Today (backdated) I went with Tony to the RFS Helibase at Hume, because helicopters!!!

We missed the beginning of the talk (it was a family and friends open day for the RFS) because we were distracted by the Toll chopper keeping a bucket at that same level while descending and winching it in.  Very cool.

We got a good look at Firebird 100 (VH-YJB)

And the Candian wildcat HT101 (C-BGND)

Firebird 100 took off to go map a fire

And the Toll chopper was going the whole time we were there doing different exercises

Very cool!!

Sunday.  Our basa bake dinner (with sweet potato and beetroot for another night)

The Crown in the evening.

Monday.  Blerf meeting all morning.  Electricians finally came to replace the inverter.  My eyes got tired mid afternoon.  It was a dark and rainy day, but the solar system does appear to be working.  The battery got up to 84% in the afternoon without any direct sunlight.  Frustrating evening because I was blind and headachey from not being able to see all afternoon.  

Tuesday.  Took forever to get to sleep then woke up around 5.  Sigh.  The battery went completely flat overnight.  It's not supposed to do that, it's mean to sit at like 10%.  So I got super stressed and grumpy.  Then I couldn't get Redactle out because it wouldn't accept "Earth's" even though I'd put that in and it had matched two other incidences, but not the one in the title.  Clear the cache they said.  It'll fix it they said.  Yeah right.  I lost my entire browsing setup.  Which means all my streaks and stats for all my online games are gone.  The waffle one upset me the most.  And I can't see.  I had a full on meltdown because it was all too hard.  And I haven't played any of those games since.  Meh day.  Stu did get Solar Edge to change the battery settings to not go flat.  We're meant to be able to do that oruselves, but as with everything else by Solar Edge it hasn't worked properly.  Had a drink and watched Star Trek IV in the evening because my eyes were too tired to concentrate on anything that required seeing anything on my computer.

Wednesday.  Slept ok.  Ok day.  Was having a nice quiet morning then All The Things demanded attention at once.  Made a nice salad for dinner.  The sweet potato and beetroot I cooked the other night, with goats cheese, toasted pine nuts and bacon, with an honey, oil and lemon juice dressing.  Annoyingly the bag of rocket I was going to use (that expired today) had gone all manky.  So this salad really wasn't the same.  It really needed the lettuce to lighten it up.  It was still quite nice though.  We won't talk about the heart attack I had on Friday when my poo was a burgundy chocolate colour!

Thursday.  Did a bunch of planning for a big project at work.  Did up all the doco and passed it onto the others to do when I'm on leave.  Also looked at what logs we might be able to trim down to save space.  Then had to be Neil all afternoon while he had bits removed.  Made pizzas for dinner.  Talked to Kit and Pete for a while in the evening (still too hard to do holiday planning in the evening because I can't SEEEE).

Friday.  Woke up at like ~3am til like ~5am.  Sigh.  Did a bunch of holiday planning before work while I could still see.  Had to be Neil again, and did some cleaning.  I had a good eye day, and I could still see in the afternoon so did some holiday planning after work.  I also went into battle with Optus.  Last year when they put my number on a different plan, they set it up in a new account.  But left the shared data plan number behind.  Shared with nothing.  I'd forgotten to stop the automatic payments on this account, so it was in credit.  But the credit was not being used on the new account.  Dumb dumb dumb Optus.  So needed to get the credit transferred to the account which is actually costing money (the shared data plan is "free".. go figure).  And figure out how to access both accounts.  Because I can only access the old one on the website, not the new one.  Turns out I can manage both of them from the app.  So lame though.  Made some creamy mushroom and bacon fettucini for dinner.  Bad for the sweetie but he'd had a crap couple of days and needed the comfort food.  Watched Star Trek VI together in the evening.

Saturday.  Woke up at like 4:30 and never got back to sleep.  Super busy day doing All The Things - house stuff and holiday prep.  Overdid it on the computer though and ended up with tired eyes.  Cooked butt beef cheeks for dinner and watched second episodes of Spy Among Friends and Death in Paradise.

Sunday.  Today.  Woke up at 4:30 and didn't get back to sleep again.  Another super busy day doing All The Things.  We I even cut the ivy back from the ensuite window..

Really need a longer ladder though.  The sparkies had one that went right to the top of the tip of the roof.  

Both days this weekend the Solar Edge inverter has lost contact with the server, so we haven't been able to see the stats in the app (or website).  We have to go flip the switch on it to reset to reconnect.  Solar Edge is CRAP!!  The other annoyance is when it was sort of working briefly last year the panels were doing over 11kw.  But I haven't seen them get much over 9 since they got it working again.  I don't know if that's just because the angle of the sun is different or what.  We'll have to wait til December to find out I guess.  We had an inspector come Wednesday morning and they found the sparkie hadn't done a couple of minor things.  So they were back again Friday to finish up.  I asked him why, once the battery is charged and we're maxing out the 5kw back to the grid, does it say we're consuming ~3kw, when we're *actually* only consuming about 1kw.  He had no idea.  He said he'd find out and get back to us.  He hasn't.  #grunt.

Oh, and the neighbour parked on our side yesterday morning while he was shovelling gravel from his trailer.  And hasn't moved his damned car back since.  At what point do I pile a whole bunch of crap behind his car in protest??

Went on strike this afternoon because I'm sick of everything, so the sweetie is getting Chong Co for dinner.

Sunday.  22nd.  Here's the turkey roast from last week.

Monday.  23rd.  Took forever to get to sleep then awake at 4 for an hour with hurty.  And it was so cold in the house I put a jumper on!  Super tired all day.  Picked something new to clean and worked on that at work.  Made up some tomatoey mince and salad for dinner and blogged last week.

Tuesday.  Took quite a while to get to sleep but then mostly slept ok.  More cleaning.  Music after work and leftover turkey for dinner.  I setup a simlink to fool iTunes into backing up my phone to my D: drive, and backed up the new phone (and moved the backup of the old phone across too).

Wednesday.  Cleaning.  Also figured out how to replace a certificate on one of our appliances, and updated doco for it.  Watched Onward in the evening which was sweet and magical, enjoyed it.

Thursday.  Slept ok.  Did a bit of house stuff in the morning.  Did some organising of crap the rest of the day.  Realised, due to covid, I don't even have a complete set of circulation coins from 2019-2022, cause I just don't spend cash anymore.

There may have been a lamb roast for dinner.  Not Un-Australian.  Although if it were we could live in a land of lamb forever!  haha.

Friday.  Spent like All. Day. going through finances - downloading statements and sorting tax and crap.  Watched the first episode of season 3 of The Crown.

Saturday.  Checking receipts off against credit card statements.  Which took like All. Day.  Had to fight with booking.com and paypal.com and tripadvisor/viator dumbness.  Terrible web interfaces and they make it so damned difficult to find details on transations.  Paypal by default only shows you 90 days of past transactions.  To see more you have to click on the Date button (it's not obvious you even can) to choose dates.  Wtih Tripadvisor I booked three tours in Rome.  One on paypal and the other two just credit card direct.  Well at least the paypal one sent me their own email which had a reference number I could cross reference.  But the ones on credit card had literally nothing.  No email confirmations.  No invoices of any sort.  So I have two entries on my credit card, both for the same amount, but no idea which one is which.  Why is that a problem, since they're the same value?  BECAUSE THEY WERE DIFFERENT PRICES ON THEIR WEBSITE!!.  They've totally ripped me off for one of the tours.  I WOULD NEVER BOOK ANYTHING THROUGH TRIPADVISOR AGAIN!!!   It didn't help that I was having a bad eye day too.  Screen was out of focus all day.  I couldn't even do music for very long because I kept missing notes because I couldn't see where they were.  

For dinner we had a Luv-a-Duck Peking Duck kit.  omfg it was epic amazing!  I scoffed half of them (sorry sweetie! haha).

In the evening we started on season 4 of Death in Paradise.  We had stop watching this series a few years ago when the buttplugs at Netflix pulled it.  So we're watching it on Prime now instead.  Then watched the first episode of A Spy Among Friends.  Which was funny after seeing another of the Cambridge Four (Five) in The Crown the other night.  Maybe that was Stu's inspiration for watching this series.  

Sunday.  Pretty much the whole day consolidating receipts for our holiday last year.  Today's drama was with booking.com.  There were five hotels that didn't charge me directly, but charged through booking.com.  But booking.com only emailed me about one of them when they were about to take the money off the credit card.  The other four were a mystery.  And there's nowhere on their site that gives you invoices or anything actually useful.  You have the "estimate" in the booking, but that's not exact.  Two of the hotels actually gave me printed invoices, but they didn't line up with what I was charged either.  So I basically had to guess which one was which based on the prior guesstimate.  Fricken hopeless.  I also strained a muscle in my back helping the sweetie move the bed to vacuum behind it.  I don't think seriously, but I think it's going to hurt tomorrow.  I washed towels today and hung them out under cover.  But with rain on and off all day and Oh The Humidity they didn't dry.  And we got a whole bag full of new guppies!!  Music then cooked all the food for dinner.

