Sunday.  16th.  Had sausages and cabbage for dinner, and geotagged Mum's Tasmania photos from 1968.

Monday.  Slept ok.  Ok day, busy doing every except the one thing probably should have been doing.  But I did upgrade our master network diagram which is always fun.  Did some weeding in the afternoon (couldn't use "it's too hot" as an excuse).  Music, "filled gnocchi" for dinner.  Finished geotagging what I could of Mum's photos.  Saw a link on Blogography to Wordle so clicked through and played it (I think I might have heard/seen one or two references to it at some point in the past week or two).  This is my first ever attempt, and I got it in three goes!  This is probably not the best starting word, it was just what popped into my head.

Then after I'd done it I saw tweets from my brother *and* Jake who have also been playing it.  Synchronicity!

Tuesday.  Slept ok.  All the rain!!  But I was in a meeting during the worst of it, so forgot about clearing out the drain sump so the garage wouldn't flood.  Oops.  Wasn't too bad in the garage, but the backyard flooded again.  

Just for giggles I thought I'd try Eudora again, and this time it fricken worked and downloaded all my mail.  NFI why it didn't work before, or what made it start working.  In other windoze 11 crapfullness, "printscreen" (or alt-printscreen) no longer works.  I mean WTF??  Closest equivalent I can find is windows-shift-s which loads snippy which I can then capture a bit of the screen.  Windows 11 is a piece of crap.  And I'm still finding it super irritating that I can't drag a file onto an open application on the task bar and have it pop up so I can drag the file into the application.  I have to resize windows and have them out of the way so I can drag the file into the app.  Was super cranky about travel and everything was all too hard.  I give up.  Beer and pizza.  And Tuesday's Wordle was tricky - took all six goes!  (another not great starting word, I've since changed my strategy somewhat and start with more common letters).

Wednesday.  Couldn't get to sleep for ages, still depressed about travel.  My sneakers really started falling apart making it difficult to walk around.  These ones I bought in about 2005-2006 (while Stu was still living in Queensland).  But how am I meant to go shoe shopping without having to be around people?? 

Weeding, slide labelling and the sweetie cooked dinner (of some of the leftover mince, and cabbage and rice).

Thursday.  Couldn't get to sleep for ages again - stressing about the cruise.  Was sitting at my computer first thing in the morning pondering my shoes and decided to go into the mall to get some new ones.  I left a bit early and went to Kmart first to get some undies (I've been needing new ones for ages but haven't been shopping really at all in five months).  Then still had some time so went to Target and got an extra fitted sheet and pillow cases (which always wear out a lot faster than a flat sheet).  Then to Athlete's Foot and walked out in new shoes!  Just for giggles I went to Amcal to ask about RATs, and they had some!  So I bought a two pack (if there's any chance of us going to Tasmania we'll need to get tested before we go).  So a super successful morning, and only an hour late to work.  Had a play with deleting old domains out of our IP management tool which was a bit of fun.  

Friday.  Depressed about cruise.  Then the brother type person called - they've offered a get out of jail free card!  Can transfer credit to next year's cruise.  I'd rather go the year after, so I'll try and negotiate that, but it means we're not going to (at least for now) lose all our money!  But in not so great news, Lily has covid and is not doing well.  Ok morning, although a bit bored in the afternoon waiting for people to do stuff so I could do my stuff.  Chicken kiev for dinner and then watched Six Minutes to Midnight, which was a little far fetched, but the school was actually a real thing.  

Saturday.  Spent all morning at work doing a firewall migration, which went quite smoothly for the most part.  Then seemed to spend the afternoon not getting much done, other than sorting out some of my music.

Sunday.  Really just house bits and pieces.  Weekends are far far far too short.. hrmmm..

This afternoon has been making cheesecake (we have lemons coming out the wazoo) and photos/blogging.  And Stu put on the Hottest 100 from 2001.  I know a few of the higher (lower) numbered songs.  Have cauliflower bake and veggies in the oven to have with some lamb I dug out of the freezer.

Sunday.  9th.  Not backdating ;)  During the week I bought these mini capsicums, so thought I'd do a stuffing for them - a bit of mince, some brown rice, and feta.  Topped with a bit of shredded cheese and roasted for like 40 minutes.  Yummy!

