I have a document at work titled "drowning" with a chunk of my todo list, cause that's what it feels like. Eep!  So much to do it's not funny.  I did configure all the network interfaces on all the new firewalls today though which was good.

And I've been drowning at home too, trying to get the house respectable for the weekend, as well as the Christmas shopping and planning for a big family lunch.  Felt a lot better after getting the washing up done tonight though.  And pretty much all the family Christmas shopping is done. 

The biggest stress left is probably figuring out what we're going to cook and go shopping for it.  We were originally planning a roast pork lunch, but given that they're predicting temperatures of 36C we're thinking that might be a little silly, and maybe a cold buffet might work better - but would need to decide what to do.  hrmm.

Oh and I'm also organising a party for about fifty people on Friday.

Hrmmm.

Friday was the first of our work Christmas parties.  It was at the Lighthouse, but it was a little pricey - $35 for a two course meal (platter of entrees and a choice of three dishes for mains).  The problem with that being we have lunches at the Lighthouse all the time, and for $35 I could normally get a large meal *and* a few beers.  Also they were super super slow bringing food out - we didn't get entrees til 1pm, the fish mains at 1:30pm, and the steak mains at 2pm.  But it was a lovely day and there was plenty of time to have a bit of bubbly and they compensated us with a free drink voucher each so that was nice of them.  Had a great afternoon.

In the evening we watched Mockingjay Part 1.

Saturday we got ready and headed out to the club for the "official" opening of the pool.

Then we (I) cooked the roast pork (in a brand new oven!!) for a Christmas dinner.  The oven had never been used before so that was quite fun (although it was a bit sad to ruin its pristine condition!).  It works a lot better than the old one too and is much much much easier to light the oven and the cooktops - no more fiddling with a lighter and hoping you don't take the hairs off when you finally manage to light the oven.  The crackling turned out really well and I think the whole lot got demolished.  I also made up some apple sauce from scratch, and some gravy (which I'd forgotten to bring - so I was glad that we found a packet there). Other people brought other food so it was quite the feast.

Just before we were about to serve dinner, we got a call from Kit - she was getting water all through her yard.  I realised I'd left the hose disconnected from when I'd been watering the potplants that morning and it must have dropped down and started siphoning off the pool.  Kit jumped the back fence and saved the situation.  It was a little horrifying to think what could have happened if she hadn't noticed - another fifteen hours before we had planned to be home and it could have drained a *lot* of water.  Honestly, bestest neighbour *ever*!

After dinner was the compulsory fun.  Aka the Kris Kringle where you can open something new or steal something that's already been opened.  I'd completely forgotten about it til that morning, and then we were running late, so we didn't have time to do anything more imaginative that a couple of bottles of wine.  I'd used wine before and it's never popular, so was a bit reluctant to do it again, but didn't have time for anything else.  And guess which two things were the *very last* things to be picked up?  Yup, my two bottles of wine.  And to add insult to injury, the people that got them were all like "oh yay, wine".  I lost it.  I actually went up to both of them and said I'd buy them back off them, but they were all "oh, it's ok, it'll get drunk".  Yay.  I was feeling pretty miserable, and the sweetie had been feeling physically unwell all night, so we just went home.

Today was a cleaning and organising type day.

We also went over to Potty's cause he wanted to get rid of a bit of fridge stuff and some cleaning products that couldn't go in the truck.  I ended up with five full Coles bags of stuff, and a huge box full of cleaning products.  hrmmmm!!  I had to fire up the little fridge in the garage, and Tetris what I could into the freezer.  But got it all in.

For dinner I picked some of the wombok that's been growing like crazy, and cooked up some duck we'd gotten off potty.  

Saw some pretty cool storm clouds from a big storm out past Captains Flat

Also cooked up a batch of honey mustard chicken for lunches/dinners during the week.

And have been trying to get on top of my photos.

And I might have put the Christmas tree this afternoon.  Last year I had the idea to do a "Frozen" inspired theme - so I've only put on blue and silver stuff, with blue and white lights.  It's very blue!

