Results matching “Games”

Sunday.  Our basa bake dinner (with sweet potato and beetroot for another night)

Basa bake and veggies

The Crown in the evening.

Monday.  Blerf meeting all morning.  Electricians finally came to replace the inverter.  My eyes got tired mid afternoon.  It was a dark and rainy day, but the solar system does appear to be working.  The battery got up to 84% in the afternoon without any direct sunlight.  Frustrating evening because I was blind and headachey from not being able to see all afternoon.  

Tuesday.  Took forever to get to sleep then woke up around 5.  Sigh.  The battery went completely flat overnight.  It's not supposed to do that, it's mean to sit at like 10%.  So I got super stressed and grumpy.  Then I couldn't get Redactle out because it wouldn't accept "Earth's" even though I'd put that in and it had matched two other incidences, but not the one in the title.  Clear the cache they said.  It'll fix it they said.  Yeah right.  I lost my entire browsing setup.  Which means all my streaks and stats for all my online games are gone.  The waffle one upset me the most.  And I can't see.  I had a full on meltdown because it was all too hard.  And I haven't played any of those games since.  Meh day.  Stu did get Solar Edge to change the battery settings to not go flat.  We're meant to be able to do that oruselves, but as with everything else by Solar Edge it hasn't worked properly.  Had a drink and watched Star Trek IV in the evening because my eyes were too tired to concentrate on anything that required seeing anything on my computer.

Wednesday.  Slept ok.  Ok day.  Was having a nice quiet morning then All The Things demanded attention at once.  Made a nice salad for dinner.  The sweet potato and beetroot I cooked the other night, with goats cheese, toasted pine nuts and bacon, with an honey, oil and lemon juice dressing.  Annoyingly the bag of rocket I was going to use (that expired today) had gone all manky.  So this salad really wasn't the same.  It really needed the lettuce to lighten it up.  It was still quite nice though.  We won't talk about the heart attack I had on Friday when my poo was a burgundy chocolate colour!

Purple poo meal

Thursday.  Did a bunch of planning for a big project at work.  Did up all the doco and passed it onto the others to do when I'm on leave.  Also looked at what logs we might be able to trim down to save space.  Then had to be Neil all afternoon while he had bits removed.  Made pizzas for dinner.  Talked to Kit and Pete for a while in the evening (still too hard to do holiday planning in the evening because I can't SEEEE).

Friday.  Woke up at like ~3am til like ~5am.  Sigh.  Did a bunch of holiday planning before work while I could still see.  Had to be Neil again, and did some cleaning.  I had a good eye day, and I could still see in the afternoon so did some holiday planning after work.  I also went into battle with Optus.  Last year when they put my number on a different plan, they set it up in a new account.  But left the shared data plan number behind.  Shared with nothing.  I'd forgotten to stop the automatic payments on this account, so it was in credit.  But the credit was not being used on the new account.  Dumb dumb dumb Optus.  So needed to get the credit transferred to the account which is actually costing money (the shared data plan is "free".. go figure).  And figure out how to access both accounts.  Because I can only access the old one on the website, not the new one.  Turns out I can manage both of them from the app.  So lame though.  Made some creamy mushroom and bacon fettucini for dinner.  Bad for the sweetie but he'd had a crap couple of days and needed the comfort food.  Watched Star Trek VI together in the evening.

Saturday.  Woke up at like 4:30 and never got back to sleep.  Super busy day doing All The Things - house stuff and holiday prep.  Overdid it on the computer though and ended up with tired eyes.  Cooked butt beef cheeks for dinner and watched second episodes of Spy Among Friends and Death in Paradise.

Runny poo meal

Sunday.  Today.  Woke up at 4:30 and didn't get back to sleep again.  Another super busy day doing All The Things.  We I even cut the ivy back from the ensuite window..

Ivy before

Ivy after

Really need a longer ladder though.  The sparkies had one that went right to the top of the tip of the roof.  

Both days this weekend the Solar Edge inverter has lost contact with the server, so we haven't been able to see the stats in the app (or website).  We have to go flip the switch on it to reset to reconnect.  Solar Edge is CRAP!!  The other annoyance is when it was sort of working briefly last year the panels were doing over 11kw.  But I haven't seen them get much over 9 since they got it working again.  I don't know if that's just because the angle of the sun is different or what.  We'll have to wait til December to find out I guess.  We had an inspector come Wednesday morning and they found the sparkie hadn't done a couple of minor things.  So they were back again Friday to finish up.  I asked him why, once the battery is charged and we're maxing out the 5kw back to the grid, does it say we're consuming ~3kw, when we're *actually* only consuming about 1kw.  He had no idea.  He said he'd find out and get back to us.  He hasn't.  #grunt.

Oh, and the neighbour parked on our side yesterday morning while he was shovelling gravel from his trailer.  And hasn't moved his damned car back since.  At what point do I pile a whole bunch of crap behind his car in protest??

Went on strike this afternoon because I'm sick of everything, so the sweetie is getting Chong Co for dinner.

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!!

Monday.  26th.  Backdating.  Frustration and grumpiness at work *all day*.  Finished up day 25 labelling (which I should have done on the weekend).  In the end labelled 261 photos in the evening, so mostly caught up to where I wanted to be.

Tuesday.  Not much better day than Monday.  Ended up worse, and feeling depressed cause I suck and noone likes me.  Had leftover pasta bake for dinner (and got a yuk taste of anchovies).  Backed up my computer but didn't do any photo labelling.  Did jigsaw and played 2048 for the first time in a couple of years.  Even got up to 4096.

4096

Wednesday.  Woke up at 3:23 and never got back to sleep.  So it was a zombie day.  Couldn't really concentrate on anything, not helped by people interrupting every five seconds.  Doc Oc pizzas and wine for dinner.  Started watching Queen: Days of Our Lives (2011).

Thursday.  Slept quite a bit better (went to bed at 20:30), other than being awake for an hour or two in the middle of the night cause of hurty.  In what world is a monthly cycle 21 days???  FFS.  Ok day.  Mulled wine at drinks for a Christmas in July night.

Christmas in July decorations

Christmas in July noms

Then met up with EffanC and R&F at Hachiko for dinner which was lovely.

Hachiko takoyaki

Hachiko wagyu gyoza

It was a lovely night and a great reminder that I do have some pretty great friends.

Friday.  Ok day.  Knocked off work a little early but then spent the evening prepping for tomorrow - for the club Christmas in July.  Struggled to get onto the butcher to order the pork - firstly couldn't find a phone number online, ended up having to resort to Yellow Pages.  But then they wouldn't answer the phone :(  Then I started stressing about fitting CRD into the car with all the foods and gear.  Sigh.  Finished the first episode of Queen: Days of Our Lives, and started episode two.  

July wattle

July wattle

July wattle

July wattle

My little patch of floriade is sprouting!

Floriade sprouting

Saturday.  Headed out early and did the shopping for dinner.  Finished the Coles shop quite quickly, then headed back to the butcher.  Turns out their phone handset was broken which is why they weren't answering.  Luckily was able to get enough pork.  Then picked up CRD and headed out to the club.  Set everything up and took a photo of all the food.

Club Christmas in July

Decorating

First up was getting the lamb ready and into the slow cooker.  I'd never done lamb like this in the slow cooker so had no idea how it would turn out.  It actually turned out really well - lovely and moist.  

I had to wash pretty much everything before I started.  All the cooking gear was covered in white dust.  And I literally had to leave the kitchen a couple of times while other people wandered in and started fussing around and washing things up.  I actually can't concentrate with people buzzing about, super stressful.

Then I prepped all the pork - just oil and salt.

Club Christmas in July

Then made a couple of epic potato bakes.

Epic potato bake

Epic potato bake

I also made up a sweet potato salad, and some lactose-free roast potatoes

Sweet potato salad

The oven is the slowest oven in the world, so I probably should have left the foil off a lot longer on the potatoes

Epic potato bake

I delegated making the roast turkeys in the bbq.  So we had a bain-marie full of pork, the slow cooker full of lamb, and another bain-marie with the turkey.  The pork and lamb turned out beautifully, but the crackling didn't work so well (slowest oven in the world) and the turkey was over done on the bottom (really need a better way to do it than on the barbeque).

