On our anniversary last weekend we did a bit of a magical mystery tour of Canberra.  We went to a heap of "our" places (mostly friends/family).  

We drove past Annie and Stu's, Mishi's and our old place

Through Gungahlin

Past Scott and Kerry's old house and Flemington Road

Through Dickson

Past Scott and Kerry's old old house (which has been demolished and replaced with two townhouses)

And into Ainslie

Where we returned to the scene of the crime!

Had a long chat with the lady cleaning the church.

Then into Ainslie shops.

Past the War Memorial

And up Mount Ainslie

Then we headed for home

It was a lovely way to spend a couple of hours with the sweetie!

Sunday.  23rd.  Leftover chicken feast for dinner.  DS9 2.1.  Recopied all the MOVs I have on my phone with Windows.  

Monday.  Early night, slept ok.  NEIL again - did a bunch of rearranging of mail routes and holding areas to make my life easier.  Salmon and salad for dinner, with a creamy lemon dill dressing, although it was very runny because it was cream - next time I'll use yoghurt.

DS9 2.2.  I reckon Frank Langella totally looks like Christopher Lee.  Google that crap, I'm not the only one that thinks so!  Finished culling/adjusting/resizing Adelaide photos.  All the photos taken on my new camera are a bit .. muddy ..  Will have to check the settings and see what other options there are.

Tuesday.  Slept mostly ok.  Noticed that Windoze 11 brought back the ability to right click on a directory in the left pane of Explorer and choose New -> Folder (previously you had to right click then Show More Options -> New -> Folder)..  That had been pissing me off since day one of using Windoze 11, so that was nice.  NEIL again at work, doing more policies for sorting mail.  Steak and salad for dinner with creamy garlic mushrooms.

Once again I managed to cook it nicely.  I may convince Stu to like steak after all haha.  DS9 2.3. Talked to the mother type person.  She's doing better, and said they pulled up the security video which showed her fall (she fell right at the entrance to her retirement village) and you could see that it was in fact just simply tripping over a raised bit of concrete, not a blackout, so that was a huge relief!  Mum photo picking - from all the weddings we've been to, so that was a bit of fun, lots of looking through photos of our wedding too.

Wednesday.  Slept mostly ok. Windoze 11 has recently started randomly moving windows off to my other screen overnight.  So I'll turn on my right screen in the morning only to find some of my windows aren't there anymore, they've been shoved off to my secondary monitor on the left.  Why is windoze 11 so TRASH?? WHY WHY WHY????  Less time having to be NEIL with my policies in place - less time picking through big mail queues.  Dealing with other crap instead heh.  Leftover lemon pepper dill chicken for dinner.  DS9 2.4.  Mum emailed through a video taken on a phone of the security video and yeah you can clearly see her trip rather than pass out.

Thursday.  Went to bed at 22:00.  Went to sleep at 01:00.  Sigh.  NEIL again for the day.  They're threatening to go back to managed desktops at work, which will be a massive pain in the @$$ because in order to use my own computer (you know, to actually work productively with a proper keyboard and two large screens) I'll need a dock or kvm just to use my own computer.  So dumb.  Ok drinks, although bartender was late so we were wondering if the bar would even open at all.  This cockatoo was hanging around behaving rather strangely.  I went over and it was quite tame (even let me hand feed it).  Wonder if it was someone's escaped pet.  

Pizzas then DS9 2.5.

Friday.  Early night and slept well hurray.  NEIL again, hopefully the last day for a while!! 

Had this miso ramen for lunch - $5.80 for two servings from Daiso.  Wasn't too bad.  Needed some pork belly though!

Kievs for dinner.

DS9 2.6 then Death in Paradise 14.4 - another ridiculous episode.

Saturday.  I knew that because I slept well on Thursday night I'd sleep badly on Friday.  Sure enough, awake from ~1:30 to ~4:30 sigh.  Zombie morning, pretty much a complete writeoff.  Tried to pay tax (last time I tried the site was down for maintenance).  Why do they make it so damned HARD??  Why can't they make it like utilities where you get a nice clear bill and details to pay.  Tax you're *lucky* to get a cryptic "You have mail in mygov" email (or in my case, the first you hear about it is an sms that it's overddue).  Then when you login it's still not even clear what you're paying.  Like is this PAYG for this quarter? Next quarter? What?  Just make it EASY FFS!!  But.  All the rain today!  Hurray!  Blogged my recent trip to Adelaide.  The new light I got for the two foot tank looked rather.. dim.. and flickery.  I tried replacing the starter (of course I opened up the wrong end first didn't I??) but no luck.  Tried another bulb, it seemed ok, and tried the bulb in another fitting, still dim.  #grunt.  Windoze 11 Notepad sux.  If the file you have open is too big (like maybe a couple of hundred KB) it will literally just skip entering keys you've typed.  So you have to back and keep reentering them.  So dumb. Most likely it's all the spell checking and autocorrection crap.  I'm still on the fence whether to give up on it and go back to classic Notepad.  I do like the state saving - you can reboot and not lose anything you have open.  Handy when Windoze REBOOTS AGAINST YOUR WILL whenever it feels like it.  Sausages and salad for dinner then watched Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.  Even though we put it on at dinner time it still finished after 21:00. hrmmm.

