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Umina

Thirty years ago today we went to Uncle Geoff and Aunty Rhonda's for the Australia Day long weekend.  At least I assume we left that day.  Mum's got photos dated 26/1 and 28/1, and David had photos labelled 26/1.  But Mum also said we went swimming in Lyn's pool at night, but that wouldn't make sense since David had photos at Umina on 26/1.  Shrug.  Point is it was around that weekend.

We stopped at Ourimbah to visit Mum's friend Lyn (her father featured in a previous post with us on his horse Dolly).

Dave and Lyn's home

David, Karen, Lyn and Dave Allen in backyard of Lyn and Dave's house at Ourimbah

It poured with rain at Umina, and David took these photos of the flash flooding.

Red Car at Umina

Flooding on Ocean Beach Road, Umina

Flooding on Ocean Beach Road, Umina

Flooding on Ocean Beach Road, Umina

Flooding on Ocean Beach Road, Umina

Mum also took this photo of Aunty Rhonda and Uncle Geoff on the 28th, I assume just before we left.

Aunty Rhonda and Uncle Geoff

Two blog entries done tonight, third right now, so not backdating!!

Monday.  18th.  Slept ok on the new mattress I think.  It's quite firm!  I was a bit worried it was going to be *too* firm.  The tencel sheets I bought in the middle of last year are *very* slippery, which is a bit odd.  Had another long day at work being on the phone for most of the day again.  Did my quota of Eurasia photos in the evening.  Also added a couple of things to the year in review post that I'd missed.  Since I was done with labelling, I watched the first episode of Into the Unknown - a documentary on the making of Frozen II.

Neighborhood greenery

Oh hai little bird

Tuesday.  Quiet day at work until it all happens at once in the afternoon.  hrmmm.  Filled up the green bin in the evening.  Then the yappy dog started barking again for an hour or more, after a week or so of peace.  Got a cold call from a mob called Sunny Money (seriously WTF, would you do business with a company called that??).  I hate being cold called at the best of times, so I'm like, wait, who are you? how did you get my number?  And when he was like "how long have you owned your home", I was like "a while" and made it all kinds of difficult for him.  So I'm like well fine, I have your details, when we've done a bit of research maybe we'll call you, and he's like but then I won't get my commission.  #grunt.  Hard slog getting through photo labelling.

Wednesday.  Slept ok I think.  Dog was barking again this morning.  In fact I think that was why I was cranky/on edge for most of the break - that damned dog.  Caught up with the backlog from yesterday in the morning.  Then had a day of failure because I'm dumb.  

Thursday.  Ok sleep (woke up 5:30ish).  No progress on all my failures of the previous day.  But there were work drinks which was nice.  Got pizza, and watched some Simpsons and more Laid-Back Camp.

Friday.  Okish day I guess.  Avoided looking at all the things that make me a failure.  Had a bit of a play with Powershell in the afternoon.  Really really need to learn Powershell more bettererly.  

Pretty pink flowers

In the evening watched the 2018 version of A Wrinkle in Time.  Disney's problem is trying to do a movie from a book that people cherish so dearly.  If you read the reviews on IMDB, it's literally all one star ratings from people who can't stand how much it deviated from the book.  I'm lucky in that I have dementia.  I read the book as a late teen or early twenties, then again in 2014.  I saw the tv movie in 2003.  So I don't have a lot of memories of any of it.  I do remember enjoying the Dumbledore quotes in the tv movie.  And the brain from the book.  There should have been a brain.  So the new one I didn't think was terrible if you'd never read the book(s), but otherwise yeah it's a bit of a fail.  And it was written by Jennifer Lee - who wrote Frozen!

Saturday.  Typical weekend day just doing all the things.  David took it upon himself to clean the bathroom fan and light fitting.  Have I ever mentioned I have the bestest brother ever?  He also helped us rehang the Lego mosaic in a new spot (out of Stu's study).  This mosaic has been there since 2009.  I *really* need to make up a new picture!!

Lego in new hangy spot

Stu cooked his gnocchi carbonara again (with actual egg!).  And we finished watching Laid-Back Camp.  I watched a Titanic bluray documentary of David's and then a Netflix documentary on Anne Frank - Parallel Stories, about a series of survivors with similar stories to Anne Frank.  

Sunday.  Today.  !  Got up to fog!  Which is quite surreal at this time of year.  Also meant having the cooling on with water made the 99% humidity even humider, if such a thing were possible ;)

Very early fog

But we did keep the cooler on all day, and it didn't get above 25C in the house all day!  Hurrah!

In the morning David packed up his car with the last of his stuff and left for good.  As staunch introverts we would stress over *anyone* in our space for so long, but having my brother here was still ok.  I probably get on better with him than pretty much anyone else except the sweetie, and I guess for the sweetie it's a bit like having two of me ;)  Plus, as a houseguest he was pretty awesome.  Not only was he respectful of our space, but he was super helpful around the house.  I will miss his generous heart.  

At lunch we tried out using the new rice cooker we got for Christmas from David as a steamer to cook up some steamed pork buns

Rice cooker steamer

Steamed pork buns

We watched a few videos from Solar Quotes while we had lunch.  In the afternoon did a bit of cleaning and tidying.  And hunted through Mum and Dad's photos for photos for This Day in History posts, including processing another two hundred of Mum's photos for use in the blog/online.  And blogging.  All the blogging.

And so here we are.  Caught up on the current events blogging.  I still have This Day in History posts to do.. one day ..

See aforementioned note on being a slacker.  Backdating.  

Monday.  11th.  After work I'd labelled my quota of Eurasia 2012 photos by dinner time.  Which was leftovers and salad.  Then continued writing up my year in review post.  Then came the news that David had gotten a train driving job out of Cootamundra and would be leaving.  For some reason that just made me feel a bit sad.  Happy for him of course though!  Couldn't get to sleep til nearly 1am, probably just trying to deal with change.

