Tuesday I did my quota of photo labelling and thought I'd watch something on Netflix.  I started watching Contagion thinking I'd start it and finish it later, but ended up watching the whole thing.  Netflix was broken though - they forgot to add the day count subtitle - super annoying.  And if you hadn't seen it before you might be a little confused about the whole Day 0 bit at the end.  Stoopid, Netflix, stoopid.

Had pizza on Wednesday because Stu had gotten a migraine at work but didn't have painkillers and his prescription for more was too old (the codeine prescriptions only last six months instead of the usual twelve months, who knew - not that it would have mattered, they were nearly two years old anyway).

Thursday after MacGyver I watched the start of Clueless, which I've also seen before but thought it would be a bit of fun.

Friday morning we had the sewage pipes eeled.  It was October 2016 that we had them done last, so thought it would be about time.  He came across roots in the place we were expecting, so told him I'd see him again in a couple of years time.  I flexed off Friday because otherwise I wouldn't have gotten any weekend to myself which would have been stressful.  So had a nice day mostly doing houseworky bits and watched the end of Clueless.  The mother type person arrived at dinner time so we had some frozen chicken wings and potato gems.

Saturday morning Mum and I went food shopping while Stu monitored the upgrade he was doing at work (that he got stuck staying up til 3am waiting for a backup to finish).  So he slept through lunch.  Chrissie and Goo came over for roast pork, and Chris made lemon meringue pie.  Yum yum yum.

I was exhausted from *people* after lunch so let Mum read a book while I listened to the classic 100 composer and checked off Lego.  Had leftovers for dinner and watched Grace of Monaco which I enjoyed although no idea how true any of it was.  Some odd cinematography and direction choices though - like bright yellow scenes, and very long extreme closeups.  Strange.

Sunday morning Mum and I hit the road and drove to Junee.

When we got to Junee David helped Mum transfer her contacts off her old dying phone onto her new one, and set it up with her car's bluetooth.  Then we went to the pub for lunch.  As you do.

In the afternoon we listened to the classic 100 composer (missed John Williams while were out though - only 15th - ripped off!) and did puzzles.  We might have cranked the volume on the 1812 overture and Beethoven's 5th. 

Went and got pizza from Pizza on Main for dinner.

Half watched Wreck it Ralph while half-heartedly playing some hands of Canasta and 500.

Took ages to get to sleep because I was *cold*, and forgetting my pyjamas certainly didn't help.

In the morning we headed over to Peter Neve's to say hi.  Had a look at the work he's doing on an inspection pit in the back yard.

Then we did some food shopping for David.  Had some chicken for lunch, then Mum and I headed home.  I saw the coat of arms on the way home - an emu off Nangus Road, and kangaroos off the Barton Highway.  Didn't get photos of them though.  Just a couple of shots around Gundagai.

At home I de-peopled for a bit then cooked dinner - a herb and apricot chicken (Coles doesn't have the three cheese and bacon ones anymore *gasp* just the apricot one and dumb mac and cheese).  Watched a couple of episodes of Death in Paradise, finishing season three.

This morning Mum went home and we went to work.  Did have lunch with the sweetie today too which was nice.  Did a bunch of photo labelling, then blogging, and here we are.

Just a few books I've read over the past few months.

Heaven is for Real - Todd Burpo.  A book Mum lent me a couple of years ago but hadn't gotten around to reading.  Read this one in bed.  Whether to believe as-is or not, it was a great read.  I'd like to see the movie although apparently the movie focusses a lot more on the doubts of the father, which didn't really come across so much in the book.

The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and six more - Roald Dahl.  I bought this on Kangaroo Island in 1994 and have read it all before.  I don't think I've read it since actually seeing the Mildenhall Treasure though, so that was pretty cool.  

Silicon Snake Oil - Clifford Stoll.  I read and loved The Cuckoo's Egg by Clifford Stoll years ago so looked forward to reading this.  Except the dude spend literally an entire book complaining about how hard to use and what a waste of space computers and the internet are.  And Facebook hadn't even been invented when he wrote it.  Honestly I have no idea how it got published.  Sure he had some good points (computers shouldn't/can't ever properly replace teachers) but some of his predictions were laughably bad (noone will ever bother to try and hack databases because they're all different and rely on people to enter the data correctly, and video streaming will be too hard to ever achieve).  I really should have taken more photo snippets like this, but I ain't going back to find them again!

bwhahahah - omfg a quarter of a megabyte or more for a picture is b-i-i-i-g-g-g!

I slogged my way through to the end of it, but it was many hours of my life I won't get back.

