Monday.  Spent all night working on the trivia night.

Tuesday.  Spent all night working on the trivia night.

OMFG Open Office sux donkey balls.  I'm sooo converting to Power Point next time.

Wednesday.  More fighting with Open Office, which decided to "link" a lot of my images instead of properly pasting them in.  So had to repaste a whole lot of them after I copied them to the laptop.  Hate Open Office.  Hate.

But.

The night went really well.  Had about seventy people which filled the rooms nicely.  If anything the questions were a tad easy (only one that noone got, but nearly a quarter that everyone got right).  

Thursday got *extremely* upset after dealing with property, who never updated my request so setup the room to the original old request, and who had told us to come to assist with the setup, but then did it an hour early and never let us know.  It was just a disaster of miscommunication all round.  I'd say lesson learned for next time, but not sure I could ever deal with a next time.  Dealing with property upsets me too much.  I'd rather just never go to a trivia night again, so no chance of winning, so no chance of having to do it again.

I also didn't sleep very well Wednesday night, so Thursday was zombie day.  Had a couple of quiet beers then came home and had home-made pizza for dinner.

Slept really well on Thursday night, then took a random day off on Friday which was *bliss*.  Got caught up on All The Things that had fallen by the wayside while prepping the trivia night.  Put on some music and churned through a hugely long todo list.

Then we headed out to the club.  Chilled in front of the fire and had a tv dinner for dinner.

Didn't sleep very well unfortunately.  The bed is bigger than the one in the last van, but not by much.  And I always wake up trying to decide if I *really* need to go to the toilet or not.  Which keeps me awake.  hrmm.

Saturday I did the jigsaw during the committee meeting, had a late lunch, gathered some firewood, worked on a tapestry.  Chilled in front of the fire for a while before it got a bit too hot, so no chillin involved there.  Ended up just having snackages for dinner.  Slept somewhat better.

Came home Sunday then got stuck back into the todo list. 

In the evening we went over to EffanC's, where we mostly just talked about our surgeries.  Had pizzas for dinner.

And then back to reality today.  

Also.  Rain!!!

Also wik.  Got a few more days of the North Atlantic blog online.

This week wasn't as crazy epic busy as the last two weeks which was kinda nice.  I *almost* had time to go back and do some cleaning!

Monday I got home and turned the heater on and nothing happened - it was already warm enough in the house!  Monday's BBT featured the first rock paper scissors lizard spock which was pretty cool :)  I also worked on the trivia night and finished Neil's jigsaw.

It's happy flower season!!

Tuesday morning I was scanning Mum's slides and found one of her in a bikini on a beach in South Australia.  I sent it to Mum and said I was finding fodder for her funeral slide show ;)  She had a laugh as well and said she wants to see the slide show before she dies :)   Not that she's dying or anything but after the sudden loss of Diana and Graham I kinda felt like it's best to be prepared, just in case and all.  Chrissie's family couldn't do a proper slide show because they didn't have access to the house to even get the photos, so they ended up using quite a lot of Mum's photos at the funeral.  Wow that got dark pretty quick.

Anneke helped us complete our Little Shop!

Also on Tuesday we tried out Yarralumla Kebab's new store.  I'd never been to their original store but had heard good things about it.  I went with the guys who knew the procedure which was good, because as a newcomer it was very confusing.  Turns out you have to know that you have to "fill out a form" on the kebab wrapper to tell them what you want.  But it was a complete shemozzle and we watched people coming in and standing in the queue from either end because it was so confusing.  We even saw people leave.  They need to have instructions or they will lose business.  Meanwhile the kebab I had was as big as my head, and I didn't have any dinner that night!

Got home and the house was 20C so there was no point turning the heater on.  Finished the first draft of the trivia night and sent it to Doc for vetting.  BBT had the first mention of coitus.

Wednesday I went over to Chrissie's for dinner and we had wine and toasted Aunty Di with some merlot and had a lovely evening.  Got home and Stu hadn't bothered to turn on the heater because it was so warm.

Thursday was tv dinners instead of pizza (man-sized chicken kiev's, but not super exciting).  Again, no heater.  Watched the first half of Twilight, which I last saw on the plane to Japan in 2009.