Tuesday.  Slept a bit late.  In the evening was up to Mum and Dad's photos of Hong Kong for our Eurasia trip.  They travelled separately to me (because I was planning to go via Japan on the way back) and the group had a daytime layover in Hong Kong.  Because I can't help myself, I geotagged all 78 of Dad's and all 59 of Mum's photos of their day there.  It was pretty easy, because I could tell exactly where they'd been on account of having gone to those exact spots a year and a half later.  Just needed a bit of street view assistance for the driving photos.  There was one tricky one of some buildings in Fortress Hill, which was really nowhere near anywhere you'd expect them to be when getting a bus from the airport to Central where they took the Peak Tram.  

Wednesday.  Another night of not getting to sleep til very late.  Had to *go* to work, blerf.  Finished writing up a test plan of sorts for the proxies.  Then started building new mail servers. 

Well and truly past the twelfth day of Christmas..
Christmas in January

Stu was meant to meet Damien at the Pot Belly for a drink, only Damien forgot, so I went and had a drink with him instead.  Sausages and salad for dinner.  Backed up my phone, backed up my computer, then labelled all of Mum and Dad's Hong Kong photos, and then it's after 9pm.  Blerf.

Thursday.

Oh hai snail.  Can you please get off the middle of the path so I don't squish you.  You're lucky you didn't end up as Stumpy's lunch!
Snail getaway

Had a drink with Neil and Wello at the Labor Club. 

Stu got this set of clickety-clack keys to test different keyboard styles
Clickety clack keys

Then had Dr Oc pizzas for dinner.  Started watching a Japanese anime show called Laid-Back Camp, which I really enjoyed and we ended up watching four twenty-three minute episodes.  It's photo-realistic, and you could actually go to all the places they go to.  

Friday.  Spent most of the day on a call with a vendor helping us with a POC of a firewall product.  So.  Draining.

I did get this funny photo of Stumpy planking at lunch
Stumpy planking

After being on the phone all day I just wanted TV dinners for dinner.  So got a couple of veal cordon bleus from Chris's.  Then watched some more Laid-Back Camp.

Saturday.  Slept ok.  Did all the morning things, then helped David load up his car to take the first load of things home.  I really didn't think he had all that much here, but we completely filled the car and there's still a lot to go.  

We might have had our new mattress arrive!

New mattress

Went out to do our food shopping.  Also to pick up pills from Chemist Warehouse.  I was going to use the app to order my pills so I could just go and pick them up.  Except the app said they didn't have any in stock.  So I went to the counter when we got there to ask, and I could literally see them on the shelf behind her.  She got them down and was like, oh yes they *are* in stock.  So I was going to grab them and go, except she's like, but you can't, there's a queue.  And I'm like, THEY'RE RIGHT THERE.  FFS.  Apparently it takes chemists literally fifteen minutes to stick a name tag sticker on a box of pills.  WTF else do they do????  Pathetic.  Continued on with the year in review post in the afternoon. 

Stu cooked dinner - sukuyaki hotpot!!  Inspired by Laid-Back Camp.  With real (and very expensive) wagyu beef that the butcher kindly sliced thinly for us.

Stu cooks hotpot

Stu's hotpot

Then we watched The Professor and the Madman which was pretty good, altho apparently Mel Gibson had a hissy fit that they couldn't film in Oxford and refused to promote the film.  Stu had the book at one point, but we couldn't find it - even if he didn't give it away in our recent purge, if it was still there it would have been behind all the Lego boxes.  

Sunday.  Took ages to get to sleep - tired and restless.  So a bit of a nothing day.  Put on beef brisket in the slow cooker at lunch.  In the afternoon we pulled apart the old bed, and setup the new mattress and linen.  I had a look at the bed frame we were looking at at Ikea, but I'm glad I read the reviews, because otherwise I wouldn't have found out that the frame is actually too small for a king size mattress, and we would have been stuck.  Finally finally posted my 2020 year in review post.  Go to the archives if you're one of those silly people that doesn't use an RSS reader.

Friday.  New Years Day.  Had a pretty slow morning out at the club.  Then came home via the Scottish Restaurant for brunch.  Had a nice quiet day.  Had salad and roast veggies for dinner. 

Start healthyish

Start healthyish

Also took this cool photo using the crystal ball David got for Christmas.  On my phone.

Crystal ball tree

Watched Discovery and finished Heartache and Birdsong, which I'd been reading since Christmas (took four nights to read).  

Saturday.  Second day of the year.  Did a fair bit on the todo list, but not really enough.  Took down the Christmas decorations and put them all away.  Watched Discovery.  Also watched "Death to 2020".  We had no idea what it was about when it popped up on Netflix, we thought maybe some year in review type show.  Which it kind of was.  Only it was hilarious.  Well except the middle bit which was pretty depressing.  It was very well done, although really only looked at American news with a bit of British news in it as well, but nothing much for the rest of the world.  I think my favourite quote was "The one good thing about Trump refusing to concede was that we got to watch him lose over and over".

Sunday.  Third day of the year.  Slept ok I think.  Did a few house type bits, but mostly going through my transactions for the year and making sure they lined up with receipts.  There were a few very strange ones, like "SpencerGulf Restaurant" which presumably owns KFC in Garema Place, and "MISS MICHELIN" which might have been Subway in the mall.  We did our food shopping, but all the butchers at the markets were closed and we didn't feel like going to Coles, so just made do with some frozen chicken kiev but that meant no leftover meat to do stirfry with.  Watched The Tale of the Princess Kaguya.  I enjoyed it for the most part, although the whole movie really echos her thoughts of "what's the point of my being here".  She starts off happy, has to go be a princess which she hates, can't go back home because everyone is gone (or is that a dream?), wants to go "home" to be miserable, rinse and repeat, and at the end you're like, if you're so miserable, why do you want to stay anyway?  I think I prefer the original story, although I only got a synopsis on Wikipedia, would have to read a translation of the whole thing.

David took Dad's old slide projector and screen home.  I figured after I scanned all Dad's slides I was *never* going to use a slide projector to project them.  So he can have it or give it to Peter Neve or whatever.   Edit: he took it home but forgot to take it out of his car, so it came back and it went home again on 16/1.