Club Christmas in July meats

I also made a big batch of gravy, and a pot of apple sauce

Gravy and apple sauce

There was also a big pot of peas/corn/carrots.

Had a couple of helpers to serve it all up.  It was quite well received .. phew!!

Chris brought these great little puddings

Christmas puddings

And Tab brought puddings and pavlovas and fruit and ice cream.

Club desserts

Then there were some very noisy games so I went and hid because it was all too loud.  Later went out and had some whiskey and rum in the sun room.  This whiskey smelt like peanut butter and tasted like butterscotch schnapps.  Yum!  And the Master Mary rum tasted like Christmas.

Sheep dog whiskey

Then loud people came out, so I went to bed.

Sadly after really concentrating on the food all afternoon and evening, I really didn't feel like I caught up properly with anyone.  I actually only sat down at the table for a few minutes to scoff my dinner.

Sunday.  Slept relatively well.  Went up to finish cleaning up and packing up.  Found out the cause of all the white powder around the kitchen - mice had been getting into the corn flour and tracking it all around.  I even saw a couple of mice running around the shelves.  I threw out anything that had mouse holes, which was all the corn flour and some of the regular flour.  Anything open but with no evidence of mouse activity I brought home to reassess.  And anything unopened and still sealed with no holes I put into a sealable plastic container. 

They pulled the pergola down while I was cooking on Saturday 

Pergola gone

Then came home after dropping off CRD.  But it was still nearly lunch time by the time we got home, and I was my usual Sunday-after-a-club-event-depressed because of the lack of time at home on the weekend.  I did manage to clean out a shelf in the pantry and water change all the downstairs fish tanks and download photos, but not blog.  Used up some of the mince I cooked last weekend with some One Pan Dinner.  

Rainbow

Sunday.  11th.  I actually blogged on time last week I think but a bit early for the evening.  Did a spaghetti rosa bake for dinner but I'll put that it its own post.  Turned out pretty well.  Then Simpsons and X Files and I might have watched Fantasia 2000 again.

Smoked rum in Queen Mary 2 whiskey glass

Monday.  Had to be Neil because he'd landed himself in hospital   .. !!!  Did some cleanup I'd been planning in test which all went well.  Otherwise just mostly being Neil all day.  

Early wattle

Early wattle with bee

Got onto Neil.  He was doing ok, just a bit wobbly on his feet, awaiting MRI results.  Did a stir fry with leftover pork for dinner.  Then watched the third episode of Brides of Christ, and more photo labelling.

Tuesday.  omfg such a busy day, mainly in the afternoon it just didn't let up - people talking to me and wanting me to fix stuff all at once *all afternoon*.  Actually nearly lost it a few times. Leftover roast pork for dinner.  Did some photo labelling, although spent entirely too much time trying to identify birds seen along the Nile in Aswan.  Fourth episode of Brides of Christ with a super young Russell Crowe.  Only managed to label 136 photos, so now a day and a bit behind.  

Wednesday.  Too much stress, not enough time, and that's *before* going to work.  Spent all day investigating a problem that Aquila alerted us to late Tuesday afternoon.  Not nearly enough time to be Neil.  I can't deal.  Watched the fifth episode of Brides of Christ in the evening and nearly lost it when I saw Naomi Watts, Lisa Hensley and a magpie thirty years before the Penguin Bloom movie!

Early penguin collaboration

Thursday.  Sharpie called me super early.  I didn't hear the phone ring (phone is on silent anyway).  I did hear the buzzes of smses but didn't wake up enough to look at my phone.  So woke up at normal time and saw the messages and figured out instantly that the problem that had been affecting dev had also affected prod (I was actually worried that this might happen).  So was able to put a workaround in pretty quickly, but it did mean for a day of insanity.  In fact I spent the entire day on the phone on support calls and even missed drinks.  Sigh.  But we did still have pizza and I had a few beers at home.

Friday.  Another day of being on the phone *all day* but at least this time just with Connor and Jim which was a lot less stressful, but just as intense.  My ears hurt from having my headset on all day :(

Stu worked from home too which was nice.  I even had some pomegranate "tea" I got from Turkey in 2014 in our nice Cunard tea cups.  And he made lunch (leftover mince on toast).

Pomegranate tea

It was definitely a candle and beer kind of an evening.

Friday Corona with candle

And I also finally tried Ray's method of reheating pizza - fried in a little oil with a lid on.

Ray's fried pizza

OMFG it was *so good* !!  Even better than the evening before and with a crispy base somewhat reminiscent of the old deep pan pizzas from the 80s.  Yum yum yum.

Simsons, X Files, and I watched Old Yeller, which I'd first (and last) seen a long long long time ago.  Thoroughly wholesome movie and super sad.

Saturday.  All the houseworks in the morning.  Checked on servers sporadically throughout the day (all good).  Spent ages rearranging pieces for the Disney behemoth jigsaw section.  We did pop out for some food shopping as well. 

Jim was talking about these on Friday so when we went out for lunch on Saturday we got one.  Delish!

Maccas custard pie

In the evening Jenn came over for dinner.  Stu actually cooked a pretty amazing Indian feast with four different dishes plus rice.  Only small amounts of most of them so not much leftovers though!

Stu's Indian feast

We played a couple of games of Fluxx, then a game of Carcasonne (which I won) and a game of Ticket to Ride (which I also won).  It actually ended up being a pretty early night.

The candles I'd lit for the evening still had a good hour to go after Jenn left, so I watched the final episode of Brides of Christ.  Definitely quality television from back in the day.  I did have to laugh at some of the Sydneyisms - "It's like painting the harbour bridge - you no sooner get to one end then it's time to turn back and start at the other" and "I was wondering if getting off at Redfern was a natural method".  The second one in particular amused me because it makes absolutely perfect sense to anyone from Sydney, but even in the rest of Australia it may not make sense.  

Today my neck hurt.  Actually it started hurting yesterday.  Much the same as a few weeks back.  Vaccine related??  First time it was nine days after, this time about twenty.  Weird stuff.  Annie and Lily and Immy came over for a bit around lunch time, and we did pop out to the chemist.  Otherwise a fairly quiet day.  

Dumbo pieces

Lamb roast for dinner tonight.  Used up some cauliflower and broccoli, finished up some cream, parsley and basil that were in the fridge.

Sunday lamb roast

Sunday lamb roast

Simpsons (into season 13) and X Files and aiming for an early night.

Not backdating ;)  Watching Encore and blogging.

Monday.  15th.  Started back at the beginning with Dad's slides, starting to rescan all the ones that had lots of fluff on them from the scanner.  Probably redoing about a third of them per box.  Had a disjointed/distracted morning at work, not much better in the afternoon, but then lots of complicated and time consuming stuff came in late in the afternoon, hrmm.  Finished off the beef brisket we cooked the other week, and did some weeding.  Also managed to label four hundred photos!! (some in the morning, some before dinner, the rest after, including some during last night's Amazing Race).  Didn't blog though, had to backdate that ;)  Had to LOL at YouTube putting up ads for mens anti-chaffing underwear.. clearly Google thinks I'm a guy..

Also, these little buggers are everywhere at the moment, epic grunt

Evil millipedes

Tuesday.  Slept in a bit, whoops.  I just don't have enough time to do all the things in the morning.  Didn't finish scanning the box of slides for the day.  Another disjointed day, also it was very loud on account of being in the office.  Home late, but did manage to fill the green bin and clean the kitchen.  But then had to try and finish scanning slides (eventually did), label photos (didn't really get done, good thing I did so many last night), and watch last night's Amazing Race.  Need All The Time.  Really.  Had to LOL when a tv ad called out Hey Siri, and my phone answered!

Also, just on our way to work and there's a hot air balloon above our heads

Hot air balloon over our street

Hot air balloon over our street

Wednesday.  Couldn't get to sleep last night til well past midnight.  Then broken sleep til 2am.  Sigh.  Ok day I think.  Rinse and repeat of morning and evenings, nearly 8pm by the time I got to sit down at the computer.  Did get some photos labelled though and watched last night's Amazing Race.