Monday.  Woke up at ~3:45 hungry and needing to pee.  At this point the sweetie hadn't actually been to sleep yet!  Poor thing.  I didn't get any more sleep after that either.  It seems on a given night one of us will be awake.  hmmm.  Spent all morning doing finance and tax stuff, and most of the afternoon checking receipts against bank statements.  Had to laugh - the RTA *finally* closed off my etag account, but funnily enough they refunded me the deposit for the tag, even though I never returned it (it was crushed with my old car).  Maybe they figured it was so old it wasn't worth it.  Shrug.  And guess how many times I went to the ATM last year?  Once.  ONCE!!  And that was only to get cash out for the kids' Christmas presents.  At least ACT covid cases were down a bit (well maybe - chances are a lot aren't being reported now because RATs are taking some of the load).  Leftover pork (refried in jelly) and cabbage for dinner.  Then I watched Die Hard with a Vengeance.

Stumpy is a bit retarded sometimes!

Tuesday.  Awake for a while around dentist time - probably from the neighbourhood dog barking at a possum.  Depressed about losing all our money on the cruise, depressed about going back to work.  So my tolerance for the stoopid was at rock bottom.  After work went and got my booster jab.  They had plenty of people working the family queue which seemed to move quickly, but there was only one person processing the adult queue.  So I was waiting for over half an hour in a queue.  I think they moved a few nurses across from the family section once that queue quietted down, because they had a few people going by the time I got seen.  

Picked up Crust pizza on the way home, but they don't keep their pizzas in the oven like Dominos do, so one was a bit cold by the time I got there and got it home.  Bit sad to find out that Bob Saget died.  In the evening tried to file photos, but I just can't *see*, especially at night.  Super frustrating.  And my resized to 1280 wide photos only take up a quarter of the screen now.

Wednesday.  Dog was barking in the middle of the night again, but not for too long.  Otherwise I think I slept ok.  Felt in a much better mental state about work.  Decided to document Neil.  After lunch I started feeling trippy - the feeling you get when you're having an immune reaction.  Went and had a little lie down.  Didn't sleep of course, but did rest.  Felt weak and floppy all afternoon/evening.  But at least my immune system is *doing* something about covid, which is a relief.  Leftover lamb and salad for dinner.  As usual we put on The Simpsons over dinner, and as soon as it started I was like OMFG wide screen!  This episode (Take My Life, Please) first aired in February 2009.  And it was glorious!  Clean and crisp, so much nicer than the old animations.  Didn't feel like doing anything much, so put on the Disney 2003 version of The Young Black Stallion, which was ok for a kids movie, but short and sweet.

Thursday.  Felt much better after a decent sleep.  Ok day, more being Neil and documenting him.  Leftover stuffing mix and cabbage for dinner.  Started geotagging Mum and Dad's 1971 Tasmania trip photos.

Friday.  Took *forever* to get to sleep, but slept ok after than.  Ok day, more documenting and writing test plans.  Chicken kiev for dinner, and watched The Grand Budapest Hotel.  I'd seen it before and thought it was quirky but overly violent.  Stu thought it was weird.  Except I swear they sanitised the violence, because it wasn't nearly as violent as I remember it.  

This is the saddest thing.  These booties were on my baptism cake!  Mum had them in her china cabinet until she moved, then they'd been on top of my computer desk gathering dust.  They had already started to absorb moisture and collapse, but when I cleared off the top of my computer desk I moved them temporarily to the dining table.  Where they sat under the cooler vent.  And promptly melted into a puddle.  Sad times!!

Super annoyingly, the rear element of our oven seems to have died - it just didn't heat up the oven when I turned it on.  The thing is less that two years old which is a big stinking poo!!!

Saturday.  Spent much of the day geotagging Mum and Dad's Tasmania photos (and I got as many of them geotagged as I could of their trip).  In the afternoon I went down to Tony's to look at / pick up some maps and brochures for Tasmania.  Ended up staying for dinner which was nice.

Sunday.  House stuff and music in the morning, and looking at Tassie locations in the afternoon.  At lunch time we were sick of our usual lunches so went out for a drive to get some takeway.  Drove past the shop where a gas leak blew up the building. 

Then picked up some Oporto drive through and went to Diddams Close park to eat it by the lake.  That quite nice, although we did have a very captive audience watch us the entire time!!

