Backdated :)

So this was version two of last month's Coles magazine yellow curry.  Although for some reason it wasn't as flavourful as the previous time I did it (maybe I added too much coconut milk and not enough yellow curry paste).  

So we have yellow curry paste, coconut milk, fish sauce, brown sugar, lime, ginger and onion

Slice the onion and cook til softened/somewhat caramelised

Add a chunk of sliced ginger 

Add the sauce bits - a couple of big dollops of yellow curry paste (I'd probably use half a jar next time), a 400mL tin of coconut milk (last time I used a 200mL tin with some extra regular thickened cream), two tablespoons of fish sauce, two tablespoons of brown sugar, and the juice and zest of a lime.

Add in whatever veggies and protein you feel like or need to use up out of the fridge (this one had cabbage, capsicum and leftover roast chicken)

Serve with rice and top with fried spring onion

Stu had the idea the other week that we should try out some sort of low carb tuna casserole.  I liked tuna casseroles growing up so thought that was a good idea.  So we bought a big tin of tuna.  

The other weekend I surprised the sweetie with it.

Here's the ingredients

So a big tin of tuna, an onion, half a pack or so of cauliflower rice, cheese, mustard, salt, pepper, paprika, cream and kewpie mayo.  I also threw in a handful of frozen peas/corn because I wanted to get them out of the freezer, and there was some leftover chili from Chong Co the other night that I chopped up and threw in as well.  I cooked the onion on the stove to caramelise and cooked the chili as well.  Topped it with cheese, a small handful of panko crumbs, and spring onion, then it was all into the oven for like 40 minutes.

It actually turned out really well and the sweetie has asked for it again since then :)

Wow, another strange year. Another crazy busy year.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Movies (at the movies)
* Top Gun: Maverick

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

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

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

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

Have a very happy and safe new year!!

My only experience of spring this year will be whatever we have in the garden.  Which turns out is quite amazing!!

I was having such a crap day with the proxies and this daisy made me smile

I'm going to mostly miss my tree flowering this spring (which is why after 2010 I said never wanted to travel in September again) but I might just see it briefly

I'm still astounded how well an iPhone camera works

Sunday.  Backdating a few days because life and birthdays and crap got in the way.  Had all the veggies and some chicken thighs for dinner.  Then watched more of The Crown.

Monday.  Um.  Probably a cleaning day.  Spent the evening looking at distances between places in Europe to see if we'll go over the daily allowance or need to buy unlimited kilometres.  And trying to plan an itinerary.  

Tuesday.  Woke up at 3 to pee, then started stressing about All The Things, then got hungry, then the hissing.  Sigh.  So tired, but still an ok day, mostly cleaning.  

Went to another Surprising Science talk in the Shine Dome.  There was Dr Chris Guppy from UNE talking about sulphur in soil, and Mahdokht Shaibani from RMIT talking about lithium sulphur batteries.  

The previous two photos of the Shine Dome were on my new G5X.  So is this next one.  This is hand held!!  Half a second.  Pretty impressive.

Had dinner at Master Bao but was disappointed they don't actually server bao!!?!?!  wtf!?

No bao at Master Bao!

Spring rolls

Dim sims

Shantung duck

Wednesday.  Ok sleep.  Busy cleaning day.

Thursday.  Okish sleep.  Another busy cleaning day.  Two days cleaning up stuff to get it all consistent and pretty.  And literally noone will care.  But I did fix something else that had been broken for a while (not by me) and did actually impact people so that was a win I guess.  Also got filled with rage at Outlook which by default only adds reminders to meetings created within Outlook, which means I keep missing stuff because I don't get reminders.  Hate Outlook.  HATE.  This was never a problem in Notes.  Just sayin!!

Homemade pizzas for dinner on Stu's low carb bases.  Then watched Careful, He Might Hear You.  I might have seen it once a very very long time ago.  I read the book ten years ago so was good to finally see the movie again.  I was disappointed they didn't have a shot of him on the train going over the Woronora Bridge (or in fact any shots at all of Sydney, I guess too hard with all the modern buildings).  

Friday.  Ok sleep until the hissing.  Had a fairly quiet day catching up on emails and stuff that had been slipping because I'd been busy the last couple of days.  Chicken Kiev for dinner, then watched Broadcast News.

