Sunday.  17th.  Backdating, because, life.  Made a golden curry for dinner with some leftover sausages.  Leslie Neilsen was in Mash!  Then watched The Crown 6.4.  Really need to watch The Queen again, which Stu has never seen (I saw it on a plane once).  Funnily enough also written by Peter Morgan.

Monday.  Slept ok I think.  Frantic morning before work trying to get the house back in order.  Had a task closing party at work.  Leftover sausages and salads for dinner.  Ronny Howard was in Mash!

These are mini capsicum seedlings that sprouted after I planted some from our dinner the other week - just for fun

Really tempting fate here with leftover sausages and salads from my bbq

Tuesday.  Went to bed at normal time but didn't get to sleep til midnight.  Sigh.  Mostly a decom day at work.  At lunch time was Col's funeral.  Place was packed and heaps of club people came.

Mash had Hawkeye do the nudie walk through camp.  Funnily enough I remembered quite a bit from this episode, even some of the lines.  We *might* have seen this episode a few years back when we started watching Dad's DVDs, but I mainly remember it from seeing it as a kid.

Wednesday.  Took ages to get to sleep then woke up early.  Sigh.  We had cake for Duncan's 60th.

Then to the Bavarian for lunch.  Someone said pork knuckle.  I asked for a doggy bag before I ordered :)

Did some food shopping after lunch but forgot the damned shopping list.  Again.  (this was after forgetting it on the weekend too, but this time I thought it was in the shopping bag but it was back at work).

Thursday.  Took a while to get to sleep, woke up fairly early.  Documentation day.  Two hour lunch dealing with bank queues and Coles.  This time I remembered to take the shopping list, but this time left it *at* Coles.  Sigh.  At least I had everything off it by now.  Bit of an early mark.  Pizza for dinner then The Orville 2.4.  Watched a new Mark Rober video (glitter bomb 6.0).

Friday.  Just tidying up at work.  Went out in the morning for a quick post office run for the sweetie.  Had a final lunch at Herbert's with Tony/Braddles/Neil.  Felt a bit off later in the arvo, maybe those two big sour beers.  Hrmm.  Mash and Death in Paradise 7.3.

Saturday.  Awake from ~3:30 til like 5.  Sigh.  Did some washing first thing because they promised rain and maybe a storm.  But no rain to be seen anywhere all day.  BOM is getting so bad lately.  Went out to pick up some booze and stuff for Annie's family (Stu was meant to get stuff during the week but was feeling off so never actually went).  The new markets are open, but the place was packed even at 8:30.  Did a bottle and Green Shed run.  Made some cookies.  Other than that just house stuff and All The Things.  Made a pizza for dinner with the last wrap in the fridge.  Mash and The Orville 2.5

Sunday.  Christmas Eve.  I think I spent more time awake than asleep.  Sigh.  Spent like an hour weeding and cleaning out some of the tubs we borrowed for my bbq.  But then a relatively chilled morning quietly getting things done. 

Whoops, time to drain/clean these!

How cute are potato flowers?

Later in the afternoon was Herbert's @ Tony's, but sadly Dino and Kristin ended up not making it.  And of course neither could Stu cause his belly was still upset.  Fun evening anyway.

Came home in time to watch most of the carols.

It's not carols until Marina Prior sings Angels we have Heard on High

Or they do the Hallelujah chorus

Very late night though :(

Sunday.  10th.  Barramundi bake for dinner (supposedly more responsible than basa, but it wasn't quite the same)

Then Crown 6.3.

Monday.  Ok sleep.  Ok day.  I felt like I could maybe have a nice wind down to Christmas at right.  Yeah right.  All The People wanting All The Things.  

In the evening started pulling apart Neil's Saturn V.  Then I came to this.  Turns out I'd put this row of cylinder pieces in the wrong way.  But I blame Lego because look at this crap.  You build it all up one way..

So you'd expect it to slot in as is.  But nooooo.. you have to flip it round!

I missed that and put it in the wrong way around.  Pissed off because I certainly wasn't going to remake it all to rephotograph it.  But I'm never going to unsee it.

