Not backdating for a change!

Tuesday.  Stu didn't actually get any sleep.  All night.  !!  So he stayed in bed all day.  Up to 6000 of Dad's slides scanned.  Saw one of my birds at lunch.  After work spent half an hour hacking weeds - this time the oak tree sprouts that went from about a cubic foot to about a cubic metre or two in the space of just a couple of weeks.  Also, the neighbour's yappy dog is *really* pissing me off.  It just goes on and on and on and on and on and on and on.  And then on and on and on and on some more.  Leftovers for dinner.  Started season 5 of The Simpsons.  Spent all evening filing photos of the years into directories.  Avoiding rereading the blog for doing the year in review post ;)

Wednesday.  Woke up at 3am from a disturbing dream, finally managed to get back only to wake up from another disturbing dream.  Hurrah.  So zombie day.  People were loving my dashboards, so I ended up duplicating them for two other teams as well.  Connor and I sat down and did the risk assessment for our Christmas party.  Yeah moving on.  Stu mostly cooked dinner.  Read through my blog posts for January for the year in review.  Finished watching 14 Minutes from Earth.  Such a waste of resources.  Especially all that helium.  When are people going to realise once all the helium is gone it's gone forever.  People shouldn't be wasting it on such frivolous things.  

Thursday.  Slept much better.  There was pizza.  Of course there was pizza.  Watched the first episode of The Queens Gambit, which was quite interesting.

Friday.  Woke up at 3am.  Because that's what I do.  I finished decorating my nails.

Then it was "my" Christmas party at the lake where I (with some help with the shopping and the cooking) put on a bbq for forty three people (minus one no show, and three that turned up right at the end to say hi).  It was a lovely day for a change, just a tad windy.  

A lovely afternoon.

Had leftovers for dinner and watch some Mandalorian, and more of the making of documentary.

Saturday was All The Things.  Had a very productive morning.  Went out a lunch (Stu had an El Maco, and I had a McRib which was super messy) and then did our food shopping.

Came home and basically just did cooking until Ben and Sarah came over for roast chicken dinner.  Started watching Home Alone til everyone got too tired, and called it an early night.

Sunday.  Not as productive a day, but did get some stuff done including fixing up several boxes of slides.  Only ten rolls left to scan!  Did a bunch of filing/sorting of photos as well.  Took bottles/cans from the party for recycling - got $18.30 back for it all, which almost lets me break even (I went about $30 over budget on the party, not sure where all the money went.. hrmm!).  

So I have three tips for Return-It.  Firstly, go to one of the bulk facilities.  Do not register an account with them - they want all your personal details, including "security questions" such as your mother's maiden name.  That is completely RIDICULOUS.  Not only that, but they're just as likely to never even give you any money at all, which is what happened to me.  They're a bunch of scammers.  So go to a facility where you don't have to register, and get cash on the spot.  Secondly, wear ear plugs.  It's very loud.  I suspected as much and took ear plugs, because I have sensitive ears and the clinking of bottles upsets them.  Thirdly, especially if you actually care about your fellow humans waiting in line behind you, SORT YOUR BOTTLES FIRST!!  They get you to put glass bottles on one side and everything else on the other.  I had already sorted out all the bottles and cans, so the sweetie and I burned through everything super quickly.  While everyone else literally didn't care that they were holding up everyone else by removing lids from bottles, videoing their kids looking dumb in front of the machine while the kids looked at the bottles and wondered which side to put them on, or simply spent ages after tipping all their bottles into a sorting sink separating bottles out as they went.  Have I ever mentioned how much I hate people?

Finished a bunch of leftovers for dinner, which is good, because the fridge is completely full.  hrmmm!  Then I finished watching Home Alone.  Haven't actually seen it in years.  And, John Williams!  And I blogged!  On time for once!

Thirty years ago today Mum took this photo of a birds nest in a birds nest fern!  With babies!

