Had a fairly decent weekend last weekend.  Got quite a few things done on the todo list, including renewing my domain names (kazza.id.au has been in existence for fourteen years today!), vacuuming and cleaning out the pool, washing the sheets, installing windows 10 on my little laptop (and the GPS software still works hurrah!), cleaning the kitchen, some fish tank work, food shopping and cooking.  Didn't do the house vacuuming though.

In between we had our work ball, which I'll get some photos online for eventually.

This week was a very strange week.  We had several farewell events for the Chrises including a long lunch on Wednesday.  Gonna miss them.  It also seems certain that we will lose literally the best bar in Canberra.  And our carpark.  All very depressing.  Got some work done in between, although wasn't terribly motivated.

I also got grumpy this week at Insight Vacations who have been ignoring my emails.  And at myself for not registering for the last Ingress Anomoly - which means the hundreds of jarvises, adas, cubes, bursters etc that I donated to the cause will have been for nothing :(

Our pool froze over twice during the week.  And yesterday the power tripped early in the morning which means the fish tank heaters didn't work all day, and we lost some fish in the smallest tank :(  

Have been spending mornings scanning mum's photos.  Two weeks to scan each album, give or take.  So one down this morning, four more to go until the next swap-meet when I can get some more.

And I have this odd sort of feeling that I'm coming down with something.

Friday night mum came down from Sydney.  Chrissie and Zac came up and we all went out to the Dumpling Inn for dinner (slightly late on account of mum getting lost on account of road closures on account of accidents).  Had shallot cakes, crispy skin duck with pancakes, garlic prawns, xiao long bao and mixed chow mein.  All very nice.

Saturday morning we hopped in mum's car and headed down to Junee, arriving around lunch time.  The others watched some taped Home and Away while I finished up the holiday finances to figure out how much I owed mum.  Then mum, David and I played a game of canasta.  I got off to a good start, but David caught up and won.  Then we channel surfed Foxtel and ended up watching Under Seige 2.

For dinner we headed out to the Junee Golf Club.  Very strange venue.  I had to keep reminding myself it's a small country town.  Eftpos is that new fandangled thing didn't you know?  At least they took credit card when ordering food, if not at the bar.  Also had a cake for mum's birthday. 

Then back to the house where mum dozed through Arctic Tale and Ice Road Truckers in India.  I half watched and half did jigsaws on Kat's ipad.

This morning we headed home.  Cloudy morning, but no rain, so actually a very pleasant drive, otherwise we'd have been headed straight into the sun.  Got home, then mum continued on home as well.

This afternoon I went food shopping, then came home and cooked all afternoon.  Cooked a roast pork for dinner with lots of roast veggies, then a "breakfast lasagna" from a recipe Lachie gave me.  Stu's brain has been suffering from processed flour the past couple of days so we really want to try again to cut out the processed sugar and flour.  This recipe of Lachie's is about 150% fat though, so it really goes against everything I consider to be "healthy".  Maybe just a very small portion with some tomatoes for fibre?  I could easily have halved the recipe I think, as it did two baking dishes full of food.  The pork roast for dinner was nice too.  Watched some Homeland, did a day's worth of photo processing, and suddenly it's 9:45pm.  Weekend?  What weekend?  I think I completely missed out this week :(:(:( 

Pretty quiet/boring weekend for us.  Although I was super busy doing house stuff - mostly the pool and fish tank stuff, a bit of housework, some cooking (a beef stew), food shopping, walking with Chris and also with the sweetie, and drinks with Kit and Ben.  In fact I was so busy doing the house stuff I barely had time for anything else, including photo processing (only managed three days worth over the weekend).

And is America *ever* going to toughen its gun laws or what?  Seriously.

Thursday and Friday were better days.  Still not great.

The weekend was primarily *getting things done*.  Relatively successfully.  Saturday night I cooked some roast pork, and Stu invited Kit up to have some.  

Sunday cleaned up the upstairs two foot tank.

Sunday night was bubbly and cheese followed by beef bourguignon at Scott's.

Today was back to the drama that is one of our vendors.  Something crashed on the weekend which led to lots of drama today and not getting anything useful done.  The ongoing dramas with their stuff is just killing me.  Especially since I really need to be working on other stuff.

*sigh*

I think it was Thursday night that we watched Star Trek Generations.  I can't actually remember.  Could have even been Wednesday.  Or even Friday.  No don't think it was Friday.

Friday morning I woke up at 3am and never got back to sleep.  Damned insomnia.  Annoying too because I had a *lot* of work to do on Friday.  Didn't really get it all done either.  Had lunch with Doc and Neil at Chatterbox though because I had a voucher I won last year.  On Friday evening the little brother and Kat came to stay.  We worked on a jigsaw and I had an early night.

Saturday I was at work all morning replacing firewalls.  It actually all went fairly smoothly.

In the afternoon I was all set to settle down and *get things done* when EffanC called us up and invited us over.  Which was lovely.  But it did mean I was out all afternoon.

Went home before dinner.  Had pizza for dinner.  Watched Footloose on tv (because I'd never actually seen it!)

Sunday morning was the Airport Open Day.  Spent all morning there.