So really a blerf longgg weekend dealing with finance crap.  I really need to be better organised and do it a bit more piecemeal so it doesn't take up an entire long weekend to catch up.  Sigh.

Wow, another strange year. Another crazy busy year.

Our year began very quietly with just the two of us. We didn't go out to the club because of Omicron taking the country by storm.

Travel-wise this year has been.. interesting. It started off with us desperatly trying to get out of the cruise we were due to go on. The charter company had postponed it a year, but with Omicron raging, government travel bans still in force, and lack of insurance for covid-related hospitalisations, we just couldn't justify it. The travel bans did get lifted and insurance companies started insuring for covid, but we still didn't think it was worth the risk. In the end, something like two weeks before the departure date, Carnival were like, ok fine, we won't charge the charter company if people don't want to come. Great. So we didn't go. The charter company were still @$$holes and would only provide a cruise credit for next year's cruise not the year after. It's caused me so much stress and angst and I would NEVER deal with them again. So plan B for February was Tasmania. But with Omicron raging and mandatory lockdowns for testing positive, we decided against that too. If we'd gotten sick while in Tasmania we would have nowhere to go and no way to get home. So plan C was regional Victoria. We only booked motels a night in advance, and if we'd gotten sick we could be home from anywhere in Victoria in a day. So that's what we did. And we actually had a lovely time with almost perfect weather (if a tad hot!). We had a very busy first week, cramming in lots of things, but took it a lot easier in the second week. In April there was a day trip to four Sydney dams to see three of them spilling which was super cool. In May was another sneaky trip to Sydney to see Woronora Dam spilling, and Brickman's Lego Jurassic World. I hadn't been planning to go see the Lego, but then was inspired by Lego Masters so went when it only had a few days to go. And then they extended it. Oh well. And then back again to Sydney in June for Mum's birthday where Kellie had organised to see Mary Poppins. Met up with Tony the next day and wandered the city and went out to Cockatoo Island, then met up with Mum again and saw Vivid. Finally a visit to Ansto at Lucus Heights which was very cool. We only made it down the coast once this year, in July, to see Kit and Pete. In September I went overseas for the first time in nearly four years. Mum and I went and saw the Oberammergau Passion Play, which I'd been wanting to see since the late 80s. We then drove through Austria, Liechtenstein and Switzerland (four countries in one day!!) and into Italy, where we ditched the car and toured northern and central Italy by train. We saw *heaps* of stuff, much more, and for much cheaper, than if we'd done it with the tour company like originally planned. I got filled with rage how Qantas and Emirates won't talk to each other to do seat allocations on code share flights. Jet lag hit me in a major way when I got home. It certainly didn't help that I got a cold as soon as I got home and so didn't go outside and see the sun in days. I was awake for hours every night for a week, and a complete zombie for much of it. Finally, we went back to Tumut for the Tumut 3 Power Station Open Day and another TRBC tour.

Work was, well, work. It's not that I don't like it, it's just that it takes up so much time out of my days. I have way too many things on my todo list to have time to go to work every day. Sigh. But at least working from home a few days a week makes it tolerable. I didn't actually go into the office at all until March (with Omicron raging and minimising people contact before we went on holidays). Then when I did eventually have to go back in I found it super loud and stressful and distracting and PEOPLE!! I had to be Neil a few times during the year and did some doco on his stuff (which he won't keep up to date heh). There were a couple of firewall migrations that went quite smoothly. A couple of load testing days in May and June. A few proxy upgrades which introduced more bugs than they fixed. But we did PoC a proxy from another company that actually looked pretty good. Migrated some servers. And All The Cleaning. Just call me Sadie. There was a whiskey night in July (which I actually missed, but was able to try everything the next week), and I ran my Christmas bbq at the lake for the tenth year in a row.

Healthwise I've been pretty good. Had a very slight cold in June and another one when I got home from Europe. Had booster jabs in January and July. The one in January caused a strong immune reaction so had to take a half day off and have a little lie down. Other than that just a sore arm so far is all I've had from the shots. Other than that just the usual bouts of insomnia, waking up with numb hands, and going blind.

We've been pretty slack at keeping up with friends and family this year. Although we have seen some friends a bit. We've seen Tony and Jess a few times for games and music. Damien came over in January, April and June for games. Jenn came over a couple of times in April and December. I had heaps of lunches at Herbert's with various Chrises and Tonys and other peeps as well. David came to stay before the Canberra Airport Open Day. Kit came to stay in July. Mum came to stay in December and we did our family Christmas with Kellie's family at the Burn's Club. We saw Annie and the family a few times - for Annie's 50th, Mila's 21st and Christmas, as well Immy coming over a couple of times to hang out. EffanC and R&F came over they day before my birthday. Had a lovely housewarming for R&F in November (it was cold and wet). Caught up with Aaron in December, probably as long as ten years since I last saw him. Finally saw Chrissie for the first time since covid in December. And met up with James and George and the kids for lunch in December on their way to Melbourne.

We only made it out to the club four times this year. It's been that kind of year. With quarantining and being on holidays for several events, the only times we made it out were for the Mexican night in March, the formal night in June, our Christmas in July and the Christmas party in November. We didn't even make it out in any non-event weekends which we like doing over winter.

I did a bit of work on processing Dad's slides early in the year but that fizzled out. I geotagged all of Mum and Dad's Tasmania photos in case we ended up going there. I also geotagged all our Victoria and South Australia photos from previous holidays to try and reproduce those. I started to scan Mum's Minolta negatives from the beginning (1983) and got some spectacular results, but that ground to a halt when I got up to 1994 and got into a batch of badly discoloured negatives that were unscannable. Not that there's even all that many past 1994 that I'm interested in keeping so no big deal I suppose. I managed to cull and label and get some photos onto the blog for the tenth anniversary of my 2012 Eurasia trip. That was a lot of work for the first few months of the year but it was so good to get it done. I also got 719 Victoria photos (plus bugs/flowers/panoramas) labelled and online in time for the six month anniversary of us leaving on that trip. After that I got really slack in the evenings - with no pressure or deadlines nothing much got done. For this year's Europe trip it took me a good six weeks just to geotag everything, then I got slack again. I was thinking I might be able to get the photos online by Christmas. Yeah right. Instead I used the evenings to start filing by 2022 photos and taking notes for my year in review post.

Stumpy is still doing great. We've had him (her?) nearly five years now! He'd be at least 13 by now. The fish are puttering along. My two main guppy tanks (the two foot upstairs and the two foot downstairs) look amazing - lots of plants (at least upstairs) and hardly any algae. But our guppies are two years old now and getting inbred. We really need to get some new genetics for them. I still have my "angel" 620T tank with a guppy, a platy, and an ancient cory. I still have Chrissie's tank with her two clown loaches and a guppy, but I'm considering moving them and getting rid of the tank. It's got horrible black hair algae which is not fun. I have the two two foots, as well as several small tanks downstairs, all with just guppies. And Stu has his four foot which is still full of algae. Really must move more juvenile guppies in there.

I lost heart in trying to complete any more of Vic's Lego sets, so decided to inventory what was left (I'm going to need to do that at some point anyway before selling it). I found a website called Basebrick which integrates with Bricklink which is super useful. Did heaps but ran out of time to finish it before I went overseas and haven't been back to it. For my birthday I got 10497 Galaxy Explorer and 75329 Death Star Trench Run Diorama which are pretty cool. I decided to sell the box of "MISB" Harry Potter Lego I got from 2003-2006. There were ten sets and they sold for quite a lot (I probably made the buy it now too small), but ebay makes it so you have to jump through all their hoops otherwise you can get totally screwed over buy the buyers. As it was I got totally screwed over by ebay who not only take 12.5% of the sale, but also 12.5% of the *postage* which I think is a complete scam. Not to mention the stress. If things go well it's actually quite simple, but if anything complicated happens (like people pay for everything and *then* want combined postage, or come to pick up from your house but don't mark online that they've done so, or the value is over the $100 Australia Post will cover you for) then it's a nightmare. I calculated how much profit I made, taking into account the cost of interest for not having the money in my mortgage all these years and all the fees, and I figure I made a total net profit of about $50. But, I'm sure I made a lot of people very happy they could get their hands on 15-20 year old brand new Lego sets. For Christmas I was going to get myself the Lego Titanic. But after not getting a Black Friday special on it, I decided to sit down and buy it on the Saturday. By which time it was out of stock. Sigh. But I did get a different Lego set for Christmas - in a manner of speaking. Neil lent me his Saturn V rocket that he bought a few years ago but had never done. So I've been having fun with that. Then will pull it all apart and give it back to him :)

I finally finished the Disney 40320 piece behemoth this year - finishing up with the Bambi section. I still haven't assembled the whole thing yet because I lost access to the really useful skybridge so don't know where I'm going to assemble it. Maybe Damien's driveway. Other than that, the usual jigsaws at home and work, although feeling like I really don't have time to do them.