Sunday.  Slept mostly ok.  Definitely had a lot more energy today.  Although mostly just house stuff, food shopping, returned the fish tank light and got a new one which seems better, cleaning etc.

We're worried Stumpy is dying.  He's not been himself the past couple of weeks.  Lethargic and not basking. hrmmmm.  He is around 18 years old though, and typical age for a blue tongue in captivity is 15-20 years.....

So after the New Years Eve fireworks we should have gone straight to bed.  We didn't.  Rage came on, and as in previous years they play a lot of nostalgia music.  It was too much effort to go get ready for bed, so we just sat there watching.  For like an hour.  Whoops!!

So a very late night.  Of course I woke up at like 5:00 anyway, because that's what I do.  So pretty much a zombie day. 

Did some Lego and Dotz in the morning.  Cooked up some cheesy hash browns.

Did some house tidying in the afternoon and might have also tidied up some of the back yard a bit.

Finished our Christmas Eve feast leftovers for dinner.  Death in Paradise 11.5.  19:30 is bed time right?

Thursday.  Went to bed early but took forever to get to sleep.  And then woke up early.  Was NEIL at work all morning.  Had a little bit of time to look at the quality script, but it was mostly staring at my code wondering what the stuff I did last year actually does.  Picked up the car from servicing, but it still has the engine light on.  They didn't actually fix anything, they just suggested booking it in for more work.  Hurray.  Pizzas for dinner then Death in Paradise 11.6.

Friday.  Took forever to get to sleep.  Again.  Sigh.  Did sleep in til 6 though.  Not much in the morning, mainly just NEIL.  Then went off to pick up Mum at Jolimont.  Had some lunch first, then headed out to the Museum to see Pompeii, which was actually pretty good, and not stoopidly crowded like I was expecting it to be.  Dropped into Chrissie's on the way home but noone was home.  Had a look through all Mum's recent holiday photos, then Stu got Chinese delivery for dinner.  Dumpling Inn didn't show up online so he got it from Quan's Kitchen which was actually pretty decent. 

Then watched Heaven is for Real with Mum.

Saturday.  Took forever to get to sleep.  Restless night, awake *a lot*.  Sigh.  Did some house tidying in the morning, then All The Cooking.  Put on a roast of epic proportions, including *two* potato bakes!

D/K/S arrived and there were many noms

And we did presents and photos and stuff while lunch was cooking

All the feast!

Roast pork, scored with my new Coles meat knife (I probably over-scored it, so it was hard to separate the skin from the fat), home-made apple sauce, gravy, blue cheese potato bake, regular potato bake, sweet potato/brussels sprouts (forgot the hazelnuts)

David and Mum and I then played a game of Monopoly for Sore Losers

It's quite a different game play from regular Monopoly.  It's faster, not so monotonous, but also more annoying (if you're not playing Mr Monopoly).  We also played a little bit of Disney Trivial Pursuit.  Well we didn't "play" it but picked out cards and just read the questions to each other.

It was a lovely day and I had a lot of fun.  Great catchup with everyone.

The great little-red-bauble hunt

D/K/S left around 19:50 then I just collapsed.  Much to the chagrin of the Mother Type Person who wanted to keep playing games for hours.  But after several crap nights sleep and an entire day of People I was well and truly done.  

Sunday.  Went to bed super early.  Still a somewhat restless nights sleep, but did sleep until 6:40.  Looked at holiday stuff with Mum, then dropped her at Jolimont.  Came home and collapsed in a heap.  Stu and I both exhausted from a weekend of people.  Had a quiet afternoon of cleaning the kitchen, putting away Christmas decorations and Dotz.

Sunday.  15th.  Blogged, then leftover food poisoning for dinner.  I was fine.  Then the last of Donna Hay's 2022 Christmas special.  I really wish she'd stop saying "perfect"!!

Monday.  Slept mostly ok. 

