Monday.  24th.  Not backdating ;)  Slept ok I think.  Had an ok day.  Updated our network diagram because it was WRONG, and we can't have that!  (discovered while trying to fix some monitoring dashboards).  Got 174 photos labelled before dinner and another hundred after dinner - past 10000!!!  Also downloaded and processed my phone photos from last week but didn't have time/energy to blog.

Tuesday.  Couldn't get to sleep for *ages* stressing about All The Things.  Had a big lunch (oops - people kept telling me to eat their chips! .. and I'm a seagull.. soo..)  Connor helped me take home three pallets from downstairs - just so that I can store some boxes in the garage without worrying about them getting water damaged for the once every year or two flood that we get through the garage.  

Wednesday.  Woke up at 5:30 from a dream where the sweetie had died during brain surgery.  I was so upset I couldn't get back to sleep.  Spent hours and hours during the day in meetings. Fun. Not.  Super late home but still managed to label all Dad's day 16 photos (nearly two hundred of them), even while watching Aircrash Confidential (watched all six episodes on 9Now this week).  Only a hundred behind in the photo labelling now, should be able to catch those up on the weekend.

Thursday.  More meetings.  Neil's beer(s) of the week this week were two from Moondog - the white chocolate white ale I first tried at Herbert's the other week, and a chilli vanilla stout (which didn't taste like chilli or vanilla or stout!).  

Friday.  Hurrah for working from home!!  Did a bit of cleaning, pretty quiet day.  Watched Gallipoli in the evening - forty years old this year and yet I've never actually seen it.  Hurrah for peeps uploading stuff to Youtube!

Saturday.  Had a pretty relaxing day.  ie, got practically nothing done around the house/computer.  Stu had a migraine in the morning so it was a pretty quiet day all round.  Headed out to the club in the afternoon and lit the fire and it was all very cosy, then we headed up for the evening's events - an Italian themed night.  All the food!

Sunday was pretty much just *work*, almost no fun.  Feel like I'm drowing in housework.  Did a couple of loads of washing, fish tank stuff, clothes sorting and a bunch of blogging.  Started watching the remake of Rebecca in the afternoon (I saw the Alfred Hitchcock version on the plane from New York to Singapore in early 2019).  Watched Lucy with the sweetie in the evening.

Today was much of the same.  All these boxes had been up in my "hobby" room until Stu converted it into his man cave, so they got moved downstairs, but it blocked up the whole dungeon room so we couldn't move in there, so now I had those pallets I could move them onto them in the garage.

Other than that just food shopping, all the work, caught up with photo labelling (finished day 16, into day 17), cooking an epic dinner of almost all veggies (ok so also a bit of leftover lamb i pulled out of the freezer) and some tv with the sweetie.  Finished up watching Rebecca in the evening.  Not entirely sure if I liked it or not.  It had more modern "values" but they could have written Maxim a bit better, altho apparently it did have Daphne du Maurier's ending not Alfred Hitchcock's censored version (I can't remember the book it was like thirty years ago).  

Sunday.  Didn't post a pic of the pork roast..

Monday.  Busy day, trying to clean all the things, but getting deeper and deeper into the mess the deeper I go.  Leftover pork for dinner, photo labelling (into Jordan in Eursasia photo labelling), Lego Masters.

Tuesday.  Rinse and repeat of Monday really.

Wednesday.  Busy day.  XL has been off on training or sick all week so super busy with tickets.  This week we finished the Puntasic Musicians jigsaw so people had a lot of fun trying to find the musicians/bands.  Labelled 82 photos.  So 208 photos behind to keep up the schedule for the year.  Manageable.

Thursday.  Went with the sweetie to our doctor who has moved to a suburban location, maybe wanting to get into aged care much??  After a couple of days of people guessing musicians, we did the big reveal of the answers just before drinks.  Had pizza for the first time in a month.  

