Wow, another strange year. Another crazy busy year.

Our year began very quietly with just the two of us. We didn't go out to the club because of Omicron taking the country by storm.

Travel-wise this year has been.. interesting. It started off with us desperatly trying to get out of the cruise we were due to go on. The charter company had postponed it a year, but with Omicron raging, government travel bans still in force, and lack of insurance for covid-related hospitalisations, we just couldn't justify it. The travel bans did get lifted and insurance companies started insuring for covid, but we still didn't think it was worth the risk. In the end, something like two weeks before the departure date, Carnival were like, ok fine, we won't charge the charter company if people don't want to come. Great. So we didn't go. The charter company were still @$$holes and would only provide a cruise credit for next year's cruise not the year after. It's caused me so much stress and angst and I would NEVER deal with them again. So plan B for February was Tasmania. But with Omicron raging and mandatory lockdowns for testing positive, we decided against that too. If we'd gotten sick while in Tasmania we would have nowhere to go and no way to get home. So plan C was regional Victoria. We only booked motels a night in advance, and if we'd gotten sick we could be home from anywhere in Victoria in a day. So that's what we did. And we actually had a lovely time with almost perfect weather (if a tad hot!). We had a very busy first week, cramming in lots of things, but took it a lot easier in the second week. In April there was a day trip to four Sydney dams to see three of them spilling which was super cool. In May was another sneaky trip to Sydney to see Woronora Dam spilling, and Brickman's Lego Jurassic World. I hadn't been planning to go see the Lego, but then was inspired by Lego Masters so went when it only had a few days to go. And then they extended it. Oh well. And then back again to Sydney in June for Mum's birthday where Kellie had organised to see Mary Poppins. Met up with Tony the next day and wandered the city and went out to Cockatoo Island, then met up with Mum again and saw Vivid. Finally a visit to Ansto at Lucus Heights which was very cool. We only made it down the coast once this year, in July, to see Kit and Pete. In September I went overseas for the first time in nearly four years. Mum and I went and saw the Oberammergau Passion Play, which I'd been wanting to see since the late 80s. We then drove through Austria, Liechtenstein and Switzerland (four countries in one day!!) and into Italy, where we ditched the car and toured northern and central Italy by train. We saw *heaps* of stuff, much more, and for much cheaper, than if we'd done it with the tour company like originally planned. I got filled with rage how Qantas and Emirates won't talk to each other to do seat allocations on code share flights. Jet lag hit me in a major way when I got home. It certainly didn't help that I got a cold as soon as I got home and so didn't go outside and see the sun in days. I was awake for hours every night for a week, and a complete zombie for much of it. Finally, we went back to Tumut for the Tumut 3 Power Station Open Day and another TRBC tour.

Work was, well, work. It's not that I don't like it, it's just that it takes up so much time out of my days. I have way too many things on my todo list to have time to go to work every day. Sigh. But at least working from home a few days a week makes it tolerable. I didn't actually go into the office at all until March (with Omicron raging and minimising people contact before we went on holidays). Then when I did eventually have to go back in I found it super loud and stressful and distracting and PEOPLE!! I had to be Neil a few times during the year and did some doco on his stuff (which he won't keep up to date heh). There were a couple of firewall migrations that went quite smoothly. A couple of load testing days in May and June. A few proxy upgrades which introduced more bugs than they fixed. But we did PoC a proxy from another company that actually looked pretty good. Migrated some servers. And All The Cleaning. Just call me Sadie. There was a whiskey night in July (which I actually missed, but was able to try everything the next week), and I ran my Christmas bbq at the lake for the tenth year in a row.

Healthwise I've been pretty good. Had a very slight cold in June and another one when I got home from Europe. Had booster jabs in January and July. The one in January caused a strong immune reaction so had to take a half day off and have a little lie down. Other than that just a sore arm so far is all I've had from the shots. Other than that just the usual bouts of insomnia, waking up with numb hands, and going blind.

We've been pretty slack at keeping up with friends and family this year. Although we have seen some friends a bit. We've seen Tony and Jess a few times for games and music. Damien came over in January, April and June for games. Jenn came over a couple of times in April and December. I had heaps of lunches at Herbert's with various Chrises and Tonys and other peeps as well. David came to stay before the Canberra Airport Open Day. Kit came to stay in July. Mum came to stay in December and we did our family Christmas with Kellie's family at the Burn's Club. We saw Annie and the family a few times - for Annie's 50th, Mila's 21st and Christmas, as well Immy coming over a couple of times to hang out. EffanC and R&F came over they day before my birthday. Had a lovely housewarming for R&F in November (it was cold and wet). Caught up with Aaron in December, probably as long as ten years since I last saw him. Finally saw Chrissie for the first time since covid in December. And met up with James and George and the kids for lunch in December on their way to Melbourne.

We only made it out to the club four times this year. It's been that kind of year. With quarantining and being on holidays for several events, the only times we made it out were for the Mexican night in March, the formal night in June, our Christmas in July and the Christmas party in November. We didn't even make it out in any non-event weekends which we like doing over winter.

I did a bit of work on processing Dad's slides early in the year but that fizzled out. I geotagged all of Mum and Dad's Tasmania photos in case we ended up going there. I also geotagged all our Victoria and South Australia photos from previous holidays to try and reproduce those. I started to scan Mum's Minolta negatives from the beginning (1983) and got some spectacular results, but that ground to a halt when I got up to 1994 and got into a batch of badly discoloured negatives that were unscannable. Not that there's even all that many past 1994 that I'm interested in keeping so no big deal I suppose. I managed to cull and label and get some photos onto the blog for the tenth anniversary of my 2012 Eurasia trip. That was a lot of work for the first few months of the year but it was so good to get it done. I also got 719 Victoria photos (plus bugs/flowers/panoramas) labelled and online in time for the six month anniversary of us leaving on that trip. After that I got really slack in the evenings - with no pressure or deadlines nothing much got done. For this year's Europe trip it took me a good six weeks just to geotag everything, then I got slack again. I was thinking I might be able to get the photos online by Christmas. Yeah right. Instead I used the evenings to start filing by 2022 photos and taking notes for my year in review post.

Stumpy is still doing great. We've had him (her?) nearly five years now! He'd be at least 13 by now. The fish are puttering along. My two main guppy tanks (the two foot upstairs and the two foot downstairs) look amazing - lots of plants (at least upstairs) and hardly any algae. But our guppies are two years old now and getting inbred. We really need to get some new genetics for them. I still have my "angel" 620T tank with a guppy, a platy, and an ancient cory. I still have Chrissie's tank with her two clown loaches and a guppy, but I'm considering moving them and getting rid of the tank. It's got horrible black hair algae which is not fun. I have the two two foots, as well as several small tanks downstairs, all with just guppies. And Stu has his four foot which is still full of algae. Really must move more juvenile guppies in there.

