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Sunday.  8th.  John Williams' birthday.  I really must remember that.  Not that he's likely to have many left.. he's fricken 94!!!!  Stu cooked up some chicken with mushroom sauce and some greens which was very yummy. Then we watched the old school Disney version of Peter Pan.

Stu's chicken and mushrooms

Monday.  Early night. Interrupted by the mother type person calling. Then I was restless. And awake from 5. Hurrah. Some tickets and crap in the morning and spent most of the afternoon writing up more stuff to decommission. Stu cooked some pork and fennel sausages with cabbage for dinner (the sausages were a bit dry unfortunately), then we watched the last episode of season 2 of MacGyver.

Tuesday.  Okish sleep I think. Busy day I think. Stu cooked some yummy creamy lemon chicken for dinner then into season 3 of MacGyver.

Stu's creamy lemon chicken

Wednesday.  Took ages to get to sleep - epic restless legs.

Sunrise

Sunrise

Super busy day - barely any time for jigsaw breaks! Stu cooked a cauliflower bake and goats cheese stuffed mushrooms which were very yummy.

Cauliflower bake and goats cheese stuffed mushrooms

Thursday.  Woke up around midnight cause my guts were upset for some unknown reason. Then stayed awake for a couple of hours waiting for things to settle. Sigh.

Pretty geranium

Busy day deleting All The Things.  Good drinks - lots of people.  Pizzas for dinner.  Not quite a repeat of the last two weeks as we were out of mushrooms.  There's pepperoni and feta, olive and capers, and tomato and spring onion.

Pizzas

Then MacGyver then started watching Airport to keep us awake til Kit and Pete got here (they'd come up for a comedy cruise and thought they'd play tourist here for a couple of days).

Friday the 13th.  Slept okish I think. Busy day of decoms and tickets and crap. Chilled out with Kit and Pete after work and got Turkish delivered from Lokma (the same place Mishi did last weekend).

Lokma Turkish feast

Chatted for a while then watched an episode of Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency which was.. bizarre haha.

Saturday.  Happy Valentine's Day.. remembered various anniversaries of my family that can't really be celebrated anymore. 

Geranium heart

Mostly awake from 3 and fully awake from 5 sigh. Zombie morning. Kit and Pete wandered off for much of the day and I did mostly Lego stuff (and some dotz!!!).

Also made up breakfasts for the week.

Keto breakfasts

Trigger warning for Tony!  Found her in the recycling green bin.

Red back in the recycling bin

Kit and Pete brought home some Luv-a-Duck peking duck for dinner which was awesome.

Peking Duck

Later we played a game of Ticket to Ride (Europe) which I won, but it was actually really close and one move either way would have changed the outcome.

Sunday.  Slept slightly better. Did some dotz in the morning. Went with Kit and Pete to the Old Bus Depot Markets which I've never actually been to before! It was very uncrowded, and apparently a shadow of its former self. 

Old Bus Depot Markets

Old Bus Depot Markets

Then dropped into Canberra Glassworks which I've also never been to.

Canberra Glassworks

Canberra Glassworks chimney

Anyone know what this is?  Google image search suggests either an epic insulator (seems unlikley) or an air raid siren...  Edit:  another search indicates it was in fact an air-raid siren!

Glassworks mystery

Canberra Glassworks hoppers

Canberra Glassworks Hot Shop

Kit and Pete wandered off home and I did some food shopping on the way home. Then tried to get KFC for lunch but the lazy or hard of hearing server mistook "large Pepsi Max" for "large chips" (which I annoyingly didn't pick up on), and then completely ignored me when I asked for a receipt. And the girl getting the chicken dropped a piece onto the floor because she was being careless. Hopeless. Talked to the mother for a while in the afternoon and then my weekend is over. hrmmm.

And Windows is STILL forgetting my photo in tray folder settings. Windows 11 is seriously BAD!!!

Wow. So 2025. It sure was a year!

Travel

I went to Adelaide with Mum in late February to visit my Uncle Graham who was in hospital for three months being treated for a lymphoma. He was doing really well at the time (he'd really only just started treatment). Good news is he's done with treatment and is (so far) cancer free. We went down the coast to visit Kit and Pete in March for Pete's birthday and I went to the Milton Show with Kit. I didn't go to Europe with Mum, even after spending months planning it. At least David got to go instead. I did go up to Sydney the day before they left to go through everything I'd prepared with them. In November the sweetie and I took ten days off and headed down the coast, staying in Narooma and Kiama. Didn't get to spend as much time as we would have liked in Narooma due to reasons, so we hope to go back again some time soon. Did a day trip to Sydney in December to see Back to the Future the Musical.

Work

At work I was the Naughty Email Intervention Layer (NEIL) a few times while Neil took leave. We're not sure what's going to happen to his position when he retires next year (after 50 years!!!!). I got to do a bunch of work on some of our management scripts to get them working in the new environment. Learnt a lot, which I've now completely forgotten. Did scripts to check on the quality of objects/rules, backup configs, look for orphaned objects, print out our rules in a friendly format, delete crap. I love those delete scripts whenever I use them - they save So. Much. Time..!! Used Copilot (and Google AI) to help me with regex and Powershell (the regex stuff was pretty cool - I gave it a problem and it found me a solution - that worked!). Did lots of decommission work in the first two thirds of the year, ran out of time with everything else going to do much in the last third of the year. I still think my job description is mostly "Sadie". Helped Neil build and cut over to some new mail servers (which took months to finally get to do after they were like, oh, yeah there's a bug, soz). Ray brought in his pizza oven in February for a team lunch which was quite fun. We farewelled HBZ in February which was a bit sad, also farewelled Julian and Bruce in March and Imaar in October. There were trivia nights in March (a bit trash), June (a lot of fun, and we actually won, but luckily didn't have to run the next one - they decided in advance that the last place getters would run it) and October (a bit trash). Had a small "anti ball" in April but it was a bit of a fizzer and I don't think I'd bother trying to organise another one. Used "New" Outlook for only a couple of days in April because it was trash. The dealbreaker was shared calendars which just wouldn't render properly. Did a massive cleanup of our main dev environment, which I've been wanting to do for literally seven years. It makes me so happy that it's *clean* now! Worked on policy for our new cloud proxies, but even though I've been using myself for months we're still not really any closer to getting it released to everyone. In November it suddenly became crunch time on our existing proxies - the old hardware (which we've been using for TEN YEARS) was going EOL and we didn't want to renew the licence and we weren't ready to cut over to our new proxies, so I spent a few days migrating the policy to other equivalent but newer hardware, doing all the paperwork, and prepping it all so Con/Ward could cut it over while I was on holidays. It went mostly smoothly which was epic awesome. Spent a heap of time looking at what talks to some legacy domain controllers so could replicate their rules to new ones. Broke something during a transition though sadly. It was fixed super quickly once they told me though. Had to rework our ticket dashboards when they upgraded versions and our originals were done so long ago they were "legacy" and didn't work properly. Had various Christmas parties in December, including my annual bbq at the lake attended by over 40 people.

Health

I had a bit of a sore throat in February. Spent two days in bed and pretty sure I beat it off because I didn't seem to get fully sick. Mainly I was paranoid about getting sick because if I did I wouldn't have been able to see Uncle Graham in Adelaide. Ongoing bouts of insomnia and thermoregulation issues throughout the year (thanks menopause). Oh, and the minor inconvenience of the C-word. Not that C-word. The other C-word.

