Fifty-one years ago this weekend the parental type people came down to Canberra to celebrate the opening of the Canberra Youth Hostel.

Mum took two photos up Black Mountain - one from the top, and one from the lookout part way up.  Unfortunately we'll be busy on the weekend so I won't be able to get the fifty-one year recreation, so you'll have to make do with my photos from 2016.

From part way up..

At the top

I love how Parkes Way just isn't there in 1968, and there seems to be a lot more trees around now..

So when I left you on Sunday night I was frustrated at the whole experience I'd had with Qantas that afternoon.  In the end my booking hadn't gone through properly because of a problem with my credit card (I never use it, in fact I don't think I'd used this one since activating it, so wasn't really surprised).  On Monday I tested the credit card worked (it did) so in the afternoon I called Qantas.  Where I got in a queue that said I would be on hold for THREE HOURS.

!!!!!!!

Are you freaking kidding me?  Most companies have different queues for sales and support.  Sales *want* your business and so put on more staff to handle the calls.  Not so Qantas.  So I complained on twitter.  As you do.  There was a bit of back and forth during the afternoon, and they said they'd call to try again with the credit card.  Which they did - while I was in the other room having dinner and watching Brooklyn 99, so didn't hear the phone.  

While I was waiting again, I got onto Emirates' site. I put through the same itinerary, which 1) actually seemed to let me do (I got all the way up to the payment page), 2) had a much better connection to Singapore, giving us a few extra hours there, and 3) was THREE HUNDRED DOLLARS CHEAPER.  I asked Qantas if we could please cancel.  I was too upset/stressed from the whole thing to concentrate on anything much, so I went and cleaned the kitchen.  Of course as soon as I left the room Qantas called again.  Sigh.  But confirmed my wish to cancel the booking and eventually they did.

On Tuesday I put the whole booking through Emirates.  I still had issues with the credit card (the two-factor code wouldn't come through to my phone), so I just used a different card.  And that was that.  Done.  

Although Emirates do price gouge with seat selection - $20-$30 for regular seats, $120 for the little pair of two at the back of the plain, who even knows how much for exit row seats.  There goes that saving...

So Qantas had three lost opportunities to get my money.  If their multi city flights were actually usable I would have booked on the spot, using whichever credit card had worked.  If their booking management system had actually made a provision to "pay now" and let me pay online, I would have.  If they didn't make me wait THREE HOURS in a phone queue I would have done it over the phone.

Qantas really need to lift their game if they want to stay competitive in 2019.

Sigh.

Monday morning I cleared a massive backlogs of tickets due to me being away on Friday for the funeral.  Started to panic at the sheer volume of work facing me for the week.  And I couldn't get anything done on Monday afternoon due to nonstop interruptions.  Every one of them tore my concentration away so the *one thing* I was trying to do I couldn't get done.  In the end I managed to get it done between 5pm and 6pm when everyone else had gone away.

Tuesday not *quite* so busy, but did get stuff done.

Wednesday I was in race condition mode.  That is, too many high priority tasks competing, which meant I actually didn't get anything meaningful done at all in the morning.  Sigh.  So did some stuff for Henrch, and then Shane saved me by pushing back on the people that haven't done their docos :)

Also on Wednesday I had just stood up and was looking out the window and saw a Tarago back into a car in the car park, bumping it so I saw it move.. and then it drove away.  I grabbed my camera and took some pics.  And then went and left a note :)  I did get a call from the police asking for the photos, but no word of thanks or even acknowledgement from the owner of the car that was hit.

Aldi proved themselves once again to be a bunch of scammers.  Neil saw an ad for some scotch that he thought he'd get for the bar.  So we had a look at lunch.  But not only was there none of that scotch to be seen, but there wasn't even an empty spot on the shelf for it.  There was no price tag at all for that scotch.  Which clearly meant they never had it for sale at all.  SCAMMERS!

