So as an enticement for me to come to Sydney after Christmas, Mum noted there was a Lego exhibition on at Moore Park.  I suppose that's a good enough excuse ;)

Our first problem (after an easy train and bus ride to Anzac Parade) was finding the damned thing.  The tickets simply said "Entertainment Quarter" with no further detail and NOTHING at the Entertainment Quarter indicating where it was on.  We wandered around for ages.  We asked two different people where to go.  Absolutely abysmal event management!!

Anyways.

Eventually found it.

This one operated much like the Sydney Icons show I saw a few years back.  Just a few displays (five this time), with Lego to play with.  Last time it was primarily just bricks, but this time there was a mix of bricks and other types of pieces.  Not that I played with any of it heh.

There were five cities - Tokyo, Dubai, London and Sydney, in four corners of the room, with New York in the middle.  Been to all of them except Dubai.

Tokyo

Dubai

London

Sydney

New York

So that was all pretty cool.

Back on 8 February I headed up to Sydney to catch up with Mum for Christmas.  Just a few weeks late haha.

Drove up Friday evening (after having a random day off which was nice) and looked at some of Mum's holiday photo slide shows.

On Saturday morning we headed into The Entertainment Quarter for the latest Ryan McNaught Lego exhibition - Lego Cities.  We took the train to Central and a bus down Anzac Parade (where I think it's amusing they're putting light rail back in after it being gone for so long).

Except the Entertainment Quarter is huge and there was literally no information whatsover on the tickets about where to go.  Lucky we were early because we walked around for ages, and had to ask two separate people where it was.  Pathetic event management.

I'll leave the Lego to a separate post.

So we were done by 11am but it was a case of "now what?".  It was such a lovely day I didn't want to just go back to Mum's and do nothing.  We were in Sydney for heavens' sake!  Even if we just took a Manly Ferry and back it'd be *something*.  But then I thought, you know I've never taken the ferry to Parramatta before.  So we hopped on a bus to Circular Quay, topped my Opal Card, and hopped on a River Cat.  I decided not to sit outside in the sun (I came for a Lego show, so no hat, sunscreen or sunglasses, and did get ripped off by the pharmacy at Circular Quay just to get some sunscreen), so got seats on the left, fortunately the windows open!

I'll leave the ferry trip to a separate post.

On the way Mum called Pam and asked if she'd like to catch up for lunch (it was about 13:30 by this point).  So she met us at the ferry terminal.  Parramatta had been hit hard by the storm the previous night, and there were a lot of downed trees.  Pam's place (which is brand new, and they are the first tenants in the place) got heaps of water from leaky windows.  Note to self: don't buy an apartment in any new building until the building industry can get their act together - shoddy work is the norm on anything built since the building deregulation thirty years ago or whenever it was).  

We wandered up to Church Street to look for some lunch (it's after 14:00 by this point).  I stipulated it needed to be a *light* lunch as I was going out for dinner.  So we ended up at Volcanos Steakhouse, where we thought we'd get a few starters and call it a day.  Except their starters were HUGE.  And then Pam said she doesn't eat cheese, after the things Mum and I ordered had cheese.  I wish she'd said that before.  #grunt.  If I'd known all that I wouldn't have got any more than two dishes, tops.  They were pretty good though!

After eating way too much, we headed for the station (the ferry is nice and all but it takes like an hour and a half). 

St John's Parramatta

Parramatta Town Hall

Caught an inter-urban back to Central, and another train back to Mum's.

I had twenty minutes, which gave me just enough time to have a shower, then head out again.

Met up with Daniel and Fi at Redfern station and we walked down to the Duck Inn Restaurant and Pub.  I started with a delicious Grifter watermelon pilsner (Serpent's Kiss) that was perfect for a humid Sydney summer evening, and had one other that it seems I didn't check in, so don't remember which.  Could have been the Mismatch Lager, but not sure.

Because I had such a big late lunch, I was happy with just starters again.  And Daniel and Fi had spent the day down at Wollongong with Daniel's parents so didn't feel like too much either so that worked out.  And they all had duck in them!

Starting with confit duck loaded fries with fig, burgundy, thyme mayo, liquid gruyere cheese and scallions, which was amazing

And also steamed bao buns with shredded five spice duck, pickled carrots and daikon, coriander, chili and hoisin sauce, also amazing, and peking duck spring rolls served with micro herbs and soy infusion dripping sauce.

Was a lovely evening catching up with those guys.  I owe them a beer though!

Sunday morning I went to church with Mum, hoping to see the Cartans, as they're in their nineties now and times to see them may be limited..  But they weren't there.

So then headed off to Luc and Lizzi's to do a penultimate donut photo with Ryan, and ended up staying for lunch which was lovely.

