6.4.14 - 15.4.14

Sunday night after the Turkey meeting I got super frustrated because I checked the seat allocations we had against the type of aircraft we were getting and found that we were right over the wings on all flights.  After I'd asked specifically for NOT over the wing, and then asked again was she really sure when I first got the seating allocations back and she said the seats were definitely not over the wing.

!@#$%^&@*!!

This is the same woman who gave me this seat on my Sydney to Hong Kong flight ..

And this seat on my Cairo to London flight ..

And yes, I'd specifically asked for a window seat NOT over the wing for those flights too.

I was absolutely furious.  So I mailed her *again* and said the seats were in fact over the wing and could they please be changed.  (I tried to do it online myself but couldn't, presumably because of the group booking).  She did adjust the allocation a little further back, but not nearly as far as I would have liked.  Might have to ask at the airport when I checkin if there's any option to move further back.

*sigh*

Monday I met up with Luc at the Baxter Inn, but I'll save that for another post.

Also on Monday I *finally* got a game of 2048 out.

Tuesday was lunch with @StuartCRyan at Super Bowl - Peking Duck!!

Wednesday was takoyaki day at Sushi and Grill.  I asked them if they make their own, but she said they didn't.. oh well.  Still, they're not too bad for pre-made.

I also had some potato croquettes that day, but they weren't as nice

After lunch was reading about Heartbleed and getting scared.  If you haven't changed your passwords yet for things like Yahoo and Flickr DO IT NOW!

Also on Wednesday there was a "signal failure" at Mortdale, so trains were "late and out of timetable order".  The announcement at Martin Place was "the next three trains will be terminating at Hurstville and the next Cronulla train will be at 17:22".  This was at 17:10.  So I did what any sane person would do - hopped on a train to Kings Cross and caught it from there.  Window seat :)  I was on the wrong side of the train to see how crowded it was on the platforms at Martin Place and Town Hall, but I think it was pretty insane.  It wasn't meant to stop at Como, so I was just going to walk from Jannali, but they said after Oatley it would be stopping at Como, so I got off along with quite a lot of other people.

Also got a nice view of the city coming back from Kings Cross.

Thursday was sad cause there was no 4:51.

Friday was social club drinks so stayed for a couple of beers.  I came home and wanted to watch To Kill a Mockingbird that mum taped for me last year, but mum wanted to sort through stuff in the study, so we did that, and by the time we were done, it was too late to start watching a movie.

This is a box full of clip art that dad had compiled and printed out.. he had an obsession with clip art..

On Saturday, mum and I went and visited dad's little spot in the cemetery, where he had been buried that week.  He's there next to his grandmother and parents.  We also went and found Chrissie's mum.

Saturday night I went Chrissie's and we went to Rhodes.  We had dinner at the Phoenix Chinese restaurant.  We had some duck noodles which were nice enough

.. but we also had these slow cooked pork ribs .. oh my they were delicious!  The meat was fall off the bone tender and the sauce was really yummy.  Loved this.

Then we went and saw The Lego Movie.. because Everything is Awesome .. even a second time :)

On Sunday I went to church with mum.  In the afternoon we tried to figure out dad's photo filing system.  He made so many fricken backups of things, there's up to ten copies of some files, on multiple disks, with copies made for "slide shows", some with labels, others without, some full sized originals, others resized.  Some files don't have full sized originals, he only has "enhanced" or labelled copies.  Which is a bit of a poo.  So I backed everything up onto one little portable disk and brought it all home, and if I ever get time (yeah right) I'll try and sort it so there's a minimal number of copies in one organised location.

On Monday Uncle Colin and Sandra and Uncle Ian and Aunty Janet came over for dinner.  At the beginning of the evening I was freaking out about how similar my uncles are in some ways to dad.. just their attitudes to a lot of things and even some of their mannerisms.  It was a good fun night (it was Ian's birthday).

On Tuesday night I came home and cuddled my sweetie for a long time.

Last Friday night we headed up to Sydney, staying at Mum's.

