Thursday was whisky night, and opened the new bar.

Friday we took the day off to go do shopping for the club Christmas in July, which we've now cooked for the past four years.  Headed out Friday arvo and fired up the pizza oven and had some yummy pizzas.

Saturday was FIRE all morning which was pretty awesome.  Not so awesome: having holes burnt in my jumper - that I wasn't even wearing!!  It was a ways off, but not protected from the raining leaves of fire from the other gentlemen being a little too enthusiastic piling stuff onto the fire.  At least my fire was civilised.  Pork into the oven early afternoon but it just would not get hot.  Even though it was in for five hours, the crackling didn't get properly crackling.  It was ok, but not great.  Anyways, everyone else had a good time and enjoyed the food.  Came home with a 1L decor container of leftover pork and mashed potato.

Came home Sunday morning and then tried to have an actual weekend.

This afternoon I had the spaced-out feeling and cough that could indicate only one thing - that I'm getting sick :(  Not happy.  

Didn't get much done tonight on account of not really feeling like it.

But I did scan twelve more USA 2004 photos of mum's, including this one, which is quite fun.

Taken in Montana, near Glacier National Park.  Apparently it's not there anymore which is pretty sad.

Mornings are struggling to keep housework under control.  Evenings are struggling to keep scanning and labelling and All The Things under control.

Did have a bit of a break on the weekend at least. 

Friday night we watched The Circle, which we both found interesting.  However I never quite *got* Mae's character.  At the beginning it looked like she was going to get caught up in something creepy and have to escape.. but instead embraced it 100% ..?  I kept thinking she was just playing along to somehow get inside and do something against the system.. but no..   Odd movie.

Saturday morning I did almost nothing except waste time on the internet.  Which is tragic considering how little time I have.  Did a few bits and pieces and some food shopping and cooked roast pork for dinner.  In the evening we watched Professor Marston and the Wonder Women, about Dr William Marston and his life and influences with the Wonder Woman comic.  We both enjoyed it although it's likely only very loosely based on reality (if at all).

Sunday was just powering through the todo list.  The never ending todo list.  In the evening I started watching Anastasia (finished Monday night).  Even though it was all in English, and the subtitles if I'd wanted them were in English, all the credits and the "ten years later" caption were in French.  Very weird.

Where were we?

Friday night went over to Chrissie's for a roast chicken dinner and lemon delicious for dessert which was lovely.  I can't believe Nathan is four months old already.. I've barely seen him!  I'm such a slack friend...

Afterwards we were invited over to R&F's for supper which was nice as well.

Scott brought these.  Can't remember what they were called, but they had little syringes of frangelico you injected into them.

Saturday I hopped in the car and headed for Sydney.  Made it in time for lunch at the New Golden Emperor Chinese Restaurant in Kirrawee for Mum's birthday lunch.  It was pretty average.  You know you're in a western Chinese restaurant when you don't even get chopsticks.  Still, the $8.30 lunch special which included chicken and corn soup was pretty good value and the serving sizes were huge.

The other Karen and I got the $9.30 satay chicken and satay vegetables and mixed the two to get a better mix of meat/vegetables.  This is just the chicken dish.

After lunch we went back to Mum's and Aunty Di and Uncle Graham (not my uncle/aunty) and June came over as well and we had a couple of games of Five Crowns which was a bit of fun.  

Everyone left around 5pm and we were like "now what?".  So we went to Vivid.  As you do :)  I'll put pics for that in a separate post.  It was pretty crowded and the sweetie would have hated every second of it, but it was good to go be a tourist in Sydney again and get photos of pretty lights.

Sunday morning we went to church, where there were cakes for Mum and Elizabeth's birthdays.

Then headed an hour and a quarter across the other side of Sydney to Uncle Ken and Jeanine's place for lunch to celebrate Ken's birthday.  Various members of Ken and Jeanine's extended families were there - over twenty people outside for lunch!  

All the news reports and locals (except Ken) were complaining about how freezing it was, but it was an absolutely glorious day and NOT cold ;)

Then we went back to Mum's and I came home.

Monday I was pretty depressed because I didn't get any down/home time over the weekend.  It's only Wednesday but this week has felt *very* long :(

Had a pretty quiet weekend.  Just plodding through the todo list and jigsaw.  Finished season six of Homeland (Quinn can't really be dead can he???).

Sunday evening headed down to Melbourne again for work. Took off to the south so the view from my left-side window was just of Queanbeyan, and nothing exciting from the northern approach to Melbourne.  Had dinner with Daniel, Ray and Tony at Platform 28.  

Then two days of discussions and some planning, although not as many decisions made as we would have liked.

This was pretty random.  I was just brushing my hair on the last morning and a hot air balloon drifted overhead..

Then home again.  Again I failed, due to a left-side seat on the plane but an approach all the way around Canberra and in from the north.  If I'd been on the other side I would have seen all the lights all the way around.  Le sigh.

Have finished labelling to the end of day two of New Zealand photos.  Getting there.. oh so slowly!

The other weekend I made Not Quite Nigella's Asian style beef cheeks again.  If anything they have *too much* flavour haha!  This time I did it on the stove so I could turn it up to high at the end to reduce it.  It stays pretty watery in the slow cooker.