Dominos Florey is still advertising The Big One, but I asked and they're not selling them anymore

Watched several episodes of the Antarctica anime (Singapore been-theres!!!) then the second episode of The Surgeon's Cut (watched the first one the other day, not sure when).  

Friday.  Was helping out Aquila with some DNS stuff and he put a beer emoji in the chat, and that was enough of a trigger to suggest a Herbert's lunch.  @CLBradley couldn't make it, but Tony could so that was nice.  Had some of the Moon Dog white chocolate white ale which was amazing, and had the Mac and Cheese which was delish.  

Went down after work to help with Tony and Jess's horrible Bach jigsaw.  It's all black and white, but the worst thing about it is if you put two pieces together you can't actually tell if they're right or not.  Worst jigsaw in history, they may not ever finish it. 

Watched Nomadland with the sweetie in the evening.  It was pretty slow, but somehow still interesting.

Saturday.  A day of all the things.  Alternating between physical stuff (houseworky type stuff), photo stuff (Dubbo photo culling) and fun (playing with my digital Lego house model).  Stu had the oven on in the morning to make some baked eggs in an attempt to get through the epic jar of salsa we have, so at lunch I had a go at making a Dominos puff pastry pepperoni and feta pizza.  It actually worked really well, except for it being a little soggy in the middle, and it also blew up a bit.. maybe pricking the surface would have helped?  I'll post most of the pics in its own post.

Pretended to be healthy for dinner - cooked up some leftover pork with some shallot, garlic and cabbage, on rice, with dried fried onion on top.

Stu must have liked it - he went back for seconds!  After some Antarctica anime I watched the third episode of The Surgeon's Cut, about a transplant surgeon.  She talked about the liver being the centre of the body - where the soul is.. and all I could think about was alcohol making the soul happy .. only it doesn't.. haha

Sunday.  Got some stuff done in the morning, then headed out for brunch, a Bunnings run and some food shopping.  Spent the majority of the afternoon blogging - our Dubbo trip from 1981 (check it out!!), the Dubbo This Day in History posts from the past week, and downloading and processing photos for this week's blog.  Stu cooked a pea and ham soup for dinner.  Finished up with Lego Masters and this blog entry.

Today was 16 May, a day which has had various significant events over the years, but this year we didn't do anything of any particular note.  Oh well.  

Monday.  I already covered this in the last post, but here's some pictures of the disgusting looking black goop that is @notquitenigella's Asian Beef Cheeks.  Served with rice and cabbage it's soooo good!

Tuesday.  Woke up cranky that I was so far behind in *everything*.  Mainly photo processing and labelling.  And that I had to go to work when I just have so much to *do* at home.  I was so cranky that I didn't even feel like singing along to the Hallelujah Chorus when it came on the radio :(  Had an ok day at work though - planning for a new server build.  Super late home though.  Leftovers for dinner, then blogged two blog entries and labelled a hundred and fifty photos or so, so all is not lost (at least not any further behind than I am already).  

Wednesday.  Ok day.  Jim organised a bunch of us to go to Belco Kebabs.  I split one with XL which ended up with a sane amount of food for the two of us, and they do Monday-Wednesday $10 kebabs at lunch, so it only cost us $5 each!  Amazing value.  

Home late.  Sorted photos from the past week and selected some for the blog.  Only 57 photos labelled though, now a full week behind.  Finally finished the lemon cheesecake for dessert.

Thursday. School holidays at the mall.  Kill me now.

Drinks was pretty good, got to try some of the wines I missed out on last week because I didn't go in.

Friday.  Still pretty quiet due to peeps not being able to deploy new servers, so time to find things to do.  Played with getting trusted certs installed on an admin interface, and planning a bunch of cleaning.  Three of my birds came to see me at lunch.  Did twenty minutes of periwinkle hacking (ten minutes at lunch and ten after work).  

Our chrysanthemums come out a little early for Mother's Day..

