Sunday.  17th.  Had an almost vegetarian dinner (except for the bacon hehe).  The bullhorn chillis were $2 from Toms.

Watched the second Christmas special of the American Lego Masters series.

Monday.  Slept okish (took ages to get to sleep and woke up early.

The sky sure was blue after all the rain on the weekend!

Dunno what was up with this currawong.  Maybe it ate too many strawberries haha

Nick helped me out with a script and I actually got it working which was super happy making.  Leftover lemon pepper chicken for dinner.  Queensland photo picking, jigsaw, Men Against Fire on Black Mirror.  I'm sure if real militaries could do that they would.  The Bricklink order (the quote) was "cancelled"  #grunt.

Tuesday.  Took ages to get to sleep then woke up early.  The Bricklink seller said the quote was already cancelled when he went to look.  And there was no way to reopen it.  #grunt.  

From Bricklink:

Canceled - There are three reasons a quote is canceled:
The seller did not provide a quote within three business days.
The buyer did not take action on the quote within three business days.
The items in the quote were sold before the order was generated.

Probably that last one.  Fortunately I was able to add everything to a wishlist so it was (relatively) easy to reorder it.  

Productive day, got some scripts working, did some music, tidied the house a bit, cooked dinner, did some photo picking and watched some tv.

Wednesday.  Took a while to get to sleep and woke up early.

Finally!  A strawberry haul!  These were in the pool so the currawongs didn't know about them, and the snails never found them either.  

Ok day at work - made some progress on scripting - got one of Daniel's premigration scripts working so that made me super happy.  Road block on another function though.  Home late, dinner, backups, hair, jigsaw, bed.

Thursday.  Took a while to get to sleep and woke up early.  Sensing a theme here. 

Busy day prepping and working with the vendor on a big cleanup of the mess they made.  Had to work through drinks so didn't really get to talk to people much.  Pizzas, bed.

Oh, and David might have been on the news the other night..

Friday. 

Finish of the cleanup went ok, noone screamed.  Mostly scripting all day.  Managed to get something super complicated working so that was cool (adding IP addresses to a group, sounds like it should be simple right hahahahaahh), but didn't finish Daniel's complicated script converting.  Kievs for dinner.

USS Callister on Black Mirror which was actually kinda fun.  A little bit like White Christmas in some ways.

Saturday.  Breakfast with Annie at Gang Gang which was nice.

Did our food shopping afterwards.  Then All The Things all day.  

Cooked up the last of the leftover pork in a red curry

Death in Paradise 10.5 and then Arkangel on Black Mirror.  

Yeah so it's early.  Sue me.

Sunday.  Slept mostly ok but woke up fairly early.  Just around the time the cacaphony of birds was starting.  Got a smidge more sleep until 5:30.  House stuff in the morning.  I even mowed the lawn!  Probably the first time in over thirty years.  I had to mow the lawn sometimes as a teenager and I HATED it!!  The lawnmower was loud and hard to start and our lawn was huge and I would ALWAYS get hit by debris even with the catcher on (which was a pain to have to empty over and over again).  I never did it here either because our lawnmower was loud and hard to start and I'd been scarred from doing it as a teenager.  Anyways.  We got a new lawnmower the other week because the starter cord on the old one broke right off.  The new one is battery powered (we did get a new 36v battery and charger because it was easier to just get the kit rather than putting in a special order for just the mower.  Turns out the new battery is chunkier so that's useful.  The thing is super easy to start - you just press down the start button and pull one of the levers (you have to keep the lever(s) held down for it to keep operating which is the only real annoyance).  And it's relatively quiet.  So yeah, winning.

Other than that just various house/computer stuffs all day.

Sunday.  20th.  Kiev and veggies for dinner.  Loch Henry on Black Mirror.  Far out I wish they'd keep the camera still.  

Went out to find the comet (Comet C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS).  I only knew where to look cause David posted a photo the night before.  Of course I couldn't actually see it.  I'm blind and there's too much city light.  And I couldn't be stuffed taking my cameras/tripod.  So I took some crappy photos on my phone.  As you do.

Monday.  Slept mostly ok.  Didn't get to do my doco clearing cause All The People wanted All The Things.  Had a long lunch to do bank and tax crap.  Tax was surprisingly painless.  I was stunned at how much is automatically populated by the ATO.  David dropped in for meat and veggies for dinner before heading home again.  Watched Beyond the Sea on Black Mirror.  You just know things are going to go Very Badly on this show, although I didn't quite pick *how* it would turn out.  When she said "What if.. what if you let him use your link?" .. you can already see where this is going..  heh.  But keep the damned camera still!!!