Then headed for home.  I took a slight detour to go see Cordeaux Dam.  Again you can drive right up to it which is nice.

I'll leave the dam to a separate post.

And finally home.

So Wednesday afternoon my bowels were feeling a little off.  Nothing unusual, can get that sometimes (all too often) if I eat too much bad food.  Or even regular food.  After dinner I was pretty gassy and burpy, moreso than usual.  

But throughout the night it got worse rather than better.  Woke up at 4:00 in some discomfort.

No nausea, so unlikely to be food poisoning.  

Oh wait, wave of nausea Thursday morning but overcame it and went to work.

Another one hit me at work but overcame that as well.

By the third wave I thought I'd let it have its way.  Maybe I'd feel better.

But I didn't.

So after feeling like crap I decided to go home at 10:00.

Lay down but couldn't rest - too uncomfortable.  I had a tiny piece of cheese and a little water but not really very much.  

Late morning and I'm doing the doctor google thing.  Symptoms were edging towards appendicitis.  Even though I wasn't in any real pain, just strong discomfort.  But it did hurt when I poked around my appendix.  Decided not to eat or drink anything more "just in case".

So drove myself to the walkin clinic.  Stu had already paid for parking for the day right there anyway, so no problem leaving the car there.  It was probably about 12:45 when I got there.  Had to wait ages, and was feeling very uncomfortable.  Eventually they took pity on me and I think I might have got bumped up a position.  The nurse had a bit of a poke and thought that yes I should probably go to the hospital.  Called the sweetie and he drove me over to the hospital.

Had to wait quite a long time there as well, so it's well and truly mid afternoon by now.  Had explained my symptoms to the triage nurse on the desk, and eventually got seen by a doctor.  He did a bit of a history and poked me a bit, and then stuck in a cannula (in my very dehydrated veins, first go, to his credit) and took some blood.  Asked me for a urine sample (did I mention I was dehydrated?  and I'd peed when I arrived at the hospital, so that was a bit of a challenge).  He asked for mid stream but got end stream, there was so little.

So he comes back shortly after and says he's admitting me - yep, likely appendicitis.  18000 white blood count, elevated temperature and some of the classic symptoms.  Fun.

So I'm in a bed in emergency.  Eventually a surgeon comes by and gets all the details all over again (I've told the story four or five times today already).  They were considering a CT but decided not to (for unrelated reasons), and at 16:45 decided to load me up with fluids and do an ultrasound at 17:45.  By 17:35 my bladder hurt like hell.  How was I going to hold it in for another half hour (at least) ??  Then around 17:45 they were like, meh, not going to bother with the ultrasound, just going to do the surgery.  So I peed! Yayyyyy!!   (dude for ultrasound eventually turned up - at 17:55 - I really don't think I would have lasted that long).  I did get sick again though because I was so hungry (it's a thing I do, don't ask).  Nothing there though except bile.  Hurrah.

The sweetie had gone back to work in the afternoon, and went home to get changed.  I let him know where I was up to, that they were going to do surgery, so he thought he'd grab some dinner on the way in and then come see me before I went off to surgery.  Except maybe around 18:30 off I went, and never got to see him :(:(

Got wheeled through the hospital upside down and backwards, which is somewhat disorienting.  Went to the OR prep.  More doctors and nurses and anesthesiologists and told my story yet again.  They asked me to say in my own words why I was there, and I said "for an appendectomy" and the admitting nurse scolded me for my American usage - "it's appendicectomy didn't you know??"

Then in to the OR.  Everyone was gloved, but still *touching things*.  I'm sure that pen and paper isn't sterile... hrmmm.  

Scooted over onto the operating bed and got poked and prodded some more.  Pain killers (they weren't wrong about making me light headed) and the next thing I knew was calls of Karen Karen Karen and it was all over.  A couple of hours later.  Couldn't feel any pain (figured that would change) and felt quite tired.

After about twenty minutes waiting for my heart rate to lower I got wheeled to my room for the night, and I'm like, where's the sweetie?  He was just outside! Yayy!  He'd called my mum and some family/friends to let everyone know what was happening, bestest sweetie ever.

So there's still more poking and prodding and checking obs, when I all I wanted was some food and to brush my teeth and go to the toilet and go to bed.  But everything operates on hospital time.  They'd wander off and it'd be ten or fifteen minutes before they came back.  So it was after midnight by the time I got to turn lights out.

Not that I slept very well.  I don't really like sleeping on my back but on my sides was too painful.  A teenager came in across the way in a lot of pain.  The lady next to me had all sorts of complications and also in a lot of pain.  Had my pulse and blood pressure read a couple of times.  At 4:00 when they came in for something I said I may as well go pee again.  Dozed but didn't really get any sleep.