Friday was hurty overnight so zombie day due to lack of sleep.  Met up with EffanC (who had to put down dear little Celeste due to old age) and R&F for beer and pizza.  A few tears were shed over the sweet little cat, and then a very pleasant evening.  

Saturday I spent all freakin day on the trivia night - doing a whole lot of reworks and edits after Doc's vetting.  Didn't even set foot out of the house all day.  Finished the second draft by dinner time, had pizza (we were thinking of going out for dinner but it was cold and the sweetie just wanted pizza (let's not even go into how much pizza we've had in our "no pizza week" week - pizza last Thursday, leftovers Friday, club on Saturday, leftovers Sunday, Tuesday with C, Friday at potbelly, then Saturday with leftovers on Sunday.  That's pizza eight days out of the last eleven.  hrmmmmm!) ).  Watched Brooklyn 99 and Octopussy (seriously what insane father calls their daughter "Octopussy" as a nickname??  Thanks Ian Fleming for that weirdness).

This morning I went mountain climbing then spent all day doing the slideshow and table rounds for the trivia night.

And there might have been pizza scrolls for lunch.

After getting the first pass of the slide show done and the filler rounds done, we went to Crace for food shopping, then came home and I spent the next hour or so prepping a lasagna with the last of Kit's frozen tomatoes.  It turned out pretty well though.

With Brooklyn 99 and Veronica Mars.

Then blogging.

Is it bed time now?

Fifty-one years ago this weekend the parental type people came down to Canberra to celebrate the opening of the Canberra Youth Hostel.

Mum took two photos up Black Mountain - one from the top, and one from the lookout part way up.  Unfortunately we'll be busy on the weekend so I won't be able to get the fifty-one year recreation, so you'll have to make do with my photos from 2016.

From part way up..

At the top

I love how Parkes Way just isn't there in 1968, and there seems to be a lot more trees around now..

So when I left you on Sunday night I was frustrated at the whole experience I'd had with Qantas that afternoon.  In the end my booking hadn't gone through properly because of a problem with my credit card (I never use it, in fact I don't think I'd used this one since activating it, so wasn't really surprised).  On Monday I tested the credit card worked (it did) so in the afternoon I called Qantas.  Where I got in a queue that said I would be on hold for THREE HOURS.

!!!!!!!

Are you freaking kidding me?  Most companies have different queues for sales and support.  Sales *want* your business and so put on more staff to handle the calls.  Not so Qantas.  So I complained on twitter.  As you do.  There was a bit of back and forth during the afternoon, and they said they'd call to try again with the credit card.  Which they did - while I was in the other room having dinner and watching Brooklyn 99, so didn't hear the phone.  

While I was waiting again, I got onto Emirates' site. I put through the same itinerary, which 1) actually seemed to let me do (I got all the way up to the payment page), 2) had a much better connection to Singapore, giving us a few extra hours there, and 3) was THREE HUNDRED DOLLARS CHEAPER.  I asked Qantas if we could please cancel.  I was too upset/stressed from the whole thing to concentrate on anything much, so I went and cleaned the kitchen.  Of course as soon as I left the room Qantas called again.  Sigh.  But confirmed my wish to cancel the booking and eventually they did.

On Tuesday I put the whole booking through Emirates.  I still had issues with the credit card (the two-factor code wouldn't come through to my phone), so I just used a different card.  And that was that.  Done.  

Although Emirates do price gouge with seat selection - $20-$30 for regular seats, $120 for the little pair of two at the back of the plain, who even knows how much for exit row seats.  There goes that saving...

So Qantas had three lost opportunities to get my money.  If their multi city flights were actually usable I would have booked on the spot, using whichever credit card had worked.  If their booking management system had actually made a provision to "pay now" and let me pay online, I would have.  If they didn't make me wait THREE HOURS in a phone queue I would have done it over the phone.

Qantas really need to lift their game if they want to stay competitive in 2019.

Sigh.

Monday morning I cleared a massive backlogs of tickets due to me being away on Friday for the funeral.  Started to panic at the sheer volume of work facing me for the week.  And I couldn't get anything done on Monday afternoon due to nonstop interruptions.  Every one of them tore my concentration away so the *one thing* I was trying to do I couldn't get done.  In the end I managed to get it done between 5pm and 6pm when everyone else had gone away.