Family and Friends

We started the year (almost) with some of the n-gang (we left at 11:30 and got home just before midnight). Mum and D/K/S came for the family Christmas lunch in early January for last year, and a week before Christmas for this year. I definitely like doing an early family Christmas. Went to see Lily for her 21st in January. Had EffanC over for dinner in February, and also my birthday, and went over to theirs for dinner in May. David came to visit in March to install a new light fitting in the kitchen. Because the old one died. It was only six years old. Hating on how crap everything is nowadays. Mum tripped over just inside her village entrance in March and was knocked out and broke her collar bone. She went to hospital and they did a bunch of scans because they didn't know if she'd passed out and then fell, or got knocked out from the fall. Passing out first would have been super worrying. Fortunately there was security camera footage and you can clearly see she just tripped (she was power walking and was just moving off the main path when she tripped on a raised bit of concrete). Had Jenn over for dinner in March. It had been two years since we saw her last. Whoops! Caught up with Luc for drinks/dinner in May and December. Fiona came over with a care package in May, and visited again July. Tony also dropped in a care package in May, and we went to the arboretum in July, as well as had a couple of movie nights. Had lunch at the Burns Club with the Chrises and Tony in June and the Chrises and Glenda and Neil in December. Kit came to visit in August for Ben and Sarah's baby shower (which I would have loved to have gone to, but, people). Went and saw Annie and the family in August. Had Friday afternoon drinks with T/J in October - we really must do that more often! David and Kellie came to stay in November when they went and saw Ricky Martin. Went to Rob and Fiona's in November for a deck warming. Had Mishi's 60th in December. Had a super quiet Christmas Day, but Stu did got to see his family (and we'll hopefully catch up with them on New Years').  New Years Eve Eve party at M&M's with some of the n-gang.

The Social Club

We went out in June for Ian and Chris's 10th wedding anniversary formal night which was lovely. I did our annual Christmas in July by remote control this year - the sweetie did all the shopping for me, I did as much prep work as I could either at home or in the van, then got the sweetie and helpers to cook it all on the night (with lots of printed out instructions!). Went out again in September - Stu for a committee meeting, and I did some priming of cabinetry. Went to the Halloween Spooktacular night in October which was fun. Went out again in early November for a committee meeting for Stu, and I continued priming cabinetry. Then there was R&F's Christmas party in late November.

Photos

Spent ages picking out photos for Mum's funeral (on account of she wants to see it and I want to get it done in advance should the worst happen and then it would be one less thing I would need to think about). Spent chunks of time here and there tagging people in Picasa. I figured out how to have different databases for different people groups and even wrote a startup script to make it easy to switch between them. Jumped in to finally getting my Europe 2016 photos online - spent ages and ages culling culling culling, then labelling them and getting them online. I still have to make panoramas and get them online. Also filed a lot of photos into directories with more descriptive folder names. Re-scanned all of Mum's slides at the highest resolution my scanner would go (the first time I did them very quickly at a medium resolution). Then rescanned the ones with fluff on them, sometimes over and over and over again. I've geotagged our south coast trip from November, but that's all I've done so far.

Fish and Stumpy

Stumpy's UV light died at the end of last year, but I couldn't find anywhere that sold a 48" 10% UV light, so had to make do with an incandescent bulb which does heat *and* UV in one. He'd been pretty lethargic at the beginning of the year, possibly because of the lack of UV light. He perked up again with the new light, and got really quite tanned over the course of the year. My AquaOne 620T tank leaked in February because the filter wool drifted over and blocked the outlet, backing everything up. Whoever thought using chipboard to make fish tank stands would be a good idea should be shot. Lost the sucking catfish in the two foot downstairs in February - it was happy then was dead. Towards the end of the year I thought I was losing the clown loaches - they both hid in a corner and wouldn't come out. But in the last week or two they've been behaving more normally.

Our current fish inventory:
* upstairs two foot - a whole heap of guppies at various ages
* four foot - nine congo tetras, one lone male guppy (I'll get him some friends when others in the other tanks get big enough), and an enormous fat loach
* Chrissie's tank - two clown loaches
* angel tank - a whole heap of guppies at various ages
* downstairs two foot - a whole heap of guppies at various ages

Lego

Spent ages of time (and money) on Vic's Lego. Bought a crazy number of loose pieces to complete some sets. I managed to complete all the Creator and City sets. I built and photographed the Creator sets and have been building the City sets. Still a long way to go though. The LEGO Group is taking over Bricklink more and more. This year they forced you to use your Lego account to sign into Bricklink and later in the year they gave two weeks notice they were going to suspend trading in a whole heap of countries (which they then pushed back til next year). I'm just waiting for them to enshittify it completely. The only set I built new was 31134 - Space Shuttle, which I got for my birthday, but haven't had a chance to build the other two sets I got for my birthday.

Jigsaws

A little bit quiet on the jigsaw front, especially at work. Bought two jigsaws with a voucher from my 50th birthday, but have only done one of them so far.

Other Hobbies

My favourite hobby at the moment is diamond painting. I find it super quieting for my brain (which always seems to be overstimulated). After the little Christmas tree I did on Christmas/Boxing Day last year, I've done Green Eyed Beauty, Pink Galah and Banksia, White Cockatoo and Waratahs, and started on Oh Christmas Tree (which Dave2 very kindly bought and posted to me, on account of not being able to find anywhere in Australia that still had it). I did an Anko miniblocks Owl in Tree that I got for Christmas from Kellie and David which was very cute. I also did a Nanoblocks Church I got from the Green Shed sorry Vinnies sorry Goodies Junction in March. It wasn't quite complete but it was mostly there and is very cute. And there was also a Petit Blocks fox I got at Daiso for at work. It's very cute. I bought a brand-new-second-hand saxophone from the Young Music School sale in February. Had it serviced and got it back in August. I've done a little bit of playing on it but not as much as I would have liked. I did find some easy Christmas music for it which was fun and have been on the hunt for other music for it.

Weather

We had hail in January, August, September, November and December. There were various rainbows throughout the year. In October/November it went from needing the heater, the cooler, the heater, the cooler, the heater (although didn't actually run it that time) in the space of two weeks. Had lots of storms in November and December. Had an overnight low of 0C on 2 December.