We just need Charlotte to write "Some Pig" in this...

Got ready, fed the fish, had a drink, put away some clothes, put a load of washing on, watered all the plants, mowed the lawn, picked up all the lemons, dusted, vacuumed, took out the rubbish and recycling, closed up all the windows and blinds, hung out the washing.  Then sat in front of the fan for ten minutes to cool down before starting work at 8:30.  Sigh.  I'm the Naughty Email Intervention Layer this week while Neil is on holidays.  I felt in holiday mode too.  Didn't want to do any decom (I always worry about deleting stuff then going on leave) so just a lot of cleaning out of inboxes etc.  Blogged some Lego after work.  Then worked on colour coding the weather pixie.  Also added the time zone based on the time zone on my host.

Tuesday.  Took ages to get to sleep (like 11), then woke up at 5.  Sigh.  Finished making up icons for the weather pixie - it has a different colour based on the feels like temperature.  Christmas movie season continued with Die Hard 2.  Man the plot holes in that thing are ridiculous, but it's still a lot of fun.

Wednesday.  School holidays.  Urgh.  But in a strange twist of fate, there was no queue at Subway and there was a *whole row* of empty tables next to us briefly.  That was unexpected!

Annie sent me a photo of the SAMs in Port (up for Potty's birthday)

Cooked up some food poisoning sausages (we were fine) and some broccolini and parnsips that really really needed cooking.

Thursday.  Took a while to get to sleep, awake from 5.  It was nice and COLD overnight which was awesome.  Didn't get much work done between all the crap.  Lunch at Vanilla Pod.  Shared a pepperoni pizza with XL (Peroni beer and a pizza for $20 - pretty good value!!).

No sooner had I gotten back to work when James and Josh came and picked me up to go down to Woden to go to Space Kitchen (Rachel wanted to go to see the epic cakes).  Bizarre place.  They make a fuss about bookings and booking times (we only had "an hour", even though the booking was for 14:30 and they close at 16:00 and the place was mostly empty anyway - weird!!).  The cakes looked pretty spectacular, although I think my favourite was the lemon meringue pie - very lemony!!

Purple passionfruit

Nutty one

Lemon meringue

Red velvet

The little cakes we got

A very brief but lovely catchup.  

Too full to eat any chips at drinks (which was surprisingly busy for the last drinks of the year), and only ate half my pizza..

I love this time of year...

Friday.  Slept mostly ok but awake pretty early.  Had to go with the sweetie to pick up a package at Fyshwick (bumplugs at Border Express wouldn't try again to deliver it) and drop him off at work.  Which made me super late for work.  Frustrating day of coding - didn't get anywhere with my script cause I'm dumb.  Had dinner at Kinn Thai with the sweetie.

Salted and Pepper Squid - wok-tosses (their spelling!) fried squid, onion, garlic, 5 spices and chilli $19

Pad Prik Khing - stir fried crispy pork with chilli kaffir lime jam and green bean $29

They say you can get anything in a vending machine in Japan.  Truth is, the vast majory of vending machines only sell drinks.  I think the most unusual one I've ever seen in Japan sold flowers.  So it was pretty funny to see this vending machine in the Canberra Centre carpark selling toy Cat trucks!!

Then watched The Santa Clause (1994) which I don't think I've ever seen.  That was a bit of fun.

Saturday.  All. The. Things.  Got heaps done but not nearly enough.  The dude serving us at Knead asked Stu.. hey this may sound like a strange question.. but do you have a sister?  And he's like yeah..  and the dude is like, what's her name?  And Stu is like .. Anne.. turns out the dude has Annie as an English teacher and recognised Stu cause, well, they do kinda look alike :)  Funny stuff!!

Made some creamy lemon dill chicken for dinner, then forced the sweetie to watch Love Actually with me (I said he could bring his laptop so he could just do stuff on the computer :) )

Sunday.  Did some weeding then I thought I'd go food shopping early to beat the crowds.  Except markets.  Sigh.  Literally no parking after several laps so parked at the pool, and they can find my trolley later.  But Coles itself turned out to be relatively quiet which was nice.  A lot easier to keep up your Christmas spirit when there's less people around.  Another day of All The Things.  Spent quite a bit of time sorting out paperwork for our trip next year and getting travel insurance.  Then I tried to book tickets for Pompeii at the museum.  The buttplugs at the National Museum now FORCE you to register a whole account just so you can book tickets online.  Hate hate hate hate hate.

I really wanted to have my last Bricklink order filed by Christmas.. but I'm only like two thirds the way through.. sigh.. 