And then on Friday Dan's tried to charge me $14.99 for a bottle of Henkell.  I knew when I saw the price tag there was going to be trouble, so I took a photo of it, and got it for the cheaper price ;)  

When we got home on Thursday night I was in the family room doing up my hair and talking to the sweetie when I heard something and saw something move out of the corner of my eye.  One of Chrissie's clown loaches was flopping on the top of the book case next to the tank.  It must have been startled when we got home, but it had somehow managed to get out between the loosish lid and the tank wall (might have to weight it down heh).  Grabbed the fish and plonked it back in, and it's been fine ever since.  It was lucky I saw it too, I don't normally linger at that spot for very long, it would have been just as likely for me not to even have noticed til the next day.

I really wanted to have a random day off on Friday but there was just too much work all week.  I think I closed something like 30 tickets which is *huge*.  I did manage to leave at 4pm tho.  Started watching Friends with Benefits until the sweetie got home, then we watched For Your Eyes Only.  I haven't seen most of the early James Bonds in probably twenty years or more - when Dad used to put them on while I was still living at home.  But with the early ones I could still remember bits and pieces and even the odd lines of script and one-liners.  But I have no memories at all of For Your Eyes Only, except for dropping the dude down the chimney at the beginning. 

Saturday morning was the usual house work type stuff.  Not too much in the afternoon.  Finished watching Friends with Benefits.  Silly and predictable, but hey, New York.  Watched Jackie with the sweetie.  It wasn't bad, but had a very disjointed filming style.

Today was Lego picking, trivia night planning, photo culling, lunch out and food shopping, more of the same in the afternoon.  Watched Parenthood before dinner and finished after. Roasted a stack of veggies for dinner and watched some Veronica Mars.

And blogged.

Monday doctor; Hero Sushi for dinner (it met expectations - it disappointed).

Tuesday continued photo culling.  I managed two days all week.  It's fricken hard work.

Wednesday was KFC for lunch (tradition).  Ate it while listening to an AWS guy deep dive into some stuff, so most of it went over my head, and I was stuck there for two hours which my legs really didn't appreciate.  Then had to deal with people blaming the firewall for blocking stuff.  Sure it's blocking stuff, but only because they upgraded their application, not because we changed the rules.  Went and shared some bubbles with Neil which was nice.

Then to Bella Vista with the sweetie.

Had Assagini for entree - a mixed seafood platter consisting of calamari, scallops, prawns, San Danielle prosciutto and an avaocado and tomato salsa

Stu had Gnocchi with gorgonzola dolce cheese

I had bistecca: wagyu sirloin, creamy mash, prawns, spinach, green beans, pancetta, garlic butter sauce.

All very nice.

Saw this on Thursday.  Driven by quality.

Friday morning I drove myself up to Sydney.  Had lunch with Mum at the village - lamb roast.

Then off to the funeral.  Actually the thanksgiving memorial - the private funeral was in the morning.  It actually went for quite a long time - an hour and a half.  They used a whole heap of photos of Mum's that I'd scanned in recent years and sent them all through to Chrissie to pass on (they didn't have access to the house to get any of their own photos).  Saw quite a few people that I knew from years past, even Kristen from school and Joe W and Michael S so that was nice.  

Chrissie and I completely geeked out and went and stood in the hall of the church where we met thirty years and a couple of weeks ago.

Hung around til almost the end before Joe gave us a lift back to Mum's (we took the train earlier because we figured we'd have to walk about the same distance as if we drove).  Stopped in at South Village to have a look.

Back at Mum's I had a quiet toast to Diana and Graham.

Then we played Rummy Tiles, which Mum and Diana played every Friday night for years.

Saturday morning Mum and I looked at dates and travel options for our trip next year.  Then I headed off.

Met up with Kit in Dapto so she could look at a horse she was interested in buying.  She had a decent long ride and I took a whole heap of video for her to get an idea of whether she wants to buy or not (by today she'd decided not to - the horse was an old pacer so wouldn't canter).  I even had a little ride (my phone went a bit spastic so it was very dark and unsaturated, no idea what that was about, fixed up somewhat but not ideal).

