This morning we headed out for brunch (the Scottish Restaurant! shhh!!) and then did a small bit of food shopping.

And then it was midday. Hrmmm.

Cleaned out and decluttered a couple of shelves in the kitchen which was all I achieved today.

The other day Chrissie asked if they could come by today for a swim (on account of stoopidly hot weather this weekend).  This morning Ben and Sarah if they could come by this arvo for a swim.  Then Annie asked if they could could come by this arvo for a swim.  

You know me and people.

Sigh.

So I refused to organise anything.  

On account of I HATE organising people.  So I didn't.  Stu organised for Ben and Sarah to come by around dentist time, and Annie from 4pm.  I never did hear from Chrissie.  So it all worked out in the end.  Had a nice swim with Ben and Sarah when they were here, and Annie brought cake for Lily's birthday and we sat around watching stoopid YouTube videos while the storm passed over (and later while all the girls were in the pool).  

Even though this was like the hottest day of the year, the sweetie convinced me to turn the oven on to make these nachos - just corn chips topped with cheese and grilled for about five minutes.  Served with Stu's homemade salsa and sour cream.  Soooo good!

Tonight we watched a new episode of The Good Place, and Discovery.  I'm thinking about going to bed, but I have this awful feeling I'm going to get insomnia tonight.  Of course going to bed early and stressing about it is almost guaranteed to make it happen.. but if I stay up later and then get it I'll just lose all that sleep I could have had.. hrmmm...

Also the cooler has been trying to keep up with the heat and doing a quite reasonable job of it..

So we'd been planning to go out to the club today.

But then I woke up at dentist time.  And lay there for two hours.  Got up for an hour and read feeds.  Then lay in bed for another hour.  Finally got about another hour and a half's sleep, but was still a zombie this morning.

Cooked David some breakfast, then he headed home.

Stu also didn't sleep very well so we decided we'd avoid people and stay home.

I spent the afternoon cleaning out drawers and cupboards in the kitchen, wiping them out and decluttering them.  I'm selling/giving a way a few things.  Selling the juicer and the ice cream maker - anyone interested?  And giving away a blender, a toasted sandwich maker and a coffee grinder.  Felt a lot better for having actually achieved something today, and getting some much needed down time.

In the evening I cooked up some fish (that we got last weekend but everything kept getting in the way and we hadn't cooked it yet), with some mushrooms and salad.  Watched the third episode of Star Trek Discovery, which was a lot better than the previous two, and then watched Look Who's Talking Too.

9pm and it's totally bed time..

Wow this has certainly been a busy year, and a very very social one. I left writing up the friends and family section til last because it just seemed to go on forever and ever!

Our year began at home, with Ben and EffanC over for nibbles and a small party. Annie and the family came over the next day for chaos and Turkish food. Saw Scott and Kerry and the kids on the first day back at work before they went home.

We had one holiday this year - a cruise on the Queen Mary 2 out of Hong Kong (with a couple of days in Macau beforehand). I was super excited about it, and it lived up to expectations. Although I felt like we didn't quite belong there, on account of not being retired highly paid executives. We never made it to Queensland this year - things were just too *complicated*. I did do two day trips to Sydney to inspect my flat. And there was a work trip to Melbourne for two days.

At work I swapped teams after not quite fitting in with the old team (I'm too dumb for that team!). Still doing much the same work, but with different technology. The project I joined had been going for about two years, and I figure I have about two years of work to clean up the mess that has been made! I had a little bit of weekend work doing upgrades to various things and monitoring of some events. The majority of my new section is in Melbourne, so we went down in September for a two-day planning session. The highlight of the trip was the amazing flight down, and catching up with David twice. We ran a trivia night in March. Unfortunately the winning table weren't going to be around to run the next one, so we asked the second-place getters if they'd do it. They said yes, but never did it. So I'll probably run another one in February or March. We had a whiskey night in June which was a bit of fun. I went with the sweetie to SplunkLive! and I'm *still* bitter that a big data company couldn't get the distribution of tshirt sizes right. We had a DAIS video night in August, as it had been way too long since the last one. Finally, I ran our annual floor barbeque at the lake for forty people and everyone seemed to enjoy it.