They said La Niña would finish by the end of summer. It didn't. There was a massive storm in January which caused a lot of chaos in northwest Canberra. There were power outages all around Belconnen and Coles lost all their fridge and freezer stock. Chris kept power to his store, but his house had no power for days. We were lucky and just had a couple of small outages while they were fixing things. And the water. All The Water. In spring half of NSW was flooded. Insanity. And there was so much water there was no lettuce in Australia for a while. Craziness.

I've had a whole stack of problems with Windows 11 on my new computer. I hate it (windoze 11) so much. Like the fact you can't ungroup task manager icons which makes it so damned slow to switch between windows now. Before you could just click on the icon. Now you have to click or just hold and *wait* for the popup before you can switch windows. I took to making whole new desktops for the browser and explorer windows I need for different hobbies (such as music or lego) but even that has its bugs - like not displaying the wallpaper at the right size at random and then fixing it and then breaking it again all without me changing anything. Or that after a reboot only two of the desktops will display the right wallpaper at all, and if I switch between the working and non working one it'll put the wall paper from the working desktop onto the non working desktop I've just switched to. And after a few days it'll come good. Utter trash. Then there's the fact my GPS won't work at all (and there's no replacement drivers for it), my scanner won't work (even though it originally did), Eudora wouldn't work to begin with, then came good. My SD card reader only works intermittently. The front USB ports take at least thirty seconds to recognise there's anything plugged into them. My second monitor wouldn't work so had to buy a new one. It's great but the resolution is so high it's difficult to see. Windows 11 *still* only ever puts the screensaver on the left-most monitor, even if that is not the primary monitor. Excel 2003 dates wouldn't work, so had to put on Libre Office instead. You can't drag a file onto the application on the task bar, have said application pop up, and open the file in that application. That just doesn't work at all anymore. Similarly I can't drag anything into Eudora to attach it, I have to go to a menu and manually attach files. Printscreen didn't work to begin with, then started working. Hate hate hate hate hate. I've been playing a lot of Wordle style games, although cut back on those while overseas and only play a few of them now. I like Symble because you have to think more about it. Redactle is challenging. Wheretaken is a new favourite. Also Worldle, Waffle and Framed. In February Google changed one of their apis to enforce https, so had to hack Geosetter to get it to work again. Then in December Google finally killed the IE api, killing Geosetter completely. A few weeks later they released a new version of Geosetter which still has some issues, but at least will display the map again. Our printer is having a tonne of issues with jamming and poor quality printouts. It might just need a clean. Or a new printer. hmmm. Had to setup an app password in June for Eudora so it can backup my gmail. In July OneDrive took it upon itself to backup/sync all my desktop, documents and downloads directories to OneDrive. But all it succedded in doing was making a complete mess of things, bringing back files from my old computer that had long since been filed. Turned off backups everywhere and I minimise use of those directories completely. IOS 15.3.1 (or thereabouts) went back to putting photos into files by year/month (which I actually prefer). But Apple is STILL messing with the timestamps on my files. I got myself a 14 Pro for Christmas (it arrived instore literally the Friday night before Christmas, I was thinking I'd have to wait until January). Its camera has.. issues.. I lot of the first photos I got off it were utter crap. Primarily because I was using the 2x lens a lot to compare with my old phone. Firstly. Don't. The 2x "lens" is a digital interpolation of the 1x optics. So it's crap. The macro setting will work (if the stars align) but while it's good for getting actual closeups, it's crap at taking photos of flowers where you want the background all out of focus. Use the 3x lens as before just be far enough away for it to focus. Optus charged me 50c for an international SMS I didn't make in July. I got onto their online chat and they gave me a credit, but firstly said they couldn't find out the exact date/time and number, which was a total lie, because when I pressed them for it they could, and then I figure out what it was (it was a reply to a string of text, not a number, so it got translated to an international number). I bought myself new sandshoes in January, for the first time in like fifteen years. And new black shoes in August for the first time in seven years. I bought a G5X before our overseas trip. And got a brand-new-second hand wok on freecycle (to replace ours whose non-stick surface was coming off).

Around the house. I needed to move all the ornaments off the top of my desk to setup my new computer and rearrange monitors and crap. I moved them all into the shevles I bought for David in the spare room. I can see everything there a lot better, so I'm enjoying having them all there. The top of the desk has remained clear all year, although I do currently have my birthday presents up there at the moment. Tony came over in January to chainsaw off the oak tree sprouts and the front hedge. And then in December to attack the photinia. In between is all the weeding. Never. Ending. Weeding. Except in winter cause it's too damned cold heh. When the big storm went through in January water was coming out of places that water should not be coming out of. Like bricks next our bins, and bricks on one of the back steps at the back of the house. So got the plumbers to come out and do all the eeling. The sewage pipes were the easiest because we know the deal with them. The front courtyard was easy when we realised it's not a proper drainage pipe, just a 50mm pipe that goes just across the courtyard and drains off to the side. Looks to have been an afterthought. Then the stormwater. They went in via the sump next to the garage and it was like thirty metres down before they found the blockage. So they cleared that. Like the sewage, we'll just need to do that every couple of years. Finally they looked at the drainpipe near the bins. Under the concrete the pipe had come adrift and was full of roots, so the drain from the roof was just pooling under the stairs, and then going through the bricks next to the bins. So they dug up the front stairs, dug a wholly new trench, resealed, relaid the pipes, filled it all in, and got someone to put in some new stairs. Fifteen thousand dollars later. Ouch. Mice were scritching around the roof in March, which caused some sleepless nights. But then they went away. Which was good because I practically had a panic attack trying to figure out how I was going to get across to the far side of the roof without falling through it and getting covered in disgustingness. I tried to cut back the ivy in May. It's now covering more of the side wall than ever. Our largest stove element died. But we still haven't replaced the element or the whole stove. Found out in early spring that a pair of crimson rosellas had been chewing through the beams holding up our roof. Tried plastic sheeting, tinsel, scaring them, and scat. Nothing much seemed to work very well. They've found more interesting things to eat for now but I suspect they'll be back again next winter. We moved a shelf out of the dungeon because Stu wanted to put in a proper shelf there. Underneath was a massive growth of dark brown mold. We don't know if it's current or historical. hrmmm. The Dyson I got for my birthday two years ago stopped working. Don't know if it just needs a clean, or if the battery is dying, or if the Dyson is just a dud. My money is on the latter. Brought home the Electrolux from the club where we'd had it to use until I can get around to cleaning the Dyson. Got lots of strawberries from plants around the back yard. Including some from our paver weeds. The snails clearly didn't get the memo, so we got the strawberries instead of them. We had solar panels and a battery installed in December. They still don't work.

Our favourite restaurant this year was still Chong Co - we got deliveries from them in January, twice in April, twice in August, and October. Herberts is also popular for work Friday lunches (and their Christmas in July was a lot of fun). I didn't get to have any workday Kingsleys lunches because the building opposite blew up from a gas leak and they've never gone back, or been allowed to, not sure which. I did finally have some Kingsleys from Kippax a few weeks ago. We had Sichuan Chinese pickup from Belco a couple of times and were pretty impressed with them. We had brunch a few times at Market St Eats. Some others we went back to after long breaks included Mills and Grills (Stu went low carb so hardly any Dominos this year either), Chez Kimchi and Bella Vista. Tried out SpudBAR and 1919 Langzhou Beef Noodle which opened in the mall. Other one-offs included Co Dung (fried chicken wings were awesome), Lazy Su, Turqoise Turkish, Edgar's, Flavours of Jiangnan, Teddy Picker's, Badger & Co, Little Steamer, The Howling Moon, Mr Shabu Shabu, Little Oink, Master Bao (which had no bao), Magpies (for Jim's farewell), Pattysmiths, and Chinese Inn (from Kippax, just as bad as last time).

As always I end up doing quite a bit of cooking and trying new recipes, as well as doing old ones a few times. One new favourite is stuffed baby capsicums - fill with whatever mince you like and lots of cheese and roast. Yum yum. I made a few lemon cheesecakes, as well as a lime one and a cherry one. One of Stu's favourite meals is Cath's basa bake we've done that a few times. We did san choy bow a couple of times. We really like the potato, onion, blue cheese and bacon bake from my Gratins and Bakes book, but with Stu going low carb we only did it like once all year. The slow cooker gets a workout over winter. Favourite recipes for that are Alan's beef stew, brisket, and even pulled pork. And we tried slow cooking pork ribs (nice but lots of little fiddly bony bits). Beef cheeks are slow cooked on the stove. After doing turkey rolls that actually turned out this time at the club Christmas in July (on account of doing them in the oven instead of on the bbq), we tried one ourselves in August and also November (and likely New Years Eve as well). They turn out really nicely and we'll probably always keep one in the freezer to do when we feel like it. From Not Quite Nigella I tried a chicken marbella but wouldn't bother again, from the Gratins and Bakes book I tried potatoes with lemon and tomato but wouldn't bother again with that either, and from my Slow Cooker Kitchen book I tried honey rosemary chicken which was too salty. Completely evil meals included uunifetapasta, cheese nachos, and no-carb pizza (made with no base at all, just cheese). Slow cooked mini tomatoes are amazing, really must do them more often. Tried pork crackling by itself but I do prefer it done on the meat. A favourite lunch is grilled cheese sandwiches - but with shredded pizza cheese on the outside as well. Favourite veggies (well other than my favourite which is potato bake) include brussels sprouts with bacon. Over winter we discovered kalettes which when roasted for 35-40 minutes turn into little bliss bombs. Almost as good is kale chips, but it's a bit too easy to overcook those and have them go bitter. I made pesto with the last of the summer basil, and tried cheese biscuits in June (but need to find a better recipe). And made a coconut cake (Yum! Delicious!) in June and October.

