Backdating again.. I'm such a slacker!!

Monday/Tuesday/Wednesday nothing eventful, just UK photo labelling and jigsaw.  By Wednesday I'd labelled 1706 photos in three weeks.

Thursday morning I passed 1000 slides of Dad's scanned.  Was up to episode 7 in Lego Masters.

Friday morning I found a date on one of Dad's pieces of RADOS paper.  The ABC used to print out the runsheets/programmes on paper and the system was called RADOS.  I'm sure Mum/David could correct me on the details.  The point is they only used the paper once then it was scrap.  So Dad used to bring it home for us as scrap paper.  All the time I was living at home I used that paper.  So did the rest of the family.  In the back of each slide box, Dad has used RADOS paper to summarise what is in each box.  The box I opened on Friday had the date - December 1980.  I already knew that Dad had rearranged slides somewhat from their original order, but this put a date on it - after 1980.  Fun times.  

Friday also happened to be the fifteen anniversary of when the sweetie and I first met in real life.  We had chicken kiev for dinner and watched Lego Masters.

Saturday I had a body corporate annual meeting for my flat in Sydney.  I've been to a couple over the years, but this year because of COVID-19 they did it as a phone meeting.  Which made it great for me - I could attend one without even leaving home!  The strata lady reckoned it was good because they got people calling in that wouldn't or couldn't normally come (like me!) and she even had one call in from South Africa for one of her buildings!

I also might have finished The Little Mermaid section of the jigsaw.  I cooked two trays of home-made potato wedges for dinner, which were epic awesome.  Then we watched some Lego Masters, which was the episode under water.  Which all tied in nicely with "Under the Sea" theme because we also watched The Little Mermaid that night.

Sunday was bits and pieces of housework, epic pizza scrolls for lunch, Lego part picking, and bribing the magpies not to swoop me come spring time (they came flying over before I'd even seen them - so fricken cool!)

Pretty sure we finished Lego Masters that Sunday night.  Was really happy the guys that won did, they looked like they were having fun the whole way through and their builds were amazing.

Monday we went food shopping.  Did a bit of housey stuff.  Cooked "lemon butt chicken" for dinner (just a roast chicken with a whole lemon as stuffing).  Turned out really nicely.  Didn't get a lot of leftovers though ;)

Long weekends are great.....

Lamb shank stew, aka runny poo dinner we had last Sunday :)

Monday I finished the Peter Pan section of the Disney Memorable Moments Behemoth jigsaw.  Took three weeks for that section, which is shorter than other sections, but probably because I tended to spend more time on it.

Tuesday I woke up at 2am and didn't get back to sleep for two or three hours.  Hurrah.

Slept better Tuesday night.  But Wednesday fricken Skype completely froze my home computer in the middle of a meeting.  Hate hate hate Skype.  Drove the sweetie to the doctor because his back has been causing him all sorts of grief.  Picked up my work laptop so I can run meetings from it on my other vm and not my main computer.  David finished a jigsaw we started, 1000 pieces in just a couple of nights hehe.

Got a tin of soup from Chris's and had cabbage bake and tomato bake for dinner.  Yum yum yum.

Thursday successfully used Skype from the laptop and other vm.  Although I did have a long Skype screenshare with Connor on my main computer because I really needed the big screen.  Traditional beer and pizza.  Watched Picard, and had a drink with Kit and Pete and a game of Kismet, which Kit won.

How awesome is Canberra, this literally two minutes walk from our house.

Friday we finished Picard (pretty sure it was Friday night we finished it.  Could have been Thursday).  Then watched Peter Pan so I could get a photo of the jigsaw and the movie.  Except the "memorable moment" of the kids flying in front of Big Ben never actually happened!!  It *sort of* did but only as a transtion between two shots.  I call shenanigans!!  (I managed to capture the transtion of shots, but if you watch it you can see they never actually did it).