I was pretty healthy this year. I had a bit of a cold in February, and then another one picked up on the Queen Mary 2 (it was going around the entire ship), but after that I didn't get any more colds all year. The other thing we got on the way home from our holiday was a bout of gastro, which hit Stu just after we got home, and me a day or so later (although I seemed to only get a fairly mild case of it). I went to the dentist after one year instead of twenty and will probably keep going regularly now. I did battle with insomnia quite a few times during the year. Usually for no apparent reason, although it tended to be associated with a sore spine and/or a brain that wouldn't shut up. I rage-quit on Stu's bed earlier in the year and more often than not sleep in the spare room. That room has the bed Yvonne gave me in 2005 which has a much firmer mattress than Stu's. I don't get a sore spine *as much* in that bed, and my restless legs don't play up nearly as much there either (don't know why that is - different fabrics??). We've been meaning to go shopping for a new king size bed, but we just haven't gotten around to it yet.

We saw a lot of F&C (EffanC) this year which was really nice. Went to their place a number times and had them over here as well. Also saw Scott with them a few times. We saw quite a lot of Kit, with various combinations of Serena, Ben, Sarah, Anita and Pete. David came to stay in January, April, August and December, and Mum came to visit in February and August. Only saw a little bit of Annie the family - they came over for a Turkish feast in January, we went to their place for dinner in March, had them over here in April, their place for cake for Noah's birthday, and them here for Christmas dessert. Saw even less of Potty and the family - seeing them at the beginning of the year before they went home, Kerry brought over sick kids in July, then everyone came at Christmas (twice). We met Chrissie's new boyfriend in January, and by July they were living together with a baby on the way. I've gotten to go to a few of the ultrasounds which has been pretty cool. They came over for our first hanami party, and we had Zac come and stay in December so Chris and Mike could celebrate their anniversary. Nat and Andrew came over for our second hanami party, but sadly that was the only time we saw them all year. We had Damien and Amanda over for dinner in May, and went with them to Olive at Hawker in July, and saw just Damien for drinks in August. James and Rachel came down for a cake decorating course in May and they stayed with us which was nice. James also came down for work in November and we caught up for dinner at Bella Vista. We met up with Jenn at Chong Co in January, and had Jenn and Nick over in June for dinner. Jenn was getting set for a foodie trip to Mexico, which she went on later in the year and we got copies of her travelogue which was pretty cool. Had dinner with Luc and Cynthia and the boys when they came down in January, had @Chrispycon and Anne over for dinner in June, went to a barbeque at @CLBradley's in June, had dinner with Luc when he was down for work in September, and went over to Lachie's for darts (which I was crap at) and Jenga (which I didn't lose at) in November.

At "the club" we went to a couple of swim nights, and several socials at the club. One of them we did pea and ham soup, and another we did Christmas in July for forty people.

Pretty quiet year for the fish. I got some more danios for the two foot, and a couple of bristlenose catfish for my big tank and the two foot. We did get another tank from Chrissie as well which is quite a nice little tank. In the big angel tank is the angel, two big (probably female) danios, a cory, the bristlenose I bought, and a big bristlenose I got off Chris. In the upstairs two foot there's five danios, four rummy nose tetras and a bristlenose. In the little tank from Chris are her two clown loaches. They're really too big for that tank but haven't decided where to put them yet. It could really use a bristlenose as well, as the tank gets direct sunlight so there's lots of algae starting to grow. Downstairs there's four danios and the platy I got off Chris two years ago. Stu has two guppies in the little tank on his desk, and heaps of fish in his four foot. We bought expensive LED lights for two of the tanks instead of regular fluoros, but one of them died after only eight months which is very disappointing. Hoping the other one we bought doesn't die as quickly.