Toys / Purchases / Techie Stuff

I bought a new camera in January because my old one (Dad's old one) had some dead pixels and just isn't as good as newer cameras in low light. But I got super frustrated at the 24-105mm lens which didn't have the range of my old camera/lens. I also got frustrated at how dull and lifeless the photos are from it. Did a bunch of testing comparing the new camera, the old 600D, my G5X and my iPhone. Also played with user mode settings to increase saturation and contrast, which has made a difference. In July I got a 24-240mm lens, much happier with it than the 24-105mm. The 24-105mm is still great for people photos and low light, but the 24-240mm is my general usage lens. I'm totally hating on Windoze 11 which does utterly daft things. Like if I open a text document on one desktop, it'll open it IN ANOTHER DESKTOP!!! Even if just a moment ago I'd opened and closed another text file on the original desktop. Or that it NEVER remembers folder settings. There's a few folders that I have specific settings (sorting by reverse date order, details instead of large icons etc..) and it resets them every fricken time I use them. HATE. There were a couple of times this year it remembered the settings, but mostly it just reset them. Or that sometimes when I unlock in the morning, windows that I've had on the right screen (my main screen) will randomly be moved to my left screen (which I don't use all the time) and I have to turn on that screen and move them back. Or that notepad is so trash now. If you have a large text file it becomes unusable due to the lag of it trying to do spell checks or whatever. Or it'll literally just not enter keystrokes and just skip one or more letters that you've typed. Or that Windoze will reboot AGAINST YOUR WILL when it feels like it. Or that whenever I attach a USB device it takes a full minute for windoze to recognise it. Or that whenever I attach or remove a USB device, explorer collapses what directories I have open, so I have to re-navigate to them all to get back into folder context. Or that when I open a command prompt (which I have pinned to my task bar), the command prompt doesn't open where the pinned icon is, it opens all the way over on the right of whatever else I have open. I got a new desktop at work and it's doing the same thing. Yet the Azure ones didn't do this. Or it'll just randomly jump to the top of the explorer window and I have scroll back down to find where I was working. Or it changed how folders are displayed by date. My computer crashed earlier in the year and in October as well. Frustration with Apple. If you let it automatically set the time zone, it'll just change the time zone on you randomly. It stuffed up a bunch of photos in Adelaide with its nonsense. Apple also merges timelines from different numbers into one message thread. So you reply to a message in the thread, but it goes to the home number not the mobile number and is never received. Apple is so stoopid. I had to split out Mum's mobile number into a different contact to stop that happening. Google broke Chromecast because they didn't renew a certificate. Eventually after a week or so they fixed it. OneNote threatened to force me into an Office365 subscription, but didn't end up doing it. I finally got around to setting up my phone to use my own hosted SMTP service because Optus was getting super flaky for trying to send mail. Raged at Optus who now FORCE you into using $5/day roaming unless you pull the sim out of your phone. BOM updated their website in October and half the country screamed at them for ruining things. Pretty sure CloudLoop made some change to email headers in mid to late November which means that mails from some places aren't rendering properly. I downloaded (and paid a little) for Thunderbird to handle mail from the problematic senders. Might one day copy everything across, but for now the way of filtering mail is super annoying.

House stuff

I spent ages in the first part of the year trying to get the back yard under control. Our lemon tree dropped probably about a thousand lemons over summer. I'm not even exaggerating - a branch fell off that had 110 lemons on it, and that was just one branch out of the whole huge tree. I juiced most of them and was drinking homemade lemonade for months. I grew a bunch of mini capsicums which I could harvest in April. Such a lot of effort (and having to water every single day) for so little reward (but a nice reward!). We tried to turn the heater on in April but either the controller or the heater was having a spaz and kept rebooting. In May we managed to get it to work and didn't turn it off for literally two weeks straight. After that we managed to operate it normally for the rest of the winter. But in spring, after being off for a few days, it got the crazy behaviour again. Potted a chrysanthemum that I'd accidentally uprooted out the front and it's been thriving. I still need to find a permanent home for it. Frustration the Mirabella Genio lights and app, terrible user interface and annoying to try and get them to repair. Started picking strawberries from the weeds in the back yard at the beginning of November and continued through early December. Not nearly as many poppies this year, must have been too dry for them.

Restaurants

We had Quan's Kitchen delivery in January (because Dumpling Inn presumably wasn't open yet). We went to Bar 59 a few times in January for work drinks, and again in April. Dumpling Inn is a continuing favourite, with deliveries in January, June (x2), July, August, September, October and December. So is Chong Co, with deliveries in March, April, May (x2), June, August and October. McGriddles at Maccas finally arrived in Australia! I had one in July but my sense of taste was shot at the time so couldn't judge it. Have had a few more since October though. Went to Ikko again for a work farewell in October. Went to Stellas by the Lake for brunch in November with David and Kellie, nominally for his 50th. Tried out Bamiyan with Luc in December which was really good. Tried out Grease Monkey in the mall in December. Went out to Four Winds for pizza lunch with Tony in December for our annual lunch out there. Went to the Labor Club with Mum and Stu in December. And to the Old Canberra Inn for Tony's birthday.

Food / Cooking

Our first meal of the new year was cheesy hash browns cooked on New Years Day. We usually have pizzas every Thursday night, mostly made ourself, but occasionally a commercial one. We often have Ingham's chicken Kievs on Friday nights. And we often have a roast dinner on Sunday nights. Made lemon pepper dill chicken a few times (with all that lemon juice!) and creamy lemon dill sauce with either chicken or fish a few times. Luv-a-duck Peking duck is a favourite, had that a few times. Did a pork neck in the slow cooker in February which was *amazing* and again in April. Tried Microwave Pork Crackle in February which was actually pretty good! Had steak a few times earlier in the year (we never get steak at home because Stu is usually meh about it). Had NQN's butt sorry beef cheeks in May. Stu cooked a little bit in April/May when he was on leave. Made a potato, blue cheese, and rosemary pizza in July. I couldn't taste it at the time, need to do it again. Did slow cooker lamb shanks in August. Tried a cheats mac & cheese with just a bit of water and cheese (and a bit of milk in one version, cream in another). Made a couple of coconut cakes - once in the microwave and once in the oven in August. Did slow cooker beef brisket in August. Baked a plain cake and icing in August from the Women's Weekly Children's Birthday cake book to test the recipe. Officially started cooking cakes out of it in September (just one so far!). Made puff pastry scrolls a few times - vegemite or pizza flavoured. Cooked some crackling by itself in November which turned out pretty well. Made some gingerbread biscuits in December. Made a peppermint slice in December.

Theatre / Shows / Exhibitions

* Pompeii at the National Museum in January with Mum which was really good
* AI in Science talk in April with T/J, but missed the rest due to avoiding people and being busy
* Constellations at the NFSA in April with Tony which was amazing
* Back to the Future - The Musical with the sweetie in December which was a bit of fun

Movies (at the movies)

None. *gasp*

Movies (TV)

* Heaven is for Real
* Die Hard 3
* Darkest Hour
* Star Trek: Generations (after seeing the Duras sisters in DS9 1.3)
* Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone
* Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
* Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
* Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
* Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
* Blackberry
* The Princess Bride
* Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince
* Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part I
* Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2
* Fantasia 2000
* Perfect Days
* Inglorious Basterds
* The Holdovers
* Jaws
* Flying High
* Rogue One
* Star Wars (A New Hope)
* The Empire Strikes Back
* Return of the Jedi
* The Post
* Cruella
* Forgetting Sarah Marshall
* Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
* Terms of Endearment
* Lego Batman Movie
* Lilo and Stitch (the original animated one, and the live action remake)
* The Green Mile
* Passengers
* The Last Emperor
* Back to the Future, I, II and III
* V for Vendetta
* The China Syndrome
* Die Hard and Die Hard 2
* Birdman
* The Neverending Story
* Love Actually
* Enola Holmes and Enola Holmes 2

TV

* Death in Paradise - seasons 11, 12, 13, 14
* Wednesday - seasons 1, 2
* Beyond Paradise - Death in Paradise but back in the UK
* Stranger Things - season 1 early in the year, then 2/3/4/5 later on
* Return to Paradise - a spinoff of Death in Paradise set on the south coast of NSW
* Meltdown: Three Mile Island
* Deep Space Nine - seasons 1-7
* Air Crash Investigations on Disney+
* Andor - season 2
* How to Change your Mind
* Turning Point: The Bomb and the Cold War
* Lego Grand Masters of the Galaxy
* Trainwreck: Poop Cruise
* Black Mirror - season 7
* Tokyo Trial
* Trainwreck: Storm Area 51
* The Antisocial Network: Memes to Mayhem
* Futurama - season 13
* You Are What You Eat
* The Simpsons - bit of season 36
* Lost Melbourne documentary
* GameStop documentary
* Pirates: Behind the Legends - a couple of episodes

Books

None. Although I did get some way through The Princess Bride by William Goldman. Reading is just so *hard*.

