Good Friday.  Still wasn't really sure if I had a sore throat or not, but warned Mum anyway just in case.  Spent the morning tidying up the house.  Mum arrived just in time for lunch (of hot cross buns and leftover chicken and plum sauce). 

She made good use of the shelves I got for David :)

Spent most of the afternoon going through about fifty boxes of Dad's slides so she could fill in any details and memories.  Mum brought down Five Crowns card game, so we had a game of that.  I started off well, but Stu won.  Had salmon and salad for dinner.  After dinner we went for a drive around Canberra to show Mum some stuffs, and then we went up Mt Ainslie to have a bit of a looksee.

I also might have taken some photos of stars

Saturday morning we got ready then Mum and I headed north to go west.  We stopped in Jugiong for a pitstop and thought we'd go for a walk down to the river.  There was heaps of campers and horse floats about, as it turned out there was a Polo Cross tournament that weekend!  We went down to the river, and watched some of the guys practising.

On the way back to the car I found a wallet just sitting on the ground.  There was a medicare card, but no licence that I could see.  Not that we looked very hard, we felt a bit odd going through someone's wallet.  We did find one slip of paper with some possible phone numbers on it, but none of them worked.  Maybe there was some contact info in there somewhere, but it certainly wasn't obvious.  Pro tip: always leave an easy to find contact information card in your wallet in the case of loss!!  I asked some of the people camping nearby if they knew the people, but they didn't, but did agree to hold onto it for us and sort it out, since they were planning on being there all weekend.  The lady tried messaging them on Facebook, but they didn't answer while we were there.  Anyways, she called me back later in the afternoon to let me know that their daughter had heard someone asking about the wallet, so it was returned to the owners!

We drove past Stu's dream home in the country

We stopped in Cootamundra to have a wander around the station and look at the rail yards.

Then onto Junee in time for lunch - of noodles :)  Had a look through David's photos of the RAAF Air Show (just some random selections throughout the five thousand or so of them that he took ;) ).  David was supposed to have a sleep and Mum thought she would too, so I went and found a jigsaw to do.  But it was more like a model made of cardboard - of the Titanic!  So David stayed up and we did it together.  Took a couple of hours.  And Mum ended up coming out but having a bit of a snooze on the lounge.  

Then we helped David do some DVD sorting.  Then we got ready and walked down to the Junee Hotel for dinner.  Mum and I split a "rump and ribs" which was very sensible - just the right amount of food, and the ribs were lovely!

Went back to David's and watched most of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, followed by the new Storm Boy in an attempt to stay up a bit later to try and sleep in a bit with the end of daylight savings.  I enjoyed the remake, as I seem to remember the original being fairly slow and bleak.  

Sunday.  Slept quite well, and because of the late night I slept in a bit - which meant I woke up exactly on time for my normal routine :)  The problem was David was at work and didn't know what time he'd be home, so we just hung around the house bored.  I did a few logic puzzles which was a good distraction.  He ended up getting home at nearly lunch time, by which time was a bit frustrated that I hadn't achieved anything useful all day.  David organised (in the space of ten minutes!!) for a bunch of peeps to meet up at the Junee Hotel for lunch for roast lamb - Peter, Nick, Ben, and Ben's sister and kids who were down visiting. 

So quite a nice lunch.  But it was pretty big, and we didn't finish eating til nearly 2pm, so decided I'd call off doing the lamb roast I'd planned for Sunday night.  After lunch Mum and I headed back to Canberra. 

Didn't get home til about 17:40.  And not at all hungry.  Put on a documentary about Machu Picchu, then had a game of Five Crowns, which I won, over pepperoni and cheese that I had for dinner.

Kings were wild this hand, and look what I got dealt!

Monday.  Slept well, and woke up exactly on time for the new time.  Mum got ready and went home.  I tried to catch up on everything I'm behind in.  I failed.  Abysmally.  Stu wanted to go out at lunch to see the new works they're doing at Lake Burley Griffin.  I just have this feeling like they're further ruining the circular shape of the area that was in the original design...   Still, it was a lovely day and nice spending time with the sweetie.

Came home and put on some Asian Style Beef Cheeks, and watched some tv in the evening.

Monday.  29th.  Slept okish I think.  Got the first of the day's boxes of Dad's slides fixed pretty quickly, so tried for a second, but that took a lot longer, which pushed out my getting ready for work, and I still needed to patch and reboot the computer.  So I was a bit late starting for the day.  Hardly any tickets so did paperwork for another round of cleaning.  Went for a walk at lunch and saw all my birds, including the old one who is happy to eat out of my hand.  Hacked some periwinkle in the evening.  Had leftover enchiladas from the weekend for dinner - so good!  Labelled three hundred photos.  Although hard to label places like Masada if you want to try and label things accurately.  Finished watching Becoming.