Tuesday.  Slept ok I think.  Mostly finishing up decom doco at work.  Mum photo picking in the evening.

Wednesday.  Slept ok I think.  OMFG windoze is so trash.  Like, for most of the time I've had this computer I can't actually shut it down.  I tell it to, but it just logs me off and stays at the login screen.  I have to actually reboot it and turn it off half way through the reboot cycle.  Had a scheduled power outage.  The Solar Edge system dutifully kicked in and kept all the fish tanks running.  But it didn't charge the battery at all.  This was totally not what we were sold on.  Had an early mark and went to Herbert's.  I was on a mission to finish the Ginja Ninja so they'd put on the dessert sour.  Alas, I couldn't do it.  But they were likely my last ever Ginja Ninjas.  Unless someone buys out and continues running TRBC.  TV dinners for dinner.  Have I mentioned how trash windoze is?  This time, after turning on my computer and backing it up, it refused to eject the disk.  Even though I had pretty much nothing running on account of having just rebooted.  I could hear that *something* had the disk open.  But even leaving it for ages it wouldn't let go.  Ended up rebooting again to clear it.  Hate windoze.  Hate hate hate hate.

There's something you don't see every day - a two leaf clover!!!  And a four.  But I see those all the time ;)

HFC (healthy fried chicken) Chipotle burger from Grill'd (went with Neil at lunch)

Possibly one of my last ever Ginja Ninjas :(

Thursday.  Dunno.  Two of the baby gak gak birds are still alive..

Pizzas for dinner.

Friday.  Queensland!

Saturday.  Wedding!

Sunday.  Home! 

John has been building a retaining wall on our bit of the land next to the driveway.. and he very kindly left the epic dandelion there (cause I asked :) )!!

Got upstairs and found the 620T fish tank was *very* low.  Like a good five centimetres lower than it should be.  Uh oh.  Had a look and sure enough, the water was backed up enough that it was dribbling back over the back of the tank where the power cables come in.  Sigh.  So dried up what I could and put a small fan on it to try and dry things out.  Bit of a lost cause though, the backing (made of compressed sawdust) was even more badly swollen than the last time this happened.  Whoever thought that chipboard and sawdust fish tank stands were a good idea should be shot in the head.  TV dinners, Mash, early night.

Sunday.  29th.  Backdating.  Leftover lasagna with salad for dinner.  Mash, then I watched Inside Out 2.  I think I actually liked it better than the original.  

Monday.  Restless legs so took me ages to get to sleep.  Woke up at 5:30.  Overwhelmed with All The Things that need doing.  I don't have time to go to work.  Then of course work was crazy busy and I couldn't leave early like I wanted to.  Did some weeding after work but no time for music :(  Leftovers for dinner.  Life is all too hard.  But I did do a heap of catchup blogging - seven entries!!

A four and a five!!!

Tuesday.  1st of October.  Ok sleep I think  More migrations at work.  Met up with Luc who was in town again.  Had a couple of drinks at Hippo, then dinner at Akiba.

Sex panther on the left (I tried a sip of this and really liked it), and penicillin on the right

PB&J on Rye

Akiba

Balmain bug bun, pickled baby gem, creamy ponzu 

Kingfish, coconut, nam jim, coriander

Sweet and sticky squid, lime, crispy Thai basil, chilli, mint

Wednesday.  Slept mostly ok.  OMFG I FINISHED THE MIGRATIONS!!!  Took an early mark but didn't even have a celebratory drink hehe.  Leftover lasagna for dinner.  Mum photo picking.  Went to wash my hair, only to find I'd bought the wrong bottle of Head and Shoulders AGAIN!!  OMFG their packaging sucks donkey balls.  

Thursday.  Mostly ok sleep.  Did some planning for some post-migration cleanup work.  Quiet drinks.  Made pizzas.

Friday.  Awake some time before 3 til some time after 5.  Sigh.  Did the cleanup work I'd been planning.  Kievs for dinner.  David Graf was in Mash haha.  Amazing Race and early night.

