter, lemon juice, parmesand cheese) and carrots).  And I made a Yum! Delicious! cake because David and found me self-raising flour.  

Wednesday I finally finished part picking the six sets I started on the weekend.  Sometimes it really does take all weekend (and then some) which is why I stopped for so long - if we had anything at all on the weekend I didn't commit to starting, because there'd be a good chance I wouldn't finish.  Cooked some pork leftovers up with some broccolini which was quite nice.

Thursday turned up to problems with SSO in the morning, and having to fight with router ACLs in the afternoon, so pretty crappy day.  Had some Corona with the sweetie.

We were going to try and get Chong Co delivery but their website wasn't showing up as available, and they didn't answer the phone either.  So had more deep pan pizza (getting a bit thicker) - but the second pizza that week - blerf.

And then watched Prisoner of Azkaban.

Tell me what this reminds you of..

Good Friday I started on Vic's Life on Mars part picking.  I thought there were twelve sets.  Turns out there was 22.  He had many copies of some of the smaller sets - eight of one of them!  Spent time on Saturday and Sunday doing that as well.  Also made some good progress on the big jigsaw we've had going since January.  It took us about three months to do half the jigsaw, and we did the second half pretty much over the Easter long weekend.  Helped by Ravensburger very nicely using the same cutter on either side of the jigsaw, so I flipped the top (mostly sky) round, lay it over the bottom, and smashed it out.  

On Friday we went for a walk around the block.  People were actually really friendly, everyone smiled.  I saw happy tree a bit closer up, but it's in someone's back yard, so can't get close.  Cooked sausages for dinner and watched the 1970 Airport movie.

Took ages to get to sleep Friday night - super restless.  House stuff, food shopping, jigsaw and Lego.  I went food shopping fairly early on Saturday, but Coles was depleted of different thing.  Like there was hardly any orange juice, frozen food, or bananas.  Still no toilet paper or liquid soap available, but I did manage to get some paper towel, garlic/echinacea/zinc/C tablets, and some brown rice.  And then felt like I was getting a sore throat all day.  Cooked pork leftovers red curry, and watched Airport 75.

Sunday, mostly just Lego and jigsaw.  There may have been pizza scrolls for lunch.  

I took a "before" photo of our dungeon room.  It's not before Stu started pulling out books to give away so that's why there's an empty few shelves.

Watched Airport 77 in the evening.

Monday was mostly just house stuff and rearranging shelves.  I put out a fun jigsaw for David to do to have a break between one hard one and the next.

And then made runny poo for dinner!

Actually beef stew, which looks digusting but tastes amazing

Finished up the Airport box set with Airport 79 - the Concorde.  The Concorde they used in the movie was the same one that crashed - so sad!!

Tuesday I woke up at Dentist Time and never got back to sleep :(:(  Started on the next section of the Disney behemoth jigsaw.

Wednesday was cranky day due to Skype sucking donkey balls.  I hate being on the phone at the best of times, but it kept dropping out and at one point left me with a big black square in the middle of the screen and I had to restart my vm to clear it.  Not happy Jan.  I asked the sweetie to cook dinner, so he ordered Chong Co, successfully this time.

How good is this?

(From @JessHarwoodArt)

Stu and I are definitely owls.  Other than working from home and not catching up with friends on weekends, everything is much the same.

So our COVID-19 routine is not too different to general reality.  I started working from home on March 17.  Mainly because I had the hint of a sore throat and cough, and while it was extremelly unlikely to be Coronavirus (what with only about half a dozen cases in the ACT at the time), I didn't want to be *that person* that spread it around. 

My home setup is *ok* for working from home.  The biggest problem is my monitor setup.  At work my primary monitor is on my left, and the secondary is to the right.  At home my primary monitor is straight in front, and the secondary is smaller and off to the left.  So everything is a bit backwards for me.  Also I'm in what would be the formal dining room of the house, between the kitchen and the living room.  So just need to be a bit mindful of having Stu or David seeing stuff they shouldn't (which really isn't much).  We're lucky because our work is very well setup for people to work remotely, and our infrastructure supports it quite happily.  The only tricky situation came with all staff broadcasts flooding our internet links, but they've started streaming those to an external website, so even that is not such an issue anymore.  Skype, however, sux donkey balls.  It's fine for text chat, but that's about it.  Anything more is just asking too much of it.