Watched some tv with the sweetie in the evening, then I watched The Color Purple.  Most of it was pretty darned depressing.  Got a bit better at the end.  Found out that Netflix will now give you a few weeks notice if something is planning to be cut.  This was one of them - last day to watch April 30.  Fine, except you'll have to regularly check your Watchlist to keep an eye on things, because it only notifies you about things ending soon.  And I'll be pissed if they pull tv shows we're in the middle of watching before we get a chance to watch through them.

Saturday.  All. The. Things.  !!  Got through a massive long todo list of stuff, mostly houseworky type stuff. 

Making slow but steady progress hacking my way through the periwinkle

Also lunch out and some food shopping.  In the afternoon I finished watching Challenger: The Final Flight documentary on Netflix.  I still tear up watching that footage.  Go figure.  

In the evening Rob and Fiona came over for epic roast lamb, great conversation and sackbut playing!

This beer was very interesting - a Belgian beer matured in red wine barrels!

Sunday.  Today.  Cooked potato and zucchini cheesy hashbrowns for brunch

I used two potatoes and an old zucchini that needed using up, which was a heap of food, so didn't actually need any lunch!  I think I had a bit of cheese on a cracker, and a carrot.

Other than that, a pretty quiet day, really not getting much done other than a whole bunch of blogging - some recent entries, as well as some This Day in History posts.  Some of those won't show up in an RSS feed because they're backdated, so when I'm caught up I'll give you a link.  

Stu prepped Japanese hotpot, which promises to be yummy!  (this isn't everything, there's still meat to be prepped)

Edit: added more pics of the hotpot later:

At least I'm not backdating for a change ;)

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.  

Monday.  First of March.  Got in a bit early to deal with the outage on the weekend.  But Sharpie already had because he's awesome.  Got started on working on change paperwork for the cleaning I wanted to do during the week.  Evening the usual of photo labelling, all the houseworks, photo processing for last week's blogging, Amazing Race and blogging.  We also fitted in some weeding.  Even ten minutes a day I think would and up making a serious dent in the weeds if we're just consistent with it.  

Tuesday.  Took ages to get to sleep, then woke up at 5am needing to pee.  Was just getting into bed when the sweetie reached over, but I didn't hear him coming because I was still rustling the sheets, and so I freaked out slightly when he touched me.  Doh.  So don't think I got much more sleep.  Had an ok day of all the cleaning.  Did a bit more weeding in the evening.  Into season eight of The Simpsons.  But by the time everything was done it as 19:44.  Sigh.  So no photo labelling, just Amazing Race.  Although I did do a bit of labelling during the ads.

Wednesday.  Ok day I think.  Work, home, cooking, dinner, 7pm.  And still haven't done any weeding yet or any photo labelling, which I'm not behind in.  hrmm.  Got a bit caught up on photo labelling while watching Amazing Race.  But still no blogging.

Thursday.  Ok day I think.  Ulach turned up for drinks which was nice.  Watched more Hibike.  Second season is pretty much a teenage girl soap opera.  Too complicated, nowhere near as good as the first season.  Watched Encore - Fiddler on the Roof.

Friday.  A few weeks or so ago, Apple changed the behaviour of closing apps.  Instead of seeing the screen swipe up and shrink down into the icon that had it open, it started closing super quickly, so you couldn't really tell which app you'd just closed.  I have three Flow apps I play every morning, and this was a pain because I'd be like, which app did I just close.  And more than once I'd go back in just to make sure I'd done that one for the day.  Anyways, last week Apple changed the behaviour back again, which is now much more betterer.  More cleaning in the afternoon, and hopefully I didn't break anything this time.  hrmm.

All the pictures for this week are in other entries.  

Sunday.  24th.  Half way through our long weekend.  Watched Your Name in the evening.  Kinda like Freaky Friday meets The Lake House?  Not that I've ever actually seen The Lake House.  Nice enough, although a tad confusing.  

Monday.  We both took a random day off to have a long weekend. 

Baby guppies!!!