Saturday.  Somewhat restless sleep but better than Thursday night.  A day of doing All The Things.  I've been scanning the filing cabinet on weekends (when the sun is out to power my old computer).  Decided I didn't need to scan development application notices.  But it was funny to go look at them on Google Maps/Street view now they're done.   So many knock-down-rebuilds!!  Chong Co delivery for dinner.  "Larry" Fishburne in Mash haha.  Then watched Golden Kamuy, which Stu said is like 6/300 of the manga.  hmmm.

Sunday.  Mostly ok sleep I guess?  Woke up at 5:25.  Oh wait, that's 6:25.  Cool I guess.  Another busy day of All The Things.  We went out and bought a new printer.  I didn't want to get HP because, subscription trash (didn't do any research to see if there were any that didn't have it, but I refuse to support companies doing subscription trash).  And didn't want to get Brother because our last one had the "known bug" with the fuser slipping and blurring prints (not to mention the paper jams) after only 15000 prints.  So we're trying Oki.  LED rather than Laser.  See how it goes.  Then did some food shopping.  It didn't feel like a Sunday so forgot to backup phone/do music/blog.  Whoops.  Watched a bit of a YouTube video on The Easy Life in Kamusari.  Then I watched Salt.  Bit of Hollywood fluff.  And how cute is Liev Schreiber?!?

Friday - 6.9.24

Out the door at 9am, but had to get some extra things for Jeff's "hamper". Then we needed to get breakfast. So it was after 10 by the time we got away from Canberra.

Lake George shining

Stu put on an audio book - The Easy Life in Kamusari.

At the Nattai River hill we were passed by a hoon. I was disappointed there wasn't police on the other side of the hill (there often is). When we got to the M7 turnoff in Sydney there was a bit of a traffic jam and we were in the wrong lane to turn onto it, so that was a bit stressful. We were finally able to merge in and when we got to the pyramid there were police cars and the same hoon pulled over and under arrest (literally saw him in handcuffs on the ground haha).

Stopped at Ourimbah for petrol and lunch.

New freeway and overpasses at Hexham

I'll miss the old bridge at Hexham

Then just drove on. Mostly finished the book.

Arrived in Port Macqaurie just before 6. Dumped our stuff then headed out again.

Went out to Potty's for drinks and pizzas. Most of the family was there so that was nice. The kids were very loud heh.

Saturday - 7.9.24

Didn't sleep very well - the pillow was too thick and the bed too soft. I did go and get my own pillow which helped, but kept getting a sore spine from the soft bed.

Got ready then went out for a good long walk around the beaches which was pretty nice.

Folly, on Windmill Hill

Butcherbird

Nobby Head

Oxley Beach

Flagstaff Lookout

Town Beach

Oxley Beach

Waves crashing off Oxley Beach

Town Beach

There was a small formation of vintage aircraft flying around

Port Macquarie Observatory

Gak gak birds!!

Then I tried to find coffee and breakfast. I'd already passed one busy cafe at Town Beach but wasn't ready to get stuff yet. I found one other cafe but they didn't have any nice pastries just a couple of cakes/banana bread type stuff. Looked for a few other cafes but they didn't look the sort to do takeaway coffee. So #fail. In the end got some snackages and coffee in a can from the Foodary.

Annie stopped by to drop off a dress (I don't own dresses lolz). It was a bit big but looked marginally ok. Stu thought I should wear it.

Then we headed up to SWR, and finished the book on the way. It was kinda funny. Nice story.

Kempsey Northern Gateway Sculpture

At Jeff and Ruth's we arrived in time for morning tea (everyone was already there, so that was a bit stressful), and they put on a slide show which was pretty cool.

Jeff about to go through the slide show

Then we headed off to lunch - The Old Bank in Gladstone. They'd setup a table outside under a big tree overlooking the river - absolutely lovely setting. Had a pretty awesome lunch there. And there were lots of speeches hehe. And there were two snakes. Or the same snake doing the rounds. I thought it was Sally's leash that was moving, and things weren't computing, and everyone thought I was having a seizure or something. But I hope I didn't step on it (I don't think I did). Left after 3.

Family photo

Ruth and Jeff

Arancini balls

Chicken sausage rolls

Prawn platter

Green tree snake (take 2 - the other one that I nearly trod on got away before I could get a photo)

Beef tenderloin I had for lunch

Annie reading her poem

Jeff's birthday cake

Happy birthday!!