Dad's slide projector

Monday.  Fourth day of the year.  We took this day off so we could ease back into work with a four day work week.  Plus we could go to Ikea on a weekday instead of a weekend.  Headed out around 10:30, and didn't get back home til 3pm.  hrmm.  First up we dropped a package off to be posted.  Then had Maccas fries for morning tea because I'd forgotten to eat before we left and I knew I'd need the energy.  First up shopping-wise we went to Ikea.  Stu wanted a rug for his study and a small lamp, and I also got some candles and a pot to plant a plant for Noah.  We also saw a bed frame that we thought would be acceptable. 

Stu and bed frame

Then we headed for Canberra Outlet Centre.  We did a lap of the place, looking in all the places that sold beds.  We saw a couple of maybes.  But we did end up buying a mattress at Freedom. 

Stu testing a mattress

Had a late lunch at Mamak Lunch but it was actually after 2pm by now and we had no idea the serving sizes would be *enormous*.  So we got a doggy bag to bring some home in. 

COC lunch

Was feeling pretty blah after having been out all day, so asked the sweetie to cook dinner.  So he ordered pizza.  hrmmmm.  But we did go for a walk together after dinner.

Tuesday.  Fifth day of the year.  Back to work.  Although at home which helped ease back into things.  Did a roast lamb for dinner and tried out Dave 2's parmesan potatoes, but they didn't turn out as awesomely as I thought they would.

Dave 2's parmesan potatoes

I also freaked out at how much food was in the fridge to be eaten.  I made up some meals and froze a few things and tried to sort it all out.  I also started labelling Eurasia 2012 photos.  This one is going to take *all year* to do...!

I have no notes for Wednesday, but will backdate this entry to then.  

1980

I was seven.  In bed asleep.

1990

No photos, and no memories, but possibly I was with Chrissie and my friends at the Reid's.  

2000

I went over to Luc and Cynthia's for a bit of a party, and we walked down to the Glebe Island Bridge aka Anzac Bridge and watched the fireworks from there.

In fact we watched both the 9pm fireworks..

2000 Sydney NYE fireworks

2000 Sydney NYE fireworks

2000 Sydney NYE fireworks

.. and the midnight fireworks..

2000 Sydney NYE fireworks

2000 Sydney NYE fireworks

2000 Sydney NYE fireworks

2000 Sydney NYE fireworks

2010

Had Nat and Andrew, as well as Steve for a bit and their friend David, and had a bit of a pool party, and played games until midnight.

2020

The sweetie and I went out to the club with a small group of people and had drinks and snackages.

And because it's Canberra, it was so cold we needed to put the fire on!

Henkell in front of the fire

Happy New Year!!  (year in review post coming "real soon now" ;) )

2020.

Oh my.

We started the year at EffanC's, suffocating in bushfire smoke. We didn't go out to the club because I was too nervous about bushfires, and in fact even suburban fires. In 1994 I saw spotfires go a full kilometre from the bush, just a couple of hundred metres from our house. So I wanted to stay close. The bushfire smoke hung around for much of January and the devastation the fires caused was just heartbreaking.

The bushfires ended, then we got a massive hail storm that wrote off thousands of cars. I know *lots* of people that had their cars written off. And then it rained. And rained. And rained. Just a few weeks after the fires finished, much of the landscape was flooded. Which apparently is exactly what the river ecosystems *don't* need. Coastal communities begged Canberrans to come down and spend some money to help them recover. So we did. Although just an overnighter for Pete's 40th.

But then.

The C word.

As it hit, coastal communities begged Canberrans to stay away. When we got back from the coast, we dropped into Coles at Gungahlin to pick up a few supplies, including toilet paper (we were down to our last roll at home). We managed to get one of the last packets of toilet paper on the shelves. It was the last time I was to see toilet paper in Coles for about six or seven weeks. Fortunately I was able to get it at Chris's, otherwise things would have been pretty messy. The panic buying extended to all paper products that could be used in lieu of toilet paper - all the tissues and paper towel was gone for weeks as well. Pasta, pasta sauce, rice and even flour and yeast all disappeared off the shelves. I really didn't understand the flour/yeast thing - bread was still freshly available throughout the whole thing. In the second week even fresh food was mostly gone. Long lasting vegetables such as potatoes were nearly all gone, as was most fresh meat. One day (22 March) we went to the Belconnen markets and all three butchers had closed by lunch time Sunday because they'd simply run out of meat to sell.

On Monday 16 March I had the slightest hint of a sore throat and a cough. So Tuesday 17 March I stayed at home. And there I stayed. For six months. Other than a couple of odd days, and dropping in on a couple of weekends to swap out my backup hard drives, I didn't work in the office in any regular fashion until September. As it turns out I love working from home. Who knew. Previously I didn't really like it, partly because of my monitor setup is a bit backwards, but also because if I didn't go into the office every day I would lose the claim to "my" desk. But with everyone else working from home as well, and in fact they had a sticker on my desk for most of that six months saying don't work here (trying to keep people further apart), it wasn't an issue. And I got somewhat used to the monitors being backwards.

By 22 March, most flights around the world had been cancelled. The government imposed a travel ban. For every country they said "Do not travel". Restaurants, bars, cinemas and anything "non-essential" was shut down. I was quite upset by the impact that would have on low income earners. And then I raged at people whinging about their pay raise getting delayed six months. My holiday to Oberammergau to see the Passion Play got postponed two years. They started doing that play to thank God for saving them from the plague. And this year they had to postpone. Because of a plague. There's got to be some irony there somewhere. Qantas grounded all their 747s - forever. I was super sad about this.