I lost heart in trying to complete any more of Vic's Lego sets, so decided to inventory what was left (I'm going to need to do that at some point anyway before selling it). I found a website called Basebrick which integrates with Bricklink which is super useful. Did heaps but ran out of time to finish it before I went overseas and haven't been back to it. For my birthday I got 10497 Galaxy Explorer and 75329 Death Star Trench Run Diorama which are pretty cool. I decided to sell the box of "MISB" Harry Potter Lego I got from 2003-2006. There were ten sets and they sold for quite a lot (I probably made the buy it now too small), but ebay makes it so you have to jump through all their hoops otherwise you can get totally screwed over buy the buyers. As it was I got totally screwed over by ebay who not only take 12.5% of the sale, but also 12.5% of the *postage* which I think is a complete scam. Not to mention the stress. If things go well it's actually quite simple, but if anything complicated happens (like people pay for everything and *then* want combined postage, or come to pick up from your house but don't mark online that they've done so, or the value is over the $100 Australia Post will cover you for) then it's a nightmare. I calculated how much profit I made, taking into account the cost of interest for not having the money in my mortgage all these years and all the fees, and I figure I made a total net profit of about $50. But, I'm sure I made a lot of people very happy they could get their hands on 15-20 year old brand new Lego sets. For Christmas I was going to get myself the Lego Titanic. But after not getting a Black Friday special on it, I decided to sit down and buy it on the Saturday. By which time it was out of stock. Sigh. But I did get a different Lego set for Christmas - in a manner of speaking. Neil lent me his Saturn V rocket that he bought a few years ago but had never done. So I've been having fun with that. Then will pull it all apart and give it back to him :)

I finally finished the Disney 40320 piece behemoth this year - finishing up with the Bambi section. I still haven't assembled the whole thing yet because I lost access to the really useful skybridge so don't know where I'm going to assemble it. Maybe Damien's driveway. Other than that, the usual jigsaws at home and work, although feeling like I really don't have time to do them.

They said La Niña would finish by the end of summer. It didn't. There was a massive storm in January which caused a lot of chaos in northwest Canberra. There were power outages all around Belconnen and Coles lost all their fridge and freezer stock. Chris kept power to his store, but his house had no power for days. We were lucky and just had a couple of small outages while they were fixing things. And the water. All The Water. In spring half of NSW was flooded. Insanity. And there was so much water there was no lettuce in Australia for a while. Craziness.

I've had a whole stack of problems with Windows 11 on my new computer. I hate it (windoze 11) so much. Like the fact you can't ungroup task manager icons which makes it so damned slow to switch between windows now. Before you could just click on the icon. Now you have to click or just hold and *wait* for the popup before you can switch windows. I took to making whole new desktops for the browser and explorer windows I need for different hobbies (such as music or lego) but even that has its bugs - like not displaying the wallpaper at the right size at random and then fixing it and then breaking it again all without me changing anything. Or that after a reboot only two of the desktops will display the right wallpaper at all, and if I switch between the working and non working one it'll put the wall paper from the working desktop onto the non working desktop I've just switched to. And after a few days it'll come good. Utter trash. Then there's the fact my GPS won't work at all (and there's no replacement drivers for it), my scanner won't work (even though it originally did), Eudora wouldn't work to begin with, then came good. My SD card reader only works intermittently. The front USB ports take at least thirty seconds to recognise there's anything plugged into them. My second monitor wouldn't work so had to buy a new one. It's great but the resolution is so high it's difficult to see. Windows 11 *still* only ever puts the screensaver on the left-most monitor, even if that is not the primary monitor. Excel 2003 dates wouldn't work, so had to put on Libre Office instead. You can't drag a file onto the application on the task bar, have said application pop up, and open the file in that application. That just doesn't work at all anymore. Similarly I can't drag anything into Eudora to attach it, I have to go to a menu and manually attach files. Printscreen didn't work to begin with, then started working. Hate hate hate hate hate. I've been playing a lot of Wordle style games, although cut back on those while overseas and only play a few of them now. I like Symble because you have to think more about it. Redactle is challenging. Wheretaken is a new favourite. Also Worldle, Waffle and Framed. In February Google changed one of their apis to enforce https, so had to hack Geosetter to get it to work again. Then in December Google finally killed the IE api, killing Geosetter completely. A few weeks later they released a new version of Geosetter which still has some issues, but at least will display the map again. Our printer is having a tonne of issues with jamming and poor quality printouts. It might just need a clean. Or a new printer. hmmm. Had to setup an app password in June for Eudora so it can backup my gmail. In July OneDrive took it upon itself to backup/sync all my desktop, documents and downloads directories to OneDrive. But all it succedded in doing was making a complete mess of things, bringing back files from my old computer that had long since been filed. Turned off backups everywhere and I minimise use of those directories completely. IOS 15.3.1 (or thereabouts) went back to putting photos into files by year/month (which I actually prefer). But Apple is STILL messing with the timestamps on my files. I got myself a 14 Pro for Christmas (it arrived instore literally the Friday night before Christmas, I was thinking I'd have to wait until January). Its camera has.. issues.. I lot of the first photos I got off it were utter crap. Primarily because I was using the 2x lens a lot to compare with my old phone. Firstly. Don't. The 2x "lens" is a digital interpolation of the 1x optics. So it's crap. The macro setting will work (if the stars align) but while it's good for getting actual closeups, it's crap at taking photos of flowers where you want the background all out of focus. Use the 3x lens as before just be far enough away for it to focus. Optus charged me 50c for an international SMS I didn't make in July. I got onto their online chat and they gave me a credit, but firstly said they couldn't find out the exact date/time and number, which was a total lie, because when I pressed them for it they could, and then I figure out what it was (it was a reply to a string of text, not a number, so it got translated to an international number). I bought myself new sandshoes in January, for the first time in like fifteen years. And new black shoes in August for the first time in seven years. I bought a G5X before our overseas trip. And got a brand-new-second hand wok on freecycle (to replace ours whose non-stick surface was coming off).

Around the house. I needed to move all the ornaments off the top of my desk to setup my new computer and rearrange monitors and crap. I moved them all into the shevles I bought for David in the spare room. I can see everything there a lot better, so I'm enjoying having them all there. The top of the desk has remained clear all year, although I do currently have my birthday presents up there at the moment. Tony came over in January to chainsaw off the oak tree sprouts and the front hedge. And then in December to attack the photinia. In between is all the weeding. Never. Ending. Weeding. Except in winter cause it's too damned cold heh. When the big storm went through in January water was coming out of places that water should not be coming out of. Like bricks next our bins, and bricks on one of the back steps at the back of the house. So got the plumbers to come out and do all the eeling. The sewage pipes were the easiest because we know the deal with them. The front courtyard was easy when we realised it's not a proper drainage pipe, just a 50mm pipe that goes just across the courtyard and drains off to the side. Looks to have been an afterthought. Then the stormwater. They went in via the sump next to the garage and it was like thirty metres down before they found the blockage. So they cleared that. Like the sewage, we'll just need to do that every couple of years. Finally they looked at the drainpipe near the bins. Under the concrete the pipe had come adrift and was full of roots, so the drain from the roof was just pooling under the stairs, and then going through the bricks next to the bins. So they dug up the front stairs, dug a wholly new trench, resealed, relaid the pipes, filled it all in, and got someone to put in some new stairs. Fifteen thousand dollars later. Ouch. Mice were scritching around the roof in March, which caused some sleepless nights. But then they went away. Which was good because I practically had a panic attack trying to figure out how I was going to get across to the far side of the roof without falling through it and getting covered in disgustingness. I tried to cut back the ivy in May. It's now covering more of the side wall than ever. Our largest stove element died. But we still haven't replaced the element or the whole stove. Found out in early spring that a pair of crimson rosellas had been chewing through the beams holding up our roof. Tried plastic sheeting, tinsel, scaring them, and scat. Nothing much seemed to work very well. They've found more interesting things to eat for now but I suspect they'll be back again next winter. We moved a shelf out of the dungeon because Stu wanted to put in a proper shelf there. Underneath was a massive growth of dark brown mold. We don't know if it's current or historical. hrmmm. The Dyson I got for my birthday two years ago stopped working. Don't know if it just needs a clean, or if the battery is dying, or if the Dyson is just a dud. My money is on the latter. Brought home the Electrolux from the club where we'd had it to use until I can get around to cleaning the Dyson. Got lots of strawberries from plants around the back yard. Including some from our paver weeds. The snails clearly didn't get the memo, so we got the strawberries instead of them. We had solar panels and a battery installed in December. They still don't work.

