2023. Another lap around the sun. Another busy year.

The big trip for this year was to America with my brother to visit theme parks and do a Caribbean cruise out of Tampa. I still thought it was "too soon" to be travelling to America and cruising, but I had no choice because Bare Necessities is an evil company and I would never EVER travel with them again. And guess what. It was indeed too soon, half the ship got covid, and I probably did too at the end. But I didn't test because what was I going to do. We called it Schrödinger's Covid. Not that Americans care about covid anyway. They flat out refuse to wear a mask when they're sick or use hand sanitiser EVER. So I felt no guilt spreading germs around Disney World, especially when there's no hand sanitiser to be found anywhere in the parks. I kept my mask on which was the best I could do. Luckily I didn't get very sick and had a pretty awesome holiday with David. We had a couple of little trips as well. We went to Berrima for the weekend around our 15th wedding anniversary. It rained the whole time. We went to the coast in May to visit Kit and Pete, and a very last minute trip in October as well. We went to Sydney to catch up with some peeps for my 50th, and again to go to the Powerhouse Museum for possibly the last time ever. I also worked super hard to get the last two overseas trip photos online, and actually managed it, six months after America, and one year after Europe. But did get filled with rage at tripadvisor and booking.com. Both have utterly terrible invoicing and communication. Tripadvisor literally ripped me off for one of our Europe tours. And booking.com charges you randomly for hotels but I couldn't find emails for all the ones they did so had to make guesses on some of them.

At work my job description is still mostly Sadie. Well, when I have time in between people wanting stuff and wanting me to fix problems. Over and over and over again I was reminded that the correct spelling of Microsoft is actually B.S. Everything they do is designed to compromise any sort of security. I hate it so much. Early in the year I decided that we really need to manage our certificate renewals manually. That is, keep them in a diary of sorts so we don't miss renewals. Because over and over again there'd be outages for systems due to certificate expiries, even with management tools, to other teams, and I didn't want that to happen to our team. I helped out with some firewall upgrades in January. Did some apnic training on routing in March. Spent ages with Neil cleaning up mail policies. Cleaned up routing on a bunch of devices. Migrated our DR laptop to a new laptop. Did a week of oncall in September to give Connor a break. Trialled a proxy replacement, but while it did have some nice saas features, it was very week security-wise. Got forced into using Windoze 11. I hate it. So. Much. Got three new people in our team, but our area is already full so everyone's having to shuffle around every day which causes me all sorts of anxiety. And yet further down the floor it's a ghost town and noone sits there. Pisses me off. Socially we had a whisky night in July, and I went to trivia nights in July and September (I missed a later one due to Stu having covid). And I ran my big bbq at the lake for the eleventh year in a row with over fifty people.

I've generally been ok healthwise. There was the probable covid in America in March. I definitely had gut involvement because I'd get hungry but then only be able to eat a small amount before my stomach would be like, nope, I'm done. When I got home I had two bouts in March and April of what the doctor suspected might be diverticulitis (mild case) but I never actually found out the results of the tests. Given it was shortly after covid, it's quite possible it was related to that. I have been avoiding strawberries though, except the ones that grew in our back yard (no problems with those). There were the bouts of insomnia on and off that have been plaguing me for the past few years. Super annoying to just be lying there just awake. After getting back from America and having spent so little time on a screen in a month, I found I was completely blind trying to look at my monitors. So I really needed to get new glasses. I tried a new optometrist in Dickson (the son of the optometrist I used to see when I first moved to Canberra) but the practice is a little unorganised and when I went to pick up the glasses the optometrist wasn't even there to help fit them. Plus when I asked a follow up question later the optometrist wouldn't even talk to me. So not sure I'll go back. But, the glasses are great, I can see my computer now clearly. But it does mean I have to swap them out with my other glasses all the time as they're optimised for screen distance. I did have a bit of a cold in August, but multiple RATs were negative. Stu got a likely case of food poisoning in August, most likely from Disappointing aka Hero Sushi. I think he's only been back like once since then (he used to go all the time). He got covid in November most likely from a work colleague who continued coming into work even though his son was sick with covid. First time for him. He had a week off feeling pretty miserable and worked from home for a while after. I worked from home for a couple of weeks too, but never got it. I guess it helped having my booster just a few weeks earlier. Stu also got another possible bout of food poisoning in December, although it might have been covid related.

I saw quite a bit of various peeps at Herbert's during the year, either with Tony/Frank/Karen etc or The Chrises/Tony/Neil etc. There was a tap takeover by Big Shed in April, but I missed the one in October by TRBC because we went down the coast. Kit came to stay a night in January. We had Jenn over for dinner in April. Caught up with Luc for drinks in June. Went to R&F's in July and November. Had brunch with Katie (Stu's school friend) and Andrew at Little Bird in September. Went to Ben and Sarah's for dinner in September. Had Chris and Glenda over for dinner in October. Went to M&M's for dinner in November. Had Christmas Eve "Herbert's @ Tony's" although Dino and Kristin never made it, but it was still a good night with a bunch of peeps. David came to stay in September. He had a look at the oven and found a blown element (which died when the oven was less than two years old). He also replaced our stovetop (one of the elements had died but the final straw was when I accidentally smashed the whole surface by hitting the preexisting chip at just the right force/angle). I took him out for lunch at the Star Buffet after. Then we walked around Ikea for a couple of hours to walk off lunch. He came back again a couple of weeks later to install the new element I got, only to find the thing didn't actually fit. Sigh. We saw Annie and the family on Christmas day which was the first time we'd seen them all since last Christmas. We're all such slackers. Mum/David/Kellie/Sia came for Boxing Day lunch, and Mum stayed til the 28th before going home.

We didn't spend a whole lot of time out at the club this year. Partly because of Certain People, but also because Life. In March the sweetie and I completely emptied out the office, cleaned it, threw a whole heap of crap out, and put everything else back again. Then it was the Mardis Gras social. We went to the M themed night in May and I went as a minifig. There was Ian and Chris's anniversary formal night in June. I did Christmas in July again for like fifty people. And then another couple of working bees later in the year. We were going to go to the Christmas party but Stu got covid.

I had a few photo projects this year. One of them was getting Dad's slides into chronological order. I'd literally lay rolls and rolls of them out on the table to piece back together their correct order. This worked up until he started printing labels and gluing them all over the slide numbers, and the newest rolls were made of plastic so you couldn't even scrape back the label to see the frame number. I've still yet to finish processing the slides but at least now I'll be able to get them into the "correct" order. Well, except for the few odd ones that seem to be loners and not fit any other rolls at all. I also managed to get *two* overseas holiday photos online within six months and a year of going on the trip. I've gone back to working on Turkey 2014 to get them done in time for the ten year anniversary of the trip. Finally, I filed three years of "Canberra Life", "Friends and Family" and "Homes and Gardens" photos which had been presorted but not actually filed. Will go back to trying to file all my photos every week. There's still a lot of work I want to do in the sorting space. Hardest is when things overlap. Like going out to restaurants or holidays with friends - do they go under restaurants/holidays or under friends. It's a dilema.