The plan was to go back to Jeff and Ruth's to get changed to go for a swim. But then it was decided to drive around the beaches to see which one would be the best. But then it was decided which beach they were going to go to, but noone told us, and most of them didn't come back to Jeff's. This made it Too Hard, so I just stayed with the Stu's.

Then back to Port for dinner of snackages (still full from lunch). Watched some Big Bang Theory then to bed.

Sunday - 8.9.24

Still too soft a bed to sleep very well. Woke up at 5.

Got ready then headed out to Potty's for coffee. We were first there which was nice.

Had breakfast at The Scottish Restaurant then tried to get petrol. But if you're coming from the restaurant side it's incredibly confusing and we drove around a couple of times and in the end came in through the back cause they made it too damned hard.

Put on the next Kamusari book which we got most of the way through (Kamusari Tales Told at Night).

Hexham Bridge

Had lunch in Ourimbah, and got petrol in Marulan.

At Lake George (which is still very full) a wallaby on the side of the road started moving onto the road. Stu slowed down, gently, then rapidly, then to a hard stop. We were lucky we didn't hit the thing. The dude on the right didn't slow down at all and zoomed past us while we were stopped. If the wallaby had kept crossing the road it would have been hit. In the end it went back off to the left. So that was a bit rattling.

Home a bit before 6.

This view coming into Canberra never gets old!

Sunday.  7th.  Epic roast chicken and veggies for dinner.

Then watched first part of Pretty Baby - a documentary on Brooke Shields.  Funny that Judd Nelson appeared in that one, but not Andrew McCarthy's one.  

Monday.  Slept mostly ok.  omfg NEW Teams is so trash.  They hid away the contact list so I had to Google how to find it.  You have to click on Calls on the left, then up in the top right click on View Contacts.  This starts up a "People" menu option on the left menu bar, but that's not persistent unless you pin it.  But then if you message someone from the contacts list it pops out into a new window instead of opening in the existing chat window.  Utterly hopeless Microsoft TRASH.  Spent most of the day looking at other peoples' problems.  Saw my birds at lunch for the first time since last winter.  They didn't fly over straight away, but did when I called them.  Cooked satay chicken for dinner with some leftover chicken and a Masterfoods satay sauce base.  Turned out ok.  The sweetie went back for seconds so must have been ok.  

Tuesday.  Took a while to get to sleep but then slept ok.  Busy day of Everything Everywhere All At Once.  Had a drink after work.  Not a great idea because then I didn't feel like doing anything.  Least of all cook dinner.  So asked the sweetie to cook dinner.

Shallot rings, prawn toast, shredded beef Peking style, cashew chicken and rice.

So I had another drink.  And we both ate entirely too much.  And I only did like 1100 steps all day.  But I did finish a day of Queensland photo culling and watched some Lego Masters.

Wednesday.  Slept mostly ok but woke up at ~5:15.  Day of all the BS.  Hurray.  Photo culling and Lego Masters in the evening.  And the sweetie cooked dinner!  Miso mushrooms!

Thursday.  Slept mostly ok.  Everything Everywhere All At Once.  Quietish drinks.  Made pizzas.  Started a new anime series.  Remind me to ask Stu what it was called.  Edit: Girl Band Cry.

Friday.  Slept mostly ok.  Spent a chunk of the morning talking to people about moving all their stuff to our new environment.  Decom work in the afternoon.  Opened a bottle of bubbles I got for my birthday and shared it with the sweetie.

Had fried chicken pieces and veggies for dinner (Chris didn't have kievs! *gasp*!!)

After dinner I watched Parasite.  It was actually kinda fun for the first half, then just got silly and ultimately pointlessly violent.  Also.  Why the hell doesn't he just *leave* at the end??

Saturday.  Slept mostly ok.  Got ready and headed out to the club for a working bee.  Spent a couple of hours mattocking tussock.  Until I whacked the mattock into the ground and felt something move beneath my foot a good half a metre away.  Uh oh.  Sure enough, I'd hit a hose and it started leaking.  Went and found Boyd and he was like, eh, just turn off the water at the tank, then he came and dug around it and then cut through it and said, easy fix don't worry about it.  This is it a while later when I went back for a photo.

There's banksias flowering in the garden.

In the afternoon helped with hazard reduction around the back.

And there was this chunky bluetongue!

