So I finally *finally* finished labelling photos from our Dubbo trip waaaayyy back in April, and today I've gotten everything online.  Check it out!

These photos have been sitting in my to be blogged folder all year.

While David was living here, we got sick of Stu's old bed.  It was a bit too small, and I found it too soft for my back.  So we'd been looking around for bed frames without much success.  In January, on impulse, we bought a mattress from Freedom.

The Mattress

It arrived a couple of weeks later.

It was a lot firmer than our last mattress which is what I really wanted, and *bigger* which we both wanted.  So we were quite happy with it and were generally sleeping pretty well (well apart from the insomnia but that's got nothing to do with the mattress ;) ).  But as the months went by, it definitely softened up.  It's nowhere near as firm as it used to be, and in fact you can see the indentations on either side of centre.  And if you roll into the centre, you can feel how firm it used to be.  It also means you can't sleep in certain places because otherwise you're on a tilt.  So in the end I've been disappointed with it.  I guess that's what you get for buying furniture at Freedom.

The Frame

In the middle of last year we went to Ikea and a bunch of bed stores but didn't find anything that we really liked.  At the beginning of January we had another look at Ikea and places in the Canberra Outlet Centre.  We saw one bed at Ikea that we thought might have suited.  But I read some reviews online and I'm glad I did because one of them noted the frame is actually smaller than standard mattress sizes by several centimetres.  David also pointed out that a frame where you need to dig your fingers down the side and under the mattress sucks donkey balls, and I had to agree, especially with a much heavier mattress. I also didn't want to have a foot board, because Stu's last bed had one, and I always worried about banging my leg on it in the dark.

So I spent ages and ages and ages searching online for frames.  I finally found something that I liked at MyDeal.  Except review sites gave the company pretty scathing reviews, noting that if anything goes wrong you've got almost no hope of getting in contact with them or any getting any response out of them.  So I kept looking.  I found the exact same thing at eliving furniture (not linking to their site because it kills your cpu).  They also got pretty bad reviews.  The next thing I found that might work was from Koala.  We kind of liked the easy to assemble design although I did worry that it would squeak.  I also didn't like that you wouldn't be able to move it out to vacuum behind it (if you picked up the base it'd just come off).  It was also three times the price.  Next I found the Cali frame again but this time at Kogan.  At least I've heard of Kogan so I would have been ok to get it from them.  But then Stu got a targeted Instagram ad for a very similar thing from Eva.  It was definitely more expensive, but the company looked good, and we considered it might be a case of "you get what you pay for". 

So we went with the one from Eva.  They said it would take like five business days, but it actually came really quickly, and I wasn't home like I'd been planning to be.  

But.

Their packaging is crap, and a couple of corners had been damaged in transit from either it moving around and tearing the sticky tape holding it in, or someone dropped it.  Either way I was appalled that we'd paid a whole lot of extra money only to have it damaged in transit because their packaging was so bad.  Far out, even Ikea does quality packaging.  If I'm paying hundreds of dollars extra, surely they could afford some decent packaging.

This is what greeted me when I got home.  Pathetic!!

The little flap of cardboard wasn't even attached at this point, it just came off

Well this can't be good

Two pieces were damaged

We didn't know how they'd look once assembled, so we assembled it.

Unfortunately the worst damage is in fact visible on the bottom left there because that piece is facing up.  Its only saving grace is that it's usually covered by linen.

With the mattress on top

Then we found the next problem - the head board is not sturdy at all.  It's held on with three screws, and it wobbles.  Significantly.  You can make it wobble back and forth by a couple of centimetres with just one finger.  In fact if I leaned on it to read I was worried it would snap screws or shred the timber. 

So I complained. 

To their credit, the customer service from Eva was actually pretty good.  The guy called me up to talk about it and really did try to make things right.  If I'd wanted I could have returned the whole bed (which I might have done had I not destroyed all the cardboard trying to keep the house tidy), but he did offer send a tightening and spacing kit, and did give me $100 back (should have asked for more).  Eventually the kits came.  There were three long screws, I assume longer than the original ones, which maybe might have helped, but by this time I was over it.  And the spacing kits were three chunky adjustable spacers that you stick to the bed head, and they lean against the wall.  I really didn't want to do that either.  So I just don't lean on the bed head.  Oh well.