We had various birds make a nest in that fern over the years.  I think some honeyeaters, and some doves a couple of times.  Which is bizarre (for the doves) cause usually they're super terrified of going anywhere near people.

Backdating.  Oh hai.

Monday.  Scanning.  Work.  Actually wore shorts to work.  Ok so I was at home, but it still felt a little strange.  The only time I ever wear shorts to work is the day of our Christmas party at the lake.  Cooked the beef stew for dinner (I'd done all the prep on the weekend, so it was just a matter of chucking it in the slow cooker all afternoon.  Nice sunset.  Did my UK photo labelling, then caught up on RSS feeds, but no blogging.  Whoops.

Tuesday.  Scanning.  Work.  Saw my birds at lunch.  David came along and we noticed a flooded pit that shouldn't be flooded, so David called Icon water to come fix.  Did my UK photo labelling.  One more night to go!  Didn't feel like doing much else.  Filed some photos.  I thought I'd download my phone photos so I can blog them at some point.  Except Apple died copying the movies, as it always does, and no amount of disconnecting/reconnecting it would get it to even open the phone in explorer.  *sigh*  Hate Apple.  HATE.  Wondering if my next phone will be a Samsung.  I'm sick of Apple's crapfullness.  Did some blogging.

Wednesday.  Scanning.  Work.  OMFG no recycling pickup.  Suez workers want a 4% pay rise and are striking til they get it.  4% seems a little high to me given our rate of inflation, but they're prolly paid like crap to begin with, so whatevs.  But still.  No recycling pickup!!  Gah!! 

Went to Specsavers at lunch.  Honestly should NOT have gone to Specsavers.  There's too many staff and too many people and they're just not very well organised.  The first half of the appointment was fine.  The general staff did scans of my eyes, and then I got to see the optometrist and all that was fine.  But then she said I should do a field of vision test and I could either wait and do it now or make an appointment.  I asked how long it would be and she went off and found out and said oh they can do it now, and I'll see you straight after.  Sweet.  So I went to go have it but they realised someone was in the room, and did I want to look at frames while I waited.  No that's fine, shouldn't be long, I'll just wait.  So I waited.  And waited and waited and waited.  I saw the previous patient leave, but noone bothered to come get me.  When they *finally* did the test, they said, oh your optometrist has gone on break, it'll be twenty five minutes, do you want to look at frames while you wait.  And I'm like NO, you told me I'd just do the test then get to see the optometrist.  So he goes off to try and find someone else to look at my results.  Ten minutes later and I'm waiting and fuming.  So I get up to leave and the guy goes oh did noone see you and I'm like no.  So he goes to the original optometrist and she comes out of her lunch break to tell me oh your results are fine.  Fricken I could have just left and you could have called me if any issues.  Fricken hopeless.  So I was fuming at all the stoopid by the time I got back to work and then had to deal with all the stoopid at work, which of course I couldn't because I was in a crap mental state.  Sigh. 

I left early with Stu to go pick up the car.  And had wine.  Because it was that kind of day.  The highlight of the day was that I finally finished labelling all twelve and a half thousand UK photos!  But the drama of the day was not over.  Kit and Pete had missed a document that needed to be signed for their new house to settle, and so it was all going to get delayed and cost them who knows how much money to sort out, and then they'd be homeless until it all got sorted out.  Which is never great when you've got so many animals to look after.  And have to go back to work at some point but all your clothes are packed.  

Oh, and there was also the cicada I rescued when I got back from lunch.  It was on the wall in the stairwell of our building.  So I grabbed it and took it outside and got a few photos before it flew away.

Thursday.  Scanning.  Work.  Work drinks.  Continuation of Kit's dramas.

Friday.  Hadn't gotten a new box of slides out to scan (and couldn't get at it cause David's car was in the way) so went back and fixed up a few rolls of previous boxes that needed fixing up (eg straighting or cleaning).  Work.  Discovery and Mandalorian in the evening.

