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.

Monday.  6th.  Not backdating!  Day of doing doco mainly.  Did lots of gardening after work (like for an hour).  The beef cheeks I'd prepared yesterday I chucked on the stove in the afternoon to have for dinner.  Yum yum yum (clearly people aren't as interested in summer - they were due to expire that day, usually they have a couple of weeks on them).  Finished season 18 of The Simpsons.  Got stuck into year in review reading, as well as work photo labelling.

Tuesday.  Team lunch, so bussed in mid morning (to avoid the peak hour crowds).  

Wednesday.  Did a heap of cleaning in the afternoon - all the deleting!  Blog reading in the evening - man, I was *sooo* stressed about having to go into the office the first half of the year.  Since lockdown in August it's been so much nicer.  Pity it won't last forever.

Thursday.  Ok day, nothing too exciting.  Drinks, pizza, tv.  Backed up my phone and computer (well, except for the E: drive).

Friday.  Woke up at dentist time, til about 5am.  Thinking about all the things.  Mostly about the party.  hrmm.  But.  Party!  In the rain!  Didn't seem to deter anyone, only two no-shows, and one of those was a no-show last year too.  So nearly forty people, I think most people enjoyed themselves.  

I think she was hissing at me

Oh hai

Mine!

Ugly ducklings? :)

The sun came out at the end

Literally the bestest sweetie in the world.  He did about a hundred trips to the car and two trips home to take everything home afterwards.

Saturday.  Awake for a couple of hours again.  hrmm.  Such a busy day doing All The Things.  Mostly house organising and cleaning and tidying. A bit of computer work as well.  Roasted a whole heap of veggies for dinner (with leftover sausages from the bbq). Finished season 1 of Sex Education then Matrix Reloaded (which I haven't seen since I saw it at the movies in 2003.. it wasn't as bad as I remember it heh).  Edit: I lied, I also saw it at Striker's in 2004.

Sunday.  Today (for a change ;) ).  Slept ok.  Annoyed in the morning because I lost a brand new hair tie *somewhere* in the house.  Maybe it'll turn up.  But another day of All The Things.  Barely any time on the computer at all, just slogging my way through everything that needs doing.  Except I didn't do much of the computer stuff that needs doing, like advertising our cruise to see if someone else will take it, booking a vaccine booster, labelling Dubbo photos, reading blog entries or labelling work photos.  hmmmmm. 

Tonight I managed to download and process photos from the past two weeks, as well as blog last week *and* this week.  Party leftovers will be for dinner.  I need a vacation.

Sunday.  14th.  Cooked All The Food for dinner.  Started into season 18 of The Simpsons.  Started watching the 2020 version of The Witches but didn't end up finishing it (finished it later in the week).

(dinner was basa fillet bake, although I probably cooked it a bit too long - it was pretty dry)

Monday.  Awake for a couple of hours in the middle of the night, feeling hot, even tho it was *cold* (13C in the house when we woke up - cold enough to turn the heater on!).  Saw my birds at lunch - needed my jacket because it was *cold* !  And noticed one of the sunflower seeds had sprouted (didn't see any others though).

Also picked the first strawberry off the plants Michelle gave us last year.  I considered splitting with the sweetie but in the end ate it all myself ;)

Weeding after work, and 78 photos labelled before dinner.  I figure I have time for two out of three things between finishing work and dinner - weeding, music practise, photo labelling.  Had time after dinner/Simpsons for a bit of music practise, and managed 182 photos labelled all up.

Tuesday.  Slept ok.  Was Neil for the morning.  Did a whole pile of doco for some rules which had never been documented before, so that I could do doco for my one simple little rule that needed adding.  Also did some thinking about the next round of cleaning that needs doing.  Lunch was leftover tacos.  Taco Tuesday!

After work was weeding and music, with mango chicken I cooked on Sunday for dinner (the chicken is somewhat buried under all that rice)

Managed to label 353 photos! Although Aaron called, which stopped me finishing day 53 in Asahiyama Zoo.  

Wednesday.  Spent all morning writing up details for cleaning out of a super complicated system no longer in use, but may come back one day, so want to be sure we have a good record of what we would need to do for it.  