Tuesday.  Messaged David about the air show, so he came up.  Pizza for dinner but no labelling.

Wednesday.  Went to the RAAF 100th Anniversary air show in the morning which was pretty awesome.  Later in the afternoon I had that feeling where your immune system is having a good serious crack at fighting something.  Did a mini food shop, backed up my computer, but not much else and no photo labelling.

Thursday.  Not really sure if I was sick.  Decided to stay home, and if I did start feeling sick or tired I could go rest.  But I actually felt fine all day, so I guess I must have fought it off.  Had Dr Octopus pizzas, then Simpsons (into season 9), Laid Back Camp, then watched The Lake House.  Plot holes you could drive trucks through and various inconsistencies of course, but a bit of fun.  And fun to see some of the things I picked up on in the IMDB goofs page as well.  

That'll do for tonight.

Before I start, this is the lemon cheese cake I made last weekend.  Similar to the previous one, except using light evaporated milk instead of cream, and made in a much bigger container to thin the base out a bit.  I also tried to melt some cooking chocolate (not baking bits), but it just wouldn't melt.  I then had flash back memories to have a similar problem with cooking chocolate when I was living in Sydney.  Note to self: never buy that again (I don't think I even bought it, I can't remember where it came from).

Monday.  22nd.  Got two boxes of Dad's slides fixed up before work (had some extra time, and not as many needed fixing up).  Being at home is sooo much better for my mental health, especially in the evenings.  I feel so much more relaxed and can get so much more done.  Even though it's only an hour and a half or so extra it makes such a difference.  Watched last night's Amazing Race.  The top three teams all really annoy me.  The girls are full of themselves and take every opportunity to tell everyone how awesome they are.  The sikhs I liked to begin with but they're just as mean to people they don't like as anyone else, and while they claim to have helping people ingrained in their culture, they really only help people they like.  The cowboys are ok, but were still out to get Chris and Aleisha.  No idea why those two are so unpopular with everyone.  Did get 346 photos labelled today, although 63 of them before work.  It'll certainly take the pressure off the rest of the week.

Tuesday.  All the stoopid.  Had dinner out with the sweetie which was nice.  Dumpling Inn was closed (have they even reopened since Covid?) so we went to Pizza Artigiana. 

Quattro Formaggi - SANDRA $22 - mozzarella, provolone, gorgonzola and shaved pecorino.  Yum yum.

Diavola - RINO $22 - tomato, ricotta, Nduja hot salami, and marinated red peppers.  Ok, spicy but not insane, just a bit meh.

Then we did our food shopping.  Watched last night's Amazing Race and was sad to see Chris and Aleisha go.

Wednesday.  Blerf day.  Had a stoopid meeting in the afternoon where they put me on the spot *on the phone* arggh.  But then Skype had a spack which saved me so I could troubleshoot offline.  Seriously DO NOT ask me to troubleshoot something over the phone, especially in a whole group situation.  Hate hate hate.  But we did managed to shut down a good chunk of the old network which was pretty awesome.  Didn't do a whole heap of work past four pm, chatting to peoples about all the things.  Super late home.  Salmon and salad for dinner which was very nice.  I stepped on one of those little bastard millipedes though while I was cooking and it popped and left a smudge on the floor.  So gross.  Labelled photos while watching Amazing Race.  Eyes felt very tired.

Thursday.  Despite being tired it took forever to get to sleep.  Sigh.  Good drinks, lots of peeps came.  Had Kingsley's for dinner (since we'd already had pizza this week), Simpsons, Laid Back Camp, Encore.  

Friday.  Awake in the middle of the night for hours.  Sigh.  So even more of a zombie than yesterday.  Which was a pity because I was having a random day off.  So I couldn't concentrate on anything that required brainpower.  But still, I had a super productive day getting things done around the house. 

This jungle has to go.  Ten minutes at a time.

Another last chance summer flower seen on my walk

Our next door neighbour when I was growing up had one of these bushes.  So many little red berries!!

Watched more X Files in the evening, and started watching Becoming.  

Saturday.  Slept well!  Hurrah!  Except I spent the entire morning finding where photos on our Dubbo trip in 1981 were taken.  Some were easy, but others super tricky.  Like exactly whereabouts is the old platform at Newnes?  And did we drive along the new railway line being constructed between Sandy Hollow and Gulgong?  (since some of the places look a little tricky to get to by car).  After lunch we headed out to the club.  I wanted to do some painting, but Stu wanted a sleep, so no painting for me. 

