Saturday morning was just cleaning the house.

The mother type person arrived around lunch time, and the brother type person arrived a little later.  We spent much of the afternoon doing a 3D jigsaw of the Sydney Opera House which was super cool.

Also it was decided that we all needed a cake.

In the evening we went to the Labor Club for dinner.

Came home and David dug out the dungeon roof to see what was up with our leaking shower.  We found a mixing bowl full of water with a copper pipe drilled into it draining to who knows where on the other side of the dungeon wall under the house.  

!!!

No idea what that was about.  We poked around and did some testing and we're pretty sure the leaking is actually in the corner where the grout has been breaking away.

Finished off the Opera House jigsaw, and did a 500 piece jigsaw.

Sunday morning we did another 500 piece jigsaw then David went home.  Mum and I went to Bunnings and got some silicone sealant, and then went to the markets to do some food shopping.

In the evening I did epic roast pork and had Chrissie et al over for dinner which was all very nice.

Monday morning mum went home, and at work I tried getting setup in my new desk, but it was all super stressful because stuff wasn't working and I don't have cubicle walls which I find pretty distressing.  I might have had a slight meltdown.

Had lunch with Chrissie - KFC - which is semi-traditional.

In the evening the sweetie took me out to Bella Vista for dinner which was excellent as always.

Arrancini con pancetta affumicata
Classic smoked bacon & onion risotto balls with cheese encased in golden panko breadcrumbs served with a creamy tomato sauce and miniature leaf salad.

Capesante e calamari
Pancetta wrapped Canadian scallops with butter poached calamari pieces on seasoned avocado puree, asparagus tips and roasted capsicum puree & pesto sauce.

Pappardelle alla Bistecca
Thin slices of Angus sirloin steak pan-fried with bacon and mushrooms finished in a caramelised butter, Pecorino Reggiano cheese and wilted baby spinach sauce tossed through Pappardelle pasta.
(note: I wouldn't say "when" to the parmesan cheese, so he gave me the whole lot ;) )

Maiale Arrosto
Twice cooked pork belly with a roasted mushroom, red onion, cherry tomato and scallop salsa served with prosciutto crisp and a garlic and thyme jus.

Orange cake (didn't get a photo of the description).

Tonight I had a go at trying to get the old silicone out of the corner of the shower.  I didn't have much luck, only managing to get silicone out of two tiles before my fingers hurt too much from using the only tool I had which seemed to do any good - an old file.  Sigh.

So this weekend consisted of:

* photographing Cotter and Stromlo
* driving to Sydney and a dinner with mum for our birthdays (had pork ribs - yum!)
* awake at stoopid o'clock
* finally getting to see the Sea Cliff Bridge up close
* driving home
* house tidying, bed changing, sheet washing, Survivor watching, tuna bake cooking.

I'm still trying to get through old food in the house.  I dug out four tins of tuna that had gotten mouldy from being out at the club (the labels, not the tuna) and two small tins of creamed corn that had been in the pantry forever.  Mixed them with a small thing of cream from across the road, a sachet of cream of mushroom soup, and a clove of pickled black garlic, then over half a pack of pasta, topped with cheese then baked for forty minutes.  For something so random it was quite delicious, and there's a bunch less things in the pantry now.

So 2013. Busy year!

We saw in 2013 with a small pool party at our place with Nat and Andrew and also Steve for a while.

  
We did a bit of travelling this year.

In January we went up the coast to South West Rocks to a school reunion of sorts for Stu and to visit Stu's dad. We drove up and down the coast, swam, visited Trial Bay Gaol, and caught up with Fiona and Margie on the way home.

We only managed to get to the coast once this year, in May. It was somewhat of a disaster with the spa being too cold on Friday night and too hot on Saturday night and a few other things that made it all a bit unpleasant (except for during the day on Saturday which was pretty good). Almost went again later in the year but had to go to Sydney and otherwise we've just been too busy.

We went to Queensland in July for a lovely long weekend to visit Chay and David.

At the end of July we flew up to Sydney for my Dad's 70th and one of my 40th parties (see below).