Tuesday.  Took ages to get to sleep - too hot with covers on, too cold without.  In the morning finished reading through my blog entries (so far) for my year in review post.  Probably the earliest that has ever happened, pays to start these things early.  In October.  Can probably start writing things up now, just adding a few things here and there as needed.  Another nothing much day - too many distractions and interruptions to really concentrate on anything.  In the evening organised Christmas with my family.  I was hoping we could do something in January so as not to cut into the break, but alas that was not to be.  Still, it was all organised with not too much stress from me, I just told Mum and David to sort it out amongst themselves :)

Wednesday.  Slept mostly ok.  Another day of too many distractions and interruptions to really concentrate on anything.  Had the division Christmas party at lunch which was actually pretty chilled.  There was a heap of leftover sausages in the fridge which I yoinked for our party.  This cool thing arrived just in time to start!

Thursday.  Not too much in the morning.  In the afternoon had a super intense decommissioning session.  Was at it for three hours straight but still didn't finish it.  Last drinks.  It was pretty quiet and I ended up running the bar while Neil went to a committee meeting.  

Friday.  Woke up for like an hour and a half during the night.  Not much in the morning then it was off to do the shoppying for my Christmas bbq at the lake!  Had close to 60 people come this year, one of the biggest in a long time.  Sadly no ducks came by to be molested.

Saturday.  Woke up for like two hours during the night.  So pretty tired.  Spent ages sorting out all the recycling and leftovers from the party.  These aren't all from the party, some are mine from the past few months.

Also weeding and All The Things.  Although not nearly as much as I needed to get done.

I also cooked up all the chicken sausages that we didn't end up using at our party.  While they'd been put in the fridge straight away on Wednesday, and kept in an esky all Friday afternoon, the esky wasn't super cold.  So I cooked the heck out of them, had one, then froze the rest.  If I don't get food poisoning (over a day later, so far so good) then they'll be fine.

Finished off several containers of old leftovers to clear space in the fridge then watched Love Actually.

Sunday.  Slept relatively well.  More weeding in the morning, then brunch then food shopping and suddenly it's lunch time.  Hmmmm.  Felt blah about everything I needed to do, so barely got any of it done.  Cooked up the beef sausages and had one, same deal as the chicken ones yesterday.  

And just like that the weekend is over and I still have barely scratched my todo list..

Monday.  6th.  Backdating because of the Second Great Vodien Outage of 2023.

Slept ok.  Urgghh they forced me to start using Windoze 11 at work.  I hate Windoze 11. So. Much.  Even worse is that notifications are all but invisible.  Skype changes the colour of its icon ever so subtly and there's a tiny red dot under the icon instead of a tiny blue dot.  So I'm missing stuff all the time.  And don't even get me started on not being able to ungroup task bar icons.  Crap in the morning and proxy trialling in the afternoon.  Cooked green spaghetti from RecipeTin Eats for dinner.  I wish books like this would use "real world" measurements, like two or three cloves of garlic, instead of a teaspoon or whatever.  Or the juice zest of one lemon instead of a tablespoon and x mL.  That sort of thing.  It was quite nice though.  Evening was filing "Canberra Life" photos.

Tuesday.  Slept okish although awak for like an hour in the middle of the night.  Proxy trialling all day.  Tony messaged me just before lunch - he was heading out to Four Winds to pick up some wine and did I wanna come with.  And I was like.. sure why not.  The last time I was out there was in 2012 for the Moving Feast.  So that was nice.

On the way back we came across this lizard with a death wish.  It clearly had no idea of what could possibly kill it, as evidenced by lack of body parts.  And it wouldn't even run away until I full on poked the thing.

In the afternoon watched a few horses run around in circles for a couple of miles.  At one point my $2 was coming second, and later my $5 was coming second.  But they finished at 20th and 7th.

Salmon, salad and leftover veggies for dinner.  Then filing house photos.  Watched Amazing Race 4.10, caught up to all aired episodes.

Wednesday.  Took forever to get to sleep - hot and restless.  Woke up early but managed a bit more sleep.  Nothing useful in the morning.  In the afternoon working with Wardie to document what to do in the event of him being away and us having to turn off MFA in the event of Optus being total idiots and breaking their entire network.  Leftovers for dinner then filing "Friends and Family" photos.

Thursday.  Slept ok.  Ok day I guess.  Good drinks - lots of people.  Popped into Tony's on the way home to pick up my old iPhone 3GS which I sold to Heather in 2012.  And since I'd sold my XS to Tony last year and I'd kept my 5, it meant I could line up every one of my iPhones!!  How cool is this!

