But the most recent one: people that buy stuff on ebay that don't bother to contact you after a week, even after repeated emails to them.  Or people that buy stuff on ebay, keep saying they'll be there "tomorrow" and then never turn up.

Hate.

In other news.

I've been having more Christmas parties - a big work one that went late and was a lot of fun.

Then instead of a nice relaxing weekend, I had to deal with aforementioned sucky people, as well as lots of other people trying to coordinate pickups remotely at mum's.  And this was down at the coast, without a computer, and I didn't have my ebay password and it was all a super huge stress.  Really really didn't want to have to go away that weekend, but it was S&K's combined 40th and we've been terrible relatives this year so thought we'd better go.  So had to go via the club, then headed down.  Stayed at Dave's house (thanks Dave!) but just did some jigsaw while Stu collapsed, then we watched some Veronica Mars and had pizza for dinner.  Didn't even bother with the spa.  Next morning was the party, although it didn't really get going til we had to leave.  Left there and headed straight to Sydney (we had to take two cars down the coast).  Sigh.  

Got to Sydney and didn't even get to dump my stuff - had to go straight to the new place to meet the uncles etc, then we went out for dinner which was quite nice.

Home, dealing with annoying ebay people, collapse.  Didn't get to sleep til like 1am though :(

And then there was chaos in the city today which made things .. interesting ..

I don't know, and mum's attempt this morning failed ..

Yah so cutting ends off cables for copper recycling and she chopped one that was still plugged in and turned on.  And the snippers didn't have any sort of insulation on them.  A flash and a bang and she's darned lucky to be alive right now is all I'm saying (she's completely fine, didn't feel a thing, not even a tingle).  My heart felt a little jittery for the rest of the morning contemplating what could have been.

So spent most of the weekend organising and chucking and photographing and sorting and cleaning and getting exhausted.  Gave up at 7pm last night with a tv dinner and Toy Story.

This afternoon Ken and Jeanine came over and helped enormously by cleaning and working through a list of todos that mum had.  Made a huge difference.  I also went over to Lizzi's to get a dress taken up.  Had yummy roast pork for dinner.

So you may remember that I've been freaking out the past few days about how busy I'm going to be for oh, you know, well til the end of the year.  On my calendar I have exactly one weekend where nothing has been planned, and that's the weekend before Christmas.

So you can imagine my delight finding out that the mother type person is planning to sell the house.  Like right now.  By Christmas.

Which leaves me exactly zero time to finish which would have taken probably at least another year's work in terms of sorting stuff out and either selling it or freecycling it.  Before Mum just gets a skip or five and chucks the whole lot out.

So now I'm studying my calendar trying to figure out what events I can drop, and what planning can be compressed into a half or a third the time I have available.  And what is going to need to give.  It'll probably be my holiday photo sorting.  I still haven't even *seen* most of my holiday photos.

Fun. Not.

Friday morning I cooked dinner.

But because I didn't have time to fry down the mushrooms, there was a *lot* of liquid in it.  So it was very watery :(

Still, our dinner guests (EffanC) enjoyed it.

After dinner we watched Rocky Horror and then Frozen.  Yeah same movies as we watched with Marc and Jo the other week!  Silly really.  Stayed up quite late chatting.

In the morning we all went out for breakfast to A Baker.  The celeriac didn't work that well for me, but the whipped feta and bacon were great.

In the afternoon I did some organising of our filing.  Still a long way to go though!  In the evening we watched The Railway Man.  I wasn't in the right mindset to begin with, so found it a little tough going at the beginning, but once I'd settled into it I thought it was pretty good.

Today was more organising of finances.  We went for a walk to hack some portals and then got laughed at by the fairy wrens who wouldn't stay still to be documented.

Weird ..

Then had lunch at Fortune Box (a rather nice dish of pork, duck and more pork, with duck egg) before doing our food shopping.

George came by while we were cooking

This was dinner - a recipe out of my newest Women's Weekly cookbook - harissa roast chicken.  It also included a stuffing of Stu's suggestion, of butter, mushroom, thyme, garlic, lemon zest, sunflower and pumpkin seeds.  

The harissa was a tad burnt, and a tad too spicy for me, and the stuffing didn't really add much.  But the chicken and veggies were certainly yummy.

After dinner we went over to Annie's for a while to say hi and have some dessert.

Had a fairly quiet weekend.  

Went out to the club on Friday night.  Attempted to go to bed early but it was still nearly 11pm by the time we turned lights out.

Spent Saturday morning doing crafty stuff.  Then a bit of socialising.  In bed by 8:15pm.

Came home after breakfast this morning.