In late March I went out at lunch time on a Monday to do the food shopping, when Jamo was a lot less crowded, and did that a couple of times. Still not much in the way of pasta/rice etc. We did big shops fortnightly to minimise having to go out. And I did the shopping by myself for a while too which was no fun because I like going with the sweetie. Every time I went shopping I swore I was getting a sore throat straight after. It was late April before I saw toilet paper again in Coles. June saw an outbreak in Melbourne, and panic buying started up again. In July I finally got my money back from Emirates for my Europe trip, although not the extra I paid for seat allocations.

Things eased up a lot in the second half of the year with no community transmission in Canberra since March. Restaurants opened and stayed open. We were able to start seeing our friends again. It hit Melbourne pretty hard in the middle of the year.  By December it looked like Australia was getting on top of things again. But then a driver of international flight crews got it in December and started spreading it around Sydney. Sydney went into lockdown of sorts and Mum couldn't come visit us after Christmas.

So a pretty wild year on that front.

Very little travel this year, for obvious reasons. I flew up to Sydney in February for Ryan's 21st birthday. But with all the delays it would have been quicker to take the coach. And that turned out to be my only flight for the year. I stayed with Mum and went to the 21st, where I put up a video of all the photos I'd taken of Ryan every week/fortnight/month/year since he was born. Caught the coach back the next morning. In March we went down the coast to stay with Kit and Pete for a surprise party for Pete's 40th. That was a bit of fun. Came home the next day. Did a quick trip to Sydney in late June to inspect my flat after the previous tenants decided to move out. We also dropped in to visit Luc and Lizzi, and on the way back I saw Nepean Dam. My flat ended up being empty for a month, and I had to drop the rent *a lot* which was pretty sad. In late August we wandered around the Snowy Mountains to Tumut, visited several dams and had a lovely afternoon at the Tumut River Brewing Company for Stu's 50th. In November Stu's brother convinced us to go up to Port Macquarie and South West Rocks to visit him and his father.

In lieu of actual travel, I did a *lot* of work on my travel photos. Throughout last year I'd gotten our Hong Kong/Singapore 2016 trip labelled, and had the blog ready for the fourth anniversary since we went. I geotagged my USA 2000 trip, fixed up all the labels, and got photos into the blog. I started geotagging my USA 2004 photos in February, but ran out of steam with that after about a week's worth, because it's *really* hard to geotag photos taken out of a moving car in the middle of outback USA. Next I labelled all twelve and a half thousand UK 2010 photos, finishing in December. I registered a Geonames account, and a Google Cloud account so I could use the Google Maps API in Geosetter.

Work was work. Still doing mostly internetty type stuff like firewalls and proxies. As mentioned previously, it turns out introverts like me like working from home. It's just so much more flexible and it *feels* like I'm home, even though I'm working. It means I can pop something in the slow cooker at lunch time, or something in the oven a bit earlier than I would if I got home at nearly 6pm. Or if it's a quiet Friday afternoon I can flex off for a bit without having to wait for the sweetie to go home or catch a bus. I got a bunch of our gear finally converted over to SNMP v3. I shut off access to an entire old environment. I fought with a particular firewall for months, including spending three hours on the phone to support one weekend trying to fix it. Still no resolution in sight on that one, but Wardie, bestest guy ever, has basically taken over, because he's awesome. Did a bit of training here and there, mostly free stuff. Got a new service desk tool in December, and had a lot of fun making shiny dashboards for it, which a bunch of other sections copied for themselves!  Socially, we had a gin night in early March, just before the lockdown. I actually missed the last work drinks before shutdown because of the slight sore throat I had. In August the guys started going to the Pot Belly for drinks, which we did for a little while before actual work drinks started up again. And I got to run my Christmas barbeque at the lake for over forty people. It was a lovely cool day, which made nice change from so many years where it's been crazy hot or shrouded in bushfire smoke.

Healthwise I was generally pretty good. Bouts of insomnia came and went a few times. Completely frustrating and debilitating. From mid March I felt like I had a permanently sore throat and slight cough for like a month or two. It was likely all in my head though. Got a flu vaccination in April. David came home with a cold in late August. He went home but it was too late - Stu caught it about a week later, and I caught it about five days after that. I was sick for a weekend. Stu was sick for a month. At least. I decided to go on short walks around the neighbourhood every day at lunch to get a little bit of exercise and vitamin D. I passed a lot of magpies, and decided to bribe them to not swoop me in spring by feeding them little bits of roast meat. All through winter they would see me coming and fly over. So cool! But come spring time they lost interest - there was obviously plenty of their own food around which they were more interested in. I also never got swooped :) Went up Mt Rogers once with David. Got some new reading glasses in December (should NOT have gone to Specsavers).

On the friends front, really things only went quiet for about two months from mid March to May. Other than that it was actually pretty much business as usual. We saw our fair share of EffanC at ours or theirs, including drinks over Zoom. We caught up with Kit and Pete when they came up in January to avoid the fires, and in February when they came up again, as well as Pete's 40th at their place in March. Had a few games of Kismet with them as well. We went to Rob and Lynne's with a bunch of peeps in January and again in December, and had them over in May. Went to a bbq at Brett and Sharon's in January, and the middle of the year we saw quite a bit of the A/M/C group, including some dinners, parties and walks. Got to see Rob and Fiona a couple of times too which was nice, as they really went into hibernation during the lockdown. Unfortunately didn't see much of Scott. Also didn't see much of Chrissie. Saw her on her birthday in January and I think that was it. Doesn't help that they are all always either crazy busy or sick. We didn't end up having a hanami lunch with Nat and Andrew.  I invited them but never heard back.  I would have chased them up but Stu was too busy and stressed with a uni assignment.  Had a lovely time at Aquila's 60th in January. Had Nelson and Susan over in August for vegan lasagna and games. Had drinks with Damien in September, I think that was the only time I saw him all year. We were supposed to go to Ben and Sarah's wedding in Queensland in October. Yeah that didn't happen. But Ben was able to have a nice 40th at Gungahlin Lakes on the day. We also had them over for dinner in December. And Doc organised drinks at the George for a bunch of work peeps between Christmas and New Year which was nice.