Our blue-tongue lizard Stumpy is still puttering along. He (she?) must be about fourteen years old now. I got a bag full of guppies in January to add to the genetic diversity in the tanks. The last cory that I got in 2015 finally died in July. I consolidated all the downstairs tanks until Stu retires and has the brain space for fish again. So now we only have five active tanks. There's my "angel" tank (the 620T) which has guppies. The two foot upstairs has guppies and heaps of java fern - I rarely need to change the water in this tank because it's so well planted. Plus there's always so many babies I'd be worried about sucking them up. The four foot still has fourteen congo tetras and a loach, as well as some guppies (I think all male - no point letting them breed in that tank as the babies would get eaten straight away). The four foot is still plagued with algae problems - needs more plants and guppies I reckon. I still have Chrissie's tiny little tank with the two clown loaches. I've had them for nearly six years now. Downstairs I only have the one two foot tank active. It's got guppies and a sucking catfish and is also a fairly healthy tank. All the other tanks downstairs I either drained or turned the heaters/lights off and only run the filters for an hour or two every day (while the sun is at max on the panels) - to keep the heaters from drying out and the water from going stagnant.

I had a bit of a fun year with Lego this year. Last Christmas I got myself the Titanic, and built it (slowly, to make the build take longer) after my America trip. It's a spectacular model, I love it. I also made an iceberg with some of Vic's huge pile of 1x4 bricks. For my birthday I got The Starry Night (which I've seen in New York!) but it's not just a mosaic, it's a fully 3D version which is pretty cool. I also got Himeji Castle (been there!) which is a really lovely set, and finished it Christmas day. I got back into inventorying Vic's Lego and finished off the loose pieces. Then worked on the non-Star Wars minifigs. Bricklink was down for a week in November because a bunch of accounts got hacked. For Christmas I got a big minifig, although haven't started that yet - I don't have time for fun anymore!

I didn't do as many jigsaws at home this year - I'm just too damned busy - too busy for fun! The problem is if I start one I'll spend too much time on it and not doing the things I need to do. I need to retire so I have time for fun. I still play the clarinet a couple of times a week.

The weather this year has been a bit insane. Apparently 2023 was the hottest year in recorded history. There was a huge lightning storm here in March. Fortunately it didn't do any damage here, but it destroyed heaps of Aquila's electronics including both his heating and cooling systems. There was snow out past Queanbeyan in May. The winter here just *felt* warm. Sure it was cold too but spring sure came early, with stuff flowering a couple of weeks earlier than usual (and Stumpy got *hungry* earlier than usual too). Another storm in December knocked down a sizeable branch off one of our trees. Fortunately no damage here, but there were heaps of trees down around Canberra. And let's not even get into the heatwaves, fires and flooding catastrophes around the world this year.

It was definitely a year of battles with technology this year.

My blog turned 20 this year! For its 20th blogiversary I gave it a bit of a design refresh. I put in a mobile friendly template which does make it a little easier to read on the phone. I also updated the banner. But I had to increase the throttle timeout so searches on my blog would work (no idea why it takes so much longer since the design refresh). I also got frustrated with Chrome which will now try the HTTPS site even when the link you click on is http:// This means the style sheet won't load as it's "mixed content". Unfortunately twenty years ago noone used https so my entire blog is all hardcoded by Movable Type with full urls with http:// I hardcoded the style sheet as https and for later pages it now renders correctly but if you look at older stuff and your dumbhead browser changes the page to https it doesn't render properly.

Vodien broke my blog three times this year. Firstly they broke Perl->MySQL in March and it took me a week of telling them it was in fact their fault before they finally fixed it. Then they broke my cpanel access during an upgrade. Twice. Had to get the password reset. Twice. Then they broke CageFS in October which broke *all* my scripts. When they eventually fixed it a couple of weeks later they left a "how did we do" survey which I couldn't do because the certificate was completely broken on *.vodien.com. Three big outages this year. Maybe I should pay for hosting somewhere else. Although with the state of the world I suspect it'd be just as bad anywhere. There's just no such thing as good service anymore.

I continued to be frustrated with Apple. While my new (now a year old) 14 Pro is great (the low light features are spectacular), it took a bit of getting used to. Firstly, don't ever use the 2x lens, it's just digital magnification. Either get closer or use the 3x lens. Next, if "macro" gets triggered while using 3x for macro, stand back, point it away to reset, and try again. The "macro" on 3x will completely destroy the photos, I have no idea what it does, it possibly uses the "wide angle" lens and then digitally magnifies 3x. When you can get the optical 3x to work on closeups it actually does ok. It pisses me off though that you can't force it to use the lens you choose. I got so fed up with Apple messing with the timestamps on my files when copying to windows that I bought a third party app - iMazing - which will at least copy jpgs/pngs properly. With movie files it copied them in native Apple HDR which makes them look trash. So I'd have to copy them off in windows as well anyway. Well that was until Apple changed something and now they both copy exactly the same. Oh, they also decided later in the year to start presenting HEIC files to windows instead of JPGs, so I *have* to use iMazing. I was enraged to find that Apple just randomly changed timezones while I was travelling in February. Multiple times a day it'd jump back and forth to GMT-4/GMT-5. It took me hours and hours to sort out the mess that was my holiday photos. And even when I got home, and had been home for a day or two on the correct time, it randomly dropped back to Houston time until a reboot. Speaking of reboots, the wallpaper is borked. Everytime you reboot the wallpaper is just a black screen. You have to go in, change to a different wallepaper theme, wait a few minutes, then change it back again. Someone suggested clearing browser cache to fix Redactle early in the year. Not only was it stoopid advice because Redactle itself is usually at fault, but whatever I did cleared *all* of my cache/cookies/whatever, so I lost all my streaks on wordle etc. So I pretty much just stopped playing them altogether on the spot. Finally, I told iTunes/my phone to trust my computer. It still doesn't trust my computer.

I had two separate battles with email. Firstly gmail refused to accept mail from me without an SPF record on my domain. Internode very nicely have a page on their website which tells you exactly what to use (for Eudora on my computer). Optus not so much (for my phone). And Vodien's support pages were misleading because they say to do it via cpanel, which is dumb because the cpanel host doesn't host the DNS. Eventually figured out how to get the record setup on Vodien DNS. Then Internode (aka Epic Bastards) moved their SMTP "service" to AWS, and cut off the ability to use it AS A PAYING CUSTOMER unless you use your internode address as the From address. Which is utterly ridiculous because they're cutting off the ability to even use the internode address for email AND what if you have multiple people in your household trying to send mail, not everyone can use that address!! So then had to spend hours massaging my twenty year old mail client into being able to use my hosting for SMTP. But that also means I can't email Stu/David at their domains because I host the websites for those and so Vodien thinks it owns them. I really wish Stu would get us off Internode. Their service has been pretty trash since they got bought out by iinet then TPG. I complained to Internode about how trash it was, and they were like, "oh we're just trying to stop spam". Nothing about being an internet SERVICE provider. Bastards bastards bastards.

