Monday came home a bit early and did All The Things.  Spent some time processing photos from our Hong Kong and Singapore trip - which I'd geotagged the originals instead of the resized ones I usually work with.  Also talked to Ric for the first time in well over ten years.

Tuesday we had Cath over for dinner - did lemon chicken and a sweet potato salad - both out of the Coles magazine.

Wednesday finished fixing up the Hong Kong / Singapore photos, and geotagged all Stu's photos from the trip, which I hadn't done before.  Then finished watching Twilight.

Thursday had quiet drinks and an early night, but didn't sleep very well so was a bit of a zombie on Friday.  At least it was a bit quieter than in recent weeks, and even had time to do decommissioning cleanup.  Had quiet drinks after work and watched cranes moving stuff around.  Watched Never Say Never Again in the evening.

Saturday we went out to the club fairly early, but when we got there most of the gardening work had already been done.  Stu helped a bit with that, and I helped chop vegetables, only slicing open one finger.  Like the Chinese New Year one a few years ago, these guys need a bit more practise getting catering quantities right.  We chopped a whole bunch of food that never even got cooked, and what did get cooked could have feed two to three times as many people as came.  So upsetting.  Anyway, the rain washed out the rest of the working bee.  I even tried to have a snooze but just don't sleep well during the day so never even got to sleep.  Didn't get much done in the afternoon either.  In the end went up to the shed for happy hour and dinner.

Didn't sleep very well, awake at 6am.  Took some containers and filled them up with leftovers.  Filled my esky to the brim and barely even made a dent.  Chucked some money in the honesty box, because basically I took home food for our entire week.

Was really tired today and just couldn't concentrate on anything much.  I did get up to the end of the one year in Julie Powell's blog, and then watched Julie and Julia.  A few differences in the movie to the blog, eg them moving to Queens at the beginning of the story when they actually moved part way into it.  And starting on August 13th instead of the 25th.  Odd thing to do.  Maybe to finish the year before the great blackout of August 14 2003 (funnily enough I remembered that date before I read her entry for that day, and wondered how it played out for her.  Turns out they only lost power overnight).  This is her boeuf bourguignon entry.

Cooked up the potato and pumpkin I brought home, and had it with the last of the chicken from Tuesday, and watched Veronica Mars.

So after Easter we only needed to take three days off to have ten days in a row off.  Connor was cool with me doing that, so that's just what I did :)  (The sweetie had to go to work on the Friday).

The mission for the break was to attack some of the clutter around the house.  I made a very long list before the break, knowing that we wouldn't get anywhere near getting it all done.  

Day 1.  Lesson 1.  Clothes.

We actually did what they did on the show (I've only seen the Netflix show, although Stu has read the book) and pulled all of our clothes from both cupboards and put them on the bed.  The pile was pretty big, bigger than I thought it would be, but smaller than most of the people on the show.  Then we through it all.  Stu actually got rid of a *lot* of clothes.  I didn't get rid of much.  And there's a couple of things in the give away pile that I might take back.  Even though they don't fit.  Just because they're a bit sentimental.

Day 2 I attacked the linen cupboard.  It was actually relatively neat already, but I did pull out a few things to give away, and tidy a little.  I still want to get a few tubs for linen that's not used very often, to slow down the silverfish.

Day 3 I went for the pantry.  This actually took a couple of days, doing a shelf at a time.

Then I ran out of steam.  And David and Kat came to stay haha.

I did get to the gardening corner of the garage on the Friday.

So still a lot I want to get done.  Just have to take the odd random day off here and there ;) 

So Monday.  Day four of our break.  But I didn't get anything much done around the house because I spent the morning getting organised to go to the club.  Made some cheese twists for lunch before heading out.  The previous owners of the van left a lot of kitchen stuff and tools behind which is great, but *all* the cupboards were full of stuff, with no free space to put any of our stuff.  Got a bit overwhelmed by it on Monday afternoon.  And it poured with rain.  A lot.  Had some leftovers we'd brought for dinner, and watched the start of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade on tv, but went to bed before it finished.

Tuesday I spent pretty much the whole day cleaning out the cupboards and reorgansing everything so it fitted into the cupboards more logically, and left most of the big cupboard free for our stuff.  Did a couple of loads of washing up to wash stuff in the drawers and some of the cookware.  Felt a lot happier with things by the end.  Although still nowhere good to store food.  D&I fired up the fire in the oasis, so we had a beer with them which was nice.  Tried out the bbq.  It doesn't light with the lighter thingie, but runs ok if you light it.  Cooked some sausages for dinner and we had a nice bottle of 2011 shiraz I got in 2014.