Ultimately I do like the look of the frame, and it was super easy to put together (and will be easy to pull apart if need be, even if they did have a mistake in their lettering of the boards).  Not having a foot board is good for my legs in the dark, although the bed covers do tend to slide off the end.

The Linen

In June last year, after covid lockdowns had eased and on our first outing, I bought some king sized sheets from Target (since we were then going to be going to look for beds and wanted to make sure I had some ready).  They were Tencel fibre which I'd never heard of, but it felt soft, so bought them.  Eventually we got to use them.  They are *very* soft, in fact too soft - they don't have any sort of structural integrity, so feels almost like liquid.  I find them annoying, but Stu likes them.  Annoyingly they pilled up immediately, although that has settled down somewhat.

Once we bought the mattress I did a couple of trips to Target/Harris Scarfe to find more sheets and a doona and doona cover.  I got a fairly lightweight feather doona (mostly feathers not down - so we can use it in summer, and I usually add a second single doona in winter) from Harris Scarfe.  Then I found a nice doona cover at Target, but it was grey not blue.  So bought some grey cotton sheets from Target as well - much nicer than the tencel ones.

And so here we are!

And yet I still prefer the spare bed.  Le sigh.

Christmas 1981

There's actually no photos of this Christmas!

Christmas 1991

I got my first camera for Christmas in 1991, and the first photo I took on it was off our balcony

Then I took it to church and took a photo of Chrissie in front of Red Car

Obligatory family photos Christmas morning

On boxing day we had Mum's family over for lunch

My camera

Mum's camera

All the cousins on Mum's side

Me with Lauren, Rebecca and Rachel

Don't know what we did with Dad's side of the family - no photos

Christmas 2001

Christmas Eve we went and visited Grandma at her nursing home

Christmas Day David and I went home for Christmas lunch at Mum and Dad's

This was taken on my first digital camera - the Olympus

Sydney was covered in bushfire smoke and the sky was quite eerie (but my camera didn't really capture it)

Christmas 2011

Stu and I headed up Boxing Day morning for lunch with my family.

We then had a touristy holiday in Sydney with Kore.

Christmas 2021

Woke up quite early, so put a turkey roast into the slow cooker for the morning.  Still experimenting with using slow cookers to do the turkey for the club Christmas in July events instead of the bbq.  Had a lovely relaxed morning with the sweetie, although probably a bit too relaxed - by mid morning I was feeling under a bit of pressure to get all the veggies on.  Ended up only six minutes late getting stuff into the oven - not too bad ;)  But we also had to work through quite a long todo list to get the house organised, as we only had a day's notice for plans with Mum and David to be established.  Also the huge siamensis in Stu's tank died which was pretty sad.  

All the veggies - sweet potato, parsnip, carrot and potato; potato bake; asparagus caesar

The slow cooker turkey (after I'd yanked out a chunk to see if it was done).  This was a "festive edition" turkey roast so it had stuffing.  I also added about half a litre of stock and a couple of tablespoons of corn flour to keep it moist and make its own gravy.  I also turned it down to low for maybe an hour and a half in the middle, and turned the turkey half way.  It was fall apart tender and it had lots of mush we could eat as well.

Christmas lunch!

The table decorated for Christmas

All the leftovers!

Mid afternoon we headed over to Annie's for dessert and drinks

Stu thought it would be fun to take Stumpy over as well.  He reacted by pooping all over the lounge.  Ha.

Daisy

Immy took this "selfie" of me

So that was a lovely afternoon.

On the way home we saw this funny cloud

Then Mum arrived.  We had snackages for dinner as we were all quite full, and watched an episode of The World According to Jeff Goldblum on fireworks.

Merry Christmas!!