Had quite a productive afternoon.  Did some crafty stuff, vacuumed half the house, moved a desk into the "winter" hobby room, cleaned the kitchen somewhat.

Cooked a nice chicken roast with three cheese and bacon stuffing.  Yumm!

Then we watched Prisoner of Azkaban.

But I got hit with Sunday night depression/anxiety.  Hate hate hate Sunday nights.

I still haven't decided which lens to get.  I tried out work's 24-105 during the week.  While it's nice I really don't think it's *that* much better than my 18-135, which I much prefer the range on, especially for travelling.  I used the full zoom on that *all the time*, so to lose 20mm would suck.  Also, it's half the price of the L-series.  And the L-series weighs a fricken tonne (ok 670g vs 480g).  I've been stuck with this indecision for months.  But now I'm really running out of time to do something about it :(

15-17.8.14

Friday night (after several disasters at their end) Marc and Jo arrived in town for the weekend.  We chatted til quite late.

Saturday morning we went into town for some breakfast at Mocan and Green Grout.

And we also had got some tapioca and persimon.  The tapioca was nice but the persimon was a little tough.

I took a *lot* of photos of this dog trying to get one of him with his tongue out.  I got a few.

There was also a honeyeater that needed documenting

Then we went down to the lake to document more birds

Then we went for a drive up Mt Ainslie

There were more birds :)

Marc and Jo went off to visit some other friends so we came home and chilled out, then went and did some food shopping.

We cooked up a *lot* of mushrooms (and had some leftover cause we bought too many) for Marc's strog

It was delicious!!

We put on Frozen after dinner while we chatted, then Rocky Horror.

In the morning Marc and I cooked up a storm for breakfast while various spouses dozed.  Bacon, eggs, hash browns, onions and mushrooms - yumm!

Then chillaxed and didn't do anything exciting.  They left later in the afternoon on Sunday.

So a couple of weeks ago at @CLBradley's Miss M was singing Let it Go from Frozen on YouTube.  So I borrowed their DVD.

Watched it on that weekend, but didn't return it because I thought I might watch it again.

The next Thursday I was at @CLBradley's again because I'd spent the week learning the song and wanted to sing it with Miss M.  So that was fun :)

The next night the sweetie suggested we watch it again, so we did.

Then he got the dvd and soundtrack for me for my birthday :)  

So we watched it again on my birthday last Thursday.  Then while waiting for M&J on Friday night we watched it again.  And last night we put it on after dinner while we were chatting.

So I've seen it five times in two weeks, and three times in three days.

Anyone would think I was a nine year old girl .. 

Last night the sweetie and I went along to see Lucy.

I did like it.

Some of the ideas were quite good, and in some ways it makes you think.

But then if you think too much about it, you realise how implausible it all is.

Fun anyway.

The rest of the weekend has been quiet so far.

Friday night we watched Frozen again, and then The Patriot.  I felt awfully conflicted watching Jason tho .. he's so damned hot in that movie, but he's also an utter bastard.  *sigh* :)

Last weekend was quite busy in terms of socialising.

As mentioned previously, the Friday night we had Gaelian and Stef over.

Late Saturday afternoon we went over to Potty's to try and clean up his computer that was full of malware the kids had installed.

Then we headed over to Mishi's for a games night.  Much chatting and eating and bit of game playing.  We played DC's logo game again which was fun, then started on Trivial Pursuit but gave up after Damien and Amanda got two pieces of pie, as the questions were quite hard and it was very slow going.

Sunday was lunch at Josh and Ally's with Andrea and GP.  Ally had cooked up some delicious food including a cassoulet!

I might have also helped the small person build one of her Lego sets.

We stayed all afternoon which was nice.

Then we came home and we watched Frozen that I'd borrowed off Miss M.

I had a craving for slow cooked lamb shanks last weekend, so bought some when we went shopping.

This is a bit of a hack of Stu's original recipe.  Well actually I really have no idea what his original recipe is, but it involves tomato and worcecesestershire sauce.

So this is what I used for this one.

Lamb shanks, half a pack of bacon (leftover from the breakfast raclette), a few potatoes, an onion, half a head of garlic, a couple of parsnips (cause they needed using up), tin of diced tomato, a goodly slurp of worcestershire sauce, tomato paste and chicken stock (left over from the coq au vin that needed using up)

Chopped potato, parsnip, onion, garlic

Bacon!

Chuck everything into the pot

And cover with the wet stuff

Come back six hours later.

Of course I always forget to document the end.  But this is how it was served - meat pulled apart for sharing among three, brown rice, peas and corn, and mushrooms cooked in butter.

The Stus went back for seconds, so must have been ok :)