Did all the washing in the morning - regular clothes washing, then the curtains from the east side window of the study.  Then headed out for the day.  Dropped in at The Scottish Restaurant for brunch, then onto Ikea.  Stu wanted to get a shelf unit for his study for the inside wall.  So we found that and got a couple of bits and pieces but not too much.  Did our food shopping on the way home. 

I'd just filled his water bowl when Stumpy decided to redecorate the place.

So just for that we gave him a bath.

Stu built his shelves and suddenly the house is a mess again.  Doh. 

It was also very hot.  All weekend.  We had the cooler going pretty much all weekend, but that did make it a bit humid in the house.  Salmon and salad for dinner, but no photo labelling.  Watched Honey, I Shrunk the Kids in the evening.

Tuesday.  Australia Day.  Our two biggest holidays celebrate invading other countries.  David's suggestion was make New Years Eve a public holiday, so all the poor saps that have to work NYE while everyone else parties will at least get paid overtime for it.  Then Australia Day could be January 1.  That was actually the day we became Australia.  Just a thought.  The day was spent avoiding the heat, a bit of housework, labelling photos and a bit of paint by numbers.  Stu wanted to hang up an aerial for his software radio, so I hacked out all the cherry tree suckers, and pruned the geraniums quite brutally (they were bigger than me!).  Didn't take any before photos unfortunately.  

Stu really didn't like being up a ladder

I well and truly filled the green bin, with a pile still left to go.  Taco Tuesday for dinner (I'd bought the shells and was going to have them before David left but we never got a round tuit).  The ten taco shells go really well with three people (four each for the boys and two for me), so we end up with leftovers if there's just the two of us.  Then I was loading the dishwasher after dinner and one of Stu's bowls slipped out of my hand and shattered all over the floor.  I seriously had a meltdown.  I really like those bowls, I use them every day, and it was one of the few complete sets we have of anything.  I don't deserve nice things.  Sigh.  Didn't feel like doing any photo labelling, or even watching a movie, so just watched random crap on YouTube.

Wednesday.  Nothing much.  Bit of photo labelling, but not nearly enough to catch up for the week.

Thursday.  Ok day; work drinks; pizza.  Got sad that I had noone to fight with over the garlic dregs from the garlic bread.  Started watching Sound! Euphonium anime series.  Then I watched Honey I Blew Up the Kid.

Friday.  The rain!  All the rain!  In the afternoon I spent an hour and a half renaming and documenting all the objects someone else in our team had created that didn't match our naming scheme.  Le sigh.  Watched Honey We Shrunk Ourselves in the evening.  I'd never seen this one.  Silly of course, but not too bad.  Then I watched the first half of a 2016 New York production of Hamilton.  I had literally no idea what the show was about, well, other than it was an American period piece.  I have to say I struggled with it.  It's mostly all rap, and I *hate* rap.  I struggled to keep up with the pace of it and what was going on and the exposition.  I also found having African Americans playing white guys pretty distracting.  Also.  Jonathan Groff as King George III.  Completely distracted by his spagging all over the place.  Also I reckon he looks a little bit like Freddie Mercury (front teeth and cheeks), he'd look more like him if he lost a little weight..

Saturday.  Woke up at 3am for nearly two hours.  Hurrah.  Did all the hosueworks in the morning.  Did a bit of paint by numbers and photo labelling of Dad's slides in the afternoon.  I'd relied on the dust and scratch filter for the first half of the scanning of his slides, but as it turns out, the hairs that were all over the roof of the scanner were there from the beginning.  The filter doesn't remove the hairs and the slides look terrible, and I'm going to have to redo *a lot* of the first half.  Sigh.  But probably not until I've scanned more of the filing cabinet.  Had a bit of a play with Gimp to make Lego mosaics using custom palettes.  Had chicken kiev for dinner.  Watched The Garden of Words, which I saw at the movies in 2013.  I reckon they must have videoed rain falling in puddles and traced it frame by frame.  Can't see any other way it'd be *that good*.  Then I watched the second half of Hamilton.  For some reason I enjoyed the second half a lot more.  Maybe because it was a bit slower, and I had a better idea of who everyone was??  I think if I watched it again I'd pick up a helluva lot more and possibly enjoy it more.  Or maybe I could just go read a transcript.  Found out that the dude who played Hamilton actually wrote the whole thing.