Sunday.  12th.  Backdating because life got in the way, and then some.  BBQ leftovers for dinner.  Into season 2 of Sex Education.  Got my RSS feed down to 1.  1!!  (the pic I posted the other day).  I'd gotten heaps of stuff done around the house, but I was feeling super anxious about all the computer stuff I didn't get done over the weekend.

Look at all the lemon marmalade Stu made!

Monday.  Woke up at like 5:20 #grunt.  Ok day I guess.  I renewed Stu's domain name, booked a covid booster and bought a new computer.  Although nothing on the regular todo list - this was just catching up from stuff I should have done on the weekend.

Tuesday.  Dunno, I don't have any notes.  But here's a photo of Stumpy doing pushups.

Wednesday.  Spent all morning explaining to people how email works.  Le sigh.  Spent all afternoon doing all the doco for all the rules I deleted recently (and not many interruptions which was nice).  Then weeding, music, leftovers, work photo labelling and year in review reading.

Thursday.  At work, blerf.  We had a morning tea which sufficed for lunch, so I worked through lunch on the jigsaw in a push to get it finished just in case it was the last time I was in for the year.  And I did finish it!  Had a nice last drinks of the year, then pizza and tv.  Dominos was hit by a ram raid, which I thought was totally bizarre, I mean who even pays in cash anymore.  Still, it's one of the busiest Dominos stores in Australia, so if there was the one to get with even a small percentage of cash payments that'd be it.

Friday.  Helped with some prep for some Saturday work.  Die Hard 2 in the evening.  

Saturday.  A day of All The Things, and even some overtime.  Had quite a productive day, including making a lemon cheesecake, although my todo list is still years too long.  Matrix Revolutions in the evening.

Sunday.  Too stressed about everything to sleep.  And the storm certainly didn't help.  Woke up at 6:05 so decided to get up and go do some food shopping.  I was a bit slow getting everything put away, and then suddently it's mid morning.  hrmm.  I did get a litt bit of stuff done in the morning, and finished season 6 of You Can't Ask that at lunch.  Then in the afternoon I went down to Herbert's to join Tony and a bunch of his friends for an early birthday celebration for him.  The walk down was in the rain, but that didn't stop me from taking lots of photos of flowers.  There was some nice jazz music going at Herbert's, and a few of us went back to Tony's after for another drink (including a very green blackberry sour).

No notes for the evening, but I certainly didn't feel up to fighting with my phone and blogging.

Monday.  6th.  Not backdating!  Day of doing doco mainly.  Did lots of gardening after work (like for an hour).  The beef cheeks I'd prepared yesterday I chucked on the stove in the afternoon to have for dinner.  Yum yum yum (clearly people aren't as interested in summer - they were due to expire that day, usually they have a couple of weeks on them).  Finished season 18 of The Simpsons.  Got stuck into year in review reading, as well as work photo labelling.

Tuesday.  Team lunch, so bussed in mid morning (to avoid the peak hour crowds).  

Wednesday.  Did a heap of cleaning in the afternoon - all the deleting!  Blog reading in the evening - man, I was *sooo* stressed about having to go into the office the first half of the year.  Since lockdown in August it's been so much nicer.  Pity it won't last forever.

Thursday.  Ok day, nothing too exciting.  Drinks, pizza, tv.  Backed up my phone and computer (well, except for the E: drive).

Friday.  Woke up at dentist time, til about 5am.  Thinking about all the things.  Mostly about the party.  hrmm.  But.  Party!  In the rain!  Didn't seem to deter anyone, only two no-shows, and one of those was a no-show last year too.  So nearly forty people, I think most people enjoyed themselves.  

I think she was hissing at me

Oh hai

Mine!

Ugly ducklings? :)

The sun came out at the end

Literally the bestest sweetie in the world.  He did about a hundred trips to the car and two trips home to take everything home afterwards.

Saturday.  Awake for a couple of hours again.  hrmm.  Such a busy day doing All The Things.  Mostly house organising and cleaning and tidying. A bit of computer work as well.  Roasted a whole heap of veggies for dinner (with leftover sausages from the bbq). Finished season 1 of Sex Education then Matrix Reloaded (which I haven't seen since I saw it at the movies in 2003.. it wasn't as bad as I remember it heh).  Edit: I lied, I also saw it at Striker's in 2004.

