Thursday was whisky night, and opened the new bar.

Friday we took the day off to go do shopping for the club Christmas in July, which we've now cooked for the past four years.  Headed out Friday arvo and fired up the pizza oven and had some yummy pizzas.

Saturday was FIRE all morning which was pretty awesome.  Not so awesome: having holes burnt in my jumper - that I wasn't even wearing!!  It was a ways off, but not protected from the raining leaves of fire from the other gentlemen being a little too enthusiastic piling stuff onto the fire.  At least my fire was civilised.  Pork into the oven early afternoon but it just would not get hot.  Even though it was in for five hours, the crackling didn't get properly crackling.  It was ok, but not great.  Anyways, everyone else had a good time and enjoyed the food.  Came home with a 1L decor container of leftover pork and mashed potato.

Came home Sunday morning and then tried to have an actual weekend.

This afternoon I had the spaced-out feeling and cough that could indicate only one thing - that I'm getting sick :(  Not happy.  

Didn't get much done tonight on account of not really feeling like it.

But I did scan twelve more USA 2004 photos of mum's, including this one, which is quite fun.

Taken in Montana, near Glacier National Park.  Apparently it's not there anymore which is pretty sad.

Hoteling

The only drawback to the cubicle-oriented office is that some employees develop a sense of "home" in their little patch of real estate. Soon, pride of ownership sets in, then self-esteem, and poof - good-bye productivity.

But thanks to the new concept of "hoteling," this risk can be eliminated. Hoteling is a system by which cubicles are assigned to the employees as they show up each day. Nobody gets a permanent work space, and therefore NO unproductive homey feelings develop.

Another advantage: Hoteling eliminates all physical evidence of the employee's association with the company. This takes the fuss out of downsizing; the employee doesn't even have to clean out a desk. With hoteling, every employee has "one foot out the door" at all times.

Hoteling sends an important message to the employee: "Your employment is temporary. Keep your photos of your ugly family in the trunk of your car so we don't have to look at them."

- Scott Adams, The Dilbert Principle, 1996

Wednesday morning I woke up at 4am and couldn't get back to sleep - stressing about work.  Said goodbye to our floor at 4:30 and went to the pub.  As you do.

Thursday morning I woke up at 2am and couldn't get back to sleep - stressing about work.  Got in early, but of the three sections (sections, not teams) in our home zone, one section had spread themselves out along most of the windows, splitting the rest of the teams up.  Very unsettling day.  Went to the pub.  As you do.  But as I was leaving, I was convinced I heard them talking about me, and so I had a full on meltdown when I got home.  I haven't cried that much about work since my very first night on 5 November 2007.  

I read The Dilbert Principle probably twenty years ago, and that section above has stuck with me all these years, as it resonated with my feelings about working at OzEmail back in 1996-1997 - where I would get into work an hour early just to get the same seat every day (Como to St Leonards to arrive by 7am - was pretty awful).  But now I just can't get in that early, as the sweetie can't (unless I catch a 6:30 bus).  Which means ongoing stress every single fricken day FOREVER.

Mornings are struggling to keep housework under control.  Evenings are struggling to keep scanning and labelling and All The Things under control.

Did have a bit of a break on the weekend at least. 

Friday night we watched The Circle, which we both found interesting.  However I never quite *got* Mae's character.  At the beginning it looked like she was going to get caught up in something creepy and have to escape.. but instead embraced it 100% ..?  I kept thinking she was just playing along to somehow get inside and do something against the system.. but no..   Odd movie.

Saturday morning I did almost nothing except waste time on the internet.  Which is tragic considering how little time I have.  Did a few bits and pieces and some food shopping and cooked roast pork for dinner.  In the evening we watched Professor Marston and the Wonder Women, about Dr William Marston and his life and influences with the Wonder Woman comic.  We both enjoyed it although it's likely only very loosely based on reality (if at all).

Sunday was just powering through the todo list.  The never ending todo list.  In the evening I started watching Anastasia (finished Monday night).  Even though it was all in English, and the subtitles if I'd wanted them were in English, all the credits and the "ten years later" caption were in French.  Very weird.

Where were we?  A week and a half ago..

Friday afternoon I took an early mark from work and came home and watched The Lion King while finishing off that section of the jigsaw.

Saturday was alternating between housework, photo labelling and photo filing.  Stu went to Damien's for a war game.  In the evening we went to Laziza House for dinner, which was ok.  Went back to Damien's to finish the game.

Sunday Stu went to work; Chrissie came over and we grouted one of the walls in the shower.  Also photo labelling.

Early this week I finished labelling my New Zealand photos - only took two months! (normally it takes years).  I also calculated that if I label 500 photos a week it'll take me about five years to label all my holiday photos.  Doable I think..