Tuesday not *quite* so busy, but did get stuff done.

Wednesday I was in race condition mode.  That is, too many high priority tasks competing, which meant I actually didn't get anything meaningful done at all in the morning.  Sigh.  So did some stuff for Henrch, and then Shane saved me by pushing back on the people that haven't done their docos :)

Also on Wednesday I had just stood up and was looking out the window and saw a Tarago back into a car in the car park, bumping it so I saw it move.. and then it drove away.  I grabbed my camera and took some pics.  And then went and left a note :)  I did get a call from the police asking for the photos, but no word of thanks or even acknowledgement from the owner of the car that was hit.

Aldi proved themselves once again to be a bunch of scammers.  Neil saw an ad for some scotch that he thought he'd get for the bar.  So we had a look at lunch.  But not only was there none of that scotch to be seen, but there wasn't even an empty spot on the shelf for it.  There was no price tag at all for that scotch.  Which clearly meant they never had it for sale at all.  SCAMMERS!

And then on Friday Dan's tried to charge me $14.99 for a bottle of Henkell.  I knew when I saw the price tag there was going to be trouble, so I took a photo of it, and got it for the cheaper price ;)  

When we got home on Thursday night I was in the family room doing up my hair and talking to the sweetie when I heard something and saw something move out of the corner of my eye.  One of Chrissie's clown loaches was flopping on the top of the book case next to the tank.  It must have been startled when we got home, but it had somehow managed to get out between the loosish lid and the tank wall (might have to weight it down heh).  Grabbed the fish and plonked it back in, and it's been fine ever since.  It was lucky I saw it too, I don't normally linger at that spot for very long, it would have been just as likely for me not to even have noticed til the next day.

I really wanted to have a random day off on Friday but there was just too much work all week.  I think I closed something like 30 tickets which is *huge*.  I did manage to leave at 4pm tho.  Started watching Friends with Benefits until the sweetie got home, then we watched For Your Eyes Only.  I haven't seen most of the early James Bonds in probably twenty years or more - when Dad used to put them on while I was still living at home.  But with the early ones I could still remember bits and pieces and even the odd lines of script and one-liners.  But I have no memories at all of For Your Eyes Only, except for dropping the dude down the chimney at the beginning. 

Saturday morning was the usual house work type stuff.  Not too much in the afternoon.  Finished watching Friends with Benefits.  Silly and predictable, but hey, New York.  Watched Jackie with the sweetie.  It wasn't bad, but had a very disjointed filming style.

Today was Lego picking, trivia night planning, photo culling, lunch out and food shopping, more of the same in the afternoon.  Watched Parenthood before dinner and finished after. Roasted a stack of veggies for dinner and watched some Veronica Mars.

And blogged.

Monday doctor; Hero Sushi for dinner (it met expectations - it disappointed).

Tuesday continued photo culling.  I managed two days all week.  It's fricken hard work.

Wednesday was KFC for lunch (tradition).  Ate it while listening to an AWS guy deep dive into some stuff, so most of it went over my head, and I was stuck there for two hours which my legs really didn't appreciate.  Then had to deal with people blaming the firewall for blocking stuff.  Sure it's blocking stuff, but only because they upgraded their application, not because we changed the rules.  Went and shared some bubbles with Neil which was nice.

Then to Bella Vista with the sweetie.

Had Assagini for entree - a mixed seafood platter consisting of calamari, scallops, prawns, San Danielle prosciutto and an avaocado and tomato salsa

Stu had Gnocchi with gorgonzola dolce cheese

I had bistecca: wagyu sirloin, creamy mash, prawns, spinach, green beans, pancetta, garlic butter sauce.

All very nice.

Saw this on Thursday.  Driven by quality.

Friday morning I drove myself up to Sydney.  Had lunch with Mum at the village - lamb roast.

Then off to the funeral.  Actually the thanksgiving memorial - the private funeral was in the morning.  It actually went for quite a long time - an hour and a half.  They used a whole heap of photos of Mum's that I'd scanned in recent years and sent them all through to Chrissie to pass on (they didn't have access to the house to get any of their own photos).  Saw quite a few people that I knew from years past, even Kristen from school and Joe W and Michael S so that was nice.  