Not much in the afternoon, spent too much time helping people with stuff.  Then worked late, had a quick break for dinner, then back online for work for more upgrades.  So behind in labelling for the week after all.

Thursday.  Couldn't do any fixup scanning in the morning because the computer wouldn't talk to the scanner.  I mean I know I really needed to reboot my computer but it takes so damned long to do it.  Started the process at 7:54am.  It was 8:28 by the time I'd saved/noted/closed everything, patched and rebooted, and 8:31 by the time I'd gotten Chrome loaded.  Le sigh.  The sunflower hasn't changed much in a couple of days..

Spent the day cleaning all the things.  Creamy fettucini for dinner.

Simpsons, whisky tasting, Speed Cubers

Then I watched The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.  I'm not usually a fan of Adam Sandler/Ben Stiller movies, and this one started off pretty silly, but the scenery in Iceland was stunning and it turned out to actually be quite sweet a movie.  Even managed to label 57 photos.  

Friday.  Another day of cleaning.  Watched Soylent Green in the evening.  It was made in 1973 but set in 2022 (we should have watched this next year!).  I reckon they could have at least *tried* to not make it look like the 70s in terms of fashion and decor :)

Today's pickings!

Saturday.  Did all the Saturday morning things.  Downloaded my email and found out they wanted to charge me another $1000 for the cruise I'm trying to get out of (for port fees or some such crap).  Had a little freak out and ended up calling them (don't know how much that's going to cost me).  At least I managed to get them to defer it til the end of December, but this whole covid thing has really put me off ever booking a holiday in advance if there's no option of refunds. We've already lost thousands on Europe, and likely to lose even more on the cruise. Makes me sick thinking about it actually.  

But then.

I've had this in my rss feed for a couple of weeks that I can't bring myself to mark as read.  It's a reminder to me that my problems are First World Problems.  So What if I lose $10000 dollars on some holidays I can't take.  At least I'm not displaced from my country due to or war or famine or whatever.  Life is good.  Really.

Then I spent the entire day alternating between the jigsaw and filing club photos (I've been sorting 9 years of club photos into folders for posterity).  Actually managed to finish photo filing!

This was the jigsaw progress mid afternoon.  A bit difficult to see what's going on, because I'm doing one half literally on top of the other half.  

Leftovers for dinner, and in the evening watched Official Secrets - a really interesting telling of the story of Katharine Gun and her efforts to prevent the 2003 war in Iraq.

Sunday.  Today.  Really just spent the whole day on the jigsaw (and finished season 4 of You Can't Ask That at lunch).

This is the progress in the morning.  Already I've done heaps since last night.

By late morning I'd done every piece that was on top of the other half.  So everything here is identical on either side.

Once that was done, I twinned up all the "special pieces"

At lunch I put on dinner - devilled lamb shanks (with de-boned meat I found at Coles)

And by mid afternoon I'd finished the jigsaw!!  Amazing that it took about seven weeks to do the first half of the jigsaw, then two days to do the second half!

Then did some music practise before Annie and the girls came over to chat for a bit.  Then it was photo downloading and blogging and dinner is just about ready!

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.  31st.  Backdating this because Kit was here and I ran out of time in the afternoon on the 7th.  Leftover lamb and all the veggies for dinner (I left those bits of sweet potato in the oven for a few days, we ate them a few days after that, we didn't die).  Lie to Me and You Can't Ask That.  

Monday.  1st.  Couldn't get to sleep til like midnight.  Then woke up at 5:30 although got a tiny bit more sleep.  Didn't have many slides to fix up, although one I did like eight times before I eventually gave up because it was too hard and I was too tired.  I was feeling stressed that I was going to have to work both days next weekend, which made me double booked with a club working bee and Kit was coming to stay Sunday as well.  And my desk was a mess and the kitchen looked like a bomb had hit it in just a day since I last cleaned it, then I was hanging the washing out and I missed a phone call.  I mean who calls at 8:24am?? I might have had a bit of a meltdown because it was all too hard.  I did have an interesting day at work though, learning about timeouts on firewalls.  Popped into the mall at lunch because I needed to get my glasses fixed (the screw fell out of one of the arms on the weekend).  Also went to the post office to drop off a package for the sweetie, had some lunch and did a bit of food shopping.  Had to do some overtime in the evening, so no labelling.

