Monday into BBT season three, photo labelling.  Tuesday and Wednesday rinse and repeat.

Had this on Tuesday.  It's been in the freezer since before I moved to Canberra.  Since before iPhones were invented.  Before social media was a thing.  The world has changed around this little ice block.  Then I ate it :)

Thursday was a long pub lunch for Jeff's farewell.  First appearance of Bernadette in BBT in the evening.

Friday met up with the sweetie for a drink (joined by some of his colleagues) and dinner (Kimchi because the sweetie wanted KFC).  

Then I left the sweetie home alone and drove down to Kit and Pete's.  Kit was finishing up her last assignment for the year.  So she finished up that, then we had a drink and went to bed.  After meeting this little monster.  He looks like George but is nothing like him.  I mean he's nice enough and all, but *really* doesn't like being picked up.  And he eats *everything*.

Saturday morning Pete cooked breakfast - turkey egg and bacon mcmuffins with hash browns.  Yum yum yum.

Then went and said hello to all the animals.

Then headed out to pick up some feed for Kit's horse.  There were birdies.

Went and visited Jet.  He's quite pretty.

Back to Kit's.

Chloe came over with three of the kids, and we had a bit of a wedding planning session.  Went through the todo list and discussed all the things.  And did a trial run of the table decorations.

When it cooled down later in the afternoon we went back to have a ride of Jet.

I even had a little ride.  But because of the design of the saddle, changing the stirrup length is too hard, so I could only just reach the stirrups with my toes so it wasn't very comfortable, and I certainly didn't feel stable enough to do anything other than walk.

Came back and looked at the sunset and had a drink outside with the girls.

Pete cooked a nice dinner of chorizo and mushroom pasta.

After dinner we played Kismet.  With the snake.  Kit won the game.

And I got snake kisses.

Played a couple of games of Monty Python Fluxx.  Kit won a game and Pete won a game.

Sunday typed up wedding planning notes.  Then we went into Husky for lunch of fish and chips.

And for a walk along the beach and rock pools

I thought these looked pretty colourful

Then we went back to the house.  I packed up all my stuff and went home.  I nearly hit a tortoise that was just standing in the middle of the road on Macs Reef Road or Bungendore Road.  And it rained.  A lot!

Didn't feel like going food shopping, so the sweetie ordered Chong Co delivery - several meals worth so we could have leftovers all week :)  Watched Goldeneye in the evening.

I'm backdating this entry to a week ago.  I was sick last weekend so didn't feel like blogging, then it all got too hard.  I'm also using a View to a Kill quote even though I didn't watch it last week, because otherwise I would have had two to use this week ;)

Monday I got home and put on my washing and sat down at my computer only to find the internet wasn't working.  Rebooted the router but it didn't come back.  Messaged a few people around - turns NBN were doing work all day Monday resulting in various outages.  Damien's internet came back but ours didn't.  And there was *nothing* on Internode, iinet, Aussie Broadband, Telstra or TPG's websites about the planned (or, as it turns out, unplanned) outages.  Fricken useless ISPs.  Stu got home and logged a fault with Internode.  It ruined my plans for the evening (labelling photos) because you need the internet to see geo location of photos.  I did do a whole heap of filing of photos from the past few months though.  But even then I got frustrated because I couldn't check geo locations of photos I was filing, or Foursquare history to confirm locations. 

Also on Monday I had to drop the rent on my place in Sydney by $40/week.  Turns out there's a surplus of unit rental accommodation in Sydney and prices are dropping.  Hurrah.

Tuesday there was still no internet.  So no photo labelling, just more filing of photos.  Internode messaged Stu to say they wanted someone on site all Thursday morning.  #grunt.  

Wednesday someone accidentally broke everything, so stayed back til 21:30 helping fix everything.  The equinox sunset shone all the way down the floor which was pretty cool.