Chrissie and I completely geeked out and went and stood in the hall of the church where we met thirty years and a couple of weeks ago.

Hung around til almost the end before Joe gave us a lift back to Mum's (we took the train earlier because we figured we'd have to walk about the same distance as if we drove).  Stopped in at South Village to have a look.

Back at Mum's I had a quiet toast to Diana and Graham.

Then we played Rummy Tiles, which Mum and Diana played every Friday night for years.

Saturday morning Mum and I looked at dates and travel options for our trip next year.  Then I headed off.

Met up with Kit in Dapto so she could look at a horse she was interested in buying.  She had a decent long ride and I took a whole heap of video for her to get an idea of whether she wants to buy or not (by today she'd decided not to - the horse was an old pacer so wouldn't canter).  I even had a little ride (my phone went a bit spastic so it was very dark and unsaturated, no idea what that was about, fixed up somewhat but not ideal).

Stu wanted gnocchi bake for dinner, so went to Chris's for supplies and did it.  Then we watched Moonraker.

Today I spent most of the morning trying to catch up housework.  Did some food shopping and finally got to go see takoyaki man!  The guy makes actual takoyaki, although he'd run out of octopus by the time we got there late morning, so we just had pork.  Next time we go earlier!

This afternoon I thought I'd book flights.  Sounds simple.  Four legs, which I put into Qantas' site.  But every time I got to a certain point (confirming passenger details) it gave this friendly error:

WHICH IS COMPLETELY F#$^ING USELESS QANTAS!!

So I got onto their chat line (took about thirty five minutes to talk to someone) and they spent a good twenty minutes trying to reproduce the problem ("I'm also having the same error in the website. Let me check this in our system").  Eventually he says "I have checked and the reason why you're unable to proceed online is that there is no combinable fares for a Multi City trip."  Which really doesn't help me much.  After a few repeats of "I don't understand" it seems that the cities don't actually link up in the middle.  Because it's Europe.  Who goes back to where they came from anyway?  So I wasn't going to be able to book it via the website.  Qantas is completely pathetic.  If this sort of itinerary is going to cause an error, why don't they say that before I move off the very first page?  Why lead me through another couple of pages before throwing up a Generic Error that doesn't actually tell me what's wrong?  Sigh.  So anyway, for an extra $200 he put it through manually, although after all was said and done, I got an email saying there was a problem with payment and I have to call them anyway.  Fricken great.  Maybe tomorrow.

Anyway so dinner was an hour later than I wanted because I spent so long dealing with Qantas.  Watched Brooklyn 99 and Veronica Mars (they keep bringing back characters that I've forgotten about so have to go look them up, and other characters that I *do* remember, like Leo and Vinnie and Weevil :) ).

Crazy week.  And two weeks in a row without a proper weekend.  Really must take another random day off..

Wednesday's Big Bang Theory had the first instances of three knocks Penny, and Thursday's had the first Soft Kitty.  Although I'm surprised the Roomate Agreement didn't come up in another episode I saw this week where Penny wanted to stay over.  Also into season four of Brooklyn 99.

Also Thursday was the vomit pizza. Again.

Friday had a very nice pork soup with Connor at 54 Benjamin.

Then had a super frustrating afternoon fighting with one of our firewalls which was being retarded.  Didn't get to do all the changes I wanted to do because it was being a big poo.

Had dinner with the sweetie at Alice's - crying duck salad and pork larb.

Then did all the food shopping for the club Christmas in July.

Saturday morning we went to pick up the pork for dinner.  Now last weekend I asked if I could book some pork but the dude said two four kilo pork shoulders wouldn't be a problem they'd always have them.  So I went in yesterday and asked, and another dude was all like, well I only have this 3.3kg one, and oh I guess there's also this 5kg one out the back.  And I'm like, no that won't work, I can't cook a 3kg and a 5kg one it'll stuff up all the cooking times.  But Stu was trying to avoid confrontation and I really really didn't want the hassle of such different sized cuts and wanted to go somewhere else and OMFG it was so stressful.  In the end we got the 3.3kg one and the bigger one cut down to 4.2kg.  I was still PISSED though.  Wish I'd gone somewhere else.  So my happy mood turned into crankiness for the morning.