Tuesday.  Slept a lot better - hurrah.  Brain was functioning a hundred times better than Monday.  I set a reminder to watch a few horses run around an oval, but was busy and missed the alert, and hence the horses.  Oh well.  Only managed to label 118 photos, so getting further behind :(  Also my wrist hurts.  Finished day 48, up to Hokkaido.

Wednesday.  Slept okish.  I *finally* finished fixup scans of all 181 boxes of Dad's slides.  I really wish I'd put more effort in the first round through, it would have saved most of a year's worth of effort to redo them this year.  Although it probably would have taken longer to do the first pass.  Will spend the "scanning time" for the rest of the year processing the slides (dating/labelling/renaming/processing/filing).  Managed to label 215 photos (used music practise time to do some - having a short break to give my wrist a rest).  Only 200 behind now.

Thursday.  Slept ok.  Ok day.  Very busy.  Rain!!

Friday.  Ok day - been there 14 years!  

Did some cleaning in the afternoon which made me happy.  That was done by 3pm and I'm like, I'm done for the week now right? hehe.  Had to hang around til late though to find out if Saturday work was going to go ahead or not, but in the end it got cancelled.  So I quickly gathered up a few things and headed out to the club with the sweetie.  It was cool enough to run the fire!  CRD came over to chat for a while too which was nice.

Saturday.  Slept okish.  Spent most of the morning de-nailing fence palings.  I got a message from Annie in the middle of it asking if I was in the queue for the Lego store opening, and I'm like, has she even *met* me?  hrmmm.  Did a few bits and pieces after lunch but it was getting hot and we were tired, so we just came home.  We basically collapsed when we got home.  Watched You Can't Ask That - on gamblers - I reckon the gamblers were more messed up than the ice users..  Pizza and X Files (finished season 2).

And how cool is this mask Tab made!?

Sunday.  Watched one of the guys doing some upgrades for a couple of hours in the morning.  Learnt some stuff which was good.  Then I finally got to have my weekend.  Spent the afternoon tidying up the house and doing all the weekend things.  Then Kit came over we chatted and had slow cooker turkey and potato bake and veggies for dinner.  The turkey was a little dry, will need to refine the recipe (I literally just chucked the thing in the slow cooker), and I should have had some gravy with it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Monday.  27th.  Slept ok, and an ok day, more playing with proxies.  The magpie chicks have hatched.  Managed 48 photos before dinner (last of the san choy bow mince with brisket rice and shredded cabbage).  Into season 16 of The Simpons and day 39 of Eurasia labelling.

Also, I truly hate people.  Some low life bastard stole the ruffled tulip bulbs!

Tuesday.  Much the same really, started looking at some more cleanup work.  Leftover pork and veggies for dinner (fried in jelly).  Got 182 photos labelled.  

Wednesday.  Awake in the middle of the night for an hour because I was hot.  Hrmmm.  More documenting of things that need cleaning up.  Creamy fettuccini for dinner.  Finished day 39 labelling, into day 40.  Stopped when I couldn't decide how to label Miniatur Wunderland - should I do a quick summary of the scene, or just label it all "Miniatur Wunderland".  hrmm.  Finished watching Love on the Spectrum.  I reckon rather than one-on-one dates, they should have double dates, with or without "normal" people to add conversation direction.  One of the problems with aspergers/autism is difficulty socialising, and I myself find it a lot easier in a small group situation (three to four is ideal) than one-on-one.  I wonder if these guys would have any more luck like that.  My favourite guy in the series was Andrew - into jigsaws and K'nex connector toys, and not a tea-totaller :)  (another side note: dopamine makes it a helluva lot easier to relate to people, ask me how I know).

Thursday.  Updated my doco on change management for the new system, and some people who hadn't seen it before were very excited that there was a nice document they could pass round/follow.  Had virtual drinks in the afternoon which was a bit fun.  Had about eleven people connect in.  Watched the third episode of Connected - Dust.  And I watched the pilot of Lie to Me.  We'd seen a bunch of episodes of this like ten years ago, but there's plenty I still haven't seen, and because I have dementia I won't remember the ones I have seen heh.  