Saturday I felt like I didn't do anything much, just towels washing, food shopping, cooking dinner at lunch time, and tidied the house a little.  I guess that's *something*.  Last time I was at Coles they didn't have the trolleys chained together so you didn't need coins or a dongle, and it was the same on Saturday.  Had epic beef stew for dinner, watched the first episode of the new season of Lego Masters, some BBT, Brooklyn 99 and Hackers.  Another blogging fail - I never blogged when we watched it last time.  I thought it was relatively recently, Stu thought it was at least five years.  No blog evidence though.  

Sixteen different cheeses in the fridge!

Today I got a lot more done on the todo list, as well as finished part picking another nine sets (although actually only eight as one duplicate was already done and complete.  Had pancakes for lunch (it was Sunday, it was tradition for a decade when were kids).  Cooked epic lasagna for dinner.  Pics next week ;)

Eight thirty is bed time, right?

So where were we?  Saturday night.  Asleep by 9pm and slept for nine hours.  Bliss!!

Sunday I felt alive again after so much insomnia.  Mostly just house stuff and Lego part picking.  Made Sizzler cheesy toast for lunch.

In the evening we had some celebratory bubbles and cheese, had Chong Co delivered, and watched BBT (three episodes from end of season 8, beginning of season 9) and Flying High.  A lovely evening with the sweetie.

Sunday night slept well again.  Finished Lego part picking the sets for the weekend.  A bunch of house stuff.  A bit of jigsaw.  Chicken kiev and veggies for dinner.

I actually had good sleep every night this week, until we got to the weekend....

Tuesday was spent in Do Not Disturb mode catching up on everything from Friday, as well as the ten or so new tickets that we had because the rest of the country didn't have the day off.  Taco Tuesday!  And USA photo geotagging - fricken hard work.  

Wednesday night spent an hour blogging, but only got half way through the week.  Continuing on now ;)

Thursday traditional beer and pizza, and watched Naked Gun 33 1/3.

Friday woke up at 5:30 and couldn't get back to sleep.  Cooked honey mustard chicken for dinner and then watched Contagion that David had brought up on DVD.  I didn't know Stu hadn't actually seen it, and neither had David.  But epic blogging fail - I didn't record the first time I saw it!  I assumed I saw it with Stu, but I don't remember when or in what format.  It was pre Netflix (I saw it for the second time on Netflix in June last year).  Maybe I saw it on TV ???  Very cool movie, underrated in IMDB.  Only gripe is they compressed the timeline somewhat, presumably for dramatic effect.  

Saturday woke up at 4:30 and couldn't get back to sleep.  Other than washing the towels, I didn't really do anything else except for the jigsaw.  Sausages for dinner and watched Identity Thief that the boys chose.  Typical Melissa McCarthy - completely silly, but with heart.  My biggest gripe is that people who commit identity theft are sociopaths with no heart.  

One of the sets I was part picking for was actually complete, so just for fun David built it.  Then I pulled it apart again, because I don't have the space to keep built models around for years ;)

Today I woke up at 2:45 and never got back to sleep *sigh*.  Did a bunch of bits and pieces on the todo list, but not nearly enough.  Had slow cooked lamb shanks for dinner which were nice enough, but it's quite a lot of work for not much meat (it's mostly all bone).  

*yawn* .. must be bed time...

It was four weeks ago last night I had my appendix out.  Still doing all right.  Still random stabby pains all over my abdomen though.

Meanwhile.

Wednesday a week and a bit ago we met up with EffanC for dinner at Malaysian Chapter.  They have a new menu but didn't put any effort at all into its presentation, it's just bits of paper in dodgy old sheet protectors.

Thursday was the usual pizza.

Friday the sweetie and I had sushi in town and watched the new Ghostbusters.  It's rated quite poorly on IMDB, but I thought it was a bit of nonsensical fun.  Kit and Pete came up for Kit's brother's wedding, so I gave them the keys during the day but we didn't see them at all Friday night.

