Sunday.  3rd.  It's going to be an eat the fridge and freezer week this week.  Starting with a cabbage bake (spiked with yellow curry paste) and some nice frozen fish fillets I got at Chris's a while back.  Then DS9 5.18.

Monday.  Pretty distracted morning at work so didn't get much done.  Did a bit of cleaning planning in the afternoon.  Finished culling Europe 2016 photos for the blog!!  DS9 5.19.

Tuesday.  We changed the house battery mode to "save battery for power outages" yesterday so it didn't drain overnight, and instead kept the lights on (and my computer running) while sparkies a couple of houses down had the power off for their work for an hour or so.

Did some deleting which was nice, and some more networking stuff for Jim (that I missed last week cause I don't *do* layer 1/2 heh).  Also got a couple of scripts working which made me pretty happy.  Made up a potato bake for dinner to use up a bunch of things, then DS9 5.20.  Dumb episode. 

Wednesday.  Slept okish.  Tried to do an improvement on one of my scripts but it was too complicated and my perfectionism got in the way so ended up abandoning it for now.  Leftovers for dinner I think.  DS9 5.21.

Thursday.

Acts 26:22.. I am saying nothing beyond what the prophets and Moses said would happen-- 23 that the Messiah would suffer and, as the first to rise from the dead, would bring the message of light to his own people and to the Gentiles." .. spoken by Paul in Caesarea!!!  Been there!!

Awake stoopidly early.  Did some more decom planning.  Chris didn't have any pepperoni so I made olive and feta pizzas.  Stu tells me they were good.  I miss being able to to taste salt!!

DS9 5.22 - somewhat interesting moral dilemma.  Then Europe photo labelling.

Friday.  Did some tidying of all the rules we've setup for the potential new load balancing solution.  May have had cheesy vegemite scrolls for lunch.

Then deleted a heap of stuff out of the old prod load balancing environment. Deleting crap on a Friday afternoon.. what could go wrong? ;)  Kievs and fries for dinner then DS9 5.23.

Saturday.  Woke up at like 4:30 or something #grunt.  House and hobbies kind of a day.  At one point I was trying to rename a folder in Windows Explorer and it just froze up.  I looked at Event Viewer and my heart sank when I saw a disk bad blocks error.  So now I have to figure out what I've done on my computer since my last good backup on Wednesday.  And wonder if I can trust that disk anymore.  So anyway, later on I was trying to find out what the hell disk was DR9.  OMFG.. rm9's comments.. THIS!!.. In the end used Winobj64.exe from Sysinternals to figure out it was actually a USB stick that I'd plugged in at the same time that had the error.  Phew!!!  I let the sweetie order a karaage chicken pizza for dinner.  Whoops.  Then we watched The Post.  I had literally no idea what it was about other than it stared Tom Hanks, and that I assumed it was about the Washington Post.  For some reason I also picked the music.  John Williams!  But definitely not in your face, quite subtle.  Stu wondered early on if it was about Daniel Ellsberg, which he was right about too.

Sunday.  Another house and hobbies day again.  Having a beer while I write this - first drink in over two weeks.  Sigh.  

Sunday.  15th.  Kievs and brussels sprouts for dinner. Must be Friday. Wait, what?

DS9 4.14. Another episode to be endured. Then LegoMasters 7.3. Yayyy Karen!!!! haha

Monday.  Slept mostly ok. Gave Mum a call before work for her birthday and heard more about her trip. Sigh. Did a few tickets at work but mostly scripting which was nice. Google AI helped with one problem but sent me on a wild goose chase with another and needed Nick to help me fix. Pizzas for dinner, must be Thursday. Wait, what?

Andor 2.4 then Lego Masters 7.4.

Was impressed how well these things lasted - like a month!

Tuesday.  Slept mostly okish. 

Happy 3128!!  Whenever I see my clock/watch at around 13:52 I wish @Aquillaaudux a happy 1352.  So my step log at 3128 two days ago was pretty cool!

Stoopidly busy day. All. The. Tickets. The last week or so has been quite pleasant, so this was quite a shock to the system. 

Nissin miso ramen that I had for lunch.  Not miso-ey enough.  Next time I'll lump in some miso paste

Cooked up some leftover pork with some veggies for dinner. Andor 2.5. People are calling this like the best show ever, but I'm all what the actual f#$& is going on all the way through it. I have no idea who's who (I struggle with names and faces at the best of times, but no one has names that mean anything to me, and some of the cast look fricken identical), who's on who's side (hurray for espionage stories), or what anyone is doing. And that end scene?? What??? Fricken hopeless. A real estate agent (I guess) came to Kit's place today. But instead of turning off the lights in the kitchen that have been on for two weeks straight, they turned MORE lights on and left them on too! What a retard.

Wednesday.  Slept ish-ish I think.