The morning dragged on as well.  They said I could go home that day, but I got a steady stream of various people come by.  Breakfast (I was starving) wasn't til 8:45.  

The sweetie came by at some point too.  But nothing much happened.  A bit before midday my temp was up a little and I was in a bit more pain, so I was worried I was getting an infection.  But likely it was just the panadol wearing off that I'd had at 5:30.  Time kept dragging.  Had a late lunch (probably too much food) but still waiting around to go home.  

Finally FINALLY I could go at about 14:30.  

Rested with the sweetie for a while, but didn't really sleep.  Then he went off to pick up Fiona from Jolimont, and they went and had beer and meat on a stick.  Well not quite.  They did to go to Bentspoke for beer, and to the multicultural festival for potato on a stick (and a couple of other things).  Because I'd had such a big late lunch I had popcorn for dinner.  Because, fibre!  Watched some old episodes of Naked Chef (man he was so *young* when he started, and Jules was just his girlfriend hehe).  Started watching Muriel's Wedding on Netflix, even though I have it on DVD.  Silly really.  Then Stu and Fiona came home.  They brought frozen chips so we heated some of those up.  But it did mean I went to bed a lot later than I wanted to.

Had some panadeine (from my stash before they stopped selling the stuff over the counter) and actually slept quite well.  Was able to sleep on my sides for some of the night, and slept in til about 7:30.  

Today Stu and Fiona went off to do some food shopping and I watched the rest of Muriel's Wedding and Netflix and tried to select photos for the holiday slideshow.  I've been mostly just sitting up.  I was never a fan of lying on the couch anyway (hurts my back unless I get things just right), and it's a lot harder to get up from the couch.  This afternoon has mostly just been chilling.  Nice and quiet like.  I also found the web archive of Julie Powell's blog, so have been reading that from the beginning.  Not really sure why some people hated it so much.  It reads like someone just doing it for themselves, not out to make a name for themselves.  She does sound like she was burning the candle at both ends though!

My butt does hurt from sitting so much though...  normally I'm bouncing up and down a *lot* more!

So an eventful couple of days.  But of everything, from appendicitis, to surgery, to recovery, the single most painful thing of the whole experience was them taking off the sticky tape holding in my cannula!   (followed by holding my pee for the ultrasound that never happened :) )

Friday:  Farewell to Cath and Stewie.  Again.

Saturday:  Quite a productive morning.  Doctor mid morning.  Late brunch at Gus' Place with the sweetie.  Photo processing all afternoon.  Cleaned my computer desktop.  Cooked a whole heap of Kit's tomatos for dinner with some gluten free pasta (she had a whole freezer drawer full of them which she gave to us before they moved).  I liked it but the sweetie thought it was too fiddly picking out stalks of thyme and tomato skins (you can eat tomato skins you know! ;) ).  Watched Discovery and Dunkirk.

Sunday:  Photo processing.  Finished processing all 10000 (and 51) of my photos from the trip.  And then we downloaded Stu's :)

Monday:  Posted my Canberra 1986-2016 blog to the Canberra Reddit.  At least a few hundred people had a look which was pretty cool.  Although Reddit's UI is pitiful.  For posting there was a link tab, an image tab and a description tab.  I filled out all three, but only the link ever posted.  So stoopid, Reddit!!  Yet another storm rolled over in the evening.  This one was pretty close so turned off my computer.  Which was annoying because almost everything on my todo list involved the computer!  Smashed out a 192 piece jigsaw while I waited.

Tuesday:  Began processing Stu's photos.  Android (at least the last two Stu's had) has a SUPER annoying bug where the forward facing camera has no date taken exif data saved.  Which makes it annoying to geotag, because apps rely on that field.  Some photos I manually geotagged, others I forced exif data into them based on the date modified field (with GeoSetter itself) so could auto geotag them.  Very very annoying.  Especially when like half of all Stu's photos on the holiday were selfies!

Thursday:  Realised it's been five years since: a) Dad went and carked it, b) we first attempted to watch MacGyver on DVD (only got half a dozen episodes in), c) Fiona was here with Bruce.

Friday: Drove to Sydney.  Will save that for a separate post.

This week I've been trying to catch up on All The Things.  Starting with all my iPhone photos and screenshots from when I first got the phone in November.  Photos are easy to work with now that I can use Faststone to force the date modified field to be the exif date taken field, so that fixes up all the photos.  For the PNGs (screenshots) and other miscellaneous files (movies and portrait edit information files) I got an app - BulkFileChanger - which is a nifty tool to modify the date modified field.  You can offset by x minutes/hours, which was super useful for fixing up photos from different time zones for the trip, or you can manually set to a specific time.  So I have to look while the phone is plugged into the computer what the actual date should be, then fix it with this app.  A fair amount of work, but gets the job done.  Although the last time I downloaded all the files none of the new ones were wrong.  Maybe 12.1.2 fixed it???? 

