Where were we?

Friday night went over to Chrissie's for a roast chicken dinner and lemon delicious for dessert which was lovely.  I can't believe Nathan is four months old already.. I've barely seen him!  I'm such a slack friend...

Afterwards we were invited over to R&F's for supper which was nice as well.

Scott brought these.  Can't remember what they were called, but they had little syringes of frangelico you injected into them.

Saturday I hopped in the car and headed for Sydney.  Made it in time for lunch at the New Golden Emperor Chinese Restaurant in Kirrawee for Mum's birthday lunch.  It was pretty average.  You know you're in a western Chinese restaurant when you don't even get chopsticks.  Still, the $8.30 lunch special which included chicken and corn soup was pretty good value and the serving sizes were huge.

The other Karen and I got the $9.30 satay chicken and satay vegetables and mixed the two to get a better mix of meat/vegetables.  This is just the chicken dish.

After lunch we went back to Mum's and Aunty Di and Uncle Graham (not my uncle/aunty) and June came over as well and we had a couple of games of Five Crowns which was a bit of fun.  

Everyone left around 5pm and we were like "now what?".  So we went to Vivid.  As you do :)  I'll put pics for that in a separate post.  It was pretty crowded and the sweetie would have hated every second of it, but it was good to go be a tourist in Sydney again and get photos of pretty lights.

Sunday morning we went to church, where there were cakes for Mum and Elizabeth's birthdays.

Then headed an hour and a quarter across the other side of Sydney to Uncle Ken and Jeanine's place for lunch to celebrate Ken's birthday.  Various members of Ken and Jeanine's extended families were there - over twenty people outside for lunch!  

All the news reports and locals (except Ken) were complaining about how freezing it was, but it was an absolutely glorious day and NOT cold ;)

Then we went back to Mum's and I came home.

Monday I was pretty depressed because I didn't get any down/home time over the weekend.  It's only Wednesday but this week has felt *very* long :(

So most of this morning was going through the year's receipts and cross checking them with bank statements to make sure things tallied up (they pretty much did).  I did find the Jem Aquatics receipt from October for the second LED light, so if that goes pffft at least I've got a receipt for it. 

After lunch went with Chrissie for a doctors appointment at the hospital.  Sadly it looks like I won't be allowed to be present at the birth.  Sad times.  

In the afternoon Stu did some tidying up of the fish stuff in the garage, so I did some cleaning up in the garage as well which was good.

Headed out to Bunnings so Stu could pick up some tubing to redo some of his little fish tanks.

Then I cooked a mostly vegetarian feast of roasted vegetables.  First course was mushrooms stuffed with mushroom, bacon, tomato and cheese.  Then there was potato bake (would you like some potato with your cream and cheese?), brussels sprouts and parsnip with bacon, and roast sweet potato and potato.  Pretty yummy.

In the evening we watched Star Trek Discovery (still not convinced - most of the episode was Klingons just rambling on), and Snowpiercer, which was like 1984 meets The Cube meets The Hunger Games meets Brave New World.  I just didn't *get* it (there were far too many issues with the messy plot to distract me - just go read some of the reviews on IMDB which list the issues I also had with it), but Stu was like "it's an allegory" and I'm like .. hrmm

In May 2011 I saw a 24000 piece jigsaw in Games Capital called "Life" and knew I had to get it.  It was once the World's Largest Jigsaw, although by the time I saw it it was relegated to second place behind Ravensburger's Double Retrospect 32000 piece jigsaw.

I purchased the jigsaw shortly afterwards for $385 from the Games Capital.

I started it immediately on the dining room table.  The jigsaw was split into four 6000-piece sections.  One section covered most of the dining room table - in fact it hung off the edges just a little bit!

I finished part one at the end of June 2011.

I had a break from it then, before working on the second section through February 2012.

I had another break then, before starting the fourth section in February 2013, finishing up in March 2013.  I did it this way because I didn't want to finish up on the blue corner which other people had said was quite tricky.  I moved downstairs for this section which gave me a bit more room to work with, but even then it just went off the edges of the table.

I finally started the third (and final) section in February 2014 and finished it in March 2014.

The puzzle is actually twenty-four identical 999 piece squares.  I laid each one of those squares on butchers paper I had leftover from my move to Canberra in 2007.  Then I stacked them - 24 high!