Came home (the sweetie and I had some good life conversations on the way to and back) and collapsed.  Had leftover satay chicken for dinner, Death in Paradise 10.1, then an early night.

Sunday.  Even though I went to bed early it still took ages to get to sleep.  And woke up around midnight with cranky bowels.  Maybe it was that tiny bit of rotten egg that got into the veggie hash browns at lunch yesterday.. I saw nothing..!  Super busy day.  Spent an hour each on Tassie culling, Queensland culling, Lego wishlisting, Mum photo picking, downloading bank statements, and shopping, with an extra blog post, music practise and phone backing up, then it was time to cook dinner and just like that the weekend is over.  Sigh.  I have so many projects going on at the moment it would be a full time job just to keep up with it all.  I don't have TIME to go to work full time.  It's killing me.

Sigh....

Something EB managed to find.  

The "tour" started with a bunch of us in their conference room and they had a few of the staff there to give a bit of a spiel and answer questions.

Some of my notes:

• For over-heights they get a few a month. But their tunnels are 5.1 which is a bit taller than other Sydney tunnels (M5 east is 4.6 and Cooks River is 4.4). They sometimes get false positives from birds or tarps blowing around.
• They do smoke extraction testing by manually setting a sensor to smoke detection mode and watching to make sure the fans work as expected.
• Heat sensors are often last to pick up any sort of fire. Their incident detection systems will usually get it first - because of a stopped vehicle for example. Then the operators will be looking at the situation before a fire escalates.
• If there's a genuine incident the operators are challenged by having a *lot* of alerts coming up for it.
• Their biggest electricity bill is from operation of the fans. Cars help keep the air flowing, so if there's gridlock, or simply no cars like late at night, then the fans have to work a lot harder.
• They don't generally have any issues with air quality because cars and trucks these days are a lot cleaner.
• They don't have to force feed any fresh air in, except during actual incidents where traffic is backed up.
• They don't do any scrubbing of their exhaust stacks but apparently there's no issues with air quality on the ground because the stacks are quite high and so the pollution doesn't really impact the surrounding area.  They reckon it's actually cleaner on the ground than having a busy road at ground level.
• They regularly publish their air quality sensor reports online.  For example here's some for the M4.
• They have a DR site at homebush, although the two M5 east operators go to a different location for it - the old M5 east control room.
• Fire alerts will go directly to the firies, but operators will still assess any incidents before enacting a fire plan. If a deluge is needed they won't turn it off until the firies give them the go ahead.
• Firie callouts are expensive - something like $1800 each. They had a lot of issues with sensors in the Rozelle tunnels when they first went in - water ingress was setting them off.
• One of their biggest challenges has been integrating all the different tunnel management systems which were built at different times with different systems hardware/software.

Then we got to go see the control room. They have a HUGE screen. Like, it covers the entire western end of the building.  The middle has an overview map of the whole system with colour coded lines and icons to give a quick overview of the status of the system. The top row has up to ten screens they'll use when there's incidents. And the rest just normally have various above ground cameras.

There's six operators 24/7. They mostly look at their own screens rather than the big one. There's four operators for most of the tunnels, and two for the M5 east. They have these metre long curved screens and several other screens which are pretty impressive.

Fascinating day. Oh and they gave us some sandwiches for lunch which was nice!

Sunday.  23rd.  Roasted some veggies to have with some leftover meat.  Watched The Crown then had an early night.

Monday.  Slept mostly ok except for numb hands every five minutes overnight.  Been really fricken annoying lately.  Sadly my ancient cory (that I got as one of five in 2015 and was the only survivor of the Two Foot Tank of Death Fiasco) had died.  This was it a couple of weeks ago when it was starting to look like maybe it was on its way out..

Day was ok.  Trying to document some stuff but finding problems.  Man I really shouldn't look at things.  Saw three of my birds at lunch.  Then it was all dingbats and numbskulls in the afternoon, including some sheer incompetance.  Leftovers for dinner (mmmmm end bits from the roast pork we did at the club Saturday night).  Finished culling days 15/16 of Europe photos.  Day 15 wasn't too bad but day 16 was pretty hard.  Too many photos that look similar and hard to choose the best.

Tuesday.  Couldn't get to sleep til past midnight :(  Then numb hands again.  Sigh.  Another crazy day with all the peeps talking to me.  Cooked creamy pasta for dinner which was nice (added a bunch of leftover peas which didn't really work texturewise but did add some vegetation).  