I don't know which way up this flower goes...

Instead I worked on a tapestry by the fire. 

Matt and Michelle put on an awesome Mexican feast, we all had a lovely evening.

Sunday.  Today.  Slept okish, then we came home.  Spent entirely too much time trying to sort out Dad's slides (for anything that doesn't have a date on it - when were they taken?  What else was on that roll?  hrmm).  Michelle (a different one) came over for a while, and then we all went for a walk, but the magpies weren't around. 

Had slow cooked beef stroganoff for dinner with a packet mix from before 2000, was actually quite nice. 

Blogged while watching the Amazing Race finale (both took nearly two hours all up).  Just finished blogging as the race finished.  Pretty happy with the outcome actually.

No movies so no movie quotes.. 

I didn't sleep too well - the pillow I had was way too thick so I wasn't very comfortable.

Sunrise sure is pretty there though!

In the morning we got to meet more of the menagerie.

The grey geese are Galen and Gabrielle, and the white one is Solomon.

There's three guinea fowl, three young turkeys, three geese, a duck or two, and a whole lot of chickens.

Two goats - Beavis (brown) and Butthead (black).  Or Knock Knock and Muffin (don't know which one's which).  

Ellie and Ziggy

And all the geep!  Some of them are *very* pregnant.

Kit cooked up a bunch of her chicken's eggs for peeps for breakfast.

Then we all went for a wander around the property.

A little creek at the bottom.

Pete and Jasper on the quad bike.

The lower paddock and round yard.

The pond.  Vicki had So. Much. Fun. jumping into this over and over and again.

Entrance to the round yard.

Late morning the sweetie and I went for a drive.  We went down Bawley Point Road all the way to the end and got out at Kioloa.

I might have caught this lizard.

Then we headed back to Bawley Point and ordered fish and chips from the takeaway.  

Wait what?  

I thought that was pretty funny at the time.  But the service was so amazingly SLOW I was certainly feeling like a Karen by the end of the wait.  Especially with the barking dog going off nearby.  Seriously I can't get away from barking dogs at the moment.  We ended up having to wait about half an hour for our food, by which time I was pretty cranky.

We headed up the road and had our lunch in a park near the beach.  

By now it was well after 2pm and we'd had a big greasy lunch, which wasn't going to bode well for going out for dinner.  hrmmm.

Went down to the beach for a bit.

Finally got back to Kit and Pete's and we saddled up Ellie and took her for a bit of a ride. She was behaving herself quite nicely (apparently she can be a bit stubborn and difficult sometimes).

I even had a bit of a go.  Unfortunately she's a ex pacer, so she doesn't trot, she paces, which is quite odd to ride.  Also the stirrups were too long for me (stoopid stumpy little legs).  

Packed up the horse and gear, got ready then headed out for dinner.  We all went up to Ulladulla to the ExServos club because Pete wanted steak for his birthday.  Scott and Sarina came too which was nice.

You can never have too much gravy!

Because Stu and I had had such a big late lunch, we got a pizza to share for dinner.  I had two pieces which was just about the right amount!  (note that was an itty bitty Henkell bottle for scale).  I may have helped finish off a couple of other dishes though, and we brought home a whole heap of leftovers.  

Then we went back to Kit and Pete's and had a game of Kismet.  Pete, C and I all got Kismets, but T won.

Then called it a night.

These are the couple of days I was going to blog last week but it got too late then it was all too hard.

Saturday.  27th.  In the morning did a cutover of prod firewalls, and everything seemed to go well.  Made a rocky road.  Not much else though.  Headed out to the club in the afternoon for Robert's epic Chinese New Year feast.  Just did a bit of paint by numbers because there were already plenty of people in the kitchen.  Sharpie messaged at one point - apparently I'd broken something I hadn't even thought to test because there shouldn't have been a need.  Whoops.  Took them *all day* to get onto us though, and then it was fixed in minutes.  

Robert's feast was spectacular as always.  A restaurant quality banquet.  I've only included photos of *some* of the dishes!

But.  As always, this guy over caters to the extreme.  He could have easily fed at least double the people that were there.  Which meant for an insane quantity of leftovers.  Which I packaged up as much as I could and *begged* people to take some home.  I took an esky full of food.  I couldn't even look in the fridge in the morning to see what was left, I knew I'd be too upset if there was a lot. 

I did actually manage to sleep ok though.  But I was pretty grumpy and didn't get much done on Sunday (other than a bit of playing (and fighting) with galleries). 

