From Woosang:

1. What did you do in 2006 that you'd never done before?
Walked outside at the top of Sydney Tower, went to Floriade, played poker for money
2. Did you keep your new year's resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
I don't make much in the way of new years resolutions. But I did keep the one I made three years ago to completely read the Bible in three years
3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
No
4. Did anyone close to you die?
No
5. What countries did you visit?
Australia only
6. What would you like to have in 2007 that you lacked in 2006?
A husband :)
7. What dates from 2006 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
14th Feb - little brother got married (family tradition, soon to be a broken tradition tho heh)
14th April - went live with new file server (it was Good Friday and James' birthday)
24th/25th December - got engaged (a week early from family tradition)
8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
er.. getting engaged? is that an achievement? :)
9. What was your biggest failure?
er.. some of my fish keeping?
10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
Just the usual colds and flu, and an episode with flat feet hurting
11. What was the best thing you bought?
Probably Stu's Christmas present (a camera)
12. Whose behavior merited celebration?
Stu's ..? :)
13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?
My neighbours
14. Where did most of your money go?
Probably on the mortgage. After that, travelling to see Stu
15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
Getting engaged :)
16. What song will always remind you of 2006?
Dunno..
17. Compared to this time last year, are you:
Happier - yeah I think so
Fitter - possibly
Thinner - about the same
Smilier - yeah
18. What do you wish you'd done more of?
Spend time with Stu
19. What do you wish you'd done less of?
Stressing
20. How will you be spending Christmas?
Lunch with the parents, dinner with the in-laws
21. Did you fall in love in 2006?
Was already in love
22. How many one-night stands?
None
23. What was your favorite TV program?
The Amazing Race
24. Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year?
Nah
25. What was the best book you read?
Well the *only* book that I completed was The Half Blood Prince
26. What was your greatest musical discovery?
er..
27. What did you want and get?
A proposal :)
28. What did you want and not get?
New taps
29. What was your favorite film of this year?
Cars (of the ones I saw at the cinema).
30. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
Went to work. Turned 33.
31. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
Living with Stu
32. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2006?
Jeans and a t-shirt
33. What kept you sane?
um.. it's not possible for me to be sane :)
34. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
n/a
35. What political issue stirred you the most?
Political issues don't stir me..
36. Who did you miss?
Stu most of the time
37. Who was the best new person you met?
Diana!
38. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2006:
Know when to hold em .. know when to fold em .. know when to walk away .. know when to run ..
*shrug* hehe
39. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year:
hrm, see above?? :) I dunno ...

I really need to keep up to date .. Suddenly I'm three days behind :(
My year in review post didn't get put into the December archive entry. Flipping MT. Here it is in case you're reading the archives in future :)

New Years Eve during the day we went out for yum cha, then went down to the Nasho Park and went for a swim. It was very pleasant, although I did manage to burn the tops of my feet where I'd missed putting sunscreen on - oops. After a quick shower, we went over to James & George's to play games. First up, Star Wars Trivial Pursuit, which Josh won. I trailed badly for most of the game and it was all very frustrating, but then I got three wedges in the one single round and actually ended up in second position, go figure. Had a lovely bbq for dinner - you can never have too much bacon! hehe. Next we played Ticket to Ride Europe which James won, then Acronymia which James also won, and finally Up The River Down the River which I won. So that was all fun (if a bit stressful at times heh), and then we watched the midnight fireworks on telly (what happened to Mr Wilkins??) and went home.

New Years Day was rainy so we went out for brunch then came home and just spent some time together. And then he went home :( Sadness.

Dreaded going back to work. Spent all morning just trying to catch up on my inbox. Then tackled the two servers. One is on hold now waiting for the dude to get back to me. The other is on hold waiting for the network to be setup (it was supposed to be but isn't). I can sense much more pain to come with it though. <snip>

Can I go home now?

So. Where to begin. Gosh.