And there they sat for three and a half years.

Whoops.

Anyways with my next purchase I needed to finally assemble the jigsaw and dismantle it.  So on the weekend, I finally did it!!  I took it into work to photograph it from the floor above.

How fricken cool is that!  The middle bit is reflecting the light a bit but other than that it turned out really well.  It took probably twenty minutes to half an hour to assemble the twenty four sections.  And then another thirty to forty minutes to disassemble back into the 999 piece sections and put them into individual baggies.  If (when) I do this again, it'll be a lot easier, with twenty four small jigsaws to do instead of four (or one!) large one.

Thanks to Daniel for helping with it!  And I was glad that a few people got to see it - Connor, Ward and Chuck all saw it assembled and thought it was suitably cool :)

Friday night we watched The Last Samurai, which we'd last seen in 2012.  

Saturday morning was just houseworkey stuff.

In the afternoon we headed out to the club.  G&A did a great pork roast for dinner.  Later there was epic Jenga which I didn't lose at :)

Going back a step.  The other week I saw this in the window of Games Capital:

OMFG!!!

I totally want one!  The price was obscured, but it looked like $500.  Given that I paid $385 for the Life jigsaw (24000 pieces), this didn't seem unreasonable.

So anyway.  Stu said I could get it if i could clear enough space in the dungeon to do it down there.  So guess what I spent a couple of hours Sunday afternoon doing?  I should have taken some before and after photos, it made a huge difference.

In the evening we got pizza and watched Short Circuit (getting through movies I've bought on DVD but haven't watched - this one I'd bought in 2004).  

!!

Whoops.

So Monday morning I called the Games Capital to check if they still had the jigsaw in stock, and if so how much it was.  Yes they said.  $1500 they said.

Fricken. OUCH.

That's like $150 for each of the 4000 piece sections.  Which, considering we paid $150 for the piece of crap 5000 colours jigsaw (which was appalling in quality and was even missing a piece!  I've yet to rant about that here), is not *completely* ridiculous, but still...

Anyway, so I had a sad on Monday morning.  We finished stacking Stu's books (badly) into shelves, clearing the floor and a table.  I set up the tv (which we hadn't even plugged in since we replaced the upstairs one like a year and a half ago) and set myself up with a jigsaw and did that for a while in the afternoon.  

I could get used to three day weekends.

So I realised recently we haven't had a video night in *forever*, so invitations went out for the return of the DAIS video nights.

Had Doc, Neil, and @CLBradley over for epic pizza for dinner (the sweetie decided we needed *three* NY sized pizzas from Mills and Grills!!), and then watched War Games first up, followed by Passengers.  Quite a pleasant evening, and will need to do them more often.

For the rest of the weekend..

Friday night we watched Doctor Strange which we quite enjoyed.  Is Benedict Cumberbatch ever NOT awesome at anything he does?

Saturday morning was mostly just house tidying/organising, then I accidently spent a good chunk of the afternoon building a roller coaster out of plastic.  It's pretty cool :)

Today I watched Monday's survivor, and had a very productive day going through piles and piles of paper clutter that never seems to stop building up.  Was pretty happy with that.  But I didn't finish removing silicon sealant from the base of the shower like I wanted to.  Oh well.

Is it just me, or are most of Voyager's season 2 episodes *out there* ???  At least three or four of them recently I've gotten to the end of the episode and I'm like "what the hell" ... Weird stuff.

Thursday night I spent half the evening making up a vegetarian lasagna sauce (mushrooms, onion, cauliflower, tomatoes, tomato paste and passata sauce, forgot the garlic though), and a big batch of bechamel sauce, and assembled an epic lasagna.  Note to self: two packs of Latina fresh gluten free pasta sheets will overflow the lasagna dish.  

Last night we had Jenn and Nick over to enjoy said lasagna.  It wasn't too bad.  And there's lots of leftovers!  Win!  We also played a couple of games of Carcassonne and inflicted our cruise slide show on them ;)

First quarter 2017 jigsaws..

This Simpsons jigsaw was done by some of the guys at work, and late last year I found it in a bin.  !!  So I retrieved it and did it at work.  It's one of those jigsaws where every piece is an "edge" so you can't start at the edges.  I mostly did it by picking up a piece and putting it where it was meant to go.  So it took quite a while.  Tried to finish it by Christmas but ended up finishing it the first week of January.