Saturday morning Mum and I went to have a look at my flat.  It'd been six and a half years since I had last seen it.  Sadly tenants just don't take care of things.  

Like the vanity - which had had so much water left on it over the years that it had gotten into the chipboard and swelled it all up and made it look disgusting, and the door was missing off it too.  

Or the light fitting in the second bedroom.  Who the hell loses light fittings?  And lots of stuff stuck to walls - I thought that was pretty much forbidden for tenants everywhere??

Or the vertical blinds, which I had in the two bedrooms and the lounge room.  But they're a crappy design and have a really thin bit of plastic holding them on, so if people let them swing about in the breeze from an open window or door, which tenants seem to do because they don't care, they break.  So now there's dodgy curtains in all three rooms.  *sigh*

Not to mention holes in doors, smashed tiles etc.  It was all a bit upsetting.

For the rest of the day Mum and I decluttered drawers and a shelf in the study - chucking out lots of stuff, reorganising things, and trying to sort out the hundreds of dvds Dad had made from shows he'd taped off tv.  Also David came over and we had another go a fixing the letterbox light, but something very weird is going on so he couldn't fully fix it.  At least now the light will come on when there's mail, but Mum has to go to the workshop to reset the light.

In the evening we headed to the other side of the world (ok the other side of Sydney) for George's 40th birthday party.  There was heaps of food and it was great to see lots of people I knew again, some of whom I hadn't seen since leaving Sydney (or even longer).

Rob and Alison had these super cool lenses for iPhones (although designed for iPhone 4s, so I had to hold them in place on my 5).  I liked the fish eye and macro lenses.  Might have to get me some :)

Then there was cake cutting

And Pippi Longstocking impersonations.

We stayed til near the end, which meant we got coopted into helping clean up.  A good fun night.

Then Sunday morning we came home.

So 2013. Busy year!

We saw in 2013 with a small pool party at our place with Nat and Andrew and also Steve for a while.

  
We did a bit of travelling this year.

In January we went up the coast to South West Rocks to a school reunion of sorts for Stu and to visit Stu's dad. We drove up and down the coast, swam, visited Trial Bay Gaol, and caught up with Fiona and Margie on the way home.

We only managed to get to the coast once this year, in May. It was somewhat of a disaster with the spa being too cold on Friday night and too hot on Saturday night and a few other things that made it all a bit unpleasant (except for during the day on Saturday which was pretty good). Almost went again later in the year but had to go to Sydney and otherwise we've just been too busy.

We went to Queensland in July for a lovely long weekend to visit Chay and David.

At the end of July we flew up to Sydney for my Dad's 70th and one of my 40th parties (see below).

In October we decided at the last minute to go to Hong Kong for a week at the end of October. It was a great week, even if a little too humid. It's the most spontaneous holiday I've ever taken. I didn't do too much planning for it, because the more I researched, the more things I found of interest to see. So I stopped researching altogether and we took it as it came.

  
At work I had a mostly good year. I started off the year cleaning and pretty much cleaned all year. I started with the knowledge base articles for our team, then moved onto the log transfer system, then the load balancers. I also rehashed an old domino database for documentation which brought back a lot of memories of my last job. For the rest of the time it mostly felt like I was the "goto" person for any and all problems that came along. We were partly restructured, but the powers that be didn't really have a clear idea of what they wanted, so things didn't change as much as we originally thought they would. I made Stu drag out his tuxedo again for the work ball which was a lot of fun.

Healthwise I felt like I was sick the whole first half of the year - with colds in January, March, April, May and June. So that was pretty horrible. Not flus though, just annoying colds. Got another one the night before we went to Hong Kong too - yay :( But have been ok otherwise.