Other Stuff

* Got frustrated at the lack of response from Access Canberra in January over the new MyWay+ issues
* Got some ok photos Comet C/2024 G3 (ATLAS) in January
* Got our Queensland holiday from 2004 and Col and Sandra's wedding blogged. Only took 21 years to get online..
* Took some Cousin Itt photos in February
* Remembered 11 years since Dad carked it in February
* The Green Shed closed down booooo and was replaced by "Goodies Junction" run by Vinnies. Definitely preferred the Green Shed. Later in the year found out the owner of the Green Shed started a spinoff in Fyshwick.
* Did a keto diet for a few weeks in February to lose a few kilos. It was pretty effective! And mostly kept the weight off too.
* Neighbours moved to New Zealand in April
* Climbed Mt Rogers a bunch of times in April while I was trying to get a bit fitter for my holiday
* Did low carb again for a little while in April. Gave up when it became apparent I wasn't going overseas.
* Had a lovely drive around Canberra on our wedding anniversary in April
* Saw the Giant Crane in May
* Listened to the Classic 100 Piano in June
* Went to the Handmade Markets at EPIC in June
* Neighbours house was finally rented out in June
* Watched all of Jamie's Anti-Chef videos from the very beginning in order from August. Still only about two thirds of the way through them.
* A red-back spider took up residence in our letter box in August. She was spray-and-wiped.
* Crimson rosellas returned to chew on the beams supporting the roof
* Stu rage-retired in September. Then spent the better part of a month in agony from his back. Recovered from that only to have hearing problems and nausea.
* Saw comet C/2025 R2 (SWAN), but only barely
* Visited the new "Green" Shed (The Shed) in October
* Stu more or less took over some cooking and some basic housework in October or November
* Plucked a number out of the air to go for in the Melbourne Cup (my birthday), and that horse won!
* Got frustrated at MyWay+ which doesn't work properly. Got one free ride out of it, but then figured out a fix.
* Got some photos of the aurora in November, although I never actually saw it
* Made a beer advent calendar out of beers I missed from work drinks that Neil saved for me
* Found a 2011 10c coin!!
* Chipped one of my front teeth
* Neighbours got a new barky dog
* Reread the second half of the New Testament

So there we have it.  I guess a fairly quiet year in a lot of ways.  We're both hoping 2026 will be better, especially health-wise.

Happy New Year!!!

Sunday.  28th.  Stu wanted karaage chicken pizza for dinner. Whoops. Stranger Things 5.7.

Monday.  Busy morning of all the things. Decided to have another go at attaching the CanoScan 8400F on my main windoze 11 machine. I know it definitely used to work on windoze 11, but the last time I tried it it refused to work. So then I wondered if maybe I was just too impatient - anything I plug in with USB takes a full minute to appear to windoze. No idea why. It only seems to happen on my computer, has from day one. Anyways. It works. So all these years I could have been scanning on my main computer and not have to turn on my old computer to scan. Lego and dotz in the afternoon. Leftover turkey and veggies for dinner then watched Enola Holmes 2. Yay for dementia, even though we only watched it three years ago, I really couldn't remember *anything* about it.

Tuesday.  Early night, slept relatively well, but then of course awake from fivish. Realised my phone hadn't charged all night. Replugged the cable. Nothing. Then realised the wifi was off. Rebooted my phone but nothing worked. Then I noticed the clock radio was off. Great. Must have tripped a circuit. Yeah. At ~23:00. So half the house including three fish tanks and the fridge/freezer were off all night. Ice cubes were still frozen though so all good there. Most likely it's the old heater in the downstairs two foot. Although I replaced it a while back but never removed the old one, but now I can't remember which was the old one and which was the replacement. Will need to stick a thermometer in there (the old one wasn't heating properly). Also off was the cooler, so ran it on fan mode for an hour or so to try and cool down the house a little before today's 34C madness. Later Stu said he'd had an alert that the grid had gone offline, so maybe it was something to do with that. Not great that it would trip a circuit flipping to battery mode though. Another quiet day of fish and scanning and dotz.

Baby currawong

Bottlebrush

In the afternoon went over to M&M's for a pool party/bbq New Year's Eve Eve which was nice.

It threatened to rain.  Then it did.  A lot.

Ominous clouds

I haven't seen these since I was in primary school!!!
Maths blocks

BBQ at M&M's

Salads at M&M's

Wednesday.  New Years Eve.  We're officially a quarter of the way through the century.  Mediocre sleep. Day of reflection (writing up my year in review post), slide scanning, Lego, dotz.

Pink pools weeds

With a family of currawongs demolishing the plums on the self-seeded plum tree.  

Currawongs and plums

Revelation 21:1 Then I saw "a new heaven and a new earth,"[a] for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. 2 I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. 3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, "Look! God's dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. 4 'He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death'[b] or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away."

Finished re-reading the New Testament today.  The verses above remind of The Holy City from carols, so fun timing.  A new heaven and a new earth will be pretty awesome.  But for now we can just be content with a new year...

Photos to be added when I download them on the weekend.

Sunday.  14th.  Backdating this a few days.  Had leftovers for dinner then we watched a documentary "Lost Melbourne" about the loss of a lot of old buildings in Melbourne in the name of progress. Melbourne is still a lot better off than a lot of cities though, even Sydney.

Christmas tree with wrapped presents

Monday.  Awake from 12 for ages, then again from 5 for ages. Hurray.  Busy day not achieving much.  Went to Four Winds with Tony for our now annual tradition of wine and pizza.  Such a lovely place out there.

Four Winds red wine tasting flight

Four Winds white wine tasting flight

Four winds white wine

Four Winds pizza

Four Winds pizza

Four Winds magpie

Four Winds magpie

Four Winds magpie

Did some Christmas music on the sax in the evening.

The last strawberry of the year!

Last strawberry

Tuesday.  Crap sleep. Awake every hour or so feeling hot and needing to cool down. Another day of not achieving much. But we did have a division Christmas party at work which was nice. Came like second in the two lolly guessing competitions. After work we went and picked up the mother type person at Jolimont then went to the Labor Club for dinner.

Stu and fisherman's basket

I may have given those anchovies to the sweetie
Labor Club caesar salad

Mum at the Labor Club

Got home and looked at Mum's slide show of Croatia and Greece, then we looked at all of Dad's photos of Tasmania.

Wednesday.  Restless sleep. Fairly chilled morning, did a bit of cleaning.

Table set for Christmas lunch

Eventually D/K/S left Junee so I made apple sauce then a potato bake then another potato bake then the roast pork then a veggie tray bake.

Blue cheese potato bake (with thyme), bacon potato bake, brussels sprouts, sweet potato, spring onion and bacon (with hazelnuts), apple sauce.  Just missing the pork which is in the oven by this point
Family Christmas lunch prepared

Just finished doing all that when they arrived - great timing! Kellie brought a heap of noms so we had those and did photos and presents and stuffs while lunch cooked.

Family Christmas noms

D/K/S

The sweetie and me

Mum, David and me

The pork turned out fairly well (the crackling worked really well but the meat may have been a little overdone).

Epic Christmas feast

There may have been a lot of bubbles

Double double toil and trouble

Fire burn and cauldron bubble

Something wicked this way comes

Played a game of Five Crowns although I got super frustrated near the end when several rounds in a row people went out before I'd even had one turn, or maybe had just had one turn. So upsetting. I don't even know who won in the end.  Played a bit of Pictionary but just playing through cards not actually using the board. Put on Flying High in the evening. D/K/S left and Mum and I finished watching the movie ourselves.  All in all a lovely day.

