Monday.  30th.  Not backdating!!  Okish sleep, bit broken.  Ok day.  Saw my birds at lunch. 

Another day, another wattle

Found this in our front yard - self seeded, no idea what it even is?  Some sort of grevillea??

Had a lot of fun doing diagrams in the afternoon.  Lamb stir fry for dinner.  Labelled 197 photos - in Leavesden Studios!!  Harry Potter!!  So much fun.  And watched an episode of Air Crash Investigations.

Tuesday.  Another pretty good day, mostly doing diagrams!  Made mushroom, olive and salami pizza scrolls for the sweetie for lunch.

Then Pizza Capers for dinner.  Simpsons, X Files, Air Crash, and still managed to label 157 photos for Leavesden Studios.

Wednesday.  Woke up in the middle of the night for at least an hour and a half.  Sigh.  Ok day, not very exciting.  Leftover lamb roast for dinner.  Simpsons, then jigsaw (finished sorting pieces into basic colours), and Air Crash Investigations, and still managed to label 232 photos - I'm actually exactly on schedule now - 17500 photos labelled!!

Thursday.  Why is it the tireder you are, the harder it is to get to sleep???  So I was epic tired, went to bed on time, I might have nodded off briefly once, but otherwise didn't get to sleep til after midnight.  And then woke like every hour after that, but at least got back to sleep.  Ok day, I think.  

Made a creamy spaghetti for dinner that was absolutely amazing.

Onion, mushrooms, bacon, garlic

Cream, cheese

Spaghetti

Can you guess which section yet?

Friday.  Okish sleep, but still pretty tired.  Ok day planning for a change and eventually doing it, only to break everything cause *someone* didn't configure a remote environment in prod to be the same as test.  So this change I'd done in test didn't work in prod.  So technically not my fault, but I still felt responsible, because I should have made sure other people could do their job right before I could do mine.  TV dinner for dinner, then watched Weathering With You which was quite sweet, and, been-theres.

Saturday.  Slept mostly ok.  Nice quiet day doing house/photo type stuff.  It rained.  A lot.  Did slow cooked brisket for dinner which was pretty awesome, and did polenta as well, which I'd never done before.  Turned out ok.  The meal could have done with some greenery though ;)  Watched Dead Poets Society in the evening, which I hadn't seen in forever, possibly I saw it at the movies thirty two years ago.

Today.  Slept ok.  Another quiet day. 

Headed out after the rain stopped and saw my little patch of Floriade, and my birds, and a whole bunch of other birds as well. 

And went to Chris's for supplies.  Watched The Incredible Journey (which I'd seen a long long long time ago) while doing photo processing.  Then cooked up some mince, as well a whole heap of roast veggies for dinner.  Had a Zoom chat with EffanC, then watched the first episode of Love on the Spectrum.  Man I know I'm socially awkward but these guys have it much worse.  Or maybe I was that bad when I was younger (quite possibly was) and just "grew out of it" (read: "learned" how to people) - cause that's the thing with Asperger's, relating to people is something you actually need to learn, it certainly doesn't come naturally.  And blogged.  Took well over an hour.  Again... 

Monday.  23rd.  Backdating this.  Slept ok.  Fighting with vendors over strange intermittent problems.  Otherwise cleaning and tidying.  Kiev and veggies again for dinner.  Got most of my quota of photos labelled.  Watched Air Crash Investigations while blogging (took over an hour to blog the last week).

Tuesday.  Slept ok.  Cold and wet and miserable day!  Had to have the light on all day it was so dark.  Ok morning but a bit of a crazy afternoon (trying to concentrate on a meeting while trying to help people with crap).  Labelled 101 photos before dinner.  Only five rows of Dumbo to go.  Finished labelling after dinner.  

Stumpy got hungry early this year

Nearly there!

At this point I twinned up all the pieces, so progress went a lot faster.

Wednesday.  Ok day.  After work we headed back out to Brindabella to get our 14 day covid test.  At 5pm (peak hour) the main roads of Canberra looked like this:

Testing went a lot quicker this time.  We basically drove straight up to the big tent.  All up we were there just twenty minutes. 

Even afterwards in the heart of Civic it was pretty quiet.

Came home and got 72 photos labelled before dinner (just veggies and cheese sauce) and finished Dumbo in the evening.  This was probably the hardest section of the jigsaw so far.  Just so much brown/grey/blue/dark stuff so pieces could go anywhere.  I'm really *not* looking forward to Fantasia!

Thursday.  Slept ok.  Ok day.  Got our test results - negative.  Knew they would be :)  So left the house for the first time in over a week and went and saw some of my birds (they recognise me from a distance even with a mask on.  Clever birds!!). 