Baby fish!  Not sure who's babies they are.. either from the very unwell big female I took from the four foot a couple of weeks ago, or maybe one of the super young females I took from the two foot..  There's only like three babies though so who knows.

Not quite as crazy a busy day but still pretty busy. I tried multiple times to do some scripting, but whenever I started someone would interrupt me. Even after 17:00 when most people were offline, people came to talk to me in real life and I *still* didn't get any scripting done hmmmm. KFC for dinner. Whoops. Andor 2.6 (somewhat better episode, easier to follow), Lego Masters.

Thursday.  Slept mostly okish.

Fairly busy day again.

Saw these guys at lunch attacking a new grass seed mat

Good drinks, heaps of people, and even a whole heap of pizzas (thanks Timmy!) so I had dinner before I even got home. Lego Masters .. awwwwwwwwwww so sad to see Owen and Gabby go. Someone must have come to Kit's place again today because most (not all) of the lights are off now.

Friday.  Okish sleep. Took an RDO. Got some things done in the morning. Went out before lunch to do a couple of things, but ended up being out for nearly four hours #grunt. There's a couple moving into Kit's today, including a dude with an actual truck. Leftover beef from the freezer for dinner. DS9 4.15,  urgh another tedious episode. Then The Bomb and the Cold War episode 7.

Saturday.  Ok sleep I think. Semi productive day. I asked the sweetie what he wanted for dinner and so he got Dumpling Inn haha. Had that while watching Jaws, on account of it being fifty years ago yesterday that it was first released in cinemas (in the US). Also because Stu has never actually seen it. !!

Sunday.  Slept okish. Less productive day today. Did get some photo culling done and some food shopping, but a lot of the day went on a horrible jigsaw.

Windoze Explorer has been continuing to drive me crazy.  This week it refuses to honour settings I've previously set like sorting and icon size.  I was trying to file email attachments and it would reset the settings to whatever it felt like EVERY SINGLE TIME I NAVIGATED AWAY.  Or it'll just randomly jump to the top of the window and I have scroll back down to find where I was working.  FFS windows is trash.  Tonight it actually remembered my blog photo directory by some miracle, although Chrome reset itself.  I hate windoze.  

Sunday.  27th.  Leftovers for dinner then Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. I still don't like how they explain how he's the half blood prince in the movie. Not that the book was a whole lot better - it was just a line, but at least it had that line.

Monday.  28th.  Remembering Alan's first heart attack, Como Presbyterian Church reopening after the 1994 bushfires, and the Port Arthur Massacre. Slept okish - restless and thermoregulation issues. My computer crashed last night #grunt and it wasn't even for patching this time. Managed to lose another hair tie overnight. Like how does that even happen, I've only been in like three rooms since last night. While searching I did find one I lost a couple of months ago. Hurray. Busy day. The sweetie cooked creamy mushroom fake noodles which was quite nice. DS9 3.4. Looked more into ways to disable Optus while overseas, including setting a SIM PIN, and locking the phone to Optus manually (but that causes a battery hit apparently). Also realised that my iPhone 5 is really a brick now on Optus since they shut down 3G, which is why it won't connect anymore. Spent entirely too much time stressing over Optus being such a ripoff.

Tuesday.  Slept mostly ok I think. Busy day. Lunch with the sweetie. Bought some light tshirts (all my tshirts are dark, which is no good for Greece or Dubai in summer). Lots of rain FINALLY and even some thunderbolts and lightning. The sweetie cooked some nice mince for dinner (well I cooked the mince the other weekend, but he added nicely to it). DS9 3.5 then holiday planning.

Wednesday.  Took forever to get to sleep - restless legs for ages. Tried to turn the heater on. But the control panel was dead. So Stu went to reboot it. The panel turned all the led things on. But then turned off. Then started flickering on and off. So he rebooted it again (leaving it off longer). It came up for a few seconds normally.. but then started flickering again. Sigh. So leaving it off for longer this time.

All on!

Did put a jumper on for third time this year. KFC for dinner, DS9 3.6, early night.

Thursday.  Took a while to get to sleep (cold!) but mostly slept ok. 12.7C in the study in the morning!! eep!! Achieved pretty much nothing all day. Super quiet drinks. Blue cheese pizzas for dinner. DS9 3.7. Early night.

Friday.  Got to sleep ok, but then awake from like 1-4. Sigh. The heater worked briefly in the morning then died. Nice warm day though so the house wasn't too crazy. Stu rebooted the heater again and it worked for a few minutes then died again. Sigh. Emailed Travis about recommendations for a split system but he hasn't mailed me back. The sweetie cooked up a cauliflower bake and brussels sprouts with kievs for dinner. 

DS9 3.8 which was pretty silly. Then another episode of an anime series of some Japanese travel blogger. Continued frustration with the heater which might work for a minute or two then just die. Sigh. The house is cold. Sigh.

Saturday.  Awake from like 3 or 4 and never got back to sleep. Sigh.