  
We had a super busy social year this year. In fact it was so busy that we went from May to September without having a free Saturday night. As a consequence our Buffy and Angel watching was almost non-existent. There were plenty of visits to/from Annie and Potty and the families. Various people came over for dinner and/or swims at the beginning of the year. Nat and Andrew came over a few times, as well as Andrew by himself when Nat was travelling. There were various after works drinks with my colleagues and Stu's and family and friends. Various Singstar/Mario Kart nights were had. Several BBQs at @CLBradley's. Several games nights at Mishi's. Had a video night at our place with work people. We visited people for lunches/dinners such as Matt and Helen, Andrew and Jen, Chris and Geoff, Josh and Ally, Windy and Nanette etc. We saw Daniel and Fi a few times when they came down. Several people came to stay including David and Yvonne, Ken and Jeanine, Fiona a couple of times and Stu's old school friend Tom. I met up with @StuartCRyan a few times in Sydney (we met in real life for the first time at my birthday). I also went to visit David in Junee.

Speaking of birthdays, I turned forty this year. To celebrate I had *three* great parties - one in Sydney, a big one at home the Saturday before my birthday, then a big lunch at work on my birthday followed by a nice dinner and seeing Phantom of the Opera. I was certainly in a different place mentally for my fortieth. During the whole run-up to my thirtieth I was very depressed, and my actual birthday was pretty meh. Such a different story this year though.

  
In sadder news, my Nana died of old age earlier in the year. And then I found out at the funeral that I have another cousin that I'd never heard about before!

Also in sad news, my father got diagnosed with a brain tumour in March. He had surgery immediately (and they had to cancel a holiday to New Zealand), followed by chemo and radiotherapy. Unfortunately it didn't really help, and he was hospitalised in July because he kept falling over and wasn't able to walk properly. He's been getting progressively worse and has been in a nursing home since September. In August I started going up to Sydney fairly regularly to see Dad and help Mum with the mammoth task of clearing out the garage and workshop. We've mostly been sorting things so far as I don't want to get rid of things until Dad goes. Fortunately I've been able to work out of the Sydney office so not having to take leave at the moment.

  
We've been enjoying a lot of visits to our little social club. We camped there over the Australia day long weekend, and the new tent survived a storm and massive downpour fairly well. But then a caravan came up for sale, so we bought it! We went to most of the club nights during the year, and plenty of other times as well. It's Stu's little get-away-from-the-world place and he thoroughly enjoys it.

With work people or the sweetie, tried out a few new restaurants. Continued going to Black Pepper for brunches and also Pulp Kitchen a few times. Went to Dumpling Inn a few times and Bella Vista as well. Didn't try too many desserts this year, although did make a Mars Bar slice and a peppermint rocky road, as well as an apple crumble and caramel slice that we tried at the club.

  
We bought another four baby angels for the angel tank. One died but the other three survived, so now have four angels and about seven danios in that tank. We got a lovely little betta for the macquarium, but he never thrived and died in six weeks. So thinking I'll probably give the macquarium away. The four foot still has a school of duboisis, two multies, a lelupi and a J.transcriptus. There's three multis downstairs, but after breeding once, the single baby I saw disappeared and haven't seen any since. There's still three or four quite old kribs downstairs as well.

Not much Lego action this year. I did get a cute little plane from Fiona, and a small City set from Ric for my birthday. I went with Nat and Andrew to Brick Expo, but was very frustrated with the crowds. I dismantled the Millennium Falcon which had been out for four years! Also over the Christmas break got to sort out and build all of Jake's lego which has been fun.

I did a lot of jigsaws this year. Mostly downstairs until downstairs got too cold. Mostly little ones, but also another section of the huge "Life" puzzle. Gave up on the skies of two jigsaws because their quality was just too poor.

I celebrated my tenth blogiversary this year. To mark the occasion I upgraded to Movable Type 5. But got very frustrated with the fact that I now cannot SSH to my host. Also with Movable Type which is *very* buggy. Next year my domain is up for renewal and I'm thinking about moving my domain to a new host with a new blogging platform. But the whole idea is pretty scary, so we'll see about that...

Shows

• The only show I saw this year was The Phantom of the Opera on my birthday.

Movies
Not many movies this year either...