 Also stopped in at Chris's and picked up some supplies (including Corona!!).  

Simpsons/X Files (X Files: how to put a downer on your evening).  Started watching Forrest Gump.

Friday.  Slept ok.  Woke up to an SMS saying they couldn't find my test results, and I had to send them a screenshot to prove my negative test result *sigh*.  The whole handling of this outbreak has been a complete debacle!!  They had Stu's though.  Later I had a sad that I wasted two or three days rescanning slides last Christmas holidays, and yet I'm *still* trying to scan them to not have fluff/specks on them.  I'm *still* fixing up a box of slides per day.  Up to 130 out of 181 and wondering if it will *ever* get any easier.  hrmmmm. Ok day.  Made burritos for dinner with leftover wraps and mince from the club night a few months back (didn't eat all of them!).  

Simpsons and The Trial of the Chicago 7 in the evening.  I'd never heard of the incident.  Was fairly interesting anyway.

Saturday.  Nice quiet day of house stuff.  Put on Dumbo (on Disney+ even though I also have it on Bluray) so I could get a photo with the jigsaw.  As always, the jigsaw doesn't quite match an actual scene in the movie.  In this case, the jigsaw has Timothy Q Mouse, but in the movie he hadn't even met Timothy yet when he was having his bath.  

There was Mexican style fried rice for lunch (using the last of the rice and mince).

And am I a glutton for punishment of what? :)

Finished day 32 Eurasia labelling, only 86 beind the 500 per week schedule.  Lamb roast for dinner.  Watched The Girl on the Train in the evening.  It was ok I guess.

Sunday.  Achieved mostly nothing at all.  Saw my birds in the afternoon. 

I have to admit sometimes I'm pretty impressed with the iPhone camera.  I mean seriously.  This.  From a PHONE!!

Cooked all the veggies for dinner.  The sweetie even went back for seconds, so he must have liked them ;)  Super dumb episode of the X Files (Die Hand Die Verletzt) then Air Crash Investigations on MH17.

Sunday.  15th.  Backdating this, but only by a day :)  Cooked All The Food for dinner (lots of veggies, that went with some pulled pork I dug out of the freezer). 

Simpsons/X Files, then watched some commentry on John Williams' music.  Seriously the guy is a genius.  Check out Listening In's commentry on Jurassic Park, Prisoner of Azkaban, Star Wars and ET.

Monday.  Woke up at ~1am for a couple of hours.  Sigh.  Ok day. 

Even if we don't get to go to Floriade this year, I'll have my little neighbourhood patch of it.

Sausages and leftover veggies for dinner.  Managed 49 photos before dinner.  Had to do a fixup of geodata on some too.  Managed 192 all up, and an episode of Air Crash Investigations.

Tuesday.  Slept well for a change.  Not a bad day, looking at more cleaning to be done.  63 photos labelled before dinner - finished Day 29 Canon photos.  Still a long way behind :(  Managed 177 all up and an episode of Air Crash.

Wednesday.  Decided yesterday I'd do a mid week food shop, and go early to minimise exposure to potentially infectious people.  Worked pretty well, and the carpark was deserted.

Took me longer than I thought it would because I had to keep stopping to go back and push my own trolley (normally Stu drives).  There was plenty of toilet paper (I didn't get any cause we still had over half a pack left).  But there were a couple of fresh things I couldn't get (like cabbage and basil).  So did all that, as well as getting a bag of fresh veggies, milk and eggs for EffanC.  They'd been down the coast when lockdown was declared in both the ACT and NSW, so they had to come home and were still waiting on a Coles delivery.  

Was just getting ready for work when Stu said our nearby IGA was a covid exposure site.  And guess who was there during one of the specified close contact times last week?  Yeup.  All because Stu wanted ice cream we can't get at Chris's ;)  OMFG I was a nervous wreck all day.  We'd have to go get tested, although couldn't go during the day because Stu was busy doing interviews for work, and we weren't sure if we'd even get in after work, with the EPIC testing site having been closed at like 4pm on the Tuesday due to high demand.  We were worried we'd have to wait around all night and still not get tested and have to go back, or even get turned away completely.  Plus if we did test positive, then Coles would be an exposure site and I'd have put EffanC at risk too.  Yeah I was a mess all day.  Although my stress did turn to anger.  We should have been notified *immediately* once the IGA was listed.  We both checked in with the CheckinCBR app, so they would have known we were there at the specified time.  Was pretty pissed off about that actually.  Anyway, as soon as Stu was finished up with interviews we headed out.  Stu wanted to try Kambah first.  One website said it closed at 5pm, another 4pm.  So we weren't sure when it would close.  Turns out it closes at 4pm and it had already closed by the time we got there.  (as it turns out, the 5pm closing time was from last year but I'd missed that when I was looking because I was so stressed).  So headed to Brindabella.  I was expecting traffic to be banked back around the airport, but we got all the way to Brindabella and were wondering where all the cars were.  Turns out it simply wasn't crowded (even though half an hour before we left home they'd tweeted it would be a three hour wait).  We took a whole stack of food.  We didn't need it.  We got to the first triage tent at 17:07 then joined the queue.  It took til about 18:00 to get to the big tent, then about twenty five minutes to get to the front of the line to get our tests.  It was unpleasant, but not as bad as I thought it would be.  So an hour twenty and we were out of there.  Got home, had some salad for dinner (hurrah for fresh food), then had a Zoom drink with EffanC.  Needed it.  Collapsed into bed for an early night.