Saturday Stu went off for a war game with Tom and Damien and I had a quiet morning. Kit and Pete surfaced well after lunch, possibly still over the limit, so I drove Kit to pick up her mum and took them to Kingston so Kit could try on wedding dresses.  In the evening Pete and Leisa were having a combined birthday thing at the Old Canberra Inn, so I drove them to that as well.  Kit still wasn't hungry so I suggested splitting a schnitty, as I don't like huge pub sized servings either.  Worked great, although Kit ate so little of it I ended up having most of it anyway hehe.  Inflicted them with our slide show.  Still too big, at 729 photos.  Still needs more culling.

Sunday Kit and Pete went home.  I just had a quiet day doing stuff.  Finished watching the Stepford Wives which I'd last seen in 2006 and started watching the day before.  Kerry and the kids dropped in around lunch.  They'd come down for a flying visit to see the balloons.  We did some food shopping, and watched Fuller House and Discovery in the evening.

Monday I got up a bit early and went and saw the balloons.  Neil was operating the Square this year and not cooking.  Saw the beagle, mostly its butt.  Then came home.  Had a quiet but productive day.  Even pulled a whole heap of crap out of the spare room.  Including a huge pile to take to the Green Shed.  So can move in there again now, but still need to do a lot of organising.

Tuesday I bought some ten litre plastic boxes to store shoes that don't get used very often.  They stack nicely and are to replace cardboard shoeboxes that silverfish eat.  Trying to get rid of as much cardboard in the house as I can.  Had Turkish for dinner and watched Homeland.

Wednesday I got some more plastic tubs for shoes because I didn't have quite enough.  In the evening I prepped a big batch of steak/bacon/onion/garlic/mushrooms for the weekend.

Thursday was just MacGyver, but no pizza because we'd already had takeaway one night this week.

So there we are, all caught up.  Nothing particularly exciting in there.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Movies
* The Last Jedi
* Bohemian Rhapsody

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

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

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

Other stuff

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

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

Friday David and Kat came to stay which was nice.  We couldn't decide what to have for dinner, so went to the shop for inspiration.  While staring at the fridge some random came in so David asked "what's for dinner?", to which she said, pasta with chicken, cream, sundried tomatoes, and D&K were like "can we come to your place?" haha.  Did pick up some stuff and made creamy bacony porky pasta.  After dinner we finished the jigsaw I'd been working on for the week (all that was left was sky that took a third of the jigsaw).  And we put on Flying High because Kat needed to see it.  Except she wouldn't watch it.  Oh well.

Saturday morning we started a new jigsaw before they wandered off.  Didn't have a particularly efficient day.  Did some food shopping but that was about all.  Thought we'd have a nice quiet evening.  Watched Wall-E (because we don't have Ratatouille).  After the movie I tried to use David's G7X in stars mode, but I couldn't get it to focus.  I completely lost it.  My brother can get the most amazing photos out of that camera, but I can't even operate it in point and shoot mode.  Such a failure at life.  Which was sad because the sweetie had come out to sit with my while I was doing stuff, which was really nice, but I couldn't deal and went to bed.  And then woke up at about 1:45am and stayed awake for the next three or four hours.  Hurrah.

Sunday I was pretty much a zombie, so again, nothing got done.  Such a waste of a weekend.  I shoulda gone petanquing.  

David and Kat came back in the afternoon, complete with broken ankle.  Kat had rolled it on uneven ground on Saturday night.  They got it treated at Goulburn Base Hospital on Sunday on the way back here.  We finished the jigsaw we started on Saturday and watched some Good Place and had roast pork for dinner, and I slept a whole lot better.

Monday evening I think I managed to achieve more in an hour than I did all weekend.  Silly really.

Tuesday evening was hurty, which was remedied with wine and pizza, and a drink with Kit and Pete, one of our last ever at their place.  Sad times.

Turned on the cooler tonight for the first time this season.  I think it's going to be a hot one....

Thursday night Hao was in town so we caught up for dinner.  Went to Alice's for dinner, and Koko Black for dessert.  Good to see him again, this time only six years since I saw him last.