• The Hobbit - An Unexpected Journey
• Star Trek - Into Darkness
• Garden of Words and Ghost in the Shell: Arise

Books

• Time Enough for Love by Robert Heinlein
• Polgara the Sorceress by David and Leigh Eddings
• Careful, he might hear you, by Sumner Locke Elliott
• To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
• Déjà Dead by Kathy Reichs
• A Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute
• I Hate You - Don't Leave Me by Jerold Kreisman and Hal Straus
• The Naked Husband by Mark D'Arbanville
• Death du Jour by Kathy Reichs
• Airport by Arthur Hailey
• Body of Evidence by Patricia Cornwall

Other stuff

• Had a full day at the War Memorial with Ken and Jeanine
• Had a jigsaw race with Nat
• Found my first geocache with Nat and Andrew
• Saw a Roller Derby bout
• Mum got her first mobile phone
• Had a random day off work to tidy up all the fish tank stuff in the garage
• Went for some walks around Palmerville with the sweetie
• Spotted the ISS a few times and waved to @Cmdr_Hadfield. Wasn't quite the same when he came back to earth.
• Went to the balloon fiesta on Canberra Day
• Watched the last couple of episodes and finale of House, which considering the timing with dad was pretty sad
• Took Stu's car for a drive up Mount Ainslie and got covered in lady bugs
• Our PS3 stopped playing DVD disks. Bluray is still ok though.  We considered getting a PS4 but the device isn't backwards compatible with old games.
• Went out to Captain's Flat on our fifth wedding anniversary
• Finished a cross stitch I got for Christmas in 1992
• Went up Black Mountain Tower
• Voted in ABC Classic FM's top 100 music in the movies, and most of my votes were in the top two hundred
• Did a blog for our trip to America in 1983
• Gave up reading Boing Boing, Life Hacker and Neatorama, Dooce and Dilbert
• Got extremely pissed off when Google Reader shut down. Destroyed my faith in Google.
• Looked at Comma Feed, Feedly and The Old Reader. Stuck with The Old Reader.  The Old Reader subsequently crashed from all the extra load of departing Google users, but was able to get funding to run on better hosting and has been fine ever since.
• Got more of my photos onto the RiotACT
• Cancelled Aussie Farmers Direct orders
• Had a look around Wintercon at EPIC
• Stu had a few car dramas that Melba Motors didn't fix
• I had a LOT of car dramas that Melba Motors didn't fix
• Saw the Skywhale
• Played through Diablo with the sweetie.  On easy mode.  Sue me.
• Did proper karaoke for the first time ever (and I've been to Japan four times!)
• Went to a Christmas Carols service at Como

So that's the end of 2013.  New Year's Eve will be spent out at the club with food and booze and friends and fairy lights and fireworks :)

Just a stack more photos that still haven't made it online..

A truncated dodecahedron I made for a guy at work

George, who jumped onto my seat straight after I got up because it was warm

Some daffodils out the front

Lego R2-D2 and C-3PO in Myer in Sydney

Lego mosaic in Myer in Sydney

Sometimes the algae in the pool gets away from me.

Add flocculent and wait a day for it to settle

Vaccum to waste - shiny!

A lovely dragonfly at work that obligingly sat still for us to photograph it

A ginormous caterpillar - a White-Stemmed Gum Moth

The Birds!  A huge flock of galahs out the back (this wasn't even all of them)

Neil with his brand new car that he got himself for Christmas.  His last car was a Datsun 120Y that he bought new - in 1978!

On Friday (after a productive morning which included cleaning out the shelves in the bedroom cupboard) we headed into the city so the sweetie could pick up a package.  Except that the post office was closed.  Doh.  So went to the Canberra Centre so we could return the Wii-U game that wasn't going to work on our Wii.  Had lunch then went to Myer and got a few bits and pieces on special, including a variable temperature kettle, a picnic set, and a beach towel for Stu.

Got a lot more of the Millennium Falcon put away in the afternoon as well as watching The Hunger Games with the sweetie.

On Saturday I got quite a bit of stuff done in the morning, including finishing dismantling the Millennium Falcon.  I found the sheet of timings I did from when I built it - at the end of 2009!!  The thing has been assembled for four years!!  Oops!  