Got out to the club and then had the usual hassle of telling people no I really don't want any help right now.  I appreciate the offers, really I do, but having extra people in the kitchen actually just stresses me out.  It's only in the last half hour that I really need any help.  Until then it's like, well you can go decorate the hall if you like.  Anyway.  It all went pretty smoothly (the 3.3kg pork was somewhat overdone, even though I took it out half an hour earlier than the other one.  And the turkey rolls got slightly burnt on the bottom by the bbq as well.  People really liked the salad I made from a recipe out of this month's Coles magazine).  About 45 people all up.

Today was pretty quiet.  Tidied my desk and did a few bits and pieces.  Stumpy was being a bit spuddy.

Watched an episode of BBT late in season 1 where they talked about trying to get "the girl from Blossom who is actually a neuroscientist" to join their trivia team, which cracked me up.  I wonder if they knew at that point (a full two seasons before Mayim Bialik first appeared on the show) that she'd ever join the cast.  Were they talking to her about it at an earlier point?  Pretty cool anyway.  

Cooked potato bake for dinner, and watched the last two episodes of season 7 of Homeland.

Have a look at this trash I saw in a newsagent the other week.

So here we have one magazine saying Harry and Meghan are pregnant again.  And right next to it other one says they've split.  One of these magazines said they had split months ago.  Do they just make this stuff up?  I think they might be referring to a split from William and Kate's charity foundation.  But that's not what it looks like there.

Now have a look closer the the covers.  Both have a picture of Fifi Box and her new baby.  One of them thought they could just reverse the picture like noone would notice.

And then there's this.  I don't know about you, but I remember seeing the first pictures of Suri as a baby and thinking she looked *exactly* like Tom Cruise.

I can't believe people actually buy those magazines.  They're utter trash.  I feel dirty even just looking at them.

So I pretty much always get depressed on Sunday nights.  But throw into the mix the fact that APPLE SUX and everything just becomes too hard.  Apple is STILL so buggy I can't download timelapse movie files off my phone with Windows Explorer.  I first noticed this when I first started taking timelapse movies using the inbuilt iOS feature.  If you try to copy the video file it says "a device attached the system is not functioning" and you have to reboot the phone just have another go at getting the *rest* of the files off.

This happened at least last year and I ranted long and hard about it, and the fact that the only way I could get the files off my phone at all was with iCloud.  But do you think I can find that rant?  Or even the movies I took?

No.

Because I suck.  And Apple sux.

No blog for you.

Edit: found the movies.  They were taken at the end of 2017 on my old iPhone. So this bug has persisted on two different phones with multiple versions of iOS.  Does this company actually care at all about people like me?  Guess not.

Edit again:  Actually I don't think I could use iCloud.  I just tried again and now I remember I had problems with that too - I get "Can't play - This item was encoded in a format that's not supported.  0xc00d5212".  Maybe I sent it via email.. which was ok for smaller files but was problematic for bigger files.  I wish I could find that rant and my solution :(

Edit again:  Ok so yeah emailing the file worked (for this file because it was small enough).  I think for larger ones I had to use this "fix" (not a fix at all because from memory it left the JPGs in some weird format, so I basically had to set this setting, get the files, then turn the setting back again).

I hate Apple So. Much.

I've just wasted a good chunk of my evening wasting time because of Apple's CRAP.  I should have just gotten an Android.

Haven't done a lot of jigsaws this quarter.  Been too busy trying to sort out Lego so I can get it out of the house.  That, and most of the puzzles I have to do are 1500 plus pieces, which stay out for a long time and get quite distracting.  The smaller ones I can knock over and get done and out of the house a lot quicker.

David selected this one from my to-do pile when he came up in April (he'd brought it up on a previous occasion).  1500 pieces and we did it in a couple of days.  It's of a cute little town, Ramsau, in Germany.  When I went trying to find it (so I can go there one day ;) ) I found a live webcam setup in this exact spot.  I watched it for a while and there was a constant stream of people having their photos taken on the bridge :)

I left it out for a while then, because I'm trying to declutter and wanted to give the jigsaw away, I pulled out the parts that David had mostly done, so that I could do them myself, so that I felt like I'd actually *done* the jigsaw before I gave it away :)

Even Stumpy came out to help :)

This was a jigsaw I bought new from Kmart for a few dollars (I think).  David, Kat, Kit and I (I think) did it back in 2016.  I thought I'd do it again myself so that I could give it away.