Sunday.  Today (for a change ;) ).  Slept ok.  Annoyed in the morning because I lost a brand new hair tie *somewhere* in the house.  Maybe it'll turn up.  But another day of All The Things.  Barely any time on the computer at all, just slogging my way through everything that needs doing.  Except I didn't do much of the computer stuff that needs doing, like advertising our cruise to see if someone else will take it, booking a vaccine booster, labelling Dubbo photos, reading blog entries or labelling work photos.  hmmmmm. 

Tonight I managed to download and process photos from the past two weeks, as well as blog last week *and* this week.  Party leftovers will be for dinner.  I need a vacation.

Sunday.  28th. Backdating because I'm a slacker.  And my weekends are too short.  Just adding a few photos for the day.

Most expensive petrol I've ever seen in Australia

Finished decorating the Christmas tree on Sunday

And played with light

Monday.  29th.  Slept ok.  Finished doing the risk assessment for the bbq.  Did some planning for a new firewall.  After work was gardening and music and suddenly it's 18:30.  Ploughing through tagging people in work photos.  I want to get the first pass done by Christmas.  Along with everything else on my todo list.  

Did you know whitetail spiders will live in a container at least two weeks?  That's how long it took me to release the biggest whitetail I've ever seen.  So gross.

Tuesday.  Slept ok, although woke up early again for the second day in a row (~5:40am).  Spent most of the day auditing unneeded firewall rules.  It was 25C in the study by mid afternoon.  Stu decided it was hot enough to turn the cooler on.  Leftovers for dinner (Stu cooked while I did weeding and music practise).

Wednesday.  December.  How'd that happen??  Stu had to *go* to work which was no fun.  I spent a chunk of time helping someone with a problem, which if they'd followed my damned doco they wouldn't have had in the first place.  #grunt.  So many hours wasted.  It was a frozen pizza kind of an evening (although Chris didn't have any Doc Oc pizzas, so we had McCains).  Because all the weeding.  And Stu was exhausted after work.  It threatened to storm but never did, got like three drops of rain.  Then paying bills and doing All The Things like photo labelling and emailing people and sorting out backups and registering for rates by email (*again* because I'd done this previously but they stuffed up the whole system last year).  And I'm really really looking forward to weekly green bin pickups.  

Thursday.  Woke up at like 4:30am hrmmm. 

Did a whole bunch of deleting of rules in the afternoon which felt realy good.  Had Sichuan Chinese takeway for dinner.  It was very nice, but also very expensive, something like $66 for this.

Simpsons, X Files and first episode of season 1 of Sex Education.  We watched season 1 independently a while back (I think I might have watched it while recovering from having my appendix out), and I'd seen all of season 2, but Stu only got to see bits of season 2 when David binge watched it here.  So we're going back to the beginning to freshen up for season 3.  

Friday.  Another fairly early wakeup.  Finished up writing up my next round of deletions.  Did some doco in the afternoon.  Weeding and frozen dim sum for dinner.  Watched The Matrix in the evening.  Lolz www.whatisthematrix.com redirects to Matrix Resurresctions site.

Stu got a tea advent calendar for Christmas from Annie, so we've been working our way through it.  Not that I actually drink tea, but I've been trying all these.  Some are actually interesting.

Saturday.  Super productive morning cleaning and organising and stuff.  Not so productive in the afternoon.  Finished season 5 of You Can't Ask That.  During the week I started getting popups that I should run a chkdsk to fix some drive issues.  hrmmmm.  I finally decided to reboot and let it do it on Saturday afternoon.

Yep, it's rooted.

After the reboot there was a whole bunch of directories on that drive I couldn't actually get into at all anymore.

Fortunately it's my E: drive which only gets touched once a week when I process my photos for the week.  And I'd backed it up the night before it had a spack so I didn't lose anything.  So now the decision is, do I get a new drive, or a whole new computer.  Given my computer is over nine years old, I'm thinking new computer.  