Thursday.  Awake from some time after 2. Hurray. Dropped Mum off at Jolimont then went to work. Did a bit of party prep and DC rules work. At drinks I took up all the leftover cans of drinks from the work family party that I bought off Neil and washed them all (they were all covered in dirt). Pizzas for dinner then Love Actually but it was too late a night :(

Friday.  Awake from 4:53.  Sigh.  Then I started thinking about the day's party and all bets were off.  Hurray.  Party prep in the morning then party all afternoon! 

Party setup crew

Sadly I didn't catch any birds this year.  Leftovers for dinner then we watched part 1 of a documentary on the Gamestop nonsense. 

Saturday.  Awake from like 3:30. Hurray.  Spent much of the morning sorting out the rubbish and recycling from the party. Super annoyingly, some helpful person tried to clean up, and very helpfully threw out a bunch of the plastic forks. Pissed off about that because those things are irreplaceable!!! I also chipped a tooth on the last of the pork crackling I had at lunch. Sigh.  Storms and epic clouds in the evening.

Double rainbow

We were getting hail (only a tiny amount) while this rainbow was out
Double rainbow

Then it all disappeared.  That's the end of the storm right there.
Double rainbow

And there may have been a Dumpling Inn delivery for dinner..

Dumpling Inn delivery

Did I mention the epic clouds?

Sunset clouds

Mammatus clouds

Mammatus clouds

Super early night because zombie tired.

Sunday.  30th.  

Christmas tree

Stu finished cooking some potatoes from the club as well as some of the bread and we had that with leftover turkey and veggies. Stranger Things 4.5.

Leftover potato and bread bake up

Monday.  December! Minimun 8.7, maximum 18, 2 predicted overnight! Welcome to summer! Took ages to get to sleep again. Then awake from 4:30 and never got back to sleep.

Strawberries

Busy day being NEIL for a while, then catching up on chats and emails then clearing the ticket queue.

Turdburgers in the red valerian

Colourful butterfly

Cracked open this year's beer advent calendar after work.  Which isn't any sort of official one.  Since I couldn't go to work drinks for months, Neil saved all the Beer of the Weeks for me.  I had almost enough to fill an advent calendar box (I still had the box from last year's Plonk advent calendar).  And I've been collecting them now that I'm going back to drinks.  I also asked @aquila to pick me up the Bridge Road Brewers Christmas beers, so this photo doesn't show the box as full, but I'll have more beers than will fit :)

2025 Beer Advent

Did some music after work, dinner, Stranger Things 4.6, geotagging holiday photos. The house is a disaster. I still haven't finished putting up Christmas decorations. I still haven't fully unpacked or put all my washing away. Need. More. TIME!!!!

This star light is probably 24 years old.  This year one of the lights has finally blown in it.  I do have one spare bulb but I'd have to pull everything out of the cupboard again to get at it.. next year.. 
Blown light

Tuesday.  Took a while to get to sleep, awake at 4 but got back to sleep.

Welcome to summer in Canberra!!
Canberra summer

Busy day. I decided I really wanted to get back to working on a project I started months ago, but it requires a lot of concentration, which I couldn't really do while being NEIL and working on proxies. So tried to get back into it. But was interrupted every five seconds by people wanting crap and distracting me. I even stayed back late after work to work on it because it's quieter then, and I STILL got interrupted by someone wanting crap. FFS. Stu cooked some pasta to go with some pesto I dug out of the freezer.

Pesto pasta

Stranger Things 4.7. Then it was pretty much bed time. Sigh. Also getting annoyed at my email which isn't downloading properly for some senders. It's like the messages are getting corrupted somehow. Or at least just not rendering correctly.  It started around maybe mid to late November. They view ok on the server in webmail. Maybe there's something in one of the headers that's confusing things. There's definitely content downloaded but it's just not displaying. And it's not everything, it's only some mails from some senders. Sigh.

Christmas tree

Wednesday.  Okish sleep but awake from 4. Got into work early and was able to do a bunch of work before a morning full of meetings.

Connor tried the Stranger Things Upside Down Double at lunch
Stranger Things Double Upside Down

Stranger Things Double Upside Down

Got more stuff done in the arvo including fixing an ldap health check for TLS. Got home and the sweetie was cooking up leftovers from the club night. Stranger Things 4.8, then backed up my computer then it was basically bed time. hrmmm.

Thursday.  Took ages to get to sleep. Looking at traffic to domain controllers most of the day. Super quiet drinks - just our table.. oof! The sweetie felt like Dominos so that's what we got for dinner. Ate too much. Whoops. Stranger Things 4.9 (end of season 4). Some of season 5 has dropped so we'll be able to start watching that straight away. Although it's another three years later so the kids will be all grown up!

Friday.  Meh sleep.

Strawberries

More AD traffic checking. Lunch with the Chrises and Neil and Glenda at the Burns Club (aka Magpies) which was very nice.

Seniors Salt and Pepper Squid, with tartare sauce, lemon chips and salad, $20M $21.50NM.  At least the Burns Club is happy to serve anything off the menu, including seniors meals to non seniors.  See, it's not that hard, HERBERTS!!
Burns Club seniors salt and pepper squid

Drinks with Luc and his mate Stephen (from AARNet) at Molly (Old Fashioned and a Rusty Nail)

Molly

Molly Old Fashioned

Then dinner at Bamiyan - we had an epic feast of camel skewers, butter chicken, mantu (lamb dumplings) and lamb biryani. So good!! I ate way too much but did bring home some leftovers. Hasty goodnight as my bus arrived just as we got to the bus stop.

Saturday.  Crap sleep (bloated cause I ate (and probably drank) too much). It didn't cool down overnight either so had to have the cooler running with water all night. Spent much of the morning tidying the house.

Yeah it was stoopidly hot, but I'm trying to clear stuff out of the freezer
Eat the freezer

Then it was all afternoon at Mishi's for her 60th. Picked up TV dinners from Chris's for dinner, then watched Die Hard.

Die Hard

Candle light

Sunday.  Awake from dentist time for a while. More house stuff and sorting out holiday finances.

Finished the puff pastry out of the freezer
Eat the freezer

Food shopping after lunch.

Ethos topped out this week (you can't see the tree in this pic)
Ethos topped out

And the Premier inn is gorrrrne, skyline replaced with The Residence at The Markets
Premier Inn gone

And stressing over how little of my todo list I've gotten done this weekend :(

The Gate

Sunday.  9th.  9/11.  Stu had a recipe he wanted to make up this week that had pork belly, but not the rind. So the butcher cut it off and gave it to us separately. So I made crackling with it! It actually turned out really well.

Crackling

Stu also cooked up a cauliflower bake and some sweet potato and we had that with leftover beef.

Veggies

Stranger Things 2.6. Early night.

Monday.   So I think I got to sleep ok, but I know I was restless. Then I woke up at 4:42. Hurray.

Strawberry haul

Usual day of NEIL and all the crap.

We may have cut down the bamboo sprout..

Bamboo

Stu cooked up that pork belly with a very nice Japanese recipe. My only complaint: not enough vegetables ;)

Japanese pork belly

Stranger Things 2.7. Then finished watching the You Are What You Eat docuseries. Yeah really need to eat less meat! hmmm.

Tuesday.  Hebrews 9:27 Just as people are destined to die once, and after that to face judgment, 28 so Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many; and he will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him.

Got stuck into planning moving proxies temporarily. Remembering there's no such thing as temporary solutions at our work. Stu cooked up the mince I cooked the other day with some stock and flavourings.  And there was a lot more veggies :)  I didn't eat all that mince, I gave some to the sweetie.

Mince

Stranger Things 2.8. Finished watching Half-Life Histories (for now). 