Saturday.  All the things in the morning.  Super productive morning by 9:30, although didn't get as much done after that.  Had to log onto work at lunch time to try and fix a stoopid firewall problem, but the vendor couldn't figure it out either.  Even after three and a half hours on the phone.  So that was a bit of a poo.  Went over to Chris's to see if he had any veggies going.  He had some zucchinis which were looking pretty sad, so he gave them to me for free!  Win!  Cooked the whole lot of them (other than a few of the worst bits) and had them with the beef brisket that had been slow cooking all afternoon.  Watched the episode of The Simpons with Tom Jones in it, and we were like, what was that spoof movie he was in, and realised it was Mars Attacks!  So we watched that after.  Rented from Amazon Prime.

Sunday.  Houseworks in the morning.  I'm having to close the blinds on the south-east side of the house in the mornings now.  Our lovely pistachio tree that used to shade the house in the morning is gone, which is super sad.  Did a bunch of poking around with my hosting trying to tidy it up a bit.  Backing up files and rearranging things and deleting things and generally tidying up.  Still a lot of work I want to do in that space.  Culled photos for our North Coast holiday, and spent *hours* blogging it.  Also did a whole bunch of backdating of other blog entries.  If you don't use an RSS feed reader you may want to go back in time a few months, there's likely all sorts of entries you may have missed ;)  Leftovers for dinner.

It wouldn't be me if I wasn't backdating ;)

Wednesday.  Slept quite well after our long drive home the day before.  Ok day I guess.  In the evening struggled through the todo list that was a long way behind on account of being away for four days.  So no UK photo labelling this week.  Backed up my computer, but couldn't connect to the NAS.  It seems likely that windows is refusing to talk to such an old version of SMB/CIFS.  The laptop which hasn't been patched for a little while can still talk to it.  Apparently 20H2 will fix it.  We shall see.

Thursday.  Poor lonely Santa.

In the evening had pizza and the second episode of Mandalorian.

Friday.  Caught up on three boxes of slide labels (slides had been scanned just hadn't done the data entry).  Soooo nice to be at home.  Went and saw some of my birds at lunch.  Did a bunch of cleaning on the mail servers.  Because that's what I do.  The new neighbours started moving stuff into their garage (they organised to get access before settlement to start moving stuff).  Stu cooked gnocchi for dinner and we watched From Up on Poppy Hill which was very sweet.

Saturday.  Smashed out all the things.  Did some scanning and housework and achieved a weekend's work by 9am.  Gathered stuff for tax in the morning.  Went out for lunch and did a huge food shop.  

In the afternoon cooked all the things.  

I cooked up some mince with onion and taco spice for taco Tuesday.  I cooked all the meat/bacon/onion ready to pop in the slow cooker on Monday.  And I cooked up a veggie loaded san choy bow mix for dinner that night.  

Took three hours.  Yeup.

Watched second episode of Discovery.  Her hair grew too much for one year.  Just sayin.

Sunday.  Another productive morning of all the things.  Spent quite a bit of time sorting out the piles of packing materials (boxes, bubble wrap, tissue paper etc) we have in the garage - organising it all so we can find it when we want to sell stuff.  Cooked a huge lamb roast for dinner, with epic leftovers.  Basically over the weekend I cooked most of our food for the fortnight.

We're into season four of The Simpsons, and up to the third episode of Discovery.

Slept ok.  Had one of my bacon and cheese rolls for first breakfast to keep me going.

Chilled for a bit.  

Cat in a bag!

Went out with Kerry and Violet - they were going to see if Target had any rollerblades, but they were only online.  Then had a little walk around the waterfront.

There's quite a few Art Deco buildings in town, one day I should document them properly.

I thought this was cute.

When everyone was ready we headed out for second breakfast - at Bittersweet cafe above Lighthouse Beach.  They wanted to put our group of six essentially right in the middle of the footpath where literally everyone trying to get past in or out of the inside part and outside part or either way along the footpath would be tripping over us.  Kerry asked if we could go in the far corner furthest away from everyone (it was only setup for four people) but they said they couldn't because of congestion for Covid.   *blink* what?  Whatever, they did actually let us sit there.  I think because Kerry said something they blacklisted us - service was *very* slow.  Took fifty minutes for our food to arrive.  I got eggs benedict with bacon and a cheese and bacon rosti.  Mostly nice, although the second egg was a bit overdone so wasn't as nice by the time it all cooled down.