Theatre/Shows/Exhibitions
* Australian Wind Symphony in May at the B (next to the Q)
* Lego Jurassic World in Sydney
* The Queen and Me exhibition at the National Capital Exhibition
* Mary Poppins in Sydney
* Canberra Lego Brick Show at Thoroughbred Park
* Australian Wind Symphony in November at St Andrews

Movies (at the movies)
* Top Gun: Maverick

Movies (TV)
* The Courier
* The Young Black Stallion
* The Grand Budapest Hotel
* Six Minutes to Midnight
* Sleeping With the Enemy
* Munich: Edge of War
* The Laundromat
* 1917
* The Mauritanian
* Zero Hour (twice) / Flying High
* Dr Strangelove
* No Time to Die
* Operation Finale
* Logan's Run
* 6 Underground
* The King's Speech
* Encanto / Luca
* The Death of Stalin
* The Royal Tenenbaums
* Gladiator
* Knives Out
* Edward Scissorhands
* The Monuments Men
* Pride and Prejudice (the Keira Knightley version)
* Mary Poppins / Saving Mr Banks
* The Little Mermaid II / Ariel's Beginning
* The Man from Snowy River
* An Affair to Remember / Sleepless in Seattle
* A Clockwork Orange
* The Constant Gardener
* Top Gun
* The Silver Brumby
* Kingsman: The Secret Service / Kingsman: The Golden Circle / King's Man
* Careful, He Might Hear You
* Moulin Rouge!
* Shine
* Blue Murder
* Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (twice - before and after Italy)
* Breaker Morant
* Matrix Resurrections
* Romeo+Juliet
* The Butterfly Effect
* Die Hard 1/2 / Love Actually
* Enola Holmes 2
* Operation Mincemeat
* Herbie Goes Bananas

TV
* Sex Education (season 3)
* The Simpsons (seasons 20 to half way through 31)
* The Girl on the Train in the Rear Window, or whatever it's called
* Mentour Pilot (about 3/4 of the air crash investigations episodes)
* Gunther's Autopsy
* Lie to Me (end of season 2 and season 3)
* Black Books
* Gunther's Anatomy
* The Crown (season 1 and most of season 2)
* Lego Masters (season 4)
* Martin Bashir's Diana interview
* The Diana Interview: Revenge of a Princess 2021
* Epstein's Shadow: Ghislaine Maxwell
* Obi-wan Kenobi
* Super Cub
* Andor (season 1)
* Lego Masters Bricksmas special (last year's and this year's)
* Survivor Canberra (fan produced)
* Picard (season 2, haven't finished)

Books
* Read the first four books of the New Testament, but got behind in February when we travelled and never really caught up. Will try again next year for the rest of the New Testament.

Other stuff
* Tried to catch up on This Day in History posts, but there's still too much work to be done with Mum's photos to do it properly, so that stalled
* Car wouldn't start in January. Turns out it was the battery, which was probably original, so it would have been nearly eight years old
* Petrol got insanely expensive
* Balloon Fiesta in March
* Canberra Airport Open Day in April
* Dam Busters trip to Sydney in April
* Climbed Mt Rogers a couple of times
* Saw the planet/moon alignment in April
* Jupiter and Venus were having a sneaky early morning kiss in April
* Sneaky trip to Sydney in May to see Lego Jurassic World (and Woronora Dam)
* Got a democracy sausage in May
* Climbed Mt Ainslie in May (hadn't been planning to it just happened)
* Whiskey Live in May
* Queen Elizabeth II 70th Jubilee in Canberra - all the purple lights on buildings around Canberra
* ABC's Classic 100: Music for the Screen in June
* Inspected my flat, went to Cockatoo Island, saw Vivid and visited Ansto in June (after seeing Mary Poppins for Mum's birthday)
* Surprising Science at the Shine Dome in June, August, and December
* Walked up Mt Painter
* Stu cracked a tooth and needed it taken out
* Fought with Qantas' booking system again. I hate Qantas. So. Much.
* Had a hair cut in August
* Stu got a 3D printer which he's been using to make little models for his wargamming
* Total lunar eclipse in November
* Took a drive out the back of Dunlop/Holt to see the West Belconnen Pond
* Got a beer advent calendar from Plonk
* Went to the Green Shed a couple of times, dropped off a few things, came home with more jigsaws
* Continued to practise the clarinet

Have a very happy and safe new year!!

Thursday.  16th.  Fairly uneventful drive up to Sydney.  Stopped at Weemeeraa Lookout to see Lake George full of water.  Also at Sutton Forest for a loo break and some morning tea.

Got to Mum's just after 12:00.  Had some lunch (bubble and squeak), then setup her new printer (which didn't come with a USB cable, so had to use her old one), and had a bit of a look at our itinerary for Italy.

Later in the afternoon we took a train into Central.  OMFG I HATE people!  The train was full of noisy Caringbah high school kids not wearing masks (they all got off at Hurstville then it was quieter).  

Then took a tram up to Star City.  Again with people not wearing masks.  #grunt.  The tram took *forever*.  I swear it would have been quicker to walk from Town Hall.  We arrived pretty early, so found the restaurant then wandered down to the harbourfront.

I wanted to go to one of the bars and have a drink (to be more relaxed meeting a whole bunch of strangers) but nothing opened til 17:00.  Sigh.  So had to meet people sober which was pretty stressful.  Dinner was at Cucina Porto.  I had crumbed veal which was quite nice.

The lemon sgroppino was also very nice

It was nice to meet Kellie's family, although mostly ended up talking to her Mum's friend Annette.

So that was all nice enough, but we had to wait for Kim and Laila (Kim couldn't get off work til late) and by the time they'd ordered and then had to reorder (because their first pizza was undercooked) and then everyone (not me! ha) got dessert it was getting really damned close to 19:00 and I was getting epic stressed because theatres often don't let you in if you're even a minute late and I had visions of us missing a chunk of the show.  Everyone had to rush through their dessert so we could race across the way to the theatre and we sat down literally at 19:00.  I was not happy.  Just sayin.  But it all worked out in the end, and the show started a few minutes late anyway, and it was actually pretty awesome!  It was somewhat different to the Disney movie, but it seems it was probably more similar to the first couple of books.  They had a bit of a singalong of Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious which was a lot of fun, and I maintain that Mum was singing louder than me during the other bits ;)  (Mum wasn't *quite* surprised, on account of her friends guessed for her what the surprise might be)

After the show a bunch of the group wandered off to find a convenience store and I NEEDED to get home to sleep, so decided we should walk to Town Hall rather than waiting fifteen minutes for the next light rail.  They did all come back just as we were about to leave so did get to say goodbye.  

'

We walked right onto a Waterfall train at Town Hall, and definitely got home earlier than if we'd taken the light rail.  But bed time was nearly midnight.

Friday.  17th.  Slept ok but still woke up at 6:30.  Because that's what I do.  We decided we'd drive to go see my flat, because a few years ago the RETARDS at Transport NSW decided that you can't get a direct train to Kogarah anymore (NFI why) so it was going to take an hour by public transport or less than half an hour by car (even in peak hour traffic).  We ended up getting there pretty early so went for a walk around the block.  Then we waited for the real estate agent to turn up.  When she hadn't by 9:05 I called them and hassled them and then had to wait while they tracked her down.  Meanwhile the tenant is waiting for us so she could go into work.  Eventually (like twenty minutes late) the real estate agent turned up, spent most of the time on her phone, I think said "apologies" once, and we got to go in.  The tenant is quite lovely and the flat is fine.  But pissed that we were so late because of the agent. 

Took Mum home then hopped on a train into the city.  Found a sign that says that masks are in fact still required on public transport, but Transport NSW is doing NOTHING to enforce it.  The train trip was horrendous - again people not wearing masks, and some guy making an absolute racket on his phone.  I hate people SO MUCH!!!!

Met up with Tony at Central.  

Had a light lunch at the Great Southern Hotel

Took a tram from Central to Circular Quay.  Had my mind BLOWN that all of George Street is now trams-only and no cars!!  Such a bizarre thing to see!!  (and I didn't even get any photos!)