Sunday.  Today.  Not backdating for a change ;)  Although I am going to need to backdate a whole bunch of This Day in History posts.  Spent the day alternating between housework, computer work (photo labelling) and fun stuff (paint by numbers and jigsaw).  Went out and did a small food shop.  Although with fragments of covid detected in Belconnen sewage, I feel like we should have done a bigger shop in case we end up in lockdown.  Roast lamb for dinner.  Or there will be.  Very shortly :)

Backdating, because I wasn't even home to finish blogging the year :)

Saturday.  Boxing Day.  Ok sleep I think.  Bits and pieces of housework in the morning, alternating between that and making the Shanghai Lego set Stu got me for Christmas.  Downloaded Python, reverted to an older version of numpy (pip uninstall numpy / pip install numpy==1.19.3), then installed Simple Photo Gallery.  It does mostly what I want to do with it, although pulling a little more exif data would have been useful.  I don't know *anything* about Python, so not sure if I could do it myself.  Leftovers for dinner then more of the Mandalorian documentary.  We were going to have the failed pavlova anyway, but it hadn't dried properly and after two days the whole bottom of it had this horrible black mould all over it.  Gross.  Then Stu broke one of my pretty green Tupperware bowls (trying to cut through the base of the cheesecake, and to be fair those bowls are probably fifty years old) and the whole evening made me have a sad.  Went and watched the Poseidon remake which was pretty lame.  If you put aside the fact that cruise ships just won't stay capsized like that, as well as a zillion other plot holes and problems (eg, those bow thrusters would NOT be running, neither would all the ships lights, but granted you do need light so you can *see* the movie), my biggest gripes were that you don't actually get to know or care about any of the characters before the wave hits (turns out a good twenty minutes of scenes where you get to know them were cut from the movie), and the North Atlantic in the middle of winter is freezing cold - they would have all died of hypothermia with the amount of time they spent in the water.  Just sayin.  

Sunday.  Couldn't get to sleep for ages.  #grunt.  Puttered through the todo list, mostly houseworky type stuff.  In the afternoon I pulled apart the scanner to try and clean under the glass.  This dude had a really helpful guide on how to pull it apart.  Sadly even after two attempts, there's still dust on the underside of the glass.  I really don't know what to do to get it clean.  Stu cooked sausages and zucchini for dinner.  

Monday.  In an attempt to have a holiday I finished the That's Insulting jigsaw, and built Neil's ISS Lego set.  Watched the second last episode of The Queen's Gambit in the evening.

Tuesday.  Tried to catch up on photo processing and blogging.  Did our food shopping at lunch time, then came home and cooked up a kilo of mince with onion, garlic and bacon, and also a batch of honey mustard chicken (with added peas/corn/carrots) and rice. 

Straight after I finished cooking, went and met up with Doc and a bunch of peeps for drinks at the George which was all very pleasant. 

Came home and used some of the mince to make up One Pan Dinner for dinner.  Finished The Queen's Gambit in the evening - very well done show, we both really enjoyed it, much more than Discovery.

Wednesday.  Stu was restless and couldn't get to sleep, and eventually that woke me up and I was awake for two or three hours.  Hurrah.  So Wednesday was a zombie day.  Pretty much a nothing day.  I did patch my laptop and backup my computer before heading out to the club in the afternoon.  Too tired to do anything much, but did sand off the top of this little chest of drawers (I should have taken a before photo).

Had a swim with the sweetie, then had a drink with some of the peeps that were out there, before heading back to the van for dinner (leftover honey mustard chicken) and an early night. 