Thursday.  Woke up at ~1am til past 3am.  Sigh.  Busy day, mostly dealing with interruptions.  Beer, pizza, Simpsons, X Files and an early night.

Friday.  Hurty for a bit in the night.  Woke up in the morning to find we'd been smsed our test results - negative.  Phew.  Ok day.  Had another Zoom drink/catchup with EffanC.  Salmon and salad for dinner, then Simpsons and Moneyball.  An odd choice for the sweetie I thought, but based on a true story and not a bad movie, for a sports movie ;)

Saturday.  Slept ok for a change.  Although that didn't stop my clumsiness trying to put out our pills/vitamins for the week, spilling things *three fricken times*.  Very upsetting.  Alternated between house stuff, photo labelling (still trying to catch up from a crazy couple of weeks), and jigsaw.  Made Dominos pepperoni and feta on puff pastry pizza for lunch.  

In the afternoon we got SMSes from ACT Health - "Check In CBR has identifed that you may have attended a COVID-19 exposure location".  Yeah no kidding guys, this was the message I should have gotten THREE AND A HALF DAYS AGO!!!!!  Fricken hopeless.  Chicken kiev and roast veggies for dinner.  Then watched Wall Street, which I'd never actually seen before.

Sunday.  Slep ok.  Another day of house stuff, photo stuff, and jigsaw.  My ideal weekend really.  And literally no different to a non-lockdown weekend (well other than not having to do food shopping, and not being able to go see my birds, on account of being in strict lockdown). 

Got a call from WA Health in the afternoon - taking some of the load off ACT Health and calling people in exposure sites - making sure we'd been tested and were quarantining.. yes and yes.  We'll have to get tested again this week, hopefully won't have to wait as long this time. 

Another afternoon of cooking all the food (mince to have with whatever at some point, and an arribbiata bake sans basil). 

Downloaded my phone photos.  Apple has gone back to arranging photos into a thousand per folder.  I mean why change to arranging them by month (a change for the better I thought) if you were just going to revert it a couple of months later??  Far out I hate Apple.  Watched The Movies that Made Us episode on Forrest Gump, and then the first half of Forrest Gump.  And blogged this Monday, ssh don't tell anyone!

Sunday.  8th.  Filling in the evening after I blogged :)  Cooked All The Veggies for dinner.  Had all the roasted veggies, with mince and cheese and sour cream on the potato wedges.  Yumminess.

Simpsons, X Files, Air Crash Investigations.

Monday.  Ok day.  Got practise looking at traffic spikes and figuring out what they were.  Labelled 182 photos - have finished Egypt and onto London, day 28.

Tuesday.  Pretty quiet day, although didn't get much done.  Leftovers/Simpsons/jigsaw/cleaned kitchen/backed up computer and suddenly it's 8pm.  Hrmm.  And labelling goes super slowly when you need to identify every building in Legoland Miniland (eg Covent Garden, which I'd never been to before, so that took a bit of flying around Google Maps trying to find it).  So I only managed to label 26 photos before dinner, did a few more while watching tv, managing 48 all up for the evening.  hrmmm.

Wednesday.  Started off ok, but then felt like a failure because I couldn't solve some stoopid problems with stoopid firewalls and stoopid proxies.  Then arguments with people who made me feel like everything I do is wrong.  Sigh.  It was a wine and scotch and no photo labelling kind of an evening.  

Thursday.  Woke up at 3am but didn't get back to sleep ~5am :(  So I was tired and grumpy.  The bathroom sealer people called me in the morning - the asbestos test came back positive (duh) so they won't do minor works, they'll only do a complete bathroom renovation so the asbestos can all be removed.  Sigh.  More fighting with stoopid firewalls and feeling like a failure and people hate me cause I hate everything.  Felt miserable all afternoon.  