Stu wanted gnocchi bake for dinner, so went to Chris's for supplies and did it.  Then we watched Moonraker.

Today I spent most of the morning trying to catch up housework.  Did some food shopping and finally got to go see takoyaki man!  The guy makes actual takoyaki, although he'd run out of octopus by the time we got there late morning, so we just had pork.  Next time we go earlier!

This afternoon I thought I'd book flights.  Sounds simple.  Four legs, which I put into Qantas' site.  But every time I got to a certain point (confirming passenger details) it gave this friendly error:

WHICH IS COMPLETELY F#$^ING USELESS QANTAS!!

So I got onto their chat line (took about thirty five minutes to talk to someone) and they spent a good twenty minutes trying to reproduce the problem ("I'm also having the same error in the website. Let me check this in our system").  Eventually he says "I have checked and the reason why you're unable to proceed online is that there is no combinable fares for a Multi City trip."  Which really doesn't help me much.  After a few repeats of "I don't understand" it seems that the cities don't actually link up in the middle.  Because it's Europe.  Who goes back to where they came from anyway?  So I wasn't going to be able to book it via the website.  Qantas is completely pathetic.  If this sort of itinerary is going to cause an error, why don't they say that before I move off the very first page?  Why lead me through another couple of pages before throwing up a Generic Error that doesn't actually tell me what's wrong?  Sigh.  So anyway, for an extra $200 he put it through manually, although after all was said and done, I got an email saying there was a problem with payment and I have to call them anyway.  Fricken great.  Maybe tomorrow.

Anyway so dinner was an hour later than I wanted because I spent so long dealing with Qantas.  Watched Brooklyn 99 and Veronica Mars (they keep bringing back characters that I've forgotten about so have to go look them up, and other characters that I *do* remember, like Leo and Vinnie and Weevil :) ).

Crazy week.  And two weeks in a row without a proper weekend.  Really must take another random day off..

Not from where I'm standing...

Last Tuesday I had lunch with Chrissie (second week in a row actually).  Zac came along this time as well - omfg his voice broke since I last saw him.  Got down to 383 photos left to label.

Wednesday was Doc's farewell.  Sad that he's leaving.  Nice afternoon with all the boys though.

Thursday I wanted vomit pizza, so the sweetie made one up.

Friday had a drink with the sweetie then walked past Wintervention.

Do I look like I have a crown of lights?

Saturday morning we did our food shopping in the morning so the sweetie could get the slow cooker on at lunch time.  I did housey stuff and picked Death Star Lego. 

The roganjosh the sweetie cooked turned out quite nicely.

In the evening we watched The Man with the Golden Gun.  So sad seeing the wreck of the Queen Elizabeth (the only Cunard Queen I've never actually seen, and never will see).

Sunday was nice and quiet.  Didn't really get a whole lot done though.  In the evening went over to R&F's for lamb roast and chatting which was lovely.

Monday I cooked honey mustard chicken for dinner.  Continued on the photo labelling but forgot to blog.

Tuesday I cooked okonomiyaki for dinner, and did a trial run of some turkey, cranberry and camembert scrolls.  Ok but a little bland.

And then. Then!  I finished labelling our last holiday photos!!!!  All 10522 of them.  It took me six months.

hrmmmmm

Next the mission will be to finish selecting some for the blog.  And then figure out the best way to get them online.  At this stage I'm thinking an Amazon bucket with the html on this site.

I was too exhausted to blog last night.

Tonight I had another go at the turkey scrolls (the recipe made a batch that did four sheets of puff pastry, but I only used a quarter of the mix and one sheet last night).  To the next quarter of the mixture I added some salt, cinnamon and nutmeg, and a little bit of shredded cheese.  They were somewhat better but still not like the awesomeness of the vegemite and cheese or pizza scrolls.

Monday night the sweetie was home so he cooked dinner - salmon with a tartare sauce he made himself.  Very nice and very much appreciated.