In October we decided at the last minute to go to Hong Kong for a week at the end of October. It was a great week, even if a little too humid. It's the most spontaneous holiday I've ever taken. I didn't do too much planning for it, because the more I researched, the more things I found of interest to see. So I stopped researching altogether and we took it as it came.

  
At work I had a mostly good year. I started off the year cleaning and pretty much cleaned all year. I started with the knowledge base articles for our team, then moved onto the log transfer system, then the load balancers. I also rehashed an old domino database for documentation which brought back a lot of memories of my last job. For the rest of the time it mostly felt like I was the "goto" person for any and all problems that came along. We were partly restructured, but the powers that be didn't really have a clear idea of what they wanted, so things didn't change as much as we originally thought they would. I made Stu drag out his tuxedo again for the work ball which was a lot of fun.

Healthwise I felt like I was sick the whole first half of the year - with colds in January, March, April, May and June. So that was pretty horrible. Not flus though, just annoying colds. Got another one the night before we went to Hong Kong too - yay :( But have been ok otherwise.

  
We had a super busy social year this year. In fact it was so busy that we went from May to September without having a free Saturday night. As a consequence our Buffy and Angel watching was almost non-existent. There were plenty of visits to/from Annie and Potty and the families. Various people came over for dinner and/or swims at the beginning of the year. Nat and Andrew came over a few times, as well as Andrew by himself when Nat was travelling. There were various after works drinks with my colleagues and Stu's and family and friends. Various Singstar/Mario Kart nights were had. Several BBQs at @CLBradley's. Several games nights at Mishi's. Had a video night at our place with work people. We visited people for lunches/dinners such as Matt and Helen, Andrew and Jen, Chris and Geoff, Josh and Ally, Windy and Nanette etc. We saw Daniel and Fi a few times when they came down. Several people came to stay including David and Yvonne, Ken and Jeanine, Fiona a couple of times and Stu's old school friend Tom. I met up with @StuartCRyan a few times in Sydney (we met in real life for the first time at my birthday). I also went to visit David in Junee.

Speaking of birthdays, I turned forty this year. To celebrate I had *three* great parties - one in Sydney, a big one at home the Saturday before my birthday, then a big lunch at work on my birthday followed by a nice dinner and seeing Phantom of the Opera. I was certainly in a different place mentally for my fortieth. During the whole run-up to my thirtieth I was very depressed, and my actual birthday was pretty meh. Such a different story this year though.

  
In sadder news, my Nana died of old age earlier in the year. And then I found out at the funeral that I have another cousin that I'd never heard about before!

Also in sad news, my father got diagnosed with a brain tumour in March. He had surgery immediately (and they had to cancel a holiday to New Zealand), followed by chemo and radiotherapy. Unfortunately it didn't really help, and he was hospitalised in July because he kept falling over and wasn't able to walk properly. He's been getting progressively worse and has been in a nursing home since September. In August I started going up to Sydney fairly regularly to see Dad and help Mum with the mammoth task of clearing out the garage and workshop. We've mostly been sorting things so far as I don't want to get rid of things until Dad goes. Fortunately I've been able to work out of the Sydney office so not having to take leave at the moment.

  
We've been enjoying a lot of visits to our little social club. We camped there over the Australia day long weekend, and the new tent survived a storm and massive downpour fairly well. But then a caravan came up for sale, so we bought it! We went to most of the club nights during the year, and plenty of other times as well. It's Stu's little get-away-from-the-world place and he thoroughly enjoys it.

With work people or the sweetie, tried out a few new restaurants. Continued going to Black Pepper for brunches and also Pulp Kitchen a few times. Went to Dumpling Inn a few times and Bella Vista as well. Didn't try too many desserts this year, although did make a Mars Bar slice and a peppermint rocky road, as well as an apple crumble and caramel slice that we tried at the club.

  
We bought another four baby angels for the angel tank. One died but the other three survived, so now have four angels and about seven danios in that tank. We got a lovely little betta for the macquarium, but he never thrived and died in six weeks. So thinking I'll probably give the macquarium away. The four foot still has a school of duboisis, two multies, a lelupi and a J.transcriptus. There's three multis downstairs, but after breeding once, the single baby I saw disappeared and haven't seen any since. There's still three or four quite old kribs downstairs as well.