Thursday.  Ok day I think?  Drinks and pizza, Simpsons/Laid Back Camp/X Files as per usual Thursday night TV.  

At drinks some guys brought some games along.  One was Tsuro which I played two games of.  I drew on the first game I played, and got booted off in the second.  Fun game.

Tsuro

Tsuro

This is why I'm fat, so much garlicy oily goodness!

Garlic oil pools

Friday.  Hurrah for being at home.  Although did have to be on the phone half the day, blerf.  Leftovers of chicken and rice for dinner, some TV and Cool Runnings which I've never actually seen before, and an episode of Encore.

Saturday.  Got the housework done pretty early, then started work on processing Dad's slides.  I figured out how to add the shutter speed, aperture and focal length data of all Dad's slides into the files with excel to generate cli stuff to use exiftool to add it all.  Worked with all the processing of the photos, and got all the exif data added to all the files I'd rescanned in the past week.  Had cajun potato wedges for dinner, and then watched Seven Years in Tibet (which we'd never seen before) with the sweetie.

Should be fine right?

Should be fine right

Should be fine right

Sunday.  Another day of powering through getting the processing of Dad's slides up to date.  Ok so I didn't do much else all weekend, but I'm in a pretty good position to keep up with Dad's slides as I rescan them over the next couple of months, and then I'll be all done.  At least with his slides ;)  I might have also spent a bunch of time geotagging his photos from his holiday to Narooma in 1960.  And made a lemon cheesecake.  And planted some lemon seeds (that were sprouting inside the lemons).  And blogged.  And had some chicken from Robert's feast I defrosted and reheated.  And watched some more Simpsons, Laid Back Camp and Encore.  And blogged some more.  

1980

I was seven.  In bed asleep.

1990

No photos, and no memories, but possibly I was with Chrissie and my friends at the Reid's.  

2000

I went over to Luc and Cynthia's for a bit of a party, and we walked down to the Glebe Island Bridge aka Anzac Bridge and watched the fireworks from there.

In fact we watched both the 9pm fireworks..

2000 Sydney NYE fireworks

2000 Sydney NYE fireworks

2000 Sydney NYE fireworks

.. and the midnight fireworks..

2000 Sydney NYE fireworks

2000 Sydney NYE fireworks

2000 Sydney NYE fireworks

2000 Sydney NYE fireworks

2010

Had Nat and Andrew, as well as Steve for a bit and their friend David, and had a bit of a pool party, and played games until midnight.

2020

The sweetie and I went out to the club with a small group of people and had drinks and snackages.

And because it's Canberra, it was so cold we needed to put the fire on!

Henkell in front of the fire

Happy New Year!!  (year in review post coming "real soon now" ;) )

2020.

Oh my.

We started the year at EffanC's, suffocating in bushfire smoke. We didn't go out to the club because I was too nervous about bushfires, and in fact even suburban fires. In 1994 I saw spotfires go a full kilometre from the bush, just a couple of hundred metres from our house. So I wanted to stay close. The bushfire smoke hung around for much of January and the devastation the fires caused was just heartbreaking.

The bushfires ended, then we got a massive hail storm that wrote off thousands of cars. I know *lots* of people that had their cars written off. And then it rained. And rained. And rained. Just a few weeks after the fires finished, much of the landscape was flooded. Which apparently is exactly what the river ecosystems *don't* need. Coastal communities begged Canberrans to come down and spend some money to help them recover. So we did. Although just an overnighter for Pete's 40th.

But then.

The C word.

As it hit, coastal communities begged Canberrans to stay away. When we got back from the coast, we dropped into Coles at Gungahlin to pick up a few supplies, including toilet paper (we were down to our last roll at home). We managed to get one of the last packets of toilet paper on the shelves. It was the last time I was to see toilet paper in Coles for about six or seven weeks. Fortunately I was able to get it at Chris's, otherwise things would have been pretty messy. The panic buying extended to all paper products that could be used in lieu of toilet paper - all the tissues and paper towel was gone for weeks as well. Pasta, pasta sauce, rice and even flour and yeast all disappeared off the shelves. I really didn't understand the flour/yeast thing - bread was still freshly available throughout the whole thing. In the second week even fresh food was mostly gone. Long lasting vegetables such as potatoes were nearly all gone, as was most fresh meat. One day (22 March) we went to the Belconnen markets and all three butchers had closed by lunch time Sunday because they'd simply run out of meat to sell.

On Monday 16 March I had the slightest hint of a sore throat and a cough. So Tuesday 17 March I stayed at home. And there I stayed. For six months. Other than a couple of odd days, and dropping in on a couple of weekends to swap out my backup hard drives, I didn't work in the office in any regular fashion until September. As it turns out I love working from home. Who knew. Previously I didn't really like it, partly because of my monitor setup is a bit backwards, but also because if I didn't go into the office every day I would lose the claim to "my" desk. But with everyone else working from home as well, and in fact they had a sticker on my desk for most of that six months saying don't work here (trying to keep people further apart), it wasn't an issue. And I got somewhat used to the monitors being backwards.

By 22 March, most flights around the world had been cancelled. The government imposed a travel ban. For every country they said "Do not travel". Restaurants, bars, cinemas and anything "non-essential" was shut down. I was quite upset by the impact that would have on low income earners. And then I raged at people whinging about their pay raise getting delayed six months. My holiday to Oberammergau to see the Passion Play got postponed two years. They started doing that play to thank God for saving them from the plague. And this year they had to postpone. Because of a plague. There's got to be some irony there somewhere. Qantas grounded all their 747s - forever. I was super sad about this.

In late March I went out at lunch time on a Monday to do the food shopping, when Jamo was a lot less crowded, and did that a couple of times. Still not much in the way of pasta/rice etc. We did big shops fortnightly to minimise having to go out. And I did the shopping by myself for a while too which was no fun because I like going with the sweetie. Every time I went shopping I swore I was getting a sore throat straight after. It was late April before I saw toilet paper again in Coles. June saw an outbreak in Melbourne, and panic buying started up again. In July I finally got my money back from Emirates for my Europe trip, although not the extra I paid for seat allocations.

Things eased up a lot in the second half of the year with no community transmission in Canberra since March. Restaurants opened and stayed open. We were able to start seeing our friends again. It hit Melbourne pretty hard in the middle of the year.  By December it looked like Australia was getting on top of things again. But then a driver of international flight crews got it in December and started spreading it around Sydney. Sydney went into lockdown of sorts and Mum couldn't come visit us after Christmas.

So a pretty wild year on that front.

Very little travel this year, for obvious reasons. I flew up to Sydney in February for Ryan's 21st birthday. But with all the delays it would have been quicker to take the coach. And that turned out to be my only flight for the year. I stayed with Mum and went to the 21st, where I put up a video of all the photos I'd taken of Ryan every week/fortnight/month/year since he was born. Caught the coach back the next morning. In March we went down the coast to stay with Kit and Pete for a surprise party for Pete's 40th. That was a bit of fun. Came home the next day. Did a quick trip to Sydney in late June to inspect my flat after the previous tenants decided to move out. We also dropped in to visit Luc and Lizzi, and on the way back I saw Nepean Dam. My flat ended up being empty for a month, and I had to drop the rent *a lot* which was pretty sad. In late August we wandered around the Snowy Mountains to Tumut, visited several dams and had a lovely afternoon at the Tumut River Brewing Company for Stu's 50th. In November Stu's brother convinced us to go up to Port Macquarie and South West Rocks to visit him and his father.

In lieu of actual travel, I did a *lot* of work on my travel photos. Throughout last year I'd gotten our Hong Kong/Singapore 2016 trip labelled, and had the blog ready for the fourth anniversary since we went. I geotagged my USA 2000 trip, fixed up all the labels, and got photos into the blog. I started geotagging my USA 2004 photos in February, but ran out of steam with that after about a week's worth, because it's *really* hard to geotag photos taken out of a moving car in the middle of outback USA. Next I labelled all twelve and a half thousand UK 2010 photos, finishing in December. I registered a Geonames account, and a Google Cloud account so I could use the Google Maps API in Geosetter.

