Sunday.  Mayday.  The lemon potato bake I did was ok, but a bit undercooked and very watery.  Watched last Sunday's Lego Masters.

Monday.  Got to sleep ok but then woke up some time after 3 and never got back to sleep.  Sigh.  Learnt some networking stuff about some of our devices which was good.  Leftovers for dinner.  Finally emailed the cruise company and got them to apply our credit to an obstructed window room.  Completely grumpy about the whole thing.  But I certainly didn't want to give them any more of my money.  Pretty sure there were other things I wanted to talk about for Monday but didn't write them down straight away so forgot.  Oh well.

Such a sweet little daisy, but it will be getting ripped out soon.  These things pop up in any crevice they can find, this one in the middle of the pavers in the back yard.  They still make me smile though.

I had to laugh at Andrew and Crystal being clapped out, because this is exactly what we did at my cousin Andrew and Crystal's wedding :)

Had to go sleep in the other room because Stu's back was killing him and he was literally screaming in agony every time he moved.  Poor thing (it's somewhat better now though).

Tuesday.  Slept ok in the other room, in fact slept through til my alarm went off.  Documenting routing setup on some of our devices.  Cooked up a big batch of veggies to go with leftover burek.  There was potato, sweet potato, parsnip, zucchini and a veggie bake of cauliflower, carrots, parsley, peas, corn, cream and cheese.

Wednesday.  Slept ok until the smoke detector battery started bleeping around 5:30 due to low battery.  Had a crazy and frustrating day.  Why is it I get a couple of days in a row of being able to do my own thing and tinker around and do doco, and then everything happens at once and everyone wants everything at once and I'm in the office which makes it five times as bad.  Spent pretty much the entire day gathering evidence to prove that another team's problem is in fact their problem and not ours.  I even had a beer when I got home (which was super late).  Stu heated up some of the pesto I made on the weekend and we had it with some buffalo ricotta, porcini and truffle ravioli.  To which I then added a big pile of shaved parmesan cheese ;)  But then it was like bed time.

Thursday.  Another crazy busy in the office manic day.  Hate.  Good drinks (although once again we were only one of two tables).  KFC for dinner then bed.

Friday.  Woke up some time after 1am and didn't get back to sleep til maybe about 4:30, and then broken sleep waking up every few minutes because my hands were numb.  So I was a bit of a zombie, but being at home meant far fewer distractions and got a bunch of work done which was good.  I reheated the lemon potatoes from the weekend, which browned up the potatoes nicely and then added the sauce after, which turned out a whole lot better.

Watched the fourth episode of The Crown and last Sunday's Lego Masters.

Saturday.  At work all day doing stress testing of stuff.  Went quite well (Connor kept it perfectly on schedule) and really only stuff we were expecting to break did in the ways we expected it to as well.

I only had to bring home two of these as leftovers ;)

Stu made slow cooker pea and ham soup, without the ham, for dinner.

Then watched The Royal Tenenbaums.. which was.. strange...

Sunday.  Lego inventorying and part picking.  Chopped back some ivy growing on the side of the house.  Turns out the stuff is quite evil, and really really hard to prise off the wall.  Not helped by not having nearly a long enough ladder.  Also trimmed the hedge out the front.  Then cooking All The Food.  Except it was 3pm by this point and I was freaking out about how much I had to do to have dinner done on time.  I made a lime cheesecake, but forgot to mix in gelatine because I'm retarded.  Also a basa bake and a new potato bake recipe, which will get its own post eventually.  At least I managed to process photos and blog before 6pm...

Monday.  25th. Spent all morning trying to catch up with life and blogging.  Feeling completely overwhelmed at life (even had a bit of a meltdown after blogging (which finished way after lunch) because it was all too hard).  Worked on Eurasia panoramas and got some online.  Cooked a lamb roast with veggies for dinner.  We opened a *very* nice bottle of wine we got at the end of 2012 for our anniversary.  Then Simpsons/Black Books/The Crown.  Also started into the fourth season of Lego Masters.  Had to LOL at the Andrew and Crystal couple (names of my cousin and wife who have since split up).  

We had tardigrades for dinner!!