Saturday.  Woke up at 2:22 with mild hurty.  Had a pain killer and some cheese.  An hour later I felt hungry again.  Then the hissing.  So a very slow morning.  I was trying to get things done in the afternoon but then more hurty so slow and painful.  But then that eased up and we had EffanC and Rob and Fiona over for dinner (brisket, blue cheese potato bake and roasted kale (I over cooked the kale :( )) which was lovely.  

Sunday.  Slept ok.  Finally booked a car for the first week of our trip.  Then spent like three and a half hours out and about running errands and doing shopping before we go into self-imposed quarantine.  Stu is not coming on this trip (sadly :( ) but I need him in quarantine as well in case he gets covid and brings it home to me.  I did get KFC for lunch, which is somewhat of a tradition, so that was nice.  Then tried to allocate seats on my flights.  For most of them this worked ok.  But the Sydney to Dubai leg I can't even tell which airline I'll be flying on.  Qantas say it's Emirates, and Emirates say it's Qantas, and neither will let me book seats.  Other than that, panicking over my todo lists.  Also.  Neil has covid.  He started feeling sick Thursday morning.  This was after I'd sat next to him all day Wednesday.  Sigh.  Felt like I was getting a sore throat Sunday.  As with every other time in the past two and a half years I'm sure it's just my imagination.  Suddenly it's 16:20 and it's like wtf happened to my weekend.  Managed to download my photos before giving up for the day and relaxing with the sweetie with some bubbles.

Monday.  18th.  (Not backdating).  Yay for catchup days.  Pretty good sleep.  Went into battle with my computer trying to get the scanner and GPS to work.  Neither do in windows 11.  The GPS won't work in windows 11 because it complains the driver is no good.  Transystem hasn't put out any new software/drivers in years which is pretty upsetting.  So had to get the dam trip GPS off on my laptop.  Now dreading what will happen if something happens to the laptop and I have to replace it.  I'll have to find an alternative to my little PhotoMate 887 which is one of the best inventions in history.  Was also fighting with the scanner which fricken USED TO WORK in windoze 11, but just stopped one day.  I've yet to reconnect it up to my old computer to test it.  Hate Microsoft.  Hate hate hate.  Did some weeding, and a magpie came right up to where I was working to see if I'd disturbed any bug noms for it.  Very cool.  Potted some geranium cuttings.  In the afternoon we tidied up the shelves in our bedroom cupboard that had been getting messier and messier.  Did a water change in the upstairs two foot for the first time in forever (there's always babies in that tank I'm worried about sucking up).  Then got frustrated yet again with Apple because it dropped out while downloading my photos and refused to show up in windows afterwards.  Was thinking I was going to have to reboot my computer.  It certainlly meant I couldn't blog the previous week.  Hate Apple.  Hate hate hate.  Then cooked all the food.  I prepped a chicken marbella from Not Quite Nigella, cooked some mince/bacon/onion/garlic, and we had salmon and cabbage for Monday night's dinner.  Then we watched the first episode of The Crown which was pretty good.  Got pretty stressed out about having to go back to work.  Even four day weekends are just not enough time to get everything *done*.  Eventually managed to reconnect to the phone and was able to download photos, but bed time so no blogging.

Was digging under the old pool and found all this steel reinforcing.  Maybe to stop slippage of the pool???

Tuesday.  Slept ok until hurty kept me awake half the night.  Ok day trying to catch up on stuff.  Then demoing stuff to peeps and trying to deal with all the stoopid.  It was a wine and candle kind of a night.  Also made the chicken marbella which was nice enough but a little watery.  

Wednesday.  Woke up for a while a couple of times.  Was sick of the stoopid by 8:40.  Fairly busy day prepping a firewall migration and prepping rules for a big project.  Did some music, then did a red curry with mushrooms, asian greens and leftover sausages.  Did some work on Eurasia panoramas but still no blogging.  

Thursday.  Another busy day, and a tonne of interruptions and meetings.  Did a firewall migration after lunch which took all of ten minutes (including testing) and was one of the most anticlimactic changes I've ever done.  Pretty quiet drinks.  Tried McCains frozen pizzas which weren't really any better than Spar.  Need to stick with Dominos or Dr Oetker (Doc Oc/Dr Octopus).