I'm trying to think of there's a word for "hates seeing anything wasted".  Specifically in relation to "core values".  I couldn't really think of a word for it.  If I had to pick my top core values, this would be one of them.  Unwasteful ??

I cooked up a brisket in the slow cooker for dinner.

And said hi to the bird at the window

And finished watching The Poseidon Adventure.

Tuesday.  Spent the morning writing up rules for new prod firewall, and put in a change.  Had lunch with the sweetie at Ramen O.  We walked straight in with no queue!  This time I tried the Yuzu Tonkotsu which was very nice as well.  Be nice if they had a smaller/cheaper option for lunches..

The afternoon was non-stop distractions and interruptions so couldn't do up the rules I'd written up.  Had refried pork and cabbage for dinner.  Got my quota of photos labelled and watched Amazing Race.

Wednesday.  Couldn't get to sleep til after midnight for no good reason.  Got into work early to try and get some work done before interruptions.  Only got half way through.  Sigh.  Ok day otherwise.  At lunch had lunch with the sweetie again.  This time I finally tried out Koku Super Kare and had the wagyu "don".  At $15.90 it'd be awesome value for dinner, but too big and expensive for a food court lunch.  Another place that would benefit from a smaller/cheaper lunch option.  

But where's the chopsticks?? Who would use fork and spoon for this?

Was just getting ready to go home when had to help fix a problem that one of the guys had accidentally caused just before going home.  So was very late getting home.  But that was ok because of the big lunch.  Labelled all of Mum's day five photos (only 103 of them) before dinner (of leftover pork and veggies), and finished the last of the lemon cheesecake.  Backed up my computer and finished labelling day five.  Then cleaned the kitchen and watched some Amazing Race.

Thursday.  Got irrationally cranky at ABC news technicians who can't control volume (it's all over the place with loud (or soft) pieces next the main anchor), not the mention the sports reporter that sounds like he's spitting into his microphone whenever he talks.  Did a whole heap of cleaning work in the afternoon that I've been wanting to do in forever.  Simpsons/Hibike/Amazing Race (the "hanging" challenge was just like Survivor!).  

Friday.  All the stoopid.  I don't even remember what.

Saturday.  Just a day of doing All The Things.  In the afternoon the doorbell rang.  I was half expecting a delivery of some sort (we do sometimes get deliveries on a weekend, including on a Sunday once recently).  But it was David!  He was up to run errands in the Big Smoke and have dinner with some friends.  Cooked @notquitenigella's Asian Style Beef Cheeks for dinner and watched The Dig, about the discovery and excavation of the Sutton Hoo treasure in 1939.  I quite enjoyed it.  

Sunday.  Was hot and uncomfortable and awake for quite a while in the middle of the night.  Hurrah.  Pretty quiet day.  Didn't get a whole lot done.  Not sure I was depressed because I wasn't getting anything done, or wasn't getting anything done because I was depressed.  Shrug.  I did pull apart Neil's ISS though to take back to him while I waited for a storm to hit us, that basically just went around us. 

I was hearing thunder rumbling and wondering what the..

Had to look around about to see the incoming storm

One of the pieces I had to pull apart was a new piece I haven't used before.  And it sucked donkey balls to try and get apart.  Had to make up a rig of other pieces to push it out.

Cooked up a bunch of roast veggies to have with some leftover pork for dinner, then watched some Amazing Race.  

Where were we?  Epic lamb roast.  31st Jan.  Backdated.

Watched more Hibike Euphonium.  

Monday.  Spent all morning renaming firewall objects to fit our naming scheme.  And documenting a whole stack of rules that had been done that I was going to need to duplicate.  Spent the entire afternoon doing all the rules - twice - on two different firewalls.  

In the evening a storm rolled through.  I was trying to run a script to copy "recent" files to One Drive (files modified since last backup), but the thing made my computer have a sad, so I ended up just shutting it down and disconnecting it from power and network.  There might have been just a bit of rain.

So it was a bit of a scramble to move the few things in cardboard out of the way and empty a few boxes.  Desperately need to declutter.

Had lamb red curry for dinner and finished season 6 of The Simpsons (Who shot Mr Burns?).  I never watched The Simpsons, but I do remember when the episode came out at the end of 1995 in Australia.  People were talking about it and I went and use this new fandangled thing called the internet to find out who did it (because the start of season 7 had already aired in the US).  Fun stuff.  So I knew who did it twenty five years ago.  Although not having seen the episode I didn't know how/why.  