We got to Circular Quay thinking we might go to Cockatoo Island, but OMFG Transport NSW information is ABYSMAL.  Other than an electronic "which wharf?" sign there was no details whatsover at the wharf about timing of ferries to Cockatoo Island. 

Transport NSW information is so bad, they literally have laminated A4 printouts telling you to go find a human to talk to

So (after waiting to see if the next Manly Ferry that came in was a Freshwater class ferry (they're retiring them but I thought a couple might still be running)) we abandoned that idea and headed for the Harbour Bridge Pylon. 

Anti-vehical barricades - looks nasty if you try to drive over them!

Chips on a Stick truck!!  I wanted to get one of these, but they weren't open in the afternoon and later I was way too exhausted and wanted to go home.

So on the way to the pylon we looked up their website and they close at 14:00.  WTF??  It was about 13:20 at that point and wouldn't be worth the $19 to get just a quick view and no time in the museum so abandoned that idea and went back to Circular Quay.  

Talked to a human at Circular Quay and got a bit of info and caught a ferry to Cockatoo Island (which I'll save for another post).  

Got back to Circular Quay and took a train to Central.  Had some drinks at the Covent Garden Hotel, then met up with Mum at Super Bowl for Peking Duck!  I haven't been there since the last time I was there with @StuartCRyan at the end of 2014, but nothing had changed and the Peking Duck was amazing (and Mum enjoyed it too - she'd never had it before!! *gasp*).

After dinner we did Vivid, which I'll save for another post.  Another night of getting to bed after midnight.   *sigh*.

Saturday.  18th.  Slept ok but still woke up 6:30.  Because that's what I do.  Picked up Tony at Sutherland and headed out to Ansto.  I'll save that for another post too.

Got lunch at Maccas drive through at Menai, then came home, via a quick stop at Sublime Point and Lake George.

I think this is the fire at Bluescope Steel

LAKE George!

It was *so awesome* to get home to the sweetie, we sooo just want a quiet life.  Chicken Kiev for dinner and then a super early night.

See 2020. Rinse and repeat. Another crazy crazy year. Wondering if life will *ever* get back to any sort of normal.

Our year started out at the club with friends. It likely would have finished there too. Except Omicron. So it is going to just be the two of us for a lovely quiet night.

Life for the first seven and a half months in Canberra was actually relatively normal. Then in mid August (two days before my birthday) someone tested postive (thanks Delta) and we got put into a snap seven day lockdown. That lasted a couple of months. For us it meant the bliss of not having to go into the office. Things did start to open up again in October/November/December but case numbers here and in NSW and Victoria are higher than ever right now due to Omicron (the numbers are staggering - 21000 per day in NSW at the past couple of days - twenty times higher than at the peak of Delta.  462 today in Canberra - it's basically been doubling every couple of days, and now also ten times higher than Delta). We got put into lockdown in August for one case, yet now we have hundreds of cases per day but there's basically no restrictions other than having to wear a mask indoors. Craziness. I mean sure, 98.5% of 12+ year olds are fully vaccinated here, but most of us haven't had boosters yet. Stu and I plan to hide from people as much as possible over the coming weeks.

We couldn't go overseas in 2021, so our only travel was within NSW. We went to the coast to Kit and Pete's for Pete's birthday in March. We got to see their new house, went for a drive to the coast, had a ride on Elle, went out for Pete's birthday, went to Myrtle Beach, and saw Old Blotchy on the way home. We also visted them in May for Kit's birthday, going to Mollymook for lunch and having snacks and drinks by the fire in the evening. In April we had a five day long weekend over our anniversary and went to Bathurst, Lithgow, Newnes, Glen Davis, Gulgong and Dubbo. We tempted fate by having Mum come down at Christmas, and went to Junee on Boxing Day to visit David. The tour company we'd booked Oberammergau through was being difficult, so in the end we cut out losses and cancelled our trip with them. I booked tickets for the show itself later next year, and if things work out we'll plan a trip around it closer to the date. We're still desperately trying to get out of a cruise out of Florida early next year, but again, the tour company is being buttheadful and are refusing any sort of refund. Our only hope is that the whole thing is cancelled and we can get our money back. Come on Omicron, you can do this!

At work I did an awful lot of *cleaning*. Tidying things up, documenting, deleting old crap. Helped shut down an old environment and migrated to new firewalls. A floor shuffle in April meant an annoyingly loud team moved in next to us which was all sorts of stressful. But then another floor shuffle in July moved us away. Rereading blog entries for most of the year it was amazing how stressed out I was just having to go into the office. Things were so much nicer from August once in lockdown. In October we had a farewell lunch for someone at the Lighty - which was the first time I'd seen any of my colleagues in person in two and a half months. Went back into the office to work for a day a week in November. I did a whole heap of overtime from October to December doing upgrades and migrations. There was a whiksy night in June, and we had "virtual" drinks a couple of times during lockdown. We tempted fate and had our usual Christmas bbq by the lake (in the rain!).

Healthwise, the main problem for me is still bouts of insomnia every so often. I thought I might have been getting sick in April but fought it off. I got my vaccines in June, with basically no side-effects at all, other than a sore arm, and perhaps a sore neck a couple of weeks later (both times). We both got colds in July, probably from someone at the club the previous weekend. Stu got tested (negative), I didn't bother, I just isolated.

Our biggest change in home life this year was David getting a job driving freight trains out of Cootamundra, so he moved out in January. Mum came down at Easter and Christmas to visit both us, and David in Junee. We saw David for about half an hour in February, and he came and stayed the night before the air show. I finally got to meet Kellie, who I found out about in about August. A lovely, thoughtful person who has a lot of the same thought processes/opionions/life outlook as me - freaky! We saw Stu's family a few times during the year including a couple of visits by Immy to see Stumpy, an afternoon tea at Annie's in October (first human contact we'd had with any of our friends/family in two months), a visit in November, and Christmas afternoon with them. We saw a bit of the N-Gang, although not so much as previous years. There was Rob's 51st in May, dinner at EffanC's in June, a couple of virtual drinks with EffanC during lockdown, and dinner with all those guys at Hachiko in July and Indian Pantry in October. I was feeling like noone liked me in July, but these guys reminded me I do have some pretty great friends. Who needs stinking young people anyway. We had brunch with Kit in June when she was up, and had Kit stay overnight in November - first time she'd been here in probably nearly two years, and the two visits to their place as well. Jenn came over a couple of times in February and July (the latter for an Indian feast that Stu cooked). CRD came over for dinner in February, and we had her at the club a couple of times too.

At our social club we went out for most of the social functions in the first half of the year (except April because we were in Dubbo). There was Robert's Chinese New Year feast in February, Matt & Michelle's Mexican feast in March, Italian night in May, Ian and Chris's anniversary dinner in June, and we did Christmas in July. CRD came out with us in May, and I did some more priming of the cabinetry. I haven't done any more tho because we've just had so little free time. There was a bbq in late October which was the first time we'd been since lockdown, and we went a week later as well for the working bee. Then for Rob and Fiona's Christmas party in late November.

I got a massive amount done on my photos this year. Early in the year I thought I was done doing fixup scans of Dad's slides, but as I started processing them I realised how bad a lot of them still were. So I spent the rest of the year (well, from March to October) redoing them *again*. Even then, a lot of the early ones still have lots of fluff on them, but I'm kinda over it now, and they can stay as they are now. I did come up with CLI commands (in Excel) to add a whole heap of exif data into his slides. If he went to the trouble of recording the aperture, shutter and F stop, then why not add it into the data files! I also have commands to add the date (if known) and captions for them. I've started (well restarted for some of them) processing them with aforementioned scripts and cropping/colour correcting, but it's still a lot of work to try and sort out the mess he's made combining things that probably shouldn't have been combined, not to mention geotagging them as I go ;) I'm basically happy with 18 boxes so far, which is about 10% of the way through them all. If I'm lucky I'll be finally finished mid next year. Just in time to start scanning Mum's negatives which started in 1983 :) I won't be scanning all of Mum's negatives that's for sure - just the ones I care about, such as holidays and family photos. A lot of the early prints are pretty crap and discoloured. In the first week of January I started labelling my Eurasia 2012 photos. At five hundred per week it was going to take most of the year. But I did it! Twenty four and a half thousand photos in eleven months. In fact I actually finished one day early :) I had a play with some gallery generating apps, and even got my USA 2000 photos online with it. The main blocker for getting more online (other than time) is deciding where to host it (likey it'll just stay on my current host), but also how to integrate it with the blog. Seems silly to have two different sites that are very similar yet one has just highlights and the other has almost everything. Because it also means the gallery doesn't have the blog detail. It's a bit of a dilema. I finished filing all my club photos into directories by event/category. One of these days they might go into some sort of club archive, but need to get permission from people first. I spent months on and off tagging people in work photos with Picasa. Still not sure how to get that data into a useful format, but at least the data is there. Still need to get Wello and Ray over to help me tag people I don't know. I also realised only last week that I hadn't been backing up the Picasa DB directories, so if my C: drive had died I would have lost all that work - yikes!