Work was work. Still doing mostly internetty type stuff like firewalls and proxies. As mentioned previously, it turns out introverts like me like working from home. It's just so much more flexible and it *feels* like I'm home, even though I'm working. It means I can pop something in the slow cooker at lunch time, or something in the oven a bit earlier than I would if I got home at nearly 6pm. Or if it's a quiet Friday afternoon I can flex off for a bit without having to wait for the sweetie to go home or catch a bus. I got a bunch of our gear finally converted over to SNMP v3. I shut off access to an entire old environment. I fought with a particular firewall for months, including spending three hours on the phone to support one weekend trying to fix it. Still no resolution in sight on that one, but Wardie, bestest guy ever, has basically taken over, because he's awesome. Did a bit of training here and there, mostly free stuff. Got a new service desk tool in December, and had a lot of fun making shiny dashboards for it, which a bunch of other sections copied for themselves!  Socially, we had a gin night in early March, just before the lockdown. I actually missed the last work drinks before shutdown because of the slight sore throat I had. In August the guys started going to the Pot Belly for drinks, which we did for a little while before actual work drinks started up again. And I got to run my Christmas barbeque at the lake for over forty people. It was a lovely cool day, which made nice change from so many years where it's been crazy hot or shrouded in bushfire smoke.

Healthwise I was generally pretty good. Bouts of insomnia came and went a few times. Completely frustrating and debilitating. From mid March I felt like I had a permanently sore throat and slight cough for like a month or two. It was likely all in my head though. Got a flu vaccination in April. David came home with a cold in late August. He went home but it was too late - Stu caught it about a week later, and I caught it about five days after that. I was sick for a weekend. Stu was sick for a month. At least. I decided to go on short walks around the neighbourhood every day at lunch to get a little bit of exercise and vitamin D. I passed a lot of magpies, and decided to bribe them to not swoop me in spring by feeding them little bits of roast meat. All through winter they would see me coming and fly over. So cool! But come spring time they lost interest - there was obviously plenty of their own food around which they were more interested in. I also never got swooped :) Went up Mt Rogers once with David. Got some new reading glasses in December (should NOT have gone to Specsavers).

On the friends front, really things only went quiet for about two months from mid March to May. Other than that it was actually pretty much business as usual. We saw our fair share of EffanC at ours or theirs, including drinks over Zoom. We caught up with Kit and Pete when they came up in January to avoid the fires, and in February when they came up again, as well as Pete's 40th at their place in March. Had a few games of Kismet with them as well. We went to Rob and Lynne's with a bunch of peeps in January and again in December, and had them over in May. Went to a bbq at Brett and Sharon's in January, and the middle of the year we saw quite a bit of the A/M/C group, including some dinners, parties and walks. Got to see Rob and Fiona a couple of times too which was nice, as they really went into hibernation during the lockdown. Unfortunately didn't see much of Scott. Also didn't see much of Chrissie. Saw her on her birthday in January and I think that was it. Doesn't help that they are all always either crazy busy or sick. We didn't end up having a hanami lunch with Nat and Andrew.  I invited them but never heard back.  I would have chased them up but Stu was too busy and stressed with a uni assignment.  Had a lovely time at Aquila's 60th in January. Had Nelson and Susan over in August for vegan lasagna and games. Had drinks with Damien in September, I think that was the only time I saw him all year. We were supposed to go to Ben and Sarah's wedding in Queensland in October. Yeah that didn't happen. But Ben was able to have a nice 40th at Gungahlin Lakes on the day. We also had them over for dinner in December. And Doc organised drinks at the George for a bunch of work peeps between Christmas and New Year which was nice.

On the family side, well my family has been here the whole time! David has been living with us for a little over a year. While it can be challenging sometimes (mainly menu planning and trying to remember to vacuum around a shiftworker) it's generally been pretty good. And he fixes things! While he was here he replaced the light fitting in our ceiling fan (I think that might have been before he moved here), fixed the leaky ensuite toilet, installed new taps in the bathroom, installed LEDs everywhere, including some smartlights in the loungeroom that are pretty cool, installed a new extentible clothes line, installed a new oven, fixed the display on Stu's CD player, fixed the frequency on our digital radios, fixed up the bedroom curtain string which had come off the rails, fixed our back fence which had been pushed out by vines and photinia and finally broken in strong winds, phoned up and ordered and picked up a new fix tank lid for me, installed a bracket for the clothes line so we can extend it half way instead of the whole way, helped Stu build his new shelves, rewired the LEDs in Stu's four foot tank so it'd work with a standard transformer, installed a couple of new smoke detectors, fixed my scanner (cable had come loose, and I would have eventually figured this out because I would have moved it to test it on another computer). And he mowed the lawns. Seriously, most awesomest brother ever!!! And super handy having a qualified electrician in the family! About the best we could do to thank him was cook lots of roasts. Including roast lamb on his birthday, and he had a few friends over to help celebrate. I stayed with Mum in Sydney a couple of times - when I went up for Ryan's 21st, and when I inspected my flat in June. We saw a bit of Stu's family as well. Went and visited a few times in August, October and Christmas.  And we saw Scott and Kerry and the family and Jeff and Ruth in November.

Our social club events had to be curtailed somewhat, and I missed out on doing Christmas in July which I've done for a few years in a row now, but at least I got to do Christmas for something like fifty people (a whole bunch had to stay outside due to capacity restrictions). We had a few weekends out there while Stu was on the committee, including in January where I did some cleaning out of the "tool shed", a night in June, our first since February, where we really appreciated the little wood fireplace, and in July where I stared priming the cabinetry. Also had some time in early October. We went out for the last event before lockdown - an epic Mexican feast in February. One of the raffle prizes that night was a six pack of Corona beer with an attached N95 mask. There was a working bee in July where I scraped concrete off a glass door. That night would have been the Christmas in July night, and the alternative was going to be a bonfire, but it rained, so we cooked marshmallows in the wood heater in the shed. The first event post lockdown was a halloween party where I got to be Lego 80s Classic Space guy again. And then my Christmas party. And we finished the year there with a few friends and a lot of bubbles.

Another fairly quiet year with the fish. I bought ten zebra danios in April and put a few in my three tanks. Half of them died, some fairly quickly. I lost the angel in my 620T tank in September, and Chrissie's catfish was looking super depressed. I stuck my hand in to see if it was still alive, and the water was COLD. The heater had died, taking my angel with it. Pretty upset about that. I took a random day off in September, thinking I'd do some fish stuff in the morning and other things in the afternoon. But I ended up doing fish stuff *all day*. And I managed to break the lid of the upstairs two foot while I was trying to clean it. Stu got some little sucking catfish and some guppies at the end of the year. So Stu's four foot has ten congo tetras, one loach, one siamensis and four tiny sucking catfish. My 620T has Chrissie's huge sucking catfish, a huge old cory and two female danios. My upstairs two foot has two male danios, one who has been sick since shortly after I got him, but refuses to die. Little trooper. It also has a sucking catfish, and six of the guppies Stu got at the end of the year. My downstairs two foot has four of the male guppies and two sucking catfish from Stu's purchase. Also downstairs are five little tanks, all with two or three guppies in them to cycle the tanks.  No change with Stumpy.  He's just as much a gumby as ever.

Not much going on with the Lego. I'm still sporadically sorting Vic's Lego but it's just so painful. If sets were complete it would be a joy, but none of them are, so it's just depressing. I think the only sets I built all year were the set of Shanghai Stu got me for Christmas, and Neil's International Space Station.

The year started slowly with jigsaws - most of the first quarter was taken up with a three thousand piece jigsaw of The Bombing of Algiers. I did two sections of the forty two thousand piece Disney behemoth - Peter Pan and The Little Mermaid. Very few at work thanks to the lockdown, and not too many at home because I'm just too damned busy all the time.

