Two years ago today we had a quiet day in London because Legoland was closed.  Even though I was devastated at the time, it probably worked out for the best in the end - as I went eighteen months later on a glorious sunny day instead of the clouds I would have had if we'd gone that day.

We left work just after lunch on Thursday, as our flight was 4pm.  Two flights for the day - Canberra to Sydney, then Sydney to Brisbane.  So weren't scheduled to arrive in Brisbane til after 7pm.  Then our flight from Sydney to Brisbane was delayed for half an hour due to heavy traffic in Brisbane.  We did three big loops around the coast off Ballina/Tweed Heads.  But to keep us entertained, they announced that Cate Campbell and Emily Seebohm were on the plane, and they wandered down the aisle showing off their medals!  It was amazingly cool!  Got to touch Emily Seebohm's silver and gold medals!  They were very heavy!  But not as shiny as I thought they'd be! heh.  Finally arrived in Brisbane, picked up our hire car then headed out to Chay and David's.  Fairly quiet night.  Only stayed up til 12:30 drinking and chatting :)  But did get to meet their new bird - Ichy - an Indian Ringneck, who is amazingly cool :)

Have I ever mentioned how much I love flying? :)

Pretty clouds over NSW

Sydney shining

Look mum, I can see your house from here!

This dude is taking this plane for a walk

I was quite surprised by the *glass* bottles!

Cate Campbell and her gold medal

Emily Seebohm and her two silver and one gold medal

Cate Campbell and Emily Seebohm on our plane!

The girls had some cool "Australia" luggage

Brisbane Airport

Mine!

After a fairly slow morning, we headed out to Ipswich for lunch and went to the Hog's Breath Cafe for lunch.  I didn't feel like anything too heavy, so had a "side" of caesar salad, and a "side" of curly fries.  Because if you go to the Hog's Breath Cafe you *have* to do curly fries :)   Stu had a pretty awesome "finger food" platter.  On the way back, we stopped in at Dan's to pick up supplies for the rest of the weekend.  Dinner was lots of Eagle Boys pizza.  There was drinking.  There was Buzz.  There was Singstar.  And it was very good.

Finger food platter

Caesar salad and curly fries

Supplies for the weekend

Stu and Ichy

Ichy!

Ichy!

Saturday after a bit of a sleepin (and the sweetie had headed out to meet a friend), C&D and I headed over to the markets next to Orion.  But they were pretty boring, not much there.  So headed into town to wander around South Bank and the markets there.  Was a very lovely wander.  Dinner that night was some roast chicken that we picked up from Chay's mum, along with the kids who were quite sick with the flu.  (David did his "best potatoes in the known universe" which were pretty decent :) ).  Their friend Storm came over after dinner too which was pretty cool.  There were mojitos.  There was drinking.  There was Buzz.  There was Singstar.  And it was very good.

Near Orion

Southbank

Brisbane from Southbank

Southbank

Southbank (taking after Japan, much?)

Bored lifesaver. The water looked lovely.  I'd have liked to have gone for a swim.  But I didn't have any swimmers.  And I think they'd have arrested me if I went skinny dipping!

Brisbane from Southbank

Lizard at Southbank

Nepalese pagoda at Southbank

Chookens!

Mojitos!

After a bit of a sleepin, we packed a picnic lunch and headed out to Wivenhoe Dam.  We'd thought of this too late last year which was a bit sad as we would have seen it spilling over.  As it was this year, they'd closed off the viewing area so you couldn't even see the front of the dam.  But I did walk over most of it while the others took photos of me heh.  Dinner was roast pork, along with a stack of pork skin.  But after dinner I started feeling a bit off-colour.  Thought I was coming down with the flu the kids had.  But also felt quite queasy.  Didn't even feel like drinking!  Tragic I know!!  Storm came over again and we played a card game called "Frustration" which I think I'd like to play some more.  There was no Buzz.  There was no Singstar.  There was no more drinking.  And it was very sad.