Friday.  Finished prepping a big ruleset, and even managed to deploy them the same afternoon which was good.  Had a craving for mac and cheese for lunch.  Lazy Su pickup for dinner and watched third episode of Gunther's Anatomy.

Saturday.  Basically got ready then Damien came over.  We chatted for ages, had frozen spring rolls and chips for lunch, then played Jaws in the afternoon.  After playing for a little while we put the movie on in the background (because I don't seem to have the soundtrack).  Stu has never actually seen it?!?!  Will have to watch it properly with him some time.  Damien and I played Brody/Hooper/Quint, and Stu played Jaws.  Stu got a really good start, pretty much totally evading us and getting lots of points for act 2.  But somehow we managed to survive and Quint finished him off with the machete.  Just as the movie was finished, amazing timing.  As soon as Damien left we both collapsed in a heap - seven hours of socialising is super super draining, who knew.  Had sausages and cabbage for dinner, then Simpsons, Black Books and second episode of The Crown.

I actually spent cash that day too - to get the shiny on the right here.  And in the same change got all four head designs of the Queen.

Sunday.  Went and climbed Mt Rogers, did some music practise, did some cleaning, and filled the green bin.  And suddenly the morning was gone.  Went to the markets after lunch to get some fresh veggies, came home and cooked some Anzac biscuits and prepped dinner.  And suddenly the afternoon was gone.  Sigh.  Jenn came over for dinner (a cheese and spinach burek we found at the markets) and then we played Carcassonne which I won.  Was going to have an early night, but then Stu tried to print something.  It did a whole lot quite happily, then went back to jamming in the same place at every damned page.  So got super cranky about the whole thing.

I nearly rage quit at one point because the pantry is so full of crap I can't get at anything without everything all falling over

Unfortunately these were a bit dry

Burek and veggies dinner

Monday.  Got a reminder to go look at planets.  Because I was awake, I did.  It was actually worth getting up for, with the moon, Saturn, Mars, Venus and Jupiter very obvious (although not so much in the resized photo).  I'll take peoples' word for it for Neptune and Pluto.

Then it was all morning trying to catch up on photos and blogging.  Yet again, even with a long weekend I'm struggling to keep up with life.  Stop the world I want to get off.

Sunday.  27th, not backdating although late.  Where were we.  I left off with hints of pork crackling and tomatoes.  Well the tomatoes were epic awesome!  It was all I could do to not just scoff them all in one sitting.

The pork crackling was ok, but not as thin and crispy as doing it on the meat

Monday.  Slept ok.  Did my quota of photo culling before work, which gives me hope I'll actually get this done.  Last day of being Neil hurrah!  I fixed a mail problem in the afternoon that had been there since December, so that was good.  Did nine minutes of weeding at lunch.  Better than nothing I guess.  Music after work and Stu made a nice salad of lettuce, cucumber, spring onion, some of the slow roasted tomatoes, minced fresh garlic, olive oil, lemon juice, salt, pepper and bacon bits I cooked on the weekend, to go with salmon I cooked.  

I was trying to do photo culling, but the sweetie was trying to print stuff for uni, but the printer was being a big fat poo.  It was flashing all its lights and once so we had to battle trying to get around than, but then it was continually getting jammed, so it was super annoying because I couldn't concentrate on photos because I had to stop every two seconds to unjam the printer.  So I got cranky and Stu got cranky.  We just want a quiet life and AND WHY THE F@#% WON'T THINGS JUST WORK!?!?!?  I gave up on photo culling after a while.  Then I was wondering why I don't seem to have any photos of the Walkie Talkie building in London.  Turns out it wasn't even built until after the last time I was there.. (which was ten years ago!)  I think I've got photos of its lift core under construction.  For some reason I thought it was built in the 70s!  I really need to get back to London some time..