Thursday.  New Years Eve.  Slept quite well.  Pottered about the van in the morning.  Started a paint by numbers set I got myself for Christmas.  Around lunch time I finished off the first tin of primer and got more of the cabinetry, and the top of the drawers, primed with a first coat.  Checked to make sure we could light a fire, and burnt a big pile of leaves and bark from around our van in the fire pit.  After all that hot work we then went and had a swim.  I rescued this bee but then had to wait for ages for her to dry herself off (I didn't want to poke her to get off, cause that's when they sting you).  Eventually got out of the pool and was able to get her off.

And hey look!  Royal Bluebells!

I'll save the evening for a New Years Eve post.

Backdating.  Oh hai.

Monday.  Scanning.  Work.  Actually wore shorts to work.  Ok so I was at home, but it still felt a little strange.  The only time I ever wear shorts to work is the day of our Christmas party at the lake.  Cooked the beef stew for dinner (I'd done all the prep on the weekend, so it was just a matter of chucking it in the slow cooker all afternoon.  Nice sunset.  Did my UK photo labelling, then caught up on RSS feeds, but no blogging.  Whoops.

Tuesday.  Scanning.  Work.  Saw my birds at lunch.  David came along and we noticed a flooded pit that shouldn't be flooded, so David called Icon water to come fix.  Did my UK photo labelling.  One more night to go!  Didn't feel like doing much else.  Filed some photos.  I thought I'd download my phone photos so I can blog them at some point.  Except Apple died copying the movies, as it always does, and no amount of disconnecting/reconnecting it would get it to even open the phone in explorer.  *sigh*  Hate Apple.  HATE.  Wondering if my next phone will be a Samsung.  I'm sick of Apple's crapfullness.  Did some blogging.

Wednesday.  Scanning.  Work.  OMFG no recycling pickup.  Suez workers want a 4% pay rise and are striking til they get it.  4% seems a little high to me given our rate of inflation, but they're prolly paid like crap to begin with, so whatevs.  But still.  No recycling pickup!!  Gah!! 

Went to Specsavers at lunch.  Honestly should NOT have gone to Specsavers.  There's too many staff and too many people and they're just not very well organised.  The first half of the appointment was fine.  The general staff did scans of my eyes, and then I got to see the optometrist and all that was fine.  But then she said I should do a field of vision test and I could either wait and do it now or make an appointment.  I asked how long it would be and she went off and found out and said oh they can do it now, and I'll see you straight after.  Sweet.  So I went to go have it but they realised someone was in the room, and did I want to look at frames while I waited.  No that's fine, shouldn't be long, I'll just wait.  So I waited.  And waited and waited and waited.  I saw the previous patient leave, but noone bothered to come get me.  When they *finally* did the test, they said, oh your optometrist has gone on break, it'll be twenty five minutes, do you want to look at frames while you wait.  And I'm like NO, you told me I'd just do the test then get to see the optometrist.  So he goes off to try and find someone else to look at my results.  Ten minutes later and I'm waiting and fuming.  So I get up to leave and the guy goes oh did noone see you and I'm like no.  So he goes to the original optometrist and she comes out of her lunch break to tell me oh your results are fine.  Fricken I could have just left and you could have called me if any issues.  Fricken hopeless.  So I was fuming at all the stoopid by the time I got back to work and then had to deal with all the stoopid at work, which of course I couldn't because I was in a crap mental state.  Sigh. 

I left early with Stu to go pick up the car.  And had wine.  Because it was that kind of day.  The highlight of the day was that I finally finished labelling all twelve and a half thousand UK photos!  But the drama of the day was not over.  Kit and Pete had missed a document that needed to be signed for their new house to settle, and so it was all going to get delayed and cost them who knows how much money to sort out, and then they'd be homeless until it all got sorted out.  Which is never great when you've got so many animals to look after.  And have to go back to work at some point but all your clothes are packed.  

Oh, and there was also the cicada I rescued when I got back from lunch.  It was on the wall in the stairwell of our building.  So I grabbed it and took it outside and got a few photos before it flew away.