Of course now I have to go and geotag all Mum's slides from her YHA trip to Tasmania in 1968 :)

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.  7th.  Not backdating for a change ;)  This was the slow cooker turkey we had.  I literally just plonked the thing in the slow cooker all afternoon, but it was a bit dry.  Will add some stock next time I think, and turn/submerge it half way through.  Had it with potato bake and veggies.

Monday.  Slept ok.  Spent the morning patching stuff we'd upgraded the other week.  The fighting with the proxy in the afternoon.  No music practise (still giving the wrist a rest), so labelled over 200 photos - the ones I was behind in from last week because I had no time on the weekend to catch up.  That was all of day 50.  Then Lie to Me and You Can't Ask That.

Tuesday.  Slept ok.  Last week I said I thought I'd finished rescanning Dad's slides, but I'm still finding a lot of fluffy ones at the beginning where I wasn't diligent/fussy/perfectionist enough.  I can't help myself, I *need* to rescan them to make them better.  Sadly these are ones I'd already processed as well, so that means I'll have to reprocess *again*.  Sad times. Busy busy day, too much stoopid.  Fun episode of The Simpsons in the evening (The Poseidon Adventure one).  Still managed 167 photos, into day 51.

Wednesday.  Another busy day.  Only 128 photos labelled - day 52 in Hokkaido.  Finished the week still 182 behind.  

This is me cheating on Mickey - doing one half literally on top of the other half.

Thursday.  Dropped into work to swap out my hard drives.  Then did our food shopping.  Coles was definitely quieter at 7am than it has been previously during lockdown.  I guess more people are relaxed about going at a more normal time and not sparrows fart.  Couldn't log into work for over an hour because the auth app on my phone had a spaz, then I got locked out, then I had to wait for the service desk.  It did make the morning pass a bit quicker though :)  Tacos for dinner.  Finished watching the Jim Carrey version of Fun With Dick and Jane that I started the other day/week.  Well half watched it really, it was a bit silly.  Rain!

Friday.  Rain! 

One of the baby magpie larks that's been hanging around our yard for a while.

Picked up the clarinet for the first time in a week.  I really need to get a neck strap to save my wrist.  XL was headed off to Sydney for the weekend, and Ward said something about getting her to eat something for him, and I was like, I want Din Tai Fung!  Of course then I had cravings for dumplings, so the sweetie had some delivered from Charnie's Noodle and Dumplings.  It was all nice enough, nothing super special though.

Watched Red Sparrow in the evening, but it was very violent, making it quite unpleasant.  I also get annoyed at spy movies because you can never know what side someone is really on, and quite often it's both.  Probably like real life, but still annoying to watch.

Saturday.  Got housework done first thing, then doing upgrades all morning.  But I'm dumb and don't know how to fix anything when it breaks.  Sigh.  Didn't get much done in the afternoon other than geotagging some of Dad's photos from sixty years ago.  !!  Did a bit of jigsaw and music practise and then suddenly it's nearly dinner time.  hmmm.

Moved the stuff on the left aside to take a progress photo

Finished season 3 of You Can't Ask That, then leftover dumplings for dinner, then watched Hachi: A Dog's Tale, an Americanised version of the story of Hachiko.  I think I started crying when Hachiko tried to stop him getting on the train that last time, and then for much of the rest of the movie.  hrmmm.

Sunday.  Today.  Wrote a massive long todo list for the day.  Did a small fraction of it.  I'm going to be dead before I finish my todo list.

Got the internal "edges" done today, and the left bubbles are back on top of the right side.  This weekend I also finished laying out *every* piece on boards, so all the pieces are on six boards for the six different shapes (plus one board of leftover twinklies).  So now every piece has to be there to find and put in.

Started photo processing and blogging early enough today to get it done, because now I need to go cook dinner for tonight and a few other nights this week.

Stop the world, I want to get off!

Sunday.  8th.  Filling in the evening after I blogged :)  Cooked All The Veggies for dinner.  Had all the roasted veggies, with mince and cheese and sour cream on the potato wedges.  Yumminess.

Simpsons, X Files, Air Crash Investigations.

Monday.  Ok day.  Got practise looking at traffic spikes and figuring out what they were.  Labelled 182 photos - have finished Egypt and onto London, day 28.