Fish. So many baby fish! I got five platies in January - first time I'd ever had platies. They had some babies, of which two survived to adulthood, but all five original ones died, so I currently just have the two babies left. Stu's tank is still overgrown with algae, but I have a solution to that - guppies!! The two foot I have upstairs (and now the one downstairs as well) is basically algae free, which I put down to having so many guppies in those tanks. So as babies (so many babies!) get big enough, I'm transferring them to other tanks, including the big one, to work on the algae.
Inventory:
Angel tank (the 620T): 1 ancient cory, 2 platies that were born in that tank (the twins!), 1 zebra danio, 2 guppies
Two foot: guppies! - a bunch of adults that we mostly got a year ago, and a tonne of babies. Some of the juveniles have been moved to other tanks
Four foot: 14 congo tetras, about half a dozen guppies I moved in fairly recently, some suckers (we think), a loach (sadly his siamensis friend died recently)
Chrissie tank: 2 clown loaches and a sucker (really need to move that medium sized sucker into the angel tank and bring one of the little ones up from downstairs, because Chrissie's big sucker in the angel tank died)
Downstairs two foot: four adult males, two adult females, and a tonne of babies, and two small suckers
Nursery tank: a few babies and juveniles, including a couple of very pretty spotted ones I'm hoping will be female
Other one foot tanks: more guppies
Stumpy is still doing well. I do think he got hungry earlier this year though. And now at the height of summer he's barely coming out at all. Silly lizard :)

No Lego building this year. We (David) moved the four-baseplate mosaic into the hallway so Stu could have the wall back for his things. I had a play with Gimp for making Lego mosaics (you feed it the colours you have in stock into a pallette file, then apply that pallette to your photo - voila! Mosaic pattern!), but haven't actually made one yet. I wanted to make one this break. Maybe I still will. If I can think of a picture that would work. I had some fun playing with Lego Digital Designer to continue working on the Lego model of our house. I got pretty much all the main floor done, but got stuck when it came to doing the roof design. The slope of the roof matches approximately a 1:4 slope brick, which you can get, but you can't get corner pieces, so doing corners would be messy. Might have to look into making the roof slops with plates/tiles. I still really haven't done any more work sorting out Vic's Lego. It just got too time consuming and depressing (because so much of it was missing). I did spend a bit of time sorting/constructing minifigs (so we can get the dungeon room back) but that was short-lived too. I might spend another couple of weekends trying to finalise another few sets, then just give up and start buying Lego to replace what's missing. Because after that is the really fun part - actually building sets.

This year was a year for *big* jigsaws. I did three sections of the Disney Behemoth - Dumbo, Snow White and Fantasia. Only one section to go now. I could have gotten it done by Christmas but it's very distracting and I had a tonne of other things that needed doing. Did a bunch of jigsaws at work too, although a lot slower on account of not being there as much (or at all). David and I made a 3D jigsaw model of the Titanic at Easter. I'm totally drooling over the Lego Titanic. I reckon I could do it, wait for it to not be on sale anymore, then sell it, and probably make a profit. Maybe I'll keep an eye out for sales ;) Very slow progress on the paint by numbers I got last Christmas. The main blocker there is the difficulty just *seeing* it - even with reading glasses I still need a magifying glass to see the tiny numbers. I took the plunge and bought myself a clarinet in September. I've been practising most days, but I still really struggle with bridging the register and the upper register notes. And reading music. I'm ok with the notes but not the tempo, so really struggle with playing music I don't know the tune to already.

Tech. Our NAS power supply died in March (someone let the smoke out). Stu bought a new one and replaced it himself. At some point we should probably get something more modern (with a higher version of SMB). The E: drive died in my computer, and since it was nine years old decided to get a new one. Haven't used it much but it seems pretty snappy. Continued frustration with Apple. Apple decided after one update this year to arrange all photos on the phone by month. This was great! But in the next update they reverted to a thousand photos per folder. And it's *still* messing with the datestamps on my photos. Hate Apple. Hate. Other purchases. Had to get new jeans. Eventually found some that are mediocre. Hating the fact that they don't make girls jeans with decent pockets. We also got a frame made (online) for my last paint by numbers, but the mounting bracket was mounted off-centre. Sigh.

Around the house. Had a lot of frustration at the beginning of the year with bathroom sealer companies not getting back to me. Eventually got a shower sealing company to come have a look. They confirmed loose tiles/cracked grout, but wouldn't replace them because there's asbestos in the walls. We bought a new mattress and then a new frame. King size which is great, but ultimately disappointed with it all. We watched a bunch of videos from Solar Quotes, but a year later we still haven't done anything about solar. Before winter I was doing a little bit of weeding, and got back into it when it warmed up. I make piles and piles, but everything grows back faster than I can get rid of it. I'm really really looking forward to getting green and organic waste pickups every week. It'll be easier to stay on top of garden waste, and our regular bin might go out like once every six months instead of every month or so like it does now.

Didn't eat out much this year. We did go to Ramen O a few times, and Koku Super Kare a couple of times, but would be good for both of those to have a cheaper, smaller lunchtime option. I went to Herbert's a few times, mostly with Tony and/or the Chrises and Neil. The sweetie and I tried KorBQ in the mall for our last work lunch together. We went to Pizza Artigiana once, and Dumpling Inn seems to be closed permanently which is sad. Had brunch with Annie at The District in April. We had Chong Co in May, and delivery from them a couple of times. Had brunch with Kit at Stellas by the Lake in June (it's no longer Black Pepper). Went with EffanC and R&F to Hachiko in July and Indian Pantry in October (which was our first outing post lockdown). Had Charnie's Noodle and Dumplings delivery in November, which was somewhat underwhelming, and Sichuan Chinese takeaway a couple of times in December, which is expensive but nice. Subway did a "cheesy garlic bread" (garlic butter, plus extra cheese) for a while which was awesome.

Cooking-wise, tried a few new things and some old favourites. There was zucchini spaghetti early in the year from some epic zucchinis we got from Con. I tried oven baked feta pasta (Uunifetapasta) from Tik Tok which wasn't too bad (but all that feta is way too salty for my blood pressure). I had a go at replicating Dominos puff pastry pepperoni and feta pizza. It was almost identical to the Dominos version - so amazing. But did someone say something about salt and blood pressure? We had Cath's crumbed basa a couple of times. I tried Ray's method of reheating pizza - frying it in a little oil with the lid on. OMFG this was so good - even better than it eating it fresh. Had that 80s deep pan vibe about it. Sooo good. I had a go at san choy bow in September which worked pretty well (Chris only has iceberg lettuce, so thought I'd have a go at doing something with that since I hadn't been to Coles in forever). I made meat jelly rice a few times - to use up meat jelly that you can't think of a better use for, mix with water and rice to make quite a flavourful rice. I experimented with slow cooker lamb roast (which I tried at the club for Christmas in July but only managed a mouthful of it because the rest of it got snapped up by everyone - I *think* it was really good?? :) ), and also slow cooker turkey (the first time it was fairly dry; it was better the second go but really works better with fattier meat). I made three new things from my Women's Weekly Gratins and Bakes book - Seafood Mornay Lasagna (expensive and fiddly and, well, seafoody), Spaghetti Rosa Bake (nice, but spaghetti is messy), Penne Arribbiata Bake (good, even with anchovies, and easy enough that I've done it a few times). We got a few nice strawberries off our strawberry plants, and there's chillis coming. I made a couple of different lemon cheesecakes in February and March, and combined them to come up with a definitive, easy to make recipe (that I tried before Christmas) that I'll probably use moving forward. I made a rocky road in February. I made Not Quite Nigella's mint slice in August, which was pretty good so made it again for Christmas.

And now for the lists!