Last night while trying to backup, the computer had a sad and I ended up rebooting it.  But did you know you can only reopen closed tabs ONCE when you quit Chrome?  I quit it twice and lost all the tab history.  That was pretty annoying.  I had closed and saved a lot already, and history got most of the rest back.  But who knows what I'm missing..

Also last night my 2 terabyte backup drive filled up!!  Gasp!!  I deleted a couple of big things and it finished (took forever because it needed several weeks worth of photo processing).  Today I bought a 4 terabyte drive.  Started backing up tonight, but it's only a fraction of the way through.  Will be backing up all through the weekend at this rate!  Then need to rework the backup strategy so there's always at least two offsite copies of everything....

Tuesday afternoon we also got a dust storm that obliterated Mt Ainslie..

Tonight was Fuller House and blogging.  All the blogs...

So we watched all eight episodes of Marie Kondo's Tidying Up.  OMFG people have a lot of clothes!  It'd be interesting to see just how many clothes we have.  I feel like I don't have many clothes at all.  Be cool to see though.  But probably not until Stu's next uni break.

Saw the first episode of season 4 of Fuller House on 26/1, and the second episode tonight.

We've seen the first four episodes of season 2 of Star Trek: Discovery.  Still enjoying that.

And we've seen the first seven episodes of season 1 of MacGyver that I have on DVD.  It hasn't aged so well, although better than Knight Rider.

22.1.19

A bunch of us went and did the Nightmare room at the Riddle Room at Mitchell.  It was great fun, the only problem being that one of the girls had done the room before, and kind of took over a bit, which I found somewhat frustrating.  I'd love to do more escape rooms, it was very cool.

In the evening there was a dinner at the War Memorial which was very cool.  There were various films, and a talk by one of the volunteers (which was perhaps a *tad* too long but quite interesting).

The entree was nice, but the mains weren't anything special (a bit dry).  There was a pork dish and a beef dish handed out alternately, and Neil and I did a swapsies of a bit of ours so I got to try both.  Dessert was quite nice, but it was a bit squishy and they didn't give us forks so I asked for one hehe.

24.1.19

They asked me last year to run a trivia night.  Because I thought it was going to be mostly a different audience I decided to reuse my oldest one.  I didn't do any prep on it at the end of last year because I was too busy with holiday planning.  So come this year and I had like one weekend to prepare it.  And I found I couldn't use a lot of my questions because they weren't relevant to the date/audience.  So ended up having to spend a lot of time on it.  But the night went well and people seemed to have a good time.

25.1.19

Another bunch of us booked out Laser Zone and we had a blast.  There were a couple of team games, a couple of team competition games, a couple of individual games and a game called "Infection" where one person is "it" and has to get as many people as possible (and the people they get can then get other people).  So you just hide and hope they don't find you.  Interesting but not as much fun.  I did surprisingly well overall.  It helped that I made a good effort to get all the "bases", and that half the people playing were kids heh.  I won or came second a few times.  This was me winning on a team game.

All in all a pretty fun week.

This week I finished processing the random camera photos - rotating, renaming, resizing, geotagging, filing into days.

We've also been watching Tidying Up with Marie Kondo.  Stu read her book a year or two ago and had a brief burst of enthusiasm keeping his clothes tidy.  Yeah that didn't last.  I'm a hoarder at heart.  Sentimentally attached to everything.  Makes it hard to let stuff go...

Survived the week.  Just barely.  Stu is still sick.  This week felt very long.  Guess that's what happens when you go back for a full week after a long holiday.

Couldn't get to sleep last night.  Too damned hot (the cooler works to an extent, but isn't aircon).  And too much lightning.  I stress over it hitting the house and frying all our electronics.  So bit of a zombie today.  But did delete a whole bunch of stuff that had never been deleted cause people didn't clean up properly.

Just call me Sadie.

Felt pretty blah tonight.  

Le sigh.

So the beginning of the year. We began the new year at Kit's with Ben and Sarah for a nice start to the year.

We took the first two weeks of January off, so three weeks all up, but during the first two weeks our house was a revolving door of people wanting to use the pool. I do enjoy having people over, but we needed a break!! I think in that two weeks we socialised every single day which was completely exhausting. Later I was able to do a deep clean of most of the kitchen, and organised the garage.