On the family side, well my family has been here the whole time! David has been living with us for a little over a year. While it can be challenging sometimes (mainly menu planning and trying to remember to vacuum around a shiftworker) it's generally been pretty good. And he fixes things! While he was here he replaced the light fitting in our ceiling fan (I think that might have been before he moved here), fixed the leaky ensuite toilet, installed new taps in the bathroom, installed LEDs everywhere, including some smartlights in the loungeroom that are pretty cool, installed a new extentible clothes line, installed a new oven, fixed the display on Stu's CD player, fixed the frequency on our digital radios, fixed up the bedroom curtain string which had come off the rails, fixed our back fence which had been pushed out by vines and photinia and finally broken in strong winds, phoned up and ordered and picked up a new fix tank lid for me, installed a bracket for the clothes line so we can extend it half way instead of the whole way, helped Stu build his new shelves, rewired the LEDs in Stu's four foot tank so it'd work with a standard transformer, installed a couple of new smoke detectors, fixed my scanner (cable had come loose, and I would have eventually figured this out because I would have moved it to test it on another computer). And he mowed the lawns. Seriously, most awesomest brother ever!!! And super handy having a qualified electrician in the family! About the best we could do to thank him was cook lots of roasts. Including roast lamb on his birthday, and he had a few friends over to help celebrate. I stayed with Mum in Sydney a couple of times - when I went up for Ryan's 21st, and when I inspected my flat in June. We saw a bit of Stu's family as well. Went and visited a few times in August, October and Christmas.  And we saw Scott and Kerry and the family and Jeff and Ruth in November.

Our social club events had to be curtailed somewhat, and I missed out on doing Christmas in July which I've done for a few years in a row now, but at least I got to do Christmas for something like fifty people (a whole bunch had to stay outside due to capacity restrictions). We had a few weekends out there while Stu was on the committee, including in January where I did some cleaning out of the "tool shed", a night in June, our first since February, where we really appreciated the little wood fireplace, and in July where I stared priming the cabinetry. Also had some time in early October. We went out for the last event before lockdown - an epic Mexican feast in February. One of the raffle prizes that night was a six pack of Corona beer with an attached N95 mask. There was a working bee in July where I scraped concrete off a glass door. That night would have been the Christmas in July night, and the alternative was going to be a bonfire, but it rained, so we cooked marshmallows in the wood heater in the shed. The first event post lockdown was a halloween party where I got to be Lego 80s Classic Space guy again. And then my Christmas party. And we finished the year there with a few friends and a lot of bubbles.

Another fairly quiet year with the fish. I bought ten zebra danios in April and put a few in my three tanks. Half of them died, some fairly quickly. I lost the angel in my 620T tank in September, and Chrissie's catfish was looking super depressed. I stuck my hand in to see if it was still alive, and the water was COLD. The heater had died, taking my angel with it. Pretty upset about that. I took a random day off in September, thinking I'd do some fish stuff in the morning and other things in the afternoon. But I ended up doing fish stuff *all day*. And I managed to break the lid of the upstairs two foot while I was trying to clean it. Stu got some little sucking catfish and some guppies at the end of the year. So Stu's four foot has ten congo tetras, one loach, one siamensis and four tiny sucking catfish. My 620T has Chrissie's huge sucking catfish, a huge old cory and two female danios. My upstairs two foot has two male danios, one who has been sick since shortly after I got him, but refuses to die. Little trooper. It also has a sucking catfish, and six of the guppies Stu got at the end of the year. My downstairs two foot has four of the male guppies and two sucking catfish from Stu's purchase. Also downstairs are five little tanks, all with two or three guppies in them to cycle the tanks.  No change with Stumpy.  He's just as much a gumby as ever.

Not much going on with the Lego. I'm still sporadically sorting Vic's Lego but it's just so painful. If sets were complete it would be a joy, but none of them are, so it's just depressing. I think the only sets I built all year were the set of Shanghai Stu got me for Christmas, and Neil's International Space Station.

The year started slowly with jigsaws - most of the first quarter was taken up with a three thousand piece jigsaw of The Bombing of Algiers. I did two sections of the forty two thousand piece Disney behemoth - Peter Pan and The Little Mermaid. Very few at work thanks to the lockdown, and not too many at home because I'm just too damned busy all the time.

I continued working on labelling and sorting photos. As mentioned above I geotagged and labelled thousands of photos. I also did a lot of filing of photos, but there's still sooo much to be done in that space. In March I started scanning Dad's slides. I started out doing a box a week, and at that rate it was going to take me four or five years. But working from home during lockdown gave me an extra half hour in the mornings that I used to scan a box a day. I managed to get all his slides scanned by Christmas, although I still had a bit of work to rescan slides that had dust on them on the first pass. Didn't quite complete that by the end of the year. In December I had a bit of a play with a gallery generator. The only reason I'm labelling all my holiday photos is because I want to get the majority of them online. I did consider Flickr, but I just have this feeling they're not going to last. Too many buyouts and changes of conditions. Most likely I'll just use S3 and pay the few cents a month it'll likely cost.

I continued to rage at Apple and the crappy things it does. It still messes with the timestamps on my files. I can't download movies first go, or second or third or fourth in a lot of cases. And can't download timelapse videos *at all* to my PC, I have to save them to Google Drive first and then if I'm lucky the encoding/dimensions will be right for me to play them on my PC. Calendar and contacts refuse to sync to Google like they used to (I don't think it's worked since I got my new phone two years ago and I've tried *everything*). The contacts don't even sync to Apple Cloud. I'm about ready to give up on Apple.