Little Brother - Cory Doctorow.  I used to read Boing Boing and remember when this first came out (I remember he published it online for free).  Stu actually bought a copy so I read it before bed recently.  Basically an essay on privacy wrapped in a pretty good story.  I really enjoyed it.  It's over ten years old now, but just as topical as ever.

Adrian Mole - the Cappuccino Years - Sue Townsend.  I read The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 3/4 years ago and I think I enjoyed it.  So picked this one up at a Bookcrossing meetup years ago, thinking it was an adult sequel.  I started reading it a few years ago on one of our trips to Queensland.  Problem is I just couldn't get into it.  And it certainly didn't help that I had to keep referring to the index of characters just to figure out who was who.  As it turns out it was the fifth book of the Adrian Mole series.  Maybe it would all make a lot more sense if I read them all together in quick succession.  Anyway after sitting on the shelf for years I gave up on it and put it back in the pile of Bookcrossing books I need to give away.  

Last Friday night the sweetie took me to Akiba for dinner.  It was a bit of jostling just to get through the door which was crowded with people trying to actually get in, people trying to pay and get out, as well as the only thoroughfare for wait staff to get to the tables outside.  That could all do with a redesign.  Got in and got a bench facing the street which was nice.  Not this view of the bar from the entrance hehe.

We ordered some drinks and the waiter said that in addition to any food we ordered they'd bring around tasty treats "chef specials" that we could also take.  No sooner had they said that then someone came around offering "eggplant chips" ($5).  These were an awesome start.

We dropped one of the things we were going to order, and ordered some food.  Straight after they came around offering chef special chicken wings ($7).  Since we'd ordered food we were a bit worried it'd be too much, but they looked so awesome, so we took them, and they were!  These were probably my favourite.

Salt and sichuan pepper squid, onsen egg ($21), delicious, probably Stu's favourite.

Agadashi fried tofu, nori, daikon, togarashi ($12) which was quite nice

Japanese fried chicken, lemon braised onions, parmesan, kewpie, sriracha ($19).  The kewpie and sriracher were in little bottles on the side.  Yummy.

We ended up quite full by the end of it, and I think we probably should have gotten some more vegetation, but quite a delicious meal.

Sunday night we chatted to Kit for a bit when she got home from the wedding.  I was all ready for bed but it meant a bit of a late night.  Not too late though.

Monday we had to move desks.  Our areas were already struggling to get enough seats, and instead of giving us more like the original plan, they took desks away.  So our group got split up but we are closer to comms so that's ok.  Just such a mess.  So much stress.  Then we had seven SEVEN people from other locations come during the week so it was a seating crisis.  I felt anxious about it all week.

Tuesday was another team lunch at Chompy's.  This time I had the Motley Crue hotdog.

Also got a big bunch of herbs off Cath!

Thursday picked up pizza and saw this!  Not really one big pizza though, just four regular sized ones in a big box.

Friday sunrise.

Friday we went to Rashay's again.  This time I had the steak, because the others said they were pretty decent.  I asked for medium rare, and some of it was, but some was a bit overdone for my liking.  Still, I'm not complaining for $5!

This week I've been catching up on Lego Masters.  Have seen the first five episodes.  Some of the builds are amazing.  I wish they'd kick Kale off though, don't like him at all.

Friday had a drink with the Stus at the Waldorf, then went to dinner with the sweetie.  We were going to try Kimchi but there weren't going to be any seats for half an hour, so we went a couple of doors down to Tasting China instead.  Had a very nice (if somewhat expensive) meal.

Just a small sample!

Peking duck

Chengdu Zhong dumplings - two chili rating, a tad spicy for me, but quite nice

Braised beef brisket - delicious, except for the chunks of fat, just not a fan if the chunks are too big

Red fried rice - good but VERY expensive ($18 for small)

Somewhat disturbing placemats..

Saturday morning I made a caramel slice, and then we went over to EffanC's for a late lunch.  Quite a pleasant afternoon.

In the evening we watched Thunderball.

Today was just a nice quiet day doing house stuff and a lot of photo sorting and filing (although not much on the holiday photos, did get day 9 of our last trip online though).  Cooked a tomato bake using some of Cath's basil.  Watched some tv and suddenly it's the end of the weekend :(

So after Easter we only needed to take three days off to have ten days in a row off.  Connor was cool with me doing that, so that's just what I did :)  (The sweetie had to go to work on the Friday).

The mission for the break was to attack some of the clutter around the house.  I made a very long list before the break, knowing that we wouldn't get anywhere near getting it all done.  

Day 1.  Lesson 1.  Clothes.