Tuesday.  Woke up to stress over cruise (the one we put off).  They want us to use the credit so got plunged into the stress of it again.  Ok day.  Nothing special for our anniversary because Stu had uni til quite late.  

Wednesday.  Stress over cruise.  They refused to allow us to use the credit for 2024, forcing us to use it for 2023.  *sigh*.  Ok day.  At the office.  Felt like a Thursday.  Stu cooked pork larb for dinner with some limes from Tim and chilli from Tony.  Continued to stress over cruise.

Thursday.  Ok day.  Pretty quiet drinks.  Picked up some CCs on the way home and had cheesy nachos for dinner.  OMFG the most unhealthiest dinner in the history of the universe but *so good*.  Finished season 23 of The SImpsons.

Friday.  Playing with logs all day.  Was actually kinda fun.  Leftover lamb and veggies for dinner.  Watched Encanto in the evening which was pretty decent.  Nice story and the graphics are spectacular.  

Saturday.  House stuff in the morning.  Stressed over the cruise to the point of depression.  To get a balcony like we had last time would cost us another $1500 USD, which I'm simply not prepared to give them.  I would NEVER EVER EVER EVER deal with this company again.  I was almost at the point of saying F#$% you and walking away from what we've already paid.  The best I can afford with our credit is a window (not a balcony) with an obstructed view.  After tidying up the house and study I thought I'd start inventorying what was left of Vic's Lego.  I had a poke around to see what was available, and one that looked really good was Basebrick.  Except they said they'd send an email to verify the account.  Except that email never arrived.  *sigh*.  So more "everything is awful".  So I started inventorying in excel in the interim.  Sichuan Chinese for dinner then watched The Death of Stalin .. which was.. intersesting.. heh

Sichuan Chinese - Kung pow chicken (lots of chilli so lots of pow), sliced pork twice cooked in green pepper (yummm), stir fry mixed vegetables, with sichuan special fried rice

Sunday.  Woke up early (between 5:30-6:00 is normal now).  Remembered the planets and went and had a look.  This morning Jupiter and Venus were having a sneaky early morning kiss.  I couldn't be stuffed finding the tripod and going outside in the cold, so just did some hand-held photos.  This is off the phone.  Haven't downloaded the camera yet.

Went out fairly early and had breakfast at Market St eats.  I had "Potato Fritters" - potato and cheese fritters, poached eggs, maple glazed bacon, hollandaise, chorizo, pickled cucumber & onion salsa.  Which was really really good.  The poached eggs were perfect, the fritter was delicious.  It was just like eggs benedict but with a croquette instead of bread.  Although the salsa was basically just some chopped red onion.  Kept me going til dinner time ;)

Then we did food shopping and had to wait for Chemist Warehouse being buttheads.  We both put our orders in early while still at home before their opening time.  They open at 9:00.  I got my SMS at 9.39.  We went and picked mine up at 10:30.  They said Stu's order was still in the queue and would be another "ten minutes".  We waited and waited and eventually he went in and was able to pick his up at 10:55.  He got his sms at 11:15.  Absolutely ridiculous that it takes ALL MORNING for them to be organised enough to do an online order.  If it wasn't for the fact that they're *significantly* cheaper than anywhere else we certainly wouldn't bother with them.  

Came home and did Lego inventorying, then music then weeding then fish stuff and suddenly it's 4pm and I need to do All The Cooking.  Which I'll save for later posts and sign off for now.

