This day twenty years ago I took a couple of different people photos, both in the office at work.

The first is of my boss at the time, Jim, doing manly man things with a shelf..

And the second was of Kin Oong, who I met on alt.unsw (or whatever that newsgroup was called).  Not sure why he was in the office that day, but it seems he had a thing for old cameras, as I have another one of him taken in 2003 with a different old camera.

Apparently this day thirty years ago I was at Stanwell Tops with Mum.  It was a Thursday, so it must have been school holidays.  I have no memory of why we were there or who else was there and there's no other photos from that date.  

Just for fun I updated the post from the other day with this new one :)

I download photos from my Canon today.  For the first time since April.  And processed the photos.  For the first time since January.

In six months I've taken all of 155 photos on that camera.  Hrmmm.

I keep telling myself it would be different if I had a new camera.. that was still better in low light.. that could deal with difficult lighting as well as my phone.. 

The Canon 600D Dad got in about Feburary or March 2012.  I inherited it when he carked it.  So it's over eight years old now.  Still works fine, is just aging... 

I'd like to go back to mirrorless.. better idea of what you're going to get once you take the picture, and a lot quieter...  

I took this one morning at the end of January. 

Got to see the DC-10 Air Tanker at the airport when I flew up for Ryan's birthday.

Stikeez!!  This is all but two of the specials.  Kaibrya has a bagfull she'll send me if we ever go back to work, I might get lucky and get one of them in that.  I took this just before lockdown in March.

Rainbow in April

Happy tree in April

Black cockatoos in April.  Look at what the vandals are doing to this tree!!

These were taken on a walk in late April

Oh my what a week.

So back to last Sunday.  I forgot to mention we went to the markets for a little bit of food shopping, altho we didn't get very much.  Had chicken cordon bleu that we got that day for dinner because, yum.  Into season 11 BBT.

Monday just doing all the things and UK photo labelling.

Tuesday morning I felt like had way too much to do at home to have time to go to work.  But at work I was so insanely busy I actually felt a bit queasy in my stomach.  I was completely on edge all day.  Late in the afternoon I went downstairs to move crap out of David's side of the garage that we'd dumped there on the weekend and I stepped on an air packing bag in the dark (twice in three days - I'd done the same thing in the dungeon on the weekend) and it made a huge bang and I had a full on meltdown right there on the garage floor.  It was definitely a wine and candle kind of an evening.  I asked the sweetie to cook so we got pizza.  hrmm.

The boys put on another couple of episodes of Space Force, and I watched the start of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.  There was also this photoshop disaster on the Chromecast.  That bridge isn't even in that location next to the Golden Gate Bridge, and the one they've photoshopped in there is only half there, and is distorted in places too.  Epic fail!

Wednesday morning was up to 1500 of Dad's slides.  Then started some pretty full on AWS training (via Zoom).  Also, I'm too stoopid to be a network admin.  In the evening I redid one of the labs to try and figure out what I was doing wrong.  Got there in the end, but I did miss out on two nights of photo labelling this week :(

Thursday wasn't quite so intense.  We didn't have much food in the house, but I did have some sausages defrosted that I bought in March (I got three trays of meat to freeze before everything got really crazy, and figured it was time to use them up).  Managed to make up quite a nice dinner of sausages, cabbage bake and potatoes.

Friday was pretty full on.  I didn't have time to go for a walk, and once I was done with the training I had to catch up on all the work I'd been neglecting at work.  Didn't finish til like 6pm.  Watched Howl's Moving Castle (the Billy Crystal english version on Netflix) with the sweetie, which I hadn't seen since we saw it at the movies in Brisbane in 2005.

Friday night I actually slept really well which was nice.  Saturday morning we did various medical things, had brunch at Rocksalt (really nice to have a nice brunch with the sweetie), dropped a boot full of clothes off at Vinnies and did a small food shop at the markets.  

Stu had the shakshuka.  He'd have liked a bit more feta but otherwise liked it.

I had eggs benedict.  Lovely crispy toast and bacon, well cooked eggs and a nice hollandaise sauce - great job!

Beautifully cooked eggs!

In the afternoon was catching up on blogging and house stuff.  Also David fixed the display on Stu's CD player which hasn't worked for years (one incandescent light bulb blew, putting too much voltage on the other two which blew as well).  Most awesomest brother ever!!