Monday.  9th.  Nice and cool overnight.  You'd think I'd be able to sleep.  You'd be wrong.  Took ages to get to sleep.  Busy morning before work doing all the dusting/vacuuming/weeding/cleaning the kitchen, and then time to go to work.  Cert renewal crap and meetings all day.  Kievs for dinner (was too hot and humid over the weekend to think about turning the oven on).  Did some catchup blogging, then bed.

Also waved at the peeps up on the space station.

Tuesday.  Nice and cool overnight.  You'd think I'd be able to sleep.  You'd be wrong.  Took ages to get to sleep.  Busy morning before work doing all the dusting/vacuuming/weeding/cleaning the kitchen, and then time to go to work.

Yeah a rinse and repeat.

Planned out some more decom work for later in the week.  Started looking at Daniel's quality report script.  Brain might have exploded.  Final Journey of Australian Science at the Shine Dome, which was back to hard science again which was pretty cool.  This one was related to the work of Sir John Carew Eccles.  They even had some of his family members there.

They had Prof Stephen Redman and Professor Lucy Palmer talking about their work with neurons and electricity in the brain.

Dinner at Terra afterwards.  We split a 220g beef brisket smoked steak and had charred broccolini and brisket fat chips as sides.  

Beef brisket (smoker) 220g | salsa verde $39

Charred broccolini | burnt miso butter, chili oil, garlic chips $18

Brisket fat chips $12

I enjoyed the sides.  The brisket itself I found a little.. dry..   I'm used to slower cooker brisket which is basically confit brisket.  This was done in a smoker so wasn't quite the same.  It wasn't bad, just wasn't what I'm used to.  It really needed the sauces.

Nice view of the tower on the way back to the car.

Wednesday.  Um.  I think I slept better.

Thursday.  12/12/24 - cool date!  I think I slept ok. 

Oh, I planted some mini capsicums the other week.  Some have sprouted.  At least one has been eaten already.

Got to do some decom work in the afternoon.  Ok drinks, but ate wayyy too much in the way of chips and sausage.  Still made pizzas but Stu ate most of mine.  Watched some more Jamie and Julia.

Friday.  took ages to get to sleep, then woke up at like 4:30.  Sigh.  Party day!!!!  The sweetie very kindly gave me a lift to work (he was working from home).  Picked up All The Sausages ($300 worth!!) and then just getting everything ready.  Went shopping with XL and Jo.  Then partied all afternoon! 

It was super hot though.  A special thanks to Louise and Tony for cooking the chicken and veggie stuff cause noone else wanted to go out in the heat! 

Typical though.. you give the camera to someone else and they cut off the tshirts and get all sky.  Uncropped.

Ho Ho Hold my .. bird.. ?  It's tradition for me to catch birds at these things.  I was never expecting to catch a honeyeater though!!

Finished up maybe like 19:30.  Stu took two loads of crap home.  Bestest sweetie ever!!  Con and Ward kicked on somewhere.  Tony biked it home.  And we gave Doc a lift home.  By the time we'd unpacked enough and organised, it was after nine by the time I got to bed.  Doh.

Saturday.  Slept relatively well.  Spent most of the morning organising the leftovers and party crap.  

For lunch I thought I'd see if any of the leftovers would give me food poisoning...

Mostly Lego filing in the afternoon.  Late in the afternoon I wondered how hard it would be to get a weather pixie on my blog...

Sunday.  Took ages to get to sleep (like 23:00).  Then woke up at 4:30.  Sigh.  Scripting, house stuff (two loads of washing up even! and ran the dishwasher for the second time in two days), Lego filing.  Put on my cd jukebox and listened to random crap all day.  Billy Joel sang about The King and I, and a few songs later Shall We Dance came up..!!  Funny stuff.

Sunday.  23rd.  Basa bake, veggie bake and potatoes for dinner.

Then Mash and Laid Back Camp (I think it was the end of season 3).  Such a delightful show.  They go to such cool places and cook amazing food.  Makes us wanna go motorbike camping around Japan :)  Then started season 2 of Lego Masters USA.  This time with Michelle from the Australians vs the World series.

Monday.  24th.  Slept mostly ok (bit restless and hands kept going to sleep).  Fairly busy day.  Cooked up a bag of mushrooms with cream and leftover corned beef from the April club night and veggies from the June club night.  Yum.  Into Mash season 7.  Watched an episode of Lego Masters USA.  Went to read an entry of my Tasmania blog for the day I was photo culling.  But my site wouldn't load.  504 Gateway Time-out - nginx.  And CageFS error in Terminal.  And scripts were broken.  Oh no.  Not again.  Need to give Vodien a bowl of petunias.  And so began a week of angst that I may post separately.  