But on a lighter note, before lunch it was announced Canberra would go into a snap seven day lockdown due to our first local cases of covid in over a year (it finally happened).  And my first reaction was woohoo.  I mean literally.  To just stay at home and not have to deal with people (at least directly) for a week - heaven.  I mean don't get me wrong, I do actually feel really bad for peeps in the hospitality and "non-essential" retail whose anxiety levels will go through the roof not knowing where their next pay check will come from, or anyone that had a wedding or something planned for this weekend - that'd be pretty devastating for them.  Neil and I had lunch at the mall as usual, then we went for a walk through the fresh food section to laugh at all the people panic buying milk and toilet paper.  About half the trolleys we saw had toilet paper in them.

I should point out that after all the panic buying of toilet paper finished last year and it was readily available again, I bought a pack of 24 and put it downstairs.  Then I've continued to buy it normally ever since, knowing that if we ever did have a snap lockdown, we'd be set.  In fact we'd just opened a pack of 12, so won't need any in the short term.

At 12:49pm there was already a queue to get into Woollies

And there was a queue at Baker's Delight too

HBZ also went shopping just after lunch, and already all the toilet paper was gone, and it took him an hour and a half to get through the checkouts.  Yikes!

On the way home we stopped for essentials - read - beer! ;)  Although tragically, Chris had sold out of Corona! *gasp*  ;)

Beer and pizza for dinner.  This is why I'm going to die young:

Friday the 13th.  Got somewhat better sleep, and actually managed to achieve some stuff at work.  Went for a walk at lunch and saw my birds. 

In the afternoon I went to check the mailbox and this daisy was there to greet me

So I got photos of some of the other flowers out already as well

Picked up TV dinners from Chris's (we actually have a freezer full of leftovers, but I really didn't feel like cooking) - he said it had been pretty quiet. 

Watched the 2008 Get Smart with the sweetie, which was completely ridiculous but I was snorting all through it - just a bit of fun :)

Saturday.  I'd had an early night, but woke up a bit before 5 and never got back to sleep.  Turned 30.  I'll let you figure out what base (thanks DC :) ).  Stu cooked breakfast of Pialligo bacon and cheesy hash browns. So brown but so good!!!!

Then had a lovely day just pottering around the house, doing jigsaw and the like.  Stu also had fun, building his little morse code thingie...

At lunch we went for a walk to see the birds, and saw this very smelly burnt out car.

And the sweetie took a photo of me in front of the same wattle tree I had photos of the other day.

In the afternoon I did a 500 piece jigsaw as a break from the agonisingly slow Dumbo.  Sadly it was missing a piece, but that's what you get for Green Shed jigsaws.  The sky was pretty at dusk too.

We may have shared some bubbles.

We got Chong Co delivered for dinner!

We had the wagyu salad and the duck salad (I asked for everything "medium" but the beef was a bit hot for me - endorphins!)

As well as the pork belly prik pao (not crispy anymore from being in transit) and satay chicken

Delicious!

After dinner we put on Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, which we enjoyed with heated Gluhwein and candles.

And all through the day (except the 10 second blackout and time taken for the router to reconnect) Stu put on a John Williams playlist which added a wonderful soundtrack to actually quite a wonderful day.

Sunday.  Another nice quiet day.  Took ages to do slide fixup scanning because every time I rescanned a bunch of slides, they'd get dust in different positions :(  

Late in the morning we went for a walk and saw these tiny flowers

With bee!

For lunch I made salami and olive pizza scrolls

My lockdown lunch is better than yours!

In the afternoon I alternated between Dumbo jigsaw and Legoland photo labelling (including geotagging a bunch I'd taken on the train but hadn't set the location) - managed 113 photos - so I'm still *way* behind where I need to be.  I also pulled everything out of the freezer and did an audit of what we have.  There's quite a bit of leftover meat (including a bunch of food from various club nights), and some frozen veggies.  I'm thinking I might do an early morning shopping trip one day this week to get more fresh food.

Then put on dinner (all the veggies, with some pulled pork from the freezer) - finished off most of our fresh vegetables, and blogged.

Monday.  2nd.  Not backdating this for a change ;)  Ok day.  Spent entirely too long trying to figure out what was causing a spike in traffic somewhere.  Really really need to relearn Splunk.  Saw eight of my birds at lunch!  Leftovers for dinner (Dinner Winner with veggies from the club night).  Managed to label 285 photos.  Found some new episodes of Air Crash investigations on Disney+, and blogged the week before last while watching an episode.  

Tuesday.  Ok day.  Lots of looking at traffic graphs and discovering new (and bad) things about one of our firewalls.  Managed to label 50 photos before dinner (turkey burnt ends and veggies from the club).  Ended up labelling 199 photos all up, and blogged last week while watching another episode of Air Crash Investigations.