This is the ingredients.  Two packs of beef cheeks from Coles, which I chopped into quarters and browned, but you don't have to do that.  An onion, garlic, a squirt of ginger paste (that didn't kill us after the great fridge power loss of 2018), half a cup of orange juice, half a cup of light soy sauce, a cup of water, a quarter cup of Shaoxing wine (I used dry cherry instead), peel of half an orange, chili to taste, and I used a good dose of Chinese five spice instead of star anise.

Cook on low for a few hours

Near the end add two tablespoons of sugar and two tablespoons of dark soy sauce, turn up the heat and reduce the sauce.

We got invited out with EffanC that night so had to package up all of it, although it was very tempting to scoff some of it anyway!!

And speaking of beef cheeks.  On Wednesday night Pete convinced Kit to go out for dinner for her birthday, so we tagged along.  We went to The George for dinner, and I ended up having beef cheeks to compare them with mine.  Quite different flavours but still very tasty and fall apart tender.

So this year has been *crazy* weatherwise.  Summer just would not end, having 30C days all through March.  April was pleasant.  I didn't start wearing my jumper until we got back from New Zealand.  Then in two weeks it was so cold I needed my jacket.  Two weeks from summer to winter.  We completely skipped autumn!

Had a very quiet weekend.  Other than food shopping I didn't leave the house.  Had a huge todo list and slowly worked my way through it, although probably only got two thirds of it done.

Saturday night after Homeland we watched The Goonies, which neither the sweetie and I had ever seen.  Sunday night was epic roast pork.

Sunday morning up bright and early and walked up Black Mountain with Cath and Fiona and Heather.  12000 steps by 10:30am, but then I only did about 1500 for the rest of the day.

Tried to get stuff done for the rest of the day, but didn't get very much done.

In the evening met up with EffanC for dinner at the Labor Club.

Monday was plugging away at the todo list.

Tonight I tried to deal with the "you have a tax debt" notice I got posted recently.  Turns out the tax office couldn't be arsed sending paper notifications of tax bills, so all I've gotten is cryptic "you've got mail" messages from mygov and finally a posted overdue notice.  I couldn't find pdfs of my payg tax bills, just a summary page.  Absolutely ridiculous.  I was filled with rage at how useless ATO and their website is.  Not happy Jan!!

In a strange twist of fate, the sweetie and I were in both Australia and New Zealand on Anzac Day - had a quick hop across the ditch to celebrate our tenth wedding anniversary - making the most of the last of the Singapore Airlines direct flights to Wellington - in fact our flight back was the second last one.

Since we've been back I've been meaning to blog, but I'm a slacker.  I wanted to rant about the poor customer service from Netflix, and praise the fantastic customer service from Willow.  I've been busy at work but not crazy busy, in fact had time to clean things this week which was nice.

A bunch of us ended up at Rob and Fiona's last night for chilli which was nice (and not tooo spicy!), and I inflicted them with not just our New Zealand slide show, but Japan 2009, Hong Kong 2013 and East Asia 2017.  Oops.  :)

I've processed all my New Zealand photos (renamed, resized and geotagged).  And other than food shopping that's about all I've managed to achieve this weekend.  Well that and cooking half the afternoon.  Cauliflower bake and teriyaki chicken for dinner, and cheese balls for snacks.

This is my new wallpaper - Belconnen from the air

Friday night we watched The Day After Tomorrow, which wasn't as bad as we were expecting heh.  Still a bit yeah right, but a bit of fun anyway.

Saturday spent the entire day at work doing upgrades.  All went smoothly until testing at the end, which proved troublesome.  But nothing was broken so we left it and Jim sorted it the next day.  In the evening we got pizza and watched Enterprise and Homeland.

Sunday was a nice quiet day, mostly tidying the house and getting organised.  In the evening we watched Orbiter 9, a Spanish movie that we thought wasn't too bad.

And then back to it for a couple of days.  Not quite as crazy busy as last week which was good.

Friday I did a bit of cleaning up in the back yard.  Did some Lego sorting and watched Clerks.  OMFG such a dumb movie.  Labelled a comedy but I didn't find a single thing to even smile at, let alone laugh at.  What a waste of time.  Had leftovers for dinner and we watched The Two Towers (started just after 6pm, finished nearly 10:30pm).

Saturday spent quite a bit of time helping Pete redo our awning out the back (whoever mounted the sheeting had the edge finish over the top of the edge piece of wood, so whenever it rained water would seep into the wood and it had gone rotten).  Did a Bunnings run and I painted all the bits (Mission Brown FTW!  - as an aside, not happy with the Bunnings guy who decided he could try and sell me something I didn't need when just plain old mission brown would be just fine thankyouverymuch).  Watched Chasing Amy in the afternoon, which was significantly better than Clerks.  At least it had a story.  In the evening we watched Enterprise and Homeland.

Sunday morning was just house bits and pieces.  Finished scanning another album of mum's.  After lunch we headed out to the club to chillax.  Well kinda.  For a non-event weekend there were *heaps* of people there.  Had a bit of a swim, but mostly just sat around and chatting.  Word got out that we were going to fire up the pizza oven, so pretty much everyone brought their own pizzas to cook which was a bit of fun.  Eventually cleared the room when I started singing Queen.  Whoops.

Monday was a quiet day, mostly just sorting Lego and watching Dad's WWII documentaries.  In the afternoon watched Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, which was actually quite fun, mainly because of all the self references with the whole series, many of which I got, many of which I'm sure I didn't.  Also did some food shopping and cooked roast beef for dinner and watched some Enterprise.