I continued working on labelling and sorting photos. As mentioned above I geotagged and labelled thousands of photos. I also did a lot of filing of photos, but there's still sooo much to be done in that space. In March I started scanning Dad's slides. I started out doing a box a week, and at that rate it was going to take me four or five years. But working from home during lockdown gave me an extra half hour in the mornings that I used to scan a box a day. I managed to get all his slides scanned by Christmas, although I still had a bit of work to rescan slides that had dust on them on the first pass. Didn't quite complete that by the end of the year. In December I had a bit of a play with a gallery generator. The only reason I'm labelling all my holiday photos is because I want to get the majority of them online. I did consider Flickr, but I just have this feeling they're not going to last. Too many buyouts and changes of conditions. Most likely I'll just use S3 and pay the few cents a month it'll likely cost.

I continued to rage at Apple and the crappy things it does. It still messes with the timestamps on my files. I can't download movies first go, or second or third or fourth in a lot of cases. And can't download timelapse videos *at all* to my PC, I have to save them to Google Drive first and then if I'm lucky the encoding/dimensions will be right for me to play them on my PC. Calendar and contacts refuse to sync to Google like they used to (I don't think it's worked since I got my new phone two years ago and I've tried *everything*). The contacts don't even sync to Apple Cloud. I'm about ready to give up on Apple.

Most of the stuff around the house was done by David. Because he's awesome. Our oven element died in March. I cleaned the oven while he investigated getting a new element, but in the end we got a whole new oven. While I was on a work break. With no sleep. Yeah really not the best mental state to be buying home appliances. In April we went out to buy half turn taps. Again, while on a work break, from a situation at work I probably should not have left. The anxiety of that day was terrible!! But the new taps are amazing, I love them! Unfortunately the dripping shower was still there. Guess it's not the taps that are leaking. We had a plumber come look at it, and he did a whole heap of tests, and decided the membrane was gone (duh) and most likely just leaking through the grout. I could have saved myself four hundred dollars if I'd just done the "cover the drain and splash water on the walls" trick which I did just after and proved the same thing. We got a resealer to come have a look and give us a quote. But he was confused about why there would be so much leaking through the grout, promised to send a quote for a complete retile/reseal, but never did. Even when I mailed them again and asked. In March we cleaned out the dumping ground room so that Stu could have his own office. He'd been wanting to do that for ages. The timing was great, as it meant he had a private office during lockdown. He got new shelves later in the year and a whole heap of toys, and he really loves his little space. I spent a weekend tidying up the dungeon and under the house and rearranging everything to keep it clear of the drip. We had to get the Chinese pistachio tree removed in August because the trunks were sagging apart and it was in danger of falling down (onto Kit's garage). I was super sad about that because it was such a beautiful tree, and the birds absolutely love it, and as it turns out it was a great shade for the eastern side of the house, so our house is a lot hotter in the mornings now. We also got the tree guys to be brutal on our photinia which was getting out of control. Again. We had a roof restoration done in October and the roof looks very shiny now. Next up: solar. The garden continued to stay out of control. Although we did get a few strawberry plants off Michelle and got some very nice strawberries off them in October (the ones the slugs didn't get at).

We still managed to eat out a little bit this year. We took Kit and Pete out for dinner in January to Bella Vista. Went to Kinn Thai in January, February and March (which was our last eating out before lockdown). It's always fast service and the food really good. Had some very nice pizzas at Grease Monkey in January. Went to Grill'd with Neil in January to avoid the food court during school holidays. Tried Malatang Hotpot in January too. The one I had was fairly bland, and the one Neil had was super epic spicy, even for him. Need to try something in the middle, but then there was lockdown, and they're still not allowing you to handle the tongs to choose your own food. Tried Wild Panda in Civic when I got back from Sydney, but I don't remember it being anything special. Had lunch with the sweetie at Gus's in May - first eating out post lockdown. Had brunch at Rocksalt in June. Had some nice pork belly with crackling at the Lake George hotel a week before my birthday. It was going to be my birthday meal, but we ended up going to Chong Co on my birthday. And KFC for lunch of course. Went to Happy's a couple of times with the sweetie in September and October. Met up with a bunch of N-Gang people for dinner at Indian Pantry in October for a feast. Tried out Herbert's in November, and went there a couple of times in November and a couple in December with Tony and/or the Chrises. Had drinks a few times with the sweetie at the Beirut Bunker Bar. Had Disappointing Sushi, aka Hero Sushi in Civic in December. It lived up to expectations. It's literally a running joke with us now. You can be guaranteed that the hot food will be cold and everything has avocado in it.

As always, I do quite a bit of interesting cooking. I don't quite know how I manage that, since I'm not really a very good cook. Actually I'm basically a lazy cook. I like cooking things that don't require a lot of fiddly preparation or a lot of cleaning up. I cooked two pavlovas in January. I think this was the first time I'd ever made a full pavlova. I thought I'd have another go at Christmas and failed miserably. Twice. We had cheese and bacon sausages we got from Coles a few times. They're great to have in the fridge because they last ages, so we can use them when we've run out of other food. Made curried sausages in March to try and use up some of the many tins of curry powder we have in the house. We tried out Dominos "deep pan" pizzas a couple of times. They were pretty disappointing. Nothing like the crispy doughy deep fried goodness of pizzas in the eighties. Tried a slow cooked marinated beef in March to try and use up some of the mustard powder we have in the house. It turned out pretty well. Made nachos in late March, probably the first time I've ever made nachos myself. Several of our lunches during lockdown consisted of various types of puff pastry scrolls - cheese and vegemite and pizza scrolls being favourites. Did a coq au vin in April. Cooked a couple of "Yum! Delicious!" cakes and a cashew slice with Mum's peanut slice recipe. I also did Anzac Biscuits on Anzac Day which has become somewhat of a tradition in recent years. I did a few tomato based stews as we went into winter, and we think all the extra tomato set off David's gout, so we had to cut those right back. There was Sizzler cheesy toast a couple of times, and taco Tuesday multiple times - soooo bad but soooo good!! Did an epic lasagna in May. Tried a pulled pork in May. It was pretty amazing, but such a waste of crackling ;) David obliged me with a Country Cheese and cheese sauce craving and had quite a bit of that over winter. Whenever a packet is open it evaporates very quickly. Tried a couple of non-tomato based bakes from my gratins and bakes book - a broccoli and cheese penne with garlic and lemon crumbs, and a potato, bacon and blue cheese bake, both were very nice but also quite similar to my regular veggie bakes. Made an Irish stew in July - Stu was going to make it but life got in the way so I did it.  It was nice enough. Tried slow cooking beef brisket in July and fell in love with it, and did it several times. As well as some slow cooked pulled beef and NQN's beef cheeks as well. Slow cookers are amazing for hearty winter cooking! David reminded me of our youth and Dinner Winner, and we had Coles' One Pan Dinner a couple of times, and even had authentic Dinner Winner once. There may have been a rocky road in there at some point, and a fairly nice gingerbread cheese cake I made at Christmas. There were several weekends where I spent several hours cooking up meals for a week or more, to save cooking during the week (which is really no fun at all when you don't heat up the kitchen to save money on heating costs).

I saw exactly one movie/theatre/show/exhibition this year -
* Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker

As usual for recent years I/we worked my/our way through a lot of movie series. This may have been aided *a lot* by Disney+ !
* finished up watching through all the James Bond movies
* watched Star Wars episodes VII and VIII before seeing IX at the movies
* finished up the Pixar series with Coco and Toy Story 4
* watched a *lot* of original/remakes of Disney movies - Aladdin, Dumbo, Lady and the Tramp, Freaky Friday, The Lion King, The Parent Trap (just 1 and 2 they don't have 3 yet), 101 Dalmatians and Mulan
* saw a few "Australian classic" movies - My Brilliant Career, which I really didn't like, and Ned Kelly, which I thought was better
* in March was the 30th anniversary of seeing Labyrinth for the first time, so we watched it on David's Bluray
* we had to watch some pandemic disaster movies, so watched World War Z first up because Contagion had been pulled from Netflix, but David had Contagion on DVD so we all watched that later too
* Frozen II
* Airport series
* Naked Gun series
* Star Wars - I think we saw all nine this year
* almost all the Ghibli movies, except Grave of the Fireflies which wasn't on Netflix. Some of them are amazing. Some of them are crap.
* a few of the Herbie movies (still a couple to go, it's a bit of a struggle since they're very silly)
* Die Hard 1 and 2 and Love Actually at Christmas. David dissed Love Actually on Facebook, but he had the choice to leave but didn't and he seemed to be enjoying himself. Just sayin ;)