Wednesday.  Restless sleep.  I like *going* to sleep on my belly, but my neck still hurts a bit from my Covid jab, but that's no so bad, I get more pain later after I wake up with an aching lower back.  If I lie on my sides my hands will go numb which is super annoying, and if I lie on my back I can't breathe.  So I really can't win.  Only managed to finish yesterday's slide fixup scanning (story of my life this week).  Decent day though - learnt *heaps* about our network, and organised a bunch more traffic graphs.  Leftovers for dinner.  Only managed to label 54 photos though.  Another episde of Air Crash Investigations while blogging the penne bake.

Thursday.  Another day of working on traffic graphs and dashboards.  

Friday.  Too busy dealing with All The Things to play with Splunk like I really wanted to.  Popped out for an impromptu Herbert's lunch with Tony and the Chrises.

Shared some loaded fries and skewers with Tony

Leftover pizza for dinner (fried of course, but a little over done because we used the bigger pan to fit it all in, but we don't have a big lid to cover it).  Watched In the Heart of the Sea, essentially about the sinking of the Essex and the survival story of the crew.  I felt quite tense watching most of it.  Pretty well done.  Interesting and quite tragic story too.

Saturday.  Fairly quiet day.  Did a bit of stuff around the house and some jigsaw (making agonisingly slow progress on that).  For dinner I used up some of the mince from the other week - heated with a leftover half punnet of tomato paste, some Worcestershire sauce, half a litre of stock with about a third to a half a packet of macaraoni, some leftover peas/corn/carrots, and cheese.  Basically my own One Pan Dinner.

Watched When a Man Loves a Woman in the evening.  I'd seen this a long time ago, but Stu hadn't seen it.  Quite a powerful movie.

Sunday.  Another quiet day pottering around the house.  Finished last week's photo labelling, worked on the jigsaw, did a bit of fish tank stuff.

Notice the symmetry in the completedness.  Every time I get a piece in from one side, I find the same shaped piece and put it in on the other side too.  

Dinner tonight will be the rest of the leftover mince with a whole heap of roasted veggies.

Sunday.  18th.  Backdating.  Lamb roast for dinner.  With epic leftovers.

Monday.  Spent some time trying to get caught up with all the stuff that got dropped last week because of all the disasters.  Saw my birds at lunch which was nice.  From 5pm spent some more time working on last week's issue.  Stu was home late as well.  Finished some leftover pork for dinner and The Simpsons, but then it was only half an hour before I had to log back on to do even more work.  So no photo labelling.  

Tuesday.  Woke up at 4am to pee but never got back to sleep.  Sigh.  Managed to rescan half a dozen slides, but not the dusting and vacuuming.  Zombie day all day.  Certainly didn't feel up to any photo labelling.

Wednesday.  Even though I was zombie tired I still took an hour to get to sleep.  But slept through til 5:30 (helped by being a bit dehydrated).  Ok day.  Managed about 90 photos labelled, so a nearly a week behind now.

Thursday.  Accidentally knocked this off my desk while I was dusting and it smashed everywhere.  George gave me this years and years ago - it was sort of like a thermometer where the warmer it got the further through the piping the liquid would go.  

Ok day.  Fairly slow morning but crazy afternoon.  Dumb episode of the X Files (Ascension).  Dumb issues, like the guy had an all night head start, but they got caught up with him pretty quickly.  Or like a cable car operator being able to control the speed of the car, rather than from the terminals.  Is that even a thing?  Or being able to infinitely zoom and enhance low res pics (a pet peeve of mine).  Although it was cool to see Gillian Anderson's actual pregnant belly.

Friday.  Had a random day off which was pretty amazing.  Did all my usual "Saturday" morning stuff.  Then attacked some unpleasant stuff - organising a heater service, someone to look at the leaky shower, etc.  After lunch spent a couple of hours tidying up the garage and organising stuff to get rid of.  Fried leftover pizza for dinner, the Simpsons, and then we watched Nanette (CRD had invited us to she Hannah Gadsby's show Saturday night, but Stu had his first covid jab on Friday and we didn't want to commit).  

Saturday.  Woke up at ~3am, but didn't get back to sleep for ~2 hours :(  Slept in til 7:20 and a very slow start.  This is Dumbo progress as of Saturday morning.

This is showing how I cheat by doing one half atop the other.

Didn't get much else done in the morning.  Stu was tired too from his jab.  But we did head out - got some lunch, dumped some stuff at Lifeline and Green Shed, and did some food shopping.  But we went to Coles at Gungahlin so everything is a different place and it was super crowded and it was a pretty horrible experience.  Came home and pretty much just collapsed in a heap and didn't really get much else done all day.  Watched the last episode of Diagnosis and did a bit of photo labelling.  Watched Wild with the sweetie, based on a true story about Cheryl Strayed hiking the Pacific Crest Trail.  Even a few been-theres.