Watched some BBT and the next couple of Netflix corona virus documentary episodes (the race for a vaccine and how to cope).  The sweetie and I have been super lucky throughout this lockdown.  Even though we're introverts and actually prefer isolation, we still have each other (and David ;) ).  So we've been coping probably better than most people.  

Today was nice and quiet, mainly just cleaning and tidying the house.  Altho I did feel somewhat cranky this afternoon (the vaccuum cleaner being a bumhead certainly didn't help).  We do have some roast pork in the oven so that should hopefully be nice.

And it rained this weekend!  I put this glass out last night and look at all the rain it caught!

Twenty years ago today I went microlight flying with John Hales.  I put all the photos up on kazza.cia.com.au afterwards with this description:

A couple of months ago John, a friend of my boss's, had mentioned going microlight flying but never got around to actually going. I mentioned to him that I would like to go along too if he went. So he said if I booked us in, he'd drive us down. So I did. I booked in for Saturday the 17th, but Paul who runs Sydney Microlight Centre called me up in the morning and said the conditions were not good for flying and that he'd call Sunday. A change was forecast for Saturday night, so I did not fancy my chances of getting to fly Sunday either. Anyway, Paul called me up the Sunday morning and said the weather looked good. So John and I headed down there and arrived just on 12pm (with some rather ominous clouds looming in the south). There were not enough craft available for John and I to go up together so I went up first. It was amazing! It was a lot of fun, although very windy! We flew down to Kiama and round the lighthouse, then back again. I got to fly a couple of times (between taking photos). John had a flight after me. He took it more seriously and did a lot more flying. Below are some pictures from the day:

I didn't include all the photos for this blog entry.  If anyone wants to see the rest of the photos let me know and I'll reupload the original html page with all the pics.

The controls of the trike

Lake Illawarra

Intersection of the Princes Highway and East-West Link (under construction)

One of the other trikes we flew down to Kiama with

Jones Beach, Kiama Downs

Bombo Quarry

Kiama Railway Station

Lighthouse and the Blow Hole at Kiama

Kiama

Kiama

Returning to the airport.  There's a 747 parked in the middle of this photo nowadays, I really must go down and have a look at it some time.

Final approach to the airport.  We actually landed on the grass rather than the runway, no idea why.  I had this feeling we were going to flip as soon as we hit the grass but it was fine.

John Hales about to have his turn to fly

Andy, our pilot

I absolutely loved it.  And it's probably the cheapest and easiest way to be able fly.  I never did go again though.  And John's wife took one look at the photos I put up and vetoed him from ever going again either.  Oh well!!

Thirty years ago today Mum took this photo of David's train set in the garage downstairs.  Dad originally built this on a different wall of the workshop downstairs, but moved it to this spot where it stayed til David moved out of home and took all his trains with him.  It was pretty amazing because Dad was into electronics and had everything wired up - including working signals!  It was probably Dad's toy as much as David's ;)  

Forty years ago today someone took this photo of the locomotive at the Zig Zag Railway.  I have no idea if I was there or not.  I probably was, I do remember going a couple of times as a kid.  It was before Mum got her Minolta camera, so likely Dad took it and Mum got it printed.  ** edit:  so it was definitely Dad, and the whole family was there.  *however* Mum for some reason has crossed out the date on the slide and written her birthday.  I can't understand why.  All the photos are labelled 22.6.80, which was a Sunday, which makes sense for when the train would be running (the 16th was a Monday - highly unlikely it would have been running then).  Weird stuff.

But what was funny is that just after the top picture of David's trainset in the photo album were these photos of the Zig Zag railway.  So they would have been taken in 1990 as well - almost exactly ten years after the photo above.  Probably David took those ones.

Twenty years ago today Mum and some friends of hers and I did the Sydney Harbour Bridge Climb for her birthday.  It was pretty amazing.  It's certainly not very strenuous as they stop every hundred metres or so to tell stories or take photos or whatever.  The girder is so wide that you can't really even look down.  The only place you can look straight down to the ground is when you're walking along under the approach to the arch/pylon.  Of course you can't take anything with you, and they make you attach glasses and tape up rings.  But they wouldn't let you attach a camera because then you'd take your own photos and wouldn't buy their overpriced ones.  Communication is done via these headsets that don't actually go into your ears - they sit just in front and work by vibrating your whole skull, so the bones in the ears pick it up.  Pretty amazing.