After dinner and photo labelling I wanted to have some *fun* with Vic's Lego (after it all just being work so far).  So I started on the Cinderella Castle, because it was almost complete (likely because girls take better care of their things than boys do).  The palette sure is different to boys Lego too.

Tuesday lunch had lunch with Chrissie which was nice, although fairly brief.

Tuesday the sweetie was home but he didn't cook dinner.  We had leftovers.  

Then I finished the castle.

Wednesday the sweetie was home but he didn't cook dinner.  We had pizza delivered. 

Instead of photo labelling I spent all evening typing up all the notes from the last chat Kit and I had had about the wedding.  

Thursday we were going to go to Dumpling Inn with Hannah and Rita, but someone had the idea we should try Pizza Artigiana.  So we did that.  We had three very nice (and very thin!) pizzas - Patate e Salciccia - PAOLA - thinly sliced potatoes with mozzarella, Italian pork sausage (I think they forgot that ingredient) and thyme ($20); Quattro Formaggi - SANDRA - mozzarella, provolne, gorgonzola, and shaved pecorino ($20); Prosciutto Crudo - AMBRA - tomato base, prosciutto, mozzarella, rocket, parmesan and balsamic vinegar ($21).

And a nice Rocket and parmesan salad - rocket lettuce with shaved parmesan and a balsamic vinegar and virgin olive oil dressing ($10).

And we might have gotten the nutella pizza (which I don't think is on the menu).  

Friday I took a random day off, so used that do a bit of houseworky stuff, and then get ready to go down to the coast.

It was crazy windy on the drive.  All the wind turbines at Tarago were shut down.  I was a bit nervous about a tree branch falling on the car (and we did have to round a small tree partially blocking the road).  (edit: a father and son died when a tree fell on their car in Victoria on Sunday night :( )

Had dinner and just chatted when we got there. 

Pete has a new fish tank with nine neon tetras (Clone 1-9), six male guppies (red spotty tail 1 and 2, yellow spotty tail 1 and 2, blue and grey 1 and 2) and a sucking catfish (Dyson).

And Petal was very excited to see us.

Kit has a new snake.  She wants to call it Richard.  Pete wants to call it Monty.

And three of these are still going something like eighteen years later..

Saturday morning was more animal stuff.

Then we headed out to have a look at the wedding venue and ask questions and take notes.

Had lunch at the Australian Hotel in Nowra.  $10 for quite a nice steak (better than the Rashay's $5 ones).

Then we all went to the zoo.  It was still crazy windy.  I'll save that for another post.

Pete made pizzas for dinner (epic thick with toppings heh)

Chatted and played a game of Kismet (I won, somehow).

Sunday morning I showed Kit the bridesmaids dress.  We debated the best way to fix the problems with it.

Then I sat down and went through the wedding planning notes with them.  Well I tried to.  I'd been wanting to do it all weekend but getting the two of them to pay attention for more than thirty seconds at a time was like trying to herd cats.  Super frustrating.  So we left a lot later than we'd planned to, and just got chips and snacks at the servo for a very late lunch.

Got home and the house was freezing (10C when we got home, minimum of 6C).  Had chicken kiev for dinner and super stressed out by Apple.

Tonight I caught up on last week's photo labelling, as well as getting a good head start on this week's.  Was in a completely different mental state and was able to process all my photos from the past week.  I was so stressed out last night my brain couldn't *see* what I was doing.  Blinded by rage???  

So no movies at all this week.  Just a lot of feeling cold.  And a lot of pizza.  And a (mostly) nice weekend away.

Such a busy week this week.

Monday was crazy epic busy.  Had leftover lasagna for dinner, finished day 28 of holiday photo labelling, although was too exhausted to do the full quota for the day.

Tuesday I had my quota of photos done by 19:30, so started watching Big Bang Theory from the beginning now that it's on Netflix.  Then I watched Kramer vs Kramer which I'd never seen, while fighting with my backups (my 2T external hard drive is really full, need to rework the backup schedule a little).