Sunday.  Slept ok for a change.  Cleaned the shower and tidied the house in the morning.  Managed to get Dad's day 25 photos labelled and a fish tank water change done. 

Mid Sunday jigsaw progress

From 3pm it was cooking non-stop for three hours.  Cooked up a kilo of mince with bacon, onion and garlic.  And made a peppermint slice.  And a penne arribbiata bake.  Listened to Fantasia 2000 soundtrack.  Twice. 

In the evening felt like watching something fun, so we watched an episode of the new season of The Movies that Made us - this one on Jurassic Park.  Stu said he liked the content but not the silly way it was presented.  Oh well.  Also how good are TED-Ed talks - suits my attention span (five minutes haha).

Sunday.  11th.  I actually blogged on time last week I think but a bit early for the evening.  Did a spaghetti rosa bake for dinner but I'll put that it its own post.  Turned out pretty well.  Then Simpsons and X Files and I might have watched Fantasia 2000 again.

Monday.  Had to be Neil because he'd landed himself in hospital   .. !!!  Did some cleanup I'd been planning in test which all went well.  Otherwise just mostly being Neil all day.  

Got onto Neil.  He was doing ok, just a bit wobbly on his feet, awaiting MRI results.  Did a stir fry with leftover pork for dinner.  Then watched the third episode of Brides of Christ, and more photo labelling.

Tuesday.  omfg such a busy day, mainly in the afternoon it just didn't let up - people talking to me and wanting me to fix stuff all at once *all afternoon*.  Actually nearly lost it a few times. Leftover roast pork for dinner.  Did some photo labelling, although spent entirely too much time trying to identify birds seen along the Nile in Aswan.  Fourth episode of Brides of Christ with a super young Russell Crowe.  Only managed to label 136 photos, so now a day and a bit behind.  

Wednesday.  Too much stress, not enough time, and that's *before* going to work.  Spent all day investigating a problem that Aquila alerted us to late Tuesday afternoon.  Not nearly enough time to be Neil.  I can't deal.  Watched the fifth episode of Brides of Christ in the evening and nearly lost it when I saw Naomi Watts, Lisa Hensley and a magpie thirty years before the Penguin Bloom movie!

Thursday.  Sharpie called me super early.  I didn't hear the phone ring (phone is on silent anyway).  I did hear the buzzes of smses but didn't wake up enough to look at my phone.  So woke up at normal time and saw the messages and figured out instantly that the problem that had been affecting dev had also affected prod (I was actually worried that this might happen).  So was able to put a workaround in pretty quickly, but it did mean for a day of insanity.  In fact I spent the entire day on the phone on support calls and even missed drinks.  Sigh.  But we did still have pizza and I had a few beers at home.

Friday.  Another day of being on the phone *all day* but at least this time just with Connor and Jim which was a lot less stressful, but just as intense.  My ears hurt from having my headset on all day :(

Stu worked from home too which was nice.  I even had some pomegranate "tea" I got from Turkey in 2014 in our nice Cunard tea cups.  And he made lunch (leftover mince on toast).

It was definitely a candle and beer kind of an evening.

And I also finally tried Ray's method of reheating pizza - fried in a little oil with a lid on.

OMFG it was *so good* !!  Even better than the evening before and with a crispy base somewhat reminiscent of the old deep pan pizzas from the 80s.  Yum yum yum.

Simsons, X Files, and I watched Old Yeller, which I'd first (and last) seen a long long long time ago.  Thoroughly wholesome movie and super sad.

Saturday.  All the houseworks in the morning.  Checked on servers sporadically throughout the day (all good).  Spent ages rearranging pieces for the Disney behemoth jigsaw section.  We did pop out for some food shopping as well. 

Jim was talking about these on Friday so when we went out for lunch on Saturday we got one.  Delish!

In the evening Jenn came over for dinner.  Stu actually cooked a pretty amazing Indian feast with four different dishes plus rice.  Only small amounts of most of them so not much leftovers though!

We played a couple of games of Fluxx, then a game of Carcasonne (which I won) and a game of Ticket to Ride (which I also won).  It actually ended up being a pretty early night.

The candles I'd lit for the evening still had a good hour to go after Jenn left, so I watched the final episode of Brides of Christ.  Definitely quality television from back in the day.  I did have to laugh at some of the Sydneyisms - "It's like painting the harbour bridge - you no sooner get to one end then it's time to turn back and start at the other" and "I was wondering if getting off at Redfern was a natural method".  The second one in particular amused me because it makes absolutely perfect sense to anyone from Sydney, but even in the rest of Australia it may not make sense.  