I didn't get any new Lego this year, although I did get a Nanoblocks Empire State Building for Christmas. I did a bunch of jigsaws throughout the year including a very cool 3D one of the Sydney Opera House. I finally assembled the 24000 piece "Life" jigsaw, because I figured I *had* to before I could get going on the 40320 piece "Memorable Moments" Disney jigsaw! I had fun with papercraft as well, making some Villarceau circles, completing a geodesic dodecahedron and two geodesic octahedra (or hexahedra), making a four frequency geodesic icosahedron which is pretty spectacular (and I had this hanging from the roof at work for a while which is probably how they noticed ceiling cat), and an icosidodecahedron and a geodesic icosidodecahedron.

For some reason I always mention the weather in my year in review posts. This year seemed quite cold in winter, but the pool only froze over a couple of times. We had hail and snow on the same day in August which was pretty exciting. October seemed like a very cold month, and as per usual December had its fair share of cold days as well. Not that I'm complaining, I'd prefer it to be cold than hot. Our evaporative cooler works very well, although I swear last summer was the most humid summer in Canberra ever (the evaporative cooler doesn't work very well when it's humid). This summer we've used it a little and it's quite lovely. I'm even noticing a temperature inversion now - often it's cooler upstairs than downstairs! But the best part is being able to use it on fan only to simply bring cool air into the house once it's cooler outside than in. In the past it could be quite cool outside, but still hot inside simply because the air is so still and there's no crossflow ventilation. Having the fan bring it in is wonderful.

At the end of last year I was considering getting a backpack vacuum cleaner because I *hate* dragging a barrel vacuum cleaner around. David suggested we get a cordless one instead. I was a bit reluctant because they are essentially glorified dustbusters, and all the ones we saw had rollers that just tangle up hair. But we ended up getting one anyway. It sat unused for probably six months, but I've finally gotten into the habit of doing a room or two per day, and now the house is actually getting fully vacuumed every week. Amazing! Our Cisco switch died while we were on holidays in March. And we never did get the NAS working again with it - it's still going through a little old 100Mb switch. Our home internet has always been bad here, and getting steadily worse. When we got back from holidays it was completely unusable. We called Internode to have a look. They got Telstra to have a look, and confirmed a problem with the line something like 400m away. They fixed this and things did improve somewhat, but our internet is still painfully slow (2Mb down). Netflix seems to buffer relatively well but Stan is abysmal. We're hoping NBN will improve things a little, but given that our node is like a kilometre away I doubt it's going to be amazing. My blog and hosting/email was offline for a few days while we were on holidays. Possibly a DOS, but don't know if it was ever explained. Then Vic sold everything off and retired. I'm wondering how long it takes them to figure out this hosting is a freebie and either shut it down or make me start paying for it. I really really need to move this blog off, but it's such a huge beast it's going to be very difficult. Even backing up the site via FTP takes a couple of days. I might have more luck tarring up the whole thing into one file which would transfer more quickly and efficiently, but I'm hampered by not having any shell access. And I couldn't find the perl script I used to have which lets you run commands interactively via the website (yes I know - super dangerous, which is why it's not online, and hence I can't find it). We had dramas with our dvd players. The video on my old dvd recorder kept dropping out, and it was getting worse. The PS3 dvd part stopped working years ago. I even had issues with my old Toshiba. So in the end we spent $80 on a new player that will play everything including media on usb stick. The remote is faulty - any time you press a button it fires off the action multiple times. But we got it working with our Harmony remote, so in the end didn't bother to swap it (especially since JB HiFi price matched it with Big W). The old Android of Stu's that I used for Ingress got so old that the Play Store wouldn't work anymore, which meant I couldn't update Ingress, so the thing essentially became a brick. Maybe I could still use it as a media player, since my phone doesn't have space for that sort of thing. I upgraded my five year old iPhone to 10.3.3 without any dramas. It's faster after unlocking than iOS 9 was which is pretty cool.