Had lunch at Ali Baba, then did some food shopping.   The sweetie got a migraine too which wasn't much fun.

Did a bit of a cleanup in the afternoon and put on a lamb roast.  For dinner, Jan, Bruce and James came over and we chatted for a while before dinner.  I followed a recipe Stu found at Annie's suggestion - which involved lemon juice and lemons put into the meat.  It worked really well and gave it a nice zing.  Will try it again sometime.  After dinner, Annie and family came over.  The kids played Mariokart while we all chatted.  Was a really nice night.  It was still pretty hot after everyone left so we both jumped in the puddle.  Heard Kit had visitors so invited myself over.  After chatting for ages, Kit and Ben came over for a swim.  We might have accidently stayed up *very* late.  But of course I always wake up early, and never did manage to get back to sleep.  So pretty tired today.  This afternoon I finished sorting Jake's Lego, and started assembling the sets.  

So a pretty good few days.

So since I last blogged I've been to four parties.

Last Friday was our division party.  It was at the Novotel, so it was a little pricey, but most of the food was really good.  Had some silly but fun activities afterwards, then kicked onto the Wig & Pen.  Went to Zierholz as well after that, but didn't stay long there.

My Christmas cracker joke

We didn't get this.  Turns out "penguins" are like Freddo Frogs - chocolates with individual wrappings

Space Invaders school!

Saturday I did house organising type stuff in the morning then went out to the club.  Had a swim and after dinner we played some cards (Fluxx and Uno) with A&J.

Sunday morning I headed up to Sydney.  

Signs burnt by the bushfires in October

Fog on Appin Road - really weird considering how hot it was

Went to the home to take dad out for chips, but we got a retarded wheel chair and had an extremelly frustrating time trying to get him to the shops.

In the evening we went to mum's church for a sausage sizzle and carols which was quite nice.

The last time I saw Ruth she was about six years old.. now she's 22!

Monday night I went over to Luc and Lizzi's for dinner.  Lizzi cooked us scotch fillet steaks - yum yum :) Was great to catch up with them.

On Tuesday it was the nursing home's Christmas party.  David and Yvonne and Uncle Ian came along too, and we had our own table too.  A friend of Ian's was the entertainment - she sang lots of Christmas songs.  So was a pretty good afternoon.  Did a bit of workshop tidying afterwards.

Yvonne being a goofball

Uncle Ian being a goofball

Possibly our last ever family photo

Christmas selfie

Wednesday mum did a great roast pork before I came home.

The car behaved itself too.  The water seems to have gone down a *little* bit but not too much.

Friday was our section party at the lake.  It was super hot and Neil and I were suckers and walked the whole way there.  Dranks lots of beer and bubbly, but also lots of water so had an early night and was totally fine the next day :)

Henrch won the race to the top of the rope pyramid

I would love to have joined the boys in a dip in the lake :)

Yesterday the sweetie and I went out for brunch at As Nature Intended, then did our food shopping.  It was miserably hot and I barely achieved anything all afternoon.

In the evening I went over to Kit's for another party so she could christen her new bbq.  Around 10pm I snuck into the lounge room to watch the end of Carols in the Domain.  Even the anti-carols people ended up watching with me :)  *and* they played the Hallelujah chorus which the Sydney one never does, so that was super awesome :)

This morning the house was ten degrees cooler so got stuck into tidying up the house.  Was at it most of the day.  But of course it got hotter and hotter and by later in the afternoon I was pretty much spent.  Had a swim, then went to Potty's to feed the fish.

And so I'm finally caught up.  Well sort of.  There's still more house tidying to be done.  And photos from the last two months to upload to the blog.  But might get it done by the end of the year.  Maybe  ....

Friday night Andrew W came over and fixed a couple of plumbing problems we've had, but the toilet problem is much more complicated and he's referring us to a mate who's had more experience with that style of outlet.