After brunch we thought we'd go up and see the lighthouse.  But everyone in Port was doing the same thing, and there was literally no parking available, so we just left.  The others went home and the sweetie and I went back down to Lighthouse Beach for a looksee.

Drove around some more.  Went to Shelly Beach where we were lucky enough to get a park.  So.  Many.  Crowds.

Went for a walk around the headland looking at beaches and stuff.

As we were leaving, someone asked if we were leaving so they could take our parking spot.  So.  Many.  Crowds.  All of Port is like that, and it's not even peak season.  Apparently the locals hibernate for Christmas/January to avoid the crowds.

Next we headed back into town so Stu could do a driveby of an old friend of his houses.  Then I remembered a slide I'd scanned of Dad's taken in 1976 of the view from a holiday flat we stayed in, and looked up where it was taken.  Turned out it was in the same street as his friend's house - about five houses back from where we'd stopped!!  I'll post the comparison pics in a separate post, but this is the house.  I wonder if Mum would remember it :)

Continued to drive around.  Wandered all the way up to Settlement Point and even saw the ferry.

On the way back looked at the crazy expensive houses around The Anchorage/Portside Crescent.

Chilled for a little while (I played through some of Violet's beginner piano books - I *really* need to learn the bass clef) before getting ready to leave.

So headed north.  The last time I was up here the Kempsy bypass and bridge over the Macleay floodplain was still under construction.  This time we got to go over it.

And finally arrived at Jeff and Ruth's.

Had a brief rest, then went on a drive with Jeff around town.

They don't need lawnmowers in this part of town - they just let the kangaroos at it

Then over to the east side of town

Then back into town, for an obligatory jacaranda photo

This is the view from where we had dinner.

Ruth cooked up beef for dinner.  Nicely cooked, although fairly grissly, they weren't too happy with it.

After dinner we watched the second last episode of Masterchef Junior.  Amazing kids.  We saw two get dropped out before the finale with the final three.

Then bed.

I'll be backdating these cause I'm so far behind in my blogging!

Left the house at 8:04.  Stopped on the Federal Highway for petrol and breakfast at the Scottish Restaurant.

Left there by 8:52.

Along the drive we listened to several episodes of Thirteen Minutes to the Moon podcast.

Lake George had a bit of water in it.

We saw people falling out of the sky at Picton!

There were people having a chat in one of the emergency stopping bays on the M7, so that meant we all had to slow down to 40 for a good kilometre or so.  #grunt

We timed the trip quite well - Northconnex had opened a mere week before.  This new toll tunnel cuts off that horrible section Pennant Hills Road and you breeze through the tunnel instead.  This also means no traffic lights between the Federal Highway in Canberra and northwest of Newcastle!

That is, you *would* breeze through if buttheads didn't break down and ruin it for everyone!

Stopping did mean I could take a photo of one of the exists

#grunt

The tunnel does have some pretty light displays.  I watched a documentary on the tunnel and apparently it's to help keep drivers alert and interested.

No sooner had we gotten out of the tunnel than we get this sign

Great.  Someone tailgating and/or not paying attention.

Crossing the Hawkesbury

I always love the big dipper ride down to the Mooney Mooney Creek Bridge

It's a pity you can't go and look at the bridge anymore (haven't been able to for years)

Near Gosford is the Australian Reptile Park.  I haven't been there since I was a kid..

Bridge over the Hunter River

At Raymond Terrace we stopped at the Scottish Restaurant for lunch.  Also got a bit more petrol.

Then continued on.

Bulahdelah Mountain

Look, our very own version of Animal Crossing!

