So on Saturday the Albury-Wodonga Lego User Group put on "Bricktastic" in Junee.  Seemed like as good an excuse as any to head down and visit the little brother.  So Saturday morning I headed down.  It was quite foggy for much of the trip which was kinda nice.

Arrived at nearly 9:30am, and then headed to the pool and rec centre.  Instantly I confirmed what I knew would be true - it would be peaceful and uncrowded - nothing like the ridiculousness that is the Canberra Lego shows (that I stopped going to because, kids).  Had a good long wander around, it was pretty cool (it was, in fact, bricktastic!).

After we were done there we headed back to David's for a little while.

Then headed out again.  We stopped by Peter Neve's, but sadly he wasn't home (haven't seen him since Dad's funeral).  Had a quick look at the trains.

Went to the Junee Hotel for a pub lunch.

Then up to the showground to go to the circus.  This was a Lennon Brothers circus, and it had animals other than horses - I thought exotic animals had been stopped in circuses in Australia years ago.  This one had three lions, monkeys, ponies, donkeys and camels.  It was quite a fun afternoon.  They couldn't have made much profit though - there weren't many people there.  Maybe there would have been more for the evening show.  There were no photos allowed, which is fairly common for performance shows, and I would understand flashes distracting the performers, and phone screens annoying other audience members.  But.  They were selling flashing glow sticks and spinning LED lights which are far more distracting and annoying than someone taking a few photos.  I reckon the real reason they don't want you taking video/photos is in case one of them falls or gets attacked by lions and they don't want it recorded.  But the real kicker was the kid outside (who played a clown) telling us not to take photos of the animals outside (before we even went in).  Little anti-photo nazi.  That sort of attitude to photos really pisses me off, and did colour my mood for the show.  So I'm going to post the couple of photos I got anyway.  So nyer!

Stopped the IGA on the way back and picked up some stuff for dinner.  

But first we did most of a 550 piece jigsaw.

Then I cooked up some chicken (butter chicken - Chicken Tonight), rice and veggies for dinner.  And we watched half a dozen episodes of The Good Place, which was good to watch again from the beginning knowing how things go later on.

Then this morning I came home, again through fog in various places along the drive.

So Sunday was another nice quiet day at home.

I would have gone to the airport open day, but I didn't register for a ticket as soon as I found out - I tried to get in contact with my brother first.  But he was off cruising so didn't get back to me til a few days later.  By which time there were no tickets left.  I got on a wait list, got offered an afternoon spot, but by the time I saw *that* email they'd completely sold out.  Le sigh.  Still, there wasn't really anything new this year so didn't really miss much.  Just crowds.  And people.  I hate people.

So anyway, in the evening David came to stay the night which was brief but nice to see him.

Today I was just trying to keep up in the morning, then a half hour meeting that went for an hour followed immediately by a one hour meeting that went for two hours.  My legs were restless by the end of it making the last hour a special form of torture.

Stu had a crazy exhausting day as well, so we did the logical thing.  We got pizza.  Even though we have a stack of healthy food in the house.  And I felt even worse after.  Le sigh.

Friday I did a bit of cleaning up in the back yard.  Did some Lego sorting and watched Clerks.  OMFG such a dumb movie.  Labelled a comedy but I didn't find a single thing to even smile at, let alone laugh at.  What a waste of time.  Had leftovers for dinner and we watched The Two Towers (started just after 6pm, finished nearly 10:30pm).

Saturday spent quite a bit of time helping Pete redo our awning out the back (whoever mounted the sheeting had the edge finish over the top of the edge piece of wood, so whenever it rained water would seep into the wood and it had gone rotten).  Did a Bunnings run and I painted all the bits (Mission Brown FTW!  - as an aside, not happy with the Bunnings guy who decided he could try and sell me something I didn't need when just plain old mission brown would be just fine thankyouverymuch).  Watched Chasing Amy in the afternoon, which was significantly better than Clerks.  At least it had a story.  In the evening we watched Enterprise and Homeland.

Sunday morning was just house bits and pieces.  Finished scanning another album of mum's.  After lunch we headed out to the club to chillax.  Well kinda.  For a non-event weekend there were *heaps* of people there.  Had a bit of a swim, but mostly just sat around and chatting.  Word got out that we were going to fire up the pizza oven, so pretty much everyone brought their own pizzas to cook which was a bit of fun.  Eventually cleared the room when I started singing Queen.  Whoops.

Monday was a quiet day, mostly just sorting Lego and watching Dad's WWII documentaries.  In the afternoon watched Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, which was actually quite fun, mainly because of all the self references with the whole series, many of which I got, many of which I'm sure I didn't.  Also did some food shopping and cooked roast beef for dinner and watched some Enterprise.