Our favourite restaurant this year was still Chong Co - we got deliveries from them in January, twice in April, twice in August, and October. Herberts is also popular for work Friday lunches (and their Christmas in July was a lot of fun). I didn't get to have any workday Kingsleys lunches because the building opposite blew up from a gas leak and they've never gone back, or been allowed to, not sure which. I did finally have some Kingsleys from Kippax a few weeks ago. We had Sichuan Chinese pickup from Belco a couple of times and were pretty impressed with them. We had brunch a few times at Market St Eats. Some others we went back to after long breaks included Mills and Grills (Stu went low carb so hardly any Dominos this year either), Chez Kimchi and Bella Vista. Tried out SpudBAR and 1919 Langzhou Beef Noodle which opened in the mall. Other one-offs included Co Dung (fried chicken wings were awesome), Lazy Su, Turqoise Turkish, Edgar's, Flavours of Jiangnan, Teddy Picker's, Badger & Co, Little Steamer, The Howling Moon, Mr Shabu Shabu, Little Oink, Master Bao (which had no bao), Magpies (for Jim's farewell), Pattysmiths, and Chinese Inn (from Kippax, just as bad as last time).

As always I end up doing quite a bit of cooking and trying new recipes, as well as doing old ones a few times. One new favourite is stuffed baby capsicums - fill with whatever mince you like and lots of cheese and roast. Yum yum. I made a few lemon cheesecakes, as well as a lime one and a cherry one. One of Stu's favourite meals is Cath's basa bake we've done that a few times. We did san choy bow a couple of times. We really like the potato, onion, blue cheese and bacon bake from my Gratins and Bakes book, but with Stu going low carb we only did it like once all year. The slow cooker gets a workout over winter. Favourite recipes for that are Alan's beef stew, brisket, and even pulled pork. And we tried slow cooking pork ribs (nice but lots of little fiddly bony bits). Beef cheeks are slow cooked on the stove. After doing turkey rolls that actually turned out this time at the club Christmas in July (on account of doing them in the oven instead of on the bbq), we tried one ourselves in August and also November (and likely New Years Eve as well). They turn out really nicely and we'll probably always keep one in the freezer to do when we feel like it. From Not Quite Nigella I tried a chicken marbella but wouldn't bother again, from the Gratins and Bakes book I tried potatoes with lemon and tomato but wouldn't bother again with that either, and from my Slow Cooker Kitchen book I tried honey rosemary chicken which was too salty. Completely evil meals included uunifetapasta, cheese nachos, and no-carb pizza (made with no base at all, just cheese). Slow cooked mini tomatoes are amazing, really must do them more often. Tried pork crackling by itself but I do prefer it done on the meat. A favourite lunch is grilled cheese sandwiches - but with shredded pizza cheese on the outside as well. Favourite veggies (well other than my favourite which is potato bake) include brussels sprouts with bacon. Over winter we discovered kalettes which when roasted for 35-40 minutes turn into little bliss bombs. Almost as good is kale chips, but it's a bit too easy to overcook those and have them go bitter. I made pesto with the last of the summer basil, and tried cheese biscuits in June (but need to find a better recipe). And made a coconut cake (Yum! Delicious!) in June and October.

Theatre/Shows/Exhibitions
* Australian Wind Symphony in May at the B (next to the Q)
* Lego Jurassic World in Sydney
* The Queen and Me exhibition at the National Capital Exhibition
* Mary Poppins in Sydney
* Canberra Lego Brick Show at Thoroughbred Park
* Australian Wind Symphony in November at St Andrews

Movies (at the movies)
* Top Gun: Maverick

Movies (TV)
* The Courier
* The Young Black Stallion
* The Grand Budapest Hotel
* Six Minutes to Midnight
* Sleeping With the Enemy
* Munich: Edge of War
* The Laundromat
* 1917
* The Mauritanian
* Zero Hour (twice) / Flying High
* Dr Strangelove
* No Time to Die
* Operation Finale
* Logan's Run
* 6 Underground
* The King's Speech
* Encanto / Luca
* The Death of Stalin
* The Royal Tenenbaums
* Gladiator
* Knives Out
* Edward Scissorhands
* The Monuments Men
* Pride and Prejudice (the Keira Knightley version)
* Mary Poppins / Saving Mr Banks
* The Little Mermaid II / Ariel's Beginning
* The Man from Snowy River
* An Affair to Remember / Sleepless in Seattle
* A Clockwork Orange
* The Constant Gardener
* Top Gun
* The Silver Brumby
* Kingsman: The Secret Service / Kingsman: The Golden Circle / King's Man
* Careful, He Might Hear You
* Moulin Rouge!
* Shine
* Blue Murder
* Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (twice - before and after Italy)
* Breaker Morant
* Matrix Resurrections
* Romeo+Juliet
* The Butterfly Effect
* Die Hard 1/2 / Love Actually
* Enola Holmes 2
* Operation Mincemeat
* Herbie Goes Bananas

TV
* Sex Education (season 3)
* The Simpsons (seasons 20 to half way through 31)
* The Girl on the Train in the Rear Window, or whatever it's called
* Mentour Pilot (about 3/4 of the air crash investigations episodes)
* Gunther's Autopsy
* Lie to Me (end of season 2 and season 3)
* Black Books
* Gunther's Anatomy
* The Crown (season 1 and most of season 2)
* Lego Masters (season 4)
* Martin Bashir's Diana interview
* The Diana Interview: Revenge of a Princess 2021
* Epstein's Shadow: Ghislaine Maxwell
* Obi-wan Kenobi
* Super Cub
* Andor (season 1)
* Lego Masters Bricksmas special (last year's and this year's)
* Survivor Canberra (fan produced)
* Picard (season 2, haven't finished)

Books
* Read the first four books of the New Testament, but got behind in February when we travelled and never really caught up. Will try again next year for the rest of the New Testament.