Tuesday morning woke up at 4:38 and never got back to sleep.  Hurrah.  Made a broccoli bake for dinner, will post that separately.  Evening was just UK photo labelling and an early night.

Tuesday night I slept somewhat better.  Stu didn't.  Le sigh.  Wednesday evening cooked chicken kiev and got up to 2794 UK photos labelled.  

Also in the evening David and I were on our computers when a possum walked onto the window sill outside the study window and looked in at us.  Twice!  (but not quite long enough for either of us to get a photo of it either time.  Possum was playing possum it was! ;) ).  As I went to bed I had that feeling again that our bedroom is a place I go to *not* sleep :(

Thursday.  Well I had a nice early night on Wednesday, but didn't get to sleep for FOUR HOURS.  Fricken hurrah.  David did very nicely go and satisfy a craving I had for Country Cheeses with cheese spread ;)  I haven't had Country Cheeses with cheese spread in probably about fifteen years.  I stopped eating them because, sodium.

The fog on Thursday took til about lunchtime to clear.  Then it came back.  At like 4:30pm ?!?  So weird!!

Evening was pizza and the first two episodes of Space Force.  The boys were cacking themselves.  I thought it was dumb.

Friday.  Awake for a while from 12:20 then up from 5:30.  Fog was gone.  Weird, because I thought it would be as thick as you could imagine.  Got up to 1400 of Dad's slides scanned.  I really hope Mum can find the book David thinks exists with details of all the slides, otherwise all this effort will be for naught - as the slides I'm scanning are not labelled other than a general topic and month/year in another book I have.  I mean some photos are pretty obvious what they are, and a month/year is sufficient, but so many photos are just a mystery what they are.

For lunch I cooked up some leftover rice with peas/corn, ham, soy, sesame oil, and a bit of leftover parsnip.  I let it get hot and a bit crunchy so that was really nice.  Really must learn how to cook paella.

In the evening we left work a little early and headed out to the club - first time we'd been out there since March.  We got the fire going and had some wine and some leftover pulled pork and had a very nice and quiet evening together.

Saturday morning Stu went to the committee meeting, and I spent the entire morning cleaning and organising the van.  Didn't get everything done on the todo list, but did clear out a heap of stuff.  Pity I didn't take any before/after photos!

Came home in the afternoon but didn't really do much.  Saw this dog saying hi on the way home.

Sausages for dinner and we watched Attack of the Clones.  I'd forgotten just how bad it is.  So much of the dialogue is completely cringeworthy.  I still have no idea how *anyone* would fall in love with petulant teenager Anakin.  So dumb.  

Any guesses what these are? :)

This morning I took a bootload of stuff to the Green Shed.  Mostly from the van, but also this little candle holder I bought when I first moved out of home in 2000.  It's very pretty and in a completely darkened room you can see the stars.  But in a normally lit room you can't actually see the candle from most angles, which makes it a bit of a waste.  I've only ever used a few times in the past twenty years, so thought it may as well go.

This afternoon I did get a bit more done on the todo list, and we had (will have - it's nearly done!) chicken cordon bleu for dinner.

After feeling like I didn't achieve much on Monday, I ploughed through my todo list on Tuesday morning while scanning slides, and actually got probably more done before 8:45am when I went to work than I did all day Monday.  I also didn't do any photo labelling on Monday night, so had to catch up on Tuesday and Wednesday nights.  Got up to 2271 photos labelled.  I also might have ruined David's evening on Tuesday by putting out a new jigsaw for him to be distracted by ;)

Also convinced I was getting sick.  This is what happens when the only time we go out is for food, and have to encounter sick people.  Fricken heck.  Why can't we be proper hermits and never have to deal with people???

Thursday was Crust pizza, and we watched the first episode of Unorthodox which was interesting (although distracting with all the been-theres heh).

Friday I started cooking beef cheeks (which I'd tried to get the time before at Coles but couldn't, but did manage to get some on Monday) at lunch time and had A/M/C over for dinner which was nice.  Geeked out with C over ABC singing books and Monty Python.

Interlude with wine and cheese

A couple of tablespoons of dark soy near the end really blackens it up.

It looks pretty disgusting but it's oh so delicious!!!