This one Kore gave to me when she came to visit in late 2011, and it had been sitting unopened downstairs ever since.  So it was good to finally do it.

This one Lachie started and promptly gave up on.  He brought it in for me to do, and I couldn't resist starting it there and then.  Took quite a while to do at work (because I simply don't have the time; the best progresses I made on it were after work hours, and also I can't sort the pieces the way I would at home because people come along and mess them up).  But it was really nice to have a jigsaw nearby to do - great for when you need a brain break to just do it for a couple of minutes.

I'll do this again at home some time, maybe when David is here haha ;)

Over Saturday/Sunday last weekened I watched The Breakup.  To start with I don't know why on earth she ever got together with him when clearly he was never going to listen to her anyway.  And I'd be just as ticked off as her at his behaviour at the beginning.  But then it all got a little childish and silly.

Monday night I got up to three quarters of the way through holiday photo labelling.  I finished sorting Death Star Lego into types of pieces.  Pretty insane.  

Tuesday I dug out my phone microscope lens to take a photo of the spelling mistake on our $50 note.  

I also thought I'd been sorting Lego Death Star 75159, when in fact the set I have is 10188.  They're almost identical.  Dumb Lego, dumb.  Also started watching Bridget Jones' Diary which I haven't seen in forever.

Wednesday morning it was a little frosty.  In the evening I finished labelling day 26 of the last trip and finished watching Bridget Jones.

Thursday was whiskey night!  I was sensible and only had half nips of them all ;)

Friday I had a lot of fun playing with a new monitoring tool we have.  And we finished the jigsaw Lachie left for us.  Had a nightmare ride on the bus sitting in front of a youth smacking gum the entire way.  Smack smack smack smack smack smack smack smack.  Urgh.  I hate people.

Had a drink with the sweetie at Shorty's.  Which was quite loud and the table next to us was full of drunk people.  hrmmm.

Then we went to Kimchi.  Or Chez Kimchi actually.  What's with that?  They trying to do fusion French/Korean or something?  What *was* a fusion, or rather a hot stinking mess was the menu.  It was all different styles as you went through it which doesn't work well with my brain. 

And a bunch of things were labelled "spicy" but no indication of *how* spicy.  I don't mind some spice, but not really hot spice, but trying to get that information off a menu is problematic in most places (I like menus that have a chili rating on each dish).  

Anyways, the condiments came out and we were hungry so scoffed these, they were pretty good.

Next up were "Modeum-Gunmandu" - Assorted pan-fried dumplings.  Ok, but two of the ones I had were cold in the middle.

Then "Dolsot-kimchi bokkeum bap" - Kimchi fried rice in a hot stone bowl.  This was pretty good.

And finally "Snow cheese chicken" - Snow on the branches of the fried chicken! (Cheese).  This was pretty good too although I was getting too full to enjoy it as much as I would normally have ;)

We loled at the Engrish on the door on the way out

Saw this in the Canberra Centre and thought it looked pretty cool.

Then we had a look in Muji - kinda like Japanese Ikea.

Didn't turn the heater on when we got home because there seemed little point when we were going to bed soon anyway.  But it did mean the house was *cold* overnight.  6C in the study according to the min/max thermometer!!  Yikes.

Saturday was at work all day watching graphs.  Nothing particularly exciting happened, although we did have a couple of complete mysteries we'll need to solve.  

Stu made up a vegetable stock in the slow cooker, and cooked cheesy polenta for dinner.  The polenta would have been nice enough as a side, but as the only dish I was practically gagging by the end of it :(  Watched Live and Let Die in the evening.

Today was a nice quiet day.  Did a bit of housework, a bit of Lego inventorying, and food shopping.  

Watched Bridget Jones Edge of Reason, which I didn't think I'd seen since seeing it at the movies with George in 2004, but according to the blog I watched it in 2007 as well. 

Stu cooked a mushroom risotto in the slow cooker for dinner, which actually turned out pretty good.

Watched Brooklyn 99 (first episode of season 3), then cleaned the kitchen and blogged.

Remind me to email the mother type person ..