Thursday I flexed off to wait around for the internet to be fixed.  At about 10:20 a dude turns up and barges into the house wanting to see the modem.  I mean literally - he didn't wait to be invited in.  I was pretty cranky about this because this outage WAS NOT OUR PROBLEM.  NBN caused the outage, they should be able to fix it without even needing to come anywhere near our property.  So he looks at the modem and of course gets sad by the fact we have our connection patched into a patch panel and not a direct connection from outside.  Then he wanted to see where the connection came into the house and I showed him the corner of the roof and said way up there.  Anyway he had a bit of a sad and got on his phone and said he was going to go check the node.  Yeah you do that buddy.  I did a bunch of gardening out the front while I waited for him to come back.  About an hour later he came back.  He checked the line and plugged the modem back in.  Checked on my computer and all good!   Yayyy!  Yes, NBN had disconnected us on Monday and hadn't bothered to reconnect us.  Happened to a house three doors down too apparently.  Retards.

But.  Flowers!

Hopped straight on a bus to work (even got a free ride!).  Had quiet drinks and pizza leftover from Wednesday night for dinner.  Had a chat to Kit about her hen's night.

Friday met up with EffanC for drinks and pizza at the Pot Belly (pizza three nights in a row hrmm) then adjourned to their place for a while.

Saturday I woke up with a sore throat.  So a slow start and didn't get too much done.  Then it was hurty which stuffed up the afternoon.  Did food shopping quite late.  Realised that at some point recently, Microsoft FINALLY enabled control-backspace in Notepad!!  I've only been waiting for that for twenty years!!  Still not enabled in our work SOE though.  Watched The Crimes of Grindelwald in the evening which was a confusing mess of a movie.  

Sunday still sick.  Had a long lie in although very little actual sleep.  Played through a whole heap of escape room games.  The first few I found were really good, but after that the ones I played were pretty lame - incessant ads (even *in the middle* of doing puzzles) or would lose progess if you got out of the game you were in.  We had to cancel the hanami lunch with Nat and Andrew because Nat was worried about getting sick.  We did have a beer and some honey soy chicken chips anyway.

Tried to sleep in the afternoon but failed.  Stu cooked salt and pepper squid for dinner.  Watched the last episode of Veronica Mars season four.  I could see the ending coming like an invetible train wreck and I was NOT impressed.  It was a total slap in the face which ruined the whole last season.  Everyone on IMDB was *pissed* and I don't blame them.  

Early night Sunday, and decided I wouldn't be going to work Monday.

I first met Aunty Di and Uncle Graham when our family started going to St Clements thirty years ago in 1989.  Although at the time they were just plain Diana and Graham.  It was only when Chrissie came back from New Zealand in the middle of 1989 that they became known as Aunty and Uncle.

They became good friends of the family.  My parents would often play cards/games with them, and they went on multitudes of church bushwalks and weekends away together.  

In recent years I saw them at various parental type birthdays, and several times when they came down to visit Chrissie.

Graham and Diana on their 25th Wedding Anniversary

Diana, Dad and Graham about to walk across the new Woronora Bridge

Graham and Diana with Dad and Mum at Sydney Aquarium

Bushwalking group walk to Nellies Glen in Blue Mountains.  Graham and Diana, Dad, Jeff Anderson, Garry Le Clerc

Diana and Graham celebrating Mum's birthday at Sizzler

Diana and Graham celebrating Dad's birthday at Tradies

Graham and Diana celebrating Mum's birthday at Tradies

Diana and Graham at our wedding

Graham and Diana celebrating Mum's birthday at Tradies

So we were all in utter shock and disbelief yesterday.

See you in heaven guys...

Tuesday I spent all day thinking it was Wednesday.  So annoying.  Did catch up on my photo labelling, doing both Monday and Tuesday nights.

Tuesday and Wednesday when we came home and turned the heater on, nothing happened.  The house was already so warm.

Friday was another $5 lunch at Rashays.  I thought I'd give them another chance to redeem themselves with their steaks.  I asked for rare.  I got medium-well.  This steak was a lot thinner than previous ones, so I guess that makes it kinda hard.  We aren't likely to go back once the May special is over.  Won't wanting to be paying triple the price or more.

In the evening I met up with the sweetie and he took me to Akiba for dinner.  Had a lovely dinner which I'll put in a separate post.  After dinner we did some food shopping.  I finally got to use the shopping trolley tool I found!  (I found a little trolley tool on the ground outside work and grabbed it.  So that if when all the trolley bays are broken or filled with the wrong sized trolleys I won't have to take my trolley all the way back inside.  Such a cool device).