After dinner fired everything up again from shutting it down for the storm.  Except the UPS decided to be a big stinky poo.  When I turned it on it had a fast beep and "reset battery" alarm.  If I held the on button down it would reset, but then it claimed it was in overload.  Which was silly because literally nothing was trying to use it (I even disconnected everything to prove it).  And then it got into such a state that I had to turn it off at the wall.  So now my computer is on mains power which is a big poo.  So by 8pm I'd only labelled fifty photos out of the three hundred I really needed to do to catch up.  At least the sweetie did the washing up yayyy.  Had another fight with windows, which has gone back to mapping by IP address rather than dns/netbios name.

Tuesday.  Remember that stoopid firewall that was being a big poo last year?  Well Wardie upgraded it the other weekend, which fixed it.  Go fricken figure.  So did up the bunch of rules I needed to do on it.  Only took like seven months to get to that point.  Hrmm.  Sausages and salad for dinner.  Did some photo labelling but ran out of steam and started looking at bed frames online.  Found one that looked promising, and found it at two different fly-by-night retailers (Eliving Furniture and MyDeal) which both got pretty scathing reviews on review sites.  

Wednesday.  I'd just gotten to sleep on Tuesday night when right on midnight there was this super loud BEEP BEEP BEEP times four.  I sat right up and saw an orange light down the hall.  But as I was sitting up I caught the cable of my phone which knocked it onto the floor which broke my brain.  By the time I looked up again the light was off.  This of course freaked me out.  Was someone in the house and they had a light on but turned it off?  I had to work hard to get the sweetie to get out of bed to come investigate with me.  We searched the whole house but didn't find anyone.  We weren't even entirely sure what made the noise and light.  But we're pretty sure it was the new smoke detector.  This is one of those ten year battery smoke detectors that you can't take the battery out of (disabling it disables it *forever*).  So we're going to be pretty pissed if it keeps generating false alarms.  There was a daddy long legs in the vicinity so we caught it, and I've been dusting around the area quite regularly in case it was simply a spider that set it off.

Had an ok morning.  Did an audit of a complicated ruleset, to make sure all our firewalls are in sync.  Missed our team meeting to go to a specialist appointment.  Had to wait for ages in the waiting room, the longest I've ever waited there.  While I was there I had to a listen to a woman rabbit on about how the covid vaccine is made from aborted babies, how the news is manipulative (well duh), how Victoria shouldn't have needed to go into lockdown last year, and how is that *noone* in Victoria is accountable for the security guard hotel quarantine contract - clearly it *must* have been Daniel Andrews that authorised it, how the government in Victoria mismanaged the whole thing, because NSW was so much better at dealing with it all, how America is overreporting their covid deaths because the hospitals get paid $15000 for every covid death and so they're reporting deaths as covid deaths even if they died of something else but still tested positive for covid.... omfg I was like *get me out of here* ..!! Seriously you can't make this stuff up.  Eventually I was called up, and I was there so long because he "didn't think I'd arrived yet".  Fricken hopeless.  I was literally right on time.  I did have lunch with the sweetie afterwards so that was nice.  Did some work with Neil on our mail servers which was good.  Had Kingsley's for dinner because the sweetie wanted comfort food after his crazy busy day, and I was up for that too for the same reasons.  Simpsons and Hibike Euphonium and struggling to keep up with Eurasia photo labelling.

Thursday.  So apparently two pieces of Kingsley's southern fried chicken is actually not a lot of food, and I woke up at 3:12 hungry.  Had some cheese etc but couldn't get to back to sleep for at least an hour.  I was pretty tired in the morning with "dropsy".. including probably $15 worth of fish food pellets all over the floor :(  Should definitely not be operating heaving machinery today.  I scooped up a goodly amount of the fish food, because $15.

Had a Lighty lunch that Jim organised.  Connor and I shared the "special" pizza which was very nice.

Watched several episodes of Euphonium in the evening and then I watched the first episode of Encore by Kristin Bell.  It was Annie, and I enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I would.

Friday.  Apparently two pieces of pizza and a garlic scroll is actually not a lot of food and I woke up a bit after 4am hungry.  Sigh.  Fairly busy day again. 

In the morning Aquila messaged me to see if I wanted to have lunch at Herbert's.   Of course!!

This time I tried the pot pie which was very nice.  I asked for a small serving of fries so I wouldn't stuff myself silly..

In the afternoon we tested the rules on the new firewall with real (testing) traffic which was pretty cool.  Didn't get the paperwork written up for it though.  In the evening went and saw Penguin Bloom with EffanC.