We actually did what they did on the show (I've only seen the Netflix show, although Stu has read the book) and pulled all of our clothes from both cupboards and put them on the bed.  The pile was pretty big, bigger than I thought it would be, but smaller than most of the people on the show.  Then we through it all.  Stu actually got rid of a *lot* of clothes.  I didn't get rid of much.  And there's a couple of things in the give away pile that I might take back.  Even though they don't fit.  Just because they're a bit sentimental.

Day 2 I attacked the linen cupboard.  It was actually relatively neat already, but I did pull out a few things to give away, and tidy a little.  I still want to get a few tubs for linen that's not used very often, to slow down the silverfish.

Day 3 I went for the pantry.  This actually took a couple of days, doing a shelf at a time.

Then I ran out of steam.  And David and Kat came to stay haha.

I did get to the gardening corner of the garage on the Friday.

So still a lot I want to get done.  Just have to take the odd random day off here and there ;) 

Monday I went shoe shopping for Kit's wedding.  Needed to get the shoes before I ordered the dress to get the right heights.  Found a nice pair of silver shoes but they've got a bit of a heel which would hurt my feet so Kit said probably not best to use those.  I might keep them anyway as I can wear them for other things.  Got up to 4000 out of 10500 photos labelled from the last trip.  Also found out that Foursquare killed their RSS feed for my checkins back in March.  How the heck am I meant to get an offline backup of my history now?!?  Stu said I should try IFTTT to get it.  So I did.  About half a dozen clicks later I had IFTTT downloading each checkin to a Google docs spreadsheet.  So disturbingly easy and I didn't touch the keyboard in the whole process.

Tuesday I had another go at shoe shopping after Kit said she'd be happy if we all wore nice thongs.  I sent her pics of a few and saw one she liked so I bought a pair.  Only $15 w00t.  Stu was sick Tuesday and we might have had Kingsley's for dinner.  Whoops.  Made up a tomato sauce with a big bunch of Kit's tomatoes I defrosted on the weekend.

Thursday I went back to the shoe store and bought another two pairs of the thongs so all three bridesmaids will have the same shoes.

Friday a bunch of us went to Rashays for their $5 lunch special (just for the month of May).  Great value that's for sure!

But they are seriously trolling people with their serviettes!

In the evening we started on MacGyver season 2.

Kit had picked up keys during the day as she was up for Katie's sister's funeral (kid was only 12 :( ).  She got home after 1am.  We hadn't slept.  Yay.  I was just uncomfortable and restless.  Torture.  When Kit got home Stu poured us a small nightcap and we chatted to Kit for a while and helped her finish her Big Mac.  Even that didn't help much, and it was after 3am before I got to sleep :(  Woke up at 5am with a sore spine so struggled to get back to sleep.  So that was a fun night.  Not.

Saturday had a little bit of a sleep in.  Kit spent much of the day sleeping and doing uni work (pyjama day for the win!).  I did houseworky stuff and jigsaw.  In the evening I cooked a lasagna with the tomato sauce I made during the week and we watched a Netflix (Stan?) show on street food, this one on Singapore, and The Imitation Game.

This morning Kit and I had a long chat about wedding planning.  I even took notes haha.  Stu and I went out to for lunch and food shopping, and Kit went off to her friend Sophie's wedding.  

She came back for a couple of hours between the ceremony and the reception so we mostly just chatted.  And there may have been cheese.  Other than that I was sorting photos - filing photos into more logical directories.  Some work directories have 1000 or 1500 photos in them that need to be filed more logically.  And then I need to crowdsource labelling them.  Cooked a lamb roast for dinner and watched Death in Paradise.

So a fairly quiet weekend which was nice.  Achieved some stuff, although maybe not as much as I'd have liked, but it was generally quite relaxing. 

So Monday.  Day four of our break.  But I didn't get anything much done around the house because I spent the morning getting organised to go to the club.  Made some cheese twists for lunch before heading out.  The previous owners of the van left a lot of kitchen stuff and tools behind which is great, but *all* the cupboards were full of stuff, with no free space to put any of our stuff.  Got a bit overwhelmed by it on Monday afternoon.  And it poured with rain.  A lot.  Had some leftovers we'd brought for dinner, and watched the start of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade on tv, but went to bed before it finished.

Tuesday I spent pretty much the whole day cleaning out the cupboards and reorgansing everything so it fitted into the cupboards more logically, and left most of the big cupboard free for our stuff.  Did a couple of loads of washing up to wash stuff in the drawers and some of the cookware.  Felt a lot happier with things by the end.  Although still nowhere good to store food.  D&I fired up the fire in the oasis, so we had a beer with them which was nice.  Tried out the bbq.  It doesn't light with the lighter thingie, but runs ok if you light it.  Cooked some sausages for dinner and we had a nice bottle of 2011 shiraz I got in 2014.