Tuesday.  Pretty quiet day, although didn't get much done.  Leftovers/Simpsons/jigsaw/cleaned kitchen/backed up computer and suddenly it's 8pm.  Hrmm.  And labelling goes super slowly when you need to identify every building in Legoland Miniland (eg Covent Garden, which I'd never been to before, so that took a bit of flying around Google Maps trying to find it).  So I only managed to label 26 photos before dinner, did a few more while watching tv, managing 48 all up for the evening.  hrmmm.

Wednesday.  Started off ok, but then felt like a failure because I couldn't solve some stoopid problems with stoopid firewalls and stoopid proxies.  Then arguments with people who made me feel like everything I do is wrong.  Sigh.  It was a wine and scotch and no photo labelling kind of an evening.  

Thursday.  Woke up at 3am but didn't get back to sleep ~5am :(  So I was tired and grumpy.  The bathroom sealer people called me in the morning - the asbestos test came back positive (duh) so they won't do minor works, they'll only do a complete bathroom renovation so the asbestos can all be removed.  Sigh.  More fighting with stoopid firewalls and feeling like a failure and people hate me cause I hate everything.  Felt miserable all afternoon.  

But on a lighter note, before lunch it was announced Canberra would go into a snap seven day lockdown due to our first local cases of covid in over a year (it finally happened).  And my first reaction was woohoo.  I mean literally.  To just stay at home and not have to deal with people (at least directly) for a week - heaven.  I mean don't get me wrong, I do actually feel really bad for peeps in the hospitality and "non-essential" retail whose anxiety levels will go through the roof not knowing where their next pay check will come from, or anyone that had a wedding or something planned for this weekend - that'd be pretty devastating for them.  Neil and I had lunch at the mall as usual, then we went for a walk through the fresh food section to laugh at all the people panic buying milk and toilet paper.  About half the trolleys we saw had toilet paper in them.

I should point out that after all the panic buying of toilet paper finished last year and it was readily available again, I bought a pack of 24 and put it downstairs.  Then I've continued to buy it normally ever since, knowing that if we ever did have a snap lockdown, we'd be set.  In fact we'd just opened a pack of 12, so won't need any in the short term.

At 12:49pm there was already a queue to get into Woollies

And there was a queue at Baker's Delight too

HBZ also went shopping just after lunch, and already all the toilet paper was gone, and it took him an hour and a half to get through the checkouts.  Yikes!

On the way home we stopped for essentials - read - beer! ;)  Although tragically, Chris had sold out of Corona! *gasp*  ;)

Beer and pizza for dinner.  This is why I'm going to die young:

Friday the 13th.  Got somewhat better sleep, and actually managed to achieve some stuff at work.  Went for a walk at lunch and saw my birds. 

In the afternoon I went to check the mailbox and this daisy was there to greet me

So I got photos of some of the other flowers out already as well

Picked up TV dinners from Chris's (we actually have a freezer full of leftovers, but I really didn't feel like cooking) - he said it had been pretty quiet. 

Watched the 2008 Get Smart with the sweetie, which was completely ridiculous but I was snorting all through it - just a bit of fun :)

Saturday.  I'd had an early night, but woke up a bit before 5 and never got back to sleep.  Turned 30.  I'll let you figure out what base (thanks DC :) ).  Stu cooked breakfast of Pialligo bacon and cheesy hash browns. So brown but so good!!!!

Then had a lovely day just pottering around the house, doing jigsaw and the like.  Stu also had fun, building his little morse code thingie...

At lunch we went for a walk to see the birds, and saw this very smelly burnt out car.

And the sweetie took a photo of me in front of the same wattle tree I had photos of the other day.

In the afternoon I did a 500 piece jigsaw as a break from the agonisingly slow Dumbo.  Sadly it was missing a piece, but that's what you get for Green Shed jigsaws.  The sky was pretty at dusk too.

We may have shared some bubbles.

We got Chong Co delivered for dinner!

We had the wagyu salad and the duck salad (I asked for everything "medium" but the beef was a bit hot for me - endorphins!)

As well as the pork belly prik pao (not crispy anymore from being in transit) and satay chicken

Delicious!

After dinner we put on Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, which we enjoyed with heated Gluhwein and candles.

And all through the day (except the 10 second blackout and time taken for the router to reconnect) Stu put on a John Williams playlist which added a wonderful soundtrack to actually quite a wonderful day.

Sunday.  Another nice quiet day.  Took ages to do slide fixup scanning because every time I rescanned a bunch of slides, they'd get dust in different positions :(  

Late in the morning we went for a walk and saw these tiny flowers

With bee!