Another ripe mini capsicum!!

Super busy day. Attacked the todo list (mostly) in the order it happened to be in FreeMind. Chong Co for dinner then Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part I. Finished just in time to see Dutton's concession speech.

Sunday.  Slept somewhat better. More ploughing through the todo list. Moved ten young guppies to the tank downstairs which has been empty for a while and desperately needing new fish, and four to the four foot (it definitely needs a lot more guppies). Need to get a few new guppies with different genetics though.

I doubt I'll get to eat this tomato.. 

Remember how much I was complaining about windoze resetting the folder views every time I went to use them?  Well the last week or two it's been a lot better - my in tray folder of photos for blogging has maintained my view settings.  This makes me happy.  I guess enough other people complained about it.

After seeing all the dead pixels in my (Dad's) old 600D thought it was time for a new one.  The new one has a dead pixel right in the middle.  But we won't talk about that.

The first photo I took on it I didn't even realise I had taken it.  It's fast and silent!

Second shot was of the sweetie of course.  Quite soft though

Obligatory Lego shot

I think at this point I'd set the date wrong on the camera so fixed that.  We won't mention that the time was actually 12 hours out as well. 

Not bad at fish photos, with a fair bit of zoom

A couple of shots of the sweetie later on - super shallow depth of field here, I'm wondering if that's cause it focussed on him being a human

Next up the true test - under the house with almost no light.  It did really well here - quite bright - a lot brighter than it looks in real life!

Went outside and took a bunch of photos of flowers which turned out quite well

Had a play with the "art" filters.  Yeah nah, none of them are any good.

A closeup of a fish - not bad

I went back downstairs to try out more options.  I tried the "hand held night scene" which supposedly takes like three photos and stacks them.  But this turned out all fuzzy.  The simple single shot (below) worked better.

This was using the "food" filter which is supposed to make things look more vibrant.  I guess it did maybe?

The next day took it to Annie's and got a nice, fairly candid, shot of her

And then the real test - comet photos!

If you can get past all of Elon's space junk cluttering up the sky #grunt

One without satellites

Thanks Elon

Thanks Elon.  This shot has TEN satellites ruining it!! (hard to see resized)

Thanks Elon

I did get a nice shot of Orion.  Well one, the others were ruined by Elon's space junk

A couple of weeks later took some more photos of the fish

And other random stuff around the house

Fern closeup

Did I mention the super shallow depth of field, even with only a modest zoom?

When I took it to Adelaide the other weekend, all of my photos on it were rather dull and lifeless compared to my phone photos.  

Like.. compare the pair..

 

Seriously WTF??

Hoping it's just a setting somewhere.. will have to do some more playing.

I'm also frustrated with the lack of zoom.  And I knew I was going to be.  I stand by my opinion of many years ago.. L series lenses are like twice the cost, but they're not twice as good.  Things are still soft at raw pixels..

I miss the old 18-135mm lens I had (~24-200 equivalent with crop).  I only get half that now. Sigh.

Yeup.

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.....

Sunday.  2nd.  Leftover beef and potato bake for dinner.  So much for keto.  Death in Paradise 2024 Christmas special with a new Detective Inspector.  Early night.

Monday.  Slept mostly ok although woke up at 5:30.  House stuff for a bit, then a bottle and can run (mostly cans).  Apparently I haven't been there since June.  !!  Got $29.70 and that's not with the Christmas party cans.  Nice relaxing RDO of doing crap.  Had a bit of "fun" but mostly just house stuff - like tidying up the garage, fish tank stuff, cooking up more veggies (yeah yeah I pick a stoopidly hot day to have the oven on).  Wednesday 1.6.

Tuesday.  Slept mostly ok but woke up early again.  Cheese kransky for breakfast.  So good but the sodium is going to kill me.  Crap day of all the crap doing all the crap for all the people.  Mum photo picking in the evening and Wednesday 1.7.

Wednesday.  Slept mostly ok (I thought) but woken up by alarm just before 6:30.  Super tired all day.  Not fully transfunctionating.  Stu put on a new series - Beyond Paradise, with Colin Frizzle (Kris Marshall) moved back to the UK.

Thursday.  Um.  All. The. Crap.  No time for any of my own stuff, just doing all the crap for all the people.  Busy first drinks, pizzas, finished Wednesday season 1.  Really quite enjoyed it.  

Friday. 

Rinse and repeat at work. 

Man you forget to water the plants *one morning* and they're doing this by the afternoon.

Might have done an oopsie.

Beyond Paradise 1.2.

Saturday.  All. The. Crap.  At home this time.  Didn't get nearly enough done.  Did have a bit of a look at holiday stuff.  I was worried the PDF of the trip we were supposed to be booked on didn't have the sailing date we were supposed to be on.  But I think the agent just printed out the wrong one for Mum.  I found another very similar cruise that aligns with the description in the itinerary, and this does have our date on it.  I emailed the tour company directly anyway just to confirm.  Leftovers for dinner.  Beyond Paradise 1.3.  Then started into Stranger Things.