Friday.  Made pretty tables in Splunk for our firewall logs which are pretty hard to read in it.  OMFG what a crazy news day though!  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.  

From ABC News:

I was pretty impressed with the distribution of chocolates in the Favourites box I won for best dressed individual back in July for work Christmas in July.

And how pretty are thyme flowers?

Leftover pork and veggies fried in jelly for dinner.  Watched Ocean Waves in the evening.  This wasn't even in the list of Ghibli movies on Wikipedia when we were going through them last year, and not sure if it was online at the time either.  It was a bit lame, and the girl in it was actually pretty horrible.  

Saturday.  Awake for hours in the middle of the night :(:(  Talked to Zac for a little bit of it.  Total zombie in the morning.  Then the mother type person called which took out another half an hour, so it took all morning to get through my Saturday morning routine (that I usually have done by about 9am).  So it was pretty much a write off of a day.  Did get some jigsaw done though, and some music practise (I've been practising most days and learning new notes and getting better at blowing).  

Put on American Pie while I blogged last week.  Never seen it before, wouldn't have missed anything if I'd never seen it.  But I knew that going in, hence why I wasn't really watching it.  Chicken Kiev and veggies for dinner (Stu needed to go to the chemist, so he did some veggie shopping as well). 

In the evening watched The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.  It started off very silly, with unnecessary love triangles all round, but it did improve a lot in the second half.  

Sunday.  Slept somewhat better.  Got a bit more done during the day.  Feeling anxious about our cruise next year.  Even though we might be able to travel in time for it, I really don't want to be going on a cruise out of Florida early next year.  I still don't think they're going to be at herd immunity status by the time we get there, even if all the idiots that aren't getting vaccinated actually get covid.  And if we get exposed and get it, we could miss out on the cruise entirely, or worse, could be hospitalised (can happen, even for the fully vaccinated).  And insurance certainly wouldn't cover that.  And there's no way in hell I'd ever want to be hospitalised in America without insurance.  

Arribbiata bake and roasted tomatoes for dinner (photos to be added next week).  I watched The Color of Money in the evening because I'd never actually seen it.  It was pretty meh actually.  

Monday.  Today.  I might have photos to add to this later, dunno.  Feeling out of sorts all day that I just don't have enough time to get everything done.  I mean it's not unreasonable that I want to finish the Disney jigsaw, finish scanning and processing all Dad's slides, file all this year's photos, file all my club photos, label my Eurasia 2012 trip, get through the backlog of This Day in History posts, and get all images for next years' posts set aside.. all by Christmas.. is it .. ??  And that's not even mentioning finishing the paint by numbers before the paint dries up, doing daily music practise, trying to stay on top of housework and the jungle that is our garden (and let's not forget being the sole chef and waitress), and who even knows where I'd fit in exercise into that punishing schedule.  I'm just depressed that work takes so much time out of my life that I could be doing other things.  And it's not like I don't like work, I actually do, it just takes up too much damned *time*.  *sigh*

Monday.  20th.  Backdating (last Sunday afternoon I managed to blog the week before but not this week).  Epic insomnia overnight.  And there was a dog barking for ages as well :(  (different to the usual annoying ones, further west of us).  Ok day I guess.  Dark and rainy most of the day.  Lit the last candle of the season (finished off a pack of Sinlig vanilla candles).  Had san choy bow for dinner (I made the mince on Sunday).  Managed 55 photos before dinner, 210 all up (Brussels tonight).  Also good progress on the jigsaw.

Tuesday.  Slept somewhat better.  Had a two and a quarter hour meeting in the morning which was pretty exhausting.  Then all the stoopid.  Leftover chicken with veggies all fried up for dinner.  Managed 50 photos before dinner and 141 all up (into day 38 Amsterdam).  

Wednesday.  Upgrading stuff, failing, learning stuff along the way.  I missed the earthquake!  The guys that felt it here were in high rise apartments.  Sausages and salad for dinner.  45 photos before dinner, 168 all up - actually on schedule for a change.  And I finished Snow White!