Somehow we managed to go overseas twice this year. In April we made an impromptu trip to Wellington, New Zealand for a lonnng weekend for our tenth wedding anniversary. We only arranged it a few weeks in advance (taking Wello's lead of going to New Zealand just because (actually he did it for status points haha)), and got one of the very last direct Canberra to Wellington flights on Singapore Airlines. In December we avoided the family Christmas obligations and headed to the northern hemisphere. We had a couple of days in Japan before heading to Southampton to board the Queen Mary 2 for a transatlantic crossing and Caribbean cruise. Christmas and New Year were on board the ship in the North Atlantic. I went up to Sydney in January for the mum/uncles post-Christmas chatchup, where we went to Pandora's in Rouse Hill for lunch and sat in Ken and Jeanine's spa all afternoon; and again in June for Mum and Uncle Ken's birthdays, and we went and saw Vivid Sydney which was pretty cool. I went to Junee in May and we went and saw the Bricktastic Lego exhibition, which was awesome because no crowds, and we went to the circus as well. I went to Melbourne in June for work, and again with the sweetie in August for Kit's graduation.

Work was pretty stressful this year. The work itself was fine (I completed a massive cleanup project in around a year, much less than my estimate of two years) and my supervisor is great, but we switched to hot-desking which is all kinds of stressful for me. Not to mention that "activity based working" means we should be sitting with the people we work with, but because there's not enough seats that's often not the case. I get in relatively early (thanks sweetie!) so at least I get *some* consistency. We had a Ball in March which was very .. blue! and a lot of fun. Our work bar closed in June and we had an amazing final night. We got a new one, but it's half the size and not as practical. One of the first nights in the new bar was a whiskey night which was good. I organised a trivia night for March, but it was cancelled at the last minute due to lack of interest. Tried again in May and this time it was a packed house, and the last one in the old bar. We won the first one in the new bar in October, but the organisers said as incentive to win, the second place winners should run it. Let's hope they do or I'll be running another one!

Healthwise I've been pretty good. Just had a cold in May and another in July. Other than that it was just a lot of insomnia. A lot a LOT of insomnia. Omigosh sometimes I was convinced it was going to kill me.

Once again we had a *very* social year. As I mentioned earlier we had a lot of visitors in the first week of January. David came to stay a few times. He came in January and fixed some taps in the bathroom, and later in January to see about the Railway Historical Society and whether or not they'd try and reopen. He came with Leanne in February, to stay after the Airport Open Day (that I never managed to get tickets for), again in April, September and October with Kat. Always great having him here. Chrissie got bigger and bigger with Beavis and I got to see a couple of ultrasounds. She had a quite small but quite cute Nathan at the end of February. Visited them a little but not nearly often enough. Didn't help that Chris was completely exhausted from lack of sleep. Aunty Di and Uncle Graham came down a couple of times and we did fondue with them at Chrissie's in April and October. Had lunch a few times with her as well which was nice. Chris also gave me a kick up the butt in July and helped me grout half the shower. We caught up quite a few times with the extended N-Gang, going to either EffanC's, R&F's, Scotts for pizza, and beef cheecks at our place in July. We saw quite a lot of Kit and Pete during the year. It was sooooo nice having cool neighbours you could pop down to for a quiet drink. Pete is into games, so played a few with him (Kit played begrudgingly) - including Travel Trivial Pursuit, Cards Against Humanity, and Kismet. We went out to the George for Kit's birthday in May, had Ben over for roast in March, and had BBQ at Serena's for her birthday in October. Kit and Pete had a farewell party at the beginning of November (much drama ensued) but we still got to see them every weekend until they left. Helped pack their truck at the beginning of December, and they moved down the coast the same weekend we went overseas. We met up with Damien and Amanda at the Dickson Dumpling House in April, and Stu had a wargame with Damien in July, followed by dinner at Laziza House. Jenn came over in February with various Tequilas she'd bought on her trip to Mexico. Hao came up for work in May, so caught up with him at Alice's. Had our annual Hanami lunch with Nat and Andrew in late September. Stu's dad came over for dinner sans Ruth in January. Scott and Kerry came down at the end of June on the way to the snow and we had the whole family over for dinner. Had Wello's 40th at Casey Jones in October, and went over to @CLBradley's in November for BBQ for his birthday.

We didn't do as much club stuff this year. The event dinners are getting out of control with so many people going, and Stu has to go out once a month for committee meetings, which leaves us with no enthusiasm to go out at other times. We did go a couple of times, including a nice night in November with only six of us out there. We did an epic Burns Night in January, with two huge pork roasts, a huge haggis, tatties, neeps, peas, carrots and cranachan, for about forty five people. We did another round of two huge roast pork roasts and veggies for Christmas in July, and something like fifty people came. We were going to help with the Christmas party, but Stu got a migraine just before we were going to head out. During the committee meeting in August I regrouted the shed's kitchen splashback, because I could scrape out the old stuff with a fingernail, and I had the last of the grout from our bathroom that I thought I could use up. Only went to a couple of swim nights.