Sunday.  Woke up maybe around 2.  For like 3 hours.  Sigh.  Got some bits and pieces done, but not nearly enough.  I have too many projects that I don't know where to start, so end up doing none of them.  I did add a bunch of locations to a Google Map for our next trip though.  And house crap.

Are these chives?  They're growing as weeds in our pavers.

When you go looking in the pantry for something and decide to clear out all the carbs so you can find it.  Will have to put these all in a tub for a few weeks.

Mini capsicum flower!

Something is eating the piths on our lemons - but not the fruit.  I mean WTF?  Surely the pith would be more bitter and less nutritious than the fruit??

In other news, keto is going well.  Breakfasts are still the worst, and my morning routine is utterly stuffed up.  I was going to cook up stuff to have as breakfasts this weekend.  I didn't.  But otherwise, doing well, and losing weight - like a kilo in a week.  I was loading the dishwasher today and had to wipe out container after container of all the fat from them (from cream or cheese or whatever).  Seems counterintuitive to be eating all the fat but losing weight.  

2024. Pretty standard year really. Busy busy busy!

Our big trip this year was to Tasmania. So no overseas travel, but does overstrait count? We spent a month there and had a great time. We could easily do the same route around the island and see all different things if were to go again, there's that much to see. I took five days off in January so I could get a nine day break, to make up for the shortened break at Christmas (which essentially only felt like a long weekend after the whole leadup/Christmas/post Christmas family stuff). In early February we went to Tumut with Tony/Frank/Karen for the TRBC Tumut River Tap Days. The day itself was hot but it was a lovely afternoon with beer and friends. I went down to Junee/Wagga for the Lego show in Wagga Wagga which was great and uncrowded, then stayed with David the night and caught up with Kellie's family. Sydney in May for a tour of WestConnex, the Ramses Gold of the Pharaohs exhibition, and Rachel and Hayden's wedding, with a couple of days playing tourist with Mum in the middle. In September we went up to Port Macquarie for Jeff's 80th birthday party. It was a lot of driving for just a day there, but Jeff had a wonderful time with most of his family there. Stu went up again in December for Potty's 50th. In October we flew up to Queensland for Ben and Sarah's wedding. It would have been nice to stay longer and have a proper catchup with Chay and also David, but Stu was too stressed with work to think about it.

My job continues to generally be "Sadie" - lots of decom work. A couple of bouts of being the Naughty Email Intervention Layer when Neil was on leave. On one of those I did a bunch of work in the test environment to make it match prod. We setup a new notifications db and decommissioned like half a dozen others. Looked at a proxy as a POC sorry POV. Not overly impressed. Cloud stuff just really is too.. nebulous.. troubleshooting and logging is invariably crap. The biggest project of the year was migrating a couple of thousand VMs to a new environment with a new version of the firewalling software. In advance of the move I spent two days deleting 10% of the rulebase so there'd be less rules to migrate. Then we had to maintain two environments while we spent a month migrating everything. But it generally went quite well, and we did the majority of it during business hours with no outages. Of course none of Daniel's scripts work in the new environment, so with a jump start from someone in security, and a lot of help from Nick, we managed to get a bunch of them working with some new powershell modules. I've learnt a lot about powershell, but I'm still really dumb so it's a struggle. Socially, there was a gin night while I was in Tassie, but was able to have leftovers when I got back. We won a trivia night in July, but luckily someone else volunteered to run the next one, which we were in no danger of winning in October. The social club had a 70th birthday "cocktail" night although it was primarily beer, wine and bubbles. A great night anyway. A couple of work Christmas parties, then my Christmas bbq at the lake in December for 58 people. About the 11th year in a row I've run it. Good times.

I've generally been pretty healthy this year. Other than being fat. Hit the fattest I've ever been in January, so went low carb and did lots of walking up Mt Rogers and managed to lose a few kilos quickly so I didn't have to lug them up mountains in Tasmania. Had the usual bouts of insomnia here and there. Did a sleep study in September. I have a bit of sleep apnea when I sleep on my back. No surprises there, I avoid sleeping on my back, except when I'm asleep and don't notice. Had a couple of sore throats in October, but if they were colds they only lasted a day or two. Got new glasses in November. Should NOT have gone to Specsavers. This time the optometrist was like "eh close enough" with the vision check so I never got that whole "oh wow I can see moment" when I first tried on the new glasses. Also one of the pairs I got was far too small and I can't get them to fit right, so wearing the "spare" glasses that don't have the anti-reflective coating on them.