3GS - 2010-2012, 5 - 2012 - 2018, XS - 2018-2022, 14 Pro - 2022-present.  We won't talk about the crack Tony got on the XS recently.. 

Friday.  Slept ok.  Got a "How did we do?" survey from Vodien which pissed me off because they still hadn't fixed anything and I hadn't had any contact other than first contact asking for some more information.  So let them know.  Skipped a 4pm meeting because I have zero interest in talking to Certain People at 4pm on a Friday, especially when I often log off around then for POETS.  Had Luv-a-Duck Peking Duck for dinner.  Got as good as Super Bowl obviously, but still very yummy.

Death in Paradise 6.7 and Amazing Race 4.11.

Saturday.  Hurty.  But otherwise slept ok.  Pretty much just did minifig sorting all day.  Except for taking a couple of hours out to do errands in the middle of the day. 

Apparently these are Oyster Plants

Tried to turn the cooler on when we got home but nothing happened.  It sat there for like ten minutes but it was like the pump to suck up the water hadn't run.  And then it errored out.  Sigh.

It wouldn't even run on fan mode which was very upsetting.  So we melted a bit in the afternoon.

So did the house - it even went over the top of the min/max fluid.

Watched David head off to New Zealand on Carnival Splendor.

Had dinner at R&F's with M&M and ChiliRob and Cath and Rob's mother Cath.  Too many Robs and Caths in the room hehe.

When I got home I poked the cooler control panel a bit and somehow got it to run on fan only which was a relief.

Sunday. 

Had a hare-brained idea to go climb Mount Rogers before it got too hot.  It was still too hot.

Spent all day doing minifig sorting and so got to the end of the weekend without having done any of the things I was *meant* to do.  Whoops.  Dug out some beef out of the freezer to have with some roasted veggies.  The Orville 1.11 and Amazing Race 4.12 which was the finale.  I was a bit sad that Emma and Hayley didn't win because they were just lovely people, but then Darren and Tristan decided to call it a three way tie so they split the winnings.  So awesome!!

Sunday.  3rd.  There may have been kiev balls.  Futurama/Crown/early night.

Monday.  Slept ok.  Distracting day.  Had to look at something that I knew wouldn't be our problem but had to help anyway.  Had a #grunt in our team meeting because I got talked over the top of WHILE I WAS ACTUALLY TALKING which pissed me off.  Often I get talked over the top of but it's difficult because of the one second or so delay over the VC when two people try to talk at once, and I get frustrated at that too, but this time I was already talking and just got interrupted which *really* pissed me off.  So then they were like "what did you do all week" and I was like "stuff".  Sigh.

But hey.  At least I can look out my front door and see this!

Did a heap of weeding at lunch - got rid of the periwinkle I wanted to... now to keep on top of it.. hrmm..  It was 22C today!!  Craziness!!

After work managed to finish blogging last week, and did a tuna casserole for dinner.  I took out some frozen cauliflower rice out of the freezer which was a bit clumped and gave it a whack on the stove.  But I must have hit the chip that's been there since we moved in and it shattered the entire stovetop from the chip in a few different directions.  Sigh.

And then just for fun the neighbour's dog was barking pretty much the entire fricken evening.  Pretty sure it's the same neighbours that had the staffies a few years back that barked non stop but evenutally killed each other returning the peace.  Sigh.  I even went for a walk to see and could hear it barking and trying to get out of the yard (as staffies do) and pretty sure it's the same house.

Tuesday.  Took ages to get to sleep.  On edge because of the dog. Then restless and awake every five minutes with numb hands.  Although apparently a storm came through that I slept through.  The other day I noticed the password to my main hosting account wasn't working (Eudora said password was failing).  So tried to figure out what was going on.  There's no way to reset a cpanel password from the interface so contacted Vodien support.  They reset the password which was great but no idea why it stopped working in the first place.  Ok day.  Lots of distractions though.  

Sour dough with leftover cheeses from various parties and some pepperoni

Housework and music after work and brisket for dinner.  Then I finished getting my Europe photos online!!  Well the main day indexes anyway, still have food/hotels/panoramas to go.  At 21:16 the dog started barking and didn't stop til I went to bed.