And in other tech crap. On Friday 13th January, Epic Tool (aka Elon Musk) turned off 3rd party Twitter access. So I stopped using it. Simples. Had to fight with Optus in February who in their wisdom split out my accounts and made me stuff up my payments so had to sort that out as well as figure out how to actually even access both my accounts which are now separate. Hopeless. Continued to get frustrated at the sheer absurdity of Windoze 11. Finally got a new battery for the UPS after over a year of them not being able to get stock. Dodgy Dyson struck again - this time it decided the battery needed to be replaced WHEN THERE WAS NOTHING WRONG WITH IT. David's Kogan iPhone cable got more and more flakey before I finally gave up on it in August.

The house caused no end of dramas too this year.

The Solar Edge solar system we got put in last December essentially was DOA. Sometimes it would work and we could see it doing 11kW which was great. Even though we were supposed to be maxed out at 5kW back to the grid sometimes we'd see it pushing more back, no idea how. But most of the time it didn't work at all. After many calls/emails that went unanswered (and I flat out refused to finish paying the sparkies until it was working) we finally left honest feedback (at their request), which finally got some action. They came and had a look in early January but didn't fix it. They rewired things so that the system would support working off grid (it was sold to us on the promise that it would but then the sparkies said oh no it doesn't do that, and later they were like, oh, Solar Edge says we can do that now). And they finally completely replaced the whole inverter in late January. We thought that would be the end of it, but the very first night it drained the battery to 0% even though it's supposed to only drop to 10%. So had to put in another support call for that. The app is great when it works, but oftentimes the system will lose connectivity and it'll be like "updated 4 hours ago". Dumb. And, upsettingly, the system never puts out more than 9kW now. I thought it might have been the angle of the sun so waited until December again (when it did 11kW last year) but alas not. So we'll have to raise *another* support call to find out what gives. On a lighter note, we did finally get a negative electricity bill in November. Separately, we got a new digital meter to replace the original analogue meter. This one has its own back to base internet connection for reporting, so noone needs to come read the meter anymore.

The night the sparkies came in early January I was turning the oven off and the power tripped. I was half wondering if the sparkies did anything. After a couple of times of the power tripping whenever we turned the oven off and on, we took to flipping the switch off at the board before turning the power to the oven on/off. Because the back element was fine, only the top element was broken, but there was no way to turn the oven on/off without going past a mode that activated the top element. I was totally pissed off though because the oven was less than three years old, and when I asked about it at Bing Lee and they said there was only a one year warranty. David eventually came to look at it in September, found the broken element, disconnected it, ordered a new one from TLE in Belco. On the same day we bought and installed a new stove (as mentioned further up). He came back two weeks later to install the element, only to find it didn't fit. I'd never buy a DeLonghi anything again - you can't get replacement parts for something that's only three years old. We still haven't replaced the element. Maynor and Cochran said they can get one, but I need to know that I can return it if it doesn't fit.

The garden is a neverending drama. I pulled back some of the ivy in February. It's grown back. And then some. Problem is our ladder is not long enough to reach it properly. We had a permaculture mob come out to talk to us about our yard. I was hoping they'd be able to talk to us and exchange ideas (that's what I assumed we paid them a couple of hundred dollars for). Instead she just said, oh well we'll need to do a cleanup first. That'll be 48 hours work just for the front yard. I'm like, WTF, there is NOT 48 hours of work in the front yard for professionals. So I did it myself. In a lot less than 48 hours. But because I focussed so long on the front yard, the back yard got out of control again. Sigh. I did manage to get all the bluestone moved to EffanC's though - thanks Tony and F!!

In other house crap. We got a new toilet seat in April as the old one was getting very yellowed and degraded. Went to Ikea in July and found a bin solution that would work. Bought all the bins but the shelves were out of stock. Turned out they were actually discontinued. Bought another shelf which wasn't exactly what we wanted. It looks sort of ok but is very flimsy. Finally ran some lines of sealant over the loose tiles in the shower in August. The leaking has finally stopped, although my future self will hate me as that's what the previous owners of my place in Sydney did and the sealent got all mouldy and discoloured over time. We got a couple of bottlebrushes planted out the front by the government. I took a chip out of the microwave platter in September. The cooler wouldn't turn the water on the first time we used it in November. But let it rest and it worked the next time. After I got past all the errors.

Our favourite restaurant of the year would still be Chong Co, with delivery from them four times over the year. Kinn Thai is another favourite, we went there a few times. Herbert's is a great local and had many lunches and some dinners there. We would often get Pattysmiths for lunch on shopping days. Their fries are awesome and the burgers pretty good too. Had dinner in March with EffanC at Hachiko which was expensive (got the banquet) but very nice. Went to Taki on our anniversary and had some delicious steaks. Dinners and takeaway from Raijin (average), 10 Yards (nice), Tiger Lane (meh), CBD Dumpling House (yummy and quick), BONE (stoopid name), Disappointing Sushi (gave us free KFC because the sweetie is a regular, although he mostly stopped going after he probably got food poisoning probably from there), Badger&Co (repeat of last time), Symposium (nice), Betty's Burgers (not bad), Happy's (sad cause of all the single guys hiding out there for dinner). Brunches at 54 Benjamin a couple of times, U&Co a couple of times, Cup of Joy, Deakin and Me, Coffee Club Gungahlin, Bunny Beans. Random lunches at Flavours of Jiangnan, Canberra Cafe and Burgers, Ramen O and Four Winds. You can now get potato on a stick in the mall, meaning I can get my two favourite street foods there (that and takoyaki). The problem is you have to wait for both of them, which is difficult if you're eating with people and don't want to make them wait.

On the cooking front, there was a few new things and a lot of old favourites. Stu really likes Cath's basa bake recipe so we make that semi regularly. Also tuna casserole and the 1kg frozen turkey roasts. In winter, favourites are Alan's beef stew, butt, er, beef cheeks and brisket. I also made a pea and ham soup in July which Stu likes but I'm meh about. We've had Luv-a-Duck Peking duck a couple of times which is pretty awesome. Kale "chips" are also great, but sadly we never saw kalettes for sale this year. We still often got pizza on Thursday, but sometimes made our own, and Fridays sometimes we'd have Ingham's chicken kievs. And I do like doing Sunday night roasts. I decided that roasting chicken "upside down" is much better than cooking it breast side up. Stu made a Japanese Golden Curry in March, and I made one later in the year. He also cooked "Coronation Oden" twice. I called it this because we first had it the night we watched the coronation of King Charles III. I made a really nice yellow curry out of a Coles magazine and liked it so much I've modified it slightly for my "official" recipe. Made a fairly nice apricot chicken to use up some old dried apricots, but would need to use a boneless cut of chicken I think. For my 50th, R&F gave me Nagi Maehashi's RecipeTin Eats Dinner book and I've so far made eight recipes out of it. They always take a lot longer to follow the recipe precisely, but they've all been very good, and I'd make them again even if just to streamline things a little. I've made several lemon cheesecakes, and also tried Milo cookies at Christmas.