Other stuff
* Tried to catch up on This Day in History posts, but there's still too much work to be done with Mum's photos to do it properly, so that stalled
* Car wouldn't start in January. Turns out it was the battery, which was probably original, so it would have been nearly eight years old
* Petrol got insanely expensive
* Balloon Fiesta in March
* Canberra Airport Open Day in April
* Dam Busters trip to Sydney in April
* Climbed Mt Rogers a couple of times
* Saw the planet/moon alignment in April
* Jupiter and Venus were having a sneaky early morning kiss in April
* Sneaky trip to Sydney in May to see Lego Jurassic World (and Woronora Dam)
* Got a democracy sausage in May
* Climbed Mt Ainslie in May (hadn't been planning to it just happened)
* Whiskey Live in May
* Queen Elizabeth II 70th Jubilee in Canberra - all the purple lights on buildings around Canberra
* ABC's Classic 100: Music for the Screen in June
* Inspected my flat, went to Cockatoo Island, saw Vivid and visited Ansto in June (after seeing Mary Poppins for Mum's birthday)
* Surprising Science at the Shine Dome in June, August, and December
* Walked up Mt Painter
* Stu cracked a tooth and needed it taken out
* Fought with Qantas' booking system again. I hate Qantas. So. Much.
* Had a hair cut in August
* Stu got a 3D printer which he's been using to make little models for his wargamming
* Total lunar eclipse in November
* Took a drive out the back of Dunlop/Holt to see the West Belconnen Pond
* Got a beer advent calendar from Plonk
* Went to the Green Shed a couple of times, dropped off a few things, came home with more jigsaws
* Continued to practise the clarinet

Have a very happy and safe new year!!

Anyone wanna come with? ;)

Link in the blog :)

Day 1 - Travel to Sydney Airport

Today we make our way to Sydney Airport to stay right next to the International Terminal. Dinner will also be in the International Terminal where we meet our fellow travellers before retiring for an early night.

Day 2 - Depart Sydney and fly to Munich, Germany

Our flight this morning leaves at dawn, offering two legs of daytime flying. We fly via Dubai, United Arab Emirates on modern Emirates aircraft. We arrive in Munich in perfect timing to go to bed and reset jetlag.

Day 3 - Day at leisure in Munich

Our buffer day will be spent at leisure exploring Munich. Perhaps a stroll through the English Garden, followed by an early Oktoberfest beer at Hofbrauhouse?

Day 4 - Drive to Fussen with Hohenschwangau and Neuschwanstein

Picking up our hire car, we head to the Bavarian village of Füssen to explore both of "Mad King" Ludwig II's palaces. Weather permitting we will first ascend Tegelbergbahn for fantastic views of Neuschwanstein castle and the Bavarian Alps. After lunch we tour the palace of Hohenschwangau, where Ludwig II grew up. We will visit Marienbrücke which has the best view of Neuschwanstein castle. Then we will tour Neuschwanstein castle itself.

Day 5 - Oberammergau Passion Play

A short drive to Oberammergau where we will fully immerse ourselves in the Passion Play. In 1633 the residents promised to perform this play regularly in thanks to God for His deliverance of their town from the Bubonic Plague. We find it ironic that this year the play was performed two years later than normal, as a result of the COVID-19 plague. In the morning we will attend a "welcome" talk about the play. Afterwards we will visit the Oberammergau Museum which contains a wealth of information about the play. Our afternoon will be spent enjoying the first act of the play. After an early dinner at a local restaurant, we will enjoy the second act of the play into the evening. The venue is a covered outdoor theatre so bring warm clothing!

Day 6 - Austrian Alps, Liechtenstein and Lucerne

Today we will take a picturesque drive through the Austrian Alps, marvelling at the beauty of the mountains and quaint villages. Lunch will be in Vaduz, the capital of Liechtenstein. We continue on to Lucerne to explore the old town on foot.

Day 7 - Mount Pilatus, Interlaken and Swiss Alps

Weather permitting we will take the "Golden Round Trip" tour of Mount Pilatus, which starts with a gondola ride to the top of Mount Pilatus. From there we take in spectacular views of Lucerne and the Swiss Alps. We go down the mountain on the world's steepest funicular railway, and return to Lucerne by boat, enjoying the lake side scenery at a relaxed pace. Departing Lucerne we make a short stop in Interlaken before continuing into the Swiss Alps the mountain village of Täsch.

Day 8 - Matterhorn and Lugano, to Como

Weather permitting we will take the train to the car-free alpine village of Zermatt. From there we take a funicular and cable car high into the Swiss Alps for spectacular views of the Matterhorn. Our afternoon will be spent driving through the Alps, including Furka Pass. We will have a late afternoon stop in Lugano before continuing to our B&B on the shores of Lake Como where we will stay for the next three nights.

Day 9 - Brunate Funicular and Lake Como cruise

First thing in the morning we will take the funicular to the village of Brunate, where will enjoy stunning views of Como and Lake Como. After returning to Como we will have a leisurely day riding the ferries across Lake Como. We visit the charming villages of Bellagio and Varenna before returning to Como.

Day 10 - Day at leisure in Como

Today we will have a leisurely day exploring Como. We will look at Villa Olmo before walking into Como, visiting the Duomo and other local sights. Time permitting we may take a drive through the Italian countryside.

Day 11 - Drive to Milan, Last Supper and Cremona

An early start sees us drive into Milan to drop off our car. Leaving our bags at the hotel we will explore Milan on foot. Highlights of the morning will include the beautiful Milan Cathedral made out of white marble, and Leonardo Da Vinci's "The Last Supper". In the afternoon we take a train to Cremona to explore this small town.

Day 12 - Novara and Pavia

Today we continue to explore the satellite towns of Milan. In the morning we visit Novara, and in the afternoon we will explore Pavia.

Day 13 - Genoa

Departing Milan we head for the coast to Genoa. Genoa has one of the best preserved medieval town centres in Europe. We will spend our day exploring this historic city.

Day 14 - Portofino

Today we take a train and ferry to the beautiful coastal town of Portofino. Time permitting we may also visit the abbey at San Fruttuoso, which is only accessible by boat. In the afternoon we continue to La Spezia, where we will stay for the next three nights.

Day 15 - Cruise the Cinque Terre

Our day begins at the ferry wharf in La Spezia where we will board the Cinque Terre ferries to cruise up and down the coast. We will also see the "Three Islands" from a ferry out of Portovenere. Our ferry rides will let us see the seaside towns from the water away from the crowds.

Day 16 - Day at leisure in the Cinque Terre

We continue exploring the Cinque Terre, this time on the Cinque Terra Express train. We hop-on-hop-off the train at all the towns, exploring them at our leisure.

Day 17 - Pisa

Leaving La Spezia we head for Pisa and its famous leaning tower. As well as climbing the 273 steps of the tower, we will explore all the other sights this small town has to offer. We continue to Florence in the afternoon.

Day 18 - Florence

For the next two days we are free to explore Florence at our own pace.