Wednesday.  Took ages to sleep.  On edge because of the dog, and restless legs.  And literally a day after the first issue, my cpanel account password stopped working again.  Talked to the same dude online who said they were doing CentOS migrations, and things would take "a few days" to sync and that they would email everyone when done.  Ok fine, at least it wasn't some sort of hacking attempt.  So will leave it a few days before contacting again.  And they NEVER email people about upgrades. And they still haven't.  Drinks with Dennis after work and dinner at Betty's Burgers.

Clocked it!

Chips aren't good for magpies

Thursday.  Fairly decent sleep.  Too much BS at work.  Too many dumb people.  Nice drinks.  Even sat outside for a bit until it started raining.  Pizza/Futurama/Ahsoka 3.

Friday.  Ok day.  I think.  David came in the evening.  We had kiev balls for dinner and watch Futurama and Death in Paradise 5.7.

Saturday.  Bacon, sausage and eggs for breakfast!! (our staple meal in America in 1983 at Denny's).  I was going to scramble the eggs but they all broke whole so decided to fry them.

As it turned out, they were the very last thing I cooked on the old stovetop.

After that David pulled out the oven to see what's been causing the power trips.  

Turns out someone let the smoke out.

But because Canberra, there's no way to get a new element same day.  So when we were out we found a place that could get one in next week.  Then we went and bought a new stove.  

I seriously have the most amazingest brother in history.  And so nice to have a qualified electrician in the family :)

So I took him out for lunch.  All you can eat at the Star Buffet.

Afterwards we "dropped in" to Ikea.  And proceeded to walk around for like two or three hours.  Bought a few things.  But most usefully we walked off lunch somewhat which was nice.

I got a shelf to use for a bin solution.  Not exactly what we wanted and it's not as nice looking as the wooden shelf we wanted (which was discontinued) but it'll do.  The sweetie ordered pizza for dinner but I only had once piece.  Then watched some Futurama and the first two episides of The Orville which was better than I expected.

Sunday.  Had pancakes for breakfast - first thing cooked on the new stovetop.  Then David went home.  Did some cleaning in the morning.  After lunch did some food shopping. 

Then it was nearly 15:00 and time for my afternoon routine.  Dinner was chicken fricassee which I've never cooked before.  Fairly nice but a bit watery.  Then Futurama/Crown.

Friday.  11th.  The plan was to have everything done on the Friday, and it would just be a last minute tidy up and food prep on the Saturday.  Yeah that didn't happen.  I worked most of Friday not even knowing if the party would go ahead.  Took a RAT.  Negative.  Decided to do the food shopping.

This isn't even everything.  I delegated a bag of frozen stuff as there was no way it was all going to fit in our freezer.

Saturday.  12th.  So most of Saturday was cleaning.  Sigh.  But.  I had a saviour.  Tony came up a little early and did all the food prep while I finished up.  (Took a RAT at lunch time - still negative).

From 4pm peeps started arriving - it felt like all at once!!  It made my brain explode heh.

We did cake at 6pm, which Tab made, because she's awesome.

And there was the funniest rendition of Happy Birthday I've ever heard in my life - everyone sung in different keys and at different speeds.  Think the Hogwart's school song from the first book.  It was just like that.

Duncan pointed out that I'd be competing with the soccer, so I warned the sweetie that we'd likely need to put it on.  And sure enough we did!  It was a pretty epic finish with a penalty shootout.

Tony also brought a massive glowstick he'd had since Jess was little.  We had no idea if it would even work - but it did!

And I put candles in the bathroom because don't candles in bathrooms look awesome!?

In the end thirty people came.  I had heaps of fun, and I think I managed to talk to everyone, even if only briefly for some of them.  But a massive shoutout to Tony, who'd had a bit of a big night the night before and so felt up to just helping out.  He managed all the hot food in the oven the entire night which was a *massive* relief for me, as I could just enjoy the party instead of being distracted dealing with the food (which is what happened last time).  Thanks Tony!!!!!!!

Sunday.  13th.  Woke up at 6:30am.  After getting to bed at 2am.  Because that's what I do.  Kit left fairly early to go have breakfast with her brother and SIL.  Then I cleaned up.  Did a couple of loads of washing up of glasses and dishes, and sorted the rubbish and recycling.

Other than that not much else.  My cough decided to go from just being a slight gentle cough to moving to my chest and being quite chesty.  Hurray.