Around the house, we discovered our shower was leaking, probably from old cracked grout in the corner. We scraped it back (mostly) but still haven't regrouted/siliconed. It's on the todo list for our staycation! The snifter valve exploded on our hot water system, but I still haven't gotten around to calling up Aquamax. It's on the todo list for our staycation! We had a heap of pool dramas this year. At the beginning of the year there was way too much stabiliser (sunscreen) which meant the chlorine didn't work at all. Got that under control with a bunch of water changes (dear Adelaide: you're welcome), but then this summer the pool has been unbuffered and unstable and keeps going green, even with adding plenty of chlorine. Sad times. Possibly the pH has been too high, so have adjusted that, vacuumed the last batch of algae to waste, raised the total alkalinity and added a bunch of chlorine and *hopefully* it'll settle down now. The tenants of my flat in Sydney moved out after seven years, and the place needed to be fully renovated, costing me something like $16000 :( Did two trips to see the before and after. Good news is it's getting a lot more rent now that it's all shiny again.

We didn't eat out too much this year, and when we did it was generally when meeting up with other people. We did go to Bella Vista a few times - for our anniversary, for my birthday, and when James came to visit. We only went to Dumpling Inn a couple of times because they were closed for much of the year. Both times were with Chris, Mike and Zac. We also tried The Scholar in Dickson with them, but I wasn't impressed with the very slow service. Also wasn't impressed with Chinese Inn at Kippax where we went for Sarah's birthday. Went to Hero Sushi in the city a couple of times, the first experience a lot better than the second. Went to Malaysian Chapter with Cath and Scott for Stu's birthday, and Chong Co with Jenn. Only had brunch out a couple of times this year, once at Market St Eats at Belconnen markets and once at Gus' Place. We often have lunch at Saigon Streetfood when doing our food shopping, or sometimes Ali Baba or more recently Alaska Seafood. We did get to try out a few new places too - The Courtyard Restaurant at Mercure with Luc and Cynthia when they were in town, Olive at Hawker with Damien and Amanda, and Black Fire in Braddon with Luc. We tried out Mills and Grills pizzas this year which are pretty good, and Stu loves the karaage chicken pizza from Pizza Capers. And finally I went with Neil to the Brokenwood Wine dinner at Monster Kitchen and Bar in Hotel Hotel.

I tried a few new recipes this year. Lemon ginger chicken from a Coles magazine was very nice, beef cheeks from Not Quite Nigella was also pretty good, and Jamie's five ingredient Asian fishcakes were simple but nice. Stu cooked Scotch eggs a couple of times, and pork larb a few times. I had a go at fondue, but didn't follow a recipe so the cheese split. Chrissie gave me a book of fondue recipes, and I got a proper fondue set, but we've yet to have another go at it. Kit and Serena's gardens provided an excess of produce that we happily used up, and we got to eat some young roosters that Kit had raised and processed. I made Anzac biscuits on Anzac Day, caramel slice at least three times, a mint rocky road and a cheesecake.

Didn't see any theatre or shows or exhibitions this year.

The only movie we saw at a cinema was Silence - in Hong Kong!

Stu likes to watch tv while we eat dinner. I feel like being forced to sit in one place for three quarters of an hour is pretty stressful, especially on weekday evenings. Having said that, some shows are better than others and with some shows it didn't feel so much of a burden.