Wednesday.  Stoopid MyWay+ is stoopid. It keeps refusing to bring up my QR code. Last time it did this I fiddled and fiddled and got it going, but not this morning. It did mean a free ride though.  Hurrah. NEIL/proxy migration/crap. I only really got any useful work done after about 16:30. Stoopid MyWay+ is stoopid. This evening I did what I did last time and signed into the portal within the app. This seems to kick it, and turns out that was probably what got it working two weeks ago.

Stu cooked up leftover pork belly with more garlic spinach and rice.

Pork belly redux

Stranger Things 2.9 which finished season 2 which was pretty cool. Tony messaged me about the aurora (which was super helpful otherwise I never would have seen it). Got some photos but couldn't actually *see* anything. Went to bed wayy past my bed time but then epic restless legs because I was overtired.

Thursday.   Yeah crap sleep after a bit of a late night. NEIL/proxies/crap. Finished copying across all the proxy config and then managed to test it. After Jim extended my admin ID because the new system is too lame and doesn't work yet. How am i meant to do my JOB without the access i need??  But yeah was super excited that the proxies "just worked" after copying all the config.  Even kerberos authentication which is a strange beast.  But then my desktop froze up and never came back which made me depressed because you never know what you've LOST when your computer crashes.  Good drinks though.  Made pizzas then watched The Simpsons 36.14 (I think we may have missed some, need to check synopses).  

Friday.  Crap sleep.  Again.  Hurray.  Hebrews 11:1 Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see. .. I learnt that as: Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.  I wonder what my printed copy has.  

Yeah I have strawberries growing as WEEDS in our pavers!
Paver weed strawberries

Strawberry haul

Poppy and a bee

Poppy and a bee

Geraniums

Miniature rose

Remember those LR44 batteries from 1998?  Well they finally died.  Given they were well over twenty five years old and lasted for nearly two years once I started using them I was pretty damned impressed.  Yayy Seiko!  I bet the Energizer ones I bought today won't last that long!

Logged into work and found my desktop had only frozen and hadn't completely crashed! So it was all there!!! Hurray!! Finished getting the proxy cutover work done and did some testing. I got frustrated at our border firewalls that barely work and you have to FIGHT them to get certificates deployed. Then I got frustrated with our Strata mob who don't send reminders if you don't pay your strata fees, they start charging ridiculous interest. No idea what happened this time, I had filed the email, filed the attachment, and marked it as paid on my budget spreadsheet, but couldn't find any payment in my internet banking. So I paid it. Without the interest. Because it's RUDE that they don't send a reminder first. I've complained to them about it in the past too. Then got frustrated with St George's internet banking which doesn't give you an option to add a nickname to payee accounts. So if I have two payee accounts with the same name but different account numbers I have to go and look up which account is which. Every. Damned. Time. They've never updated their internet banking interface in OVER TWENTY YEARS!!  So I complained AGAIN to them about it. Then I got frustrated at the ATO because their billing system is so TRASH!! I had a "New myGov Inbox message" so went to look. It's complaining about an overdue PAYG tax bill, but I can't find any original bills at all!! They just give me a dollar value and say it's overdue. They don't say which quarter it's for. Fricken HOPELESS ATO!!!!! Not only that, but most of the links from MyGov to the ATO site were giving such fun errors as "An error has occurred. We are currently experiencing technical difficulties. We apologise for any inconvenience. Try again later." Yeah thanks ATO.  Had EB over after dinner and we watched a 50th anniversary documentary on Jaws (Jaws @ 50) which was pretty cool.  

Saturday.  Awake from 2:52 for most of the rest of the night.  Hurrah. 

More WEEDS! ;)
Paver weed strawberries

Poppy and a bee

Day of housework, Lego filing, jigsaw, scanning.  Then went over to Rob and Fiona's for a "deck warming" which was a very pleasant evening, but a bit of a late night, whoops.

Deck warming

Sunday.  Slept relatively well all things considered.  Spent entirely too much time geotagging photos of Dad's. Whoops.

Brick poppy

Sunday.  2nd.  All The Leftovers for dinner - some pasta from the club, some veggies from last weekend, and some bits of cut up bread from the club fried in bacon fat (wheee). Stranger Things 2.1.

Chives flowers

Monday.  Restless sleep.

Strawberries

Was about to do Monday morning STUFF including cleaning the kitchen and doing some weeding before my washing was ready to hang out, only to find a bit watery mess. Yesterday when I did a water change in Chrissie's tank I went around watering all the plants. I probably put too much into the big plant above the bins, so I stood with a towel waiting for it in case it overflowed. It came about half way up the tray then stopped, so I carried on. This morning there was water all over the top shelf, drips down the wall, drips onto the shelves and rungs below and over all the bins. Fricken great. So then I had clean up the mess. I don't have TIME for this trash. And that reminds me, I overfilled one of the ferns on top of Stumpy's tank and that went everywhere too. Sigh. Being NEIL and fighting with proxies at work. Nine minutes of weeding at lunch. Had to deal with mail servers being spazzes so didn't finish up til nearly dinner time. Sigh. Need. More. TIME!!! Stu cooked a couple of pretty spectacular pasta bakes with pasta leftover from the club event. The puttanesca one was pretty good, the creamy one needed a little more cream (we ran out) but was still tasty (and crispy!).

Stu pasta bakes

Stranger Things 2.2 then photo picking and half watching/listening to Half-Life Histories.

Tuesday.  Awake from around midnight for a couple of hours hurray. NEIL/proxies.

It hailed in the morning!

Hail

I wasn't in any sweeps this year (they've mostly died post covid) so picked number 14 (Half Yours, based on my birthday) before the race to see what would happen.  And he won!  With the second female jockey winning race.  Although I was a bit disturbed about all the blood, they said it was a "minor cut" on the inside of his cheek, but what from?  The bit? hrmmm

Half Yours winning the 2025 Melbourne Cup

Cooked up a very tasty rump cap and veggies for dinner.

Beef rump cap and veggies

Stranger Things 2.3, photo stuffs.

Wednesday.  5th.  Remember remember.  Slept somewhat ok. I think. It was nice and cold which helped. Although it meant the house was like 13C in the morning. Couldn't be stuffed running around and closing up the vents (again) so endured the cold.

Strawberry

NEIL/proxies (rinse and repeat). One of my fingernails is falling off. Hurray. Leftovers for dinner. Stranger Things 2.4. I can't SEE anymore. For the last few months I've been able to use my regular glasses for the computer but now it's going back to me needing to wear my "computer" glasses. Sigh. Started watching V for Vendetta but only got half way through.

Thursday.  Slept okish I think. NEIL mostly and dealing with whatever crap people came to me with. Did spend a bit of time planning how to get off some legacy load balancers. Good drinks.

The only correct way to eat Cheezels!!!
Cheezels

Pretty clouds

Pizzas, Stranger Things 2.5.

Chris didn't have any "special sauce" so the one on the bottom had a sauce of mayo and tomato paste.  We put pickles and mince on it to make a "cheeseburger" pizza.
Pizzas

Friday.  

Strawberries

Tried to have a catchup day - tried to get my inbox under control. Still a long way to go. TV dinner for dinner (the sweetie was at the club) then watched The China Syndrome (influenced by all the those Half-Life Histories videos!). It was freaky that this movie came out just a few days before the Three Mile Island accident!