Saturday morning was a quick bit of housework but mostly just getting organised to go out to the club.  We were only staying overnight but we had enough *stuff* in the car you'd think we'd be going for a week.  I spent a couple of hours trying to sort out and clean the old van so we can sell it.  Stu sat by the fire and did lots of reading for uni.

We had the pizza oven going in the afternoon and cooked quite a nice pizza for dinner (we cheated and used a store-bought flatbread base).  The sweetie and I struggled to rememeber the rules of Cribbage, and I won a game of that with him.  Then there were several games of Epic Jenga.  I lost the first two games.  I *never* lose that game.  Sad times!

Sunday morning we came home.  I just had a nice quiet day, mostly just checking off Vic's Lego.  Cooked Not Quite Nigella's Asian Style Beef Cheeks for dinner.  Is it possible for something to have *too much* flavour?  It's so intense!  I'm half tempted to use a little coconut milk or cream in it next time to lighten it up a little.  Watched You Only Live Twice in the evening.

Today I had a quiet but productive day, getting through quite a few annoying items on the todo list.  Cooked a bunch of veggies and the other pizza base for dinner.  Not *quite* as good as in the pizza oven, but not too bad.

I didn't get to do any photo labelling tonight.  Too much catching up to do.  And backing up my blog.

I need more of it.  Everything takes longer to do than it should, and there's just not enough hours in the day to get it all done.

Pretty standard week.  Busy in parts, not busy in others.  Fun and games with failed hardware, but did get dual nics working on the mail server in the new environment (well Connor did the hard bit, I fiddled with the server config).

Thursday the return of the vomit pizza!  Well not quite, but it does have a cheesy sauce base.

Also, as it turns out, I never posted a photo of the original vomit pizza.  This was taken in August 2017.  OMFG it looks disgusting but it was sooo good ;)

Saw this Friday morning which made us lol

Friday came home a little early.  Started watching He's Just Not That Into You which was a bit of fluff, kinda reminded me of Love Actually where everyone is connected to everyone else.  When the sweetie got home we had leftovers and started watching The Desolation of Smaug.  Way too long a movie and we ditched it with still a little over an hour to go and went to bed.

Saturday morning catching up on house stuff.  Then headed out to the club.  Where we accidentally bought a new van.  Which is about five times the size of our last van (actually probably even bigger).

Then back home, and straight out again, to EffanC's for drinks and cheese on one of the last warm days of the season.  Had dinner of one of C's amazing salads.  So all very nice.  Except the drama.  Don't like drama.  Dropped in to see Annie and the kids and Daisy for a bit as well.

Saturday night/Sunday morning woke up around midnight and didn't get back to sleep til after 4am :(  So was a bit of a zombie today.  I thought I'd do a little Lego picking (finish picking the six sets I started this week) til maybe lunch time, then tackle the todo list.  Except I was still going strong on the picking by dinner time and I'd done like ZERO things on my todo list :(  Well other than finish watching He's Just Not That Into You.  And I did pull out some periwinkle and load the green bin.  Kit called just before dinner asking if I'd be a bridesmaid, which is very exciting (Audrey was going to find it too difficult, living in another country and all).  Roasted some potatoes and had those with leftover chicken and watched Discovery.

How do you stop windoze 10 just forcing a patching reboot whenever it damned well feels like it???  HATE Microsoft.  More time taken out of my evening trying to get back into everything it shut down.

Now just need to find some time to breathe....

22.1.19

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

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

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

24.1.19

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

25.1.19

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

All in all a pretty fun week.

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 :)

So where were we?  Oh yes, yet another week has passed..

Wednesday morning we hopped a flight to Melbourne for Kit's graduation.  

!!!

Her parents were overseas so couldn't make it, so we filled in.  

Wait, let me backtrack a minute.  On Tuesday morning the sweetie messaged me to say his ballot for a points upgrade to business class had gone through.  So I'm like.. friggen great.. now I could lose my left-side-of-the-plane window seat.  So I tried to check in online.  I was able to choose seats on the left side of the plane (yayy!!) but the screen hung after the declaration of dangerous goods.  I tried to reload the page but it just said I couldn't check in online.  Thinking it was me stuffing up the webpage loading I tried to call Qantas to reset the error.  None of the options on the phone menu matched anything I wanted so I just ###### in an attempt to talk to a human.  Well it did put me in a queue.  For the next forty five minutes.  In the end I tried the online webchat, and got through to a human pretty quickly.  They said because of our upgrade we couldn't check in online.  Well why didn't you fricken say that on the error on the webpage you buttplugs!!!!  Why make me waste fifty minutes on hold (before I evenutally hung up after talking to webchat person)?!?