Monday.  18th.  (Not backdating).  Yay for catchup days.  Pretty good sleep.  Went into battle with my computer trying to get the scanner and GPS to work.  Neither do in windows 11.  The GPS won't work in windows 11 because it complains the driver is no good.  Transystem hasn't put out any new software/drivers in years which is pretty upsetting.  So had to get the dam trip GPS off on my laptop.  Now dreading what will happen if something happens to the laptop and I have to replace it.  I'll have to find an alternative to my little PhotoMate 887 which is one of the best inventions in history.  Was also fighting with the scanner which fricken USED TO WORK in windoze 11, but just stopped one day.  I've yet to reconnect it up to my old computer to test it.  Hate Microsoft.  Hate hate hate.  Did some weeding, and a magpie came right up to where I was working to see if I'd disturbed any bug noms for it.  Very cool.  Potted some geranium cuttings.  In the afternoon we tidied up the shelves in our bedroom cupboard that had been getting messier and messier.  Did a water change in the upstairs two foot for the first time in forever (there's always babies in that tank I'm worried about sucking up).  Then got frustrated yet again with Apple because it dropped out while downloading my photos and refused to show up in windows afterwards.  Was thinking I was going to have to reboot my computer.  It certainlly meant I couldn't blog the previous week.  Hate Apple.  Hate hate hate.  Then cooked all the food.  I prepped a chicken marbella from Not Quite Nigella, cooked some mince/bacon/onion/garlic, and we had salmon and cabbage for Monday night's dinner.  Then we watched the first episode of The Crown which was pretty good.  Got pretty stressed out about having to go back to work.  Even four day weekends are just not enough time to get everything *done*.  Eventually managed to reconnect to the phone and was able to download photos, but bed time so no blogging.

Was digging under the old pool and found all this steel reinforcing.  Maybe to stop slippage of the pool???

Tuesday.  Slept ok until hurty kept me awake half the night.  Ok day trying to catch up on stuff.  Then demoing stuff to peeps and trying to deal with all the stoopid.  It was a wine and candle kind of a night.  Also made the chicken marbella which was nice enough but a little watery.  

Wednesday.  Woke up for a while a couple of times.  Was sick of the stoopid by 8:40.  Fairly busy day prepping a firewall migration and prepping rules for a big project.  Did some music, then did a red curry with mushrooms, asian greens and leftover sausages.  Did some work on Eurasia panoramas but still no blogging.  

Thursday.  Another busy day, and a tonne of interruptions and meetings.  Did a firewall migration after lunch which took all of ten minutes (including testing) and was one of the most anticlimactic changes I've ever done.  Pretty quiet drinks.  Tried McCains frozen pizzas which weren't really any better than Spar.  Need to stick with Dominos or Dr Oetker (Doc Oc/Dr Octopus).

Friday.  Finished prepping a big ruleset, and even managed to deploy them the same afternoon which was good.  Had a craving for mac and cheese for lunch.  Lazy Su pickup for dinner and watched third episode of Gunther's Anatomy.

Saturday.  Basically got ready then Damien came over.  We chatted for ages, had frozen spring rolls and chips for lunch, then played Jaws in the afternoon.  After playing for a little while we put the movie on in the background (because I don't seem to have the soundtrack).  Stu has never actually seen it?!?!  Will have to watch it properly with him some time.  Damien and I played Brody/Hooper/Quint, and Stu played Jaws.  Stu got a really good start, pretty much totally evading us and getting lots of points for act 2.  But somehow we managed to survive and Quint finished him off with the machete.  Just as the movie was finished, amazing timing.  As soon as Damien left we both collapsed in a heap - seven hours of socialising is super super draining, who knew.  Had sausages and cabbage for dinner, then Simpsons, Black Books and second episode of The Crown.

I actually spent cash that day too - to get the shiny on the right here.  And in the same change got all four head designs of the Queen.

Sunday.  Went and climbed Mt Rogers, did some music practise, did some cleaning, and filled the green bin.  And suddenly the morning was gone.  Went to the markets after lunch to get some fresh veggies, came home and cooked some Anzac biscuits and prepped dinner.  And suddenly the afternoon was gone.  Sigh.  Jenn came over for dinner (a cheese and spinach burek we found at the markets) and then we played Carcassonne which I won.  Was going to have an early night, but then Stu tried to print something.  It did a whole lot quite happily, then went back to jamming in the same place at every damned page.  So got super cranky about the whole thing.

I nearly rage quit at one point because the pantry is so full of crap I can't get at anything without everything all falling over

Unfortunately these were a bit dry

Burek and veggies dinner

Monday.  Got a reminder to go look at planets.  Because I was awake, I did.  It was actually worth getting up for, with the moon, Saturn, Mars, Venus and Jupiter very obvious (although not so much in the resized photo).  I'll take peoples' word for it for Neptune and Pluto.

Then it was all morning trying to catch up on photos and blogging.  Yet again, even with a long weekend I'm struggling to keep up with life.  Stop the world I want to get off.