And again, somehow we managed to watch our way through a lot of TV. I always feel like I don't have time to watch tv/movies, and yet somehow we see a lot. Mostly from Thursday to Sunday, as Monday to Wednesday is "work" nights.
* first episode of Who is America
* Star Trek: Picard
* The Mandalorian (season 1)
* Big Bang Theory - finished mid year, took a little over year to watch all 12 seasons
* Brooklyn 99 until it ran out of episodes (up to season 6?)
* Fuller House (last seasons)
* Lego Masters (second Australian season)
* Unorthodox
* Filthy Rich
* The Dismissal
* The Miraculous Mellops
* The Simpsons (most of the way through season 5)
* High Score (documentary)
* Against the Wind
* Discovery (season 3)
* The IT Crowd (all of it)
* The Mandalorian (season 2)
* The Queen's Gambit

Not a lot of reading this year. I don't catch the bus much and I mostly feel too tired to read when I go to bed.
* Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, by J.K. Rowling
* Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy (all five books in the trilogy), by Douglas Adams
* Penguin Bloom, by Cam Bloom and Bradley Trevor Greive (I also started Heartache and Birdsong)

Other stuff!
* Started "This day in history" posts
* Got Disney+ and watched a *lot* of Disney
* Got some cute "living stones" - succulent plants that grow extremelly slowly
* Played with Picasa for Ryan's 21st "morph" series
* Got our NBN fixed in January - because last time they did work they broke one of our connectors so we were only getting half the speed we should. David organised that because he's awesome.
* Used Picasa to tag people in a lot of work photos, still a long way to go on that
* Collected the next batch of Stikeez - got all but one of the specials
* Our rose bush and rhododendron out the front put out just a couple of flowers right at the end of summer when it finally rained
* Had cheese and nibbles with bubbly, and Chong Co delivered for our anniversary
* Went bed shopping in June but didn't find anything we really liked
* Went to Ikea and bought storage cubes for David and drawers for stu
* My domain - kazza.id.au turned 18
* Had a big outage of my web hosting in late June. Went looking for a new host and found VentraIP, but they didn't support Perl DBD::mysql so had to cancel it all again. But it did force me to do an upgrade of a dll in Eudora which allows secure downloads without ssl errors, so that's a win
* Had issues with the vacuum cleaner - it kept getting jammed - with my hair :(
* Got so much rain in August all creeks and rivers around Canberra flooded a bit
* The boys bought me a Dyson cordless for my birthday
* Couldn't get on the Qantas 747 joy ride flight out of Canberra, because Qantas' website sux donkey balls. So I watched it fly over central Canberra from Mt Ainslie instead (arguably better for photos anyway!)
* Listened to some podcasts with the sweetie - The Eleventh, Winds of Change, Thirteen Minutes to the Moon
* Got super sad at all the 747s around the world being retired
* A neighbourhood yappy dog pissed me off by barking non stop for literally hours at a time
* The winter was so warm our potatoes survived the whole winter without freezing
* Enjoyed Floriade in the suburbs!
* Went for a drive with the sweetie around Denman Prospect and out to Cotter
* Had a Bunnings sausage in October for first time since lockdown
* Voted in the ACT elections early so I didn't get a Democracy Sausage (most places I don't think were doing them anyway)
* Had a free run to the tip because what we took was mostly all metal
* Had to fight with windoze to maintain access to our NAS - its ancient version of SMB is making windoze super sad
* Tidied up all the packing materials in garage, with the idea to use it all to sell stuff
* Vodien moved my blog to a new host, but didn't tell me. Well, apparently they did tell me - to an email address that doesn't actually work anymore.
* Failed at jeans shopping
* Tried out Return-It's bulk facility which is only marginally better than their drop off system
* Saw the moon and Saturn and Jupiter near each other, but not at their closest point

Our year was finished off at the club. We headed out there on New Years Eve eve and stayed two nights, and had a fairly relaxed New Years.

2020 sure was one crazy year. Here's hoping 2021 settles down quickly into the "new normal".

Happy new year!! 

Still backdating ;)

Tuesday.  Slept ok, woke up on time. 

Beans

Beans

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

Hedge before

Hedge after

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+.

Floriade site

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.

The sweetie making vegan lasagna

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

Roborally

I won this game of Fluxx

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.

Daffodils

Epic pork crackling

Charred brussels sprouts

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.

2019 Year in Review

The new year started for us in the Bermuda Triangle! It was 9am Caribbean time, 12am AEDT time. Stu was in bed and I was eating breakfast. And I watched the Sydney fireworks. Live. On an ocean liner. In the middle of the North Atlantic. I love technology :) We actually managed to stay awake til midnight ship time and heard them sound the horn to mark midnight.

So our overseas trip of the year was just the tail end of our North Atlantic crossing and Caribbean cruise. Had four days in New York which is not nearly enough time. Came home via Singapore on the longest commercial flight you can take (for now) - 18 hours!. Early in February I went up to Sydney to visit Mum for a post-Christmas catchup. Went and saw a Lego show, took the River Cat to Parramatta and caught up with Pam, and later with Daniel and Fi. Didn't get to see the Cartans on the Sunday morning which was a shame because Doug Cartan died later in the year. Visited Luc and Lizzi for Ryan's penultimate donut photo and saw Cordeaux Dam on the way home. We went down to see Kit and Pete several times - in March to see their house and go to their engagement party, in July for a visit and to do some wedding planning and go to the zoo, in November to do some wedding planning and meet and ride Kit's new horse Jet, and in December for their wedding. Went and visited David in Junee in June. In August I went up to Sydney for Diana and Graham's funeral, and Chrissie and I geeked out at standing in the spot we met thirty years and a couple of weeks earlier. Came home via Dapto that trip to meet up with Kit who wanted to look at a horse (not Jet), and had a fun drive up Macquarie Pass. In November we went to Melbourne for the weekend to see Harry Potter and the Cursed Child with Hannah and Rita.

Work was pretty decent this year. My life is four things: source, dest, port, protocol. Simple. Except way too many people don't understand basic client-server communication which is pretty frustrating. Whenever I had the time I would clean things. Our section disbanded (or was announced it would be disbanded) around February 14 - exactly one and a half years after I started in that section. I went back to comms but kept sitting in the same place for a while longer until they did a bit of a floor reshuffle. Fortunately I was able to get a seat away from the corridor and things stayed pretty stable which is essential for my mental health. Socially there was a big event at the beginning of the year which included an Escape Room, and dinner at the War Memorial, Laser Tag, and I ran a trivia night for it (using mostly recycled questions). We won a trivia night in April which meant we ran one in September. Had a whiskey night in June and a ball in October. Our drinking buddies dropped like flies though - Lachie, then Doc, then Hannah. Very sad times. Ran our annual Christmas party at the lake again, but it was very smokey and numbers were down - only about 40 this year!

On Valentines Day I had my appendix out! My first ever general anesthetic and first ever hospital stay. Then in April Annie had hers out too - didn't know these things were contagious ;) After surviving the plague ship (don't travel in northern hemisphere winters with old people - everyone gets sick) and not even getting sick when Stu did, I had a very small cold in February, but then survived all winter without getting sick again, only to get one in September then another one in December. The one in December was the worst and I was coughing for a couple of weeks, including being sick at Kit's wedding. Insomnia was a lot better this year but still got bouts of it.