Anyway.

So we got to the airport somewhat early, and sure enough did get the seats I requested which was a relief.  Had breakfast in the business lounge which is somewhat nicer than regular Qantas club, and I had bacon, eggs and mushrooms for breakfast and a croissant.

Ok so business class.  Never flown it before.  Ok the service was bit nicer/quicker.  They offered us still or sparkling water before take off.  And we got actual metal cutlery and didn't have to peel a cover off our quiche.  But the seats, while wider and more legroom, were more reclined than usual, and I couldn't actually reach the floor, even with my slight heels.  So somewhat uncomfortable.  I'd much rather business class on a long haul flight so I can lay down flat(ish).  It is somewhat more quieter in front of the engines though.

So on a Canberra to Melbourne flight you really want the left side of the plane.  You typically take off to the north from Canberra airport, then curl around to the west then south west over north Canberra.  Which means.. I can see my house from here!  Had a great view of Canberra, everything I hoped for.  At least that part of the flight was pretty awesome.

And then to Melbourne.

We got tickets for the Sky Bus, because it's like half to two thirds the price of taking taxis, and went pretty close to our hotel.  Funnily enough, we booked into Travelodge Docklands, where I've stayed twice in the past year for work.  When booking the hotel I asked for a room on the east end of the building, because it has a much nicer view.  But, like just about every other customer service experience I've had in the past couple of weeks, it was terrible, and they ignored my request, and we ended up on the west end of the building with a lovely view of the Channel 9 building.  Thanks Travelodge.  NOT!

We couldn't actually checkin when we arrived at 12pm, so dumped our stuff and headed over to the Convention Centre for the graduation.  We met up with Kit and Pete, and then we went to the pub across the way with Pete while Kit got a gown etc.  She met up with us just before it started and then left again.  We finished our drinks but even though we were only slightly later than the suggested time, the auditorium was almost completely full, and we had to sit way over on the side and couldn't sit with Pete, he was two rows in front.  The graduation ceremony was .. well it was a graduation ceremony.  Hadn't been to one since my own in 1996.  Was somewhat like I remembered.

Afterwards there was some pretty average "refreshments".  Kit got her degree framed and bought her stage photo, then we queued for the studio photos.  For like an hour.  We were getting pretty tired by then.  And they were all stoopidly fussy about anyone taking their own photos, which I thought was COMPLETELY ridiculous.  There was no way we were going to queue for an hour and then not buy any of their photos.  STUPIDITY, GFP!! I didn't even bother, but Pete got told off for trying to get a quick snap.  I hate that sort of attitude, GFP, JUST SAYIN!!

Afterwards we walked Kit and Pete back to their apartment and had a couple of quiet drinks (Kit's back was killing her and the sweetie was super exhausted so we didn't go out).  Then walked all the way back to our hotel, where we had thins and aero for dinner and watched the end of War Games.

In the morning...  well other than breakfast in the hotel which was ok .. but .. 

Second Qantas drama in a row.  I tried to check in to the flight but we had been "upgraded" to exit row seats.  Which are like THE WORST SEATS ON THE PLANE.  Right over the wing, you can't see a damned thing.  This is an epic DOWNGRADE for me.  And I couldn't change the seats online.  Once again, we had to go to the airport to deal with it.  I told the sweetie he could keep the seat if he wanted, but he said he'd sit with me.  So I explained my situation to the checkin dude who was all cool and gave us seats further back.  Although row 22 which is still a bit close to the wing.  Not like the seats I actually reserved when I booked.  Completely pissed off with Qantas over all the drama they caused me.  The flight wasn't even full, and we could have had seats further back.  At least the sweetie didn't have to sit in the middle.

So work, drinks, etc.