Sunday.  10th.  Backdating this.  Had Cath's basa bake for dinner with Brussels sprouts with bacon.  Was delicious.

Monday.  Slept ok until 4am when I woke up with upset bowels (maybe I undercooked the fish?) and never got back to sleep.  Got some Eurasia photos up before work.  Work was ok, doing firewall migration planning.  Weeding at lunch.  More Eurasia photos online before dinner (of leftover brisket I dug out of the freezer, with leftover veggies) and more after dinner as well.  Got depressed because I'm a horrible person and that's why noone likes me.  And the house is a mess.  Although did manage to put away three loads of washing and run the dishwasher.

Must be autumn

Tuesday.  Woke up ~4am and couldn't get back to sleep for ages.  Wasted most of the morning before work, so no photo stuff.  Bit of playing with log searches at work.  Leftover mince rissoni from the freezer, with potatoes for dinner.  Got lots of photo uploading done.  Watched some Lie to Me and did music practise.

How cute is this little 15mm Italian soldier Stu painted?

Wednesday.  Couldn't get to sleep til after midnight, then woke up around 5am.  Sigh.  Even with a decent walk at lunch.  Couldn't stop yawning all day.  But.  I did get my Eurasia 2012 photos online in time for the 10th anniverary of when I left on that trip! 

Take your toasted cheese sandwiches to the next level - plop some parmesan cheese down beneath and on top of it.

Thursday.  Not a great sleep.  Ok day, updating dashboards.  Not bad drinks.  Although Optus was being a big fat poo and not delivering our smses, so the sweetie and I were sending each other all these messages and not getting any responses.  So we both ended up cranky and ended up getting pizza.  Finished Starry Night, but then couldn't get to sleep til midnight on account of restless legs.

Thanks Chris and Glenda for the challenge :)

Good Friday.  Well not so good for Jesus back in the day, but good for us now.  Since I was feeling like a big fat blob Thursday night decided to go climb Mt Rogers.  

Then music practise and working on the panoramas for Eurasia 2012.  Stuffed capsicums for dinner.  No leftovers.

Saturday.  Went and did food shopping first thing.  Bit of house stuff in the morning then headed out to the club after lunch.  I primed some more cabinetry.  Went up for Happy Hour, then just had a nice quiet evening with the sweetie.

Easter Sunday.  Super early pickup to go dam busting!  Pics in another post when I get around to it.  Quite exhausted when we got back so the sweetie ordered Chong Co.

(Backdated).  Back in April once they finally reopened some of the Sydney Dams, Engineering Buddy (EB) and I went up to Sydney to have a look at some of them.  Starting with Warragamba, then Cataract, Cordeaux and Nepean.  Sadly Avon is still closed due to repairs on the road bridge, as is Woronora.  Three of the dams were spilling which was pretty damned cool.  Check out the previous entries to have a look.  But here's some other miscellaneous photos from the day.

It was pretty foggy between Bungendore and Goulburn.

Drove past Thirlmere

Had a picnic lunch at Warragamba Dam

Wallacia Hotel

Pedestrian/bicycle bridge over the Hume Highway next to Narellan Road

Pretty drive on Appin Road

Bridge over the Cataract River at Broughton Pass

Drinks and nibbles after seeing Nepean Dam

Kangaroo and sunset near Nepean Dam

Moonrise over Lake George

Ten years ago today.

Ten. Years. Ago. TODAY.

I left Australia for two whole months to travel around the Middle East, Europe and Japan.  

I spent all of last year labelling the twenty four thousand photos my parents and I took.

And I spent the last month or two frantically culling photos for the blog and getting them online.  

And I did it.  Photos from that trip are finally online.  My parents would have seen all these photos because they got copies of everything back in the day.   And I did get the Israel ones online years and years ago.  But noone has ever seen the rest of them, not even the sweetie.

Also.  The Titanic sunk a hundred and ten years ago today.

Tuesday.  5th.  Took me a while on Monday to get to sleep.  Still woke up early though.  Did my music practise in the morning.  Busy day, but I don't even know where most of it went.  Did washing up at lunch time and weeding after work.  Stu cooked dinner - creamy mushroom and chicken fettucini.  Nothing of use in the evening though, just jigsaw and rss feed reading and feeling blah.  Did the washing up.  Again.  Watched some Lie to Me.  Found that "print screen" started working again.  WTF is it with windows 11 that things just stop and start working at random (still haven't had time to fight with the scanner that just stopped working a couple of weeks ago).