Saturday.  As noted in my movie review, I asked Sam Bloom whether she became friends with Bron again or not, so I was pretty stoked when she answered.  Pretty quiet day.  Didn't do too much house stuff (trying to actually enjoy weekends).  Had a bit of a play with Gimp to do Lego mosaics.  Watched Encore (The Sound of Music).  Stu cooked dinner - sausages and cabbage.  Then Simpsons, Hibike Euphonium, and Star Trek VI in memorium of Christopher Plumber (I wanted to watch The Sound of Music, but accepted Star Trek VI instead).

Sunday.  7th. 

This is why should always carry a camera on your person.  This flutterby landed near me when I was collecting lemons.  I barely had time to snap a photo before it flew away again.

Wrote out a very long todo list for the day, although forgot to add Eurasia photo labelling to it.  So I did a reasonable amount but nowhere near enough. 

I might have done some decluttering of my bedside table drawers.  Some of these soaps I've had since I was a kid.  I think it's time to use them up.

I never made it through the list as far as photo processing and blogging, so it never happened.  In fact I was still part way through the list when someone came to collect Stu's old bed.  While we were loading the trailer suddenly the lights went out.  I looked up and saw this.

Then it was time to make dinner (lots of roast veggies with leftover lamb), and I even made a cheese cake to use up some of our epic supply of lemons.  I wasn't sure if it was going to work or not, having added so much lemon juice (200mL!!).

Simpsons - You don't win friends with salad!! Euphonium and Encore.

Sunday.  24th.  Half way through our long weekend.  Watched Your Name in the evening.  Kinda like Freaky Friday meets The Lake House?  Not that I've ever actually seen The Lake House.  Nice enough, although a tad confusing.  

Monday.  We both took a random day off to have a long weekend. 

Baby guppies!!!

Did all the washing in the morning - regular clothes washing, then the curtains from the east side window of the study.  Then headed out for the day.  Dropped in at The Scottish Restaurant for brunch, then onto Ikea.  Stu wanted to get a shelf unit for his study for the inside wall.  So we found that and got a couple of bits and pieces but not too much.  Did our food shopping on the way home. 

I'd just filled his water bowl when Stumpy decided to redecorate the place.

So just for that we gave him a bath.

Stu built his shelves and suddenly the house is a mess again.  Doh. 

It was also very hot.  All weekend.  We had the cooler going pretty much all weekend, but that did make it a bit humid in the house.  Salmon and salad for dinner, but no photo labelling.  Watched Honey, I Shrunk the Kids in the evening.

Tuesday.  Australia Day.  Our two biggest holidays celebrate invading other countries.  David's suggestion was make New Years Eve a public holiday, so all the poor saps that have to work NYE while everyone else parties will at least get paid overtime for it.  Then Australia Day could be January 1.  That was actually the day we became Australia.  Just a thought.  The day was spent avoiding the heat, a bit of housework, labelling photos and a bit of paint by numbers.  Stu wanted to hang up an aerial for his software radio, so I hacked out all the cherry tree suckers, and pruned the geraniums quite brutally (they were bigger than me!).  Didn't take any before photos unfortunately.  

Stu really didn't like being up a ladder

I well and truly filled the green bin, with a pile still left to go.  Taco Tuesday for dinner (I'd bought the shells and was going to have them before David left but we never got a round tuit).  The ten taco shells go really well with three people (four each for the boys and two for me), so we end up with leftovers if there's just the two of us.  Then I was loading the dishwasher after dinner and one of Stu's bowls slipped out of my hand and shattered all over the floor.  I seriously had a meltdown.  I really like those bowls, I use them every day, and it was one of the few complete sets we have of anything.  I don't deserve nice things.  Sigh.  Didn't feel like doing any photo labelling, or even watching a movie, so just watched random crap on YouTube.

Wednesday.  Nothing much.  Bit of photo labelling, but not nearly enough to catch up for the week.

Thursday.  Ok day; work drinks; pizza.  Got sad that I had noone to fight with over the garlic dregs from the garlic bread.  Started watching Sound! Euphonium anime series.  Then I watched Honey I Blew Up the Kid.

Friday.  The rain!  All the rain!  In the afternoon I spent an hour and a half renaming and documenting all the objects someone else in our team had created that didn't match our naming scheme.  Le sigh.  Watched Honey We Shrunk Ourselves in the evening.  I'd never seen this one.  Silly of course, but not too bad.  Then I watched the first half of a 2016 New York production of Hamilton.  I had literally no idea what the show was about, well, other than it was an American period piece.  I have to say I struggled with it.  It's mostly all rap, and I *hate* rap.  I struggled to keep up with the pace of it and what was going on and the exposition.  I also found having African Americans playing white guys pretty distracting.  Also.  Jonathan Groff as King George III.  Completely distracted by his spagging all over the place.  Also I reckon he looks a little bit like Freddie Mercury (front teeth and cheeks), he'd look more like him if he lost a little weight..