Arribbiata bake for dinner, tv and Die Hard (it's Christmas!).

Sunday.  We were going to go shopping together at some point on the weekend, but with Omicron in the wild and only a few weeks til Christmas, I decided to play it safe and go shopping super early Sunday.  I also dropped into work to pickup the hard drive I'd last backed up my E: drive to, so I could copy it to another local location (so that I have copies in two physical locations).  All The Things in the morning.  Into season 6 of You Can't Ask That.  Cooked All The Food in the afternoon - roast chicken, beef cheeks, mince and a heap of veggies.  And blogged.  Just not the past week.

Sunday.  21st.  Backdating because I was just too busy last weekend.  Had slow cooked lamb shanks for dinner, and finally finished watching through Dug Days.  Then I watched Ciao Alberto.  If covid doesn't stop us I might be going "there" next year :)  Watched the first episode of Squid Game.  The english dub was super annoying, so put on the Korean subtitles, although that was annoying too because it felt the need to subtitle all the sound effects as well.

Monday. Ok day, did some cleaning.  Did some weeding after work although no music practise - making a final push to get the last five hundred-odd photos labelled this week.  Did 124 before dinner.  Dinner was some frozen dim sum pieces we got so we could use up the bucket of sweet and sour sauce we got with the Chinese we had the other night.  Finished labelling my quota by 19:17, but then kept going - doing 307 all up - all of day 53 - Sapporo to Tokyo.  Only 247 to go!!  Then watched Lie to Me and into season 5 of You Can't Ask That.

Tuesday.  Ok day, planning for more cleaning.  Started thinking about the risk assessment for our Christmas party.  Weeding, music, leftover mango chicken for dinner.  Then the final push to finish labelling photos from my Eurasia 2012 trip.  At 500 photos per week, I was schedule to finish Wednesday, but I was so close I pushed through and finished it Tuesday!  Twenty four and a half thousand photos labelled, taking nearly all year.  What an epic achievement :)  The flight from Sydney to Canberra on that trip was pretty cool - I managed to get photos of all three of my previous homes in Sydney :)

Wednesday.  Rain!  I shoulda put the deck chairs out in it for rinsing.  Did more cleaning planning at work, and leftover lamb shanks for dinner.  Have been doing a whole heap of tagging of people in work photos now using Picasa.

Thursday.  Had to go to work *at* work, which meant taking the bus which was a bit awful.  But everyone was wearing masks at least so that was good (it's still mandatory on public transport).  But it was humid and disgusting and they didn't turn the air conditioning on in the office, so it was pretty miserable in the morning.  Went to the mall with Neil at lunch, but maybe only 20% of people are wearing masks there.  Blerf.  The bar was open for the first time in over three months, so that was nice.  Although not many people there.  In the evening I put on Fantasia 2000 to get a photo of The Sorcerer's Apprentice with the jigsaw.  Yeah yeah I know the jigsaw was from the original Fantasia, but the original is pretty boring, I like Fantasia 2000 much much better.  Might have also put up the Christmas tree (just the tree though no decorations).

As usual, it's really not quite right

Friday.  OMFG.  Practically had a meltdown because I was trying to concentrate on *one thing* but literally every time I tried I would get interrupted again.  I felt like just giving up on trying to do any work and just sit there staring at my screen waiting for the next question.  #grunt.  Eventually got some peace and quiet so got some stuff done, and some cleaning in the afternoon too which was nice.  In the evening we watched the 80s version of Dune.. which was.. strange.. hmmm.  

Saturday.  Did the most essential weekend housework stuff before heading out to the club for the Christmas party.  Did a bunch of work helping prep all the food and serve lunch, then drank and chatted all afternoon so that was all quite nice.  Although I really hope noone brought covid along, that could be quite messy.  Leftovers for dinner and an earlyish night.

Sunday.  Slept relatively well.  Got up early and came home so I could log onto work for an upgrade.  Then spent the rest of the morning putting up Christmas decorations.  But then by the time I'd done gardening and music practise it was late, so managed to download and process photos but not blog.  Whoops.  Roasted some veggies for dinner then pretty much just collapsed.