Tuesday.  25th. 

HTTP working on the blog but scripts and terminal still broken.  Busy day at work.  Made "Mexican Mince" (in that I used some taco seasoning on it) with leftover peas and carrots from the club night, and made up some taco slaw as well.  The sweetie went back for seconds so must have been good.

Wednesday.  26th.

Took ages to get to sleep because I was cold.  Got frustrated with NRMA because they've been charging us twice (I think) for membership.  Filled in an online form asking about it.  And the insurance wanted us to update a couple of things on the policy but of course insurance and membership is two different accounts in totally different places on their site and it wasn't at all obvious how I could even update what they wanted.  I should have taken a screenshot of what they wanted on the renewal because it's literally written in Engrish.  Their help is trash too.  All trash.

Busy day.  Didn't do the One Thing I wanted to get done.

NRMA got back to me.  Said they couldn't sort out my problem over email and I'd need to phone in.  Sigh.

Also.  People drama this week.  In an effort to avoid drama, or indeed be the cause of it, I pushed away a good friend, possibly forever, which makes me pretty sad.  I keep telling people i'm a horrible person, maybe now they'll believe me.  Sigh.

Thursday.  27th.  Slept ok.  Another busy day at work not getting done the One Thing I wanted to do.  Pizza for dinner.  Montage episode of Mash.  Braindead response from Vodien.

Friday.  Slept ok (surprisingly, after last night's Vodien rage).  Until 4:35 when the sweetie had to get up to fly to Sydney.  Busy morning before work tidying up the house so I wouldn't have to spend time on the weekend tidying up the house.  Relatively quiet day at work, finished the One Thing I wanted to get done from the other day, then basically caught up on a bunch of crap.  House and fish stuff after work.  Lego Masters.  Vodien fixed cagefs and scripts but broke my access to cpanel and I realised with horror that my mysql database had been restored to a point from LAST OCTOBER.  Then watched The Shape of Water .. which was .. interesting.. 

Saturday.  Slept ok.  Made this!  How cool is this :)  Been meaning to make this for ages (found a gif I'd made ages ago while I was cleaning out my in tray).

Bit of house stuff, bit of photo stuff, bit of Lego part wishlisting.  

When the Vodien nonsense started at the beginning of the week I quickly exported my database in case anything happened.  At the time I thought.. funny.. that's significantly smaller than my last backup (taken in May).  But then didn't think much more of it.  On Saturday I realised to my HORROR that the backup I'd made was of the REVERTED database FROM LAST OCTOBER!!  I freaked out.  I couldn't login to cpanel anymore (they broke that on Friday) to do a tar.gz of the site.  I couldn't FTP anything (same login problem).  In the end I just loaded the May/June entries in my browser and manually saved them.  Then if all else failed at least I had the latest content since my May backup.  I also have it in a local RSS feed reader.  Although I do worry about having to ever do a mysql restore.  So much potential for things to go Very Badly with my blog.

The last of my mini capsicums is actually slowly ripening all by itself indoors!

Leftovers for dinner.  Second part of the Mash montage episode.  Then watched The Good Son, which I'd seen once a long time ago.  All I could remember from last time was the Highway Man and the cliffs at the end.

Sunday.  Slept mostly ok although woke up early and started stressing about my database.  Got up to find the cpanel password reset email.  Cool.  But cpanel was full of scary errors, terminal had different errors and NONE OF MY WEBSITES OR EMAIL ACCOUNTS WORKED!!!  Finished getting ready, and thankfully by an hour later everything was working again.  I went to backup my database but phpMyAdmin had this error "mysqli_sql_exception: Access denied".  A quick Google said to just reset my cpanel password again so did that and it all came good.  Backed up the database.  Made a test blog post.  Hoped like hell this would be the end of the drama.  Until next time.

More drama with Rob and some club photos.  Sigh.

Bit of Tassie culling but mostly just Lego parts wishlisting.  Put some lamb into the slow cooker mid morning.  Lunch at Pattysmiths.  The cheesy chicken burger doesn't have actual cheese, just cheese sauce.  Still nice though.