Finished culling up to day 19.  There's a third series of War on Waste on iView, but I realised I haven't seen season two, so went back to start watching that.  Booked tickets for Indiana Jones, but seriously why TF do they charge booking fees to book online??  Surely they'd be encouraging that to save having to pay box office staff?  Dodgy Dendy strikes again.  Hate.  I probably didn't even need to book in advance, it was clear it wasn't going to be anywhere near full.

Wednesday.  Slept a bit better.  Busy day again.  Went and did a screen test at work.  I doubt they'll want me for any sort of video, but you never know for audio.  After work went and had Disappointing Sushi with the sweetie (so called because the hot stuff is *always* cold).  But because the sweetie is a regular at lunch, the owner brought out a complimentary plate of KFC, which was fresh out of the fryer and pretty awesome, so that was really nice :)

Then we went and saw Indiana Jones, which I'll put in another post.

Thursday.  Slept ok.  The sweetie didn't though.  Several nights in a row of not being able to get to sleep til like 1, 2 or 3 o'clock, stressing about All The Things (mostly work).  Poor thing.  Yet another crazy busy day.  Had a vendor meeting in the afternoon so was late to drinks :(  Pity because it was busy too.  Pizza for dinner (mac and cheese! which was actually pretty decent) then into Season 5 of Death in Paradise.

Friday.  Completely overwhelming day.  Had to just STOP at one point and list All The Things that people had been hassling me about to I could prioritise to get things done.  Did manage to get a lot done (once I had a chance to breathe) and finished up at 16:00 so could head out to the club.  Slightly more relaxed this Friday than last, but not by much.  Had to have a laugh at some point because I said "Hey Siri, tell me a story", and she spouted out half a dozen bizarre little short stories.  Straight out of AI, as the text isn't Googleable.  Also, funny fire is funny..

Oh, I also finished making an iceberg out of Vic's huge pile of 1x4 bricks

Saturday.  Slept ok (and the sweetie slept somewhat better as well).  Did a bit of work around our van tidying up leaves and such, then joined the club working bee.  Just ended up helping load/unload trailerfulls of logs, and helping distribute road base on the main driveway.

Anyone know what this is??

Came home and cooked a basa bake and a cauliflower bake (I won't mention the massive pile of MOLDY CHEESE I had to pick out after throwing on top of the cauliflower bake, WTF Woollies???) and then watched Indiana Jones, Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Sunday.  Woke up after 1 for over three hours.  Sigh.  Then ended up sleeping in til past 8 - two hours of my day WASTED to insomnia.  Felt completely overwhelmend with life - culling is just so damned HARD and there's so much HOUSEWORK TO DO.  In the end really all I got done was to tidy a bunch of surfaces and rearrage all the clutter somewhat.   Sigh. 

Oh also, bookings247 has been hacked!!  I got an email to the email address I use only for that site (which I've actually only ever used once, to find accommodation for Kit's wedding) telling me I'd signed up for Norton antivirus.  It had my name and last four digits of my credit card.  I left a comment on their website, but bet you any money they fob me off.

Here's the email:

This is a receipt for your order.

Order ID: #<redacted>
Order Date: 28-07-2023
Transaction ID: <redacted>
Amount: 499.99 AUD
Payment Method: Auto Debit
Card Number : ********<redacted>

Product Details
Product Name: #<redacted>_NRS_Ultimate-Desk
Powerful protection for your device and the personal information it stores.
License Type: 1 Year
Devices: Unlimited

One Sale, Many Things
Payment Details

Taxes & Duties: 0.00 AUD (all taxes & duties included in product price)
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Devices: Unlimited
For cancellations or complaint regarding this order. Please contact directly at our service department at - +61 2 6176 1229

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I'm half tempted to call the number to see what BS they spin.  But that would require talking to people.  Which I hate.  Sigh.

Sunday.  16th.  Lamb roast for dinner.  Into season 5 of The Crown.  Then finished season 3 of The Amazing Race Australia.  I was really glad that (spoiler alert!!) Heath and Toni won.  

Monday.  Took ages to get to sleep.  Then kept waking up early thinking it was time to wake up.  Then people hassled me the entire fricken day and It. Did. Not. Stop. All. Day.  I hung my washing outside in the morning because it was supposed to be 16 and breezy.  Pfft, never dried.  Saw three of my birds at lunch and did some weeding.  Sausages for dinner.  Still behind on culling.