Today my neck hurt.  Actually it started hurting yesterday.  Much the same as a few weeks back.  Vaccine related??  First time it was nine days after, this time about twenty.  Weird stuff.  Annie and Lily and Immy came over for a bit around lunch time, and we did pop out to the chemist.  Otherwise a fairly quiet day.  

Lamb roast for dinner tonight.  Used up some cauliflower and broccoli, finished up some cream, parsley and basil that were in the fridge.

Simpsons (into season 13) and X Files and aiming for an early night.

Monday.  End of the weekend.  Cooked all the veggies for dinner.  Potato and sweet potato, tomato with buffalo mozarella I got for 80% off, brocollini and facon, cauliflower with paprika, and capsicum and zucchini.  And a bit of lamb I dug out of the freezer.

Tuesday.  We're into season 11 of The Simpsons.  Then photo labelling and the first episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents (I'm sure we used to watch this a bit when we were young).  

Wednesday.  Finally got caught up with my photo labelling, into Egypt this week.  More Alfred Hitchcock.

Thursday.  OMFG why is every interaction I have with the government so damned painful?!?!?  So it was announced on the news Thursday morning that 40-49 year olds are now eligible for Pfizer - win!!  So I logged on to book an appointment, except you need to create a myDHR account.  Sigh.  Don't they have some sort of centralised system attached to Medicare for all this crap?  So I went through the process of registering an account, except it died half way through with this error:

So I'm like.. did it go through or not??  (my tweet about it *still* hasn't been answered!!!)  Fricken hopeless.  So started all over again, and this time it went through.  Except then you have to wait up to 24 hours for them to confirm your eligibility before you can book an appointment.  Sigh.  In the end it probably only took an hour or so for them to get back to me, so booked an appointment for Sunday afternoon.

My Aunty Rhonda sent me this work of art this week, made by an aquaintance of hers.  It's a journal, but it's more like an adventure, with little pockets and fun little bits and pieces all through it.  Not quite sure what I'll do with it, but it sure is pretty!!

Friday.  Finished watching tv with the sweetie over dinner just after 6pm, so watched The Wolf of Wall Street.. which was very.. long..  I didn't realise it was based on a true story (what I get for not ever reading up on movies before I see them).

Saturday.  Took *forever* to get to sleep - my feet were freezing.  Woke up early though, tried to get back to sleep, ended up getting a bit more, slept til nearly 8am.  Bit of a slow start, and in the end pretty much all I did was play with my USA 2000 photo gallery.  The sweetie cooked dinner of chilli mince.  Then we watched a few hours of Gettysburg.

Sunday.  Took *forever* to get to sleep - this time I was too hot.  I think I'm dying. 

Made pancakes for lunch.

After cleaning the kitchen in the morning I just worked on my USA 2000 photo gallery.  In fact I got it to a point where you can have a look if you like.  I've still got some work to create the location index pages, and I need to setup a footer with contact deets and links back to my blog.  But if I die now, at least one of my holiday photo galleries will be online.  Saw my birds in the afternoon, then did a bunch of fish tank water changes.  Then I went and got my first dose of Pfizer vaccine!!!  I arrived about 17:15 for a 17:30 appointment.  Gave them my deets then waited.  And waited and waited and waited.  They didn't call me up to go in until 17:50, and then I had to wait while the single nurse there attended to the other person that came in at the same time as me.  It was 18:00 before I finally got my jab.  While I was waiting to make sure I didn't keel over, another person that came in was being seen at 18:05 - for an 18:15 appointment!!  No fair, how come I had to wait thirty five minutes, and he got in early???  Sigh. 

Got Kingsley's on the way home for dinner.  I'll probably wake up in the middle of the night hungry.  CSS is evil.  Or more precisely, how different browsers deal with it is infurating.  More Alfred Hitchcock while I downloaded and processed phone photos and blogged.

Now for the fun part.. waiting to see what side effects I get from the vaccine.. :)

Friday 21st.  Backdating this.

Finished up work a bit early then got packed to head down the coast.  Took me an hour and a half to get organised.  hrmmm.

The sweetie was feeling super tired so I drove.  I felt pretty tense whenever anyone was behind me, because I wanted to take things a little slow on account of kangaroos, but also didn't want to be holding up traffic.  So went quite slow whenever there was an overtaking lane so people could pass me.  

Arrived at Kit and Pete's a bit before 20:30 and had a couple of drinks then went to bed.

Slept ok I think.  In the morning went and saw all the animals.  When I went outside the turkeys and guinea fowl all came over to see if I had food, but wandered off again when they realised I didn't.

Kit fed all the birds first.