Well, Friday night the boy arrived and we had a lovely dinner of kangaroo steaks and potato bake. The kangaroo was absolutely delicious, restaurant quality :)

Saturday we went to Luc and Cynthia's for a BBQ lunch. Was lovely to catch up with them, as hadn't seen them in ages. Also managed to get a parking spot in the shopping centre in about one minute, instead of the fifteen I allowed :) After lunch we did some Christmas shopping for the kids, and did a blitz walk-through of Ikea - I was looking for a lamp that I saw there last time, but they didn't have them this time, so that was a bit annoying. We had leftovers (kangaroo, sausage and potato) for dinner, and watched Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.

Sunday we trekked over to see Nana at her favourite restaurant. Meal was ok. And Nana shouted us so that was nice .. but only my parents came so didn't get to see any of the uncles.. oh well. Came home via Bunnings and bought a lamp - a bit more expensive and not quite the same as the Ikea one I'd liked, but it works well and now Stu has a decent reading light at my place :) Sunday night I started getting stressed at everything I still needed to do. I baked another batch of cookies, which Stu was suitably impressed with, and packaged them up for the various clans. Also wrapped the remaining presents while watching Carols by Candlelight.

After the carols finished, we went for a drive, and on the tranquil shores of Botany Bay, under city lights, and Christmas fairy lights from an apartment block above, Stu asked me to marry him and be his partner through life. I made him wait the few seconds til Christmas day to answer yes :) (ok so it wasn't quite the family tradition of proposing on New Year's Eve, but we were impatient :) ). We took some photos and I cried, then we came home and went to bed.

We decided not to go to church in the morning, for the simple reason that we wanted to avoid people making a fuss. That and we'd had a late night and we still hadn't packed, watered plants, fed fish, that sort of nonsense. So we did all that and went directly to the parents' for lunch. Mum of course wasn't fooled. She'd been *looking* for a ring. Flipping heck. Well I suppose at least we didn't have to announce it. But they did make the expected fuss. Gave Luc a call to let him and the entire Coates clan know, so that was an easy tell. Then D&Y turned up and they were suitably excited as well :) Much present opening followed. My biggest surprise was Airwolf season 1!! Which I didn't even know was on dvd yet! Then we had lunch (roast pork yumm), but unfortunately we couldn't hang around (which was disappointing because everyone was in a good mood and it was all very pleasant), as we then had to drive down to Yass. Where Annie had done a *delicious* roast turkey roll. More present opening for more kids, and I finally got Stu to open and play with his present heh. Finished the night with a game of scrabble with Rebecca and Alex, which I flipping won, which like so totally never happens - I hate scrabble! Beating Stu was quite bizarre too.

Which leaves us with today. Decided we needed a quiet day, so slept quite late, snuggled, and eventually got out to go get some food just before lunch time. But because we'd had a late breakfast, we went to Starbucks and played a game of chinese chess on their chess/checker table. It took quite a while, cause I'd never played, and all the symbols confused me for a while. But after a few good suggestions of moves from Stu, I ended up removing all his attacking pieces, so he conceded defeat. Totally unexpected outcome, given that we'd checked each other quite a few times during the game, and I was fully expecting to lose, it being my first game and all. Totally bizarre :) Did our food shopping and came home for a very late lunch of a delicious wrap Stu made. Followed by him painting tin soldiers and me working on my Titanic model. Then a late dinner of kangaroo steaks (same sort we had the other night, and just as delicious) and watched Total Recall.

There we go, all caught up. Phewf. :)
Good night! :)

Came home today .. sigh ..

The yokult David gave me last night worked wonders. Felt instantly better, and was fine after that.

This morning Stu went into the city for work, and I drove out to the airport. Even though I thought I had left plenty of time, by the time I got delayed with slow traffic, having to get petrol, return the car, then trek down to the other end of the terminal and wait for security to check my bag, I made the plane with only about 7 minutes to spare! Yipe! That is so unlike me. So very stressful. Thank heavens for web check-in and not having check-on luggage!