Friday night was Enterprise (we're into season three now) followed by Flying High.  Love that movie hehe.  Then a bit of Cards Against Humanity with Kit and Pete.  Because there was only three of us, after a few rounds we introduced a "dummy hand" - putting cards at random into the mix to give more options to choose from.  For a while the dummy hand was doing better than me!  Silly really!

Saturday Stu had an appointment in town in the morning so I went in with him.  Dropped off a huge bag of used coffee pods, and got a bit annoyed because they'd moved and I had to carry the heavy bag further.  Then did a few Ingress missions.  Then bought a new jigsaw with the gift voucher Ben S had given me a while back.  Came home and organised some stuff then started the next section of the Disney Behemoth jigsaw.  The bag I pulled out at random was The Lion King.  Dinner was a complete mashup of pretty much all the leftovers left in the house.  A very random meal but it least it got rid of most stuff in the fridge.  In the evening watched Enterprise, Homeland and Trumbo, a movie about a Hollywood screenwriter who was a member of the Communist Party and had to work under false names due to being blacklisted.  We quite enjoyed it.

Today I woke up with a bit of a sore throat.  Hope I'm not getting sick.  Have been alternating between computer stuff, house stuff and jigsaw.

Saturday I started gluing things into my holiday scrapbook.  Until I ran out of glue.

So then I started trying to organise my tax paperwork but decided it was all too hard, so thought I'd start with an easier job - digitising my tax paperwork starting from 1996.  Hrmm.  Did about seven years worth before the scanner needed a rest.

In the evening we watched some Voyager and then we watched The Third Man, which had been mentioned in an episode we saw the other night of Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations set in Vienna (Viennese people sure love their pork!).  And it went on the Riesenrad, which we'd been on, so we had to watch it :)  Interesting movie, a little slow to get going but picked up at the end, and who killed the porter??

Today I wanted to do more paperwork sorting and work on my new blog, but didn't end up doing any of that.  Instead I cleaned the oven.  Hurrah.  And did some fish tank stuff and did some food shopping and cleaned and cooked and cleaned.  And my hands aren't very happy with me.

And in the What The files.. I was feeding Stu's fish and they got so excited that the smaller siamensis rocketed out of the tank and went flying over and out and landed under Stu's comfy chair.  Had to rescue it and put it back in the tank!  Silly fish!

So 2016. Not too bad a year for me personally. But memorable for a spate of celebrity deaths (two I'd seen in real life - David Bowie and Carrie Fisher) and two overseas trips.

My first trip of the year was by myself to Sydney to see mum and the uncles/aunties for a Christmas party in early January where I cooked a big baked dinner for everyone. Also saw two Lego exhibitions on the same day while I was up there. Came home from that trip to a pool party in full swing. In January we did a two week trip to Hong Kong (to see Chris and Anne one last time there before they came home) and Singapore. The weather was the biggest downer of the trip - grey and rainy in Hong Kong, and unbearably humid in Singapore. In April we went to Sydney again for my cousin Ben's wedding. Later in April I went to Europe for six weeks with mum. The first two weeks was for a "reformation tour" of sites pertaining to the protestant reformation. That was a really interesting trip and a good group of people. Had a couple of days in Salzburg before heading up to Scandanavia for a three week tour. We saw some amazing things on that tour, but the size of the group (forty people) made it incredibly draining for me. In June mum and I went down to Junee to visit David and celebrate mum's 70th birthday. We only went down to the coast once this year in July. And we did our yearly trip to Queensland, but in November, which was a lot later in the year than I wanted to (Stu had uni work making it to hard to go any earlier). Fortunately the weather wasn't *too* hot and humid.

At work my most interesting work was some firewall migrations. Our first attempt in the test environment though was a bit of a disaster. It took the cleverer network guys about a month to solve a super weird MTU issue in the switch infrastructure they were plugged into. After that, the migrations went very smoothly. I also did an authentication system migration which also went well. So the first half of the year I was pretty busy and the work was interesting. In the second half of the year though I had to deal with the proxies again which drains my will to live. Is there actually such a thing as a *good* proxy? I'm beginning to think not. They caused me a lot of stress this year, including *three* failed attempts to upgrade them to the lastest version. Other than that I was feeling way too dumb to be in the team I'm in. But things picked up towards the end of the year with another firewall migration that went pretty smoothly and a stocktake, which is kind of my super power.