Another day of getting things done.. well, and doing crap for other people as well hehe.

Went down to Kit's for dinner (pizza was calling) and a couple of drinks and now an early night.

I also finished up my first draft of the trivia night questions this week and sent them round to peoples for comment (no responses yet though :( ).  Tonight I worked on the filler rounds.  I've got two definites and one maybe.

Then the fun part of putting it all into a slideshow begins...

Had a pretty productive day today.  It's amazing what you can get done when people leave you alone to just get your work done!!

Did you know traffic around all of Dickson is *terrible* at 6pm at night?

I was scanning photos of the Olympics in Sydney in 2000 the other day and remembered the photo that went round the interwebs at the time of a guy doing a handstand in front of the Olympic Flame at Sydney Olympic Park at Homebush.  I had a quick Google but couldn't find it.  But I did find it in my small collection of "humour" pictures.

Had a thoroughly awful day today.  Thought was going to be picked up to go to Chrissie's appointment, but I was actually meant to pick her up.  Which meant we were late and when we were still on our way they were like, well the doctor is running late anyway, don't bother coming.  So $90 better off (so long as they don't try to charge her) but I was super stressed due to failing because of poor communication and assumtions.  We went and got lunch anyway but I was in a pretty bad mood.

And then got back in time for a meeting, but the dude was like "it's next to the kitchen" except there's *two* kitchens on his floor.  Fricken sigh.  Was in tears because of the stress of everything at one point.  And people.  Hate people.  Why can't I just sit quietly in a room and do my work and NEVER HAVE TO DEAL WITH PEOPLE????

My boss said I needed Lego therapy, so got a bit of that tonight.  And have sore fingers to show for it.

Friday.

Yeup.

Ok day, relatively busy. 

The little brother and then Leanne came over for dinner.  Just did spaghetti with bascaiola sauce (cream, bacon, garlic - no mushrooms on account of my brother doesn't like mushrooms).  Nice enough, if a little carby and veggie-less (we haven't been shopping in two weeks).  Although I then did find the epic zucchinis in the fridge we got off Kit that I need to use soon.

Having a moment now on account of whenever I open my mouth people switch off and don't listen.  Hate that crap.

So somehow we ended up volunteering to do a Burns Night dinner at the club last night.

We took the 9kg of mashed potatoes we cooked on Friday and heated them up in a couple of slow cookers (tatties).  Stu cooked swedes (which take a *lot* longer than potatoes to get soft) and mashed them as well (neeps).  I added butter and salt to 9kg of pork and cooked them alllll afternoon.  There was also I think a kilo and a half of haggis.  Finally we did up some frozen peas and carrots.  I also made my own apple sauce and packet gravy.  Chris made up two cranachans (one with whiskey) which looked nothing like any google image search you'll do of it but tasted pretty good.

For about forty five people.

Yipe.

Good news is there was plenty of pork, potato and haggis for everyone, and pretty much the whole lot got eaten.  Bad news is we ran out of peas, carrots, apple sauce and gravy before we'd quite fed everyone (including us servers).  Doh!!

But everyone seemed to have a good night, including the three that stayed up til about 4:45am hehe.  I dropped in to say hi to them after going to the loo at one point and had to evict *three* frogs!!  One from the bathroom and two from the shed.  Such little cuties!

Today we lazed around, cleaned up, had a swim, then came home via the Scottish Restaurant.  Both pretty tired this afternoon and evening though.

Everything you said in that last sentence was incorrect.  hehe. 

So the sweetie and I went to see Star Wars: The Last Jedi at Dendy last night (an 8:30pm session so hardly any kids just a couple of teenagers).

Generally I quite liked it.

Although that was helped by hearing a few people say they either didn't like it or were indifferent to it.

I didn't watch any trailers, and I didn't read any reviews, so I had no expectations whatsoever, which is how I like to see movies.

So.. spoilers follow.. :)

So The Force Awakens was essentially a remake.  I called it a love letter to the original movies.

This one felt a lot like a remake as well.  There were an awful lot of parallels between this and Empire Strikes Back (master and apprentice training in a remote location, battle of Hoth etc), and a bit of Return of the Jedi in there as well (throne room stuff, stoopid cutesy creatures (seriously wtf?)).

Then there was the Harry Potter stuff (Rey/Kylo Ren connection like Harry/Voldemort, Mirror of Erised and trying to know parents).

But.  John Williams!!  It was so cool to see/hear the opening yet again in a cinema.  I've seen every Star Wars movie in the cinema except for A New Hope.  And all the leitmotifs for all the characters were there, to the point that any new stuff was kinda secondary.

It was cool seeing Billie Lourd in a bigger role too.

It was pretty long, but I enjoyed it.  Be interesting to see where they take the next movie.