Sunday.  14th.  Cooked All The Food for dinner.  Started into season 18 of The Simpsons.  Started watching the 2020 version of The Witches but didn't end up finishing it (finished it later in the week).

(dinner was basa fillet bake, although I probably cooked it a bit too long - it was pretty dry)

Monday.  Awake for a couple of hours in the middle of the night, feeling hot, even tho it was *cold* (13C in the house when we woke up - cold enough to turn the heater on!).  Saw my birds at lunch - needed my jacket because it was *cold* !  And noticed one of the sunflower seeds had sprouted (didn't see any others though).

Also picked the first strawberry off the plants Michelle gave us last year.  I considered splitting with the sweetie but in the end ate it all myself ;)

Weeding after work, and 78 photos labelled before dinner.  I figure I have time for two out of three things between finishing work and dinner - weeding, music practise, photo labelling.  Had time after dinner/Simpsons for a bit of music practise, and managed 182 photos labelled all up.

Tuesday.  Slept ok.  Was Neil for the morning.  Did a whole pile of doco for some rules which had never been documented before, so that I could do doco for my one simple little rule that needed adding.  Also did some thinking about the next round of cleaning that needs doing.  Lunch was leftover tacos.  Taco Tuesday!

After work was weeding and music, with mango chicken I cooked on Sunday for dinner (the chicken is somewhat buried under all that rice)

Managed to label 353 photos! Although Aaron called, which stopped me finishing day 53 in Asahiyama Zoo.  

Wednesday.  Spent all morning writing up details for cleaning out of a super complicated system no longer in use, but may come back one day, so want to be sure we have a good record of what we would need to do for it.  

Not much in the afternoon, spent too much time helping people with stuff.  Then worked late, had a quick break for dinner, then back online for work for more upgrades.  So behind in labelling for the week after all.

Thursday.  Couldn't do any fixup scanning in the morning because the computer wouldn't talk to the scanner.  I mean I know I really needed to reboot my computer but it takes so damned long to do it.  Started the process at 7:54am.  It was 8:28 by the time I'd saved/noted/closed everything, patched and rebooted, and 8:31 by the time I'd gotten Chrome loaded.  Le sigh.  The sunflower hasn't changed much in a couple of days..

Spent the day cleaning all the things.  Creamy fettucini for dinner.

Simpsons, whisky tasting, Speed Cubers

Then I watched The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.  I'm not usually a fan of Adam Sandler/Ben Stiller movies, and this one started off pretty silly, but the scenery in Iceland was stunning and it turned out to actually be quite sweet a movie.  Even managed to label 57 photos.  

Friday.  Another day of cleaning.  Watched Soylent Green in the evening.  It was made in 1973 but set in 2022 (we should have watched this next year!).  I reckon they could have at least *tried* to not make it look like the 70s in terms of fashion and decor :)

Today's pickings!

Saturday.  Did all the Saturday morning things.  Downloaded my email and found out they wanted to charge me another $1000 for the cruise I'm trying to get out of (for port fees or some such crap).  Had a little freak out and ended up calling them (don't know how much that's going to cost me).  At least I managed to get them to defer it til the end of December, but this whole covid thing has really put me off ever booking a holiday in advance if there's no option of refunds. We've already lost thousands on Europe, and likely to lose even more on the cruise. Makes me sick thinking about it actually.  

But then.

I've had this in my rss feed for a couple of weeks that I can't bring myself to mark as read.  It's a reminder to me that my problems are First World Problems.  So What if I lose $10000 dollars on some holidays I can't take.  At least I'm not displaced from my country due to or war or famine or whatever.  Life is good.  Really.

Then I spent the entire day alternating between the jigsaw and filing club photos (I've been sorting 9 years of club photos into folders for posterity).  Actually managed to finish photo filing!

This was the jigsaw progress mid afternoon.  A bit difficult to see what's going on, because I'm doing one half literally on top of the other half.  