• Sherlock - season four
• Fuller House - season two
• Star Trek: The Original Series - finishing up what we started last year
• Star Trek: Voyager - the entire thing, which took most of the year and was the most stressful to have to watch
• Homeland - season five
• Black Adder Goes Forth - borrowed off Annie years ago but hadn't gotten around to finishing, watched this on my computer
• Monty Python - season four - borrowed off DC years ago but hadn't gotten around to finishing, watched this on my computer
• Air Crash Investigations - various episodes watched online while doing other things on my computer
• Australian Survivor - season two of the current incarnation - the only commercial tv we watched all year
• Fuller House - season three (in two parts)
• Dad's documentaries - stuff he'd taped off tv over the years. I've been working my way through them while I do jigsaws downstairs in the summer months
• The Good Place - season one and the first half of season two
• Rake - season four

Books Read

• Tales of Two Cities, various short stories
• Bones Never Lie, by Kathy Reichs
• Uncle John's 24-Karat Gold Bathroom Reader
• The Barefoot Investor, by Scott Pape
• ET: The Book of the Green Planet, by William Kotzwinkle
• One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nets, by Ken Kesey
• No Place to Hide, by Glenn Greenwald

Other stuff

• Kit had baby bunnies but Vicki killed them by "playing" with them
• Neil won Ali Baba's "Chance to win $1000000" - but that's all it was - a chance to win. He didn't actually win the $1000000.
• Went to the Multicultural Festival with Chrissie for beer and meat (and potatoes) on a stick, while remembering Dad from three years earlier
• Had to do some actual clothes shopping for formal and other nice clothes for the cruise. Material Pleasures was awful, City Chic was much more successful, then again so was Vinnies and it was a lot cheaper
• Went to the farmers markets in April but I find it too stressful and it's too early for Stu so we don't really like going
• Stopped going to Coles at Jamison for the most part, because Jamison couldn't be arsed putting in enough trolley return bays around the car park
• Made a classic 80s space guy costume for Kit's 30th birthday party
• Had a brief play with IMosaic
• Setup a blog for the Queen Mary 2 with photos of the ship
• Went to Shepherd's Lookout and down to the river with Kit
• Paid off our mortgage
• Went to Hall Markets with Kit and Pete
• Got access to my old CIA mailbox and downloaded seven years of mail
• Setup a blog to compare Canberra between 1986 and 2016, sent it to the RiotACT but they didn't link to it. Johnboy would have.  Just sayin'.
• Had to be official photographer for Roz's 60th at The Abbey which I found very stressful
• Saw some of Kit's chicks hatching
• Kit had more baby bunnies but they died, we don't know why
• Had my democracy sausage photo feature in Atlas Obscura 
• Got long service leave
• Accidentally bought Twisties that make your tongue turn blue. I couldn't eat them. Ewww. Stu said it wasn't the only thing that turned blue..!

Saturday 23.12.17

Dropped into Chrissie's to pick up keys and instructions for animal feeding, then did our food shopping for the week.  

Sunday 24.12.17 - Christmas Eve

Spent pretty much the entire afternoon cooking.  I cooked up a Christmas caramel slice (flavoured with a little ginger and spice), a cherry/raspberry white chocolate cheesecake that looked like crap, whoops, and then a 2.8kg piece of roast pork, as well as potato bake and roast veggies.  In the evening we had our Christmas Eve feast and watched new episodes of Fuller House, and started watching season four of Rake.

The fridge is choc-a-block full!

Monday 25.12.17 - Christmas Day

Had a relaxing and quiet morning because I didn't need to do any cooking.  I did clean up the kitchen, the bathroom, and the vomit some animal had left on our front patio - gross!!!  The sweetie and I went out and did a little pokegressing, then dropped into Chrissie's to feed the animals.  Came home and did a final bit of house tidying (and found out both families were coming for dessert, not just one).  After lunch (I had leftover pork and potato - yum!) Annie and the kids came over for dessert, and a little while later Scott and the family came over as well.  There was so. much. dessert.  And I'm not even a big dessert person.  My teeth hurt just looking at all the sugar!

By the time everyone left the sweetie and I were completely exhausted from *people*.  I cooked up the section of crackling that had been under the roast and so not crackled, and had that for dinner.  In the evening just Fuller House and Rake.