Watched by an eastern yellow robin (raw pixels from phone)

The geese have gone - Solomon got eaten by a fox so Kit sold the two girls.  The goats have also moved on because they annoyed Kit too much.

Then down to the horses.  This is Scout, her newest horse.

Then to the sheep.

These are some of the new sheep

This lamb was born just after we were down there last time

More of the lambs - so cute!!

Then continued our wander.  How spectacular is their turpentine tree!

Over to the very dewey powerline paddock (my feet got very wet) to see the neighbour's horses.

How freaky are Rocket's eyes?

Then some brunch (good thing I had a light breakfast a couple of hours ago ;) )

Then Kit did a bunch of work with Scout while I supervised and played with Elle and Ziggy.

For lunch we headed up to Mollymook and met up with Chloe and had lunch at the golf club, which has a lovely outlook over the beach.

There was some very nice cheesy garlic bread

Kit was interested in the ribs for lunch, so I asked if she wanted to split it.  Turns out that was quite a sensible idea, as we ended up full enough without being stuffed silly.

After lunch we went for a bit of a wander

Then headed back to Kit and Pete's and hung out for a bit.

Then Pete lit a fire and we had snackages and roasted some marshmallows and had a bbq for dinner and a pretty chillaxed night.

There was even cheesecake for Kit's birthday

Kit blowing out the candles with her hand - very Covid safe ;)

Went to bed around midnight, but then woke up at 5:30 and couldn't get back to sleep for ages.  So a pretty slow start.

The turkeys and guinea fowl came over again when I went out.

Did all the animals stuff, then Kit cooked up an epic breakfast of buns, eggs, bacon, garlic mushrooms and hashbrowns.

Then we all wandered off.  Went into Batemans Bay to go over the new bridge and see if we could get a last look at the old bridge (didn't get a good view because they've only got the western half of the new bridge open at the moment).  We got home mid afternoon but didn't get much done and I was pretty tired.  I did cook up a cauliflower bake, potatoes, and broccolini with facon, so a relatively healthy dinner.  

Monday.  12th.  Wow over two weeks ago (backdating).  Took ages to get to sleep because I was *cold* !!  Four of my birds came to see me at lunch.  Powered off a bunch of old hardware from our old network which was pretty cool.  Filled the green bin after work.  Had leftovers for dinner.  Labelled 392 photos so somewhat caught up with last week.

Tuesday.  Took *hours* to get to sleep - freezing cold :(  Thinking I might need an electric blankie.  Did a heap of work cleaning out bits of the old network.  Had an irritated eye which lasted ages :(  Did some photo labelling in the evening.  I really don't have time to go to work - too much life to do.

Wednesday.  This time I woke up hot, and with an irritated nostril (just one, so not sick, and oddly on the other side to my sore eye from yesterday), so I was a bit of a zombie for the day.  And it meant I had a runny nose all day which was super annoying.  Had an ok day I guess, trying to plan the next round of cleaning.  Leftovers for dinner, then labelled a few hundred photos, now up to only a hundred behind..

Thursday.  Slept pretty well for a change.  

Our azaleas are pretty confused - flowering in autumn instead of spring.

Never go the mall during school holidays.  I had to wait fifteen minutes at Subway :(

More cleaning planning during the day.  Finished Laid Back Camp season 2.  Then watched New York Minute, had to laugh at Danny Tanner peering after the twins.  One of their last movies.  

Friday.  Slept ok. Had lunch with Tony at Herbert's which was nice.  Shared a few different starters.

Can't remember what flavour the skewers were - they were on the specials board, I think maybe Thai curry or something.  And the spring rolls were cheeseburger!  Which were pretty cool.

And corn and zucchini fritters

They were throwing this rose out because it was drooping, so I brought it home and it's been smelling lovely ever since.

Did a heap of cleaning in the test network in the afternoon, although didn't finish what I wanted to get done - a couple of big apps just need a bunch more work.  X Files in the evening.

Saturday.  Had brunch with Annie at The District. Good catchup, haven't seen her in months.

Then an afternoon doing All The Things.  Alternating between fun stuff, house work stuff and photo work.  Got caught up with Eurasia photo labelling finally.  Watched High Fidelity in the evening which I didn't remember having seen, but turns out the sweetie and I watched it together in 2006, and some of it did seem vaguely familiar.  Hurrah for dementia.

Sunday.  Continued All The Things, again alternating between different sorts of tasks.  For dinner I made the oven baked feta pasta doing the rounds.  It wasn't too bad.  Simpsons and X Files in the evening.  I was also set to blog this, had my photos downloaded and processed and everything, but just ran out of time.  So here we are two weeks later backdating...

Twister !?

Epic mushroom cluster