Wivenhoe Dam

Extra spillway at Wivenhoe Dam

Blue-faced honeyeater

Isn't he a cutie? :)

Wivenhoe Dam

Wivenhoe Dam

Wivenhoe Dam

Wivenhoe Dam

Wivenhoe Dam

Wivenhoe Dam

er..

We'd bought a big bag of purple carrots.  If you boil them, their water turns bright indigo!

The last day is always a quiet day.  Didn't really do anything before heading off with ten baby plecos and three baby guppies in tow at 11:30am.  Pretty uneventful trip home (two flights - Brisbane-Sydney then Sydney-Canberra, and Lake George looks very full!).  After a long weekend of entirely t-shirt weather it was a bit sad to get home to the freezing cold.  

Jaffas at the Brisbane Qantas club

Citrus lemon shortbread on the plane

Northern beaches of Sydney

Drinks with Libby Trickett at the Qantas Club in Sydney

A-380 taking off

Been to a couple of parties down there

Sunset over Botany Bay

I've never seen Lake George completely full!

Home!!

I dumped all the fish into the two-foot tank.  The next morning (Tuesday) I couldn't see any of the new fish at all - alive or dead.  Wednesday morning I saw one of the plecos swimming around.  So who knows if any others have survived.

Also fought the infection for a couple of days, but I think I have beaten it and not really gotten sick.

As always, same time next year guys, it was fun :):):)

After a morning of fighting with it, Neil and I went to lunch, deciding we should go somewhere licensed.  

We settled on the Ha ha bar, and had a very nice lunch and several mulled wines.  Not very alcoholic, but super tasty.

Yummy mulled wines

"Beef Tagliata" - rare beef, rocket, parmesan, capers, balsamic reduction and olive oil - yummmm!

Monster clouds

So back to work but I wasn't in the mood for any more crap.  So answered a few queries and phone calls, and went and annoyed people.  I went and annoyed Fred for a bit, and he had this big pile of 5c coins on his desk.  So as I do, I went through them looking for 1972 5c coins.  Not expecting to find any.  Because I've been collecting coins for probably nearly thirty years and I've never seen one.  In fact for years I didn't think they existed because I'd gotten every other minted coin until the eighties, but never a 1972 5c coin.  But a while back I found out they do actually exist, but are pretty rare.  In fact they sell for about $5 each on ebay.  But we were just chatting and I was going through the coins, and holy crap I found one!!!!!  So was super excited by that.  I kept chatting and looking and OMG ANOTHER ONE!!!  I've never seen one of these coins in my life and suddenly there's two in one place?!?!!!  I was spinning out at this point but kept looking AND THERE'S ANOTHER ONE!!!!!!!!!!!!   THREE!!!!  IN ONE PLACE!!!!!    Do you understand how amazingly unlikely this is?!?!!?  The last one had a super big scratch across it, so not worth anything, but the chances of finding three of these coins at once absolutely gobsmacked me.  

Anyways.  

Sent out the word early that we'd be at the Ha ha bar from 4pm, and invited the usual crowd.  It was quite peaceful for a while, outside by the lake, quiet, not windy.  Very pleasant.  Then the heaters or refrigeration turned on so it got noisy.  Oh well.

Afterwards Tony and I were going to walk home but it was getting a bit late, so cheated and took the bus that goes half way.  Then I stayed for a very yummy mac&cheese dinner.

So a nice end to what started as a super crappy day.

I was appalled.  I expect this sort of behaviour from overseas "companies" and fly-by-nights and your other general dregs of the internet.

But for an Australian company to stoop so low as to use comment spam to increase their Google rankings is just pathetic.

If I lived in Adelaide there's certainly no way I'd ever be a customer!

Bunch of lowlife spammers!

The Saturn V rocket was super awesome

The Dish

Government House in Victoria, made by the owner of the OzBricks Bricklink store

Closeup of the top of the Saturn V rocket

I drooled over these mosaics.