Then food shopping.  I was worried going into Woollies that I wasn't in the right frame of mind for it.  Just about every time I go to Woollies I can go in in a completely happy mood, and be wanting to kill people by the end of it.  So after the terrible week I've had I knew things were going to be bad.  And I was right.  I took a few deep breaths before I went in.  But then I was trying to find the dried fried shallots.  They're usually down the bottom in the Asian section.  But there was this couple and their trolley in the way and while they did move a bit, they still stayed there in front of everything for AGES and I couldn't see the damned shallots and I was getting more and more frustrated and stressed and when that happens I literally go blind and can't SEEEEE and then all these people were trying to get past in either direction and I just about had a panic attack.  I gave up looking and carried on but I obviously looked distraught enough that a staff member actually asked if I was ok and I was like no because I can't FIND anything and he very sweetly went and looked for me (it took him ages to find them too).  What a lovely guy.  Grabbed our last few things then got out of there.  Should go back to shopping at 7am, so much less stressful.  Pity the sweetie is allergic to mornings.  Not much else in the afternoon.  Mostly Lego wishlisting.  Glimmer of hope that good friend may not be lost.  And now to see if I can post this...

Sunday.  16th.  Mum not in the country to wish happy birthday to.  Cath's basa bake, cabbage bake and veggies for dinner.  

How funny is this garlic we had for dinner.  The one in the middle is a regular sized clove, but the other four are EPIC!  This was basically the entire head of garlic - five bulbs!

Then watched the last episode of season 1 of Shogun.  It was good and all but I really struggled to keep up with who was who which did affect my enjoyment of it.  Then an early night. 

Monday.  Slept generally ok I guess.  Busy day dealing with all the crap.  Then after work it was just cleaning the kitchen and cooking.  Sigh.  After dinner was photo culling, Lego part listing and USA Lego Masters.

Stu had a top hat arrive this week!

Tuesday.  Slept ok.  Was filing some of my Sydney photos and nearly blatted 54 photos because the Canon and iPhone photos happened to have the same number range on the same date - so there were conflicting file names!  And this was just after me coming across a single conflicting file name from the Canon/iPhone but this time both the date *and* the time were the same (holiday photos get renamed with date and time, but regular photos just have the date).  Of course David will think I'm dumb, because he renames his photos as year-month-day-hour-minute-second-number-<label> so there's never any conflicts, but this is literally the first time this has happened to me!

Wednesday.  Took ages to get to sleep and woke up early but slept ok in between.  Had a moment where I wanted to rage quit my entire job because everything Microsoft does is TRASH.  Every product of theirs EXPECTS you to be directly connected to the internet, as if firewalls and proxies don't exist.  They're utterly delusional and I HATE it.  But I did get to delete lots of stuff which always makes me happy.  Had a beer with Jim after work again which was nice, his idea this time.  Pretty much all I did when I got home was backup my computer and watch an episode of Lego Masters.

And deal with this beer disaster!

Thursday.  Slept ok.  Another day of deleting All The Things which was pretty cool.  And technically not even my job (supposed to be another team's job) but satisfying nonetheless.  Made pizzas again for dinner.  Mash then watched the Lego Masters USA season 1 finale.  They all did amazing builds, and they all deserved to win.  I called it with ***spoiler alert*** Tyler and Amy winning, although I would have liked Mark and Boone to win too!

Oh, and the freezing nights finally caught up with the mini capsicums!

I picked the three biggest, and the next day picked four even smaller ones

Used one of the mini capsicums on pizzas!

Friday.  Awake from like 3 til 5:30.  Sigh.  Updated a bunch of doco for all the crap I deleted.  And just bits and pieces.  Kievs for dinner, then Mash and Death in Paradise 9.7.

Saturday.  Took ages to get to sleep because my feet were cold, then woke up early but slept generally ok in the middle.  Got a bunch of stuff done in the morning.  

I'm convinced that geraniums could survive the apocalypse.  This stem of geranium has been out of the ground since like FEBRUARY.  And yet it lives!  In fact that leaf wasn't even there a month or so ago.  The thing just keeps on growing!

After lunch we headed out to the club.  Lit the fire I'd prepared last time, then the sweetie had a sleep while I went back to Queanbeyan to get my nails done!  There was a lady at work who was looking to do it as a side hustle and wanted people to practise on.  They generally turned out pretty well although she had a bit of trouble with the extensions on the three nails that were broken in the past week or so (this was the first time she'd tried it with this method/materials).  So they're a bit rough but still look good overall.  Except it did take 2.5 hours.. whoops.. heh.

Headed back to the club just in time to get ready for Chris and Ian's anniversary formal night!  The theme was royal blue, top hats and tiaras!  Hence the blue nails.

Rob got a nice photo of me on the couch

There were blue table cloths

And as always an epic feast!

As always a lovely night.