Theatre/Shows/Exhibitions
* AWS at the Hellenic Club with Emma Pask and Ed Wilson
* Lego Brick Show in Wagga, caught up with David as well
* Jess and Uncle Doss at Herbert's
* Come From Away
* Australian War Memorial's Big Things in Store
* ANU Women's Revue with Jess aka Jeremy Laser

Movies (at the movies)
* Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny
* Oppenheimer

Movies (TV)
* Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade on NYE
* Laid Back Camp
* A Christmas Karen
* The Social Network
* Onward
* When Harry Met Sally / The Shop Around the Corner
* Avatar
* Glass Onion
* You've Got Mail
* Everything Everywhere All At Once
* 127 Hours
* Rocky Horror Picture Show
* Chernobyl 1986
* Amadeus
* First Man
* Raiders of the Lost Ark
* Dragonheart
* Innerspace
* Paterson
* Romancing the Stone
* Jewel of the Nile
* The War of the Roses
* Turning Red
* Pretty Woman
* Malcolm
* The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar / The Swan / The Rat Catcher / Poison / Fantastic Mr Fox
* Dumb Money
* Die Hard / Die Hard 2 / Love Actually
* Home Alone 2

TV
* Picard (finished season 2)
* You Can't Ask That (season 7)
* a series of Canberra Survivor on YouTube
* Origins of Us
* Bocchi the Rock
* The Crown finished (seasons 2-5)
* Death in Paradise (seasons 4-6)
* First two episodes of A Spy Among Friends. Stu was going to watch the rest himself but never did
* The Simpsons (seasons 32-34)
* The Book of Boba Fett
* Mandalorian (season 3)
* Futurama (all of it)
* Lego Grandmasters (season 5)
* Amazing Race Australia (seasons 3-4)
* War on Waste (seasons 2-3)
* Ahsoka
* The Orville (seasons 1-2)

Books
* The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar (well, I started it)

Other stuff
* tried to see the balloons but the wind was blowing towards the airport so they didn't lift off. Tried again the next day and saw them. Jet lag and being awake stoopidly early helped.
* saw a double rainbow in March
* went with Tony to RFS tour of the helibase at Hume in March
* Pialligo Estate went broke - no more streaky bacon!! Disaster!!
* Looking Back, Moving Forward nights at the Shine Dome
* Cotter Pumping Station Tour
* saw a partial solar eclipse in April
* Parliament House in May to see the Lego Parliament House and wander round. Probably the first time I'd been in there since 1990.
* saddened over the death of Heather Armstrong (dooce.com) by suicide in May
* magpies came to see me over winter after six months of not
* Whisky Live in May
* Hardly Normal started work at beginning of June, but didn't open til November
* ABC Classic 100 - your favourite instrument - all of mine made it into the top 100
* got to level 10000 in Candy Crush in June. Got to 12186 by the end of the year by completely changing the way I play it.
* found some papers from my Dad's family and how they'd found the family home of some my ancestors!
* gave blood for first time in about 32 years in July
* bookings247 got hacked - they had my name and last four digits of my credit card. I know it was them because the email they used was the one I used on their website, once, in 2019. I contacted them but they ignored me.
* my 50th!! Had a party the Saturday before; day of was pretty quiet, just KFC for lunch and Chong Co delivered for dinner; Sydney the Saturday after; another run for club peeps in early September
* made a new candle with old candle wax, but need to make it thinner next time
* evil neighbours that refused to train their dogs got another one that barks a lot from time to time, but at least not *all* the time
* our car clocked 100000km in August
* went for a drive in September to the Air Disaster Memorial, Molonglo Observatory Synthesis Telescope (MOST), and Canberra's weather radar outside Captains Flat
* Herbert's for Sunday jazz in October
* saw a cool double rainbow in November
* got a heap of strawberries off our strawberry plants in November

And that wraps up another year.  Have a happy and safe New Year!!

Monday.  Christmas Day!  Late night because of the carols, but then woke up at 6am.  Because that's what I do.  Ok sleep in between though.  Never turned my computer on all day because of storms coming and going and needing to do All The Things anyway. 

When you plant mint seeds and poppies grow instead

Cooked up an epic Christmas Day feast for the two of us.

There was a woollies turkey roast, some sweet potato and sage, a blue cheese potato bake, brussels sprouts with bacon and hazelnuts and onion and sage stuffing.

Just cleaning and Lego after lunch, then headed over to Annie's for drinks and dessert.  It's been exactly a year since we saw them all last.  We're such slackers.

Tuesday.  Boxing Day.  Got to sleep ok but then awake from 4am for ages.  Spent all morning cooking and cleaning.  Stu went to pick up the mother type person.  Then everyone else got here.  Had snackages and did presents and stuffs.

Lunch was epic roast pork (crackling was great but the pork was a little over done), epic potato bake (there were heaps of leftovers!!), potato and sweet potato, peas, home made apple sauce and gravy.

After lunch David went on a shopping and visiting expedition, so I put up the America photos from my blog (they really need culling for a slideshow though).  David was gone for hours haha.  When he eventually did get back we put on Mum's Tasmania slide show.  Meanwhile, we got a message from Annie (who we saw yesterday and who said when we got there she had a sore throat) that she was covid positive.  Sigh.  Had dessert for dinner and an early night.

Wednesday.  Slept okish I think.  Spent most of the morning with Mum looking at Tasmania photos from three out of four of her trips there (1968 with YHA, 1971 with Dad, 2023 with Evelyn and Outback Spirit).  Mum went off to lunch with the others.  I was going to go to Tony's birthday lunch at Dickson, but decided not to "just in case" stoopid covid (it would have been fine).  Instead cleaned up and sorted cables.  When everyone got back David told me what all the cables were so I labelled everything.  We then had a game of Five Crowns which I won.  Put on the news for Mum and made her some garlic prawns with some of the prawns D&K brought up.  Then we watched Luca, which Mum even managed to stay mostly awake through.

Thursday.  Awake from like 3:45 and never got back to sleep.  Sigh.  Dropped Mum off at Jolimont and had a full on meltdown on the way home.  Too much stress?  Release of stress?  I dunno, but over half my break was over and all I've done was cleaning and cooking and family and haven't had a chance to relax yet.  Man I still miss uni holidays.  So.  Much.  Put on some washing and tidied up the fridge and labelled stuff.  Then just another day of trying to get All The Things done.  Did I mention I haven't had a chance to relax yet?  Finished season one of Mash.. the blue ladies!!  They played that episode *a lot* in the eighties.  Then The Orville 2.6.

After sorting the cables that came out of this box and putting them all back in.. sigh..

Friday.  Slept relatively well.  Another day of All The Things.  Got heaps done.  Rewarded myself later in the afternoon by starting a jigsaw.  Stu got pizza for dinner, then Mash, Death in Paradise 7.5 and Twin Peaks 1.7.

Saturday.  Slept relatively well.  Another day of All The Things.  Got heaps done.  In the afternoon I watched the 1964 Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer because I don't think I've ever actually seen it.  I actually really really HATE the song.  Yeah let's all bully someone for being a bit weird, and only like them if we can use them for something.  So horrible.  The tv special isn't any better, but Clarice is nice.  The Crown 6.5, Twin Peaks 1.8 (which is the end of season one - I thought that would be the end, but it keeps on going haha).