These two were done with bricks on four boards

And this one with plates on nine boards

No crowds!!!

Carillon, Parliament House and War Memorial

Where's Wally?

Wall-e and Eve were there again this year

There was a pretty big Star Wars section

I loved this tree in full bloom

Domo!

And then we headed into dinner.

I think this was pork, but I'm not really sure.  It was yummy though!

And a delicious, tender steak

With chocolate mousse for dessert

The guest speaker was Gary McIntire from Legoland California.  He talked about his life with Lego and how he got work at Legoland.

My creation (with a bit of help).  Pretty tragic really, I'm not creative at all!

I did add to my Lego earrings

A great night!

For the most part I liked it.

<spoilers!!!>

Except for feeling tense the whole way through because you just *know* that everyone is going to die heh.

And there's a few things I had to go look up to figure out what they were about.

Like the opening scene.  Some guy swallows black goop and dies.  What the?  OK so reading online it seems that that is the way they create life on a planet, by having the black goo mix with the humanoid DNA and go off and do its thing.  Or some such thing.  

Or David infecting Holloway and trying to get Shaw pregnant with the alien.  Why??  Getting too late to find a definitive answer on this.

As others have said, David is the best character in the movie, especially his channelling of Lawrence of Arabia :)

I just watched the video Dave2 linked to.. it has plenty of other questions!

 

Other than that.. my day started with me starting to work on something that really hasn't moved since I left it before I went away.  I got to work on it for about ten minutes before the interruptions started.  They didn't stop all day.  Doh!

It's only half finished :)

But tonight I did finish the second quarter (6000 pieces) of the Life jigsaw.  So that was thirteen days of work, including two weekends (although obviously not all that time spent on it).

Pretty uneventful week.  I think.  I think I was pretty busy at work.  I counted up my todo list and realised I'm in the middle of thirteen different projects at the moment.  Yikes.

This weekend I had a relatively productive Saturday.  Well sort of.  Did a few days of UK photo sorting.  And a bit of cleaning.  And some work.  And mostly cleared news feeds.  But mostly jigsaw.

Saturday night we went to Mishi's for our semi-regular catchup/games night, which was lovely as always.  First we played Pass the Popcorn (Thrills and Chills Edition).  Which would have been more fun as the regular edition.  I don't know enough about "scary" movies.  Then we played Way Back When in History, which was an American history board game where you answer questions and move your way around the board.  Most of the questions were completely basic, but a few things we'd never heard of.  I think Stu and I won in the end.  It wasn't very well thought through in terms of game play (well maybe it was, but the instructions certainly didn't help).  Like it said if you land on someone's token move to the next available space.  But there were some spaces that were "go back one space". But if someone was there you would end up in an infinite loop.  Silly.

Today was pretty much just jigsaw all morning.  And went and saw Excalibur at the Film and Sound archives (which I quite enjoyed, despite a faded and dirty print).  And went to Dumpling Inn for dinner.  And did our food shopping.  Might have gone to the multicultural festival but Stu was not up for crowds of people.

So this is the jigsaw.  Nearly finished.  Maybe a couple of hundred pieces left.  Should knock it over tomorrow.  Then can get back to regularly scheduled programming..

Came home and in two hours had run and chlorinated the pool, put washing away, done a load of washing, cleaned the bathroom, done some jigsaw, had dinner and cleaned the kitchen.

Did a bit more jigsaw.  Today I did the balloons and the rainbow.

But also did some trivia night planning.

So a pretty successful night all up.

I did the jigsaw most of the weekend.

This is the next 6000 pieces sorted into sections

And this is my progress as of this evening (can't really see much in this photo)

The only other event of the weekend was meeting up with @phonakins and @chrispycon (and Rish and Richard) for drinks at King O'Malley's, followed by dinner at Asian Noodle House.  No documentary evidence (although I might steal Fiona's photos of the meal one day), but it was a great night.