Tonight we used some Dendy vouchers (that I think I won in the mother's day raffle earlier this year and forgotten about them until last week) to go see Spectre.

As you'd expect from a James Bond movie, it's full of action and great locations and car chases (and all sorts of other chases) and (apparently) the biggest explosion in movie history.

And a lot of it had the *feel* of some of the old James Bond movies.

I rather enjoyed it :)

One thing that did annoy me (and this is just nit-picking) - streets empty of cars!  And the scene at the end would *not* have had a big empty space like that.  Just no.

But aside from that.

Great :)

Other than that.  Today we had a vendor thing which also included a couple of hours of Go-Karting!  We all had three races each, plus a finals race (one for the slow group and one for the fast group).  So much fun!  I came last in the first race, then I think second-last in the second and third-last in the third (or something).  Which really makes no sense, on account of I never managed to actually overtake anyone - I'm way too slow for that!  Good times.  But my everything hurts - and will hurt a lot more tomorrow!  I have to say the experience at PowerKart at Griffith was quite a bit better than at Queanbeyan where we went last time.  The seats were better (and they had booster seats for little people!) And they adjusted the pedals for me as well.  So it was a lot more comfortable this time around. 

One year ago today I went for a walk to the Regent Hotel to see where they filmed the opening scenes of Lucy, and then we began the long trek home to Canberra.

Did a full day first aid course at the club today.

Was really going over a lot of the material we did in the online elearning, as well as some practical stuff such as CPR on adult/kid/baby dummies, and some bandaging and rolling people around.  Got all but one question right in the assessment, but I blame a badly worded answer for the one I got wrong.

Then we jumped into the new pool!

One year ago today we got driven on a magical mystical tour of northern Taiwan.

So apparently today is World Statistics Day.

I was going to publish some of the search terms people use to get to my blog, but Google Analytics doesn't do this in a nice way anymore.  Actually I couldn't find anything at all in there - they've either hidden it very well, or for some reason don't save them for my site, or maybe it's just something you need to pay for now.  At any rate, it's pretty retarded and I couldn't find anything in there at all.

And the ancient tools that come with the ancient version of cPanel on this host are pretty useless too.

No stats for you.

(I will note however that by far the biggest bringer of traffic to my site seems to be Stumbleupon, sending people to my Lego Star Destroyer page).

And I'm still number 2 in Google for "kazza".

So I decided today to export all the blood pressure readings (and heart rate and weight) from the app I've been using for the past four years (iBP Tracker by Finger Taps).  Turns out the export to email function doesn't actually work.  Neither does the online backup option.

So I was forced to go through each day's entry and manually record it elsewhere.

#grunt

I got through the past month, which is what I want to take to the doctor.

What a piece of crap.  Guess what application I *won't* be using anymore.

Another thing I realised tonight is how much crap I have on my computer.  At least twenty year's worth.

I did find this list of quotes (file was last saved 16.10.97) which I remember well..

Life is short and DNA is long
If at first you don't succeed, destroy all the evidence
An optimist: someone who hasn't been given all the facts yet
Friction is a drag
Very funny Scotty. Now beam up the clothes!
Recycle!! Today's garbage is tommorrow's world!
Marriage is grand. Divorce? 20 grand.
Marriage - it's not just a word, it's a sentence!
Hello? Constipation Hotline? Yes, I can hold...
Support mental health... or I'll *KILL* you
If you're 1 in a million, there's a thousand Chinese just like you.
No matter where you go, there you are.
Psychic midget escapes from prison... Small Medium at Large!
World to end at 10pm! Film at 11
Floggings will continue until morale improves.
Who tested Preperations A through G, and why??
9 out of 10 men who try CAMELs prefer women.
8 out of 10 people suffer from hemmorhoids. The other 2 enjoy them.
Who is All, and why does he get so much mail??
Who is General Failure, and why is he reading my drive??
Who is General Protection, and why does he always find fault??
Who is Joy, and why does everyone jump for her??
Who is Will, and why should I fire at him??
Warning : Breathing may be hazardous to your health!
Shin : device for finding furniture in the dark
Stick : A boomerang that doesn't work
No trespassing... prosecutors will be violated!
Warning : research causes cancer
Ok, I pulled the pin, now what? Hey, where are you going??
When I get bored, I beam myself back and forth - Worf
The only way to avoid temptation is to yield to it.
Today's subliminal message sponsered by : Ben Dover
Today's subliminal message sponsered by : Justin Hale
Today's subliminal message sponsered by : Mike Rotch
Despite the high cost of living, it still remains popular.
The world is like a kleenex.. you use it, then you throw it away.
Look! Up in the sky! It's a bird! It's a plane! It's... no, it's a bird.
2 wrongs don't make a right, but 3 lefts do.
Tonight's forecast : darkness, followed by light.
In God we trust. All others require a credit check.
If practice makes perfect and noone's perfect, then why practice?