Leftovers for dinner, and in the evening watched Official Secrets - a really interesting telling of the story of Katharine Gun and her efforts to prevent the 2003 war in Iraq.

Sunday.  Today.  Really just spent the whole day on the jigsaw (and finished season 4 of You Can't Ask That at lunch).

This is the progress in the morning.  Already I've done heaps since last night.

By late morning I'd done every piece that was on top of the other half.  So everything here is identical on either side.

Once that was done, I twinned up all the "special pieces"

At lunch I put on dinner - devilled lamb shanks (with de-boned meat I found at Coles)

And by mid afternoon I'd finished the jigsaw!!  Amazing that it took about seven weeks to do the first half of the jigsaw, then two days to do the second half!

Then did some music practise before Annie and the girls came over to chat for a bit.  Then it was photo downloading and blogging and dinner is just about ready!

Sunday.  7th.  Not backdating for a change ;)  This was the slow cooker turkey we had.  I literally just plonked the thing in the slow cooker all afternoon, but it was a bit dry.  Will add some stock next time I think, and turn/submerge it half way through.  Had it with potato bake and veggies.

Monday.  Slept ok.  Spent the morning patching stuff we'd upgraded the other week.  The fighting with the proxy in the afternoon.  No music practise (still giving the wrist a rest), so labelled over 200 photos - the ones I was behind in from last week because I had no time on the weekend to catch up.  That was all of day 50.  Then Lie to Me and You Can't Ask That.

Tuesday.  Slept ok.  Last week I said I thought I'd finished rescanning Dad's slides, but I'm still finding a lot of fluffy ones at the beginning where I wasn't diligent/fussy/perfectionist enough.  I can't help myself, I *need* to rescan them to make them better.  Sadly these are ones I'd already processed as well, so that means I'll have to reprocess *again*.  Sad times. Busy busy day, too much stoopid.  Fun episode of The Simpsons in the evening (The Poseidon Adventure one).  Still managed 167 photos, into day 51.

Wednesday.  Another busy day.  Only 128 photos labelled - day 52 in Hokkaido.  Finished the week still 182 behind.  

This is me cheating on Mickey - doing one half literally on top of the other half.

Thursday.  Dropped into work to swap out my hard drives.  Then did our food shopping.  Coles was definitely quieter at 7am than it has been previously during lockdown.  I guess more people are relaxed about going at a more normal time and not sparrows fart.  Couldn't log into work for over an hour because the auth app on my phone had a spaz, then I got locked out, then I had to wait for the service desk.  It did make the morning pass a bit quicker though :)  Tacos for dinner.  Finished watching the Jim Carrey version of Fun With Dick and Jane that I started the other day/week.  Well half watched it really, it was a bit silly.  Rain!

Friday.  Rain! 

One of the baby magpie larks that's been hanging around our yard for a while.

Picked up the clarinet for the first time in a week.  I really need to get a neck strap to save my wrist.  XL was headed off to Sydney for the weekend, and Ward said something about getting her to eat something for him, and I was like, I want Din Tai Fung!  Of course then I had cravings for dumplings, so the sweetie had some delivered from Charnie's Noodle and Dumplings.  It was all nice enough, nothing super special though.

Watched Red Sparrow in the evening, but it was very violent, making it quite unpleasant.  I also get annoyed at spy movies because you can never know what side someone is really on, and quite often it's both.  Probably like real life, but still annoying to watch.

Saturday.  Got housework done first thing, then doing upgrades all morning.  But I'm dumb and don't know how to fix anything when it breaks.  Sigh.  Didn't get much done in the afternoon other than geotagging some of Dad's photos from sixty years ago.  !!  Did a bit of jigsaw and music practise and then suddenly it's nearly dinner time.  hmmm.

Moved the stuff on the left aside to take a progress photo

Finished season 3 of You Can't Ask That, then leftover dumplings for dinner, then watched Hachi: A Dog's Tale, an Americanised version of the story of Hachiko.  I think I started crying when Hachiko tried to stop him getting on the train that last time, and then for much of the rest of the movie.  hrmmm.