Tuesday 26.12.17 - Boxing Day

Did a bit of decluttering in the spare room - pulled out a pile of clothes to give/throw away, and started separating some of the stuff in the entrance way of what to Green Shed/Freecycle/eBay.  Cleaned the kitchen and family room window sills and trimmed the thyme which had been going a little crazy and tidied up all the herbs.  Did a bit of jigsawing, and worked on my new Nanoblocks building.  In the evening we went to Kit's as she and Pete were having a barbeque and a bunch of their friends came.  Stayed up probably a little too late, but it was a nice night.

Wednesday 27.12.17

Had a bit of a slow start.  Did a water change in the angel tank.  We'd been planning to meet up with Potty etc to see a movie, but in between deciding which movie/session to see and actually booking it, they sold out.  We met up with them at the mall anyway for lunch (I also needed a few things at the shops so did that first).  Then everyone came back to our place for dessert take 2 (and the kids had a swim as well).  So I had to put away all the stuff that I'd spread out on the lounge room floor back into the spare room, where it's now out of sight out of mind :(  We put on the animated live action The Jungle Book to watch in the afternoon.  I say animated because just about the only thing that was real in the entire movie was the kid.  Still, it wasn't too bad.  I did the edge for the World's Most Difficult Jigsaw while watching.  By the time everyone left the sweetie and I were completely exhausted from *people*.  That and an entire day gone with pretty much nothing to show for it.

Thursday 28.12.17

Alternated between fifteen minutes at a time doing some deep cleaning in the bathroom, and doing the big jigsaw.  In the evening (it was Thursday after all), the sweetie ordered an epic pizza from Dominos.  It was nice enough, but it was sorely lacking in pepperoni, which was pretty disappointing.

We watched The Space Between Us, which was nice enough, but some of the problems with it annoyed me (spoilers!!) - like being able to have online chats in real time - don't you know there's a three to twenty-four minute delay each way on comms (depending on position in orbits)??  Or what are they going to feed the kid?  I'm sure they didn't send any baby formula on the mission!  And I did call out the father very early on.

Friday 29.12.17

Just a few bits and pieces in the morning, including testing the dead LED fish tank light in the fitting downstairs.  I bought the LED light in April, but it died a week or so ago.  I'm pretty pissed off about that because the light was twice the price of a regular fluoro light, but it only lasted half as long.  I'm also pretty pissed that we don't have a receipt, because the sweetie doesn't tend to keep receipts.  Going to have to make a point of always getting him to give me receipts when we go shopping.  I know exactly when we bought it, and it should be in the sweetie's credit card statements, so going to try our luck getting a refund or replacement.  Moral of the story:  AquaOne is evil, and their products are crappy (always have been).  We bought another LED light in October that's still working, but we don't have a receipt for it either, so can guarantee it's going to die shortly too :(

Went into Belco to get our pool water tested.  Good news is our sunscreen levels are now down to the correct levels after last summer's dramas.  Bad news is there's no buffering (total alkalinity), which means it's all a bit unstable.  And even though our test kits say there's plenty of chlorine, the pool shop testing says there's none.  *sigh*

Went into the city for doctor stuff and lunch.  We went to Hero Sushi which is usually crowded and pretty good, but it was half empty and all the hot food was cold which wasn't much fun. Mostly just sorted pairs of pieces in the little jigsaw in the afternoon.  Had a swim then added a bunch of pool chemicals.

Saturday 30.12.17

Finished The World's Most Difficult jigsaw (it's not) fairly quickly in the morning, then finished the Nanoblocks Empire State Building.

Worked on the big jigsaw for a while in the afternoon so could finish it by the end of the year.  Serena came over after seeing Kit, and had a quick swim.  We watched Coyote Ugly in the evening which I first saw on the plane to the USA in 2000.  I didn't realise I'd seen it again back in 2003.  

Sunday 31.12.17 - New Years Eve

Was awake from dentist time to about 5:30am, then only managed about another two hours sleep after that.  So pretty tired and a very slow morning.  Watched Cinderella while finishing off that section of the jigsaw.  It's a pretty lame movie actually.  I don't think I've seen it since I was a kid.  There's a whole heap of just slapstick, and the "love" story is pathetic.  How do you fall in love with someone without them even saying a word??  Sure you can get a bit of a crush, but that's not really enough to live "happily ever after". 