Day 19 - Florence

We continue to explore the most famous Tuscan city.

Day 20 - Travel to Rome

This morning we take our first FrecciaRossa (Red Arrow) train to Rome where will spend the next three nights. Our afternoon is spent at leisure exploring Rome on foot. After dinner we will join a guided tour which will take us to all the major sights of Rome. This unique tour will allow us to see the attractions by night, making for some amazing photo opportunities.

Day 21 - Pompeii and Mount Vesuvius

Today we join a tour that will take us to the historic city of Pompeii, destroyed in AD79 by an eruption of Mount Vesuvius. We will enjoy a guided tour of the enormous archaeological site. We will also have the opportunity to climb to the summit of Mount Vesuvius for 360 degree views over Naples, Pompeii and the Gulf of Naples.

Day 22 - Grand Tour of Rome

We take a different tour today which will take us to many of the most famous sights in Rome. Included is express access to the Colosseum in the morning and skip-the-line entrance to the Sistine Chapel and Vatican Museums in the afternoon. We will also pass by the Roman Forum and Pantheon, and stop at Piazza Navona and the Trevi Fountain.

Day 23 - Travel to Ortona

Leaving Rome we cut through the mountainous heart of Italy by coach, finishing on the eastern coast in Ortona. We have free time to explore this small town with views of the Adriatic Sea.

Day 24 - Travel to Verona

Heading north, we take trains along the Adriatic coast, then deep into the north of Italy, arriving in Verona in the late afternoon.

Day 25 - Verona

Today we explore fair Verona, home of Shakepeare's Romeo and Juliet. We visit "Juliet's House" and explore the old town with its many beautiful buildings and bridges. We continue to Venice in the afternoon where we stay for the next three nights.

Day 26 - Venice

For the next two and a half days we will explore Venice at our leisure. A 72 hour vaporetto (ferry) pass will give us the flexibility to explore the outer islands including Murano. Other highlights include the famous St Mark's Basilica, and visiting sites used in the filming of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, and Moonraker.

Day 27 - Venice

We continue to explore one of Italy's most famous cities.

Day 28 - Venice and fly to Singapore

Our morning will be at leisure in Venice. In the afternoon we head to Marco Polo airport for our flights to Singapore.

Day 29 - Arrival in Singapore

This afternoon we arrive in Singapore and head to our resort style hotel near Clarke Quay. We can relax in the pool and walk to Clarke Quay in the evening.

Day 30 - Day at leisure in Singapore

We have a relaxing day at leisure today. Perhaps a visit to the Botanic Gardens, with lunch in Chinatown. In the afternoon we head to the famous Marina Bay Sands hotel with its infinity pool with spectacular views of Singapore city. In the evening we walk around the Gardens by the Bay with its pretty lights.

Day 31 - Singapore and fly home

This morning we return to the Gardens by the Bay to explore them during the day. We return to the hotel to freshen up before heading to Changi airport for our flight home.

Day 32 - Arrive home

After flying overnight we arrive home after an amazing holiday.

Sunday.  Backdating a few days because life and birthdays and crap got in the way.  Had all the veggies and some chicken thighs for dinner.  Then watched more of The Crown.

Monday.  Um.  Probably a cleaning day.  Spent the evening looking at distances between places in Europe to see if we'll go over the daily allowance or need to buy unlimited kilometres.  And trying to plan an itinerary.  

Tuesday.  Woke up at 3 to pee, then started stressing about All The Things, then got hungry, then the hissing.  Sigh.  So tired, but still an ok day, mostly cleaning.  

Went to another Surprising Science talk in the Shine Dome.  There was Dr Chris Guppy from UNE talking about sulphur in soil, and Mahdokht Shaibani from RMIT talking about lithium sulphur batteries.  

The previous two photos of the Shine Dome were on my new G5X.  So is this next one.  This is hand held!!  Half a second.  Pretty impressive.

Had dinner at Master Bao but was disappointed they don't actually server bao!!?!?!  wtf!?

No bao at Master Bao!

Spring rolls

Dim sims

Shantung duck

Wednesday.  Ok sleep.  Busy cleaning day.

Thursday.  Okish sleep.  Another busy cleaning day.  Two days cleaning up stuff to get it all consistent and pretty.  And literally noone will care.  But I did fix something else that had been broken for a while (not by me) and did actually impact people so that was a win I guess.  Also got filled with rage at Outlook which by default only adds reminders to meetings created within Outlook, which means I keep missing stuff because I don't get reminders.  Hate Outlook.  HATE.  This was never a problem in Notes.  Just sayin!!

Homemade pizzas for dinner on Stu's low carb bases.  Then watched Careful, He Might Hear You.  I might have seen it once a very very long time ago.  I read the book ten years ago so was good to finally see the movie again.  I was disappointed they didn't have a shot of him on the train going over the Woronora Bridge (or in fact any shots at all of Sydney, I guess too hard with all the modern buildings).  

Friday.  Ok sleep until the hissing.  Had a fairly quiet day catching up on emails and stuff that had been slipping because I'd been busy the last couple of days.  Chicken Kiev for dinner, then watched Broadcast News.

Saturday.  Woke up at 2:22 with mild hurty.  Had a pain killer and some cheese.  An hour later I felt hungry again.  Then the hissing.  So a very slow morning.  I was trying to get things done in the afternoon but then more hurty so slow and painful.  But then that eased up and we had EffanC and Rob and Fiona over for dinner (brisket, blue cheese potato bake and roasted kale (I over cooked the kale :( )) which was lovely.  

 

Sunday.  Slept ok.  Finally booked a car for the first week of our trip.  Then spent like three and a half hours out and about running errands and doing shopping before we go into self-imposed quarantine.  Stu is not coming on this trip (sadly :( ) but I need him in quarantine as well in case he gets covid and brings it home to me.  I did get KFC for lunch, which is somewhat of a tradition, so that was nice.  Then tried to allocate seats on my flights.  For most of them this worked ok.  But the Sydney to Dubai leg I can't even tell which airline I'll be flying on.  Qantas say it's Emirates, and Emirates say it's Qantas, and neither will let me book seats.  Other than that, panicking over my todo lists.  Also.  Neil has covid.  He started feeling sick Thursday morning.  This was after I'd sat next to him all day Wednesday.  Sigh.  Felt like I was getting a sore throat Sunday.  As with every other time in the past two and a half years I'm sure it's just my imagination.  Suddenly it's 16:20 and it's like wtf happened to my weekend.  Managed to download my photos before giving up for the day and relaxing with the sweetie with some bubbles.

Sunday.  13th.  Roasted up some veggies for dinner and had it with some leftover lamb.  Watched Logan's Run in the evening.  Kinda like Soylent Green meets The Time Machine.  I want to go to the Fort Worth Water Gardens that'd be cool.  

Monday.  Epic insomnia.  Went back to sleep for an hour after the alarm went off.  Then it was just house/photo/jigsaw stuff.  

My aim here wasn't so much to completely get rid of the periwinkle this go, but give the area some light so the freesias will grow.  I'll keep going at it when I get the energy.