Friday morning was optometrist appointment.  Honestly Specsavers are *completely* unorganised.  I first went two years ago and got a full eye check and new glasses.  They said they'd like to get a baseline for potential glaucoma (family history and all), and scheduled me in for a checkup in a year's time.  So last year I got the reminder notice, and booked an appointment.  When I got there the staff were all like.. "why are you here?  You just had a checkup..? and I'm like .. um, because you told me to.  They eventually figured out I was just there for the glaucoma tests.  Again they said come back in a year.  So I got my reminder recently and booked in an appointment, making it quite clear that it was just for the glaucoma tests.  So I get one of the tests, but then the one of the optometrists comes out and he's like "why are you here?" and I then had to explain the situation AGAIN, IN FRONT OF EVERYONE IN THE STORE!!  Don't these guys understand *anything* about patient confidentiality???  I was actually pretty annoyed with the guy.  Specsavers please get your act together!

For lunch Neil and I were planning "grease" at KFC, but the queue was a bit long, so he suggested Grill'd, which usually involves sharing wine.  Then hot chocolate at Max Brennar.  Whoops ;)

Last Sunday night we watched Star Trek Beyond, which I could barely remember anything about it was that.. memorable..  So I decided we should watch all the Star Trek movies from the beginning.  So on Friday night we watched The Motionless, sorry, Motion Picture.  Honestly nothing happens.  They get called on to intercept a thing.  So they do.  And that's all they do for the next two and a quarter hours.  Although I can imagine that trekkies after a ten year break would have wet themselves over seeing the Enterprise on the big screen.

Saturday was out to the club for yet another whole day wasted, this time for the AGM.  

Oh I should mention, since we got back, after Pete's sister left on Friday, I was feeding Kit's animals.  On Saturday morning I went out and collected twenty one eggs!!!  So Saturday night we used nine of them to cook a frittata for dinner.  Fun times.

Then we watched Khaaaaaaan.  

Today was just a quiet day doing all the things, although not all the things, cause I don't have time for all the things.  Did do some food shopping and cooked a lamb roast for dinner. 

And then we watched The Search for Spock.  There's a bunch of funny quotes, but the one that transported me back at least twenty five to thirty years was "Up your shaft" which Scotty mutters to the turbolift.  I first saw this movie in probably about 1990 with Chrissie.  I can't remember anymore if we hired it or if it was on tv, or if we watched it at her place (I think we did) or mine.  But I do remember we both absolutely cacked ourselves over that line.

And so ends another week.

This is one of Kit's jigsaws.  I was down there one Thursday night and Pete and I started it, although Pete lost interest pretty quickly and Kit helped me finish it.  Fun little jigsaw.

David did pretty much all of this on one of his visits in April.  In fact he stayed up til 3am!  So an entire 1000 piece jigsaw in one night.  I will do this one again myself one day :)

We did this at David's place when I went to visit in May.  It glows in the dark!

Stu let me work on the next section of the Disney 40320 piece Memorable Moments behemoth upstairs.  I started it in late May and finished by 22 June (I came home early one Friday afternoon to watch the movie while finishing the jigsaw).  The only problem with doing it upstairs is it's harder to photograph the jigsaw "in front" of the movie.

I got this with a Games Capital voucher I'd been given.  I couldn't decide what to get for ages, so in the end got this Krypt spiral jigsaw.  More interesting that the plain coloured version of the same thing.  I quite enjoyed this, and reckon the plain coloured one would be easy enough because they print the pattern on the box so you'd know what shaped piece you were looking for.

So Saturday for lunch I had some leftover honey mustard chicken that I'd cooked during the week.  And forgotten to put in the fridge that night.  The kitchen stays pretty cold in this house, but I still tempted fate and had it for lunch on Saturday.  Sunday morning about 1am my bowels weren't too happy with me, and it was *probably* that.  And other than not being about to get back to sleep for HOURS, I was fine.

Stu went to work (again!) and I grouted the other half of the shower.

Then some photo stuff and started a new Wasgij jigsaw.  

Late in the afternoon Kit and Pete invited me down for a drink and to soak in the last of the afternoon sun.  Then played a few games, then came home for an early night.

Tonight I continued labelling the first day in Shanghai from our trip last year.  Made super difficult because China offsets its street maps from its satellite maps for "security" reasons by several hundred metres or so.  Silly really.