Crossing the Manning River

I think this is Middle Brother

Arrived at Scott and Kerry's around 4pm.  So eight hours to get there, including two meal breaks and several breakdowns and accidents.

Stu had a little lie down, and Scott, Kerry and Violet and I went for a little walk around the neighbourhood.

Then chilled for a bit

Potty cooked up a bbq feast

Backdating.  Cause I'm a slacker.  Nothing to see here, move along.

Monday.  Slept ok.  Ok day I guess.  Went to have some of the snow peas that I bought probably only two weeks ago and they were *covered* in slime.  So fricken unusual because normally they last weeks and weeks in the fridge.  Pissed as.  Then David came home and spent all afternoon swearing at the fish tank lights.  But he got them working in the end.  Bestest brother ever.  (not sure if I ever mentioned the story - a few weeks back the transformer for Stu's stoopidly expensive LED fish tank lights went POP and that was the end of that.  It was a completely non standard transformer, there was no doco anywhere online for the lights, and they were strangely wired.  David decided to get resistors and rewire the thing so it'd work with a standard transformer, and also be less likely to blow out the lights.  Just waiting for the other transformer to go next so he'll have to do it all over again.. hrmmm....).  Had sausages and salad/veggies for dinner.  Then got more grunty that Stu's sauerkraut had gone off.  And some ham we bought ages ago is also looking very strange.  I *hate* wasting food and we've wasted so much this week >:(  Feeling like I should ban perishable food that I won't eat (like ham and sauerkraut) and veggies that only I like (like snow peas).  Don't get me started on trying to find veggies that everyone likes and doesn't cause health issues in people.  Took til 8pm to get UK photo labelling done.  811 left.  And blogging.  An hour and a half later.  hrmmm.

But look!  Poppy in the staircase!

Tuesday.  Ok sleep mostly.  Finished scanning Dad's WA slides.  Was good to see his photos, after only having seen Mum's very red-shifted prints for so many years.  I think I'll need to scan her negatives of those holiday trips - hopefully they fared better than the prints!  Worked from home so just watched some silly horse race on tv in the background.  David made home in time for the race but steadfastly ignored it ;)  Later in the afternoon had no tickets and not much else happening so flexed off for an hour or so and got some UK photo labelling done.  Only 581 photos left!  Leftovers from the club halloween night for dinner.  Hacked some periwinkle.  Watched random stuff on the internet in the evening.

Wednesday.  Okish sleep.  Up to 5000 of Dad's slides scanned.  I'm into Central Australia now.  I remember Mum saying a while back that Dad had issues with his camera on the WA trip, and there was a $25 camera fixing bill listed in the holiday expenses, but all the photos from that trip looked fine.  The Central Australia trip on the other hand was a disaster.  So many of the photos are over exposed, and there's *heaps* missing - obviously too bad to even keep.  I'm thinking *this* was the trip he had camera issues with.  Must have been absolutely heartbreaking for him.  I'll have to get Mum's negatives of this trip too.  Pity you can't climb Ayers Rock aka Uluru anymore.  I'm calling it though - I reckon within twenty years the local Aboriginal people will start doing guided tours to the top.  Charged of course.  I don't know how true it is, but David and Yvonne went some years ago and got the impression that the Aboriginal people didn't really care too much that people would want to climb to the top - they were much more worried about the sacred sites around the base of the rock.  I'm having to be the Naughty Email Intervention Layer (aka NEIL) at work, probably for another few weeks at least.  Which is a bit of a poo.  Cause he doesn't document anything!  Actually *going* to work sux epically - takes so much extra time out of my day.  Had leftovers for dinner.  Then it's back to "work" - finishing scanning the morning's photos (because there's not enough time in the mornings on "work" days), backing up hard drive, labelling photos etc.  Only 475 to go!!!

I don't have any notes for Thursday.  There was work drinks.  And I went with David to the mall to do some shopping.  Saw this very pretty car in the car park.

Friday.  I swear Dad must have had sex on the brain.  Following his Coitus Tower slides from the USA, this was the label for a thorny devil in Central Australia.