Thursday.  Scanning.  Work.  Work drinks.  Continuation of Kit's dramas.

Friday.  Hadn't gotten a new box of slides out to scan (and couldn't get at it cause David's car was in the way) so went back and fixed up a few rolls of previous boxes that needed fixing up (eg straighting or cleaning).  Work.  Discovery and Mandalorian in the evening.

Saturday.  All the things in the morning.  Super productive morning by 9:30, although didn't get as much done after that.  Had to log onto work at lunch time to try and fix a stoopid firewall problem, but the vendor couldn't figure it out either.  Even after three and a half hours on the phone.  So that was a bit of a poo.  Went over to Chris's to see if he had any veggies going.  He had some zucchinis which were looking pretty sad, so he gave them to me for free!  Win!  Cooked the whole lot of them (other than a few of the worst bits) and had them with the beef brisket that had been slow cooking all afternoon.  Watched the episode of The Simpons with Tom Jones in it, and we were like, what was that spoof movie he was in, and realised it was Mars Attacks!  So we watched that after.  Rented from Amazon Prime.

Sunday.  Houseworks in the morning.  I'm having to close the blinds on the south-east side of the house in the mornings now.  Our lovely pistachio tree that used to shade the house in the morning is gone, which is super sad.  Did a bunch of poking around with my hosting trying to tidy it up a bit.  Backing up files and rearranging things and deleting things and generally tidying up.  Still a lot of work I want to do in that space.  Culled photos for our North Coast holiday, and spent *hours* blogging it.  Also did a whole bunch of backdating of other blog entries.  If you don't use an RSS feed reader you may want to go back in time a few months, there's likely all sorts of entries you may have missed ;)  Leftovers for dinner.

It wouldn't be me if I wasn't backdating ;)

Wednesday.  Slept quite well after our long drive home the day before.  Ok day I guess.  In the evening struggled through the todo list that was a long way behind on account of being away for four days.  So no UK photo labelling this week.  Backed up my computer, but couldn't connect to the NAS.  It seems likely that windows is refusing to talk to such an old version of SMB/CIFS.  The laptop which hasn't been patched for a little while can still talk to it.  Apparently 20H2 will fix it.  We shall see.

Thursday.  Poor lonely Santa.

In the evening had pizza and the second episode of Mandalorian.

Friday.  Caught up on three boxes of slide labels (slides had been scanned just hadn't done the data entry).  Soooo nice to be at home.  Went and saw some of my birds at lunch.  Did a bunch of cleaning on the mail servers.  Because that's what I do.  The new neighbours started moving stuff into their garage (they organised to get access before settlement to start moving stuff).  Stu cooked gnocchi for dinner and we watched From Up on Poppy Hill which was very sweet.

Saturday.  Smashed out all the things.  Did some scanning and housework and achieved a weekend's work by 9am.  Gathered stuff for tax in the morning.  Went out for lunch and did a huge food shop.  

In the afternoon cooked all the things.  

I cooked up some mince with onion and taco spice for taco Tuesday.  I cooked all the meat/bacon/onion ready to pop in the slow cooker on Monday.  And I cooked up a veggie loaded san choy bow mix for dinner that night.  

Took three hours.  Yeup.

Watched second episode of Discovery.  Her hair grew too much for one year.  Just sayin.

Sunday.  Another productive morning of all the things.  Spent quite a bit of time sorting out the piles of packing materials (boxes, bubble wrap, tissue paper etc) we have in the garage - organising it all so we can find it when we want to sell stuff.  Cooked a huge lamb roast for dinner, with epic leftovers.  Basically over the weekend I cooked most of our food for the fortnight.

We're into season four of The Simpsons, and up to the third episode of Discovery.

Monday.  Couldn't get to sleep til really late, then woke up before 4am for ages.  Sigh.  Ok day.  Lots of tickets.  Hong Bo fixed the stoopid thing I couldn't get working last week - missing a dependency that I knew nothing about and wasn't in any of the doco.  Sigh.  Had UK labelling done by 7pm then watched the last episode of Against the Wind.  Then had a bit of a look around at static gallery apps.