I really have nothing interesting to say these days.  And, unlike twelve years ago when I started blogging, I don't post every boring detail of my life every day.  Tonight we watched Green Zone, and it inspired me to go back and find the blog entry I did about the opening day of the Iraq war.  I then read through a couple of month's worth of blog entries from 2003.  My style was very different back then.  I suppose back in the day there was really noone else reading it, so I wasn't really thinking how other people might perceive it.  These days I don't blog much unless something interesting happens.  And even then I sometimes don't, because I'm a complete slacker.

So.  Boring details.  Does anyone care?  Do I care if anyone cares?  So few people read this blog now.  And much fewer bother to comment.  

Anyways.

Thursday: work drinks, not much else

Friday: not much

Today: bit of house work, listed some stuff on Freecycle, went for a walk with the sweetie, cooked a roast chicken dinner, watched some House (we're near the end of season 2) and Green Zone.

See, nothing of any particular interest to anyone.

Twenty One. Again.

Today I turned twenty one again. Supposedly now I should know the meaning of life, the universe, and everything. Or some such nonsense.

Last weekend when the little brother was here, he asked me about the photos he'd just sent me - photos he'd just had scanned of my 21st birthday. I did actually have the originals of the prints, which I'd scanned a couple of years ago. But it was still fun, and I said it was actually pretty scary how many of the things in the photo I still had. Then he said I should recreate the photo. I laughed, but then had a think about it, and for the most part decided it wouldn't be too hard to do.

So over the past few days I've collected together all that remains of my 21st birthday presents, as well as some of the other things in my room at the time.

Here they are!

Last week wasn't quite as bad as the week before.  And then Neil came back which helped.  BBQ at @CLBradley's on Thursday.  

Friday night Chris and Zac came down.  We had wine and pizza and chatted which was nice.

Saturday morning we hung out at home in the morning.  I made a tomato bake for breakfast.

Went into Civic and got some lunch at the Curry festival (meat on a stick!), then ice skating at Skate in the City.  It was fun but it was super crowded and the ice was all lumpy and rough.  But towards the end a lot of the little kids got tired and left, and the people that were left were getting better at it, so it was a lot better.

Came home and cooked up a lamb roast for dinner, and Chris made a lemon meringue dessert thingie which was delicious.

Sunday not much in the morning, then tried to get organised in the afternoon.  Went over to EffanC's for some delicious soup and boeuf bourguignon and watched Force Majeure which was somewhat cringeworthy.  And the footage of completely empty ski slopes irritated us hehe.

Last night the little brother and I went along to see Jurassic World

I really enjoyed it.

Of course it's completely ridiculous, but that's what you expect from this style of Hollywood popcorn movie.

Actually really the only completely "yeah right" moment for me was twenty-two year old batteries and fuel that still worked.  Oh and the transition from bright daylight to night time instantly.

It was possibly a little slow to start but built up and built up.

And plenty of nods to the original 1993 movie.

And they used a lot of John Williams' music which was awesome.

Plenty of predictability, but really just a lot of fun.  If you don't mind seeing lots of people being eaten heh.