Thursday.  Continuation of yesterday really, but on the phone most of the day which is never fun.  

Bit of a ringin here!

Friday.  Working on proxy block pages which was a bit of fun.  Cooked some rice in brisket jelly for lunch which was quite nice.  Leftover roast pork for dinner.  Watched Suffragette in the evening which was interesting.  Bit funny watching all these people we've seen in other movies recently (Carey Mulligan in Never Let Me Go, Helena Bonham Carter in Enola Holmes, Brendan Gleeson in In the Heart of the Sea).  

Oh, I also found out today that the super annoying yappy staffies down the road actually killed each other ..  !!

Saturday.  A day of All The Things.  Usual Saturday really.  Put on Snow White in the afternoon so I could photograph it behind the jigsaw.  

Scene sorta kinda matches

What's up with this manic squirrel though?

Had a bit of a whoopsie transferring it to paper for stacking.  Took 17 minutes to fix up.

The sweetie might have convinced me to have Chong Co for dinner.  Ok it didn't take much convincing ;)

Watched The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel in the evening.  Stu missed it when I saw it with EffanC in 2015, and he enjoyed it.

Sunday.  Another day of All The Things.  Started the next section of the Disney behemoth.  Guess which section.. Roast veggies with leftover pork for dinner.  Watched Cocktail in the evening, which I don't think I've seen since I first saw it, probably at the movies, over thirty years ago.  Kokomo was one of my favourite songs for years.  I also didn't realise Don't Worry Be Happy was in it, another one of my favourite songs.  

Didn't blog cause I'd run out of energy heh.

Sunday. 12th.  Backdating.  Doh.  Roast chicken dinner which was very nice.

Monday.  Ok day, was Neil all day because he took the day off to go to the dentist.  Which means I try and fix all the stoopid problems I see.  I can't help myself ;)  In the evening was looking for paperwork from the Eurasia trip to help with photo labelling.  Was actually feeling super panicky/anxious about the fact that there's just not enough *time* to get everything done.  Labelling Louvre photos in the evening.  Only managed 35 photos before dinner, which was a bit late (leftover brisket), and only 75 done by 8pm.  Turns out labelling things in the Louvre is hard work if you want to do it properly.  Still hadn't blogged for the week.  hrmm.  Managed 156 all up for the evening.

Tuesday.  Ok day, although I felt like I didn't get much done in between talking to people all day.  41 photos labelled before dinner (of leftovers), and 116 done by 8:04pm.  77 behind, hrmm.  Finished day 35 in Paris though.

Wednesday.  Ok day.  Finished up yesterday's slide scanning fixing, but hadn't brought up a new box yet, so scanned 12 of Stu's negatives that he took on a youth group boating trip on the Hastings.  Also managed to clean the kitchen.  Bit of a late finish, so no labelling before dinner (of filled gnocchi with sweet potato salad).  After dinner was trying to deal with my computer which had some stoopid windoze process running taking up all its energy.  Spent an hour trying to shut down as many things as I could, so didn't end up doing any labelling at all. 

"Filled gnocchi" - that I got a while back because Coles had sold out of regular fresh gnocchi.  Just fried in butter which was very tasty.  Salad is rocket and sweet potato, with toasted pine nuts and pumpkin seeds and feta, with a honey and olive oil dressing.  Yumm.

Thursday.  Ok day.  Pretty much a standard Thursday.

Friday.  Had an RDO (random day off), which was the first one I'd had since July (and I was definitely feeling it).  Spent the day trying to get on top of All The Things.  In the late afternoon put on Nanny McPhee and the Big Bang, which was a bit silly.  Leftover brisket and veggies for dinner.  In the evening watched Words Bubble Up Like a Soda Pop, which Stu described as Japanese Mall Rats.  Kinda sweet but a bit silly.

Saturday.  A day of All The Things.  Caught up on this week's photo labelling which I was behind on.  Other than that the normal Saturday of trying to do house stuff, project stuff, photo stuff and have a bit of fun in the middle.  Put on Bridget Jones's Baby later on while filing photos.  Stu cooked creamy pasta with mussels for dinner which was very nice.  In the evening watched Enola Homes which was a bit of fun but pretty silly, and too "modern" for a period piece.  (I've been a bit spoilt by a documentary we watched on our last cruise about anachronisms in movies, and how modern values colour period movies).