I wish I'd discovered web check-in earlier. You can pick your seat online and print out your own boarding pass. Way cool. If I'd known that before Saturday I would have gotten that window seat. Although I might then have lost all the photos anyway - I seem to be missing one of my memory cards - I think it might have fallen out of my camera bag on the plane :( So I lost some pics from Saturday night, but also some mystery pics that I'm not sure what I took .. There was a missing week, and a total of 70 photos missing. Damned annoying.

Did some shopping on the way home, then got pissed off at the neighbours who seem to be opening the door deliberately to annoy me. I closed it three times this afternoon and within half an hour it was open again. At this rate I'll be removing the catch ...

Other than that, I did actually get the dusting and vacuuming done (the dusting done with my spiffy new FlyLady feather duster!), and cooked an "interesting" meal of capsicum stuffed with potato, cheese, tomato and garlic. Need to work on the timings of things tho.

Miss the boy.

Dreading going to work tomorrow :(

Pics tomorrow........

The doc reckons my foot pain is likely to be caused by my flat feet. Solution: get better shoes, and supportive insoles.

Came home feeling stressed about not being ready for the weekend, only to realise that I had almost nothing to do tonight anyway. Who'dathunk?

This is cool, a list of most hated things... heh.. from Woosang:

MOST HATED...

FRUIT: Avacado maybe...
CANDY: licorice
BEVERAGE: coffee
COLOR: khaki
TOWN/CITY: LA is a pretty ugly place most of the time. Has a few good amusement parks though
TV SHOW: Maybe late night Rage when they have boring guest djs who put on boring songs
ASPECT OF MYSPACE: it poisons google searches
ASPECT OF INSTANT MESSENGER: with msn, that it doesn't save a session until you close it cleanly - if your computer crashes you could lose a whole night's conversation
ANIMAL: hyena maybe??? or spiders...
INSECT: mosquito
SEASON: winter when it's cold and dark, although it's good for the snow.. :)
AGE OF KIDS: teenagers

...WHAT ANNOYS YOU MORE THAN ANYTHING WHEN...

DRIVING?: people who push in
GOING THROUGH DRIVE-THRUS: people that have no idea what they're ordering, or order something so big it takes you fifteen minutes sitting behind them to get through, and you can't escape backwards if people are behind you
YOU'RE AT THE MALL: crowds
SLEEPING: having to wake up in the dark in the morning
SHOWERING: in Canberra, it's definitely getting dry in the frreeeeezing cold
YOU'RE AT THE BEACH: sand in your cossies .. I guess some beaches that isn't such a problem ... ;)
YOU'RE AT THE GROCERY STORE: having to take my backpack off my back so they can check it
COOKING OR BAKING: cleaning up

HOUSEHOLD CHORE DO YOU HATE THE MOST?: washing up
WAY TO DIE?: maybe being burnt or eaten alive...
WHAT'S THE MOST ANNOYING HABIT IN OTHERS?: anything involving bad personal hygeine
WHAT IS YOUR WORST HABIT?: no comment ;)
WHAT FASHION TREND (PAST OR PRESENT): a recent one is the jeans that have pre-worn areas like someone spends their whole life rubbing their thighs. Talk about a fashion disaster.
POPULAR SONG (PAST OR PRESENT): Groove is in the Heart (although I hated the video clip more)
WORST PART OF YOUR JOB: the stress when things break
WORST PICKUP LINE YOU'VE GOTTEN: don't know that I've ever gotten one.. I don't get out much..
WORST THING ABOUT HIGH SCHOOL: fitting in
WHAT DO YOU THINK IS THE MOST ANNOYING THING ABOUT GIRLS?: bitchiness
WHAT DO YOU THINK IS THE MOST ANNOYING THING ABOUT GUYS? obsession with sex

Gosh what a crazy two days.