Pets. For years we've only ever had fish in this house. In February Chrissie was heavily pregnant and overstressed and the stress of Stumpy not eating was too much for her (Stumpy being a lovely blue tongue lizard). Kit had had Stumpy since he was born in her last place (I remember when they first moved in seeing the tank in the spare room, thinking at the time it was fish). Stumpy spent many years living in Kit's garage generally being neglected. So a couple of years ago Kit gave him to Chris and Zac. He fattened up nicely. But as I said, Chrissie couldn't deal, and asked if I'd take him. Well our front entrance way was still full of clutter that had been there for like five years that I'd been wanting to get rid of. So she took the majority of the stuff to sell on Gumtree one day, and we got Stumpy. He didn't eat at all for the first six months we had him. Didn't help that I didn't have lights through the early part, and then it was winter. So he sat doing not much for the whole time. Then later in the year (I'd been increasing the amount of heat/light to match the seasons) he suddenly started eating. It's been lovely having him. Stu really likes him and gives him lots of cuddles.

On the fish front. I got five new black neon tetras in January for the two foot, and some harlequin rasboras in May. I got a little sucking catfish to keep the algae at bay in Chrissie's little tank. We went to Serkan's for killifish study group meetings in March and August. Stu has been trying to breed killifish, with mixed success. He gets all enthusiastic for spurts, then they get neglected for weeks at a time. The other drama was the epic stress caused by dodgy Aqua One LED fish tank lights. All three, plus one I'd already had replaced died in the space of a couple of months. In the end got all my money back and went back to fluoros. Confirming my hatred for all things Aqua One.

Lego, jigsaws, and other hobbies. In January, Vic came down from Sydney with an entire bootfull of his kids' Lego he wanted to sell. It wasn't sorted so I spent months sorting it and checking each and every damned piece for FAKE Lego. Had to stop working downstairs in April when it got too cold, but didn't really do too much at the end of the year - I was too busy getting ready for our holiday. I'd bought some nice Willow storage tubs to replace all the cardboard boxes I have for storage, and they got pressed into service holding sorted Lego. I really want to get rid of it all to get the space back (and my storage tubs back!), but need to do something about the computer I'm using down there - it doesn't have enough grunt to keep five word docs open at a time containing the parts lists for the sets. I did a LOT of jigsaws this year, including several sections of the Disney behemoth. Another reason I want the space back downstairs...! Didn't do much else hobbywise. Spent a lot of time fighting with Apple. I downloaded Image::ExifTool and used a perl script to rename the files based on Date taken instead of Date modified which I've been doing all these years with all my other photos. I processed, labelled and blogged all the photos from our New Zealand holiday within two months, then I went back and labelled all the photos from our East Asia holiday and got that blogged by the end of the year.

For some reason I always mention the weather. We had the extremes this year. We had a dust storm in March. In fact all through March the max temperature was around 30C almost every day. It was freaky hot. Then throughout July it was crazy cold. We got so much ice on the pool it was ridiculous. One time it was 14mm thick in places! Maybe the super thick ice was the beginning of the end for the pool - I did consider that all that ice can't be good for all the joints.

New toys! My iPhone 5 got more and more annoying. For some months the lock button was really sticky. It either wouldn't work at all, or would spend the whole time in the lock position, so the phone would think you were trying to turn it off. I waited til the Apple announcements in September to see if they'd release a small form factor phone, but alas none came. So I bit the bullet and got a HUGE XS. The new phone and iOS STILL screws around with the date modified on my files. Pissed off at that. But the camera is very nice. Especially the HDR capabilities. My old phone feels like such a sweet little phone when I pick it up (I've kept it around because it has a bunch of apps that won't run on the new one). Also before our holiday I decide to replace the seven year old Asus Eee PC. It was always under-powered (what is it with Asus and not enough memory?) and spent most of its life swapping to disk and not actually doing anything. It was pretty much unusable and frustrating, so got a little Lenovo net book which was just great to travel with.