Sunday.  New Year's Eve.  Slept mostly ok although awake around 4 for a while.  Another busy day, mostly catching up on blogging and finishing my year in review post, with a bit of jigsaw as well.  We might have had peeps over tonight, but we're still isolating "just in case" we get covid.  So will be a nice quiet night with just the two of us.

Sunday.  17th.  Backdating, because, life.  Made a golden curry for dinner with some leftover sausages.  Leslie Neilsen was in Mash!  Then watched The Crown 6.4.  Really need to watch The Queen again, which Stu has never seen (I saw it on a plane once).  Funnily enough also written by Peter Morgan.

Monday.  Slept ok I think.  Frantic morning before work trying to get the house back in order.  Had a task closing party at work.  Leftover sausages and salads for dinner.  Ronny Howard was in Mash!

These are mini capsicum seedlings that sprouted after I planted some from our dinner the other week - just for fun

Really tempting fate here with leftover sausages and salads from my bbq

Tuesday.  Went to bed at normal time but didn't get to sleep til midnight.  Sigh.  Mostly a decom day at work.  At lunch time was Col's funeral.  Place was packed and heaps of club people came.

Mash had Hawkeye do the nudie walk through camp.  Funnily enough I remembered quite a bit from this episode, even some of the lines.  We *might* have seen this episode a few years back when we started watching Dad's DVDs, but I mainly remember it from seeing it as a kid.

Wednesday.  Took ages to get to sleep then woke up early.  Sigh.  We had cake for Duncan's 60th.

Then to the Bavarian for lunch.  Someone said pork knuckle.  I asked for a doggy bag before I ordered :)

Did some food shopping after lunch but forgot the damned shopping list.  Again.  (this was after forgetting it on the weekend too, but this time I thought it was in the shopping bag but it was back at work).

Thursday.  Took a while to get to sleep, woke up fairly early.  Documentation day.  Two hour lunch dealing with bank queues and Coles.  This time I remembered to take the shopping list, but this time left it *at* Coles.  Sigh.  At least I had everything off it by now.  Bit of an early mark.  Pizza for dinner then The Orville 2.4.  Watched a new Mark Rober video (glitter bomb 6.0).

Friday.  Just tidying up at work.  Went out in the morning for a quick post office run for the sweetie.  Had a final lunch at Herbert's with Tony/Braddles/Neil.  Felt a bit off later in the arvo, maybe those two big sour beers.  Hrmm.  Mash and Death in Paradise 7.3.

Saturday.  Awake from ~3:30 til like 5.  Sigh.  Did some washing first thing because they promised rain and maybe a storm.  But no rain to be seen anywhere all day.  BOM is getting so bad lately.  Went out to pick up some booze and stuff for Annie's family (Stu was meant to get stuff during the week but was feeling off so never actually went).  The new markets are open, but the place was packed even at 8:30.  Did a bottle and Green Shed run.  Made some cookies.  Other than that just house stuff and All The Things.  Made a pizza for dinner with the last wrap in the fridge.  Mash and The Orville 2.5

Sunday.  Christmas Eve.  I think I spent more time awake than asleep.  Sigh.  Spent like an hour weeding and cleaning out some of the tubs we borrowed for my bbq.  But then a relatively chilled morning quietly getting things done. 

Whoops, time to drain/clean these!

How cute are potato flowers?

Later in the afternoon was Herbert's @ Tony's, but sadly Dino and Kristin ended up not making it.  And of course neither could Stu cause his belly was still upset.  Fun evening anyway.

Came home in time to watch most of the carols.

It's not carols until Marina Prior sings Angels we have Heard on High

Or they do the Hallelujah chorus

Very late night though :(

Sunday.  22nd.  Backdating because when I went to blog this a couple of weeks ago, found that Vodien had broken my CGI scripts AGAIN which meant none of my CGI scripts worked at all, and I couldn't even use the terminal shell.  More on that later.

Leftover veggies and duck sauce that I brought home from the coast for dinner, yum!  Then The Orville 1.8.

Monday.  Be early, slept fairly well.  Still woke up tired though.  And stressed about the lack of weekend.  Meetings in the morning and trial proxy working in the afternoon.  At lunch popped into the mall to get a covid booster and run some errands.  Sausages for dinner and Amazing Race 4.2.  Found myself getting super annoyed at the rich people saying like "oh I never do washing, I buy undies and tshirts and wear them once then throw them out".  People like that are everything that's wrong with the world.  

Tuesday.  Had a pretty rough night on account of vaccine reaction.  Pretty slow morning - still feeling a bit rough. 

Stu cooked gyozas for dinner.

Wednesday.  Slept somewhat better.  Fighting with frustrating trial proxy.  Then was fighting with this super weird problem with some really bizarre symptoms we'd literally never seen before.  Turned out to be assymmetric routing which I could have probably figured out quicker if I'd actually paid attention to the logs that were LITERALLY RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME.  I was so upset.  That lack of situational awareness and tunnel vision is how planes crash.  Good thing I don't fly planes I guess.  

On a lighter note.

Thursday.  Awake for ages in the middle of the night.  Just restless.  Didn't take any work notes so no idea what I did.  Probably crap.  Had a sausage at drinks on a "welcome to summer" night, which was freezing cold.  Pizza for dinner (not much for me), then first episode of David Attenborough's Tasmania.

Friday.  Some cleaning in the morning, and some security talks in the afternoon.  Kiev for dinner (Kiev Fridays!!) then Death in Paradise 6.5.

Saturday.  Super productive day doing All The Things!!  Including chopping some huge branches off the photinia (thanks Tony!!), a green waste run, moving the rest of the stones (thanks Tony and F!!), and gave away our old pool cover to M&M. 

Five!!

Two fours and a five!!!

Manly men!!

This gecko ran out from under the pool cover as we moved it.  So cute!

Did some music in the afternoon as well, then pasta for dinner and then watched The War of the Roses.

Sunday.  Slept ok.  Did a few bits and pieces in the morning but the mostly inventorying Vic's Lego (nearly done with the loose pieces!).  Took me about fifty minutes to play through all the hymns I've collected.  Will probably need to split them in two.  Put on dinner and then I sat down to blog.

Internal Server Error
The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.

FFS.  What have they done this time.  Checked my address book scripts.  Also broken.  So then tried to use the terminal to access stuff via CLI.

cagefs_enter: Error entering cagefs jail: Unable to determine realpath of /home2/<user> (No such file or directory)

FFS.  And error logs were full of this crap

[2023-10-29 17:37:38]: CageFS jail error Unable to determine realpath of /home2/<user> (No such file or directory)
[2023-10-29 17:37:38]: uid: (1935/<user>) gid: (1937<user>) cmd: mt.cgi

Sigh.  So no blogging for me.  But did go in and backup my database just in cases.  Basa bake for dinner, then The Orville 1.9 and Amazing Race 4.6.