In the afternoon Dave and Kat left, replaced by Graham and Pam.  We chatted for the afternoon (Pam has grand plans for our garden.  I'd rather not have a garden at all).  Then because we hadn't had any time to ourselves all weekend, and therefore no time to do any shopping, we went out to Dumpling Inn for dinner.  

Today I just felt like I needed a weekend to recover from my weekend.  At least Stu got a bit of down time.  

Today started off ok at work.  No dramas from the firewalls.  Just the proxies.  *sigh*  Got quite depressed about the whole thing actually.

Came home exhausted, hungry, tired and grumpy.  Had dinner, then helped move Kit's lizard (and associated large tank) down to Chris's.  Then just trying to catch up on life.  Have now finished geotagging all my Canon and iPhone photos from the last trip.

I'm tired.

Saturday I was at work for six hours trying to get some work done before next weekend.  I was hoping to do it all.  I did maybe a third :(

In the evening we watched a documentary "My Beautiful Broken Brain" on Netflix, and the Bourne Ultimatum.

Sunday we headed out to Namagi with Kit to do the Granite Tors walk.  Took an hour twenty to get up (my heart was *not* thanking me for it) and an hour and ten back down.  Kit very nicely supplied some sausages and we had a bit of a bbq at the end.

This snake was *right next to me* on the path.  I only heard it after I'd passed it.  Scary!

We was up there

Nice spot for a picnic lunch

The remains of the tracking station

In the evening we watched Star Trek Generations and had a relatively early night.

Today I did houseworkey stuff, cooked dinner before lunch, spent the afternoon blogging my USA 2000 trip and geotagging my Hong Kong photos.

In the evening we enjoyed deviled lamb shanks and watched the Bourne Legacy.

So I spent pretty much the entire weekend doing trivia night stuff.  Saturday was researching all the questions to make sure they were right.  This morning was gathering pictures to make it look pretty.  This afternoon and tonight was *fighting* with Open Office.  It kept crashing and corrupting my file.  Very upsetting.  So it took about ten times longer to do than it should have :(  Worried the thing will crash during the presentation.  

Other than that, cooked epic lasanga (with epic zucchini instead of pasta sheets) - a bit better than the last attempt, watched Thirteen Days and The Bourne Identity with the sweetie, and went for a little walk with Chris.

I'm tired.

Wednesday Luc was in town, so we went for a drink after work, then back to our place for dinner (duck stir fry) and chatting.  Mostly chatting about travel.

Woke up at about 3am Thursday morning.  And never got back to sleep.  Stoopid brain just would. not. shut. up.  Super frustrating.  Took Luc to the airport then went and saw the balloons again (sadly no sun again).  Although the sun was out for the drive home, which made for a super pretty drive under all the balloons (which of course I couldn't document - doh!).

So Thursday was zombie day.  Good thing Lachie was busy doing other stuff, I don't think I would have been able to concentrate on the other stuff we're doing.

Also finished drafting the trivia night questions so the weekend will be spent researching, prettyifying and copying and pasting.

Last night slept for around nine hours, so feel a lot better today.

Blink.  Whoops a week goes by.

I've been so busy at work I've barely had time to breathe.

Other than that, people drama is getting me down.  Sometimes I think maybe I should just go be a hermit somewhere.

Thursday night was nice though - bit of a farewell for Klaus.  Friday I wasn't feeling sociable at all, although we did end up going to Kit's for a while.  

Yesterday we had a pretty quiet day just doing housey stuff.  In the evening we watched Good Morning Vietnam, which the sweetie had never seen.  But aforementioned people drama came up again, even tho we weren't dealing with it directly.  Just made for a strange sort of a night.

I made these spinach and cheese pastries using some quite dried up puff pastry sheet's from Kerry's.  They still turned out pretty well we thought.

This morning I went with Chrissie to see the balloons.  But this was after hurty kept me awake for two hours in the middle of the night, so I only got about four hours sleep :(  Collapsed back into bed for a bit when I got home.  Good thing we get an extra day off this weekend.

Friday I finally got one of my new firewalls live.  Seemed to all work ok.  Now think I may make our (my) deadlines.

Friday night a cool change came through which was *heavenly*.  I opened the entire house up and the relief was amazing.  Dropped into Kit's briefly in the evening (she fed us a couple of slices of Aldi/enhanced pizza which was just what we needed and saved us ordering evil pizzas).

Saturday was a trip to the Canberra Show, but I'll save that for another post.  Got home completely wrecked (on our feet for about seven hours, 16000 steps, with only a rest at Zierholz in the middle).  Needed to just *sit* for a while to recover.  Started watching Back to the Future III, but ended up down at Kit's for a while cause she had some friends over.  Got to bed on time, but woke up in the middle of the night for an hour or so.

Today just houseworkey stuff and shopping.  In the afternoon we watched Das Rheingold.  This was a production Stu saw at Dendy a while back by the New York Met.  It was quite well done (although lonnnng heh).  Stu cooked home-made salt and pepper squid for dinner and we finished watching Back to the Future III.

Also this weekend (as well as watching some House - we're into season 8 now), we started watching Fuller House.  I loved Full House as a teenager and they're doing a remake.  It was chocked full of references to the old show, and they have a couple of serious digs at the Olsen twins.  It's a little bit more adult focussed - not quite as family friendly I don't think.  Hoping that it finds its own feet though and not just a complete remake of the original series.