Special fried rice I made for lunch - leftover rice, fried up with a chopped up sausage, peas and corn, some of Stu's teriyaki sauce, and topped with kewpie mayo

Cheating

Didn't get to do more important things, like putting ratsak into the roof.  Made stuffed capsicums for dinner.  The sweetie doesn't even like capsicums much but he went back for seconds haha.  Then the last three episodes of the girl on the train in the rear window.  Completely ridiculous of course.

Tuesday.  Slept ok-ish. 

Had to be Neil at work.  Except I can't help myself and try and deal with problems that he's just happy to delete heh. 

An hour and a quarter of weeding after work.  Whoops.  Then had to go to back to work late in the evening to do a cert replacement.

 

I don't think this is all going to fit in the green bin..

Wednesday. Took forever to get to sleep - cold and still too wired from working late.  So pretty tired day.  Was Neil again.  Did music but no weeding after work.  Eh, it was wet anyway.  Late dinner of lefover lamb, cabbage and rice.  Did some photo culling (onto London now).

Cheating on the edges

Thursday.  Slept well for a change!!  Another day of being Neil.  Did some fun mail stuff I wouldn't have gotten to do if Neil was around.  Really not comfortable being in the office.  Too many people off with covid (which means they've likely been in contact with people in the office).  And at drinks someone was sniffling away.  omfg if you're sniffling stay home!  Even if it's "just a cold" I don't want to get your germs.  I guess it could have been hay fever but sheesh..!  Stu want home feeling sick during the afternoon (not covid related), so let him get pizza for dinner.

Friday.  Woke up some time after 3 and never got back to sleep.  Epic sigh.  Pizza=>insomnia?? 

Saw Tico out the window

Zombie day.  Did a bit of cleanup for Neil because I can't help myself.  And more of the fun mail stuff.  TV dinners for dinner.  Finished Bambi!  And not just Bambi, but the entire Disney Memorable Moments Behemoth!!  40320 pieces!  DONE!!!

Watched Flying High in the evening (after seeing Zero Hour! last week we had to)

Saturday.  Peed once but otherwise slept through from ~10pm til 5:30!! Hurrah!!  House stuff in the morning, and some weeding.  Then just photo culling.  Well other than going out late morning to do a chemist and bakery run for Annie's family, several of which have covid at the moment.  

This sweet little geranium is flowering even though it's just sitting in a glass on the window sill, and had been mostly eaten by an epic caterpillar.

Remember that cute little cow from last week?  This is the scene it went into.  So cute!

Got this off Chris and Glenda.  Any guesses what it is? :)

I was going to do some greenery with this.  Really I was.  But the chicken kievs were pretty big and this old bread needed using up, so it ended up being a pretty big meal.  And it was so awesome!!!

Sunday.  Today.  I swear brown meals cause insomnia.  Last night took *forever* to get to sleep because I was restless/itchy/uncomfortable.  And then I woke up around 5 and took forever to get back to sleep.  When I went to pee I could hear a pipe running and water dripping.  I thought it was the cooler dripping down the roof.  Slept til about 7:15 but it wasn't enough.  Sigh.  Realised after I got up the dripping was actually from the tap in the bath.  I must have turned it on slightly when I wiped down the bath on Friday night.  This is the only drawback of half turn taps - they are *very* easy to accidentally turn on!  Went out to do ten minutes of periwinkle hacking in the morning but John saw me and couldn't help himself.  He dug into the worst of the roots and pulled out all the rocks and suddenly (an hour and a half later) there's no periwinkle left there at all (I'll have to spray any shoots that come up).  Whoops.  I gave him a couple of beers but he definitely deserved a whole sixpack!!  Maybe a case!!

Does anyone want these rocks?

Then just alternating photo and jigsaw stuff.  

Can you guess now?  Easy bit is done, the rest is going to be horrendous :)

In the afternoon I put on Bambi.  I swear I had a bluray of this.  But maybe I just had the VHS and hadn't gotten around to getting a bluray of it yet.  Anyway, I couldn't find my own copy to watch so put it on on Disney+

As per usual, the jigsaw doesn't actually match the movie.

I mean, there *is* shot of the three of them

But Thumper on the ground is a different shot

So is Flower being bashful

And the flowers overhead aren't even there until Bambi grows up

Silly really.

Then photos and blogging and rain!

Sunday.  Not backdating!  Lamb roast for dinner.  Except it was two small roasts not one larger one, so the cooking time was very much reduced.  Which meant the garlic didn't cook fully.  So I stuck it back in the oven.  This has to be among the tastiest things on earth ;)

Monday.  Even though I was zombie tired from not sleeping well Saturday night, I still took *ages* to get to sleep, but at least finally slept ok.  It was so *windy* today.  I put my washing out on the line, it was probably dry in about three minutes.  Scanned a roll of negatives.  Had an ok day, doing cleaning and deleting old production stuff :)  Did music but no weeding.  Sausages and salad for dinner.  Into season 22 of The Simpsons.  Did a "first pass" cull of three days of Eurasia 2012 trip.

Tuesday.  Slept ok.  The questions started as soon as I logged in and didn't let up for nearly an hour.  Found it super frustrating in the afternoon because everything was blurry and I couldn't SEEEEE.  I don't know if I was tired which made it worse, or if not being able to see made me tired.  Did some photo culling before dinner.

Wednesday.  Could see the screen in the morning, although it got worse during the day.  Clearly I'm too old to be sitting at work all day staring at a computer screen.  More cleaning with HBZ's help.  And finally sat down to plan cleaning of another set of firewalls (that a previous cloud admin completely botched up and made an epic mess of).  Uunifetapasta for dinner.

Thursday.  Had to *go* to work.  Blerf.  There's still way too much covid around for me to be feel comfortable doing that.  And the office is *noisy*.  People yapping away everywhere, super annoying.  I went to talk to Neil at one point and found myself on TWO people's cameras in two different meetings.  So I went and sat back down until they were off their calls.  Hate being on camera hate hate hate.  Still, the bar was open so that was nice, first time in three months.

Friday.  Ok day.  Grilled the last of some bread I got the other day in the toasted sandwich maker with some parmesan cheese each side (and leftover KFC). Epic good.  Late getting off work because Neil was stressing about upgrades, although turns out what he thought was a problem wasn't a problem after all.  Doc Oc pizzas for dinner, then finally watched Zero Hour! (which Tony took it upon himself to reencode for us, and this time it worked perfectly, even streaming straight off OneDrive and casting from my computer browser). OMFG it was HILARIOUS.  Not because it was actually funny, but because Flying High is pretty much identical to this movie.  I mean I already know there were chunks of it the same, but I had no idea almost the entire movie, from plot to character names to the dialogue was pretty much verbatim.  I mean I could even quote this movie in a lot of places because it was all the same.  My brother would probably appreciate this, you should have a watch :)

Saturday.  Urgh couldn't get to sleep for *ages*.  Maybe even non-Dominos pizza will cause me insomnia.  I still got up to go see the balloons though.  Except I really didn't like the new location (Patrick White Lawns, in front of the library).  It was all very cramped and there was no *view* - no landmarks (other than the library if you could make your way through the crowds to get to the north side) and surround on all sides by trees.  So went somewhere else instead, which worked out a whole lot better.  Pics in a separate post.  Went and said hi to Neil afterwards.  The day was just house/photo/jigsaw stuff.  At lunch we did a Bunnings run (to get vermin poisoning stuffs), as well as Asian Supa for some bits and pieces and Officeworks (to get a decent reem of paper - to try instead of the Coles paper we have which keeps getting jammed - not sure if it's the paper or the printer).  Mostly just jigasw in the afternoon.  