We've had a relatively quiet year with friends. Stu has simply been so stressed out by work that doing any sort of socialising is too much for him to bear a lot of the time. David came up in January to look at the oven. Met up with him and Shane and Jess for dinner in October, and he came for dinner later in October. Stayed with Mum a couple of days in May and we played tourist which was kinda cool. Kit came to visit with Oreo in February and May, and by herself in June. Had multiple visits to Herbert's with Tony/Frank/Karen as well as with the Chrises and Neil. Had Tony and Jo over for dinner in April. Had cocktails at Molly/Hippo and dinner at Molly/Bar Rochford/Akiba with Luc in April, August and October (busy year for him in Canberra! Here three times!). Picked up the sweetie a few times after drinks with Dennis. Had drinks/dinner with Ding at the Lighty in April. Went over to Nick and Tab's for dinner in May. Met up with Luc and Cynthia in Sydney for dinner in May. Had Fred's 50th at Herbert's in June. Went over to Chris and Geoff's for raclette in September. Had a Rocky Horror night at Rob and Fiona's which was a lot of fun. We caught up with Chay, Daemon and Augie in October, the first time we'd seen them since 2016! James/George/Josh/Rachel took me to afternoon tea in December on their way to Melbourne.

We went out to the club five times all up. See aforementioned notes above about Stu being stressed by work. We went out for a Remembrance dinner near Anzac Day in April. Ian and Chris's anniversary formal night in June. There was a working been in July. I did Christmas in July for like the tenth year in a row (except for 2020, stoopid covid). And Rob and Fiona's Christmas party in November.

Had another busy year of photo processing. I got my Turkey 2014 trip photos culled, labelled and blogged in time for the ten year anniversary of our departure in May. I started processing David's America 2023 photos, but didn't get very far through it because I had too many other projects I was working on. Got Tasmania photos online in time for the six month anniversary of that trip. I got our Queensland 2014 trip photos culled and labelled, but couldn't get them online on the tenth anniversary because Vodien broke my database. So they were a month late. I've also been doing a lot of filing/organising of general Canberra photos, Stu's family photos (pulled out 600 photos of Immy cause she hardly has any of her as a little kid), and pulling photos in case of having to need them for Mum's funeral one day (easier to get that done now rather than being in a hurry if things happened suddenly).

No big changes with the fish. The upstairs two foot has countless guppies, and I'm having to weed all the java fern out of it regularly. The four foot has a loach, three male guppies and two female guppies, and 11 congo tetras (I think). I still have Chrissie's two clown loaches - I've had them for nearly seven years now. The "angel" tank has maybe ten or so guppies in it. The downstairs two foot has a big sucking catfish and two female guppies. I've been meaning to give them a boyfriend for a while now... In January the filter clogged up the outlet on the "angel" tank and water backed up and leaked over the back, which was super annoying and made a big mess. In October the stone I had weighing down the filter wool to stop a repeat of January drifted over the well with the wool and got stuck in the outlet. Water backed up and leaked over the back, which was super annoying and made a big mess. Stumpy's UVB light died in December, but two pet stores and the reptile store at Gold Creek don't have them. Waiting for Gold Creek to get more stock.

I had a big Lego year this year. I've spent ages on Vic's Lego all year. I finished inventorying loose pieces so I knew what was left, then used that to pick parts for some more sets that looked somewhat completable. I then wishlisted all the missing pieces (a couple of thousand of them! eep!) and noted the average price for them (to compare seller prices). I bought a big batch off a dude in South Australia and it's taken weeks to mark everything off and file them into sets. I did build a few of the smaller sets that are complete, but was hoping to do a lot more over the break that I just didn't get the time for. I made a 31x31 mosaic of a QR code that will take you to my blog. I borrowed Jo's (originally Riley's) Winter Holiday Train (10254) and bought some missing pieces to complete it. Of my own I did Scaled-Up Lego Minifigure (40649), Minifigure (3723), Moving Truck (40586) and Notre-Dame de Paris (21061). All a lot of fun.

Jigsaws continue whenever I have time. Which is not often at home. I still haven't assembled the Disney jigsaw as I don't have anywhere I can do it.

I pulled out my Spirograph in January and had a bit of fun with it. Also had a play with my Rubik's Rings puzzles (never could solve those things). I'm still playing the clarinet. I'm still not very good at it. Spent the year working through a Crystal Creations koala. While it was all actually pretty good quality, the colours they provided were all off, so it looks dumb. I got some Diamond Dotz ones for Christmas and have done one and started on a bigger one.

It's been a warm year. Had our usual share of storms, rainbows and even some hail. It snowed out at the club in July which was pretty awesome. The humidity in January and December wasn't fun.