Monday.  14th.  Slept from around 9pm til after 6am yayyy!!  But it was kind of a boring day really.  Took another RAT late morning.  Still negative.  Went into the office before lunch because Maddie had made me a cake (she didn't get the memo I WFH Mondays :) ).  It was really nice!

Then went to the chemist, and picked up takeaway KFC on the way home for lunch.  We had Chong Co delivered for dinner (didn't go out because the sweetie had to leave for Adelaide in the morning and it would have been all too hard).  They haven't had the "crying duck" style salad in ages, but turns out the wagyu salad is basically identical!  Also got satay chicken and crispy pork with chili jam.

Then I watched Dragonheart while the sweetie packed and got ready.

Saturday.  19th.  Syd-ah-nee bound.  I drove the first half.  We listened to a couple of episodes of The Lazarus Heist, about the alleged hacking of Sony by North Korea.  Swapped driving half way.  The GPS took us a bit of an odd way into Sydney - round the back of the airport and up through Alexandria (but not even the way the Murray's coaches do it).  Sydney keeps changing.  Like a lot.  New roads (the M8, never even heard of it!), new tunnels, new bridges.  Craziness.  Got to the hotel around 1pm, parked ($45, but still works out cheaper for the two of us than coach/bus/train/plane), and checked in.

Then headed off to the pub. 

I'd settled on the Keg&Brew in Surry Hills.  Simply because it looked like it had enough space to go to without a booking, had a rooftop bar, and it was right next to the station. 

We ended up on a decent sized table and nine people came, as well as us. It was funny though because there were *five* different streams - Mum's family, Dad's family, the Clan, CIA, and Uni, and not many people knew each other (but enough did so that noone had noone else to talk to).

The sweetie got a couple of pizzas (two for one FTW!)

And I had a lovely afternoon :)

We booked a table downstairs for dinner and the sweetie and Mum and Uncle Graham and I went down for dinner when the soccer started (it was a little bit noisy heh).  Mum and I split crispy pork belly and cripy potatoes which was very nice.

Then we went back to the hotel and crashed. 

After seeing the end of the soccer (4th place!!  Still pretty epic!!)

Sunday.  20th.  Was awake for many hours in the middle of the night.  Too hot.  The aircon wouldn't go down below 21C which was way too hot, and didn't notice the ceiling fan til the morning (the sweetie did but I wasn't paying attention when he suggested turning it on).  #grunt.  So slept like crap.  But then we got up and headed home.  

Got to go through the M8 tunnel this time.

There were people falling out of the sky at Picton.  Had some brunch at Sutton Forest.  Listened to some more of the Lazarus Heist.

And Lake George is still very full.

Sunday.  11th.  Lamb roast for dinner.

Then watched V for Vendetta.  Not nearly as scary watching this time as it was the first time we watched it.  The world is in a bit of a different place (in terms of who's in power in the UK, USA and Australia at the moment).

Monday.  Slept okish.  I finished culling photos from the cruise (the day entries, still need to do the Carnival Pride, food and hotels).  Got it down to 1042 photos.  Had a meltdown because the barrel vacuum cleaner is so damned hard to use.  I need two hands to hold onto it so it doesn't fall apart which leaves nothing left for moving furniture around, not to mention have to stop every two seconds to pull to barrel closer.  Hate hate hate hate hate.

Tuesday.  Shine Dome talk after work.  They had Mr Dean Yibarbuk who is a ranger in Arhem Land talk about his work with fire management up there which was pretty cool.  And also a talk by Dr Jeremy Russell-Smith.

Dinner at 10 After.

Wednesday.  Dinner at CBD Dumpling House.  Get a seat at the bar and watch the kitchen action!

The pan fried shallot cake was fresh and crispy

The xiao long bao were nice, but not as good as Din Tai Fung

The other dumplings were decent too

The place was packed, but we were in and out in twenty minutes.  Pretty impressive!!

Thursday.  Quickie drink at work then into town for the third night in a row to catch up with Luc who was in town.  We had such a short time to catch up - like less than an hour.  Great to catch up but sad it was so short.

Mary's French, with a Frenchman!

Antebellum

Watched some more Picard.  I'm enjoying this season.  The last couple of episodes were directed by Jonathan Frakes and have four or five original cast members which has been a lot of fun.  It's like Next Gen only more "real" and better character development.