A few house sagas this year. The first being the leaky shower. It took me forever to finish scraping off the old sealant and scraping back the old grout. And then it sat there for months doing nothing. Eventually Chrissie gave me a kick up the bum and helped me grout half the shower, and I finished it a week or two later in July, followed by the sealant in August. Took a little over a year to get that shower back into use, but it doesn't seem to leak anymore. I also attacked the cloudiness on the shower glass but NOTHING worked - not bathroom cleaner, not vinegar, not diluted CLR, not straight CLR, not straight CLR left there on the glass for weeks on end. I gave up the idea of ever having that glass clear again. We came home from New Zealand to find the power had gone off in the house and had been off for four days. We lost some fish in the cold (the rummy nose tetras), and I chucked out a bag of stuff from the fridge just in case, but the freezer didn't defrost completely (still had a couple of whiskey balls in tact) so didn't chuck anything out from there. Then there was the epic stress over the blown hot water release valve. It had died *just before* it was one year old, but I didn't call them for ages because I'm allergic to the phone. When I did call them it sounded like they were going to charge me, but when the dude turned up he was all "is that all?" and replaced it for me on the spot (and left me a spare to boot). Fortunately Rheem didn't charge me for their second defect in its first year. Then there was the circuit breaker that caught fire, taking out all our power points. Fortunately we got it fixed the same day, and used the lack of computer to do a lot of cleaning and organising. And finally the pool. Maybe all the ice over winter stretched all the seals to breaking point. But we had a leak that I don't know how old it was and we couldn't see how much damage had been done to the structural wall. The pool turned out to be around thirty years old! So even though it broke my heart we (I) decided to drain it and say goodbye. We did have a win - Pete replaced the laserlite sheeting on our back pergola, as well as the front piece of wood that had been positioned right under the old sheeting and had gotten rotten.

We ate out a little this year but not too much. Went to Iori with EffanC, Yat Bun Tong a few times (Stu likes the dumplings), with Damien and Amanda we went to Dickson Dumpling House and Laziza House, went with EffanC and Scott to Pialligo Estate for a "Meet the Maker" dinner with wines by Shaw and Smith in April which was delicious, Happys with the sweetie, Malaysian Chapter a couple of times with the N-Gang, The George for Kit's and my birthdays, Lake George Hotel in Bungendore with EffanC - disappointed with the pork belly, Tipsy Bull in Braddon for Stu's birthday which was great, and Sushi Bay sushi train with the sweetie. Went to Chong Co a couple of times. Probably others I didn't mention.

Didn't have too much blog-worthy food. A guilty pleasure was nachos - simply corn chips topped with cheese and baked for five or so minutes. Did Lorraine Elliot's Asian Style Beef Cheeks a couple of times (is it possible for something to have *too much* flavour?), and had a go at Sizzler cheese toast!! OMFG!!! SO GOOD!!! I'd make it all the time if given half a chance...

Theatre/Shows/exhibitions
* Bricktastic in Junee which was great and no crowds of kids
* Circus in Junee which had exotic animals to my surprise, but convinced their no photography rule is simply to not have anyone get it on video if they fall off stuff or get eaten by lions
* Ben Law and Jenny Phang at Library Up Late which was interesting
* *Didn't* see Cartier, but did wander around a bit of the National Gallery with Cath
* Brickman Lego exhibition by Ryan McNaught with Neil which was also awesome and also no crowds of kids (sensing a theme here?)

Movies
* The Last Jedi
* Bohemian Rhapsody

Movies on TV
* Well lots but I'm not going to list them all
* Lord of the Rings series (in advance of going there)
* Kevin Smith movies
* Harry Potter series
* Star Trek series
* Pixar series. Saw what we could of these on DVD and Netflix, then saw most of the rest on various plane trips at the end of the year. The only one I didn't see (and have never seen) is Coco.

TV
* Star Trek Discovery (season 1)
* The Good Place (season 2)
* Pride and Prejudice (BBC series borrowed off @CLBradley)
* A lot of Dad's war documentaries up until April, and then again from October
* One episode of Altered Carbon
* Homeland (season 6)
* Star Trek Enterprise
* Addams Family (maybe season 2, would need to check)
* Anthony Bourdain's The Layover
* Back in Time for Dinner
* David Attenborough's Natural Curiosities
* Anthony Bourdain's Parts Unknown
* Rake (season 5, not as good as previous seasons, too over the top)
* The Good Place (season 3)
* Death in Paradise (seasons 1 and 2)

Books
* Prey, by Michael Crichton
* The Giant Book of Science Fiction Stories
* Black Beauty by Anna Sewell
* The Last Seven Months of Anne Frank by Willy Lindwer