Just a few weeks it was 181.9.  Just the other day it was 199.9.  Saturday 209.9.  omfg, madness.  See we should all be working from home to save petrol given the current crisis.

How cute is this teeny little cow that Stu painted? :)

Stu cooked dinner - a vegetarian Japanese curry which was very nice.

Watched Operation Finale in the evening.

Sunday.  Slept well for a change.  Forgot to have breakfast (routine was out of whack), so ended up having bacon and eggs (Pialligo bacon yummm) which was quite nice.

The day was house/photo/jigsaw stuff.. doing All The Things.

Sunday.  8th.  Filling in the evening after I blogged :)  Cooked All The Veggies for dinner.  Had all the roasted veggies, with mince and cheese and sour cream on the potato wedges.  Yumminess.

Simpsons, X Files, Air Crash Investigations.

Monday.  Ok day.  Got practise looking at traffic spikes and figuring out what they were.  Labelled 182 photos - have finished Egypt and onto London, day 28.

Tuesday.  Pretty quiet day, although didn't get much done.  Leftovers/Simpsons/jigsaw/cleaned kitchen/backed up computer and suddenly it's 8pm.  Hrmm.  And labelling goes super slowly when you need to identify every building in Legoland Miniland (eg Covent Garden, which I'd never been to before, so that took a bit of flying around Google Maps trying to find it).  So I only managed to label 26 photos before dinner, did a few more while watching tv, managing 48 all up for the evening.  hrmmm.

Wednesday.  Started off ok, but then felt like a failure because I couldn't solve some stoopid problems with stoopid firewalls and stoopid proxies.  Then arguments with people who made me feel like everything I do is wrong.  Sigh.  It was a wine and scotch and no photo labelling kind of an evening.  

Thursday.  Woke up at 3am but didn't get back to sleep ~5am :(  So I was tired and grumpy.  The bathroom sealer people called me in the morning - the asbestos test came back positive (duh) so they won't do minor works, they'll only do a complete bathroom renovation so the asbestos can all be removed.  Sigh.  More fighting with stoopid firewalls and feeling like a failure and people hate me cause I hate everything.  Felt miserable all afternoon.  

But on a lighter note, before lunch it was announced Canberra would go into a snap seven day lockdown due to our first local cases of covid in over a year (it finally happened).  And my first reaction was woohoo.  I mean literally.  To just stay at home and not have to deal with people (at least directly) for a week - heaven.  I mean don't get me wrong, I do actually feel really bad for peeps in the hospitality and "non-essential" retail whose anxiety levels will go through the roof not knowing where their next pay check will come from, or anyone that had a wedding or something planned for this weekend - that'd be pretty devastating for them.  Neil and I had lunch at the mall as usual, then we went for a walk through the fresh food section to laugh at all the people panic buying milk and toilet paper.  About half the trolleys we saw had toilet paper in them.

I should point out that after all the panic buying of toilet paper finished last year and it was readily available again, I bought a pack of 24 and put it downstairs.  Then I've continued to buy it normally ever since, knowing that if we ever did have a snap lockdown, we'd be set.  In fact we'd just opened a pack of 12, so won't need any in the short term.

At 12:49pm there was already a queue to get into Woollies

And there was a queue at Baker's Delight too

HBZ also went shopping just after lunch, and already all the toilet paper was gone, and it took him an hour and a half to get through the checkouts.  Yikes!

On the way home we stopped for essentials - read - beer! ;)  Although tragically, Chris had sold out of Corona! *gasp*  ;)

Beer and pizza for dinner.  This is why I'm going to die young:

Friday the 13th.  Got somewhat better sleep, and actually managed to achieve some stuff at work.  Went for a walk at lunch and saw my birds. 

In the afternoon I went to check the mailbox and this daisy was there to greet me

So I got photos of some of the other flowers out already as well

Picked up TV dinners from Chris's (we actually have a freezer full of leftovers, but I really didn't feel like cooking) - he said it had been pretty quiet. 

Watched the 2008 Get Smart with the sweetie, which was completely ridiculous but I was snorting all through it - just a bit of fun :)

Saturday.  I'd had an early night, but woke up a bit before 5 and never got back to sleep.  Turned 30.  I'll let you figure out what base (thanks DC :) ).  Stu cooked breakfast of Pialligo bacon and cheesy hash browns. So brown but so good!!!!

Then had a lovely day just pottering around the house, doing jigsaw and the like.  Stu also had fun, building his little morse code thingie...

At lunch we went for a walk to see the birds, and saw this very smelly burnt out car.

And the sweetie took a photo of me in front of the same wattle tree I had photos of the other day.

In the afternoon I did a 500 piece jigsaw as a break from the agonisingly slow Dumbo.  Sadly it was missing a piece, but that's what you get for Green Shed jigsaws.  The sky was pretty at dusk too.

We may have shared some bubbles.

We got Chong Co delivered for dinner!

We had the wagyu salad and the duck salad (I asked for everything "medium" but the beef was a bit hot for me - endorphins!)

As well as the pork belly prik pao (not crispy anymore from being in transit) and satay chicken

Delicious!

After dinner we put on Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, which we enjoyed with heated Gluhwein and candles.

And all through the day (except the 10 second blackout and time taken for the router to reconnect) Stu put on a John Williams playlist which added a wonderful soundtrack to actually quite a wonderful day.

Sunday.  Another nice quiet day.  Took ages to do slide fixup scanning because every time I rescanned a bunch of slides, they'd get dust in different positions :(  

Late in the morning we went for a walk and saw these tiny flowers

With bee!

For lunch I made salami and olive pizza scrolls

My lockdown lunch is better than yours!

In the afternoon I alternated between Dumbo jigsaw and Legoland photo labelling (including geotagging a bunch I'd taken on the train but hadn't set the location) - managed 113 photos - so I'm still *way* behind where I need to be.  I also pulled everything out of the freezer and did an audit of what we have.  There's quite a bit of leftover meat (including a bunch of food from various club nights), and some frozen veggies.  I'm thinking I might do an early morning shopping trip one day this week to get more fresh food.

Then put on dinner (all the veggies, with some pulled pork from the freezer) - finished off most of our fresh vegetables, and blogged.

Twenty years ago today I left with Pete for a two week trip to the USA, just four cities.  It was a pretty good trip (although those quick flights across the Pacific are slightly horrendous).  I updated the blog this year with photos, see it here.

Backdating, and also no photos yet, I just haven't processed them yet.  At some point you should reload the September page, as there's going to be a bunch of backdated posts and updates with photos.