Sunday.  Bit restless sleep and hands kept falling asleep.  But even though it was freezing we were quite comfortable with our down/feather doona.  Went up at 8:00 and helped clean up the shed for an hour before we headed home.  Stopped in at Queanbeyan McDonalds for breakfast (epic queue!).  Decided to try the new chicken/bacon mcmuffin.  So ordered (and paid) for that.  But the retards at McDonalds Queanbeyan forgot to put the bacon on.  And the chicken pattie was a bit dry anyway.  Won't be ordering that one again.  Other than that just a nice quiet day doing some photo stuff and Lego stuff and even got to build a new set!  Next week!  Maybe...!

Sunday.  2nd.  Went out for dinner with Annie and Stu to Raku.  Stoopidly expensive tasting menu but an excellent meal and a lovely catchup.  

Monday.  Awake for hours in the middle of the night.  Sigh.  NEIL for the day.  Figured out my kerberos problem, but it was an obvious problem that I was too stoopid to spot.  This is how planes crash.  Leftovers for dinner.  Finished watching Lego Masters Australia vs the World.  The winning team's build was spectacular!  I picked them as the winners and they were!  But didn't do any music, didn't do any blogging catchup, didn't do any weeding.  Barely cracked 1000 steps all day.  Sigh.

I finally picked some of the mini capsicums (the one on the right had a hole in it from some bug so water was getting in).  There's still plenty more green ones but I doubt they'll ripen.

Tuesday.  Took forever to get to sleep - mostly stressing about being so stoopid.  But also thinking about Lego Masters.  hmm.  Slept mostly ok otherwise but woke up pretty early.  Pretty much a BS day.  Weeding at lunch.  Did some music, Tassie photo culling, blogging, dinner and suddenly it's 19:45.  Sigh.  Did some more culling and watched the first episode of the first season of the American Lego Masters.  It's quite a bit bigger production.  They had ten teams, and they cgi animate the Lego.  But the episodes are quite short (41 minutes each) so they have to rush through the final showing of the builds so you don't get a good look at them.  But.. Krystle!!  That was a crack up to see her two nights in a row but for different countries :)

Wednesday.  Meh day.  Talked Neil into going to the pub after work.  Wasn't hard to convince with the offer of a lift home instead of a walk in the pouring rain :)

Thursday.  Awake for three hours in the middle of the night.  Hurray.  Crazy busy day.  Reasonably busy drinks which was good.

Friday.  Slept for like nine hours!!  Woke up at one point thinking it was the middle of the night but it was actually 6am!  Winning! 

Another crazy busy day.  Chris didn't have kievs though!!  Disaster!!  So had some other fried chicken pieces instead.  With kalettes!!  Might have over cooked the kalettes a little - this oven is definitely a lot hotter than the last one.

Finally got around to finish watching The Sound of Music (which I didn't even blog the start of, but it was forever ago, like months).

Saturday.  Slept ok.  Day of house stuff centered around the Classic 100 "Feel Good".  Tuna bake for dinner with the other pack of kalettes.

Then watched the last episode of The Orville.  After the somewhat more heavy episodes of the third series it all finishes off quite lightly with a wedding which was nice.  

Sunday.  Slept ok.  More house stuff (and noting missing parts from Vic's Lego) amongst the Classic 100.  Did sneak out to do some food shopping but didn't miss too much (got to sing the Hallelujah chorus in the car on the way home, sorry sweetie ;) ).  Cheat's Peking Duck for dinner.

Then the second last episode of Shogun.  I was actually wanting to watch Fantasia 2000 (since there were two pieces from it in the Classic 100), so put that on afterwards, but still managed an early night.

Monday.  Slept ok.  Did a bit of noting of missing parts, but mostly just cleaning the house.  Nothing like having people over to force the issue...  Put dinner on after lunch.. for next time!

Sunday.  5th.  Corned beef leftovers for dinner.  Mash, Shogun 1.5.

Monday.  Slept mostly ok.  Fighting with proxies.  Definitely not cut out for this.  Got Turkey hotel photos labelled.

Tuesday.  Took til like midnight to get to sleep.  Had a meltdown in the afternoon because my brain doesn't work anymore and I can't comprehend stuff and I'm just too overwhelmed.  Labelled Turkey food photos in the evening.  

Wednesday.  Slept mostly ok.  Meh day.  Felt like I achieved nothing although when I wrote it down for Connor it didn't sound so bad.  Finished what we could of the leftovers from the club (the rest is in the freezer).  Finished uploading all my Turkey photos with 24 hours to spare!  Also finished part picking all the sets that I want to for Vic's Lego.  You'd think those things would be cause for celebration, and I was going to have a drink when it was all done, but they were both such a slog I was just feeling eh about it all and it got too late to have a drink anyway.