Wednesday morning we came home.  Thanks to Tony though for taking our bins out - they'd been collected by the time we got home, and the recycling bin in particular would have been a disaster if we'd missed the pickup.  Cooked some pizza scrolls for lunch.  In the afternoon cleared/cleaned the middle shelf of the pantry and the two drawers under the oven.  Cooked honey mustard chicken for dinner, watched Homeland and From Russia With Love.

Didn't do much Thursday.  Did some photo filing in the morning, then headed over to Chrissie's for a bbq for lunch.  James was in town, first time I'd seen him in twenty five years, with Anita, and Susannah and Rob were there too.  So it was quite the family gathering for them.  And then they got out all the family photos that survived the bushfire (as an aside, Como Presbyterian Church reopened twenty three years ago on this day as I type this, same day as Port Arthur massacre.. moving on..).  David and Kat came over late in the afternoon and we had lamb roast and started a 2000 piece jigsaw.

Friday Stu went to work.  David pulled apart our bedroom fan light which had died a couple of months ago.  We'd gotten a new bulb but it hadn't worked either.  Turns out the ballast had gone.  Someone let the smoke out.  This fan light had been installed in November 2008.  A "Brilliant" branded fan light we got from Bunnings.  Don't do that people.  We never could get a replacement light for it.  The last one we got was a much smaller T4 bulb because we couldn't find any the right size.  Pretty sure that was in April 2014.  So instead of trying to replace the ballast and not get a bulb that fitted anyway, we decided to get a similar sized LED oyster light and mount that instead.  It looks slightly odd, but works just fine and cheaper than a whole new fan light.  Most awesomest brother ever!

So that was done in the morning and we were like.. now what?  D/K went out for a wander round Canberra and I got stuck into cleaning out the "gardening" corner of the garage.  Too many spiders and other disgustingness for my liking.  D/K gave me a lift into town later where I met up with the sweetie for a drink and dinner for our anniversary (and they went off and did their own thing).  We went to Temporada and had quite a delicious, if very expensive, dinner.

Saturday and David couldn't help himself, he wanted to replace our ancient fluoro kitchen/family room light fittings with LED ones.  So a trip to Bunnings (where it was decided against getting the "Brilliant" branded ones, even though they looked nice because a) Bunnings staff couldn't/wouldn't get the panel of test lights turned on to look at them, and b) they're Brilliant branded, which we've already established seems to be non-standard anyway), and then a trip to Project Lighting.  Got some flat round lights that don't quite cover up the old holes, so we'll need to sand/bog/paint that at some point.

We did one of the lights in the morning, then headed out to the club to show D/K the new van (and get out of Stu's way as he was trying to study).  Had a bbq out there (we really need a new gas cylinder), then came home again, and David replaced the other light.  Had pizza for dinner, watched Goldfinger, and finished the big jigsaw.  Pretty good effort for two days. 

Sunday D/K went home and I spent the day coming to terms with the end of my holiday :(  Tidied up a lot of the house, did two loads of linen washing, got some holiday blog entries online, got some kiev balls from the shops and cooked those for dinner, watched Brooklyn 99 and Death in Paradise.

Ten days is not enough time off.  I really need those three month holiday I used to get when I was at uni... *sigh* ....

The other week Connor made a batch of these and they were pretty good, even cold the next day.  So bought some puff pastry last time we went shopping and I made these yesterday.  They were epic awesome.

Take one sheet of puff pastry and spread vegemite on it.

Add cheese.  I used a mix of regular shredded and pizza blend.  Probably just use the tasty next time, it melts a little less.  Also, probably should have left like half an inch at the end without cheese to make it easier to join up the edge to the next layer down.

Roll tightly.  I probably didn't roll tightly enough.  Move bits of cheese out of the way and pinch it shut so they don't unroll.

Cut into 12 pieces and lay on a non-stick baking tray.

Add more cheese.  Because you can never have too much cheese.

Bake at about 175C for fifteen minutes.  Yeah maybe didn't need all that extra cheese..

So good!!