Went out for lunch at the markets and to do our food shopping.  We didn't do much shopping as none of the butchers were open, I was super tired so couldn't even think about vegetables (and Tom's was very depleted on stock anyway).  We did pick up a huge pile of fish for $19/kg though, gave some to Kit, froze some, and will have it as a couple of meals in the next few days. 

This afternoon has just been catching up on this blog, and I've still got to finish my year in review post.  I started off well this year, taking notes for most of the year at the beginning of December.  But then everything just went crazy before Christmas and I kept putting it off.  It's probably half done so need to do that if there's nothing else I do before tonight.  We have no plans yet for New Years.  I'll be lucky to stay awake!

Wednesday was my ex-section Christmas party, which is actually more like a floor party, which I run every year (for the past five years anyway).  This year I put the price up a little because I could barely get enough of everything last year, and last year I also got quite a few bags of free ice.  So this year for $715 I put on a barbeque for nearly forty people.  A good chunk of that money went on beer but I also got a lot more chili sausages from Bonzer Bangers which were very much appreciated.  So pretty much everything I took got eaten except a couple of bags of lettuce leaves, a loaf or so of bread, some beer and softdrink and quite a bit of water (it wasn't a hot day - in fact in rained a fair bit, but it only rained heavily while we were all eating lunch).  Everyone seemed to have a good time which was good :)

Friday night I made the sweetie watch Love Actually, because, Christmas.

Yesterday was pretty quiet, just doing bit of house work and jigsaw.  In the evening I was going to watch Carols in the Domain, which are always on the last Saturday before Christmas.  Except this year they did them a week ago.  Sad times.  So then tried to find a Christmas movie to watch.  A couple of weeks ago at work we were discussing best Christmas movies.  General consensus was Die Hard, but ChrisT and I both said Love Actually as well.  Connor's contributions were Jingle All the Way, and The Santa Clause (neither of which I'd seen).  So Netflix had Jingle All the Way, so we watched that last night.  OMFG one of the stoopidest movies ever!  Oh dear!

In May 2011 I saw a 24000 piece jigsaw in Games Capital called "Life" and knew I had to get it.  It was once the World's Largest Jigsaw, although by the time I saw it it was relegated to second place behind Ravensburger's Double Retrospect 32000 piece jigsaw.

I purchased the jigsaw shortly afterwards for $385 from the Games Capital.

I started it immediately on the dining room table.  The jigsaw was split into four 6000-piece sections.  One section covered most of the dining room table - in fact it hung off the edges just a little bit!

I finished part one at the end of June 2011.

I had a break from it then, before working on the second section through February 2012.

I had another break then, before starting the fourth section in February 2013, finishing up in March 2013.  I did it this way because I didn't want to finish up on the blue corner which other people had said was quite tricky.  I moved downstairs for this section which gave me a bit more room to work with, but even then it just went off the edges of the table.

I finally started the third (and final) section in February 2014 and finished it in March 2014.

The puzzle is actually twenty-four identical 999 piece squares.  I laid each one of those squares on butchers paper I had leftover from my move to Canberra in 2007.  Then I stacked them - 24 high!

And there they sat for three and a half years.

Whoops.

Anyways with my next purchase I needed to finally assemble the jigsaw and dismantle it.  So on the weekend, I finally did it!!  I took it into work to photograph it from the floor above.

How fricken cool is that!  The middle bit is reflecting the light a bit but other than that it turned out really well.  It took probably twenty minutes to half an hour to assemble the twenty four sections.  And then another thirty to forty minutes to disassemble back into the 999 piece sections and put them into individual baggies.  If (when) I do this again, it'll be a lot easier, with twenty four small jigsaws to do instead of four (or one!) large one.