Theatre/Shows/Exhibitions
* Hamilton (on Disney+ so you may not want to count it ;) )

Movies (at the Movies)
* Penguin Bloom

Movies (TV - not all movies, but I've included series)
* Studio Ghibli movies
* Honey I Shrunk the Kids series
* A whole heap of true stories and spy movies, which is what Stu tends to pick when it's his turn
* The Poseidon Adventure (saw the remake at some point earlier, the original is way better)
* Some old Australian movies - Playing Beatie Bow, Gallipoli, The Shiralee
* Fantasia 2000 a few times, and Fantasia
* Nanny McPhee 1 and 2
* The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel 1 and 2
* Snow White original and remake
* Dan Brown series
* Some Bette Midler movies
* Some Tom Hanks movies
* The Matrix trilogy
* Die Hard 1 and 2 and Love Actually in December

TV
* Discovery (finished season 3)
* The Simpsons (started off in season 5, ended up nearly finished season 19)
* The X-Files (seasons 1, 2 and a bit of 3)
* Laid Back Camp (seasons 1 and 2)
* Hibike! Euphonium (seasons 1 and 2)
* Encore!
* Amazing Race Australia
* Lego Masters
* A Place Further than the Universe
* The Surgeon's Cut
* Aircrash Confidential
* Alfred Hitchcock Presents (a bit of it)
* Human: The World Within
* Pandemic
* Diagnosis
* Brides of Christ
* The Movies that Made Us
* Air Crash Investigations (some recent seasons I hadn't seen)
* Love on the Spectrum
* Connected
* How the Mind Works
* Lie to Me (season 1 and most of season 2)
* You Can't Ask That (seasons 1 to 6)
* Sex Education (seasons 1 and 2)

Books
* Heartache and Birdsong by Sam Bloom, Cameron Bloom and Bradley Trevor Greive
* To Catch a King by Harry Patterson
* Seizure by Kathy Reichs
* Doctor No by Ian Fleming

Other stuff
* neighbourhood dog barked nonstop for hours on end for months. It make me super cranky all last summer break and well into the new year
* scanned a whole heap of stuff in the filing cabing
* Disney+ launched "Star" with a whole heap of new content it could take me a lifetime to watch
* saw the RAAF 100th Anniversary airshow which was pretty amazing
* went down to Lake Burley Griffin for a wander round with the sweetie on Easter Monday
* saw my magpies throughout the year
* voted for and listened to ABC Classic FM's top 100 "Music You Can't Live Without"
* had to start wearing masks indoors for two weeks in June - my first time was in July for seeing my dentist. I continued wearing a mask in the mall even though I didn't have to, because you can't trust people to stay home when they're sick.
* snap 7 day lockdown in August that lasted three months
* had a lovely quiet birthday at home with nice food and hobbies and had Chong Co delivered
* we were in an exposure site the Wednesday before the lockdown, but didn't find out until Wednesday a week later. Had to get tested but it meant only a week of full lockdown at home. It was a good thing I'd done a big food shop that morning. The Saturday after that we got an sms from Canberra health that we'd been in an exposure site - literally a week and a half after we'd been there. Fricken hopeless.
* I missed the earthquake! (in September)
* in September I found out the super annoying yappy staffies down the road killed each other. No more annoying barking!!!!
* the first of October was an epic news day. 52 covid cases recorded - highest ever in Canberra for one day. ScoMo announced opening of international borders a lot sooner than we first thought. Gladys resigned.
* saw the remains of Floriade in Belconnen, but missed out on seeing it sans-crowds in Commonwealth Park
* would often go three weeks between Coles shops during the lockdown, getting essentials at Chris's
* went to the online funeral for Win Cartan. Still annoyed I didn't get to see them when I was at church in early 2019. Oh well, will see them in heaven soon enough.
* planted sunflowers across the road. One sprouted and is still going (last I looked)
* petrol prices hit an all time high in November
* mask mandate reintroduced just before Christmas (I reckon it should have been weeks earlier)

So there we have it. Another epic year. And for once I have this review done *before* the end of the year! It took *hours* :) Have a happy and safe new year. Get your booster. Eat less. Drink less. Sing. Floss. Stretch. Dance. Wear sunscreen.

Sunday.  12th.  Backdating because life got in the way, and then some.  BBQ leftovers for dinner.  Into season 2 of Sex Education.  Got my RSS feed down to 1.  1!!  (the pic I posted the other day).  I'd gotten heaps of stuff done around the house, but I was feeling super anxious about all the computer stuff I didn't get done over the weekend.

Look at all the lemon marmalade Stu made!

Monday.  Woke up at like 5:20 #grunt.  Ok day I guess.  I renewed Stu's domain name, booked a covid booster and bought a new computer.  Although nothing on the regular todo list - this was just catching up from stuff I should have done on the weekend.

Tuesday.  Dunno, I don't have any notes.  But here's a photo of Stumpy doing pushups.

Wednesday.  Spent all morning explaining to people how email works.  Le sigh.  Spent all afternoon doing all the doco for all the rules I deleted recently (and not many interruptions which was nice).  Then weeding, music, leftovers, work photo labelling and year in review reading.

Thursday.  At work, blerf.  We had a morning tea which sufficed for lunch, so I worked through lunch on the jigsaw in a push to get it finished just in case it was the last time I was in for the year.  And I did finish it!  Had a nice last drinks of the year, then pizza and tv.  Dominos was hit by a ram raid, which I thought was totally bizarre, I mean who even pays in cash anymore.  Still, it's one of the busiest Dominos stores in Australia, so if there was the one to get with even a small percentage of cash payments that'd be it.

Friday.  Helped with some prep for some Saturday work.  Die Hard 2 in the evening.  

Saturday.  A day of All The Things, and even some overtime.  Had quite a productive day, including making a lemon cheesecake, although my todo list is still years too long.  Matrix Revolutions in the evening.

Sunday.  Too stressed about everything to sleep.  And the storm certainly didn't help.  Woke up at 6:05 so decided to get up and go do some food shopping.  I was a bit slow getting everything put away, and then suddently it's mid morning.  hrmm.  I did get a litt bit of stuff done in the morning, and finished season 6 of You Can't Ask that at lunch.  Then in the afternoon I went down to Herbert's to join Tony and a bunch of his friends for an early birthday celebration for him.  The walk down was in the rain, but that didn't stop me from taking lots of photos of flowers.  There was some nice jazz music going at Herbert's, and a few of us went back to Tony's after for another drink (including a very green blackberry sour).

No notes for the evening, but I certainly didn't feel up to fighting with my phone and blogging.

Sunday.  17th.  Not backdating ;)  Spent about four hours cooking All The Food that I'd bought that morning - lamb roast, cauliflower bake and roasted veggies which was dinner, as well as some pork mince/bacon/onion to have whenever (froze half straight away), butter chicken (from a simmer sauce, made up five meals with rice, froze two of them), Asian style beef cheeks (which went into the evening because I was late starting, and froze some of that too).  Was quite exhausted by all the effort by the end of it.  Started watching Big Business (not sure that I'd ever seen it - if I had it was a very long time ago).  

Monday.  Slept relatively well.  Busy day.  I thought I'd have some time to sit down and clean up stuff on the proxies from the weekend.  bwhahahahah.  Yeah right.  Got pulled in every other direction including more upgrades and people wanting All The Things.  Not even enough time to consider some other cleanup work I'd planned for the week.  Then got asked to do some firewall rules in a new environment that I have ZERO experience with.  So much for an RDO this week.  Also got a letter saying they're planning on cutting off our power next Thursday.  Which means either going into the office, or having that RDO.  I think I'll take the RDO.  Because, jigsaws, paint by numbers, weeding, decluttering.  All those things I never have time to do because I spend so much time on the computer.  After work was weeding and music practise and dinner, but the sweetie cooked dinner (salmon and salad) which was lovely of him.  Managed 224 photos in an hour after dinner (mostly in Miniland in Legoland Billund).  But I still hadn't emptied the dishwasher from the morning or put away the towels from the weekend or my clothes from today.  Fricken stop the world I want to get off!!!  I don't have time for this whole going to work malarky.  Into season 17 of The Simpsons (which unusually didn't start with a Treehouse of Horror).  Also finished Big Business while continuing to label, managing 311 all up, finishing day 42 in Legoland Billund.  Not a bad effort.  Now mostly caught up.  Was putting away all the stuff from the dishwasher when I realised I was missing a baking dish.  OMFG I'd left it in the oven overnight!!  With potatoes in it!! (to give the potatoes a wee bit longer to cook).  Decided they'd be fine and chucked em in a container in the fridge.

Tuesday.  Slept ok.  But had a pretty horrible day.  Still no time to clean up from the weekend because busy doing upgrades, and freaking out over someone who may be leaving and leaving me with aforementioned firewall rules in new environment which I have ZERO experience with, then there was two and a quarter hours in meetings and stoopid tickets and people not cleaning up mess and I literally had a couple of meltdowns during the day because it was all too hard. 

But look! Exclamation point rainbow!

Did some weeding then headed out for dinner.  It was Cath's birthday so they'd decided to take up the easing of restrictions to go out for dinner with R&F.  We were a bit nervous about heading out into covid-infected Canberra, but we were the only group in the restaurant, other than three or four people that came for takeaway pickups.  It was actually a lovely night out, awesome to catch up with friends we hadn't seen in months, and lots of yummy food.

Wednesday.  OMFG epic insomnia.  Woke up a bit after 2am and never got back to sleep :(  So a complete zombie morning, although I did manage to get some stuff done so that was ok.  Did weeding and music practise after work and even managed 122 photos (from my afternoon in Copenhagen).  Was super epic tired though.  And also got the sad news that Mrs Cartan had died.  In bed by 9pm.

Thursday.  Slept much better.  Dennis (an ex-colleague of Stu's) came over for coffee and a croissant before week (which also made me nervous, because, covid).  But I was in a MUCH better mental state at work and got a great long primer from Sharpie on firewall rules in new environment which I have ZERO experience with.  Usual Thursday night.  Started watching Beaches.  Because Bette Midler.  