Saturday.  Woke up at 3am for nearly two hours.  Hurrah.  Did all the hosueworks in the morning.  Did a bit of paint by numbers and photo labelling of Dad's slides in the afternoon.  I'd relied on the dust and scratch filter for the first half of the scanning of his slides, but as it turns out, the hairs that were all over the roof of the scanner were there from the beginning.  The filter doesn't remove the hairs and the slides look terrible, and I'm going to have to redo *a lot* of the first half.  Sigh.  But probably not until I've scanned more of the filing cabinet.  Had a bit of a play with Gimp to make Lego mosaics using custom palettes.  Had chicken kiev for dinner.  Watched The Garden of Words, which I saw at the movies in 2013.  I reckon they must have videoed rain falling in puddles and traced it frame by frame.  Can't see any other way it'd be *that good*.  Then I watched the second half of Hamilton.  For some reason I enjoyed the second half a lot more.  Maybe because it was a bit slower, and I had a better idea of who everyone was??  I think if I watched it again I'd pick up a helluva lot more and possibly enjoy it more.  Or maybe I could just go read a transcript.  Found out that the dude who played Hamilton actually wrote the whole thing.

Sunday.  Today.  Not backdating for a change ;)  Although I am going to need to backdate a whole bunch of This Day in History posts.  Spent the day alternating between housework, computer work (photo labelling) and fun stuff (paint by numbers and jigsaw).  Went out and did a small food shop.  Although with fragments of covid detected in Belconnen sewage, I feel like we should have done a bigger shop in case we end up in lockdown.  Roast lamb for dinner.  Or there will be.  Very shortly :)

See aforementioned note on being a slacker.  Backdating.  

Monday.  11th.  After work I'd labelled my quota of Eurasia 2012 photos by dinner time.  Which was leftovers and salad.  Then continued writing up my year in review post.  Then came the news that David had gotten a train driving job out of Cootamundra and would be leaving.  For some reason that just made me feel a bit sad.  Happy for him of course though!  Couldn't get to sleep til nearly 1am, probably just trying to deal with change.

Tuesday.  Slept a bit late.  In the evening was up to Mum and Dad's photos of Hong Kong for our Eurasia trip.  They travelled separately to me (because I was planning to go via Japan on the way back) and the group had a daytime layover in Hong Kong.  Because I can't help myself, I geotagged all 78 of Dad's and all 59 of Mum's photos of their day there.  It was pretty easy, because I could tell exactly where they'd been on account of having gone to those exact spots a year and a half later.  Just needed a bit of street view assistance for the driving photos.  There was one tricky one of some buildings in Fortress Hill, which was really nowhere near anywhere you'd expect them to be when getting a bus from the airport to Central where they took the Peak Tram.  

Wednesday.  Another night of not getting to sleep til very late.  Had to *go* to work, blerf.  Finished writing up a test plan of sorts for the proxies.  Then started building new mail servers. 

Well and truly past the twelfth day of Christmas..

Stu was meant to meet Damien at the Pot Belly for a drink, only Damien forgot, so I went and had a drink with him instead.  Sausages and salad for dinner.  Backed up my phone, backed up my computer, then labelled all of Mum and Dad's Hong Kong photos, and then it's after 9pm.  Blerf.

Thursday.

Oh hai snail.  Can you please get off the middle of the path so I don't squish you.  You're lucky you didn't end up as Stumpy's lunch!

Had a drink with Neil and Wello at the Labor Club. 

Stu got this set of clickety-clack keys to test different keyboard styles

Then had Dr Oc pizzas for dinner.  Started watching a Japanese anime show called Laid-Back Camp, which I really enjoyed and we ended up watching four twenty-three minute episodes.  It's photo-realistic, and you could actually go to all the places they go to.  

Friday.  Spent most of the day on a call with a vendor helping us with a POC of a firewall product.  So.  Draining.

I did get this funny photo of Stumpy planking at lunch

After being on the phone all day I just wanted TV dinners for dinner.  So got a couple of veal cordon bleus from Chris's.  Then watched some more Laid-Back Camp.

Saturday.  Slept ok.  Did all the morning things, then helped David load up his car to take the first load of things home.  I really didn't think he had all that much here, but we completely filled the car and there's still a lot to go.  

We might have had our new mattress arrive!