Not much Lego action this year. I did get a cute little plane from Fiona, and a small City set from Ric for my birthday. I went with Nat and Andrew to Brick Expo, but was very frustrated with the crowds. I dismantled the Millennium Falcon which had been out for four years! Also over the Christmas break got to sort out and build all of Jake's lego which has been fun.

I did a lot of jigsaws this year. Mostly downstairs until downstairs got too cold. Mostly little ones, but also another section of the huge "Life" puzzle. Gave up on the skies of two jigsaws because their quality was just too poor.

I celebrated my tenth blogiversary this year. To mark the occasion I upgraded to Movable Type 5. But got very frustrated with the fact that I now cannot SSH to my host. Also with Movable Type which is *very* buggy. Next year my domain is up for renewal and I'm thinking about moving my domain to a new host with a new blogging platform. But the whole idea is pretty scary, so we'll see about that...

Shows

• The only show I saw this year was The Phantom of the Opera on my birthday.

Movies
Not many movies this year either...

• The Hobbit - An Unexpected Journey
• Star Trek - Into Darkness
• Garden of Words and Ghost in the Shell: Arise

Books

• Time Enough for Love by Robert Heinlein
• Polgara the Sorceress by David and Leigh Eddings
• Careful, he might hear you, by Sumner Locke Elliott
• To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
• Déjà Dead by Kathy Reichs
• A Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute
• I Hate You - Don't Leave Me by Jerold Kreisman and Hal Straus
• The Naked Husband by Mark D'Arbanville
• Death du Jour by Kathy Reichs
• Airport by Arthur Hailey
• Body of Evidence by Patricia Cornwall

Other stuff

• Had a full day at the War Memorial with Ken and Jeanine
• Had a jigsaw race with Nat
• Found my first geocache with Nat and Andrew
• Saw a Roller Derby bout
• Mum got her first mobile phone
• Had a random day off work to tidy up all the fish tank stuff in the garage
• Went for some walks around Palmerville with the sweetie
• Spotted the ISS a few times and waved to @Cmdr_Hadfield. Wasn't quite the same when he came back to earth.
• Went to the balloon fiesta on Canberra Day
• Watched the last couple of episodes and finale of House, which considering the timing with dad was pretty sad
• Took Stu's car for a drive up Mount Ainslie and got covered in lady bugs
• Our PS3 stopped playing DVD disks. Bluray is still ok though.  We considered getting a PS4 but the device isn't backwards compatible with old games.
• Went out to Captain's Flat on our fifth wedding anniversary
• Finished a cross stitch I got for Christmas in 1992
• Went up Black Mountain Tower
• Voted in ABC Classic FM's top 100 music in the movies, and most of my votes were in the top two hundred
• Did a blog for our trip to America in 1983
• Gave up reading Boing Boing, Life Hacker and Neatorama, Dooce and Dilbert
• Got extremely pissed off when Google Reader shut down. Destroyed my faith in Google.
• Looked at Comma Feed, Feedly and The Old Reader. Stuck with The Old Reader.  The Old Reader subsequently crashed from all the extra load of departing Google users, but was able to get funding to run on better hosting and has been fine ever since.
• Got more of my photos onto the RiotACT
• Cancelled Aussie Farmers Direct orders
• Had a look around Wintercon at EPIC
• Stu had a few car dramas that Melba Motors didn't fix
• I had a LOT of car dramas that Melba Motors didn't fix
• Saw the Skywhale
• Played through Diablo with the sweetie.  On easy mode.  Sue me.
• Did proper karaoke for the first time ever (and I've been to Japan four times!)
• Went to a Christmas Carols service at Como

So that's the end of 2013.  New Year's Eve will be spent out at the club with food and booze and friends and fairy lights and fireworks :)

Tonight a bunch of us went to Ruchi's in Belconnen to celebrate Damien's birthday next week.  It was a very pleasant evening :)  And got to know Amanda a bit better which was lovely :)

While the food was pretty good, and the service not too bad, they did charge us corkage for five bottles of wine, when we only had three. Bastards. So we didn't give them a tip. They can take the tip out of the $9 extra dollars of corkage they charged us. That makes two strikes for Ruchi's in my book :)

As we arrived home, saw a rather spectacular moon bow. This is a hand held shot (cause it was all too hard to come and get my tripod).. mind you the moon already did look hazy behind the cloud. That's Jupiter up the top.