Most of the stuff around the house was done by David. Because he's awesome. Our oven element died in March. I cleaned the oven while he investigated getting a new element, but in the end we got a whole new oven. While I was on a work break. With no sleep. Yeah really not the best mental state to be buying home appliances. In April we went out to buy half turn taps. Again, while on a work break, from a situation at work I probably should not have left. The anxiety of that day was terrible!! But the new taps are amazing, I love them! Unfortunately the dripping shower was still there. Guess it's not the taps that are leaking. We had a plumber come look at it, and he did a whole heap of tests, and decided the membrane was gone (duh) and most likely just leaking through the grout. I could have saved myself four hundred dollars if I'd just done the "cover the drain and splash water on the walls" trick which I did just after and proved the same thing. We got a resealer to come have a look and give us a quote. But he was confused about why there would be so much leaking through the grout, promised to send a quote for a complete retile/reseal, but never did. Even when I mailed them again and asked. In March we cleaned out the dumping ground room so that Stu could have his own office. He'd been wanting to do that for ages. The timing was great, as it meant he had a private office during lockdown. He got new shelves later in the year and a whole heap of toys, and he really loves his little space. I spent a weekend tidying up the dungeon and under the house and rearranging everything to keep it clear of the drip. We had to get the Chinese pistachio tree removed in August because the trunks were sagging apart and it was in danger of falling down (onto Kit's garage). I was super sad about that because it was such a beautiful tree, and the birds absolutely love it, and as it turns out it was a great shade for the eastern side of the house, so our house is a lot hotter in the mornings now. We also got the tree guys to be brutal on our photinia which was getting out of control. Again. We had a roof restoration done in October and the roof looks very shiny now. Next up: solar. The garden continued to stay out of control. Although we did get a few strawberry plants off Michelle and got some very nice strawberries off them in October (the ones the slugs didn't get at).

We still managed to eat out a little bit this year. We took Kit and Pete out for dinner in January to Bella Vista. Went to Kinn Thai in January, February and March (which was our last eating out before lockdown). It's always fast service and the food really good. Had some very nice pizzas at Grease Monkey in January. Went to Grill'd with Neil in January to avoid the food court during school holidays. Tried Malatang Hotpot in January too. The one I had was fairly bland, and the one Neil had was super epic spicy, even for him. Need to try something in the middle, but then there was lockdown, and they're still not allowing you to handle the tongs to choose your own food. Tried Wild Panda in Civic when I got back from Sydney, but I don't remember it being anything special. Had lunch with the sweetie at Gus's in May - first eating out post lockdown. Had brunch at Rocksalt in June. Had some nice pork belly with crackling at the Lake George hotel a week before my birthday. It was going to be my birthday meal, but we ended up going to Chong Co on my birthday. And KFC for lunch of course. Went to Happy's a couple of times with the sweetie in September and October. Met up with a bunch of N-Gang people for dinner at Indian Pantry in October for a feast. Tried out Herbert's in November, and went there a couple of times in November and a couple in December with Tony and/or the Chrises. Had drinks a few times with the sweetie at the Beirut Bunker Bar. Had Disappointing Sushi, aka Hero Sushi in Civic in December. It lived up to expectations. It's literally a running joke with us now. You can be guaranteed that the hot food will be cold and everything has avocado in it.

As always, I do quite a bit of interesting cooking. I don't quite know how I manage that, since I'm not really a very good cook. Actually I'm basically a lazy cook. I like cooking things that don't require a lot of fiddly preparation or a lot of cleaning up. I cooked two pavlovas in January. I think this was the first time I'd ever made a full pavlova. I thought I'd have another go at Christmas and failed miserably. Twice. We had cheese and bacon sausages we got from Coles a few times. They're great to have in the fridge because they last ages, so we can use them when we've run out of other food. Made curried sausages in March to try and use up some of the many tins of curry powder we have in the house. We tried out Dominos "deep pan" pizzas a couple of times. They were pretty disappointing. Nothing like the crispy doughy deep fried goodness of pizzas in the eighties. Tried a slow cooked marinated beef in March to try and use up some of the mustard powder we have in the house. It turned out pretty well. Made nachos in late March, probably the first time I've ever made nachos myself. Several of our lunches during lockdown consisted of various types of puff pastry scrolls - cheese and vegemite and pizza scrolls being favourites. Did a coq au vin in April. Cooked a couple of "Yum! Delicious!" cakes and a cashew slice with Mum's peanut slice recipe. I also did Anzac Biscuits on Anzac Day which has become somewhat of a tradition in recent years. I did a few tomato based stews as we went into winter, and we think all the extra tomato set off David's gout, so we had to cut those right back. There was Sizzler cheesy toast a couple of times, and taco Tuesday multiple times - soooo bad but soooo good!! Did an epic lasagna in May. Tried a pulled pork in May. It was pretty amazing, but such a waste of crackling ;) David obliged me with a Country Cheese and cheese sauce craving and had quite a bit of that over winter. Whenever a packet is open it evaporates very quickly. Tried a couple of non-tomato based bakes from my gratins and bakes book - a broccoli and cheese penne with garlic and lemon crumbs, and a potato, bacon and blue cheese bake, both were very nice but also quite similar to my regular veggie bakes. Made an Irish stew in July - Stu was going to make it but life got in the way so I did it.  It was nice enough. Tried slow cooking beef brisket in July and fell in love with it, and did it several times. As well as some slow cooked pulled beef and NQN's beef cheeks as well. Slow cookers are amazing for hearty winter cooking! David reminded me of our youth and Dinner Winner, and we had Coles' One Pan Dinner a couple of times, and even had authentic Dinner Winner once. There may have been a rocky road in there at some point, and a fairly nice gingerbread cheese cake I made at Christmas. There were several weekends where I spent several hours cooking up meals for a week or more, to save cooking during the week (which is really no fun at all when you don't heat up the kitchen to save money on heating costs).