Thursday.  Took forever to get to sleep.  I really should have had that drink.  Another meh day feeling like I didn't achieve much.  Drinks was ok although the new bartender was in a meeting til 17:10 then left at 18:15 without even cleaning up.  Hmmmm.  Pizza, Mash, Laid Back Camp 3.5.  In other news @kapgar's rss feed started working again and I got a flurry of recent posts.

Friday.  Ok sleep I think.  Ok day.  Prepped and did a bunch of kerberos crap.  

Friday = brown food night!

Mash/Death in Paradise 9.4 (last episode of D.I. Mooney).

Saturday.  Woke up at Dentist Time til around 5.  Hurray. 

Finished putting away the Lego from the sets I decided not to pick (too much missing to be worth it).  And tidied all the boxes up.  Other than that just house stuff.  Went over to Nick & Tab's for a very nice creamy mushroom pasta and black forest cheesecake.  Altho converstation mostly revolved around playing with the doggo heh.

Sunday.  Woke up around 1:30-4:45ish.  Hurray.  Mostly just house stuff in the morning (also rang the Mother Type Person for Mother's Day), then food shopping, then it felt like I was cooking all afternoon (an hour and a half at least anyway).

The sky cleared up today.  May have seen the solar storm the other night had it not been for all the rain.. Might get lucky and see it tonight.. I'll probably be awake half the night anyway..

Monday.  New Years Day.  So New Years Eve we had some beer and watched Rocketman which was quite interesting.  But then had a sad cause we couldn't agree on something else to watch before midnight.  Ended up watching Death in Paradise 7.6.  Watched the Sydney fireworks but made for a late night.  But of course woke up New Years Day 6am.  Because that's what I do.  Bit of a lost day.  Didn't get much done.  After lunch the sweetie suggested going for a drive, and I'm like, the Cotter is spilling.. so off we went.  Turns out there's another lookout you can go up to (have to walk, takes about an hour round trip if you stop and look at flowers and saddle dams and the like).  I haven't been up there since it was still under construction in 2010.  Being New Years Day the place was PACKED.  We were lucky to get a parking spot.

This butterfly photobombed me!!

Some of the flowers

And some from the bottom

Kievs for dinner.  Was right near the end of the cooking and was about to turn off the oven.. only to find it was off.  Dead.  Tripped the power.  Sigh.  Think we need to give the damned thing a bowl of petunias.

Tuesday.  Back to work.  Sigh.  Planned to do nothing other than be the Naughty Email Intervention Layer, and clean up the test servers to get them as close to prod as possible.

Wednesday.  Rinse and repeat.

Thursday.  Rinse and repeat.  Death in Paradise 7.7.

Last look before I started taking things down

Friday.  Finished cleaning up the test policies which made me pretty happy.  Once all was said and done it was like 3pm.  I'd had a pretty intense week of getting this stuff done, surely that means I can knock off right?  The Orville 2.8 and 2.9 in the evening.  And I watched an old Harry Potter special on YouTube.

The capsicums I planted out the front are still alive.  The ones I planted out the back got eaten by snails.

Saturday.  Woke up at like 4am and don't think I got back to sleep at all.  Zombie tired all day :(  Then had a sad about taking the Christmas tree down and everything being too hard.  So the sweetie put on some John Williams which helped :)  Mostly house stuff (physical stuff) because I was too tired to concentrate on anything.  Leftovers for dinner, Mash, Sex Education 4.2.

Thistles are of the Devil.  I mean seriously, what was God's purpose in inventing these abominations??  Normally I'd rip these things out, but it was out of the way so I left it to flower.  Because they do have pretty flowers.  Will cut off the heads before they go to seed.

Six days later and the glow stick from NYE is still going (really only visible in the dark though)

Sunday.  Tried to get an early night on account of being zombie tired all day.  Except I was too tired to go to sleep.  Sigh.  Stoopid restless legs.  So that was all a bit miserable.  Not great sleep either, but still felt somewhat better today.  Walked up Mt Rogers before it got too hot.

Got some stuff done, but wasted entirely too much time on Rubik's puzzles (found in the box when I was looking for my Spirograph).

All our Game and Watches from the 80s

I have like a thousand Buckyballs (collected before the ban on sales).  I should make something epic out of them..

I didn't solve this.  In fact I completely bollocksed it up and needed help to unscramble it before could watch a video to solve it.  The big one I bollocksed up too but haven't fixed it yet.

And suddenly it's the end of the weekend.  Sigh.