Saw a bit of my family. Saw Mum in Sydney in February. David and Kat came to stay in April. Took them out for a bbq at the new van. Mum came to visit in June and we went down to Junee to visit David. Later blacklisted Kat from ever coming here again - I can't stand the way she treats David and there's no way I could be civil to her if I saw her ever again. David came to visit in October and we took him out for his birthday and then on a tram because he was going to interview for a job driving them. David got the job, and moved in with us in November (had to clean out space in the bedroom, bathroom, pantry and study). Mum came down at Christmas for a couple of days. We saw a little bit of Stu's family too. The other Stu came over for dinner in January. Kerry and the kids came to see the balloons in March and dropped in to visit. Dropped in to see Annie and the kids in April and save Daisy's life (emergency cash supply). Scott and Kerry and the kids dropped in briefly in October. Saw Noah on his 18th birthday. Stu and Annie and the family came over for Christmas lunch. I saw a bit of Chrissie during the year. Went over for a couple of low key dinners in January (hot cross bun ice cream!) and December, saw her the night her aunty and uncle were murdered and we just tried to process, had a few lunches out and about, and a nice BBQ on Anzac Day which also included her Dad, siblings and their partners. Saw quite a lot of EffanC and the N-gang which was great, including a couple of dinners at R&F's, various visits back and forth and dinners out at Pot Belly and Malaysian Chapter with EffanC including an election night event and New Years. We're still missing Kit and Pete and the chickens although did see them a few times during the year. Other than the four times we went down to the coast, they also came to stay for Tarun's wedding in March. Went wedding dress shopping with Kit then had dinner at Old Canberra Inn for Pete and Leisa's birthdays. They came back again in April to see Kit's brother before he went home to Germany. Kit came up again in May for Katie's sister's funeral and her friend Sophie's wedding. I organised Kit's Hen's at the end of November - Laser Tag and dinner at George Harcourt with drinks after at Moby's. And I ended up being a bridesmaid at their wedding after it became too difficult for Audrey. We farewelled Stewie and Cath (again) in February. Fiona came to stay the weekend after I got my appendix out, but was pretty stressed about it because everyone was sick and I couldn't sleep in the spare bed. Jenn came over a week later for a Turkish feast, and we caught up for drinks with her in October. Went to see Doc's new place with a big group of work peoples which was lovely. Had a couple of dinners with Hannah, at Dumpling Inn and Pizza Artigiana so Stu could get to know her before we went away together. Had our annual hanami part with Nat and Andrew, although I was sick the original weekend and the flowers were mostly all gone by the time they did get to come over. And went to @CLBradley's 60th at Ciscos.

Spent a bit of time at our social club. There was a Finnish night in March, with a wallaroo joey. Not to eat - that's Australian, not Finnish ;) In April we bought a well-established van off another member to give us some space to move (our old van was just barely big enough to sleep in, and even then not really). Sold the old one for a lot less that we paid for it because it had a leak that we never fixed and wasn't in great condition. Spent a bit of time cleaning and decluttering the new one, but there's still a long way to go. Had Chris and Ian's anniversary there, it's been a shame that I've had to miss two of them over the years. We did Christmas in July again for a huge crowd. Had a couple of nights there in August, including the AGM on Stu's birthday (doh!), and another night in September. September was a Chilean night, which was great, but some people really need to learn to better estimate catering. I mean a bit of overcatering is fine, you don't want to run out, but you also don't want an entire fridge full of leftover food - both cooked and uncooked! Went for Oktoberfest in October. We missed the Christmas party because we were down the coast at Kit and Pete's wedding. We were going to go out at New Years, but I was too nervous about the weather and potential for fires.

Pretty quiet fish year. I discovered my angel is a girl - she laid a couple of batches of eggs! At the end of the year I had four active tanks. The angel tank, with the angel, a cory, and a sucking catfish. The two foot, with three black neon tetras and a sucking catfish. Chrissie's little tank, with two clown loaches and a sucking catfish. And the downstairs two foot, with one large danio. Stu has his four foot which is always covered in algae because the lights are too good and there's not enough algae eaters, a tiny tank on his desk with a white cloud, and a little tank downstairs with a white cloud. There's also four empty tanks that were for killifish but they all died. I want to restock my tanks, but needed to prove I can take care of them first (ie, making sure at least one of them gets a water change every weekend, so no more than four weeks between water changes for each tank).

Nothing much on the Lego front either. I'm still working on sorting out Vic's Lego. It's extremelly slow going. It takes a good chunk of the weekend to do pick parts for six sets, so if there's anything on on a weekend nothing would happen. Really need to get back into it, as I really want my tubs and floor space back.

Not so many jigsaws this year either. I feel like there's too many other important things to do to "waste time" doing jigsaws :( Similarly with any of my other hobbies.

The weather was *hot* when we got back from overseas in January. We had the cooler running for three weeks straight. There were a lot of thunderstorms at the beginning of the year too. Had a duststorm in February. Then drought with a dry winter and super dry November and December, and the shroud of bushfire smoke for most of December.

Around the house.. I took a few days off at Easter to have a ten day break, and we Marie Kondo'd the house - well, clothes, linen cupboard, under the house a bit, some of the garage, and the pantry. David came during that break and replaced the light in the fan light, and also the kitchen lights, with LEDs. Had the sewer pipes eeled in May and he cleared a blockage at the same spot twelve metres in as last time. For Christmas I treated us to new towels - the first time in my life I've ever had matching bathroom linen - loving it!

Considering it feels like we don't eat out all that often, it seems like we ate out a lot. I tried Master Hin Dumplings at the mall. Very average dumplings. I'm surprised they're actually still there. Went to Chong Co on Australia Day and had their delivery a couple of times. Went to Gus's with the sweetie in February. Malaysian Chapter and Pot Belly a couple of times with EffanC, and for a work farewell lunch. Indian Pantry with Cath. Had Pho Hub with Neil. A couple of work lunches at Chompy's. Had Yat Bun Tong at least once with the sweetie. Possibly only made it to Dumpling Inn once this year - to meet up with Hannah so she and Stu could meet and we could discuss Harry Potter. The sweetie took me out to Temporada on our anniversary which was expensive but excellent. A group of us went to Rashays for their $5 lunches in May. We haven't been back since. Tried Tasting China and Akiba which were both pretty good. Went to Chez Kimchi a few times. They're ok but their menu is just a mess. Had Disappointing Sushi (aka Hero Sushi in Canberra Centre) a couple of times. It always meets expectations - it's always disappointing. We had Pizza Artigiana a couple of times. The first in July to meet Hannah's flatmate Rita who we were going to see Harry Potter with, and again with Stu in August. Tried lunch at 54 Benjamin a couple of times. Nice, but a bit expensive to do too often for lunches. Had Alice's in July, the Lake George Hotel in Bungendore in August with EffanC, Bella Vista on my birthday, Happy's in December. Tried out Yarralumla Kebabs' new store in Belco. Pro tip - take a knife and cut one in two and split it with someone - otherwise you'll feel to stuffed at the end (even Stu finds them too big!!). And went to Bharat International with some work guys. And there were several treks to Kingsley's ;)

It seems I wasn't terribly creative in the kitchen this year. Or maybe I just didn't document things. We ate one of Kit's little roosters and made a couple of lasagnas with her tomatoes. I had a lot of fun with puff pastry - making cheese and vegemite scrolls, pizza scrolls and cheese twists. Made tacos a couple of times. A large kit works a lot better with three people than two ;) Made a gnocchi carbonara bake a couple of times. Also made cheesy hash browns which are always pretty awesome. And made a huge batch of gingerbread biscuits for Christmas.

The only theatre/shows/exhibitions I saw were two Lego things (Lego Cities by Ryan McNaught in Sydney, and a private Lego Christmas Show in Ngunnawal), and Harry Potter and the Cursed Child in Melbourne.

The only movie I saw in theatres was the Lego Movie 2 - the Second Part.

Saw a lot more movies on TV. As well as invididual movies which I won't list, we (or I) also carried on watching movies in series. Including:

  • Kung Fu Panda 1 and 2
  • Sherlock Holmes 1 and 2 (Robert Downey Junior version)
  • The Hobbit 1, 2 and 3
  • James Bond movies, starting in April, still haven't quite finished
  • Paddington 1 and 2
  • Bridget Jones 1 and 2
  • Molly Ringwald teen movies (except Breakfast Club cause that's kinda boring)
  • A few Tom Hanks movies
  • Twilight saga
  • Die Hard 1, 2 and 3 (haven't had a chance to see the rest yet)

Watched a surprising amount of TV too!