I was going to mention this the other night but forgot. While I was driving home from work on my birthday, listening to a radio station I don't normally listen to, they had a "on this day" segment and mentioned some people that had this birthday. Aside from Kieren Perkins and Kate Ritchie that I already knew about, it turns out that Hector Crawford and Peter Costello also share my birthday.

Hector Crawford, executive producer of such cool shows as The Flying Doctors (mmmm Peter O'Brien yummm) and the Henderson Kids (mmmm Alex Papps yummm), and lots of other classic Aussie drama was born in 1913.

Peter Costello, the current Australian treasurer, was born in 1957.

And armed with that thoroughly useless piece of information ....

Today was perfectly pleasant. Slept late and did a whole lotta nuthin. Stu gave me a cool birthday present - a Logitech webcam, which we tested successfully with Arian. In the afternoon we made a pilgrimage to the aquarium and then to the shops to buy meat and beer. Then onto James & George's for a bbq birthday dinner thing. Dinner was great, and Dave & Yvonne fairly successfully took over most of the conversation ;) although my brother could of course be trusted with dropping not-so-subtle hints.. ok *blatantly telling* some people about my new bed and my blog. Honestly, little brothers, who'd have em? ;) <Considers chmod 700ing my blog in case the parents really do decide to go do a google search on kazza> Although I did throw them off the scent slightly when they asked what my website address was, and I said kazza.cia.com.au. Dunno if that'll fool em :)

Thanks everyone for your lovely birthday wishes :):):)
It was probably one of my best birthdays ever. The complete opposite of my 10000th birthday which was probably my worst.

Today was a much more back-to-reality type day. Not helped by waking up at the crack of dawn tired (how does that song go, "I'm so tired, of waking up tired" .. heh). With all chores done (except brushing my teeth), I'm off to bed :)

So when Aurelius came over last night, we went and hired Garden State because Stu had seen it and liked it. It's one of those rather odd movies, quirky and funny but kinda sweet. Then we took Aurelius home to Will & Javaira's and came back and crashed out.

This morning another sad farewell, although not so sad because it's only two weeks till he'll be down for our birthdays. And then a thousand kilometre commute to work. Aside from the fact that it took most of the morning, the flight is only an hour and a quarter.. I could handle a commute like that. It's all the fluffing around on either end that takes up all the time. But I still think a teleporter would solve all our problems. Well at least a few of the biggest ones anyway :)

Work was a writeoff. TTotM hit with a vengeance just as I got to work, and then I was just so whacked in the afternoon I couldn't keep my eyes open during a meeting on the new website. I'm sure I should have been paying attention, because I'm going to have use it for the project I'm working on.. but maybe Jim will do most of the hard stuff (given it's mostly in lotusscript).

And then tonight, spent over an hour trying to decide what carpet and edge runners to put in all the stairwells. Good thing there were only four of us there, or we'd have never made a decision!

And now, it's time for bed.

FQ1: What's an impressive gift ($50 US or less) on your wish list?
See now this is where it gets difficult getting stuff for me. Anything less than $50 I tend to just go and buy if I want it. So whenever people ask when I want for birthdays/christmas etc I have trouble thinking of things. Silly really.
FQ2: What's an expensive gift ($500 US or less) on your wish list?
mmm dvd recorder (with hard drive, to replace my vcr)
FQ3: What's an extravagant gift ($5000 US or less) on your wish list?
Probably a decent home theatre system, everything of mine is second hand and for the most part very old.
FQ Greed: Money is no object! What's the most outrageous gift money can buy on your dream list?
A trip into space.