Monday.  16th.  Not backdating!  Slept ok I guess but still cranky in the morning.  Ok day I guess.  Pasta for dinner.  Tallied up all the Europe spending, Mum owes me a little bit.  Still have yet to compare how much the whole thing would have cost us doing it ourselves vs doing it with Albatross.

Tuesday.  Took ages to get to sleep - cold feet.  Had a good tidying day, planning the work I wanted to do last Friday.  Filing photos in the evening.  Also started the latest Amazing Race.  Which is a celebrity edition.  Of which I've heard of like two or three of them.  

Wednesday.  Took ages to get to sleep - cold feet.  Turned on my computer in the morning but there was no network.  And Windows 11 is so retarded at the moment that telling it to turn off or reboot simply logs you out.  So dumb.  Pressing the power button convinced it to reboot, but had to hold it in to shut it off.  Still no network after a cold boot.  So tried it with another cable.  Worked fine.  Tried my cable on a different port.  Worked fine.  So somewhere between the wall panel and the switch.  Probably the Cisco switch just killed another port like it did with our NAS.  I'd really like to get a low power 12 port gigabit switch rather than the Cisco behemoth we have.  Also after the reboot the issue Windoze has updating the wallpaper between desktops is back.  Why is Microsoft so bad at everything whyyyyyy???

Had a slightly long lunch with Neil for his birthday.

And dinner with the sweetie in the evening.  Kinn Thai beef pad see iw and chilli jam crispy pork

Thursday.  Slept ok I think.  Did some work on another server migration. 

After missing out on the raspberry ones we decided to get these.  They definitely tasted cinnamoney, but these things need to be savoury not sweet.

Then meetings in the afternoon including an hour and a half one with a vendor where I had to be engaged the whole fricken time which I fricken HATE HATE HATE.  Utterly exhausted by the end of it.  Meanwhile someone broke some stuffs pretty badly but took them a few hours to make the connection between the fact that they made a change and the fact things were broken.  Even after I asked did anyone change anything.  Ok drinks, but just our group, then a quiet night.  

Friday.  Slept ok I think.  Bunch of crap in the morning then a lovely afternoon of cleaning.  We'd just settled down to share a bottle of bubbles after work when we got a somewhat desperate message from Kit, who was going through a bit of a crisis and really needed some friends.  So we packed up and headed down the coast.  Didn't get home til after 15:00 Sunday, and quite exhausted.

Monday.  2nd.  Not backdating for a change.  But it is running pretty late on a Sunday afternoon when I still have two dinners to prep/cook.  And that's without even doing the Captains Flat post.  hrmmm.  Awake for a while in the middle of the night, but otherwise slept ok.  Tony helped me with a greenwaste run in the morning which was very nice of him.  Then Lego inventorying and jigsaw but not much else.  Apple is so retarded.  I told it to trust my phone the other week.  It still doesn't and I still need to enter the password every time I want to back it up.  Tuna casserole for dinner.

Left is "brown".  Right is "reddish brown".  According to Bricklink, the radar dish doesn't exist in brown, only reddish brown.  I beg to differ.  

Tuesday.  Took ages to get to sleep - hot and restless.  Have I mentioned how hot it's been the past little while?  Ok day.  Procrastinating at looking a new proxy product by catching up on life.  Watched the first episode of Twin Peaks, which I've never seen, although I have known whodunnit for over thirty years.

Wednesday.  Took ages to get to sleep - hot and restless. 

Halloween cupcakes by a-cakes

Went to reply to an email of Mum's in the evening and it wouldn't send.  First up I was getting TLS failures.  I'd already updated a couple of the dlls for Eudora a couple of years ago, but found updated ones from the Hermes project so got past that fairly quickly.

Great. Except now I get:
the SMTP server (mail.internode.on.net) said:
550 mf-505: Sender Policy - Relay Denied

*sigh*  F$*%ing internode have broken their SMTP server (moved it to AWS).  Previously you could always use their SMTP server if you were on their network.  Now.. they're like nope, screw you.  So much for an internet "service" provider.  Got literally nothing else done tonight.  

Thursday.  Took ages to get to sleep.  Cranky with everything and everyone.  Fighting with proxies most of the day.  Busy drinks (old farts drinks).  Pizza for dinner (although not much because too much pigging out on snackages).

Friday.  Fighting with proxies in the morning.  Gave up because the thing won't block an executable file if it's been renamed to .txt.  Did decom work in the arvo, because Fridays.  Ahsoka in the evening.

Saturday.  Awake in the middle of the night for two or three hours.  Sigh.  Had breakfast at The Scottish Restaurant then did food shopping from a couple of places.  Was nearly midday by the time we got home.  Sigh.  Afternoon alternating between cleaning the house and finishing the jigsaw.  Roast beef for dinner and had Chris and Glenda over which was lovely.  Played Battle of the Sexes in the evening.  The questions were fun but the rules were pretty confusing and the gameplay was a bit retarded.

There was roast beef and potato bake and other veggies

Glenda brought pavlova!

Sunday.  Awake for a little while in the middle of the night but not as badly as last night.  Spent the ENTIRE MORNING fighting with SMTP. 

Had a go at connecting to Vodien for authenticated SMTP. 

Firstly had to enable "esoteric" features in Eudora so that I could see the ports.  Ended up setting the SMTP port to 587.

Started off with errors like
535 Incorrect authentication data
Can't send to ''. The server gives this reason: '550 SMTP AUTH is required for message submission on port 587'.

I was able to get Thunderbird to authenticate against my kazza.id.au host and send, so then spent ages fiddling with configs in Eudora trying to get it to work.  Eventually after MUCH hacking I got it to work.

But then my SPF record needed to be updated.  Gmail was rejecting with fun errors like
"Messages missing a valid Message-ID header are not accepted"
but even that was inconsistent.  Eventually after much hacking and googling I settled on 
include:_spf.syrahost.com include:all._spf.ds.network
which as it turns out was buried deep in cpanel as well.

Of course the problem is now I can't send emails to Stu's domain, or to David's domain, because I have those in my cpanel account for web hosting, and now it thinks it owns them and delivers the mail to me not them.  Sigh.  

The afternoon was then music, weeding and blogging.  And I haven't even finished catching up on blogging.  Sigh.

I need a weekend to recover from my weekend. 

Sunday.  17th.  Backdating because, life.  I need to retire.  I had a nice day doing house stuff and hobbies, but I need a day like that every day for the rest of my life.  Just to keep up.  Cooked RecipeTin Eats garlic roast potatoes to go with some roast lamb (that was sadly very gristly). 

Chrome is being super annoying.  My blog is http only.  Because when Movable Type was invented noone used https.  And it hardcodes everything with full urls.  But https is enabled on the domain, and because of that, Chrome will try to use the https site EVEN IF THE LINK YOU CLICK ON IS HTTP!!!  The problem with that is the mixed content.  It renders the images ok (clearly browsers have decided it's "safe" to allow mixed content images), but the style sheet is not rendered so the site looks dumb.  It's pissing me off.