Wednesday I had to come home so Rheem could look at the broken valve on the hot water tank (remember I noticed it was broken one year and twelve days after the tank was installed).  The guy took one look and asked "is that all that's wrong?" heh.  Two minute job to put a new valve on (and he left me a spare in case it happens again).  *Hopefully* they don't charge me for the callout, on account of it's the second thing to go wrong with that heater in its first year.

Had dinner with the whole N Gang at Malaysian Chapter which was pretty cool.

Friday I went over to Chrissie's for gozleme for dinner.  We were going to watch a Lego movie but it got too late.

And yesterday was pretty must just cleaning and tidying the house all day, on account of having all of Stu's family over for dinner.  It was all very nice, except for Violet being super stressful jumping all over everything and everyone and touching and poking everything. Had lots of pizza and watched Austen Powers.

And so ends the first half of the year.

So Wednesday kinda felt like Monday which meant the week did go by a lot quicker.  

Today I window shopped while Stu had his osteopath appointment, Gus's for brunch (no hair in my food this time, but one of our water glasses was all sticky), then we did our food shopping.  Powered my way through scanning the last album of Mum's that I've got (aside from the wedding album) so can return the batch of five and get some more.  Also New Zealand photo labelling.  And jigsaw.  

Cooked Alan's beef stroganoff (minus the sour cream) all afternoon.

Last week I was scanning Mum's photos of their trip to Queensland in 2002 and came across the sculpture of the rescue of the Stinson survivors in 1937.  So tonight I watched The Riddle of the Stinson, which I saw once on tv many many years ago.  Mum even has a copy of Green Mountains signed by O'Reilly!  One of these days I should read it..

Yeah so I got sick.  Fun.  Not.  I blame Ray.

Felt a bit blah yesterday.  We still did food shopping though.  Did a few bits and pieces and some of the jigsaw.  In the evening we watched Anon which was quite interesting and we enjoyed it.

Today was just more feeling blah.  Again with just house bits and pieces, photo labelling, and jigsaw.

Also, Vince Matsko replied yesterday to an email I sent him last year with a photo of the geodesic icosahedron .. I might have squeed just a little bit :)

Friday night a week ago, a bunch of us went in to Library Up Late.  It was an interesting concept, with a keynote discussion with Ben Law and Jenny Phang (of Law School fame, although I'd never actually heard of them), live music, displays of ephemera and other talks and entertainment, as well as food and drinks available.  We quite enjoyed it.

So this year has been *crazy* weatherwise.  Summer just would not end, having 30C days all through March.  April was pleasant.  I didn't start wearing my jumper until we got back from New Zealand.  Then in two weeks it was so cold I needed my jacket.  Two weeks from summer to winter.  We completely skipped autumn!

Had a very quiet weekend.  Other than food shopping I didn't leave the house.  Had a huge todo list and slowly worked my way through it, although probably only got two thirds of it done.

Saturday night after Homeland we watched The Goonies, which neither the sweetie and I had ever seen.  Sunday night was epic roast pork.

In a strange twist of fate, the sweetie and I were in both Australia and New Zealand on Anzac Day - had a quick hop across the ditch to celebrate our tenth wedding anniversary - making the most of the last of the Singapore Airlines direct flights to Wellington - in fact our flight back was the second last one.

Since we've been back I've been meaning to blog, but I'm a slacker.  I wanted to rant about the poor customer service from Netflix, and praise the fantastic customer service from Willow.  I've been busy at work but not crazy busy, in fact had time to clean things this week which was nice.

A bunch of us ended up at Rob and Fiona's last night for chilli which was nice (and not tooo spicy!), and I inflicted them with not just our New Zealand slide show, but Japan 2009, Hong Kong 2013 and East Asia 2017.  Oops.  :)

I've processed all my New Zealand photos (renamed, resized and geotagged).  And other than food shopping that's about all I've managed to achieve this weekend.  Well that and cooking half the afternoon.  Cauliflower bake and teriyaki chicken for dinner, and cheese balls for snacks.

This is my new wallpaper - Belconnen from the air

Last Thursday we went along with EffanC and Scott to Pialligo Estate for a "Meet the Maker" dinner with wines by Shaw and Smith.  This was a much smaller event than the Brokenwood dinners I've been to, but just as good.  Their head chef could do whatever he liked foodwise to showcase the wines.  A lovely evening of great food, wine and friends.

Poached coconut chicken breast salad, with 2017 sauvignon blanc

Asian BBQ style prawn, chili, with 2015 M3 chardonnay

Duck jungle curry, with 2016 pinot noir

Sticky beef ribs, steam rice, Asian crispy brussels sprouts, with 2015 shiraz

Pecorino, spiced quince, with 2009 shiraz

Deep fried banana