I also raged at All The Things.

For example.  People complaining about fortnightly rubbish pickups (that have recycling and food/green waste pickups).  I just don't *get it*.  Growing up we didn't have any recycling (to begin with) and just one little metal bin for a family of four.  Nowadays we put out like one bag of rubbish a week.  We're lucky to put out the rubbish bin once a month, and then it's rarely more than half full.  What are people even doing now?  Putting literally everything into the rubbish bin, including all their recycling and food waste?  Maybe they only eat packaged food and nothing fresh.  No idea.  Like I said, I just don't *get it*.

Also.  If they want more people living in higher density buildings, there needs to be bigger units at a "reasonable" price.  These days the only units you can get are *tiny* little two bedroom units, or maybe a three storey penthouse - usually for a *lot* more than a house of the same size.  People probably have to get a house because they need the indoor space.  I'm sure plenty of families would be happy to live in a unit if you could get a decent size one without paying twice as much for it. Far out, we'd be much happier in a unit because we wouldn't have a yard to try and keep weed free.  But try getting anything the size of our place in a unit.  Good luck with that.

Also.  If they want more people to use electric cars, fricken standardise on power connectors.  At the moment it's like a Beta vs VHS war or HD-DVD vs Bluray.  And an electric car is fine if you have two cars and one is the city car and one is for holidays.  Good luck travelling anywhere much in Australia outside the big cities with an electric car.  Much of Australia is simply inaccessible without petrol at the moment.

Wednesday.  Slept mostly ok.  Another busy day but at least I got stuff done.  Did some weeding at lunch.  Cooked up some veggies to have with lefover pork for dinner.  Went through half of my Eurasia blog photos tweaking the colour balance a little (my old camera had way too much red and not enough blue) and cropping as necessary.

Thursday.  Took ages to get to sleep but still woke up super early (like 5am).  Ok day.  *At* work blerf.  It's noisy and distracting in the office.  Drinks was good, but ours was literally the only table there - noone else was there!  Too much covid in the office I guess.  Watched the first episode of Black Books.  Had a raging battle with the printer that is now jamming literally every page.  It puts toner down but then jams before fusing it.  Ended up angry and depressed.  Also had some Spar pizzas for dinner because Chris didn't have any Dr Oc.  Definitely not good.

Friday.  Busy day, had fun making up dashboards for some testing we're doing in a few weeks.  Chicken kiev for dinner (the Steggles ones are nowhere near as good as the Ingham ones).  Watched a couple of episodes of Gunther's Anatomy series.

Saturday.  A day of All The Things.  House, jigsaw, photos.  

This magpie came down after I'd been weeding for a while to see if I'd disturbed any bug noms for it

We dug Stumpy out cause we hadn't seen him in days.

Dinner was the last of the pork, refried in jelly, with some leftover rice from during the week and cabbage and kewpie sesame dressing

Watched The King's Speech in the evening, which we hadn't seen since we saw it at Stu's dad's place in 2013.

Today.  Rinse and repeat really.  Although mostly getting Eurasia photos sorted and ready for the blog.  Basa fillets for dinner, which will be in next week's post.

Happy tree is being obscured by another tree.. doh!

Third episode of Black Books.  19:30 is bed time right?

Sunday.  27th, not backdating although late.  Where were we.  I left off with hints of pork crackling and tomatoes.  Well the tomatoes were epic awesome!  It was all I could do to not just scoff them all in one sitting.

The pork crackling was ok, but not as thin and crispy as doing it on the meat

Monday.  Slept ok.  Did my quota of photo culling before work, which gives me hope I'll actually get this done.  Last day of being Neil hurrah!  I fixed a mail problem in the afternoon that had been there since December, so that was good.  Did nine minutes of weeding at lunch.  Better than nothing I guess.  Music after work and Stu made a nice salad of lettuce, cucumber, spring onion, some of the slow roasted tomatoes, minced fresh garlic, olive oil, lemon juice, salt, pepper and bacon bits I cooked on the weekend, to go with salmon I cooked.  