Monday.  Slept ok.  I think.  Stoopidly busy day.  Late finish (doing doco! hurray!) then some weeding.  Leftovers for dinner.  Then spent an hour waiting for the support peeps at Vodien to actually pay attention to the call they're on and reset my cpanel password after the great upgrade fiasco of the other week.  What should have taken all of a few minutes took over an hour.  Sigh.  Gave up using the nice long Kogan iphone cable because it kept not working.  Either not even registering at all, or saying it was charging but wasn't.

Tuesday.  New iphone cable also playing up - saying it was charging but then not doing anything.  Replug it in and it'll actually start charging.  #grunt (although as of nearly two weeks later it's been ok).  Busy day.  Did some firewall cleaning.  Weeding after work.  Some frozen stuff from the parties for dinner.  Finished writing up hotel posts for Europe trip.  And finished season 23 of Air Crash Investigations.

Cape weed may be an invasive species but it is quite pretty

So.  Many.  Weeds.

Two kiev balls left, and those carbonara bites are yummy but the box is a rip off, only like half full.

Wednesday.  Missed three calls in quick succession while the phone was in the bedroom while I was having breakfast.  Sigh.  Then a stoopidly busy day. 

Apparently these are called scilla.  I had one plant of them last year.  This year I have like ten.

David came after work to install the new oven element.  Except.

The design is different.  It wasn't going to fit.  #grunt.  We all had a sad.

Watched The Orville 1.3.  

Thursday. 

Returned the element in the morning.  So back to square one.  Slightly more productive day.  Trivia night in the evening.  We came fourth.  Some of the rounds were "normal" and therefore fun.  But some of the rounds were just plain evil.  And badly done too.  Like there'd be five-part questions/answers with text so small you could barely read it.  Like this BS.

How do you even mark that crap??  What if you get one out of order but the rest in order, do you get four out of five or none?  And they did badly acted readings, this time from tv shows, but they didn't learn a damned thing from the previous people that ran it, AND YOU COULDN'T HEAR A DAMNED THING.  Ridiculous.  

Friday.  Hurty in the middle of the night.  Zombie day.  Back to cold weather which was nice. 

I actually had a really nice day because hardly anyone bothered me all day so I could concentrate on some decommission works. 

Did some weeding after work.  Before and after.  

Went over to Ben and Sarah's for dinner which was lovely. 

Saturday.  Productive morning, and did some food shopping.  Did RecipeTin Eat's mac and cheese for dinner, which was yummy but took two hours.  hrmmm.  It was too late and we were too tired to watch a movie so watched some Death in Paradise.

These cherry tree suckers are like a week or two old.  Sigh.

I guess they're pretty .. but still..

This cracked me up - a lineup of Teslas!  Two parked, and a third one just happened to come alone while I was taking a photo of them!

Sunday.  24th.  Somewhat better sleep.  Weeding, Lego inventorying and building, blogging, tax.  Man, financial crap is such a pain in the @$$.  You have to go into battle with every damned website and fight to get the information you need out of it.  I really hate the ones that don't let you right click to save-as (which is like all of them these days).  One site wouldn't let me download *anything* - you'd click on the link and nothing would happen.  Sigh.  Hate hate hate.  Roast pork for dinner which was yummy.

Then watched the last episode of season 5 of The Crown, which was actually the last episode aired so far.

Sunday.  3rd.  There may have been kiev balls.  Futurama/Crown/early night.

Monday.  Slept ok.  Distracting day.  Had to look at something that I knew wouldn't be our problem but had to help anyway.  Had a #grunt in our team meeting because I got talked over the top of WHILE I WAS ACTUALLY TALKING which pissed me off.  Often I get talked over the top of but it's difficult because of the one second or so delay over the VC when two people try to talk at once, and I get frustrated at that too, but this time I was already talking and just got interrupted which *really* pissed me off.  So then they were like "what did you do all week" and I was like "stuff".  Sigh.

But hey.  At least I can look out my front door and see this!

Did a heap of weeding at lunch - got rid of the periwinkle I wanted to... now to keep on top of it.. hrmm..  It was 22C today!!  Craziness!!

After work managed to finish blogging last week, and did a tuna casserole for dinner.  I took out some frozen cauliflower rice out of the freezer which was a bit clumped and gave it a whack on the stove.  But I must have hit the chip that's been there since we moved in and it shattered the entire stovetop from the chip in a few different directions.  Sigh.

And then just for fun the neighbour's dog was barking pretty much the entire fricken evening.  Pretty sure it's the same neighbours that had the staffies a few years back that barked non stop but evenutally killed each other returning the peace.  Sigh.  I even went for a walk to see and could hear it barking and trying to get out of the yard (as staffies do) and pretty sure it's the same house.

Tuesday.  Took ages to get to sleep.  On edge because of the dog. Then restless and awake every five minutes with numb hands.  Although apparently a storm came through that I slept through.  The other day I noticed the password to my main hosting account wasn't working (Eudora said password was failing).  So tried to figure out what was going on.  There's no way to reset a cpanel password from the interface so contacted Vodien support.  They reset the password which was great but no idea why it stopped working in the first place.  Ok day.  Lots of distractions though.  

Sour dough with leftover cheeses from various parties and some pepperoni

Housework and music after work and brisket for dinner.  Then I finished getting my Europe photos online!!  Well the main day indexes anyway, still have food/hotels/panoramas to go.  At 21:16 the dog started barking and didn't stop til I went to bed.

Wednesday.  Took ages to sleep.  On edge because of the dog, and restless legs.  And literally a day after the first issue, my cpanel account password stopped working again.  Talked to the same dude online who said they were doing CentOS migrations, and things would take "a few days" to sync and that they would email everyone when done.  Ok fine, at least it wasn't some sort of hacking attempt.  So will leave it a few days before contacting again.  And they NEVER email people about upgrades. And they still haven't.  Drinks with Dennis after work and dinner at Betty's Burgers.

Clocked it!

Chips aren't good for magpies

Thursday.  Fairly decent sleep.  Too much BS at work.  Too many dumb people.  Nice drinks.  Even sat outside for a bit until it started raining.  Pizza/Futurama/Ahsoka 3.

Friday.  Ok day.  I think.  David came in the evening.  We had kiev balls for dinner and watch Futurama and Death in Paradise 5.7.

Saturday.  Bacon, sausage and eggs for breakfast!! (our staple meal in America in 1983 at Denny's).  I was going to scramble the eggs but they all broke whole so decided to fry them.

As it turned out, they were the very last thing I cooked on the old stovetop.

After that David pulled out the oven to see what's been causing the power trips.  

Turns out someone let the smoke out.

But because Canberra, there's no way to get a new element same day.  So when we were out we found a place that could get one in next week.  Then we went and bought a new stove.  

I seriously have the most amazingest brother in history.  And so nice to have a qualified electrician in the family :)

So I took him out for lunch.  All you can eat at the Star Buffet.

Afterwards we "dropped in" to Ikea.  And proceeded to walk around for like two or three hours.  Bought a few things.  But most usefully we walked off lunch somewhat which was nice.