Windows 11 continues to piss me off with its trash - like files opening on a completely different desktop to the one you're on, even if the app is open on your current desktop; notepad search sucking donkey balls and just dumping you at random places in the file when you close the search box (but keeping unsaved files open over reboots is nice, although only at home, not at work); refusing to shut down when I tell it to; refusing to eject hard drives some times. But at the beginning of the year we found it will FINALLY let you ungroup taskbar items. Google may be improving the security of the internet by FORCING https, even without consent, but it did break my blog because Chrome refused to load the http css/js content on a https page. Vodien broke my blog/database in June - from broken CageFS file system errors and script errors, to broken cpanel passwords, to a mysql database reverted to October last year, to a completely broken website. Took weeks of yelling for them to fix it. Then in August they broke my database AGAIN, by reverting the database to the same point in October last year. Took weeks of yelling and pleading to finally get a complete export of my database taken after my last blog entry but before they broke it. I took that database and moved to CloudLoop, who have been amazing. I used the opportunity to do a massive cleanup of all my blogs. I fixed up all the things I'd been meaning to fix up for years, got my holiday blogs to a consistent design, got everything working in https, and cleared 14000 image assets so my blog entries publish in seconds instead of minutes. We bought a new printer in October (an Oki) because the old Brother one had a fault with the fuser and was smudging all the prints. Such a waste. Why is everything so crap these days? We bought a new lawn mower in November because the starter rip cord ripped right off on the old one. Stu has used it once. I've used it three times. In December I coded up some Perl to pull weather data from BOM's API and put a little widget on my blog to show the current weather. I dispute their "feels like" temperatures though!

Around the house. A second element died in our POS DeLonghi oven on New Years Day. After not being able to get a replacement for the previous dead element, we decided to piss it off and get a new oven. The old one was only four years old. Such a waste. Why is everything so crap these days? David came up in January to do the diagnosis on the old one, and did the installation on the new one. So nice to have a qualified electrician in the family! Although funnily enough the new one has a standard plug and doesn't need to be wired directly in, but it did need a new power point. I grew two mini capsicum plants out the front (the ones out the back got eaten by snails in like one night). They're stoopidly slow growing (not helped by completely infertile soil out the front and very little water) so only a few ripened by June before the frost finally got to them. The fridge made a loud clunk in April when it was turning off which sounded ominous. Sure enough the next time it ran it was a lot noisier. But it's still running, loudly, so there's that I guess. I dread having to buy a new one. This one is at least twenty years old. Anything new won't last anywhere near that long. Our Solar Edge solar system for reasons unknown didn't charge the battery at all for three days in April (it was sunny!). Our lemon tree totally went off this year. By June it was completely laden. In August I started juicing lemons that had fallen off. In November a branch with 112 lemons on it broke off. I've given away dozens of lemons and litres of juice, and made multiple lemon cheesecakes and lemon pepper chicken, and there's litres of juice in the freezer. I drink about an ice cube a day. But more lemons keep falling. All. The. Lemons. We had various problems with ancient electronic timers. Either turning on and just not turning off, or losing time. About three have had issues this year. The turdburger crimson rosellas came back again this year to eat the house. The gas heater died in August - nothing on the control panel. Fortunately a complete reboot of the whole heater at the power point fixed it. First poppy of the season flowered on 1 September. There's still one or two left. We had more purple poppies and epic dandelions. In September I planted out a stick of geranium that had been lying on the ground since January!! How is that even possible that it's still alive?? We had a scheduled power outage in October. The Solar Edge solar system dutifully kicked in and kept all the fish tanks running all day, but it didn't charge the battery. That's not what we were sold on. Annoyed. Got lots of strawberries in November/December. Although I didn't get to eat half of them - the currawongs kept stealing them. They didn't find the ones in the pool though, and neither did the snails so that was a win. In December I heard dripping in the washing machine after it was finished/emptied. Seems the thing is leaking. The first time I let it go and it leaked a *lot* into the drum over a few days. And then one day I found water all over the laundry floor. So it's leaking in two places. So now we turn the water off when we've finished washing. I dread having to buy a new one. This one is at least twenty years old. Anything new won't last anywhere near that long. Redid the silicone sealant on the shower in December - further up the wall this time. Our ExtendaLine that David installed in 2020 had another line break in December. Now I can't fully extend the thing which is super annoying.

Did a reasonable amount of eating out this year. Kinn Thai in Civic is a favourite, we went there in February, April and December. Chong Co is another favourite, with delivery in April, August, October. Same with Dumpling Inn in February, July, September and November (twice). Many visits to Herbert's with Tony/Jo/Frank/Karen/Chrises/Neil etc, including tap takeovers by TRBC (farewell tour) and Hopsters Cooperative Brewery. But they gave me grief over ordering from the kids menu the last time, so I lost it, and very likely will never go back. Dumb business decision will (and in fact already has) cost them. Dinners before/after ANU events with Tony at Badger&Co, 10 Yards, Terra. Some new lunch places with Neil at BZ Burgers, Uyghur Cuisine and No. 10, a few team lunches at Ikko (twice), Ramen-O and Vanilla Pod. Molly, Bar Rochford and Akiba with Luc the three times he was in town. Went to the Burns Club in Holt with the Chrises in January, and at Kambah with David and Kellie and some of David's friends during the Airport Open Day. Kimchi in Dickson with David/Shane/Jess and a colleague of David's in October. Cypher for Wello's birthday in October. Raku with Annie and Stu in May. Had Grease Monkey from their food truck at the Belco markets in May. Pattysmiths in January and June. Pizza at TRBC in Kingston in July, which turned out to be the one and only time I'd ever get there. Pappa Rich before Twisters in August. Returned to the Aussie Crepe House (previously Crepe Cafe) in October for the first time in a few years to avoid the mall food court during school holidays. Beess & Co in September and Gang Gang in November. Four Winds with Tony in November, repeat of the previous year. Yat Bun Tong and Kinh Do delivery/takeaways in May/July.