Tuesday.  Took forever to get to sleep (nearly midnight) but then slept ok.  More photo culling in the morning, now only three days of final culls to go (Leavesden Studios, Brussells and Legoland Billund).  Ok day, not being Neil yayy.  Approvals came much too late to get much cleaning done.  Did an hours weeding after work but no music oh well.  Chicken caesar salad for dinner.  After dinner I finished photo culling!!!  I was worried I wasn't going to get it done, but I did.  Now just need to process the photos and get them on the blog.

Wednesday.  Slept fairly well.  Did some tweaking of dashboards for our workflow.  Salmon and salad for dinner again (probably should have bought two pack not a four pack).  Blogged the Balloon Fiesta. Into the third (final) season of Lie to Me.

Thursday.  Slept ok.  Ok day.  Started thinking about another firewall migration.  Finally finished the salmon heh.  Watched random stuff on YouTube including Robin Williams on Don Lane in 1979.  There was a quote from him along the lines of (this is a direct quote but it's a bit rambly) "to keep performing live .. it keeps me alive.. and just.. it just.. keeps contact with people is very important, cause if not you get just get dead you don't take chances anymore, and for me that's very important."  Kinda sad really.

Friday.  Slept ok.  I wonder how much of my insomnia is dietary.  I've been *trying* to eat better.  Not sure it's helping or not.  Probably salmon and veggies is going to sit better than pizza or kfc...  Ok day, cleaning in the afternoon (always takes a lot longer than you think).  David arrived and we had beef cheeks for dinner.  It doesn't photograph well but it's oh so delicious.

Watched Zero Hour! with David in the evening.  It was kinda law that he had to see it :)  We also saw a bunch of his holiday photos/videos (before I called it cause I was exhausted and needed sleep).

Saturday.  Slept ok, although lately every time I wake up I have numb hands which is super annoying.  Did a chemist/groceries run in the morning and did some jigsaw, as well as finishing watching David's holiday photos/videos.  Made a lemon cheesecake in the afternoon, and did a pork roast for dinner (felt like I was on my feet most of the day).  Watched 6 Underground in the evening.  Eh, Michael Bay, and very violent.

Sunday.  Slept ok.  Canberra Airport Open Day.  Will save that for another post.  Came home utterly exhausted.  The sweetie ordered Chong Co for dinner and I had a super early night.

My phone has better eyesight that me.  Spot the mistake :)  This is our country's $50 note.  Silly really.

David helped with the village on Saturday.

Duck salad and pork belly - our favourites

Monday.  Today.  Slept ok but awake pretty early.  Got two loads of washing done before work.  More firewall migration planning in between all the things.  After work brought in all the washing and did some weeding and then did music while Stu cooked dinner - a pasta bolognase which was very nice.  Treehouse of Horror XXII in The Simpsons - we're into season 23 now.  Then phone/camera downloading and blogging.  I still haven't made the bed or put away the washing though.  Trying to cram an entire weekend into before and after work.  Doesn't work.  Too stressed.  Too much to do to have time for work.  Sigh.

As I mentioned in my previous entry, this weekend I started scanning Mum's Minolta negatives, which started on our trip to America in 1983, with her new brand new duty-free camera which she got to open on the plane.

The funniest thing I've noticed is just how much extra frame space is on the negative that was never on the print.  Check this out.. literally the first photo she ever took on that camera..

The negative scan (below) could do with a little tweaking, but is still pretty good.

Then there's this one which blew me away.  The negative scan (below) needs a bit less green in it, but you can actually see the snow now (a few others have been equally amazing).  

Or what about this??  The print faded so much over thirty years, the negative below just went a bit red (and hence a bit too much green in the scan)

Each strip of negatives is four photos, which means I can do eight at a time.  And that takes three quarters of an hour.  The good thing is I can pretty much just set and forget and come back to it later when it's done.  So while not as "quick" as doing slides, it probably won't be as much work.  Hopefully.  

This is now my official recipe for lemon cheesecake.

The Base

250g pack of biscuits, blended in food processor (in a couple of goes cause our food processor is a bit crap).  Normally Nice, but I got these fake Milk Arrowroot for 70c so used them.
125g butter, melted (a bit more won't hurt)

Mix butter and biscuits and spread out in a springform tin, or a lined lasagna dish

Filling

2x 250g packs of cream cheese, at room temperature
400g tin sweetened condensed milk
Juice and zest of three or four lemons - approx 200mL (although 300mL using up more lemons is also fine)
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
3 teaspoons gelatine in 1/4 cup boiling water

Blend everything except the gelatine first in the biggest bowl you have, get cheese spatter all over you, then boil the water, add the gelatine, and mix in.