Wednesday was mostly fighting with the proxies.  I had it good for a year and a half when I didn't have to touch them, but now I'm back it's mostly my responsibility.  Was exhausted and sick of cooking and sick of leftovers so relented and let the sweetie order pizza.  Which of course made me feel like a big fat blob.  I did get over 9000 photos labelled (86% done), but we forgot to get milk.

Thursday I put on It Takes Two, because I don't think I've ever seen any of the Olsen Twins movies.  It was all a bit of fluff, much like Parent Trap only they weren't sisters.  I was all squee about the New York been-theres though.  One of the shots was of the Metlife building (this was a 1995 movie) and I was like, it was the Pan-Am building in 1979 in Kramer vs Kramer hehe.

Sailed under this six months and one day before seeing the movie

Went up there in 2000

And there

Walked past this statue of William Sherman in Central Park exactly six months before seeing this movie

Was there in 2000 too

Fun times.

Friday had a drink with the sweetie at the Waldorf.  Took photos of the pretty arch.

We went to Hero Sushi for dinner, but as always it was disappointing.  They did have plenty of takoyaki out this time, but it was just barely warm :(  No other interesting hot food to speak of.  Did our food shopping on the way home.

Saturday was pretty quiet.  Didn't do much in the morning.  Had the second last ancient hot dog roll out of the freezer and made pizza subs with it (slowwwwly getting through all the ancient food in there).

Stumpy even came out for a while in the afternoon and stayed til the heat turned off.

Saw these wispy clouds when I was bringing in the washing.

Mostly just Lego picking in the afternoon.  Watched Made of Honor in the afternoon/evening.  Again, fluff, but I really didn't like the title.  If he was *actually* "made of honor" he wouldn't try to break up the wedding.  Lame.  And get this, the opening shot in the movie was filmed BACKWARDS!  Completely retarded.  Here's a screen grab vs reality.

Watched The Rocky Horror Picture Show after dinner, need to try and brush up on the songs for the club night in a couple of months.

Today I did a bunch of housework in the morning and achieved quite a lot.  Just nothing on my todo list :(  Stumpy was out the entire time the heat was on.  Maybe he thinks winter is over.  Lego picking all afternoon - finished picking for another six sets.  Had slow cooked lamb shanks for dinner as per this recipe.  The recipe is nice enough, it's just lacking .. *something* .. Not sure what.  I had heaps of corn flour so it wasn't as watery as it's been in the past.  Just lacks a certain mouth feel.  hrmm.

Continued Brooklyn 99 and Homeland.

Then fought with Apple again.  After several weeks of it not screwing around with my files, this week it trashed most of my PNGs

Hate Apple.  Hate.

And there we are for another week.

Haven't done a lot of jigsaws this quarter.  Been too busy trying to sort out Lego so I can get it out of the house.  That, and most of the puzzles I have to do are 1500 plus pieces, which stay out for a long time and get quite distracting.  The smaller ones I can knock over and get done and out of the house a lot quicker.

David selected this one from my to-do pile when he came up in April (he'd brought it up on a previous occasion).  1500 pieces and we did it in a couple of days.  It's of a cute little town, Ramsau, in Germany.  When I went trying to find it (so I can go there one day ;) ) I found a live webcam setup in this exact spot.  I watched it for a while and there was a constant stream of people having their photos taken on the bridge :)

I left it out for a while then, because I'm trying to declutter and wanted to give the jigsaw away, I pulled out the parts that David had mostly done, so that I could do them myself, so that I felt like I'd actually *done* the jigsaw before I gave it away :)

Even Stumpy came out to help :)

This was a jigsaw I bought new from Kmart for a few dollars (I think).  David, Kat, Kit and I (I think) did it back in 2016.  I thought I'd do it again myself so that I could give it away.

This one Kore gave to me when she came to visit in late 2011, and it had been sitting unopened downstairs ever since.  So it was good to finally do it.