Friday.  Windows patched and rebooted overnight.  They've stuffed up window behaviour.  Now if you maximise a window it'll either completely cover the task bar, or it'll hide the bottom of your window behind your taskbar.  Completely retarded.  ** As of Sunday night this seems to have been fixed, even without another reboot **  Leftover lamb shanks for dinner, then Futurama, then finished season 4 of Death in Paradise.  Kit invited us down for a drink.  Then had sad cause we don't live next door anymore.  

Oh, the other week I made it to level 10000 in Candy Crush!!  Except then this week they completely changed the interface.  That coupled with a super hard level 10086 and I've lost all motivation to play.  Other than logging in to collect daily rewards I've all but stopped playing.  Maybe they'll nerf the level and I'll take it up again.

Also this week I spent several mornings fighting with Dad's slides.  Specifically his ones of Yerranderie.  He did a bushwalking trip in June 1985, and we went there as a family in December 1985.  Those two trips were easy enough to separate.  But within the December trip there were clearly two different rolls of film.  But the second roll of film had photos interspersed with the first roll.  The dates were right (when compared with Mum's photos) so it just didn't make any sense.  Then Stu said "maybe there were two cameras" which also didn't make any sense until I thought about it some more.  Dad had massive problems with his old camera in August 1985 - he lost half of his photos to the camera over-exposing them.  Maybe he got himself a new camera for Christmas?  Mum couldn't remember.  But it was certainly plausible.  Maybe the half a dozen photos in the middle were simply finishing off the last roll of film on the old camera?  I decided to go with that :)

Saturday.  Woke up in the middle of the night for like an hour and a half for no good reason.  Spent most of the day labelling holiday photos and inventorying Vic's Lego.  I did also spent an hour and a half cleaning out a manky fish tank, consolidating a couple of tanks, then arranging the power and lights so that only two tanks are active now, with another essentially just keeping heaters from drying out, running for just a few hours in the middle of the day while the sun is out.  Then I found the house battery simply didn't charge.  Flatline at 10% all day.  Solar Edge strikes again.  #grunt.  Leftovers for dinner then watched Innerspace.

Sunday.  Slept ok.  Spent the entire day (other than going out for lunch and food shopping) labelling photos and inventorying Lego.  The sort of nice quiet day I crave every day.  Oh, and the battery charged today.  Hurray.  

So as soon as I heard Emma Pask would be singing at an AWS event, I was like I'M THERE.  Except it got postponed a couple of times, stoopid covid and crap.  You see I actually went to primary school with Emma Pask.  She was several years younger than me so I never really had anything to do with her, or even her brother who was a bit older.  But David would have spent quite a bit of time with her, on account of he did the lighting for the various High School Musicals she was in.  I vividly remember her as Miss Hannigan in Annie, but she was also in Chicago and Into the Woods.  Also our mothers were pretty good friends because they helped at our primary school.

So last Thursday night was the first time I got to her sing again in person in nearly thirty years.  

Oh and there was Ed Wilson, and the Australian Wind Symphony as well.  You know.  As backup. hehe.

Dr Geoff Grey

Ed Wilson on trombone

Ed Wilson could prolly be a standup comic if he wanted, he was pretty funny

Ed Wilson and Emma Pask and the Australian Wind Symphony

Emma Pask and Ed Wilson and the Australian Wind Symphony

I actually knew a lot of the music which was quite nice

Emma Pask

There was an intermission and as Emma passed by I said "We love you Miss Hannigan" and she was totally taken aback and went "what, omigod" haha.  But she was focussed on talking to her family so didn't get to say anything more then.  But I did then go out a bit later to go to the loo and she was out there so I said hi, and that you probably don't remember me but we went to primary school, but you  would definitely remember my brother and she was like "and your mother - Sylvia!" omfg Emma Pask remembers my mother haha!!  Very cool!!  And she said I should go say hi go her parents, so I did (and it was only today that I remembered her Mum's name, whoops!) and they were a bit excited too and said to say hi to Mum .. hi Mum!!

After the show I totally had to line up for an autograph.  I showed her my copies of her High School Musical programmes for Into the Woods, Chicago and Annie.  She was a bit blown away that I still had them, and said that she didn't have them but maybe her parents had copies.

I got her to sign my Annie programme :)

A pretty awesome night :)

Monday.  8th.  Backdating because spent too much time last week blogging the week before.  Took a while to get to sleep Sunday night, woke up a bit early.  Ok day I guess.  Cooked creamy mushroom fettuccini for dinner, but it took over an hour.  Sigh.  Not enough TIME.  Cruise photo culling and Lego Grandmasters.