Wednesday morning we came home.  Thanks to Tony though for taking our bins out - they'd been collected by the time we got home, and the recycling bin in particular would have been a disaster if we'd missed the pickup.  Cooked some pizza scrolls for lunch.  In the afternoon cleared/cleaned the middle shelf of the pantry and the two drawers under the oven.  Cooked honey mustard chicken for dinner, watched Homeland and From Russia With Love.

Didn't do much Thursday.  Did some photo filing in the morning, then headed over to Chrissie's for a bbq for lunch.  James was in town, first time I'd seen him in twenty five years, with Anita, and Susannah and Rob were there too.  So it was quite the family gathering for them.  And then they got out all the family photos that survived the bushfire (as an aside, Como Presbyterian Church reopened twenty three years ago on this day as I type this, same day as Port Arthur massacre.. moving on..).  David and Kat came over late in the afternoon and we had lamb roast and started a 2000 piece jigsaw.

Friday Stu went to work.  David pulled apart our bedroom fan light which had died a couple of months ago.  We'd gotten a new bulb but it hadn't worked either.  Turns out the ballast had gone.  Someone let the smoke out.  This fan light had been installed in November 2008.  A "Brilliant" branded fan light we got from Bunnings.  Don't do that people.  We never could get a replacement light for it.  The last one we got was a much smaller T4 bulb because we couldn't find any the right size.  Pretty sure that was in April 2014.  So instead of trying to replace the ballast and not get a bulb that fitted anyway, we decided to get a similar sized LED oyster light and mount that instead.  It looks slightly odd, but works just fine and cheaper than a whole new fan light.  Most awesomest brother ever!

So that was done in the morning and we were like.. now what?  D/K went out for a wander round Canberra and I got stuck into cleaning out the "gardening" corner of the garage.  Too many spiders and other disgustingness for my liking.  D/K gave me a lift into town later where I met up with the sweetie for a drink and dinner for our anniversary (and they went off and did their own thing).  We went to Temporada and had quite a delicious, if very expensive, dinner.

Saturday and David couldn't help himself, he wanted to replace our ancient fluoro kitchen/family room light fittings with LED ones.  So a trip to Bunnings (where it was decided against getting the "Brilliant" branded ones, even though they looked nice because a) Bunnings staff couldn't/wouldn't get the panel of test lights turned on to look at them, and b) they're Brilliant branded, which we've already established seems to be non-standard anyway), and then a trip to Project Lighting.  Got some flat round lights that don't quite cover up the old holes, so we'll need to sand/bog/paint that at some point.

We did one of the lights in the morning, then headed out to the club to show D/K the new van (and get out of Stu's way as he was trying to study).  Had a bbq out there (we really need a new gas cylinder), then came home again, and David replaced the other light.  Had pizza for dinner, watched Goldfinger, and finished the big jigsaw.  Pretty good effort for two days. 

Sunday D/K went home and I spent the day coming to terms with the end of my holiday :(  Tidied up a lot of the house, did two loads of linen washing, got some holiday blog entries online, got some kiev balls from the shops and cooked those for dinner, watched Brooklyn 99 and Death in Paradise.

Ten days is not enough time off.  I really need those three month holiday I used to get when I was at uni... *sigh* ....

We had a very quiet day today.  After having to socialise Every Single Day of the break, we decided to avoid people.  I didn't get much done though, partly because I was feeling a bit blah about the end of the holidays.  We did do a bit of gardening though, and had a swim.  I cooked a nice big roast pork for dinner, because we missed out on getting much crackling or leftovers at Christmas.  Our fridge is stuffed full of food again now, so now the fun part begins of getting through it all :)

Tuesday - Melbourne Cup day.  Helped run a big party at work and made sure all the food got eaten there or taken as leftovers.

Wednesday - Celebration of Neil and Dave5's respective 40ths

Thursday - work drinks, then BBQ at @CLBradley's

Friday - quiet night to myself

Saturday - went to the Ingress First Saturday at Gold Creek, then over to Mishi's for games in the evening.  We played a game of Roborally first up, which proved to be difficult, even on a "starter" board.  We also played The Logo Game which I won (really must give that back to DC - after scouring for good trivia night questions).

Today was just housework and food shopping.  But after my enthusiasm was deflated the whole day became a chore to get through.  But we did do a thorough clean of the bedroom - vacuumed about five years' worth of dust from behind the bed, as well as wiped down most horizontal surfaces.  And Stu did some gardening.  And I did some pool stuff.  Cooked a stack of veggies for dinner, to go with some leftover pork.  And no washing up.  Just wiped out the frying pan, and chucked the baking paper.  Easiest cleanup from a roast ever.