Socially at work I ran another trivia night in March which was packed. We won the next trivia night in June, but luckily the second place getters agreed to run the next one. Which we then won in September, so now I have to run the next one. Had a Gatsby ball in June, although I didn't get with the theme. Had a whiskey night in July. And for our section Christmas party (with various hangers on) I organised a bbq for nearly 40 people.

Healthwise I've been ok. I find lying down uncomfortable due to my deformed spine, which results in a lot of insomnia due to not being comfortable. Early in the year I did some proactive stuff that I'd been putting off forever - I got my skin checked, went to the dentist for the first time in twenty years and got new glasses. I got a minor cold in July, and a more severe one in November.

We've had a super social year this year. We've continued our visits to "the club", going to events and committee meetings in February, March, June, did a Christmas in July, October, twice in November (one of them we fed seventy-plus people) and December. My best friend from high school Chris moved down to Canberra at the end of last year so we've seen quite a bit of her - either dinners here, there, or out, or just going for walks (she lives in stumbling distance which is super handy!). We've also spent a lot of time with Kit, and also Ben and Serena - mostly just hanging out in the courtyard, but the occasional parties, meals as well, and even a p0ker night. Ben moved into a new place earlier in the year and we had a small housewarming there. I did an impromptu hanami party with Chris, Kit and Serena, and another one a week later with Nat and Andrew and the sweetie. Unfortunately that was the only time we saw Nat and Andrew all year. We've seen quite a bit of EffanC and Scott this year as well which as been nice - alternating between our places and enjoying champagne or a local equivalent. We had games nights at Mishi's in July and August. Also caught up with Damien and Amanda at the Dumpling Inn, and Damien and Tom at the Durham on a trivia night. Managed to see Ding twice this year, although the second time was a lot more chaotic with a heap of people in the house. Luc came to stay a night in March, Stu's ex colleague Jenn came for dinner, and we had an afternoon tea at Chris and Glenda's.

Dave and Kat came to stay with us five times this year which was great - in February, April, August, November and December. Mum stayed in June and December. Kerry and the kids dropped in in April, and Potty and Jake came to stay a night on the way to the snow and ended up staying for several nights. Didn't see much of Annie's family, only saw them a couple of times. Graham and Pam came to stay in April as well, and we went to the Dumpling Inn for dinner. Uncle Colin dropped in to say hi in December.

Various people came to swim in the pool in the summer months. For Christmas we did roast pork for Mum, Dave, Kat, Chris and Zac.

In the fish tanks I had four baby angels at the beginning of the year but three of them died. One of them survived, and it shares the AR-620T tank with four huge danios and a cory catfish. The two foot tank was a disaster at the end of last year with toxic black algae. I moved the fish downstairs over summer and cleaned it out completely. The black algae did start to come back, but with a bunch of plants, snails and a siamensis the tank has stabilised nicely and looks really good. The two remaining black neon tetras died this year - but they'd had a good run - I'd had them for ten years!! Amazing for such small fish. I bought some danios to be dither fish for the rummy nose tetras which worked really well - you can see them and their colour a lot better now. So in the upstairs two foot I have the five rummy nose tetras, five danios and a siamensis. Downstairs I had four of Chris's platies that I looked after while she moved house, but three of them died so there's only one left now. It shares the tank with four danios. Stu also has a tiny tank with a betta and some really small fish, and his four foot which got overrun with algae for a while but it's settled down a bit now.

I did a 5000 piece jigsaw this year which was good, but the quality of it was shocking. Did other jigsaws as well, but not as many this year. I've been doing a lot of nonograms online ever since the GCHQ Christmas puzzle last year. And just a couple of days ago I rediscovered Loops of Zen. I didn't buy any Lego this year, but I did spend a couple of months sorting out all of Zac's Lego.