Went out to do our food shopping.  Also to pick up pills from Chemist Warehouse.  I was going to use the app to order my pills so I could just go and pick them up.  Except the app said they didn't have any in stock.  So I went to the counter when we got there to ask, and I could literally see them on the shelf behind her.  She got them down and was like, oh yes they *are* in stock.  So I was going to grab them and go, except she's like, but you can't, there's a queue.  And I'm like, THEY'RE RIGHT THERE.  FFS.  Apparently it takes chemists literally fifteen minutes to stick a name tag sticker on a box of pills.  WTF else do they do????  Pathetic.  Continued on with the year in review post in the afternoon. 

Stu cooked dinner - sukuyaki hotpot!!  Inspired by Laid-Back Camp.  With real (and very expensive) wagyu beef that the butcher kindly sliced thinly for us.

Then we watched The Professor and the Madman which was pretty good, altho apparently Mel Gibson had a hissy fit that they couldn't film in Oxford and refused to promote the film.  Stu had the book at one point, but we couldn't find it - even if he didn't give it away in our recent purge, if it was still there it would have been behind all the Lego boxes.  

Sunday.  Took ages to get to sleep - tired and restless.  So a bit of a nothing day.  Put on beef brisket in the slow cooker at lunch.  In the afternoon we pulled apart the old bed, and setup the new mattress and linen.  I had a look at the bed frame we were looking at at Ikea, but I'm glad I read the reviews, because otherwise I wouldn't have found out that the frame is actually too small for a king size mattress, and we would have been stuck.  Finally finally posted my 2020 year in review post.  Go to the archives if you're one of those silly people that doesn't use an RSS reader.

January 24.  That's today.  You'd think with the new year I'd be more organised about blogging.  Except I'm worse than ever.  Really must work on that.  So backdating this.

Thursday.  7th.  The sweetie got a migraine after lunch and wasn't feeling the best, so I took him home and worked from home in the afternoon.  No work drinks anyway, so just had a few quiet ones myself. 

I got these at Ikea the other day.  They were smelling out the whole study so I had to burn one to see what it was like :)   Looks and smells like raspberry syrup.

Started watching Soul in the evening.  Pixar animation of *stuff* is astounding.  The people are still more like caricatures.  I literally had no idea what the movie was going to be about (other than seeing a picture of the dude at the start), so when it veered off from what it started out as it was a bit surprising.  Totally got the Interstellar reference there.  It reminded me of Inside Out meets Coco meets Freaky Friday.  One gripe: how did he pay the taxi?  I loved how they used real locations.  I actually went on street view to have a look.  Like the intersection where they meet the crazy guy.  There's a chemist just like that one there.  And instead of Chase Bank, they've animated it as Pace Bank :)  Couldn't find the spot where they're walking under the elevated railway, but I suppose I didn't look too hard.  Then watched the making of Mandalorian Season 2 documentary.

Friday.  Ok day.  I updated a stack of mail flow diagram in the afternoon.  In the evening watched When Marnie was There.  Hands up who else thought Marnie was *creepy*..

Saturday.  Slept in by like an hour!  Yikes!  Finally finished fixing up scanning of Dad's slides, as best I could.  Any feelings of accomplishment at that task were destroyed by the non stop yapping dog.  Apparently it's a staffy, and it clearly has separation anxiety.  Can you report that as animal cruelty?  

This is the Tupperware bowl that broke.  I guess it was about fifty years old, and has been in constant use for most of that time, so I guess it had a good run!

Did our food shopping.  Did a practise Citizenship Test online.  I got 95%.  No idea which one I got wrong.  Spent the afternoon cleaning off my desk.  I put away and moved a lot of stuff, and actually cleaned behind the monitors and the monitors.  I also took all the crap off the side of the filing cabinet and the whiteboard, and cleared a lot of crap off the sides of the fridge as well.  So the surfaces in here just seem a lot cleaner and less cluttered.

Stu cooked dinner - spinach/ricotta gnocchi with cream and mushrooms, yum!  (it really is there under all that parmesan! ;) )

Into season 6 of The Simpsons.  And watched the finale of season 3 of Discovery.  Then chatted to Kit and Pete for a bit and got a tour of their new house.

Sunday.  Began work on scanning the filing cabinet.  The majority of what's in there I don't need to keep, so I'm scanning and recycling it.  The idea being to only keep what I really need to, and have some space for Stu's stuff as well.  Stu wanted to get some more fish, so we went out to get some, and he got me some platies as well.  In eighteen years of fish keeping, I've never actually had them, so thought I'd give them a go in the "angel" tank.  I started writing up my 2020 year in review post.  We had an orange and five spice marinated pork for dinner which was very nice.  And the sweetie and I even went for a walk after dinner.