Sunday.  Much the same as Saturday but with fewer time limits.  

I might have bought myself a new toy during the week, which arrived in less than a week, from America, on a Sunday!

So I've actually been wanting to learn the clarinet for long time.  I learnt the recorder as a kid, but it has a very limited range which can be frustrating.  I read a bunch of reviews that said the Jean Paul CL-300 was probably the best value for money in terms of pretty decent quality for not a crazy price.  Turns out it's a lot harder than a recorder to play, who knew! I was expecting to be able to blow into it and make a sound, but it's a lot more complicated than that.  And I'm really going to need a neck strap so I don't get RSI in my thumb/hand.

Cooked All The Food in the evening - roast pork for dinner, and some mince for dinner during the week.

Watched the second episode of Connected (Poop) (we watched the first episode - Surveillance a little while ago), then I watched another episode of How the Mind Works, on memory.  

Monday.  30th.  Not backdating!!  Okish sleep, bit broken.  Ok day.  Saw my birds at lunch. 

Another day, another wattle

Found this in our front yard - self seeded, no idea what it even is?  Some sort of grevillea??

Had a lot of fun doing diagrams in the afternoon.  Lamb stir fry for dinner.  Labelled 197 photos - in Leavesden Studios!!  Harry Potter!!  So much fun.  And watched an episode of Air Crash Investigations.

Tuesday.  Another pretty good day, mostly doing diagrams!  Made mushroom, olive and salami pizza scrolls for the sweetie for lunch.

Then Pizza Capers for dinner.  Simpsons, X Files, Air Crash, and still managed to label 157 photos for Leavesden Studios.

Wednesday.  Woke up in the middle of the night for at least an hour and a half.  Sigh.  Ok day, not very exciting.  Leftover lamb roast for dinner.  Simpsons, then jigsaw (finished sorting pieces into basic colours), and Air Crash Investigations, and still managed to label 232 photos - I'm actually exactly on schedule now - 17500 photos labelled!!

Thursday.  Why is it the tireder you are, the harder it is to get to sleep???  So I was epic tired, went to bed on time, I might have nodded off briefly once, but otherwise didn't get to sleep til after midnight.  And then woke like every hour after that, but at least got back to sleep.  Ok day, I think.  

Made a creamy spaghetti for dinner that was absolutely amazing.

Onion, mushrooms, bacon, garlic

Cream, cheese

Spaghetti

Can you guess which section yet?

Friday.  Okish sleep, but still pretty tired.  Ok day planning for a change and eventually doing it, only to break everything cause *someone* didn't configure a remote environment in prod to be the same as test.  So this change I'd done in test didn't work in prod.  So technically not my fault, but I still felt responsible, because I should have made sure other people could do their job right before I could do mine.  TV dinner for dinner, then watched Weathering With You which was quite sweet, and, been-theres.

Saturday.  Slept mostly ok.  Nice quiet day doing house/photo type stuff.  It rained.  A lot.  Did slow cooked brisket for dinner which was pretty awesome, and did polenta as well, which I'd never done before.  Turned out ok.  The meal could have done with some greenery though ;)  Watched Dead Poets Society in the evening, which I hadn't seen in forever, possibly I saw it at the movies thirty two years ago.

Today.  Slept ok.  Another quiet day. 

Headed out after the rain stopped and saw my little patch of Floriade, and my birds, and a whole bunch of other birds as well. 

And went to Chris's for supplies.  Watched The Incredible Journey (which I'd seen a long long long time ago) while doing photo processing.  Then cooked up some mince, as well a whole heap of roast veggies for dinner.  Had a Zoom chat with EffanC, then watched the first episode of Love on the Spectrum.  Man I know I'm socially awkward but these guys have it much worse.  Or maybe I was that bad when I was younger (quite possibly was) and just "grew out of it" (read: "learned" how to people) - cause that's the thing with Asperger's, relating to people is something you actually need to learn, it certainly doesn't come naturally.  And blogged.  Took well over an hour.  Again...