So Monday had peeps over for pizza for Stu's L'th.  So no UK photo labelling.

Tuesday.  Back to work.  Sigh.  Also.  David is sick with a cold.  Spent the entire night processing photos and blogging for previous weeks, so no UK photo labelling.

Wednesday.  David went for a covid test (it's not going to be covid), picked up supplies, then went home.  Once again photo processing and blogging so no UK photo labelling.

Thursday watched Herbie Rides Again, which was very silly, but the best part was Helen Hayes playing basically the same sweet little old lady as in Flying High.  David's covid test was negative (we knew it would be).

Friday.  Awake for hours in the middle of the night.  Hurrah.  Ok day.  Watched Princess Mononoke, which I found really quite irritating.  Normally there's good guys and bad guys in a story, but in this one everyone is a bit of both, so it's like, do we like these characters or not?  And ultimately no consequences for being evil, the "bad guys" (if you can call them that) win and carry on as before.  Urgh.  So annoying.  

Saturday.  Ploughed through the todo list.  Lost the my angel fish which was pretty sad.  Happy one day, dying the next.  Sigh.  Watched the original Mulan (we don't have premium so can't see the new one yet).  

Sunday.  Ploughed through the todo list. 

In the afternoon cooked for three hours straight.  Cooked up taco mince for during the week.  Cooked up a kilo pack of mince with onion, garlic and bacon to be used with whatever takes our fancy.  Cooked up some chicken thighs to have with Pataks later in the week.  And also cooked the sunday roast - tuscan drumsticks, potato bake, roast pumpkin, zucchini and carrot. 

In the evening watched My Neighbours the Yamadas.  Man the Ghibli films keep going downhill.  Not even a movie as such, just an animated comic book where each character gets a chance to show how it sux to be them.  I had restless legs the entire way through, and made the sweetie come sit with me instead of just playing his game so he could see what I had to suffer through.  Yeup.

Still backdating ;)

Tuesday.  Slept ok, woke up on time. 

Tree guys came in the morning and trimmed our hedge back.  I told them to be brutal.  They complied.

Insanely crazy busy the rest of the day.  Although maybe I wouldn't have felt so bad if I'd been able to do my work in peace without ten different people talking to me non-stop all afternoon.  Sigh.  Watched the very last episode of Fuller House.  It was such a pity they could never get the Olsen twins to put in an appearance, because they had the rest of the cast which was just amazing to have the same group of people still working together for well over thirty years.  I don't know of any other show like it that has done anything remotely like what they did.  Just amazing.  Loved it.  Finished Day 19 of UK photo labelling.

Wednesday.  Slept ok.  Tackled the ticket queue I'd been ignoring yesterday afternoon, and played whack-a-mole with it most of the day.  Super heavy rain a couple of times during the day.  It was like night time, day time, night time, day time.  I watched the last two episodes of The Miraculous Mellops - and I was right about who the new Grand Baby was ;)  We also started on The Simpsons on Disney+.

Thursday.  Rage quit over people hassling me to do stuff.  I have this irrational rage at people that hassle me to do stuff while I'm literally doing stuff for them.  Then there were the people who hassled me in one system, and not five minutes later hassled me with direct messaging as well.  Drives me nuts.  Watched Derren Brown's The Push.  The whole Weekend at Bernie's reference had me cacking myself.  But I can't believe it could all be real.  Those people weren't showing any remorse or trauma at all.  If it was real, there should be arrests.  Seriously.  

Friday.  Up to episode three of The Simpsons.  But getting really annoyed at the cropping they did to get it onto 16:9 screens.  So I Googled that crap.  As of May, Disney+ had set a toggle switch so you can watch it the original aspect ratio.  Much more betterer!  Then watched Porco Rosso which I actually really enjoyed.  It has flying in it, but it's more realistic.  

Saturday.  Housework.  All.  Day.  Stu found a recipe for a vegan lasagna that said something like twenty minutes prep time.  It took him three hours.   !!  Craziness.  Had Nelson and Susan over for dinner.  Had a game of Roborally which Susan won, and a couple of games of Fluxx.

Not actually a vegan cake - they used eggs from chickens they knew

Sunday.  Bit of a late night but not too crazy.  But woke up early and couldn't get back to sleep.  Hardly did anything all day.  Roast pork for dinner.  Watched Pom Poko in the evening.  OMFG what a completely bizarre movie.  Really didn't like this one very much.

Monday.  Woke up at 5:59 - right on time!  Ok day for a Monday.  Spent all evening trying to sort out accomodation in Tumut for the next weekend.  The problem with small places is their websites are very amateurish.  Sefton House said there were three different queen rooms, but it really wasn't clear which ones had ensuites and which had "exclusive" bathrooms.  And they never answered the query I sent them.  The caravan park looked like they had some lovely cabins by the river, but it was basically impossible to tell which cabin you were trying to book on their online web form.  At least they did respond (eventually) to my query, but the ones we wanted were all booked out.  I actually didn't want to commit to anything too far in advance - I didn't want to be up for a few hundred dollars if one of us got sick and we had to cancel.  So that was all very blah.  And didn't get my quota of photos labelled.

Twenty years ago today I went microlight flying with John Hales.  I put all the photos up on kazza.cia.com.au afterwards with this description:

A couple of months ago John, a friend of my boss's, had mentioned going microlight flying but never got around to actually going. I mentioned to him that I would like to go along too if he went. So he said if I booked us in, he'd drive us down. So I did. I booked in for Saturday the 17th, but Paul who runs Sydney Microlight Centre called me up in the morning and said the conditions were not good for flying and that he'd call Sunday. A change was forecast for Saturday night, so I did not fancy my chances of getting to fly Sunday either. Anyway, Paul called me up the Sunday morning and said the weather looked good. So John and I headed down there and arrived just on 12pm (with some rather ominous clouds looming in the south). There were not enough craft available for John and I to go up together so I went up first. It was amazing! It was a lot of fun, although very windy! We flew down to Kiama and round the lighthouse, then back again. I got to fly a couple of times (between taking photos). John had a flight after me. He took it more seriously and did a lot more flying. Below are some pictures from the day:

I didn't include all the photos for this blog entry.  If anyone wants to see the rest of the photos let me know and I'll reupload the original html page with all the pics.

The controls of the trike

Lake Illawarra

Intersection of the Princes Highway and East-West Link (under construction)

One of the other trikes we flew down to Kiama with

Jones Beach, Kiama Downs

Bombo Quarry

Kiama Railway Station

Lighthouse and the Blow Hole at Kiama

Kiama

Kiama

Returning to the airport.  There's a 747 parked in the middle of this photo nowadays, I really must go down and have a look at it some time.

Final approach to the airport.  We actually landed on the grass rather than the runway, no idea why.  I had this feeling we were going to flip as soon as we hit the grass but it was fine.

John Hales about to have his turn to fly

Andy, our pilot

I absolutely loved it.  And it's probably the cheapest and easiest way to be able fly.  I never did go again though.  And John's wife took one look at the photos I put up and vetoed him from ever going again either.  Oh well!!