As usual I somehow ended up doing a whole lot of cooking this year. Staples included Sunday night roasts, Thursday night pizza (mostly made at home) and often Brown-Food-Fridays with chicken Kievs. Did slow cooker lamb in January which was amazing. Lemon dill chicken in January, then again in December with my own dill. Cheese mince and cheesy taco casserole in January (keto ftw!). Tried a carbonara from AntiChef in February but it didn't really work with alternative pasta. Might try it again some time though. Barramundi bake in March, although not as good as basa, and a few tuna bakes. Luv-a-duck cheats Peking duck a couple of times - pretty awesome each time. Did three Mexican things from Nagi Maehashi's Dinner book in May - slow cooker Mexican shredded beef, taco slaw, Mexican red rice which were all excellent, and beef ribs from her website in June, which would need a bit of tweaking to do again. Osso bucu on August. Lemon pepper chicken a couple of times in November. French onion soup in December. Also made Not Quite Nigella's peppermint slice a couple of times, and lemon cheesecake a few times.

Theatre/Shows/Exhibitions/Tours
* Canberra Airport Open Day in April. In the rain. But nice in the afternoon.
* Journey of Australian Science series at the Shine Dome
* Lego show in Wagga Wagga in April
* Ramses and the Gold of the Pharaohs in Sydney in May. Too many people and not enough room and no flow made it super stressful for me
* Ralph Heimans exhibition at the portrait gallery in May
* Questacon to see the Ryan "Brickman" McNaught Lego exhibition. During school holidays. Not recommended.
* Beethoven's 9th in August
* Questacon again on my birthday in August. Much quieter and more civilised.
* Dark Matter in the Pub in August
* Mint in September (and back again a week later to swap out the earrings I bought)
* Scrivener Dam tour in October

Movies (at the movies)
* Twisters

Movies (TV)
There may have been more that I forgot to blog about or forgot to add to this list
* The Queen
* Mona Lisa Smile
* Mash
* The Sound of Music
* Fantasia 2000
* The Shape of Water
* The Good Son
* Parasite
* Barbie
* A Night To Remember
* Iron Man 1/2/3
* Miss Potter
* Twister
* 9 to 5
* The Door Into Summer
* Mean Girls
* TRON / Tron: Legacy
* Freaky Friday (2018)
* South Solitary
* Wonka (2023)
* Grave of the Fireflies
* Inside Out 2
* Golden Kamuy
* Salt
* My Old Ass
* John Wick
* Die Hard / Die Hard 2
* Love Actually
* The Santa Clause / The Santa Clause 2

TV
We were getting into a good routine of Death in Paradise on Thursdays, The Orville on Friday or Saturdays, The Crown on Sundays, as well as Mash, The Simpsons and Futurama over dinner. Then they all finished and we haven't been watching as much together. There's a few things I want to watch so hopefully will get into a routine again in the new year.
* Death in Paradise - from mid season 7 to mid season 11
* The Orville from mid season 2 til the end
* Mash from mid season 2 til the end. Fun seeing various people pop up that became famous later - like Mr Miyagi, Larry Wilcox, James Cromwell, GW Bailey, Patrick Swayze, David Graf, "Larry" Fishburne
* Sex Education from mid season 4 til the end
* The Crown from mid season 6 til the end. Although there's 20 years of the Queen's life left so they may make another series.
* Some Big Bang Theory on tv in Tassie
* Shogun all of season 1
* Laid Back Camp season 3
* Start of The Apothecary Diaries. It didn't really grab me (maybe it would have gotten better) so Stu watched it by himself.
* Lego Masters Australia vs The World
* First three seasons of the American Lego Masters, and a Christmas special
* Documentaries - Brats, Pretty Baby, The Movies that Made Us (on Friday the 13th), Feminists: What were they thinking?
* Start of Girl Band Cry. Another one that really didn't grab me.
* Amazing Race season 8 (another celebrity edition)
* Black Mirror - all of it
* The Simpsons - some of season 36
* Futurama - whatever this year's season is