I saw exactly one movie/theatre/show/exhibition this year -
* Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker

As usual for recent years I/we worked my/our way through a lot of movie series. This may have been aided *a lot* by Disney+ !
* finished up watching through all the James Bond movies
* watched Star Wars episodes VII and VIII before seeing IX at the movies
* finished up the Pixar series with Coco and Toy Story 4
* watched a *lot* of original/remakes of Disney movies - Aladdin, Dumbo, Lady and the Tramp, Freaky Friday, The Lion King, The Parent Trap (just 1 and 2 they don't have 3 yet), 101 Dalmatians and Mulan
* saw a few "Australian classic" movies - My Brilliant Career, which I really didn't like, and Ned Kelly, which I thought was better
* in March was the 30th anniversary of seeing Labyrinth for the first time, so we watched it on David's Bluray
* we had to watch some pandemic disaster movies, so watched World War Z first up because Contagion had been pulled from Netflix, but David had Contagion on DVD so we all watched that later too
* Frozen II
* Airport series
* Naked Gun series
* Star Wars - I think we saw all nine this year
* almost all the Ghibli movies, except Grave of the Fireflies which wasn't on Netflix. Some of them are amazing. Some of them are crap.
* a few of the Herbie movies (still a couple to go, it's a bit of a struggle since they're very silly)
* Die Hard 1 and 2 and Love Actually at Christmas. David dissed Love Actually on Facebook, but he had the choice to leave but didn't and he seemed to be enjoying himself. Just sayin ;)

And again, somehow we managed to watch our way through a lot of TV. I always feel like I don't have time to watch tv/movies, and yet somehow we see a lot. Mostly from Thursday to Sunday, as Monday to Wednesday is "work" nights.
* first episode of Who is America
* Star Trek: Picard
* The Mandalorian (season 1)
* Big Bang Theory - finished mid year, took a little over year to watch all 12 seasons
* Brooklyn 99 until it ran out of episodes (up to season 6?)
* Fuller House (last seasons)
* Lego Masters (second Australian season)
* Unorthodox
* Filthy Rich
* The Dismissal
* The Miraculous Mellops
* The Simpsons (most of the way through season 5)
* High Score (documentary)
* Against the Wind
* Discovery (season 3)
* The IT Crowd (all of it)
* The Mandalorian (season 2)
* The Queen's Gambit

Not a lot of reading this year. I don't catch the bus much and I mostly feel too tired to read when I go to bed.
* Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, by J.K. Rowling
* Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy (all five books in the trilogy), by Douglas Adams
* Penguin Bloom, by Cam Bloom and Bradley Trevor Greive (I also started Heartache and Birdsong)

Other stuff!
* Started "This day in history" posts
* Got Disney+ and watched a *lot* of Disney
* Got some cute "living stones" - succulent plants that grow extremelly slowly
* Played with Picasa for Ryan's 21st "morph" series
* Got our NBN fixed in January - because last time they did work they broke one of our connectors so we were only getting half the speed we should. David organised that because he's awesome.
* Used Picasa to tag people in a lot of work photos, still a long way to go on that
* Collected the next batch of Stikeez - got all but one of the specials
* Our rose bush and rhododendron out the front put out just a couple of flowers right at the end of summer when it finally rained
* Had cheese and nibbles with bubbly, and Chong Co delivered for our anniversary
* Went bed shopping in June but didn't find anything we really liked
* Went to Ikea and bought storage cubes for David and drawers for stu
* My domain - kazza.id.au turned 18
* Had a big outage of my web hosting in late June. Went looking for a new host and found VentraIP, but they didn't support Perl DBD::mysql so had to cancel it all again. But it did force me to do an upgrade of a dll in Eudora which allows secure downloads without ssl errors, so that's a win
* Had issues with the vacuum cleaner - it kept getting jammed - with my hair :(
* Got so much rain in August all creeks and rivers around Canberra flooded a bit
* The boys bought me a Dyson cordless for my birthday
* Couldn't get on the Qantas 747 joy ride flight out of Canberra, because Qantas' website sux donkey balls. So I watched it fly over central Canberra from Mt Ainslie instead (arguably better for photos anyway!)
* Listened to some podcasts with the sweetie - The Eleventh, Winds of Change, Thirteen Minutes to the Moon
* Got super sad at all the 747s around the world being retired
* A neighbourhood yappy dog pissed me off by barking non stop for literally hours at a time
* The winter was so warm our potatoes survived the whole winter without freezing
* Enjoyed Floriade in the suburbs!
* Went for a drive with the sweetie around Denman Prospect and out to Cotter
* Had a Bunnings sausage in October for first time since lockdown
* Voted in the ACT elections early so I didn't get a Democracy Sausage (most places I don't think were doing them anyway)
* Had a free run to the tip because what we took was mostly all metal
* Had to fight with windoze to maintain access to our NAS - its ancient version of SMB is making windoze super sad
* Tidied up all the packing materials in garage, with the idea to use it all to sell stuff
* Vodien moved my blog to a new host, but didn't tell me. Well, apparently they did tell me - to an email address that doesn't actually work anymore.
* Failed at jeans shopping
* Tried out Return-It's bulk facility which is only marginally better than their drop off system
* Saw the moon and Saturn and Jupiter near each other, but not at their closest point

Our year was finished off at the club. We headed out there on New Years Eve eve and stayed two nights, and had a fairly relaxed New Years.

2020 sure was one crazy year. Here's hoping 2021 settles down quickly into the "new normal".

Happy new year!! 

Christmas 1980

We hadn't started doing family photos back then.  But Dad did take photos of David and me.  1980 was the year we got our first bikes.  So here's a photo of me on my shiny new bike!  No gears though, and we lived in a hilly suburb, so riding it was a lot of hard work!

Me on my new bike

Christmas 1990

Obligatory family and present photos.

Christmas 1990

Christmas 1990

Christmas 1990

We went over to Nana's on Christmas day.  This is all the cousins on Mum's side.

Christmas 1990

And some extra ringins I don't even know who they are.

Christmas 1990

No idea what we did with Dad's side of the family - no photos.

Christmas 2000

I was living out of home by now.

Christmas Eve we met up with Ian and Jan at Grandma's nursing home. 

Grandma

I got a rare good photo of Jan!

Jan

Christmas Day we were back home for Christmas lunch, and some of Mum's family came over.

Christmas 2000

Christmas 2000

Christmas 2000

Christmas 2000

Christmas 2010

Had Christmas Day in Yass with Stu's family.

Christmas 2010

Christmas 2010

Then on Boxing Day we drove to Sydney to have dinner with my family.