Pour into base

Allow to set in fridge for several hours or overnight.

Monday.  5th.  Not backdating!  Slept relatively well.  Woke up at 6:40 and didn't push myself to do any scanning.  Worked from home and had a pretty decent day, not too many stoopid problems bugging me, in fact even solved a few people's problems for them which was nice.  Stu was still sick though and stayed home.  Made an "instant" lasagna for dinner with stuff I made on the weekend (the mince and a bechamel/cheese sauce I did for the veggies).  Did a bit of jigsaw and watched the third episode of Diagnosis.

Tuesday.  Slept well again but still a bit sniffly so worked from home.  A lot more distractions today, and then hurty.  Stu worked from home which was nice.  Finally finished off the potatoes we brought home from the club (I think there would have been about thirty of them, all cooked, so it was a race to get them eaten before they went moldy).  This time I fried them with the last of the unfrozen mince from the club night, and a bunch of cheese.  I did them without mince for lunch and we liked them so much I did it again for dinner with mince.  So yummy, my favourite of the ways we got through those potatoes. 

Did my quota of photo labelling by 19:18 and even ran the dishwasher.  Watched a couple of episodes of Diagnosis.  Got quite frustrated with the mother in the fifth episode, but then I later found the girl's Instagram account, where she was pretty scathing of the show and how it portrayed them.  She'd also had a couple of surgeries for some vascular problems that had never been thought of in the show.  

Wednesday.  Slept well until I woke up with hurty at 1:15 and it kept me away til nearly 3am.  Sigh.  So another zombie day.  Vicki was in town which offered the perfect excuse to work from home again.  Got photo labelling done early so X Files and Diagnosis in the evening (after finishing off the last of the unfrozen club leftovers - some spring rolls and chicken wings and chipolatas).

Thursday.  Finally felt up to scanning slides again, first time in nearly a week due to insomnia or sickness.  It was also the first time in nearly a week we didn't have the heater on in the morning and it was *cold* in the house.  Ok day, ok drinks.  Feeling a general depression over not really fitting in and not getting on with people and not really being "friends" with anyone much I work with.  So felt a bit blah even at drinks.  Started watching I, Tonya.

Friday.  Slept ok.  Ok day.  Did up doco and change paperwork for next round of cleaning next week.  Finished watching Fantasia.

Saturday.  Quiet day, alternating with housework and jigsaw. 

Yet again, went into battle dealing with the government online.  This time I wanted to get a certificate of my covid vaccination.  But to do that you have to link Medicare or the Health Record (which I think I opted out of) to mygov.  But of course it refused to link my Medicare account didn't it.  It wanted the number and address details etc, but kept complaining I hadn't answered things correctly, at which point it prompted to fill in all the details of my bank accounts and my last doctor's appointment, including the date and how much it cost.  And I'm like wtf.  So I rage quit on that and called them.  Fortunately I pretty much got straight through, and they gave me a linking code I could enter and that worked and it linked up and I got my covid vaccination certificate.  Hurrah.  Now let's just hope they'll let us travel.  I'd be happy to do home quarantine when we get back if that's what it takes.  So long as I don't have to fight with tour companies about getting money back on trips...  

Found someone had uploaded Brides of Christ to DailyMotion, so watched the first episode of that.  We watched this when it came out back in 1991, and I blogged that I watched in when it was on tv again in 2003.  Downloaded and processed phone photos while that was on.  Dinner was some mince that I cooked last weeked, with tomato paste and tomatoes and pasta.  Into season 2 of the X Files, and then I finished I, Tonya.  It's actually not a bad movie.  Margot Robbie did a pretty good job (she even did a lot of the skating), although she's just a bit tall and *big* to pass for Tonya Harding, who was tiny. 

Sunday.  A quiet day of housework stuff, jigsaw, and blogging and computer stuff.  We did go out for lunch and food shopping/chemist as well.  About to go prep dinner.