This one David mostly did when he was up in January.

The next one I did at home was a jigsaw James and George gave me for Christmas or birthday in about 2004 or 2005.  I remember starting it, ie doing the edges, when I was visiting Stu when he was living in Queensland.  But I never finished it.  This is why:

It took forever to do because I simply lacked motivation.  Here it is finished:

After that I was super busy with trivia night and holiday planning.

On the Queen Mary 2 they have two big tables setup on either side of the ship in the games corridors where there's always jigsaws going.  

I did quite a bit of this 1500 piece one:

And this 1500 piece one in the same series:

Someone else started this one of York Minster, but I spent a good chunk of an afternoon on it and finished it:

This 1500 piece one had been going by some others since Sydney.  When I arrived in Hong Kong, there was just a little bit left and I helped finish it.  They put it away, but later on it came out again.  I started it one evening, spent most of the next day on it, getting it to about the point it was when I first came to it in Hong Kong.  I was going to go back to finish it the next morning but was busy reading info boards, and when I did get back to it, a lady from Wales had finished it.  But I feel like I did pretty much the whole thing :)

I helped with another couple of jigsaws on the ship but either didn't see them finished or hadn't helped enough to warrant a photo.

Had a pretty quiet Australia Day.  I had hurty that kept me awake for a couple of hours in the middle of the night.  Did a little bit of house stuff.  More hurty for a couple of hours in the afternoon.  For dinner we took some sausages and salad down to Kit's and had a bbq with her.

Friday I took a Random Day Off and Got Stuff Done.  Piled up a bunch of stuff and took it out to the Green Shed.  Only came home with a jigsaw, four small candles and some cookie cutters.  Did a bunch of errands and shopping all over the place, and final stop was food shopping.  Coles have now introduced coin trolleys which is a pain in the @$$.  They've always needed trolley return bays at that carpark, but now they REALLY need them.  Painful.  Cooked roast beef for dinner and watched Z for Zachariah in the evening.  Ok, but introduced a whole new thread that the book didn't have (I read the book in high school so don't remember a huge amount about it, but the things I did remember weren't in the movie.

Saturday was another quiet day doing mostly house stuff. Chris and Zac came over for a swim in the afternoon.  Cooked lemon ginger chicken for dinner from a recipe I got out of the Coles magazine.  Watched the first Hunger Games in the evening.

Sunday yet another quiet day (although two quiet days I didn't really get that much done :( ).  Ben came over for a swim in the afternoon.  The sweetie cooked Scotch eggs for dinner which were pretty good.  Watched the second Hunger Games.

Last night I just couldn't get to sleep - too hot and uncomfortable, so was a bit of a zombie today :(

So 2016. Not too bad a year for me personally. But memorable for a spate of celebrity deaths (two I'd seen in real life - David Bowie and Carrie Fisher) and two overseas trips.

My first trip of the year was by myself to Sydney to see mum and the uncles/aunties for a Christmas party in early January where I cooked a big baked dinner for everyone. Also saw two Lego exhibitions on the same day while I was up there. Came home from that trip to a pool party in full swing. In January we did a two week trip to Hong Kong (to see Chris and Anne one last time there before they came home) and Singapore. The weather was the biggest downer of the trip - grey and rainy in Hong Kong, and unbearably humid in Singapore. In April we went to Sydney again for my cousin Ben's wedding. Later in April I went to Europe for six weeks with mum. The first two weeks was for a "reformation tour" of sites pertaining to the protestant reformation. That was a really interesting trip and a good group of people. Had a couple of days in Salzburg before heading up to Scandanavia for a three week tour. We saw some amazing things on that tour, but the size of the group (forty people) made it incredibly draining for me. In June mum and I went down to Junee to visit David and celebrate mum's 70th birthday. We only went down to the coast once this year in July. And we did our yearly trip to Queensland, but in November, which was a lot later in the year than I wanted to (Stu had uni work making it to hard to go any earlier). Fortunately the weather wasn't *too* hot and humid.