As a side note: don't use the crappy "liner" paper you can get from your local shop.  Invest in the good stuff people.  Or even the Coles branded stuff.  This stuff is $#!+

I wasn't going to collect these things.  I didn't collect the Little Shop things.  Fiona got some Stikeez while she was here and took them home.  But then Stu got given a couple with petrol, so I thought stuff it, and got them whenever we went to Coles.  I took the duplicates to work and left them lying around.  Then Connor brought in some, including the glow-in-the-dark cucumber, and the display box.  So it was on.  I took any I got into work.  We put the uniques into the display box and left the duplicates out for trading (although some people just came and took them without giving us any in return :( ).  Quite a few people contributed, we traded a few to get missing ones, and by the other week we had ALL THE STIKEEZ!!  Even the four "rare special" ones.  Of course we didn't get the Golden Banana, that was never gonna happen heh.

What I didn't know until the end of all this, was that Stikeez are nothing new.  In fact there's all sorts of series of them out there.  Silly really.

It started the Wednesday night.  I did all the prep for a beef stroganoff.  So the beef, mushrooms, bacon, onion and garlic, frying it all up so the only work on the weekend would be plugging it in, filling up the slow cooker, and letting it go all afternoon.

And by the end of it, on a weeknight, I still managed a clean kitchen!

Friday evening we headed down the coast.  I snapped a picture of one our new trams.

Drive down was uneventful.  We listened to John Williams the entire way that Stu had downloaded on Spotify.  Couldn't enjoy the scenery though cause it was dark most of the way.

We'd booked to stay at an Airbnb in Sussex Inlet.  Neat little apartment, quite spacious, and a well equipped little kitchen (stovetop but no oven, washing machine/dryer but no dishwasher).  Although previous reviews weren't wrong about rock hard pillows (I brought my own), incorrect wifi password (it was correct in the notification Stu got just before we arrived though), and lack of privacy from a useless curtain on the window above the door, with a view straight from the flat above into our bed (but noone was staying there so not really a big deal).  Pretty much just collapsed into bed (after Stu had a shower that was barely a trickle).

In the morning I went to have a shower, only to find no water at all.  The taps in the sinks were still running slowly, but even they stopped after a flush or two of the toilet.  My first stay at an Airbnb and THIS is my experience??  I smsed the number we had but got no response.  But Stu used the app a while later and got a response within a few minutes so that was ok.  The cleaner said feral kids think it's funny to turn off the water at the street.  (I had asked Stu to go check that earlier but he hadn't gone out to the street).  So they turned it on again and it was ok.  Although a lot of bubbles all through the pipes made for some interesting noises.

I'd been chatting to Kit about it as well, and they weren't doing much better with their water.  They have solar hot water, but it had been rainy, and with so many people in the house they were getting slightly warm at best.

Had some breakfast then went for a wander around Sussex Inlet.  Just walked down to the inlet, north along the river, then back through the town.  It was only 22C, but with the humidity it felt a lot hotter :(

Then we drove to the hall where the party was being held so I could setup the slow cooker.  The hall is quite lovely.  Poured everything into the slow cooker and asked Pete to stir it every hour or so.

Went back to see Kit and Pete's new house which is pretty cool.  Pete has an EPIC shed, and there's heaps of room for all the animals.  Although the dogs didn't like being relegated out the back heh.

We didn't actually see Kit - she was out with Mel.

Headed off again.  We went into Huskisson to have some lunch.  So much fried goodness.  Oh and some salad.

Wandered down to the water to have a look.  

Drove down to Hyams Beach to have a look.  It was full of people.  Yuk.

Then we went for a bit of a drive south, and ended up in Booderee National Park, in the Jervis Bay Territory.

Drove around the loop through Jervis Bay Village, and Stu was like - oo look the Federal Police :)

Stopped at Scottish Rocks and wandered down to the beach, then wandered all the way along to Hole in the Wall, then walked back along the road (because it was cooler out of the sun).

We drove to the end of the road at Murray's Beach, but didn't get out, because it was getting quite late.  We were going to be late for the party, so did the long drive back to Sussex Inlet.  Had a shower, then back to the hall for the party.  The stroganoff was still quite liquid which was a bit disappointing.  Probably shouldn't have used all the stock that I did.  Or at least added a bunch of corn flour.  People did seem to like it though.  Would have done better with something to soak up the juices.

So not only is there quite a large hall, but there's a huge open area all around the hall, including a playground for kids.  People spread out all over the place, meaning the hall was only sparsely populated heh.

And there were some very friendly horsies.

Party food.

And there was some dancing (see what I mean about the hall looking empty!).

I may have called it a night once Bohemian Rhapsody was played and sung along to :)

Came back to crash.

In the morning we dropped by the hall to pick up the spoon I'd left behind, although we didn't stay to help clean up because Stu was anxious to get home to do some uni work.  So just drove home, home by lunch time.

Quite a nice weekend, although I did feel a bit grumbly on Sunday afternoon that the weekend was nearly over and I hadn't had any time at home.