Saturday the sweetie felt like food from the Scottish Restaurant for breakfast, so I obliged ;)  They were completely unorganised though.  The queue of cars wasn't moving, they tried to ask me what I wanted before I was anywhere near the speaker because of the cars not moving, then the person in the lane next to me got served first out of order, they didn't have the right order when I went to pay, they had to ask me what my order was when I went to pick up the food, and they *still* gave me food for someone else.  Basically a disaster all round.  Still, I did get the correct order eventually so all good.

Otherwise I didn't really do anything all day.  Spent all morning scanning my oldest ABC book.  Frittered away the afternoon.  Finished watching The Blues Brothers which I started possibly on Thursday night.  I didn't feel like standing in a cold kitchen cutting up chicken while everyone else slept, so got cranky and let the sweetie order vomit pizza and pepperoni and feta pizza, with these pretty amazing cheesy garlic scolls.  Then we watched The Phantom Menace.

Sunday was just Lego part picking.  All.  Day.

Sunday I tried out a recipe from Taste for pulled pork.  It was indeed extremelly easy - just some onion, garlic, and a dry spice rub, then stick in the slow cooker all afternoon.  I had no idea if it was going to work or not, but it worked just beautifully - fall apart tender meat.  The only problem is wasting the skin that I would otherwise make crackling with ;)  Might have to try with beef next time, and try some different combos of spices (this one had paprika, chili, cumin and fennel).

Oh, also on the weekend was ABC Classic FM's Hottest 100 Beethoven.  I actually know surprisingly little of his work, so just voted for the few I recognised.  And of course the 5th and 9th symponies.  The 9th was always going to win, but I was shocked with the 5th came 5th!  I thought it would have come second. 

Watched another two episodes of Unorthodox in the evening.

Today I felt like I didn't really get much done, but there's a reasonable amount ticked off the todo list.  Including scanning slides, finishing part picking for the last six sets, dusting, vacuuming, putting away washing, more washing, and we even went for a nice long walk around Palmerville with A&M (all the way up the highway and back).  Finished watching the Netflix series on Jeffrey Epstein that I'd been watching over the weekend.  Guy was a sleaze.  And how come they haven't charged anyone else???  Lunch was a packet pumpkin soup from Coles, and dinner will be that chicken.. in that very cold kitchen....

Backdating again.. I'm such a slacker!!

Monday/Tuesday/Wednesday nothing eventful, just UK photo labelling and jigsaw.  By Wednesday I'd labelled 1706 photos in three weeks.

Thursday morning I passed 1000 slides of Dad's scanned.  Was up to episode 7 in Lego Masters.

Friday morning I found a date on one of Dad's pieces of RADOS paper.  The ABC used to print out the runsheets/programmes on paper and the system was called RADOS.  I'm sure Mum/David could correct me on the details.  The point is they only used the paper once then it was scrap.  So Dad used to bring it home for us as scrap paper.  All the time I was living at home I used that paper.  So did the rest of the family.  In the back of each slide box, Dad has used RADOS paper to summarise what is in each box.  The box I opened on Friday had the date - December 1980.  I already knew that Dad had rearranged slides somewhat from their original order, but this put a date on it - after 1980.  Fun times.  

Friday also happened to be the fifteen anniversary of when the sweetie and I first met in real life.  We had chicken kiev for dinner and watched Lego Masters.

Saturday I had a body corporate annual meeting for my flat in Sydney.  I've been to a couple over the years, but this year because of COVID-19 they did it as a phone meeting.  Which made it great for me - I could attend one without even leaving home!  The strata lady reckoned it was good because they got people calling in that wouldn't or couldn't normally come (like me!) and she even had one call in from South Africa for one of her buildings!

I also might have finished The Little Mermaid section of the jigsaw.  I cooked two trays of home-made potato wedges for dinner, which were epic awesome.  Then we watched some Lego Masters, which was the episode under water.  Which all tied in nicely with "Under the Sea" theme because we also watched The Little Mermaid that night.

Sunday was bits and pieces of housework, epic pizza scrolls for lunch, Lego part picking, and bribing the magpies not to swoop me come spring time (they came flying over before I'd even seen them - so fricken cool!)

Pretty sure we finished Lego Masters that Sunday night.  Was really happy the guys that won did, they looked like they were having fun the whole way through and their builds were amazing.

Monday we went food shopping.  Did a bit of housey stuff.  Cooked "lemon butt chicken" for dinner (just a roast chicken with a whole lemon as stuffing).  Turned out really nicely.  Didn't get a lot of leftovers though ;)

Long weekends are great.....