In March this year I had to have my alternator replaced.  Fine, whatever.  

Last Sunday my charge and brake light came on.  

WTF???

However I completely forgot about it.  Until tonight.  When I need my car tomorrow to get to Sydney.

So now I either have to go to Sydney with it, and get it looked at in Sydney.  Or leave it here and get Stu to get it looked at.  

But this alteranator, even though it was second hand, has only been in for five months, and I barely even use my car!  This is ridiculous!  I'd argue this with Mick, but I can't because I won't be here!  And Stu certainly wouldn't argue it.  If I get it looked at in Sydney I'd be up for a new one anyway, with no chance to complain.  I'm going round in circles stressing about it. 

These are the things that keep me up in the middle of the night.

Thursday night: Slept til 4am then woke up and couldn't get back to sleep.

Friday night: Went to bed at 9:30pm.  Got up at 9:30am.  Only slept six of those twelve hours.  Spent the other six hours stressing about the party and the fact that I wasn't sleeping.

Saturday: Did a bit of house organising but not really enough.  Was too tired.  Went out for kebabs for lunch, then did party shopping.  And nearly killed people because there was too many of them in once place.  Came home and cleaned the house, but not really enough because we only had an hour and a half and there was just too much to do.  Chris P arrived at 4pm, then Neil, who forgot the salami so Stu went with him to get it.  Then others turned up in dribs and drabs for the next few hours.  After about an hour I finally managed to have a drink.  And finally another.  And finally started to relax.  And then finally to start enjoying myself.  There was *tonnes* of food.  We bought eight packets of frozen food to cook over the course of the night and it all got eaten (and the neighbours came up very late and brought some frozen pizzas and they got eaten too).  I spent so much time trying to make sure I talked to everyone that I didn't really talk to anyone, which was slightly sad.  A slow cooker and a half of mulled wine was drunk, along with a whole recycling tub full of beer and wine.  I think people had a good time?  Certainly the last of them didn't leave til 2am!

Windy took a few photos (thanks Windy!), but this was my favourite - a "Cognac of Chrises" (and a small ring-in whose middle name is Chris).  There'd have been eight if Henrch and the other Chris Bell had been able to make it!

Sunday:  woke up early (apparently that's what happens when you drink) but didn't get up til around nine.  Chris got up before me and cleaned up the entire kitchen and living room!  It was amazing!  She was my little cleaning fairy!  Quiet morning with Chris and Zac (Zac's quite a lovely kid, as kids go) and Potty, and we shared some of Chris L's bread and marmalade for breakfast.  Saw Chris off at lunch time, then tried to get ourselves and the house back into some semblance of sanity.

In the afternoon I went to Brick Expo, but I'll save that for another post.

Sunday night had a nightcap before bed, then slept very well from about 9:30pm til 6:30am.  I needed it!

Monday: Spent all morning dealing with fallout from the weekend's work.  

And it looks like life might get super complicated in the next little while...

My Dad turned 70 on Sunday.

So we trundled up to Sydney.

And I figured if I was going to be in Sydney, I'd try and catch up with some of my Sydney friends for part one of my birthday bash.

Stu wanted to fly (to get points so he can get Virgin lounge access).  So we spent obscene amounts of money on flights and a hotel.

But let me backtrack a minute.

I'd decided that we should go to the Löwenbräu Keller, as it was central for everyone, it had pork, and it had beer.  I thought that we could have a lunch, and people could stop in for a drink afterwards if they weren't able to make it to the lunch.  Except when I made the tentative booking they said that they were a restaurant and everyone had to be dining.  This they underlined.  Well actually they said that everyone who made a reservation had to be dining.  And they wanted a $20 deposit for everyone.  And we had to order off one of the very restrictive set menus.  So that was my drama last week.  Anyways.  I got my RSVPs and made the final booking and paid the deposit, and fortunately on the day everyone showed up who said they would, and no surprises.  But more on lunch later.

So Saturday morning we got up and got ready and headed to the airport.  And after complaining a couple of weeks ago about Stu getting to fly in one of Virgin Australia's ATR 72-600s, I got to go in one :)

Took off to the north, with a view of Canberra and the new Majura Parkway, but a lot of fog around still (delays all over the place because of heavy fog in the morning, and was a bit stressed that our plane would be late or cancelled).