Other stuff

* Got NBN!!!!!!! In January - haven't complained about our internet since. 12x faster than before!
* Stopped by Cataract Dam on the way home from Sydney in January
* Took my car to the wreckers. Realised six months later I'd left my RTA etag in it, so called the wreckers but my car was crushed. There goes $40. Also realised, when I went to charge Kit's car in December, that I'd forgotten the battery trickle charger attachment that had been mounted in the engine bay.
* Climbed Black Mountain from Bindoubi Street with Cath, Fiona and their friend Heather
* Saw the Canberra Balloon Fiesta
* Filled with rage at the tax office that refuse to send paper bills, so how the hell am I meant to know how much I owe them??
* Was super happy with the awesome customer service from Willow when I found one of the lids I'd bought was cracked. Saddedened at the appalling experience from ebay
* reCAPTCHA died, but have been puttering along without it since May, and doesn't seem to be getting comment spam these days anyway
* Watched Flying High twice this year
* Tried taking recycling bottles to Return-It, but (after they forced me to register all my personal details) they RIPPED ME OFF and never put any money in my account. Return-It is a SCAM!!  I've been collecting the bottles but I've never been back - I give them to David whenever he comes to stay and he takes them to NSW where they have a PROPER system, or take them out to the club where someone else takes them to NSW or I think the new one in ACT where you get a receipt on the spot.
* Went to Frank Bradley's funeral, on my birthday. Tried to go to Stanley's in Bruce for dinner but it's closed Tuesdays so ended up at The George.
* Got a green bin!!
* Ate some of Kit's chickens
* Stu chopped a foot of hair off just before we went away at the end of the year

We finished the year at nine o'clock in the morning, North Atlantic time.  Stu was in bed and I was eating breakfast.  And yet, even in the middle of the North Atlantic, I could still watch the Sydney fireworks live :)

This was a fun one that came second hand from somewhere, possibly from the club cleanout, or from David.  There were a couple of pieces missing sadly.

Another from either the club cleanout or David, of Kinderdijk in the Netherlands.  I saw a bunch of windmills when I was there in 2012, but not sure which ones.  I did see that little tower on the very right.  I did most of this jigsaw myself, then we finished the sky when Dave and Kat were up in October.

We started this the Saturday morning David and Kat were here, then they went off to River Island.  Given the waste of a weekend I had at home, I shoulda gone with them.  We finished it Sunday afternoon.

I got this from Kmart for $2 because I had a $10 voucher and had spent $8 on five pairs of socks and needed to spend the rest on something.  A fun little jigsaw I think I did in about an hour.

This was from the club cleanout.  Had a repeating pattern so the left half was the same as the right half.

This jigsaw we started in Southampton on the Queen Mary 2.  Did it in a couple of days.

This second comic jigsaw came straight after the one above on the port side of the ship.  Did this in two days.

I truly hate people.  I hate evil disgusting people.  One morning after finishing the comic jigsaw above, we started this jigsaw of Polperro and got the sky and the boats and water done.  Later I came back to it and someone had put their hands on both sides of the jigsaw and pushed the whole lot together, destroying it.  I just walked away, I couldn't face redoing it all.  Then we had our shore day in New York.  Came back to it the next day and someone had restored it to about where I'd left it.  So I finished it.  Later I walked past and someone had pulled out all the dark bits of the water.  I mean seriously what the F#$* is wrong with people??  Some dude was putting it in and I showed him the photo of the finished jigsaw from just that morning.  I let him finish it.  The next day it had started all over again.  Le sigh.

I don't actually know what this is, as I didn't get a photo of the box (edit: it's Two Sisters (On the Terrace) (1881), by Renoir).  This was started in Southampton as well on the starboard side of the ship, and this was the progress after three days.  I didn't do much of it at all by this stage, just a couple of pieces.  It was pretty tough going, very dark and not much definition on the pieces.  Really didn't like it at all.

This was the progress by Christmas day.  I'd done a bit more on it, and I'd sorted all the pieces by shape, and partly by colour as someone else had sorted by colour.

And did I mention how much I HATE PEOPLE??  Look at what some feral turd of a human being did to it!

I'd originally thought with a bit of persistence we could get it done by the time we got off in New York, but I couldn't face it after this.  I actually considered boxing it all up and telling them to throw it out (there were pieces missing anyway) and put out a new one.  But I just walked away.

This had been going on the port side of the ship during our Caribbean days, so was just about finished when I saw it.  I helped with all the greenery at the top and we finished it before lunch on New Years Eve (technically New Years Day in Australia haha)

Wednesday was first work Christmas party.  It was ok but nothing special.  Didn't get too silly.  Although some of the guys did, getting in a little late the next morning :)

Friday was "my" Christmas party.  Almost 60 people this year!  Getting out of control haha!  But everyone had a great time.  Well maybe except DC who got hit with *something*, no idea what.  And I did forget the Coke Zero.  And cooking oil.  I didn't stay til the end on account of the sweetie wanted to get home (and we needed to help Kit pack the truck).  I did catch the very same duck again :)  (she even came back a few minutes later and ate out of my hand so couldn't have been too traumatised!)

So yeah last night was helping load the truck.  Kit doesn't have a lot of *stuff* but Pete does and it's mostly awkward big stuff that doesn't fit in boxes.  I collapsed about 10:30 but there was still a lot in the garage to try and get in.