The weather was *hot* this year. Summer seemed to last *forever* this year - global warming anyone? Made good use of the pool, but suffered in the heat. Had a lot of heat-induced insomnia and generally felt miserable for months. We got some hail in January. The pool only froze over twice this year in late June. It actually snowed one morning in July, but then a week later had the warmest overnight July temperature in recorded history. The El Niño finished up and it rained *a lot* over winter and spring.

We did a lot of stuff with the house this year. We got all the guttering replaced (while I was overseas). No more flooding of the garage after heavy rain! We got gutter guards in one corner where the oak tree is, but probably should have gotten them along the back as well, as one end still clogs up from that tree. Our twenty five year old hot water system died in the middle of winter, luckily a plumber could come the same day to replace it. The same plumber came a month or so later to clear out the sewer pipes which had been blocked by roots. We put evaporative cooling in which has been amazing for the most part, except this whole Christmas break which feels like the humidest week in Canberra ever! And we got a solar blanket for the pool (basically glorified bubble wrap) which has made a small difference to the temperature, but also has added bonuses of keeping most of the light out so algae doesn't grow as much, and keeps most of the leaves and bugs out as well.

I got a bit frustrated with technology this year. Had to fight with Logitech's Harmony remote software again. In the end never got it working with our tv. Upgraded my computer to Windows 10, which actually went ok, but had some drama with Windows Defender, and got sick of it rebooting without permission whenever it feels like it. I thought I'd bricked my iPhone because the battery got so dead it wouldn't turn on, even after charging overnight. Warming it up fixed it. Did this several more times over the next few months before finally replacing the battery in late November. I would like to get an iPhone 7, but I want one as small as I have now. Still having issues with the scanner, but still haven't gotten around to testing it on another computer to see if it's the computer or the scanner. And this blog got moved to new hardware by my hosting company so it's a lot more responsive now.

The Dumpling Inn was still our most visited restaurant this year. We went for Chrissie's birthday, again with Pam and Graham, again with Chrissie, with Chris and mum in June, and Damien and Amanda in July. I finally got to go to Smoque in Civic, fortunately, because it closed down later in the year. I went with Neil to a degustation dinner at Sage which was awesome. We went to Shogun for Ben's birthday, The Hungry Buddha with EffanC and Scott, and Casey Jones with Annie and the family for my birthday. With the sweetie we had dessert at Max Brenner in Civic, went to Chong Co, and tried Jamie's Italian and Pappa Rich. Generally we didn't eat out as much this year - trying to save a bit of money. Although we still had a lot of pizza! And bacon and cheese loaded fries from Maccas. omfg sooo good! Sadly the last time I tried to get some they didn't have them anymore :(

I didn't do a whole lot of creative cooking this year. I did make some cream cheese bacon balls which are so evil they're amazing. I made "epic" stuffed zucchini. I made some cheese and spinach pastries with some pastry inherited from Kerry before they moved which turned out pretty well. I did a zucchini lasagna. And a I tried a couple of different breakfast casseroles - one pretty evil and I made it a few times, and one I wasn't too fussed about.

Theatre/Shows/Exhibitions:
* Art of the Brick Exhibition in Sydney
* Sydney Icons in Lego in Sydney
* The Proclaimers

Movies:
* Sherlock - The Abominable Bride
* The Big Short
* Whiskey Tango Foxtrot
* Independence Day: Resurgence
* Finding Dory
* Star Trek: Beyond
* Rogue One

TV:
* Finished the last seasons of House
* Season 1 of Fuller House
* Documentaries on Netflix
* First four seasons of Homeland
* Most of Star Trek: the Original Series
* Australian Survivor
* Start of season 2 of Fuller House

Books:
* The Tower by Richard Martin Stern
* The Hindenburg Disaster by Jeff Rovin
* Raise the Titanic! by Clive Cussler
* Grey Mountain by John Grisham
* Penguin Bloom by Cameron Bloom and Bradley Trevor Greive