Actually to say was a bit stressed was putting it very mildly.  I was totally stressed out all morning - about the lunch, who would/wouldn't turn up, the restaurant being bumheads, getting to the airport on time, the plane being on time and on and on.  Was feeling quite queasy until we got to the airport and our plane was going to be on time .. 

But carrying on ..

Because it's such a little plane, they don't have the full food service where they sell food/drinks.  Instead they have complimentary drinks and snackages for everyone!  So that was pretty nice of them.

Flew almost right over the top of River Island (it was on the other side of the plane)

Then up over Campbelltown and in from the south-west.

M7-M5 junction

Holsworthy

Look Mum I can see your house from here.. and mine (under the clouds).  Looking into the sun, so not much more in the way of good shots for the rest of the flight.

Bate Bay looking very blue

So off the plane and onto the Airport Train.  I've never actually taken this train before.  Reason being: it's a complete rip off!  $31 for the two of us to get to the city.  Absolutely ridiculous.  And of course, there was trackwork, so we had to change trains at Central.  At least there *was* a train to Circular Quay - when Stu went a couple of weeks ago, there were no trains at all in the CBD.

Carnival Spirit

Walked up to our hotel, and were able to check in.  Fairly basic hotel room, but very nice and a pretty decent view.

Then we wandered down to the Lowenbrau, and even though we were fifteen minutes early, we were only *just* the first ones there heh.

No good photos of Marc/Ryan and none at all of Emma/Charlotte.. doh!

So everyone arrived and they brought out meat.  So. Much. Meat.  This times four!

We got the "Schmankerlplatter" which was $39.50 and the cheapest of the options we were forced into having by the Lowenbrau.  I was really annoyed by this, as it meant people couldn't go for a lighter lunch if they wanted to.  One thing's for sure - I'll *never* be booking to go to the Lowenbrau again.  If opportunity arose I'd still go there, but I'd never organise an event there again.

*Fortunately* they were happy to package up all the leftovers, and Stuart R and my brother took them home.  So at least a quarter of all that food didn't end up going to waste.

And the pork was pretty damned good.  And there was other meat too.  For those that wanted it ;)

So after lunch, since the Lowenbrau were being buttheads about not wanting people to drop by casually, we headed up to the Argyle for drinks.  Fiona, Stu, Chris, Daniel&Fi and me and the sweetie went, and were joined by Fran, Jake, Ric, David and Yvonne.  Where we stayed til early evening :)

The Argyle's unisex bathroom.  The funky pods at the far end are the urinals!

So all in all it was actually a wonderful afternoon.  I hadn't seen Chris in twenty years, and I'd never even met Stuart R (except online, and he had actually thought I was a boy which gave everyone a good laugh ;) ).  And all sorts of lengths of friendships in between.  The only sad part was not having enough time to catch up with everyone for as long as I'd have liked.  Oh well.. will have to make more effort on future trips!  And convince people to come visit ;)

Stumbled back to the hotel.

Picked up some snackages on the way back to the hotel, thinking we might get hungry later on.  But we never did.  Too much meat!

However the hotel had put out a little bit of cake and a macaron for my birthday - how sweet of them :) (when they asked at checkin if I was up for a special occasion I said I was :) )

Enjoyed the view briefly before collapsing into (a very soft) bed.

Pretty crappy night tonight.

Well it started off all right.  Went to Alice's with the sweetie for dinner which was nice.

On the way home I started getting anxious about stuff I have to do and unknowns I have to face and strangers I have to call.

At home we found that the third brake light on Stu's car wasn't working.  After we had just gotten the car back from a service *today* in which they assured us it had been fixed (this was the second time they've looked at it).  So I'm like, you've got to be kidding me.  One more stress.  More money wasted.  More hassles.  I mean I like Mick and all, but sometimes I think he's not a particularly good mechanic :(:(

The Old Reader has died, hopefully only temporarily.  They did a migration to new hardware on the weekend and it all failed in a heap today.  They're still hoping to get it back within a couple of days.  So using Comma Feed in the meantime which has all the same stuff in it, but isn't as good as a reader.

And then the real drama started (yeah the rest of it was just a warm up).