Feeling like it's bed time at 8pm though :/

Last night after dinner, Doc came up for some gaming and Singstar.  We all played Buzz for a while, then some Mario Kart.  But during a race the picture on the tv fritzed out and died completely (still had audio).  Even a full reboot didn't help.  So then there was some drama with the other tv and cabling and consoles.  In the end we just did Singstar using the limited collection of downloaded tracks that I have, so ran through those and then called it a night.

Haven't tried the tv again today, but now we have to go through the drama of either getting the current one fixed, or getting a new one.  Blerf.

Today was just photo stuff, gardening stuff, pool stuff, shopping etc.

I've had this plant since I was a teenager.  The original plant has probably been in the family for much longer.  When I was in uni I used to do a lot more gardening, and evicted this plant to a rock crevice next to my garden, since ribbon grass has a habit of taking over as much space as you give it.  I never thought it would survive, but survive it did for twenty odd years.  It's still there last I looked.  Before mum went and sold the house. hrmm.  Anyway, a few years back I took an offshoot of it.  They don't grow very well in Canberra (too cold for them) but they do well enough inside.  So I have several now, because it's very happy and keeps sending off new shoots.

Ribbon grass flowers only last a day

And this is a salad I got from the farmer's markets in Bungendore a while back.  The tomato I added, but it had fun things in it like nasturtiums and flowers.  It was a fun, tasty little salad.

Thursday I had a horror night from not feeling well in my stomach (I hadn't even drunk that much at drinks), to hurty hitting at midnight.  So not much sleep then.

Friday I donned my Sadie gloves for a little cleaning (although not as much as I would have liked).  That night I watched the Shawshank Redemption which I hadn't seen in years. I wouldn't mind reading the book some time.

Saturday morning first thing we had brunch, did some food shopping and went to Bunnings.  And then it was after midday.  How does that happen?

Lamb mint chili chocolate sausages from Market Meats Belconnen - they were pretty good!

Then headed out to the club.  Did a bit of trench digging, but ended up helping measure curtains up for hemming.  We hung them in the bus later and they looked amazing.  Had dinner there and chatted to J&H for quite a while and I even went in the sauna.

This morning we came home earlyish via breakfast at Quangers Scottish Restaurant and Office Works.  

I did some painting and fish stuff and gardening.  Accidentally started watching Secondhand Lions on tv and ended up watching the whole thing, was quite good.  Then went and did our food shopping for the week.  Tonight was Veronica Mars and dad's documentaries.

The piles of crap on my desk are getting higher and higher.  Really must clean them up ..

Had one night at home which gave me a chance to do two loads of washing.  

Then headed out to the club on Friday after work.  Stayed two nights, which is actually the first time I've ever done that.  On Saturday afternoon I pulled all the utensils, crockery and glassware tubs out, cleaned them, sorted their contents and made labels for it all.  Took pretty much all afternoon.  Yipe.  Sunday morning I finished the job by doing all the cutlery drawers.

Left for Sydney from there a bit before midday.

Feed me!!

Went and visited Dad (he's much the same).  Took him some hot chips.  Also read him the $#!+ My Dad Says list that I've been working on - sayings and stuff that are distinctly him.  He laughed at a few of them which was cool.

Mum did a lamb roast for dinner which was yummy, then we continued on with the workshop.  Made pretty good progress on one of the work benches in the workshop.  Pretty much cleared a whole surface.

OMG a work bench!!!

Tonight (after a dinner of scotch fillet steak) we continued on and around the corner.  Found papers dating back to 1976 - gardening and orchid stuff he was into years ago.  And a lot of disgusting stuff hidden up the back which probably hasn't seen the light of day in twenty five years.  And a piece of HO scale railway track.  And unopened tools.  And lots of duplicates of tools.  We think he would lose things and then go and buy another one because the old one was buried.  Silly really.  Setup some boxes - one for screw drivers, one for pliers and cutters, and another for "small" tools.  And another one for multimeters - at least four of the things.

Dad installed this intercom so that mum could call dad when he was downstairs in the workshop.  Except after a while the voice bit of it died, and only the call buzzer really worked.  So for the latter years of its life mum would press the button three times, which meant dinner's ready.

A few trips ago I forgot pyjamas.  This trip I forgot my phone charger and house keys.  Fortunately someone at work has one, so didn't have to go out and buy a new one today.

Will get some photos into this post later in the week.