Let's see. Friday morning after we logged off, we caught and packed up all the fishies and put them into baggies. All good. And carried on cleaning what we could. Then the removalist showed up. Yes, one removalist. Actually he was just a packer, not a remover. So this dude, by himself, spent about four hours just packing stuff. So much for a team of packers to come through and blitz the place. There was an hour or two when we couldn't really do anything, because the surfaces we needed to clean were inaccessible behind boxes of stuff. We were also getting stressed because the carpet cleaners were due to arrive and there was no visible carpet to clean :( When he did turn up though, he kindly arranged to get the key off the estate agent and come back next week to do it. Anyway the removalists finally arrived and three blokes in their blue singlets blitzed the emptying of the house. I ran around after them with the vacuum cleaner to get the excess of dust off the floor so they could take the vacuum cleaner with them as that last thing heh. We also ran around with spray and wipe and chux cleaning surfaces as they became available. It was about 7:30pm by the time we'd tetrised the car and returned the key and said goodbye to a lovely flat.

The way the removalists worked was different to what I expected. Rather than filling up a truck and driving that truck down to Canberra and unloading at the other end, they instead filled up a shipping container. Then the container is taken either by road or rail down to Canberra, and another team will unload it. Which was pretty nifty. Although of course it does mean that we don't actually know yet when the container will be arriving. Hopefully next weekend would be useful. So I'm not going down today, but perhaps next weekend, or maybe the one after.

Next it was over to Chay and David's for a wonderful lasagna dinner, a few drinks, and a game or two of the new Buzz (general knowledge, which I did a lot better at than with the music trivia version). And a place to crash for the night. Thanks guys!

Yesterday the long long drive. Got away at 9:13. Got here about 12:45 :( We had a coffee stop in Warwick, a lunch stop in Tenterfield (we had to try the honeycomb cheesecake at the Coachman's Cafe :) ), a tea/coke stop in Tamworth, and a nice break at Arian's parent's place (where Arian had been all week so caught up with her here instead of Armidale :) ). Traffic was fairly light which was good. The fish in the baggies seem to be ok so far. My fish at home seem ok. And a lovely sleep in this morning :)

Bit of a blah day today. *stuff* just pissed me off.

Like people that *constantly* leave their chairs in the middle of the confined spaces of our office, so that I have to walk around them or push them out of the way *every single freaking time*. J's high and mighty solution: just push it out of the way and deal with it. Yeah good on you.

Or international phone lines that drop out so you can't hear what they're saying and you have to get them to repeat themselves constantly, with the added fun of two other people *right behind me* on their respective phones making trying to hear what's going on even more fun.

Or people that push in. I HATE people that push in. I hate selfish people. I hate people that don't give a damn about anyone else except themselves.

The new office arrangements are really stressing me out. I don't know how much longer it's going to be before I crack :/

Yay. Fun. I'm going to bed now.

The glass catfish I'm treating for ich. I really don't think he's all that sick. He's perked up in the hospital tank. I think perhaps the lights stress him out.

Some of the wisteria at work. There's even a krib hiding out in there

My angels

Ich is back in the big tank. The last remaining catfish looks a bit sad :( Will try and treat the tank or just him this weekend.

The baby kribs at work all got eaten within a few days. I should probably try and separate them next time..

Expecting big mama guppy at work to pop again in a few days.

Got a funky blue bubble light for the Macquarium, but it doesn't like the tank enough and bubbles violently which would be stressful for a betta in such a small tank. So will rethink the whole thing - perhaps put the blue light in the krib/guppy tank and get something else for the macquarium. One idea might be a rope light running all over the back of the tank which I saw done on one site. Someone else had made up an led "lid" which illuminated the tank really well with no external attachments.

Bit sad about the catfish still.

Current inventory of fish:

Tank 1
* two three-year old angels
* one three-year old glass catfish

Tank 2
* three pretty big corys
* four neon tetras

Baby Krib Tank
* six juvenile kribs

Tank "5"
* one yellow cichlid - probably Metriaclima barlowi ("Fred")
* one huge catfish ("George")

Work Tank
* twenty one (at last count a while back) kribs, some at breeding age
* two parent guppys
* ten four-month old juvenile guppys from original parents
* nine one-month old baby guppys from original parents

Work Bowl
* two of the four-month old guppys I think might be almost ready to breed
* five three month old blonde guppys I got off Stu in January