Thanks to Daniel for helping with it!  And I was glad that a few people got to see it - Connor, Ward and Chuck all saw it assembled and thought it was suitably cool :)

So last Tuesday was a big Kingsley's lunch followed by me taking photos of people watching horses run around in a circle followed by a bunch of us heading back to Lachie's for darts, jigsaw (ok that was just me) and imitation Jenga (I didn't lose!)

Friday night we caught up with Kit and Pete for a while which was nice.

Saturday was pretty quiet.  Just housework and getting things done in the morning, and mostly jigsaw in the afternoon.  For dinner we went to the Dumpling Inn (which has *finally* reopened after being closed for like six months for "renovations" but we could barely notice any difference) with Chris and Mike and Zac.  We got there pretty early which meant we didn't have to wait all night for food which was good (and the place didn't fill up either, people must not realise it's reopened).

Sunday was also quiet, with housework type stuff interspersed with jigsaw.  In the evening we watched Beauty and the Beast - the live action one.  I quite enjoyed it, but not too convinced by Emma Watson as Belle, it felt like I was just watching Hermione.

And then back to it.  I've got my Sadie hat firmly on at the moment which generally makes me pretty happy.  Just puttering through work at my own pace and cleaning up mess.

So Survivor finished last night.

It was interesting this season.  There was obviously a lot of fans of the show playing this season as most of the survivors played *hard*.  But the problem with that is most of the people weren't actually all that nice (or at least weren't portrayed that way) and to be honest there wasn't all that many of them that I hoped would win.  Jericho's final speech made him sound like a complete jerk, and yet he still won it.

Oh well.

Bit of catching up here, and this isn't even everything heh

Tried out Gozleme King in the mall in June.  It was quite nice, although the spinach leaves a bit of an after taste on the top of my mouth that I don't like that much.  Later tried peri peri chicken which was nice enough too.  But would be nice if they had a "dine in" option as they go through a *lot* of cardboard boxes.

Got these heirloom tomatoes at the markets in July.  Not bad, although they do tend to dry out in the tub they're in at the markets because people don't buy them fast enough.

I used those tomatoes to make a tomato bake.  Roast the tomatoes for like an hour..

Top with basil and mozarella cheese

Bake for another 5-10 minutes or so.  So good.

Purple brussels sprouts we also got at the markets in July.  Don't think they were quite as nice as the green ones.  This is mixed with bacon, before being roasted.

Just a lamb roast I did in July

This was a beef cheeks dinner I did in July based on this recipe from Not Quite Nigella.

It doesn't look like much, but it sure was tasty!

Last year Stu read The Barefoot Investor by Scott Pape on his Kindle.  He said it was good and decided to get a paper copy.  I read most of it early this year before we went away and finished it when I got back.  It kinda reminds me of The Naked Chef for money.  Heck Scott Pape even looks a bit like Jamie Oliver :)  I quite enjoyed the book.  It's certainly an easy read, very conversational.  But the funniest part is that one of the things he said people should do is get rid of their credit cards and separate their pools of money into needs and wants.  Now I've been telling Stu that for *years* but it took him reading it in a book to finally do it hehe.

A book I finished reading more recently was ET: The Book of the Green Planet, by William Kotzwinkle, which I borrowed from the club forever ago.  I really really struggled to read this book.  It has quite an odd writing style that I struggled with.  It's a sequel to the ET movie, where ET is unsettled after his time on earth, doesn't fit in back home, and yearns to get back to earth.  But for someone so old and intelligent he's made out to be a bit of a klutz.  Finally finished it after many months, but didn't really enjoy it.

And another book I finished recently was One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nets, by Ken Kesey.  Pretty sure I borrowed this off Kit, and if I didn't I don't know who I borrowed it off - oops.  I'd seen the movie of this a long time ago so knew basically how it ended.  Again I struggled a bit with this in the beginning as it was pretty slow to get going, and really nothing much happens until the second half.  But got through it in the end.