Christmas 2010

Christmas 2010

Christmas 2010

Christmas 2020

A very quiet one this year.

I didn't sleep very well, and tried to sleep in.  But that put me "behind" all morning.  Not that I really was, I just felt like I was because I felt two hours out all morning.  I cooked a roast pork (the butcher only had fancy stuffed ones, and they only had coconut, mango and pineapple left, and as it turns out a kick of chili), potato bake and veggies.

Christmas roast pork

Christmas 2020

Christmas 2020

Christmas 2020

Christmas 2020

After lunch Stu and I headed over to Annie's for drinks and afternoon tea.  Not that any of us felt like any food for *ages*.  I took over some of a gingerbread cheesecake (handy I had a backup - the pavlova I tried to make was an epic failure).

Christmas 2020

David had gone out in the afternoon/evening to a mate's place, so I think we just watched some Discovery before bed.

Merry (backdated) Christmas! :) 🎄🍾🥂🎁

Backdating, because you wouldn't expect anything less!!

Monday.  Slept okish I think.  After the weekend this counted as the first day of our holidays.  I had the idea that I would "work" until Christmas - finish scanning Dad's slides and fixing them all up, get the house cleaned, get photos sorted out, get my year in review done, that sort of thing, and then after Christmas would be "holiday" time to do fun things.  So I spent All. Fricken. Morning. trying to fix up two boxes of slides.  Some slides I had to scan up to *seven* times to get them without fluff somewhere in the scan.  So was pretty cranky to start with.  Then stressed about having to cook all the time and deal with everyone's dietary issues.  I pulled everything out of the freezer and did an audit on it.  Pulled out a few things to defrost and eat before we're allowed to go shopping next.  It took all day to fix up seven boxes of slides.  Felt super annoyed that my first day of holidays was just doing this and nothing useful.  Watched Die Hard 2 in the evening.

Santa Stumpy

Tuesday.  Got morning stuff done then we headed out.  I dropped off the last of the tubs we'd used for the bbq back at work.  Took a drive through the Parliamentary Triangle and I got Stu to stop so I could take a photo of George - because I'd never taken a photo before!

George V Statue, Parliament House

Parliament House

Then continued on.  Went all the way to Kambah to a brewing supply store so Stu could pick up a CO2 cylinder for his fish tank.  Then back into the city so Stu could buy some pens and I could have a look for jeans in Big W (epic fail there as well).

Canberra Centre Christmas Tree

Had "Disappointing Sushi" at Hero Sushi.  It lived up to expectations - the first takoyaki plate I got was *cold*.  And everything has avocado in it.  Why can't you put cucumber in some of it??  Some of us don't like avocado!  #grunt.  By the time we got home it was mid afternoon.  Spent an hour fighting with slides and managed to fix one roll.  The sad story is there's dust and tiny hairs *under* the glass, so even though I wipe down the glass and practically scrub the slides before each scan, there's always dust in a few set positions.  But there's now so much fluff there I can't even flip the slides 180 degrees because there's fluff in all the corners, which means there's *always* fluff in the sky no matter which way I orient the slide.  So an hour and a half to fix two boxes.  Had leftovers for dinner.  Watched more of the Mandalorian documentary.  But basically I was cranky all day due to simply not enough hours in the day to get through the ever growing todo lists, not enough days in a holiday (still miss my uni three month holidays), being out most of the day, slide scanning being so painful etc.  I didn't even bother to try and go see Jupiter and Saturn on their second closest night.

Wednesday.  Finally finished scanning all Dad's slides (at least a first pass).  Took two hours to do one box.  Day was spent fixing slides, blogging, processing photos.  In the afternoon we met up with Tony and later Keira at Herbert's for a couple of beers and dinner.  I had the porcetta burger this time (which has crackling!!) and managed to mostly get through it.  Earlyish night.

Herbert's porcetta burger

Thursday.  Christmas Eve.  4:30 wake up - itchy and restless legs.  Just a day of all the things, although not as much as previous days.  Put on a video of Beethoven's 9th while wrapping presents and blogging.  In the afternoon watched the end of Jingle Jangle: A Christmas Journey, which I'd started the other night.  I'd watched the first half one night when I was feeling cranky, and as such didn't really enjoy it.  But enjoyed the second half a bit more.  It sure is pretty to look at, but basically a bit meh.  The kid who played Journey is pretty cool tho.  Pizza for dinner (Thursday!), then watched Love Actually (Stu endures it because he has no choice, David had a choice, and although he dissed it, he actually stayed and seemed to be enjoying it ;) ), and then the Melbourne Carols by Candlelight.  Such a strange thing to watch with no audience due to Covid, and most of the choir for the Hallelujah Chorus singing remotely.  

Anything that turned up at the house in December went under the tree.  Seemed little point rewrapping any of it, so that's how they stayed til Christmas morning ;)
Presents

Talbingo Lichen

This piece of lichen was growing on a guard rail along the road crossing Talbingo Dam.  I needed to cull photos for the blog entry and thought this could go, but it's still cool.  It was pretty big for lichen - maybe 6-7cm across?

Talbingo Lichen

Moon and Planet Kiss

I get a lot of my news from @Cmdr_Hadfield.  The other week he alerted me to the "planet kiss" coming up.  I dug out my old copy of Starry Night and went and had a look.  Last Thursday was going to be the most interesting, because the moon would be in frame too.  Monday night they would have been closest, but it was raining here that night.  I popped outside briefly last night to have a look, but didn't bother with any photos because my little 135mm (200 equiv) lens would still just show them as a single dot.  Unless you have a great telescope the planet kiss wouldn't have been very interesting.  But having the moon next to them was pretty cool.  My best shot by far was on David's 400mm lens (even greater because of my sensor scale).  

Planet kiss with moon

(that's Jupiter at the bottom, Saturn slightly up to the right).

This is just the moon, from that same shot..

Epic moon

And this is the same shot again, at actual pixels..

Epic moon

Fun times :)