Weddings
* Rachel and Hayden
* Ben and Sarah

Other stuff
* late night on NYE watching the fireworks
* went out to Cotter Dam on New Years Day because it was spilling. It was quite crowded out there. Walked all the way up to the viewing spot.
* took a *lot* of photos of flowers. And food.
* remembered the January 1994 bushfires thirty years ago
* went shopping for jeans in January. Failed. Did get a bra though.
* bought some jeans at Vinnies of all places in January
* also managed to get some "skinny" jeans in January at Kmart because that's all that was left in the store. Hate.
* impressed with a Seiko battery from 1998 that was still working, and has been powering a thermometer all year
* got my first Charlie coin in April
* got grunty at Access Canberra because MyWay cards can expire and they expect you to fork out $5 for a new one (no credit on new cards) so they can transfer the balance. Decided to ignore the problem until the new MyWay+ system came along in December, and Stu could transfer his balance.
* saw a kangaroo in our driveway in May (sounded like it smacked into the fence) but it disappeared before I got outside
* ABC Classic 100 "Feel Good" in June
* had my nails "professionally" done in June
* watched the Olympics opening ceremony but nothing else
* had a play with ChatGPT. It's trash. Asked it to write a trivia night round on current events. Most of the questions couldn't actually be answered because they were wrong.
* saddened to hear that TRBC was closing down in September
* found some five leaf clovers in September
* wandered round Yarralumla in September and saw the old brick works
* saw Comet C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS) in October. Well, my phone did, I didn't
* found a two leaf clover in October
* visited the Lake Ginninderra spillway and wetlands in November
* encouraged the epic dandelions around the place
* watched lots of Jamie and Julia
* booked another holiday next year with the mother type person
* did the Plonk beer advent calendar
* got a random Blue Screen of Death in December
* got to level 15000 in Candy Crush just before the end of the year
* saw a rat among the daisies under the lemon tree

My biggest stress this year is simply a lack of TIME. I desperately want to retire so I can actually slow down and enjoy life and just do my hobbies and have a quiet life. Even over the Christmas break I spent too much time trying to get All The Things done, and not nearly enough time on my hobbies. Didn't really feel relaxing at all. I have heaps of photo projects I want to work on next year as well. And I'm desperate to get Vic's Lego out of the house, but so little of it is complete. Deep breaths. It'll all be ok in the end.

Happy New Year to everyone, I'll try and have one too!

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.. 

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.

Monday.  7th.  Labour Day.  Slept mostly ok I guess.  Woke up ~6.29.  Fish and gardening stuff all morning.  Then setting up and fighting with the new printer (needed another driver to print double sided).  Then trying to sort out tax stuff.  And getting stressed at everything.  Adulting is hard :(

Tuesday.  Slept mostly ok I guess.  Catchup day at work really.  Shine Dome talk in the evening. Prof Nanda Dasgupta talking about the research of Prof Mark Oliphant, and Dr Ed Simpson talking about his work with particle accelerators and making new elements. 

Bronte Cormican-Jones's "Of Line of Light" outside the NFSA

Dinner at Badger&Co after.  Talked into buying more food than I wanted.  Like a LOT more.  Oh well, leftovers.  Hurrah.  Also Badger is pretty hit and miss, and more misses with the specials.  Like the "crispy" pork belly bites that weren't crispy.

Wednesday.  Awake from before 1:30 til after 4.  Hurray.  Zombie day.  Did go to the Crepe Cafe for lunch to avoid the food court in school holidays.  Hadn't been since pre covid.  Except they're the Aussie Crepe House now.  I had the stroganoff crepe (up to $17 now, ouch).  It probably had a bit more cheese filling, but the beef was TOUGH.  

Cooked cheese kranski chipolatas for dinner, and the kitchen smelled wonderfully of them for the next 24 hours or so!

Thursday.  Ok day I think.  Herbert's after work for a final TRBC tap takeover.  Tim came which was nice.  He might be looking for IT work in Canberra, although his wife is not keen on them leaving Tumut.  

Friday.  Crap sleep.  Ok day.  Kept a bit late at work and then had to race down the hill for a bus, which I only *just* caught, to go out to Cypher for Wello's birthday drinks.

Saturday.  Slept mostly ok.  Busy day trying to catch up with life.  Stu was also too stressed with life so we didn't go to the club working bee. 

In the evening was a Rocky Horror night at Rob and Fiona's.  I did a very half-hearted attempt at Eddie (couldn't find a wig or vest, or borrow a saxophone, but did find a scarf which matched and made a slingshot).  

The sweetie went as Dr Scott.

There were frank n furters, meatloaf, and rocky horror road.

Ian even let me have like one of the last ever TRBC beers I'm ever likely to have!

Ended up staying up wayyyy too late, but it was fun.

Sunday.  Got like five hours sleep.  Cause I wake up early no matter what.  With sore throat.  Spent the day continuing to catch up with life.  Managed to get all my Queensland photos online, only a month late.  Also went and did food shopping.  Tuna bake and veggies for dinner.  Early night.