Saturday.  Awake from 4:28 when a massive bang woke me up. Nothing much on the radar or lightning maps. Was hoping it was just a "bolt out of the blue" but no, crazy lightning all around. Turned off my computer and disconnected a few things, then didn't get back to sleep. Hurray. Mostly house stuff in the morning and some slide rescanning. David and Kellie came over later in the afternoon and we locked in Christmas plans with the mother type person. Had a drink or two and a nice catchup.  Early dinner of kievs, then David and Kellie went off to see Ricky Martin, then the sweetie and I watched Back to the Future and V for Vendetta.

Kievs for four

Sunday.  Couldn't get to sleep til like 1am on account of epic restless legs. Sigh. Took David and Kellie out for brunch as a belated birthday brunch for David so that was quite nice to hang out.

Me, David and Kellie at Stella's

Stella's by the Lake eggs benedict

Had a quick walk down to the lake after.

Swallow

Cirrus on Lake Ginninderra

These turds where zooming up and down the lake.  Pretty sure petrol motor boats are not allowed on Lake Ginninderra.  hrmmmm.

Motor boat turds

Motor boat turds

Then we went to Vinnies at Mitchell then the Green Shed sorry Vinnies sorry Goodies Junction.

Came home and David fixed the last Mirabella light hurray! (took him a while - in the end he did what the sweetie was going to do - take out all the "good" lights and keep turning on/off until the last one went into pairing mode).  Then D&K went home, the sweetie went food shopping, and I did some music.  And just like that the weekend is over.. hrmmm..

Sunday.  19th.  Super yummy roast pork for dinner.  2.5kg so barely fit in my baking dish.  There may have been a lot of fat..!

Pork fat

Because it was so big, the crackling turned out really well, but the meat stayed nice and tender.  It was awesome!

Pork crackle

Roast veggies

Stu decided we should watch Futurama.  They're into season 13.  But honestly they should just STOP.  It's done its dash.  13.1 was pretty dumb too.  Then I finished watching The Green Mile.

Monday.  Slept like crap - awake for ages because I was hot.  Another disjointed distracted day at work. The temperature today got to like 32C! Turned the cooler on for the first time this year. Yeah last week we had the heater on (briefly), this week we had the cooler on. That's Canberra for you. Leftover pork for dinner. Futurama 13.2 then blog reading and photo filing.

Tuesday.  1 Timothy 2:11 A woman[a] should learn in quietness and full submission. 12 I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man;[b] she must be quiet. 13 For Adam was formed first, then Eve. 14 And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner. 15 But women[c] will be saved through childbearing--if they continue in faith, love and holiness with propriety. .... yeah hmmm.  Again, makes you wonder how much of this is cultural.  

Slept like crap again - awake for ages because I was hot. Even with the cooler fan going.

Azaleas

Little white flowers

Busy being NEIL in the morning and not getting any other work done. My Christmas present arrived! ;) To be revealed.. one day..!  Penultimate nuking session, finished the Wasgij jigsaw, then walked up and visited Neil.

Neil visit

Hospital flowers

Then battled peak hour traffic to get home. Canberra has peak hour traffic.. who knew!? Leftover pork and veggies (refried in the "aspic" - I don't know why you'd want to eat that stuff cold anyway - just use it as a kind of "stock" to fry stuff in - much more yummierer!) for dinner, Futurama 13.3, blogged my last two Diamond Dotz birds sets.

Wednesday.  

First orange poppy

Last nuking!!!!!!

Last nuke

Got conflicting advice about my skin.  They're all like.. keep it moisturised.. but those bits, keep them dry.  Like make up your mind.  Rang the bell though hurray!

Ding!

Black Mountain Tower

Got home and had a couple of beers and got Chong Co delivered for dinner then Futurama 13.4

Chong Co

Thursday.  1 Timothy 4:10 That is why we labor and strive, because we have put our hope in the living God, who is the Savior of all people, and especially of those who believe.  .. "all people" .. and "especially"..? what does that even mean?

Okish sleep.  Opened the door under the "angel" tank to get the food out and it was tougher to open than usual.  Which usually means swollen chipboard from a leak.  Except I couldn't find where the leak was coming from.  hrmmmm.  

NEIL for a bit in the morning then fighting with new proxies. If you turn off inspection on a site it can't figure out what browser you're using, and so it blocks you (we block Firefox from general browsing and only allow it to some sites). But it won't give you an error, you just get a connection reset. So dumb. Then fighting with the test mail servers after someone spammed the hell out of them.

Gladioli

Went into drinks for the first time in months. Then it was a trivia night. It was one of THOSE trivia nights - stoopidly complicated question/marking setup (like three parts to an answer, each with two parts, and if you get one out of the two you get half a point, but if you get both parts right you get two points, oh and you have to mark each others, it's not marked centrally so there's no consistency in the scoring). Yeah so fricken dumb. One round wasn't even trivia, it was look at this picture for 10 seconds, then answer the crappiest stuff, like how many ears were in this picture, or how many feet were in this other picture. Not even trivia. Dumb dumb dumb. But my expecations for these trivia nights are so low now that I just didn't care. And I had bubbles. I don't even know what the final scores were, I didn't get a photo. I think we came third. They spun a wheel to determine who'd run the next one, and it missed us by one. Winning!  Also, Gin picked me up some Subway to have for dinner.. first Subway in like three months!!

Friday.  1 Timothy 5:23 Stop drinking only water, and use a little wine because of your stomach and your frequent illnesses.  Yeah cause fresh water back in the day was usually contaminated, and alcohol killed a lot of the germs.

Logged onto work briefly to be NEIL for the overnight stuff, then took an RDO.

Plums

Rose

Orange poppy

Did some washing, did some weeding, went shopping (actually had fairly successful shopping mission.  Was chatting to Faye at Subway at lunch about how I'd been away with the C word, and she gave me a free cookie! So sweet :) ), took some cans for recycling and suddenly it's 15:45. And nowhere near enough done on my todo list. hrmmm.

I've missed Subway so much..!!  So much that I had it for dinner last night then lunch today haha
Subway

Drinks at Jo's in the afternoon and Tony came too so that was a nice catchup.

Me and bubbles

Cooked up some veggies to go with some leftover pork. Futurama 13.5.  Then I watched "Apollo 13: Survival" documentary on Netflix which was pretty interesting.  Jim Lovell only died a couple of months ago, and Marilyn only a couple of years ago.

Saturday.  1 Timothy 6:10 For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil.  .. not necessarily "money".. but the "love of money".  

Got a few things done in the morning then we headed out. First up to "The Shed", an offshoot of the Green Shed. Quite a bit smaller than the old shed, but he only has the lease til December so he may find something bigger (and with better parking would be nice!). They still charged me $3 for jigsaws, although I have a feeling they only did that after I asked (they revised the total down). They charged $2 each for some plates which I thought was a little high. Oh well.

The Shed

This would fit in nicely with Mum's collection :)

The Shed tea set

Then next door to the other second hand place there (Down Memory Lane, I think??).  Mum would definitely recognise this ;)

Cornflower blue Corningware

Then out to the club for the "Spooktacular" halloween night. But first up went for a wander with the sweetie.

Club flowers

Club flowers

Club flowers

Club flowers

The sweetie at the club

Then had a good long chat to Chris and Geoff. Then it was up to the shed for drinks and a spectacular charcuterie board, and an amazing dinner with lots of different things. Little bit of a late night but not too bad.

Sunday.  Got up and went and tidied up the shed a bit, with a bit of help from Brenton. Then home via the Scottish Restaurant, which took them 18 MINUTES to deliver our food from when we first arrived. So much for FAST food. Also. BOM updated their website a few days ago, and in the process shut down the APIs used by third party apps for the radar. TWITTER MUCH??? I'm so pissed off that RainRadarAU doesn't work anymore - I always preferred it to the BOM app. Hopefully there will be enough backlash/complaints and they'll restore them. Got a few things done in the afternoon and pfft, there goes the weekend. Sigh.