This one Lachie started and promptly gave up on.  He brought it in for me to do, and I couldn't resist starting it there and then.  Took quite a while to do at work (because I simply don't have the time; the best progresses I made on it were after work hours, and also I can't sort the pieces the way I would at home because people come along and mess them up).  But it was really nice to have a jigsaw nearby to do - great for when you need a brain break to just do it for a couple of minutes.

I'll do this again at home some time, maybe when David is here haha ;)

Monday morning I was cranky at the STOOPID, so spent way more than my usual lunch budget on crackling pork, which was good, but *huge*!

I was so full from lunch I didn't feel like dinner, but did eventually fry up some cabbage with cheese and pepperoni.  A little weird..

As of Monday was 80% of the way through holiday photo labelling.

Tuesday was a somewhat better day, still too much stoopid.  Had my dinner and quota of photo labelling done by 19:30, so watched The Secret Garden.  I have a feeling I may have read the book in school.  Certainly don't remember though.  Movie was all right, but not amazing.  Filed club photos while watching.

Wednesday was filled with utter rage at the sheer hypocrisy of our change management team.  I was so angry at one point I nearly punched something.  Went to Vinnies and got a couple of (expensive) second hand jigsaws (Green Shed is better value).  Finished up to day 27 of holiday photo labelling. 

Thursday we were going to be good and not get pizza for dinner.  We got pizza for dinner.

Friday the sweetie cooked a pork larb, which was nice but needs more vegetation.  Watched a couple of episodes of Homeland.

I like this picture I saw on a website on the weekend.  What does it look like to you?

Did usual Saturday morning stuff, then we headed out to the club for Chris and Ian's anniversary dinner.  I helped setup; they went red this year.

Had a lovely evening.  Rob put on a heap of Queen.  I may have sung along.  Ended up back at Ian's for a very late night.

This morning we came home (I slept relatively well, just didn't get enough of it).  Just did Lego inventorying and had a nap.

Stu cooked a sweet potato and leek soup in the slow cooker which turned out quite nicely, and I finished off some lasagna sheets and made a vego lasagna (left it in the oven a bit too long though).  I just made up a bechamel sauce, and for the tomato layers just had a can of crushed tomatoes, a tub of tomato paste and some garlic and herbs.  It was only four layers (two of tomato and two of white sauce) but was pretty quick to make and used up a few things out of the pantry and fridge which was good.

Then the usual Sunday night photo processing and blogging.

Tuesday I did my quota of photo labelling and thought I'd watch something on Netflix.  I started watching Contagion thinking I'd start it and finish it later, but ended up watching the whole thing.  Netflix was broken though - they forgot to add the day count subtitle - super annoying.  And if you hadn't seen it before you might be a little confused about the whole Day 0 bit at the end.  Stoopid, Netflix, stoopid.

Had pizza on Wednesday because Stu had gotten a migraine at work but didn't have painkillers and his prescription for more was too old (the codeine prescriptions only last six months instead of the usual twelve months, who knew - not that it would have mattered, they were nearly two years old anyway).

Thursday after MacGyver I watched the start of Clueless, which I've also seen before but thought it would be a bit of fun.

Friday morning we had the sewage pipes eeled.  It was October 2016 that we had them done last, so thought it would be about time.  He came across roots in the place we were expecting, so told him I'd see him again in a couple of years time.  I flexed off Friday because otherwise I wouldn't have gotten any weekend to myself which would have been stressful.  So had a nice day mostly doing houseworky bits and watched the end of Clueless.  The mother type person arrived at dinner time so we had some frozen chicken wings and potato gems.

Saturday morning Mum and I went food shopping while Stu monitored the upgrade he was doing at work (that he got stuck staying up til 3am waiting for a backup to finish).  So he slept through lunch.  Chrissie and Goo came over for roast pork, and Chris made lemon meringue pie.  Yum yum yum.

I was exhausted from *people* after lunch so let Mum read a book while I listened to the classic 100 composer and checked off Lego.  Had leftovers for dinner and watched Grace of Monaco which I enjoyed although no idea how true any of it was.  Some odd cinematography and direction choices though - like bright yellow scenes, and very long extreme closeups.  Strange.