Tuesday.  Took ages to get to sleep *again* (stoopid cold feet).  Very quiet day at work.  I don't think I had any tickets.  So went through documenting and cleaning out an old server we need to decommission.  Cooked up a bunch of veggies in with the mince I cooked Sunday night, and had it with pasta.  UK labelling and cleaning took til 8pm.  Then blogging.  Suddenly it's 9pm.  hrmm.

I saw this baby magpie lark on my walk at lunch.  The thing could flutter a bit but was clearly too young to be out of the nest.  The parents were *not* impressed that I was anywhere near it!

Wednesday.  Woke up to the sad news that Charlie of The Daily Coyote had died. 

Was scanning slides in the morning and came back after some housework when it had done a pass and the lights were out.  Which is super odd, the lights only turn out after it being idle for quite a while (12 minutes as it turns out).  When I tried to scan there was no option to scan slides anymore.  Tried turning it off and on again, but it still wouldn't come good.  And I'd just been saying that there were 58 days left til Christmas, and 50 boxes of slides, which didn't leave much wiggle room to get it all done by Christmas.  If the scanner was dead that would blow right out.  And then I remembered that I hadn't put out the green bin.  I went and got gloves and was about to go outside (I was going to have to empty some of the grass because the bin was way too full of grass) but the track came!  Gahhh!!!  But then it stopped.  And picked up the bin.  And I'm like.. wha??   Turns out David had put it out the night before, and even put some of the grass in the neighbour's bin.  Seriously, bestest brother ever!!  Ok day.  Busy busy afternoon.  David finished mowing the lawn in the afternoon. Stu wanted pizza for dinner.  At least it wasn't takeaway.  But they did get extra cheese.

And there was a storm down south.

I rebooted my computer to see if it would help with the scanner.  It didn't.  I knew it wouldn't.  So then David had a look.  Turns out the cable connecting the lid to the rest of the scanner had worked its way loose after thousands of times being opened and shut.  So it was the first rule of tech support - is it plugged in.  Sigh.  But did I mention that I have the bestest brother ever??  Finished scanning the morning's slides, but didn't get all the UK labelling done.  

Thursday.  Neil came to work blind in one eye, so Sharpie and I convinced him to go straight to the ER rather than his optometrist at 12pm.  And then I had to be Neil all day.  As well as find someone to run the bar.  I hassled literally everyone and thankfully someone came in to do it, otherwise we would have had to cancel.  R&F invited us out for dinner at Indian Pantry with EffanC.  We had one of the banquets which brought a lovely array of food.

Friday.  We would have been in Queensland for Ben and Sarah's wedding.  But covid happened.  So instead it was simply Ben's 40th birthday party at Gungahlin Lakes.

For dinner I had Famous Paddies Chicken - pan fried chicken tenderloins cooked in a whisky cream sauce with bacon, onion and mushrooms, served with house fries.  It was delicious!!

Saturday.  Just bits and pieces of housework.  We were going out for the club halloween night, and I wanted to get there a bit early to do some priming.  But Stu wasn't feeling it, so we arrived only just on Happy Hour.  I did Lego 80s Classic Space guy again.

Stu wore the beanie he had from a previous year, that everyone thought made him look like Shrek.

Matt and Michelle put on an awesome dinner.

Then got rejected so left quietly before I had a meltdown.  But it did make for an early night which was nice.

Sunday.  Slept relatively well.  Woke up to the news that Sean Connery had died.  Came home early.  They played our song on the radio on the way home.  

Oh wow!  We know him!!

Had a relatively productive day I guess.  Cooked up a bunch of veggies including a potato bake, and even baked some kranksys so that was a nice Sunday night dinner.

Watched the first episode of the new season of The Mandalorian.  See Star Trek, you don't need an overly complicated plotline to be good televsion.