I was trying to do photo culling, but the sweetie was trying to print stuff for uni, but the printer was being a big fat poo.  It was flashing all its lights and once so we had to battle trying to get around than, but then it was continually getting jammed, so it was super annoying because I couldn't concentrate on photos because I had to stop every two seconds to unjam the printer.  So I got cranky and Stu got cranky.  We just want a quiet life and AND WHY THE F@#% WON'T THINGS JUST WORK!?!?!?  I gave up on photo culling after a while.  Then I was wondering why I don't seem to have any photos of the Walkie Talkie building in London.  Turns out it wasn't even built until after the last time I was there.. (which was ten years ago!)  I think I've got photos of its lift core under construction.  For some reason I thought it was built in the 70s!  I really need to get back to London some time..

Tuesday.  Took forever to get to sleep (nearly midnight) but then slept ok.  More photo culling in the morning, now only three days of final culls to go (Leavesden Studios, Brussells and Legoland Billund).  Ok day, not being Neil yayy.  Approvals came much too late to get much cleaning done.  Did an hours weeding after work but no music oh well.  Chicken caesar salad for dinner.  After dinner I finished photo culling!!!  I was worried I wasn't going to get it done, but I did.  Now just need to process the photos and get them on the blog.

Wednesday.  Slept fairly well.  Did some tweaking of dashboards for our workflow.  Salmon and salad for dinner again (probably should have bought two pack not a four pack).  Blogged the Balloon Fiesta. Into the third (final) season of Lie to Me.

Thursday.  Slept ok.  Ok day.  Started thinking about another firewall migration.  Finally finished the salmon heh.  Watched random stuff on YouTube including Robin Williams on Don Lane in 1979.  There was a quote from him along the lines of (this is a direct quote but it's a bit rambly) "to keep performing live .. it keeps me alive.. and just.. it just.. keeps contact with people is very important, cause if not you get just get dead you don't take chances anymore, and for me that's very important."  Kinda sad really.

Friday.  Slept ok.  I wonder how much of my insomnia is dietary.  I've been *trying* to eat better.  Not sure it's helping or not.  Probably salmon and veggies is going to sit better than pizza or kfc...  Ok day, cleaning in the afternoon (always takes a lot longer than you think).  David arrived and we had beef cheeks for dinner.  It doesn't photograph well but it's oh so delicious.

Watched Zero Hour! with David in the evening.  It was kinda law that he had to see it :)  We also saw a bunch of his holiday photos/videos (before I called it cause I was exhausted and needed sleep).

Saturday.  Slept ok, although lately every time I wake up I have numb hands which is super annoying.  Did a chemist/groceries run in the morning and did some jigsaw, as well as finishing watching David's holiday photos/videos.  Made a lemon cheesecake in the afternoon, and did a pork roast for dinner (felt like I was on my feet most of the day).  Watched 6 Underground in the evening.  Eh, Michael Bay, and very violent.

Sunday.  Slept ok.  Canberra Airport Open Day.  Will save that for another post.  Came home utterly exhausted.  The sweetie ordered Chong Co for dinner and I had a super early night.

My phone has better eyesight that me.  Spot the mistake :)  This is our country's $50 note.  Silly really.

David helped with the village on Saturday.

Duck salad and pork belly - our favourites

Monday.  Today.  Slept ok but awake pretty early.  Got two loads of washing done before work.  More firewall migration planning in between all the things.  After work brought in all the washing and did some weeding and then did music while Stu cooked dinner - a pasta bolognase which was very nice.  Treehouse of Horror XXII in The Simpsons - we're into season 23 now.  Then phone/camera downloading and blogging.  I still haven't made the bed or put away the washing though.  Trying to cram an entire weekend into before and after work.  Doesn't work.  Too stressed.  Too much to do to have time for work.  Sigh.

Sunday.  20th.  Stu cooked dinner - pumpkin and sage ravioli with burnt butter and salad.  Delicious!  Then watched random flashmob videos to keep me awake until something resembling bed time.