Other Stuff:
* Started off year with an impromptu neighbourhood party at Kit's
* Didn't dance on Lachie's table
* Saddened by deaths of David Bowie, Alan Rickman, Prince, Gene Wilder, Kenny Baker, George Michael, Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds, and the end of the world as we know it, ie, the US presidential election results.
* Went to the Mint open day
* Went to Canberra's new Ikea for first time
* Went to the Canberra Show with Chrissie
* Watched Das Rheingold with the sweetie, but still haven't gotten around to watching the rest of it
* Saw the Canberra balloon fiesta - twice
* Digitised my USA 2000 blog, although still haven't added photos to it
* Did the Granite Tors walk with Kit, nearly trod on a brown snake
* Ben and Stu fixed up the festoon lights out the back (only took seven and a half years to get around to doing!)
* Went to the Canberra Airport open day
* Installed Windows 10 on my travel laptop and my main computer
* Scanned ten of mum's photo albums
* Voted twice, but only got one #democracysausage
* Went out to Cotter Dam in August to see it overflowing, and went back again a week or two later to get it with better lighting
* Did a flying visit to Sydney in August to drop Stu off at the airport early Sunday morning, and saw the Sea Cliff Bridge on the way home
* Chrissie brought up her steam cleaner and made the bathroom all sparkly
* Saw James Turrell's Skyspace at the Art Gallery
* Kept myself busy in September with a massive photo project
* Popped into the War Memorial for an hour to look at the newly done WWI memorial halls
* Saw the first flight from Singapore to Canberra land, and the first flight from Canberra to Wellington depart
* Went to Costco for the second time. I think Coles and Aldi are actually cheaper.
* Did a massive photoshoot around Canberra to compare thirty years ago til now
* Photographed the super moon
* Spent several days over the break cleaning out cupboards

On Friday night I left work a bit early and drove up to Sydney.  I drove past a fire at the airfield at Marulan, which turned out to be not from natural causes, but because of a plane crash!  (the dude walked away - must have been a good landing!).  We went and fed the Macaulay's cat, visited Aunty Di and Graham, then had an early night.

On Saturday we spent the morning looking at photos (we played Dad's funeral slide show which was a bit emotional) and food preparation.  We did a big roast pork and my epic potato bake as well as some other veggies and lots of nibblies.  We also whipped some cream and decorated a pavlova.  Graham and Pam and Ken and Jeanine came over and we had a lovely afternoon.

In the evening we went and fed Macaulay's cat again, and watched The Princess Diaries (which Chris and I had been talking about only just the other day).

On Sunday I caught a train into the city to go see a couple of Lego exhibitions (which I'll save for separate posts).

At Central I was all set to walk around to Harris Street when I noticed the end of the Devonshire Street tunnel didn't *end* anymore - it kept on going - with a sign to the Powerhouse Museum.  So I walked down through it.  They've converted that whole little area between Central and the museum from the old goods lines into a park called The Goods Line.  Totally spun me out because that area of the city has always been a dead zone and it was a real pain trying to get around because you couldn't just walk across town because of all the railway lines in the way.

The Powerhouse Museum (bottom entrance).

After seeing Art of the Brick, I headed back to Central to catch the train to Circular Quay (it was super hot and I didn't want to get hot and sweaty walking all the way, and as it turned out, Sunday is currently $2.50 all day on the trains so it didn't cost anything).

Then there was the second Lego exhibition of the day - the Sydney Harbour Icons at the Museum of Sydney.

Then up to Martin Place to train it back to mum's.  I walked straight onto a train which was pretty cool.

Picked up all my stuff, then a flying visit to Luc and Lizzi's to do a donut photo of Ryan, then drove home.

I was expecting when I got home to have a quiet night of getting myself organised, but instead I came home to a pool full of people, in varying states of intoxication.  Which was rather unexpected (and made me feel somewhat left out! heh).  So didn't get anything done at home that night.  Oh well.