The evening was packing for our long weekend away...

Tonight I watched the thirteenth and final episode of Against the Wind.

This show was aired on Australian television in 1978.  I was five.  I have memories of watching it on tv as it aired.  At least I thought I had memories of it.  I thought I watched it and enjoyed it, but when I think about what my bed time would have been back then I just don't know.  Maybe Mum might remember?  

Anyway, I certainly remember it being on, and I remembered the theme song.  

Recently I was scanning Dad's slides of our trip to Old Sydney Town, and it must have been that that triggered the memories of the series.  So I Googled that crap.  Some kind soul has uploaded the whole series onto YouTube!  So over the past few weeks I've been watching through it all.  

As it turns out, the series is, in fact, awesome!  I really enjoyed watching through it all again.  Although as I've said previously I did quite often get distracted looking up the people and events depicted.  Maybe I got taught some of this crap in school, but I certainly didn't remember it.  Did you know Bligh of Mutiny on the Bounty fame was governer of New South Wales for a time?  Until he was ousted in Australia's only military coup.  Must have been a bit of deja vu for him!

Brilliant series, go watch it!

So we have a new local!  Herbert's at Evatt.  When you Google Herbert's Evatt, some of the results are for Herbert Evatt, who the suburb was named after.  Learn something new every day ;)

Tony has been going there quite a bit over recent months.  It's been super popular over the covid period, with people working from home and going there for lunches and dinners - he's had to book in advance just to get a table.  With people going back to work now, and now that it's not so "new", business has dropped a little, and with covid capacity restrictions easing it's easier to get in.  So couple of weeks ago I met up with Tony and Jess and Keira for lunch. 

Their favourite brewer is Tumut River Brewing Company and they have several of their beers on tap! 

When we were in Tumut in August we heard about TRBC's Fifty Shades of Purple, which Herbert's had on tap, so I finally got to try it!

It was purple when they first tapped it - Tony got to try the first glass!  But it was quite blue by the time I got to it.  It makes your whole mouth turn blue!

I was going to be going out for a birthday barbeque in the evening so I thought I'd go for a light lunch and order off the starters menu.  I got four mac and cheese balls which were quite yummy, but huge!  I was actually *full* all afternoon!  Whoops!

Last Friday I met up with Tony and the Chrises for lunch again.  They still had some Fifty Shades of Purple left, so had some of that, as well as a Ginja Ninja.  This time I thought I'd order off the starter menu again and got the lemon chicken skewers.  Also delicious, but I was *full* all afternoon - whoops!

I'll have to get the sweetie there some time.  Would be a great place to drop in for a drink after work.  And if they start doing breakfast on the weekends we could do brunch there sometimes :)

I had a few more photos in this folder I was going to post, but since David did the jigsaws not me (other than a bit of help here and there) I probably shouldn't.

Which makes for a pretty lean post for this quarter.  I've just been so fricken busy.  Who says the pandemic lockdown gives people more time?!?  Not me!!

I think this was an opshop find of David's.  Moraine Lake in Canada (been there!)  I did it, then pulled it apart and let David do it.  Someone had spilt something on some of the pieces which was a bit sad.  Pretty easy jigsaw to do because a lot of piece variety and easy to tell orientation.

Another opshop find of David's I think.  This was of Milan Cathedral rooftop, which I would have been to this year if it weren't for Covid :(  While secondhand, it had actually never been opened so we were the first to do it.  David started it first but hated it because the piece quality was abysmal - when you placed a piece, several other pieces would come adrift.  I called it a 5000 piece jigsaw, becuase you had to redo all the pieces like five times each.  He didn't quite rage quit, but he didn't bother to do the sky.  I pulled it apart but kept the sky separate - little point resorting it all.

This one belongs to Duncan at work.  It was also brand new when I did it.  Actually I started it wayyyy back before the pandemic lock down.  It was nearly finished when I left it, and I only pulled it out again a few weeks back and finished it off.