Monday.  I actually had a shower Sunday night on account of getting all sweaty in the garden earlier.  So I was actually fairly relaxed in bed.  For the first hour.  Where I still didn't get to sleep.  At 22:30 the restless legs kicked in.  At 23:00 I had a meltdown.  How can you be so tired that you can't actually sleep.  Sigh.  Then woke up at 6, so was zombie tired.  All day.  Plus I had a sore ring finger.  I thought I might have slept on it funny but I think I actually strained it (I bent the nail back on that finger weeding on Sunday).  Struggled to concentrate all day.  Music after work, leftovers for dinner then had on more flashmob videos to keep my brain awake enough to do photo culling.

Tuesday.  Slept somewhat better, although it still took a while for me to get to sleep and then I woke up at 5am.  More being Neil (in Cairns now!) and documenting cleanup work that needs doing.  The backs of my legs still hurt from all the exertion on Sunday.  Leftovers for dinner then lots of photo culling.  Got frustrated at yet another barking dog in the neighbourhood.  Sigh.

Really need to put Bambi away

Wednesday.  Slept ok, but then a day of non stop messages and phone calls and meetings and stoopid so didn't really get anything useful done.  Leftovers for dinner, then completed a first pass cull of all my Eurasia 2012 photos.

Thursday.  Slept ok I think.  Nothing much in the morning then went DND for a bit to get some work done in the afternoon which was super helpful.  Got back into the swing of things with some doco.

This is the entire Disney behemoth stacked.  Each of the ten sections is cut into four and layered on packing paper from our move in 2007.  So it's forty layers thick.

Friday.  Woke up at 1:40 with the start of hurty.  Took some painkillers.  An hour layer it was worse so maxed out on painkillers but they never fully helped and didn't get back to sleep til after 5.  Sigh.  So yet another zombie day.  Did finish the cleanup doco though.  The Chrises might have talked me into a Herbert's lunch.

This cider was pretty good - nice and strong and not sweet

Prawn and chorizo skewers, and brown sugar chicken skewers

Watched a couple of episodes of Autopsy in the evening.  Well I did, the sweetie went and worked on his essay :)

Saturday.  Slept relatively well, so alternated between house, photo culling and jigsaw after doing food shopping first thing.  Late in the afternoon we headed out to the club (for the first time in four months!) for the Mexican night by M&M which was amazing as always.  Although I did have flashbacks to earlier life when we couldn't find anyone to sit with and all the "cool kids" were sitting together and I had that epic feeling of rejection that was so familiar to me for such a long time and I might have had a small meltdown.  But Rob came to the rescue so that was nice.  

We finished off the last ever TRBC Tex Mex beer.  I really hope they make some more, it was epic awesome!

Sunset was pretty too

So many yummy things to try!

Had a relatively early night, but still woke up at ~2am til well after 5 (there were still people partying in the shed when I went up to pee).  Slept in a bit but today was pretty much zombie day.  Sigh.  

So today was struggling to get through house stuff and photo stuff (did get a few days fully culled though).  In the afternoon setup to cook a whole bunch of the food I got yesterday.  This should keep us going all week and then some.  There's some tomatoes, plus some mince with garlic, eschallot and bacon, some bacon for having with salads, chicken thighs, some pork crackling (experimenting) and veggies.

You'll have to wait til next week to see the results of this - a whole heap of cherry tomatoes cut in half, drizzled with oil, salt, pepper and herbs and slow roasted for a couple of hours.  So good!!  

I also somehow managed to end up with a completely clean kitchen, and photos downloaded and processed and a blog entry, all before 18:00!  Although no music practise, oh well.

Sunday.  13th.  Roasted up some veggies for dinner and had it with some leftover lamb.  Watched Logan's Run in the evening.  Kinda like Soylent Green meets The Time Machine.  I want to go to the Fort Worth Water Gardens that'd be cool.  

Monday.  Epic insomnia.  Went back to sleep for an hour after the alarm went off.  Then it was just house/photo/jigsaw stuff.  

My aim here wasn't so much to completely get rid of the periwinkle this go, but give the area some light so the freesias will grow.  I'll keep going at it when I get the energy.