Saturday we went to Pulp Kitchen for breakfast.  They've changed their menu slightly and the breakfast raclette is not there anymore.  I had eggs benedict with ham, and a side of streaky bacon, but the dude forgot to write down the side, so I had to get it after they brought out my eggs.  It wasn't as good as last time though, oh well.  But the ham was very nice on the eggs benedict.

Afterwards did some food shopping then came home.  I pottered around the house and Stu worked on his assignment.

Saturday night we actually had a night off.  It was the first Saturday night since May 11 that we've had where we didn't go out or have anyone over.  We watched some Star Trek and then Gladiator.

Sunday morning tidied the house a bit, then Damien came over for a war game.  I was planning to leave for Sydney around 11am, but firstly the garage door broke (a bracket came off and it wouldn't roll up - we did manage to roll it manually somewhat), and then my car was completely dead and wouldn't start.  Not even any charge lights at all.  *sigh*.  So got the NRMA battery dude out and he ended up replacing it (it was four years old - older than I thought).  So made it to Sydney a couple of hours later than I expected.

Went to visit Dad.  He's "sad" he described himself.  Mostly about facing the unknown of moving into a nursing home tomorrow.

Mum did an instant roast dinner for lunch with leftover pork, then we attacked the garage for an hour or so.  I climbed up into the shelves and pulled down piles of stuff.  I made an executive decision that VGA cards, other I/O cards, MS DOS 5, Windows 3.1, Microsoft Word etc etc could all be safely tossed.  We filled several large boxes with manuals for software that was out of date twenty years ago, a lot of it unopened. 

Fun fun fun ...

Sorted out my tax, tidied the house (a bit), had dinner, watched some Masterchef (which made me hungry again), bought some stuff online, backed up my computer, did some jigsaw, continued trialling feed readers (The Old Reader is winning by quite a bit).

And Ren solved the maths formula from the other day.  Well done (I didn't think anyone would bother).  Solution posted in the extended entry.

And just for fun, here's a little log cabin that I got in Canada in 2004 - in pieces, had to glue it together.

And I suppose congrats?? to this guy - photo taken just after he lost the job in 2010 as the last photo of our UK trip.

Yesterday afternoon (after doing our food shopping) we headed out to the club.  Chris did some rather nice soup, and some amazing jacket potatoes with a whole slew of wonderful toppings.

Oh and Peter may have done a nice salad :)

We .. well we did desserts :)

The caramel slice was from a recipe I saw in the newsagent last week.  Snapped a photo of it and attempted to make it on Friday night.  But after taking it out of the oven it was completely solid on top and I thought it was an epic disaster.  Saturday morning I topped it with chocolate anyway, thinking if it was a complete failure I'd make a Violet Crumble Cheesecake Slice.  But as I cut it up I realised it wasn't such a complete disaster after all!  And in fact people liked it!

I also made an apple crumble from an untested recipe I found online.  Actually I only used the topping from that recipe, I used another recipe for the apples.  But it was untested so I had no idea if it would work.  But it did!  Hurrah!

After dinner we played Geoff's version of "Crazy Whist" which was very silly but a lot of fun.

Didn't sleep too well in the caravan.  Not really sure why, I was warm enough even though it was freezing*.  I disturbed some kangaroos at 6:30 going to pee .. hrmm.

J&H did bacon and eggs from breakfast and we used the leftover potatoes as well so that was pretty nice.

We were going to do some stuff with the caravan, but in the end just came home.

* I mean freezing in the figurative sense as it wasn't freezing *inside* the caravan.  Apparently people aren't clear on the difference between my figurative and literal speech.  However it did in fact freeze outside overnight, and there was plenty of frost on the ground to prove it.

In about year eight (give or take a year) we were learning to solve mathemetical formula such as this one:

Yes really :)

ok so were just learning this stuff in general when a magazine advert came out with the above formula.  Well not quite.  It actually had a mistake in it and didn't work.  So we figured out what was wrong with it and fixed it, and that's what's above.

I can't imagine for a second that anyone will bother to try and solve it, but just in case anyone does, I'll hold off posting the photo from the magazine.

Formula courtesy of http://www.codecogs.com/eqneditor