For lunch I made salami and olive pizza scrolls

My lockdown lunch is better than yours!

In the afternoon I alternated between Dumbo jigsaw and Legoland photo labelling (including geotagging a bunch I'd taken on the train but hadn't set the location) - managed 113 photos - so I'm still *way* behind where I need to be.  I also pulled everything out of the freezer and did an audit of what we have.  There's quite a bit of leftover meat (including a bunch of food from various club nights), and some frozen veggies.  I'm thinking I might do an early morning shopping trip one day this week to get more fresh food.

Then put on dinner (all the veggies, with some pulled pork from the freezer) - finished off most of our fresh vegetables, and blogged.

Not backdating ;)  Watching Encore and blogging.

Monday.  15th.  Started back at the beginning with Dad's slides, starting to rescan all the ones that had lots of fluff on them from the scanner.  Probably redoing about a third of them per box.  Had a disjointed/distracted morning at work, not much better in the afternoon, but then lots of complicated and time consuming stuff came in late in the afternoon, hrmm.  Finished off the beef brisket we cooked the other week, and did some weeding.  Also managed to label four hundred photos!! (some in the morning, some before dinner, the rest after, including some during last night's Amazing Race).  Didn't blog though, had to backdate that ;)  Had to LOL at YouTube putting up ads for mens anti-chaffing underwear.. clearly Google thinks I'm a guy..

Also, these little buggers are everywhere at the moment, epic grunt

Tuesday.  Slept in a bit, whoops.  I just don't have enough time to do all the things in the morning.  Didn't finish scanning the box of slides for the day.  Another disjointed day, also it was very loud on account of being in the office.  Home late, but did manage to fill the green bin and clean the kitchen.  But then had to try and finish scanning slides (eventually did), label photos (didn't really get done, good thing I did so many last night), and watch last night's Amazing Race.  Need All The Time.  Really.  Had to LOL when a tv ad called out Hey Siri, and my phone answered!

Also, just on our way to work and there's a hot air balloon above our heads

Wednesday.  Couldn't get to sleep last night til well past midnight.  Then broken sleep til 2am.  Sigh.  Ok day I think.  Rinse and repeat of morning and evenings, nearly 8pm by the time I got to sit down at the computer.  Did get some photos labelled though and watched last night's Amazing Race.

Thursday.  Ok day I think?  Drinks and pizza, Simpsons/Laid Back Camp/X Files as per usual Thursday night TV.  

At drinks some guys brought some games along.  One was Tsuro which I played two games of.  I drew on the first game I played, and got booted off in the second.  Fun game.

This is why I'm fat, so much garlicy oily goodness!

Friday.  Hurrah for being at home.  Although did have to be on the phone half the day, blerf.  Leftovers of chicken and rice for dinner, some TV and Cool Runnings which I've never actually seen before, and an episode of Encore.

Saturday.  Got the housework done pretty early, then started work on processing Dad's slides.  I figured out how to add the shutter speed, aperture and focal length data of all Dad's slides into the files with excel to generate cli stuff to use exiftool to add it all.  Worked with all the processing of the photos, and got all the exif data added to all the files I'd rescanned in the past week.  Had cajun potato wedges for dinner, and then watched Seven Years in Tibet (which we'd never seen before) with the sweetie.

Should be fine right?

Sunday.  Another day of powering through getting the processing of Dad's slides up to date.  Ok so I didn't do much else all weekend, but I'm in a pretty good position to keep up with Dad's slides as I rescan them over the next couple of months, and then I'll be all done.  At least with his slides ;)  I might have also spent a bunch of time geotagging his photos from his holiday to Narooma in 1960.  And made a lemon cheesecake.  And planted some lemon seeds (that were sprouting inside the lemons).  And blogged.  And had some chicken from Robert's feast I defrosted and reheated.  And watched some more Simpsons, Laid Back Camp and Encore.  And blogged some more.  

2020.

Oh my.

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

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

But then.

The C word.

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

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

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

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

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

So a pretty wild year on that front.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Happy new year!! 

A long long long time ago the brother type person put me onto Geosetter by Friedemann Schmidt.  I've been using it to geotag my holiday photos since probably around 2010.  I take the GPS tracks from my PhotoMate, and geotag all the photos with it.