Stu started working from home about a week and a half after me.  It took him a while to get the hardware/software he needed from his work setup.  But once he got that he's been doing ok.  We had started to setup my Lego room as a study for him before any of this started (with David mostly taking over the other desk in the dining room study, Stu wanted his own desk and private space).  It worked out really well for him to work in that room.  This weekend we've done a whole heap more rearranging.  Stu pulled out *lots* of books to be given away (sadly Lifeline are not currently taking donations due to covid-19 so they're just piling up at the moment).  I took all my models (well, all the ones from the big shelves) downstairs, and Stu took all his work/study and some of lifestyle books upstairs.  The bookshelves are super messy and unorganised right now due to all the rearranging, but I still need to get rid of the Lego minifig workstation on the table before I can pull out all the remaining books for sorting.  And it's starting to get really cold down there, so running out of time.  I suspect the bookshelves will stay messy for a while yet.

David has to keep going to work outside the house.  He's a shift worker, and unfortunately for him, we're home all the time now, which means he can't watch DVDs/Netflix while we're at work.  Well at least not on the TV.  He could probably setup his laptop to watch things with headphones if he was so inclined.  His work also means that if covid-19 does start spreading in Canberra, he's on the front lines for exposure, and it's probably inevitable that it hits our house at some point over winter.  

Lunches during the week are almost always leftovers of some description.  Pretty simple.  What has been suffering though is any sort of exercise and vitamin D.  Usually I would get a ten minute walk each way to go get food for lunch, but if I'm just heating up leftovers I don't get that.  So I've started going for a little walk at lunch.  Usually only about ten minutes, but enough to get me out of the house, get the blood circulating, and get a little vitamin D.  

Probably the single nicest thing about working from home is the lack of commuting.  I've been using the extra time in the mornings to scan more of Dad's slides.  I've been smashing out two boxes a week.  The evenings are a little less structured.  I've got a little list of things to do in the extra time between 5pm and 6pm, but haven't really done too much constructive with the extra time.  I am able to knock off work when I want to though, and not either have to wait for the sweetie or catch a bus.  So that's really nice.  My flex time is a bit too high at the moment, so will try and ease that down a bit, then will keep mostly fairly regular hours, which will also be nice.

Shopping is the biggest challenge of all of this.  I want to minimise how often I go out, so need to do bigger shops when I do go (and go by myself which is super sad - the sweetie and I have always gone shopping together).  There's three people eating here, two of us eating all meals at home, which means we need a lot more food in the house.  If I'm shopping fortnightly I have to get stuff for the first week that has to be eaten quickly, and stuff for the second week that lasts longer.  Fridge space is a huge issue at the beginning of the fortnight.  The supermarkets are out of various things at various times, so there's no guarantee that when you do go shopping you'll be able to get what you need.  I haven't seen toilet paper in Coles since we got one of the last packs when we got back from Pete's 40th at the beginning of March.  Fortunately I've been able to get it at Chris's so we haven't run out.  As I mentioned in another blog entry, we don't eat a lot of packaged food, mostly fresh food.  But the stuff that we do use all the time (tinned tomatoes, tomato paste and rice) has been difficult to get.  Again, I've been able to get things from Chris's when really needed.  

The rest of my routine hasn't changed.  I still get up at the same time (Stu plays on his phone a little longer before getting up).  I still shower and wear the exact same thing - my uniform of jeans a tshirt, with a jumper when it's cold.  I do the same things on the weekends - housework stuff and whatever projects/hobbies I'm working on.  I don't have any more time on my hands than normal, so it's not like I have time to binge watch anything.   Maybe if we do get sick we can binge watch stuff.  

The clutter is getting to me though.  We have things that need to go to the tip (like our old oven), or the Green Shed, or Lifeline.  But while I think the tip and the Green Shed are still open, I would classify them as non-essential.  So we have piles of stuff around the house.  And Stu could really use a better desk in his study, but we can't just go shopping for a new one.  Well, again, we probably *could* but we're trying to be good about this whole staying at home except for essential stuff thing...  

The only other significant change is not catching up with friends.  We would go out or have people over I guess on average every other weekend.  So that's not happening (other than a couple of virtual catchups).  It's a little sad, but remember, we're owls.  We like keeping to ourselves :)

In all of this we have been extremelly lucky/blessed.  We haven't had to stress about losing our jobs, or have to take care of kids as well as work, or wonder where the money for our next meal is going to come from.  2020 is sure going to be one hell of a year ..