  • The Good Place Season 3
  • Tidying Up with Marie Kondo
  • Discovery Season 2
  • Fuller House Season 4
  • MacGyver Season 1, start of Season 2
  • Homeland Season 7
  • Brooklyn 99 - up to season 5
  • Death in Paradise Season 3
  • Lego Masters
  • Veronica Mars Season 4
  • The Good Place Season 4
  • The Amazing Race
  • Fuller House Season 5

I'm not a big reader but did get through some books:

  • Heaven is for Real - Todd Burpo
  • The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and six more - Roald Dahl
  • Silicon Snake Oil - Clifford Stoll
  • Little Brother - Cory Doctorow
  • The Cult of LEGO - John Baichtal and Joe Meno
  • You Always Remember the First Time - edited by B.S. Johnson
  • The Reader - Bernhard Schlink
  • On the Road - Jack Kerouac (never finished)


And as always, I finish off with a big list of other bits and pieces..

  • Started blogging weekly on Sunday nights, as that seems to happen more consistently, and get my photos online in a more timely manner
  • Still raging that Apple sees fit to modify the timestamps on my photos and screenshots - on the phone!!
  • Posted my Canberra 1986-2016 blog to Reddit and got a lot of nice comments
  • Android (at least the last two Stu's had) has a SUPER annoying bug where the forward facing camera has no date taken exif data saved. Makes it harder to geotag the photos.
  • Finally filled up my 2T drives with backups, had to split them out. Also bought a 4T drive to have room for everything. Took nearly a week to copy everything
  • Found "Tent Go Bye Byes" on the internet so Mum could finally see what all the fuss was about in 1983
  • Finished scanning all of Mum's photo prints
  • Saw the Balloon Fiesta
  • Took a stack of Tupperware to the Green Shed
  • Read all of Julie Powell's "Julie and Julia" blog (started and got a good chunk of the way through in February after I had my appendix out, finished in September)
  • Collected all the Coles Stikeez. And Little Shop 2
  • The neighbours got ducks, although they didn't keep them for too long
  • Got asked to be a bridesmaid at Kit's wedding. Got the shoes for the girls
  • Finished scanning all of Mum's analogue photos. Started on her slides.
  • Got our democracy sausage in May
  • Finished labelling all 10000-odd photos from our last trip
  • Created an S3 bucket for holiday photos. Still haven't gotten around to doing anything with it.
  • Filled with rage at Qantas' website and general customer service, booked my next trip with Emirates instead
  • Three cats we know - Pookie, Celeste and George - all had to be put down
  • Processed and labelled all our Hong Kong and Singapore 2016 photos and got them into the blog
  • NBN screwed us over - disconnected us during upgrades and never bothered to reconnect us. Had to get a tech to come out and fix it. Found out a while later they'd downgraded our speed from about 25mb to 12mbit. Bastards. (Edit: they broke the connector, hence only half the speed, later we got it fixed)
  • Microsoft FINALLY enabled control-backspace in Notepad!!
  • STILL raging at Apple and the inability to copy timelapse (and even regular video) files to my computer
  • Bought a toasted sandwich maker - loving that
  • David bought me a new frying pan (and another one at Christmas)
  • Had my hair trimmed. Trimmed is an understatement.
  • Got my North Atlantic trip fully labelled and blogged
  • Didn't see blue sky in Canberra from before Kit's wedding til the end of the year
  • Saddened by the bushfires that raged through south-eastern Australia
  • Played some escape games on my phone which are a lot of fun
  • Watched both Christmas Carols events. Carols in the Domain are pretty tacky but Melbourne's Carols by Candlelight is still ok.
  • Spent the last couple of days of the year tidying and organising the house, and catching up on blogging

We finished out the year at EffanC's for a quiet evening with great friends.

Monday night was washing, dinner, tv, kitchen and suddenly it's 19:43.  Sigh.  Did do some holiday photo processing and blogging though.

Tuesday was dinner, BBT, kitchen but only 19:00 - better.  Patched and rebooted the computer.  Half an hour later.

Taco Tuesday

Wednesday.  Sucky day.  Realised I'd broken stuff and had to fix it.  Realised other people had broken stuff and I'm *still* waiting for them to fix it.  Had leftover lamb for dinner and inflicted our last holiday slide show on David.  

Thursday we went to Bharat International, an Indian grocery store that has a restaurant attached.  I had goat curry which was ok, but a tad spicy for me and very bony.

Bharat International goat curry

A guy at work had this tshirt which was pretty cool.

Never Forget

Didn't you know it's *never* lupus? ;) #bbt #housemd

It's never lupus

Friday was the first of the work Christmas parties.  Quite a lovely afternoon.  Didn't go bowling because it was too hot and sunny. 

Had a drink with Kit in the evening which was really nice, before she headed off to the pub with Katie.  Watched The World is Not Enough.

Saturday got bits and pieces done in the morning while Stu went off to the club and Kit slept in. 

In the afternoon was the first of Kit's hen's events - Laser Tag!!  Except there was only ten of us, so they put us with fifteen little 10-11 year old girls.  It was chaos.  Fricken Little Girls everywhere.  And they'd hang around in little packs or pairs.  The worst thing was some of the expressions on their faces - they looked like psycopaths or something - no emotion whatsoever, they would literally just stare at you and expect you to move on.  I'd have been a lot happier if they'd actually looked like they were having fun.  Still, our team of five (Kit, the bridesmaids and Leisa) won both games.  I came fourth in the first game and second in the second, and Kit won the second which was pretty cool.  

Hens laser tag

Hens laser tag game 1

Hens laser tag game 2

Came back to my place so we could get changed and get ready then headed out again.

Hens bride and bridesmaids

This time to the George Harcourt.  Those guys *seriously* do not want business.  Well not if you want to book anyway.  During the week I tried about five times to get through to the function number - 0423 257 978 - but they just wouldn't answer the phone.  I left a message once which they did *not* return, even though I explicitly asked them to to make sure they'd received my message (because last time I left a message a couple of months back when I was trying to make the original booking, they never returned my call).  I tried one last time to call the function number before calling the pub directly, but they answered this time.  I asked them to please change the numbers from 15 to 18.  I bet you can guess what happened.. yep, they never ammended my booking.  Not impressed.  Fortunately it all worked out and we all fit in.  (I won't even get started on the fact they don't do "doubles", even in a high glass, yet they will happily sell me two at once, or apparently you can get it on the rocks - so you could mix it yourself.  Makes no sense at all).  

But anyhoo.

Bride and mother of the bride

Had a pretty good night there and Chloe and Katie had a couple of party games which were a bit of fun.  Chloe and Kit and I split two dishes (arancini balls) between the three of us, which was a much more sensible quantity of food.

At midnight Chloe drove Kit, Katie and me to Moby's.  Had a couple of drinks there (these guys don't take cards at all, all a little dodgy).  I was trying to hold out for Kit but I just couldn't keep up with the youngsters so called it a lot earlier than them.  

Sunday I woke up pretty much at normal time, because that's what my body does.  Had a bit of breakfast (loving our toasted sandwich maker) then attempted to get more sleep.  Failed, because that's what my body does.  Still, I rested for a few hours, so wasn't as tired in the afternoon as I would have been.  Made toasted cheese sandwiches for Kit and Chloe before they went home.

Around lunch time I logged on to do a cutover of mail to our new environment.  Except we had a really really bizarre issue that I just couldn't figure out.  So rolled back the change.  Didn't figure out what the problem was until today.  Stoopid dependencies.  So what should have been a ten minute job had me online for 2.5 hours :(  #grunt.  Watched some Amazing Race in the afternoon, and BBT and Good Place with the sweetie in the evening.

Today I woke up with sore throat but felt mostly ok.  Busy day as always.  But the sore throat wouldn't go away and by evening I was definitely starting to feel sick.  Fricken great.  I don't have TIME to get sick - I'm too freakin busy both at home and at work to get sick.  Had dinner with the sweetie at Happy's, then did a small food shop.  And instead of me doing All The Things that I need to do, I'm going to go to bed as soon as I've hung out my washing.  I certainly don't have the energy to fight with Apple to get my photos, so I'll update this entry with photos later.  

Sweet and sour duck at Happy's