I've only been using Geosetter for the basics of geotagging, but a while back David showed me that Geosetter could pull even more location data from GeoNames a free location database.  Well free except the api key is restricted to 1000 requests an hour.  It'll work briefly at the beginning of the hour then stop.  But, turns out you can register for a free account.  So I did that, and in the Internet settings of Geosetter, you put your GeoNames details in, and away you go!  Did that the other night and got it working.  I haven't started going through and adding the data to all my files yet - I'll start to work on that methodically at some point.

A year or two ago Google started charging to use their maps API.  Geosetter fell victim.  It would still work, but the map would be very dark and have "for development purposes only" watermarks all over the page.  This also would occasionally work properly if you loaded the application at a quiet time when other people weren't using it as much.  Then it would stay working for a few days, so I'd leave it open so I could come back to it.  But for most of the time it just made it a bit harder to label photos because the page would be so dark.   David had also gotten around this problem by registering for a Google API key.  This one you need to pay for, but unless you're making a lot of requests, it's pretty cheap (0.007 USD each map load if I read it right).  So I found a guide online which describes how to get an API key and configure it in Geosetter.  So I did that tonight and got it working!  It took a bit of fiddling with Google as the developer guide doco neglected to mention associating the Maps Javascript API with the project. It also didn't talk about how to associate billing.  I had to fiddle around in the Cloud Platform settings to find those myself.  But now it seems to load properly, so that'll be much more betterer!

Fun times!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Monday I went and did the food shopping at lunch.  Definitely less crowded than the weekend.  Almost no pasta.  No liquid soap or vitamins.  Still no flour, dry rice, paper towel or toilet paper.  I was able to get a couple of tins of diced tomatoes, but a squeezy bottle of tomato paste and a four pack of tomato paste sachets was "too much tomato" and the squeezy bottle wouldn't scan.  Sadness.  We don't eat a lot of dried/packaged food, primarily fresh food, but the pantry stuff that we do use regularly (tomatoes/tomato paste/rice) is the stuff we can't get easily at the moment.  Geotagged day 6 in the evening.

Tuesday I woke up at midnight for an hour or two, and again from 5:30.  Le sigh.  Our rose bush put out a couple of roses right at the end of summer.

In the evening I made nachos.  I don't think I've ever made nachos before.  Fry some onion and garlic, a pack of pork mince (that I was lucky enough to get on Monday), with one of the sachets of tomato paste, some cumin and some kashmiri chili, with corn chips I topped with cheese and grilled, and serve with salsa, cheese and sour cream.

The boys *destroyed* them.  So much for leftovers!

Wednesday was minifig picking in the evening for a bunch of sets.  I still hate how Lego changed the colours of their greys and brown back in ~2003.  It's a real pain in the @$$ to separate them, especially in low light.  I mean just look how similar they are.

With a flash it's slightly easier to see the difference

Wednesday was geotagging day 7 of our USA 2004 trip, finishing BBT season 7, and Friday finished scanning box 7 of Dad's slides (I'm smashing out two boxes per week).  777!

Thursday started on season 8 BBT.

Friday woke up at 3:30 with hurty.  Crazy busy couple of days at work.  I was so frazzled on Friday I really couldn't think straight at all.  But I did shut down access to an old test environment which was pretty cool.  In the afternoon David pulled the bumper off his car to install a new nudge bar and spotlights.  He managed to get it all done before 11pm, because he's "that good" ;)

Saturday woke up early with hurty.  Mostly house work and Lego part picking.  Had drinks with EffanC in the evening which was nice.  Even over Zoom.  Made coq au vin for dinner and watched half of Dr Strangelove (got too restless to watch all of it).

Sunday I woke up early with hurty, except this time it *really* hurt, even with codeine, not helped by running out of naprogesic.  Slept in a bit when I finally got back to sleep, but felt exhausted and depressed all day.  David spent all day installing stuff and running wiring in his car.  He made a complete mess, but managed to get puzzle all back together again before he went to work.

In the evening I gave the oven its first test with a full baked dinner (roast pork) which turned out pretty well, and finished Dr Strangelove (either that or started it Friday and finished Saturday, can't remember which).

And I watched the original Jodie Foster version of Freaky Friday that I saw once a very long time ago.  

Tonight we had pizza (because Stu got a migraine just after lunch and wanted comfort food).

And I blogged.

2020 is sure going to be a very strange year.