Friday.  Slept well enough.  Ok morning.   Took an hour out of work to watch Mrs Cartan's funeral.  Live-streamed funerals are pretty much commonplace now.  What a world.  I think I'll post some extra detail in a separate post.  A little after that was lunch time, and I finished watching Beaches.  Watching two funerals online in a couple of hours was quite surreal.  Busy afternoon, then weeding etc.  Started watching Down and Out in Beverly Hills, because Better MIdler.  Watched the first half of The Shiralee, which neither of us had ever seen.

This is part of the jungle I'm trying to clear with my weeding.

Saturday.  Slept well!  Then a day of All The Things.  Had a super productive day which was great.  Spent a few hours in the afternoon getting back into sorting Vic's Lego - this time all the minifigs so I can clear a space so Stu can do some sorting.  In the middle of that a couple of young magpies came down into the backyard and they were both singing which was lovely.  Watched the second half of The Shiralee in the evening.

Sunday.  Today.  Rinse and repeat of yesterday in some ways.  Spent a good chunk of the afternoon planning our Oberammergau trip.  After we decided to cancel the tour, I decided we should book just Oberammergau, lock it in, then see how things pan out.  If we have to cancel it'll be 36 Euros (I paid for cancellation insurance) and that's it. So booked that, and then started making maps of all the things we want to see.  I locked in all the places from Como, then I started going through the tour itinerary to see what they had planned to see, and made a map of those too.  Some days would have been good to do on tour (like Cinque Terre with a boat cruise) but other days would have been a waste, like the day doing a cheese factory tour (I mean sure, that would have be fun, but not really worth the money) and a tour of the Ferrari musem.  Not to mention the many half days given over to "free time".  Let's just hope covid has calmed down somewhat in Europe by then.  I have more confidence in that than I do in America early next year.  Dinner tonight will be some butterfly lamb with all the roast veggies.

Agonisingly slow progress on Mickey

Monday.  4th.  Not backdating for a change ;)  After I blogged last week we had lemon chicken for dinner (pulled out of the freezer from a club night early in the year).  Started watching Snow White and the Huntsman.  It was dark and slow and she's not exactly fair and pure slashing people with spikes, just sayin.  My legs were too restless to finish watching it.  

Tuesday.  Woke up at 4am and never got back to sleep :(  So a zombie morning.  Although was fairly busy all day.  Managed to label 153 photos before dinner - helped that Stu cooked!!  We defrosted some uncooked pork loin which he fried up with some greens and had with rice.  Very nice.  316 photos labelled all up - actually caught up with my schedule!  The photos were mostly in Miniatur Wunderland in Hamburg - amazing place.

Wednesday.  Woke up at ~3am for a while but eventually got back to sleep.  Busy in the morning but fairly quiet in the afternoon.  Into day 41 of Eurasia photo labelling - I'm *almost* up to 20000 photos labelled!  Only 37 behind schedule, not too bad.  

Thursday.  Slept okish.  Fairly busy day.  I wasn't planning to have virtual drinks, but a couple of the guys asked, so we did it with five people all up.  Watched the fourth episode of Connected - Digits which was pretty interesting.  Stu was learning about that stuff for work a while back.  Finished watching Snow White and the Huntsman.  I went in with very low expectations.  It met expectations.

Friday.  Awake from 12:30 til about 3am with hurty and insomnia.  Hurray.  So zombie day.  Had a two hour support call in the morning which was epic draining.  Had a bit of fun in the afternoon though.  Had a tv dinner for dinner, because Friday.  Then we watched The Da Vinci Code.  I saw this at the movies in 2006.  Stu thinks we'd seen it together at some point, but I never blogged it so no idea.

Saturday.  Woke up about 5:30 needing to pee, so sleep was all over from then.  Had a pretty productive day doing All The Things.  Stu cooked dinner again - this time a gnocchi bake.  I ate too much.  ;)  Then we watched Angels and Demons.  

This is the first time I've ever done the edge first.. that's how hard the rest of it is!

Sunday.  Today.  Bit of a late night last night due to Stu cooking dinner (always takes a long time ;) ) and then him decided we should also start watching a new series of anime.  So actually slept quite late - til 6:37!!  Fairly quiet day.  Did achieve some things on my list though, including filling the green bin and some music practise.  Have started trying to play (and not screech) upper register notes.  Not as bad sound-wise as high recorder notes, but quite difficult.  The transition from A to B is a nightmare.  In the afternoon we went over to Annie's because she invited us over for afternoon tea.  It was the first time we'd seen any of family or friends in two months!  So that was lovely.  Came home and prepped veggies for dinner (to have with some leftover roast pork I dug out of the freezer).  And here we are - having my photos downloaded and processed and blogged all by 17:25 - a miracle! ;)

Monday.  26th.  Backdating.  Frustration and grumpiness at work *all day*.  Finished up day 25 labelling (which I should have done on the weekend).  In the end labelled 261 photos in the evening, so mostly caught up to where I wanted to be.

Tuesday.  Not much better day than Monday.  Ended up worse, and feeling depressed cause I suck and noone likes me.  Had leftover pasta bake for dinner (and got a yuk taste of anchovies).  Backed up my computer but didn't do any photo labelling.  Did jigsaw and played 2048 for the first time in a couple of years.  Even got up to 4096.

Wednesday.  Woke up at 3:23 and never got back to sleep.  So it was a zombie day.  Couldn't really concentrate on anything, not helped by people interrupting every five seconds.  Doc Oc pizzas and wine for dinner.  Started watching Queen: Days of Our Lives (2011).

Thursday.  Slept quite a bit better (went to bed at 20:30), other than being awake for an hour or two in the middle of the night cause of hurty.  In what world is a monthly cycle 21 days???  FFS.  Ok day.  Mulled wine at drinks for a Christmas in July night.

Then met up with EffanC and R&F at Hachiko for dinner which was lovely.

It was a lovely night and a great reminder that I do have some pretty great friends.

Friday.  Ok day.  Knocked off work a little early but then spent the evening prepping for tomorrow - for the club Christmas in July.  Struggled to get onto the butcher to order the pork - firstly couldn't find a phone number online, ended up having to resort to Yellow Pages.  But then they wouldn't answer the phone :(  Then I started stressing about fitting CRD into the car with all the foods and gear.  Sigh.  Finished the first episode of Queen: Days of Our Lives, and started episode two.  

My little patch of floriade is sprouting!

Saturday.  Headed out early and did the shopping for dinner.  Finished the Coles shop quite quickly, then headed back to the butcher.  Turns out their phone handset was broken which is why they weren't answering.  Luckily was able to get enough pork.  Then picked up CRD and headed out to the club.  Set everything up and took a photo of all the food.

First up was getting the lamb ready and into the slow cooker.  I'd never done lamb like this in the slow cooker so had no idea how it would turn out.  It actually turned out really well - lovely and moist.  

I had to wash pretty much everything before I started.  All the cooking gear was covered in white dust.  And I literally had to leave the kitchen a couple of times while other people wandered in and started fussing around and washing things up.  I actually can't concentrate with people buzzing about, super stressful.

Then I prepped all the pork - just oil and salt.

Then made a couple of epic potato bakes.

I also made up a sweet potato salad, and some lactose-free roast potatoes

The oven is the slowest oven in the world, so I probably should have left the foil off a lot longer on the potatoes

I delegated making the roast turkeys in the bbq.  So we had a bain-marie full of pork, the slow cooker full of lamb, and another bain-marie with the turkey.  The pork and lamb turned out beautifully, but the crackling didn't work so well (slowest oven in the world) and the turkey was over done on the bottom (really need a better way to do it than on the barbeque).

I also made a big batch of gravy, and a pot of apple sauce

There was also a big pot of peas/corn/carrots.

Had a couple of helpers to serve it all up.  It was quite well received .. phew!!

Chris brought these great little puddings

And Tab brought puddings and pavlovas and fruit and ice cream.

Then there were some very noisy games so I went and hid because it was all too loud.  Later went out and had some whiskey and rum in the sun room.  This whiskey smelt like peanut butter and tasted like butterscotch schnapps.  Yum!  And the Master Mary rum tasted like Christmas.

Then loud people came out, so I went to bed.

Sadly after really concentrating on the food all afternoon and evening, I really didn't feel like I caught up properly with anyone.  I actually only sat down at the table for a few minutes to scoff my dinner.

Sunday.  Slept relatively well.  Went up to finish cleaning up and packing up.  Found out the cause of all the white powder around the kitchen - mice had been getting into the corn flour and tracking it all around.  I even saw a couple of mice running around the shelves.  I threw out anything that had mouse holes, which was all the corn flour and some of the regular flour.  Anything open but with no evidence of mouse activity I brought home to reassess.  And anything unopened and still sealed with no holes I put into a sealable plastic container. 

They pulled the pergola down while I was cooking on Saturday 

Then came home after dropping off CRD.  But it was still nearly lunch time by the time we got home, and I was my usual Sunday-after-a-club-event-depressed because of the lack of time at home on the weekend.  I did manage to clean out a shelf in the pantry and water change all the downstairs fish tanks and download photos, but not blog.  Used up some of the mince I cooked last weekend with some One Pan Dinner.