I tried booking the lunch I'm having on Saturday.  But because there were more than ten people coming we have to choose a set menu and pay $20 deposit each per person.  Except I don't actually know how many people are coming yet because quite a few people haven't rsvped.  And it's fricken expensive - with a set menu there's no choice of having a smaller cheaper meal if you wanted.  And heaven help you if you're vegetarian.  And also, because they're a "restaurant", people can't just pop in for a while during the afternoon for a drink - they have to dine as well.  So I've had to change the plans a bit, and then email everyone again asking *again* for rsvps. 

I fricken *hate* that sort of drama.  It's made me stressed/depressed about the whole thing.  

*sigh*

Oh yeah, and I forgot to call dad *again* tonight.. wonderful daughter I am .. *not*

• Being stressed about having your blood taken makes your veins tense up and makes it that much harder to have your blood taken (three holes later .. )
• There's a Chilean flag flying outside our building
• There was a Mars Rover in the mall
• Took a couple of hundred photos of colleagues playing touch footy.  Clocked my camera in the process
• Had a lovely bbq at @CLBradley's tonight

Today I had to go into work for an upgrade.  I was there for a couple of hours, but it all went relatively smoothly.

Tonight we went over to Chris and Geoff's for raclette.  Oh my!  So much cheesy goodness!  I might have eaten a little too much.  But it was so delicious!

And a pretty awesome blackberry dessert as well

But then I got a sms from Tony who was having some trouble with an application that we'd apparently broken today.  So that stressed me out for the rest of our time there :(

But got onto Windy and it looks as if he's been able to fix it, so probably won't have to go back in tomorrow after all. Phew!

I was toying with the idea of going to Skyfire last night.  And before that the Canberra day celebrations last Monday.

But Canberra makes it too hard and stressful to go to festivals.  

You see Stu has little interest in festivals.  Mostly because of the crowds.  We both *hate* crowds, but him even more so.  Which means he doesn't usually want to go to them.  Which means I'd have to go by myself (not very appealing) or find someone to go with (tricky).  Either way I would ordinarily still need to get myself there.

Now in Sydney if you want to go to an event, you just hop on a train.  It's much easier and faster to take public transport in Sydney than it is to drive, so that's what you do.  In Canberra the opposite is true.  Public transport takes *much* longer than driving.  So while you *can* take a bus to an event, it's usually too impractical.  But if you drive then there's the stress of parking.  Because everyone else has the same idea.  And the parking situation around the lake is pathetic.  Not to mention that if I drove myself I wouldn't be able to drink.  (The exception is Epic - there's plenty of parking there).

And then there's the crowds.  Have I mentioned the crowds?  And guess what crowds need to do?  Go to the toilet!  But Canberra festival organisers never provide enough toilets so you have to queue forever.  

The lack of food outlets and so therefore the huge queues at those is another turn off, but that one just takes a little bit of planning to bring your own food.

So basically the stress of it all turned me off going last night, so I didn't go.  Which is a shame because I *love* fireworks and would like to get some more practise photographing them.

Over summer I was letting myself wake up naturally with the light.

But now it's not even sunrise until after I need to be up I'm needing to set an alarm again.

Also, work is stressing me out like crazy :(

Had a pretty awful day today.  Woke up at 4:15 and never got back to sleep.

So couldn't concentrate very well on some work I need to get done before Wednesday morning.

And then I got cornered by a developer who wanted me to look at a problem of theirs, and I got stuck with it because other people were away or on training.  Did I mention I have a heap of work I need to do before Wednesday morning?

*sigh*

Came home feeling very stressed to the point of feeling queasy :(

This evening at least was productive - the usual washing, pool chlorinating, kitchen tidying, bathroom cleaning, rubbish removal, leftover eating, as well as some jigsawing.

If I went to everything that's going on this weekend I'd be pretty exhausted .. hrmmm

Possible dinner with Ken and Jeanine on Friday, Canberra show, possible club night, Paul Kelly and Neil Finn Sunday night.

Although with all that stress I'll just as likely do none of it.. hrmmmm

The Paul Kelly and Neil Finn concert on Sunday could be good.  If I had someone to go with :/

Then there's Verticool coming up, which I'd love to do, but the $880 suggested fund raising is a little daunting.. bit off-putting actually .. makes it all too hard.. and it sounds like you can't really just go in it for the fun of walking up the stairs .. *sigh*

And work was just as crappy as I expected it to be.  Possibly even a bit worse :(