I got a shelf to use for a bin solution.  Not exactly what we wanted and it's not as nice looking as the wooden shelf we wanted (which was discontinued) but it'll do.  The sweetie ordered pizza for dinner but I only had once piece.  Then watched some Futurama and the first two episides of The Orville which was better than I expected.

Sunday.  Had pancakes for breakfast - first thing cooked on the new stovetop.  Then David went home.  Did some cleaning in the morning.  After lunch did some food shopping. 

Then it was nearly 15:00 and time for my afternoon routine.  Dinner was chicken fricassee which I've never cooked before.  Fairly nice but a bit watery.  Then Futurama/Crown.

Monday.  28th.  Slept fairly well.  Bit of BS.  Planned some new work but that got stalled (and too many interruptions anyway).  Phone is being a poo.  It was on the charger all night but it was only at 50% when I woke up, which dropped after I got up.  Rebooted and plugged it in on the computer but it took *ages* to fully charge.  But then it stayed at 100% forever and was at 99% at bed time.  Got it down to 95% by playing on it for a bit.

Apparently these are erlicheers .. early cheers!  They smell amazing!

Tuesday.  Phone was at 87%.  Rebooted.  85%.  Played on it for a bit while plugged in.  No change.  Rebooted.  80%.  wtf??  Left it plugged in and it came good in an hour.  Sigh.  Tried to look at some firewall cleaning.  Didn't get to do much because of all the interruptions and BS.  Roasted a haep of veggies for dinner and cooked a very nice steak that we shared.  Then I finished labelling my photos for the Europe blog!!!  Well, for the day entries, I still have the food/hotels/panoramas to do.

Wednesday.  Dunno.  Had duck at Symposium for dinner then went and saw Oppenheimer.  Which was very .. lonnnngggggggg....

On the way home we drove past this building that was all lit up which looked really strange.. 

Thursday.  Dunno.  Mulled wine (glühwein) at drinks, pizza and second episode of Ahsoka.

Friday.  Dunno.  Bit of house cleaning after work.  Leftover meatballs for dinner.  Futurama/Death in Paradise 5.6.

Saturday.  Breakfast at U&Co (eggs benny again, same as last time), then saw the Big Things in Store.

Made a cheesecake and ran the dishwasher and had a short break before more party prep.  Still felt rushed even though I had a lot more time and a lot less things to do.  Sigh.

Sunday.  Woke up at 6am cause that's what I do.  Cleaned up in the morning then worked on retouching/cropping all the photos for the blog, and even got some online.

Friday.  11th.  The plan was to have everything done on the Friday, and it would just be a last minute tidy up and food prep on the Saturday.  Yeah that didn't happen.  I worked most of Friday not even knowing if the party would go ahead.  Took a RAT.  Negative.  Decided to do the food shopping.

This isn't even everything.  I delegated a bag of frozen stuff as there was no way it was all going to fit in our freezer.

Saturday.  12th.  So most of Saturday was cleaning.  Sigh.  But.  I had a saviour.  Tony came up a little early and did all the food prep while I finished up.  (Took a RAT at lunch time - still negative).

From 4pm peeps started arriving - it felt like all at once!!  It made my brain explode heh.

We did cake at 6pm, which Tab made, because she's awesome.

And there was the funniest rendition of Happy Birthday I've ever heard in my life - everyone sung in different keys and at different speeds.  Think the Hogwart's school song from the first book.  It was just like that.

Duncan pointed out that I'd be competing with the soccer, so I warned the sweetie that we'd likely need to put it on.  And sure enough we did!  It was a pretty epic finish with a penalty shootout.

Tony also brought a massive glowstick he'd had since Jess was little.  We had no idea if it would even work - but it did!

And I put candles in the bathroom because don't candles in bathrooms look awesome!?

In the end thirty people came.  I had heaps of fun, and I think I managed to talk to everyone, even if only briefly for some of them.  But a massive shoutout to Tony, who'd had a bit of a big night the night before and so felt up to just helping out.  He managed all the hot food in the oven the entire night which was a *massive* relief for me, as I could just enjoy the party instead of being distracted dealing with the food (which is what happened last time).  Thanks Tony!!!!!!!

Sunday.  13th.  Woke up at 6:30am.  After getting to bed at 2am.  Because that's what I do.  Kit left fairly early to go have breakfast with her brother and SIL.  Then I cleaned up.  Did a couple of loads of washing up of glasses and dishes, and sorted the rubbish and recycling.

Other than that not much else.  My cough decided to go from just being a slight gentle cough to moving to my chest and being quite chesty.  Hurray.

Monday.  14th.  Slept from around 9pm til after 6am yayyy!!  But it was kind of a boring day really.  Took another RAT late morning.  Still negative.  Went into the office before lunch because Maddie had made me a cake (she didn't get the memo I WFH Mondays :) ).  It was really nice!

Then went to the chemist, and picked up takeaway KFC on the way home for lunch.  We had Chong Co delivered for dinner (didn't go out because the sweetie had to leave for Adelaide in the morning and it would have been all too hard).  They haven't had the "crying duck" style salad in ages, but turns out the wagyu salad is basically identical!  Also got satay chicken and crispy pork with chili jam.

Then I watched Dragonheart while the sweetie packed and got ready.

Saturday.  19th.  Syd-ah-nee bound.  I drove the first half.  We listened to a couple of episodes of The Lazarus Heist, about the alleged hacking of Sony by North Korea.  Swapped driving half way.  The GPS took us a bit of an odd way into Sydney - round the back of the airport and up through Alexandria (but not even the way the Murray's coaches do it).  Sydney keeps changing.  Like a lot.  New roads (the M8, never even heard of it!), new tunnels, new bridges.  Craziness.  Got to the hotel around 1pm, parked ($45, but still works out cheaper for the two of us than coach/bus/train/plane), and checked in.

Then headed off to the pub. 

I'd settled on the Keg&Brew in Surry Hills.  Simply because it looked like it had enough space to go to without a booking, had a rooftop bar, and it was right next to the station. 

We ended up on a decent sized table and nine people came, as well as us. It was funny though because there were *five* different streams - Mum's family, Dad's family, the Clan, CIA, and Uni, and not many people knew each other (but enough did so that noone had noone else to talk to).

The sweetie got a couple of pizzas (two for one FTW!)

And I had a lovely afternoon :)

We booked a table downstairs for dinner and the sweetie and Mum and Uncle Graham and I went down for dinner when the soccer started (it was a little bit noisy heh).  Mum and I split crispy pork belly and cripy potatoes which was very nice.

Then we went back to the hotel and crashed. 

After seeing the end of the soccer (4th place!!  Still pretty epic!!)

Sunday.  20th.  Was awake for many hours in the middle of the night.  Too hot.  The aircon wouldn't go down below 21C which was way too hot, and didn't notice the ceiling fan til the morning (the sweetie did but I wasn't paying attention when he suggested turning it on).  #grunt.  So slept like crap.  But then we got up and headed home.  

Got to go through the M8 tunnel this time.

There were people falling out of the sky at Picton.  Had some brunch at Sutton Forest.  Listened to some more of the Lazarus Heist.

And Lake George is still very full.