Sunday morning Mum and I hit the road and drove to Junee.

When we got to Junee David helped Mum transfer her contacts off her old dying phone onto her new one, and set it up with her car's bluetooth.  Then we went to the pub for lunch.  As you do.

In the afternoon we listened to the classic 100 composer (missed John Williams while were out though - only 15th - ripped off!) and did puzzles.  We might have cranked the volume on the 1812 overture and Beethoven's 5th. 

Went and got pizza from Pizza on Main for dinner.

Half watched Wreck it Ralph while half-heartedly playing some hands of Canasta and 500.

Took ages to get to sleep because I was *cold*, and forgetting my pyjamas certainly didn't help.

In the morning we headed over to Peter Neve's to say hi.  Had a look at the work he's doing on an inspection pit in the back yard.

Then we did some food shopping for David.  Had some chicken for lunch, then Mum and I headed home.  I saw the coat of arms on the way home - an emu off Nangus Road, and kangaroos off the Barton Highway.  Didn't get photos of them though.  Just a couple of shots around Gundagai.

At home I de-peopled for a bit then cooked dinner - a herb and apricot chicken (Coles doesn't have the three cheese and bacon ones anymore *gasp* just the apricot one and dumb mac and cheese).  Watched a couple of episodes of Death in Paradise, finishing season three.

This morning Mum went home and we went to work.  Did have lunch with the sweetie today too which was nice.  Did a bunch of photo labelling, then blogging, and here we are.

Tuesday I snapped this.  Just pointed my phone at the ground and snapped.  Autumn sure is pretty in Canberra.

In the evening I managed to catch up with all of Monday's photo labelling as well as Tuesday's so that was a pretty good effort.

Wednesday evening I finished labelling St Maarten.  Three nights to do one day.  Five hundred photos.  hrmm. 

In bed I usually play some Candy Crush til I run out of lives - usually about ten minutes worth, sometimes longer if the "bot" boosters get me on a roll.  But I reached a point at level 4602 where suddenly you couldn't restart the game to get a better starting board.  This is critical to game progression, even more so with boosters.  If you don't get the right combo of boosters to begin with they're actually often pretty useless.  And the single most effective start in most levels is a two colour-bomb combo.  So this change of game play destroyed my will to play it.  I'm still logging on every day to get the daily boosters, but if this change isn't reverted at the next update I probably won't play it anymore.

Thursday we watched the first episode of MacGyver that had Jack Dalton in it.  Love that guy haha.

Friday was the last day of May so the last of Rashay's $5 lunches.  I went back to the calamari which they can get right, I wasn't going to give them a third chance to fail on the steak.

Friday evening we watched On Her Majesty's Secret Service.  They filmed a Christmas festival in Switzerland and there was Raclette!  And Gluhwein!  Sooo need to do Christmas in Switzerland one year.  I also totally need to go to Piz Gloria, which was the fictional name of the building, under construction at the time of the filming of the movie.  The film production contributed to the completion of the building, and they kept the name forevermore (there's even a James Bond exhibition there!)

Saturday morning I woke up at 5:44.  Gave up trying to get anymore sleep around 6:30 and got up.  Had a busy early morning getting all the housework done.  The rest of the day was just photo filing and Lego picking.  I might have used up the last of the puff pastry to cook more cheese and vegemite scrolls for lunch.

In the evening I didn't feel like cooking so the sweetie ordered Chong Co delivery.  Not too bad delivered.  Then we watched The Incredibles 2, which I last (and first) saw on the plane between Tokyo and Hong Kong at the end of last year.

Today was pretty much just Lego picking all day.  All weekend I managed just six sets.  Surprisingly a couple of them were actually complete, which has been super rare for this collection.

We haven't been food shopping so dinner was a case of what could we find left to cook.  I went and got some cream and cooked bacon, garlic, onion and mushrooms with cream and cheese and pasta.  The sweetie went back for seconds so it must have been ok.

I think I had a bit too much salt this evening though.  Whoops.