Special fried rice I made for lunch - leftover rice, fried up with a chopped up sausage, peas and corn, some of Stu's teriyaki sauce, and topped with kewpie mayo

Cheating

Didn't get to do more important things, like putting ratsak into the roof.  Made stuffed capsicums for dinner.  The sweetie doesn't even like capsicums much but he went back for seconds haha.  Then the last three episodes of the girl on the train in the rear window.  Completely ridiculous of course.

Tuesday.  Slept ok-ish. 

Had to be Neil at work.  Except I can't help myself and try and deal with problems that he's just happy to delete heh. 

An hour and a quarter of weeding after work.  Whoops.  Then had to go to back to work late in the evening to do a cert replacement.

I don't think this is all going to fit in the green bin..

Wednesday. Took forever to get to sleep - cold and still too wired from working late.  So pretty tired day.  Was Neil again.  Did music but no weeding after work.  Eh, it was wet anyway.  Late dinner of lefover lamb, cabbage and rice.  Did some photo culling (onto London now).

Cheating on the edges

Thursday.  Slept well for a change!!  Another day of being Neil.  Did some fun mail stuff I wouldn't have gotten to do if Neil was around.  Really not comfortable being in the office.  Too many people off with covid (which means they've likely been in contact with people in the office).  And at drinks someone was sniffling away.  omfg if you're sniffling stay home!  Even if it's "just a cold" I don't want to get your germs.  I guess it could have been hay fever but sheesh..!  Stu want home feeling sick during the afternoon (not covid related), so let him get pizza for dinner.

Friday.  Woke up some time after 3 and never got back to sleep.  Epic sigh.  Pizza=>insomnia?? 

Saw Tico out the window

Zombie day.  Did a bit of cleanup for Neil because I can't help myself.  And more of the fun mail stuff.  TV dinners for dinner.  Finished Bambi!  And not just Bambi, but the entire Disney Memorable Moments Behemoth!!  40320 pieces!  DONE!!!

Watched Flying High in the evening (after seeing Zero Hour! last week we had to)

Saturday.  Peed once but otherwise slept through from ~10pm til 5:30!! Hurrah!!  House stuff in the morning, and some weeding.  Then just photo culling.  Well other than going out late morning to do a chemist and bakery run for Annie's family, several of which have covid at the moment.  

This sweet little geranium is flowering even though it's just sitting in a glass on the window sill, and had been mostly eaten by an epic caterpillar.

Remember that cute little cow from last week?  This is the scene it went into.  So cute!

Got this off Chris and Glenda.  Any guesses what it is? :)

I was going to do some greenery with this.  Really I was.  But the chicken kievs were pretty big and this old bread needed using up, so it ended up being a pretty big meal.  And it was so awesome!!!

Sunday.  Today.  I swear brown meals cause insomnia.  Last night took *forever* to get to sleep because I was restless/itchy/uncomfortable.  And then I woke up around 5 and took forever to get back to sleep.  When I went to pee I could hear a pipe running and water dripping.  I thought it was the cooler dripping down the roof.  Slept til about 7:15 but it wasn't enough.  Sigh.  Realised after I got up the dripping was actually from the tap in the bath.  I must have turned it on slightly when I wiped down the bath on Friday night.  This is the only drawback of half turn taps - they are *very* easy to accidentally turn on!  Went out to do ten minutes of periwinkle hacking in the morning but John saw me and couldn't help himself.  He dug into the worst of the roots and pulled out all the rocks and suddenly (an hour and a half later) there's no periwinkle left there at all (I'll have to spray any shoots that come up).  Whoops.  I gave him a couple of beers but he definitely deserved a whole sixpack!!  Maybe a case!!

Does anyone want these rocks?

Then just alternating photo and jigsaw stuff.  

Can you guess now?  Easy bit is done, the rest is going to be horrendous :)

In the afternoon I put on Bambi.  I swear I had a bluray of this.  But maybe I just had the VHS and hadn't gotten around to getting a bluray of it yet.  Anyway, I couldn't find my own copy to watch so put it on on Disney+

As per usual, the jigsaw doesn't actually match the movie.

I mean, there *is* shot of the three of them

But Thumper on the ground is a different shot

So is Flower being bashful

And the flowers overhead aren't even there until Bambi grows up

Silly really.

Then photos and blogging and rain!