Tuesday.  Slept ok.  Could have had more sleep though.  Got some culling down in the morning.  Work wasn't *as* crazy as yesterday.  Pea and ham soup for dinner (took literally two minutes to make - ham hock, packet of yellow split peas, bay leaves, onions (that I cooked last night), pepper and water).  Weeding at lunch.  Got up to date with culling.  Windows 11 is so bad.  I have notepad pinned to the task bar.  And normally when it's open it's in the place I have it set.  But every so often windoze just moves notepad all the way over to the right of all my icons, and not where I'd originally pinned it.  So I have to move it back.  So damned retarded.  And don't even get me started on cmd, which is pinned right next to notepad, but when you actually start it, it leaves the pinned icon there, but opens the actual command prompt in another icon all the way to the right.  So you go looking for your open cmd window on the left but can't find it, because it's all the way over to the right.  

Wednesday.  Spent all morning on one ticket trying to figure out how we do our cloud crap.  Another crazy day.  Gave blood for the first time in about thirty two years.  The first time I gave blood I felt really quite unwell after (I felt really off in my 4 unit maths class, and Sarah F gave me a lift home).  And the second time at the Red Cross centre in Wynyard I threw up.  So I never did it again.  But I'm about a hundred kilos heavier now so thought I'd give it a go.  And I wasn't sick.  Hurray.  Met up with Dennis and the sweetie for a drink after work.  Well they had a drink.  I thought a drink might be a bit unwise with reduced blood volume.  Then we had Kinn Thai for dinner.  I had grilled beef.  Because iron.

Thursday.  Crazy busy day AGAIN.  Another morning trying to figure out cloud crap all for one ticket.  Trivia night in the evening.  We came 5th out of 10.  And I'm pissed at myself for getting one wrong that I should have known better.  If we'd gotten that one and just one more we would have come second, it was that close.  

Friday.  Crazy busy day AGAIN.  Sigh.  At one point in the morning I was so overwhelmed I had a full on meltdown.  Sigh.  Totally worn out by this week.  But did manage to knock off early so we could go shopping and go out to the club. Laid out all the food and prizes before holing up in the van with the fire going.  It took us both several drinks to start to feel relaxed after such an insane week.

Saturday.  Slept ok(ish) (kept waking up with numb hands).  Our feather/down doona sure is lovely.  I stoked the fire maybe a little too much in the morning, but did have a leisurely morning.  I even made a candle (which I'll put in another post).  Went and chatted to Chris and Geoff for a bit (saved them from a phone call to Chris's sister), then went up to start the dinner proceedings.  

I was pottering away almost all afternoon.   I did allow for some help making the "Christmas Skewers", and John very nicely carved the meat and I had several amazing servers as well.

Other than that, did all the prep/cooking myself. 

Eight kilos of pork (the crackling didn't turn out as well this year, probably needed to have it higher longer, but it did mean the meat was fall-off-the-bone tender)

Four kilos of turkey

Two epic potato bakes (annoyingly the baking dishes I normally use have disappeared so had to use smaller ones)

And winter salad (sweet potato, rocket, goats cheese, toasted pumpkin seeds, honey and olive oil) which I remembered to take a photo of this year (there were two of these)

Tab made some lovely Biscoff muffins and some puddings.

It seemed to go well and I think everyone enjoyed dinner.  There was just the tiniest amount of leftovers, which meant catering was perfect - anyone that wanted seconds got them and there wasn't a huge pile of leftover food.  Just enough for a meal or two for us.  And not too late a night.  

I'm always amazed at the STARS out at the club.  Being away from Canberra's light pollution is pretty cool.  On the way back to the van I could see the Milky Way and wondered if my phone could capture it.  It could!!  How amazing is this.. hand held, on a PHONE!!

Sunday.  Slept okish.  Did I mention how good feather/down doonas are?  Got up relatively early and went up and spent an hour or so tidying up the shed. 

Then we came home.  And I realised I'd left a bunch of food in the fridge in the van.  Pissed about that.  As per usual on Sundays after club nights I felt pretty flat all day.  All I managed to achieve all day was finishing the Titanic.  But hey, I guess that's a pretty cool achievement.  Because I mean look at this thing!  So cool!