Sunday.  Today.  Wrote a massive long todo list for the day.  Did a small fraction of it.  I'm going to be dead before I finish my todo list.

Got the internal "edges" done today, and the left bubbles are back on top of the right side.  This weekend I also finished laying out *every* piece on boards, so all the pieces are on six boards for the six different shapes (plus one board of leftover twinklies).  So now every piece has to be there to find and put in.

Started photo processing and blogging early enough today to get it done, because now I need to go cook dinner for tonight and a few other nights this week.

Stop the world, I want to get off!

Sunday.  31st.  Backdating this because Kit was here and I ran out of time in the afternoon on the 7th.  Leftover lamb and all the veggies for dinner (I left those bits of sweet potato in the oven for a few days, we ate them a few days after that, we didn't die).  Lie to Me and You Can't Ask That.  

Monday.  1st.  Couldn't get to sleep til like midnight.  Then woke up at 5:30 although got a tiny bit more sleep.  Didn't have many slides to fix up, although one I did like eight times before I eventually gave up because it was too hard and I was too tired.  I was feeling stressed that I was going to have to work both days next weekend, which made me double booked with a club working bee and Kit was coming to stay Sunday as well.  And my desk was a mess and the kitchen looked like a bomb had hit it in just a day since I last cleaned it, then I was hanging the washing out and I missed a phone call.  I mean who calls at 8:24am?? I might have had a bit of a meltdown because it was all too hard.  I did have an interesting day at work though, learning about timeouts on firewalls.  Popped into the mall at lunch because I needed to get my glasses fixed (the screw fell out of one of the arms on the weekend).  Also went to the post office to drop off a package for the sweetie, had some lunch and did a bit of food shopping.  Had to do some overtime in the evening, so no labelling.

Tuesday.  Slept a lot better - hurrah.  Brain was functioning a hundred times better than Monday.  I set a reminder to watch a few horses run around an oval, but was busy and missed the alert, and hence the horses.  Oh well.  Only managed to label 118 photos, so getting further behind :(  Also my wrist hurts.  Finished day 48, up to Hokkaido.

Wednesday.  Slept okish.  I *finally* finished fixup scans of all 181 boxes of Dad's slides.  I really wish I'd put more effort in the first round through, it would have saved most of a year's worth of effort to redo them this year.  Although it probably would have taken longer to do the first pass.  Will spend the "scanning time" for the rest of the year processing the slides (dating/labelling/renaming/processing/filing).  Managed to label 215 photos (used music practise time to do some - having a short break to give my wrist a rest).  Only 200 behind now.

Thursday.  Slept ok.  Ok day.  Very busy.  Rain!!

Friday.  Ok day - been there 14 years!  

Did some cleaning in the afternoon which made me happy.  That was done by 3pm and I'm like, I'm done for the week now right? hehe.  Had to hang around til late though to find out if Saturday work was going to go ahead or not, but in the end it got cancelled.  So I quickly gathered up a few things and headed out to the club with the sweetie.  It was cool enough to run the fire!  CRD came over to chat for a while too which was nice.

Saturday.  Slept okish.  Spent most of the morning de-nailing fence palings.  I got a message from Annie in the middle of it asking if I was in the queue for the Lego store opening, and I'm like, has she even *met* me?  hrmmm.  Did a few bits and pieces after lunch but it was getting hot and we were tired, so we just came home.  We basically collapsed when we got home.  Watched You Can't Ask That - on gamblers - I reckon the gamblers were more messed up than the ice users..  Pizza and X Files (finished season 2).

And how cool is this mask Tab made!?

Sunday.  Watched one of the guys doing some upgrades for a couple of hours in the morning.  Learnt some stuff which was good.  Then I finally got to have my weekend.  Spent the afternoon tidying up the house and doing all the weekend things.  Then Kit came over we chatted and had slow cooker turkey and potato bake and veggies for dinner.  The turkey was a little dry, will need to refine the recipe (I literally just chucked the thing in the slow cooker), and I should have had some gravy with it.