We caught this in the lounge room on the weekend

There's snow on them thar hills!

Tuesday.  Slept ok.  Started off fresh and getting things done, then the hassling started, one thing after another after another.  I never did get item 2 of my todo list done.  Such a busy day.  Logged off, then five minutes later Con messaged me that work that had originally been planned for the night and had since been cancelled, had been uncancelled but noone bothered to tell me.  Brisket for dinner (the thing was making me hungry all afternoon.  

Wednesday.  Slept ok.  Well other than waking up from a traumatic dream where I couldn't get my Subway lunch.  The dude serving me was speaking jibberish and also couldn't understand me.  I begged for someone else to help.  The manager tried but he made a footlong sub that also had seafood in it.  And I'm like, I'm not paying for a footlong with seafood because it'll be soggy and disgusting by the time I get to the second half later.  So he went to start a new one but then wandered off half way through and I'm getting super upset because I'm hungry and just want my lunch and noone else would help either and I was trying to come around to make it myself.  Silly really.  Another day of people coming to me with problems and not able to get my own work done.  But did have a good documentation session while waiting for the sweetie.  Leftover curry for dinner and photo culling.

This is a fun pic - the count of blog entries I've made per month over the past twenty years.  I used to blog more frequently back in the day, but didn't include photos nearly as much.  It's the downloading and processing of the photos that takes the most time and energy and was always the barrier to posting them more often.  And why I mostly only blog weekly now, so I only have to download and process my photos once a week.

Thursday.  Slept ok.  Woke up to the news that Heather Armstrong of dooce.com had died.  Literally the first thing I saw on Instagram, and somehow I just knew it would be suicide.. the Black Dog finally caught up with her.  I feel bad for Leta, Marlo, Pete and all her family and friends, pretty awful thing for them to go through.  Rest in Peace.  Work/drinks, then mostly reading about Heather and some of the comments on her last post.

Friday.  Slept ok other than waking up a bit early.  I think.  Ok day.  I think.  Sigh.

Saturday.  Did a few things at home before we went out for breakfast and food shopping.

This overpass in Gungahlin wasn't here last time

Coffee Club brekkie burger

I'm a sweet pickle? what?

Of course it was nearly midday by the time we got home.  Then it was mostly cleaning the house all afternoon.  Sigh.  Had Nick and Tab over for butt beef cheeks for dinner which was nice.

Sunday.  Slept ok.  Did a bottle/tip/Green Shed run.  At least it didn't take too long.  But then spent the entire rest of the day sorting out Dad's photos of various Queensland and northern NSW trips.  He'd mixed up like four entirely separate holidays all together into ten boxes of slides.  Oddly he'd also included some from a 1978 trip, but not all, and he'd also put some of the slides from one of the earlier trips into the 1978 trip.  Such a mess.  But think I got it all sorted out in the end.

But by the time I'd done that it was after 15:00 and I hadn't done anything else on the todo list and then I started freaking out how short weekends are and I how much I have to do.  I did some music, then photo downloading and processing.  But it takes like an hour to blog each week and I still hadn't blogged last week.  Sigh.  And I also think I might have accidentally found out the winners of Lego Grandmasters.  hrmm.  Stu cooked some mince for dinner, then Futurama/Crown.

This first one we did at work.  We started it last year and finished it just before I went into quarantine.  It's only 300 pieces, so I laid them all out by shape and orientation and it didn't take that long.

This next bunch were part of a multijigsaw pack I got from the Green Shed.  Except only seven of the ten jigsaws were there.  Oh well.  And only one of them was missing any pieces which wasn't too bad.  They were all meant to glow in the dark, but the chemicals were so old they'd fade instantly.  I did most of them before I went away, and the lion one when I got back.

Today (backdated) I went with Tony to the RFS Helibase at Hume, because helicopters!!!

We missed the beginning of the talk (it was a family and friends open day for the RFS) because we were distracted by the Toll chopper keeping a bucket at that same level while descending and winching it in.  Very cool.

We got a good look at Firebird 100 (VH-YJB)

And the Candian wildcat HT101 (C-BGND)

Firebird 100 took off to go map a fire

And the Toll chopper was going the whole time we were there doing different exercises

Very cool!!