Something I learnt this week: Weenus!  I'd never heard of it, but apparently it's a slang word for the flap of skin you get over your elbow (technically referred to as olecranal skin).  There you go!

Sunday.  28th.  Not backdating for a change!  Roast turkey and all the veggies for dinner.  Then Futurama/Crown.

Monday.  Slept ok.  Day of trying to do All The Things - cleaning, photo culling, etc.  Also went into battle with the Dodgy Dyson.  Cleaned everything out, and reseated the battery.  No luck.  Fricken POS.  It's like Dyson programme these things to just stop working after a couple of years to force you to buy new stuff, even when the old stuff is perfectly fine.  Cooked a very nice tuna casserole for dinner.  Also, it was 18 years ago tonight that I met the sweetie in person!

Cutest bassoon player in the world?

Tuesday.  Slept ok.  Filled with rage that the Electrolux cordless vacuum cleaner we have as backup has also decided its battery is no good.  So now we have no working cordless vacuum cleaners.  Sigh.  Ok day.  I think.  I forget.  Creamy fettuccini for dinner.  Finished first pass cull of cruise photos, and into final culls.

Not convinced by this Hutwoods candle.  It sure smells nice, but this huge reed wick burns funny and then splits

Wednesday.  Slept ok.  Quiet morning.  Then found MESS - someone had put some test servers in a prod group, so I HAD to fix it. 

New Hardly Normal coming to the mall

Chicken and egg rice bowl from KSK

Leftovers for dinner, and finished final culls up to day 6.  Then watched the Lego Grandmasters final.  OMFG such amazing builds!!

Thursday.  Took *forever* to get to sleep but then slept ok.  More mess cleaning, and generally catching up.  Super quiet drinks.  Pizza.  Watched John Oliver's take on AI, which has foibles such as deciding that images of skin cancer with rulers in them are much more likely to be malignant.  

Friday.  Slept ok.  Ok day.  My birds didn't come to see me.  Chicken kiev for dinner, then watched My Octopus Teacher which was beautiful.

Saturday.  Sneaky trip to Wagga Wagga to see the Lego brick show (might get a selection of the 600-odd photos online one day).  Stopped at the Bethungra Spiral but the lighting wasn't great.  

These carriages were being transported from South Australia to Goulburn and the trainspotters were out in force

Had lunch with David at the Junee Hotel.

And there were also planes to be seen

Sunday.  Nothing much.  Did start a jigsaw and get a quarter of the way through it.  Then the usual Sunday afternoon crap, including feeling that life and weekends are far too short.

Friday night I got home from work, chucked everything in the car, and headed straight out again to go down the coast.  We nearly hit a kangaroo on Macs Reef Road.  Stoopid things.  Took it a bit slow and arrived about 19:45.  Had bbq chicken and salad for dinner and then just chatted for a bit.  Little bit of a late night but not too bad.

I slept like crap - woke up for a couple of hours in the middle of the night.  So a slow start.  Followed Kit around like these ducks as she did the morning animal routine.

These guys will be a lot of dinners one day

There's like eight or nine new lambs under a couple of weeks old which are so cute!

I don't even know how many birds she has.  There's ten ducks, one large male turkey (Nigel), a female turkey and a young turkey, as well as about ten guinea fowl, and countless chickens.

She still has Scout and Ricky

Biscuit has as much fun jumping into the creek as Vicky does

Chatted for a while before we headed into Bateman's Bay for lunch.  We were going to go to the Mariner's, but it was closed til early June.  So went to Catalina, which we've driven past heaps of times but never been in.  I had quite a nice pork belly salad.

Went back to Kit's and everyone else had a nap while I did a jigsaw.  Only 250 pieces but quite tricky - basically just had to pick up a piece, figure out where it went, rinse and repeat 250 times.

Then Kit and Pete and I played a couple of games.  First What Next? (The Skyscraper Caper) which is kinda like a choose your own adventure, but we failed on pretty much everything.  Then Dragonworld which was decent enough and I actually managed to win it.

Since we'd had a big lunch, dinner was just ham and cheese toasted sandwiches.  Then listening to music on YouTube.

Slept ok Saturday night.  Pete cooked us breakfast while I followed Kit around doing the animals.

Had our breakfast then we came home.  Was 12:30 by the time we got home, and I was stressed most of the way home about losing so much time out of my weekend.  Not sure how long I can keep up this work nonsense, it just takes up too much damned time..