Sunday.  12th.  Reheated the last of the lamb and had it with a cauliflower bake, potato, brussels sprouts and garlic.

Lamb and veggies

Wednesday 2.3. Then Lilo & Stitch (the live action one from 2025). Lolz Tia Carrere as the social worker (she played Nani in the original). And Cobra Bubbles is split out into his CIA character. A lot of it is pretty similar to the original. And as live action remakes go this one was actually pretty decent. Certainly a lot better than The Lion King or Aladdin.

Monday.  Somewhat restless but slightly better sleep.  Achieved precisely nothing today. Too many interruptions and All The People wanting All The Things. Past half way through nuking.

Purple irises

Leftovers for dinner. Wednesday 2.4. Photo stuffs.

Tuesday.  More restless sleep. Another busy day of crap, although did manage to actually achieve a couple of things. Nuking session 9. Driving home and noticed all the fluff is out!! Too late to start studying?  Leftovers for dinner then Wednesday 2.5. Lots of photo stuff. Then tried to blog jigsaws but I kept making mistakes because it was getting late and I was tired and half watching Anti Chef videos which was distracting me.

Wednesday.  Restless sleep again (hot and sweaty every five minutes). The koels are back in town!!! They remind me of home.  Mowed the lawn when I got home from nuking (it was as tall as me (kidding .. but it was super tall)).  Then went out for petrol.  And KFC.  Whoops.  Wednesday 2.6.

Thursday.  Some turd dumped two empty rolls of fake grass on our nature strip overnight.  They're a few metres long and we have no idea what to do with them.  I fricken HATE people. 

I hate people

Domino for dinner.  Whoops.  Wednesday 2.7.

Friday. 

Paver weed strawberries

Fighting with the stoopid new proxies.  Trying to allow encrypted files from certain sites.  But can't get it to work.  So dumb.  Kievs for dinner then the finale of Wednesday season 2. 

Kievs and fries

Then I watched the first half of The Green Mile (I'd seen a documentary on it earlier today or yesterday and was inspired).

Saturday.  Spent much of the morning doing housework and weeding.  This was not part of the plan.  Bit of photo stuff and hobbies. 

Gladioli

Got some sausages from Chris's and did a creamy mushroom sauce with some cream and mushrooms that really needed using up.  And frozen veggies.  Which the sweetie didn't much care for haha.  Maybe he can cook dinner next time. 

Sausages and creamy mushrooms

Then we watched Passengers, which we last saw on the Queen Mary 2 in 2017.

Sunday.  More nights of waking up hot and sweaty.  Woke up at 5:30 to a cacophony of birds.  A day of All The Things.  Not enough time.  Too many things to do.  Slide scanning took too long and then I had to cook dinner so no time for music.  This was not part of the plan.  On a lighter note, it smells like Christmas in here.

Sunday.  5th.  Cooked up a cauliflower and potato bake, brussels sprouts and bacon and some zucchini to go with some leftover lamb for dinner.

All the veggies

DS9 7.22 then some of The Antisocial Network: Memes to Mayhem. Oh, I forgot to mention that Aunty Rhonda called this arvo which was nice, haven't talked to her in forever.

Monday.  I keep getting the same APOD pic in my RSS feed. Went to the site and it hadn't been updated since Wednesday and had this note: "Due to the lapse in federal government funding, NASA is not updating this website. We sincerely regret this inconvenience." Sad times.

Flowerporn!!!

Fresias

White iris

Fresias

Purple poppy

Climbing roses

Quiet day. Actually had some time to do some hobbies which was nice. Feel like I don't have enough time on weekends for any fun stuff. So today was kinda nice. Leftovers for dinner. DS9 7.23 then finished watching The Antisocial Network.

Tuesday.  Philippians 2:10 That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father... Hymn 178!!

Trash sleep - took ages to get to sleep (restless legs), restless sleep (hot and sweaty every five minutes), awake early (needing to pee). Sigh. Achieved basically nothing all morning. In the afternoon got absorbed in proxy stuff and almost forgot to go get nuked. Got home a bit late and asked the sweetie what he wanted for dinner. hrmm.

Dumping Inn

Then DS9 7.24.

Wednesday.  Philippians 4:4 Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! .. Sounds like another song..

Slept somewhat better but awake super early. Another day of being busy but not achieving much. Nuking session 5, they were ready for me as soon as I got there. Leftovers for dinner then the finale of Deep Space Nine. Pretty decent finale actually. Except for Worf looking around and not seeing Jadzia in the montage, how dumb is that!? And no Rom or Leeta?? Why not?? Got back to my computer and it had rebooted. hmmm.  Logged in, and it crashed - black screen of death. Held my breath as I rebooted it again. Possibly windoze updates caused it to crash in the first place. I was going to make some other comments about my day but I forget now, because my computer had crashed and it took so long to get back in that I'd forgotten stuff. Sigh.

Oh, met one of the new neighbours today. I heard a car and person out the front so go out to open the door. Dude has left a package and is leaving. I say that he can knock if he likes and he said, oh I was just taking a photo then I was going knock. BS. You were already walking away. Whatever. So take the package inside. It's not for us. It's for the neighbours. So I go out again and try and stop the dude and told him he needs to go down the back for next door, and he's like, isn't this all the one house. Um. No. And he wouldn't take it, he was like, can you just take it. Fricken useless Fedex driver. They're getting as bad as America. Anyways, so dude's truck was there so I went down and gave it to him and said hi.  

Got depressed about closing off browser tabs I had open for the Europe trip I never went on. Sigh.

Thursday.  Slept like crap - awake for half the night hot and sweaty and restless. Fighting with All The Stoopid all day. Nuking session 6. They're too efficient, I never get time to do any jigsaw while I wait - pretty much every time I've been (except for one) they grab me as soon as I've changed! Watched this POV of Rise of the Resistance at lunch which was pretty cool. Definitely not as epic as doing it for reals though! 

Clouds from Garran

Pizzas for dinner, then we watched a documenatry on Deep Space Nine called What We Left Behind which was pretty cool.  

Friday.  Colossians 3:12 Therefore, as God's chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.. More stuff I need to remember.

Rhododendron

More restless sleep. Another day of All The Crap from All The People wanting All The Things. Nuking day 7. Nearly half way done. Kievs for dinner then Wednesday 2.1. Then I watched Lilo and Stitch, the original animated version. Which I haven't seen in at least 20 years. I don't remember if I saw this at the movies or later. But it was before 2006.

Kievs and fries

Saturday.  Not great sleep again. Busy busy morning. Spent a good chunk of the afternoon trying to sort Mum's slides into chronological order based on frame information. Sadly Mum wasn't great about noting dates on her slides. Some I can't even pick a year - could be 1967 or 1968. There's a few places where frame numbers don't line up with dates. Meanwhile Stu's back pain is subsiding, replaced with weird hearing issues and vertigo and now nausea. Hurrah.  Cooked a pasta bake for dinner with some potatoes and zucchini then watched Wednesday 2.2.

Pasta bake and veggies

Sunday.  Slept okish. We haven't run the heater in a few days. So had a look at the controller. Sure enough it's continually flashing on and off. So I have a feeling that it's actually the heater playing up, as this is the behaviour that we've seen when it hasn't been run for a while. Day of trying to keep on top of crap and fit some hobbies in there somewhere.

And Windoze has forgotten all my folder settings.  AGAIN.  #hate