At work my most interesting work was some firewall migrations. Our first attempt in the test environment though was a bit of a disaster. It took the cleverer network guys about a month to solve a super weird MTU issue in the switch infrastructure they were plugged into. After that, the migrations went very smoothly. I also did an authentication system migration which also went well. So the first half of the year I was pretty busy and the work was interesting. In the second half of the year though I had to deal with the proxies again which drains my will to live. Is there actually such a thing as a *good* proxy? I'm beginning to think not. They caused me a lot of stress this year, including *three* failed attempts to upgrade them to the lastest version. Other than that I was feeling way too dumb to be in the team I'm in. But things picked up towards the end of the year with another firewall migration that went pretty smoothly and a stocktake, which is kind of my super power.

Socially at work I ran another trivia night in March which was packed. We won the next trivia night in June, but luckily the second place getters agreed to run the next one. Which we then won in September, so now I have to run the next one. Had a Gatsby ball in June, although I didn't get with the theme. Had a whiskey night in July. And for our section Christmas party (with various hangers on) I organised a bbq for nearly 40 people.

Healthwise I've been ok. I find lying down uncomfortable due to my deformed spine, which results in a lot of insomnia due to not being comfortable. Early in the year I did some proactive stuff that I'd been putting off forever - I got my skin checked, went to the dentist for the first time in twenty years and got new glasses. I got a minor cold in July, and a more severe one in November.

We've had a super social year this year. We've continued our visits to "the club", going to events and committee meetings in February, March, June, did a Christmas in July, October, twice in November (one of them we fed seventy-plus people) and December. My best friend from high school Chris moved down to Canberra at the end of last year so we've seen quite a bit of her - either dinners here, there, or out, or just going for walks (she lives in stumbling distance which is super handy!). We've also spent a lot of time with Kit, and also Ben and Serena - mostly just hanging out in the courtyard, but the occasional parties, meals as well, and even a p0ker night. Ben moved into a new place earlier in the year and we had a small housewarming there. I did an impromptu hanami party with Chris, Kit and Serena, and another one a week later with Nat and Andrew and the sweetie. Unfortunately that was the only time we saw Nat and Andrew all year. We've seen quite a bit of EffanC and Scott this year as well which as been nice - alternating between our places and enjoying champagne or a local equivalent. We had games nights at Mishi's in July and August. Also caught up with Damien and Amanda at the Dumpling Inn, and Damien and Tom at the Durham on a trivia night. Managed to see Ding twice this year, although the second time was a lot more chaotic with a heap of people in the house. Luc came to stay a night in March, Stu's ex colleague Jenn came for dinner, and we had an afternoon tea at Chris and Glenda's.

Dave and Kat came to stay with us five times this year which was great - in February, April, August, November and December. Mum stayed in June and December. Kerry and the kids dropped in in April, and Potty and Jake came to stay a night on the way to the snow and ended up staying for several nights. Didn't see much of Annie's family, only saw them a couple of times. Graham and Pam came to stay in April as well, and we went to the Dumpling Inn for dinner. Uncle Colin dropped in to say hi in December.

Various people came to swim in the pool in the summer months. For Christmas we did roast pork for Mum, Dave, Kat, Chris and Zac.

In the fish tanks I had four baby angels at the beginning of the year but three of them died. One of them survived, and it shares the AR-620T tank with four huge danios and a cory catfish. The two foot tank was a disaster at the end of last year with toxic black algae. I moved the fish downstairs over summer and cleaned it out completely. The black algae did start to come back, but with a bunch of plants, snails and a siamensis the tank has stabilised nicely and looks really good. The two remaining black neon tetras died this year - but they'd had a good run - I'd had them for ten years!! Amazing for such small fish. I bought some danios to be dither fish for the rummy nose tetras which worked really well - you can see them and their colour a lot better now. So in the upstairs two foot I have the five rummy nose tetras, five danios and a siamensis. Downstairs I had four of Chris's platies that I looked after while she moved house, but three of them died so there's only one left now. It shares the tank with four danios. Stu also has a tiny tank with a betta and some really small fish, and his four foot which got overrun with algae for a while but it's settled down a bit now.

I did a 5000 piece jigsaw this year which was good, but the quality of it was shocking. Did other jigsaws as well, but not as many this year. I've been doing a lot of nonograms online ever since the GCHQ Christmas puzzle last year. And just a couple of days ago I rediscovered Loops of Zen. I didn't buy any Lego this year, but I did spend a couple of months sorting out all of Zac's Lego.

The weather was *hot* this year. Summer seemed to last *forever* this year - global warming anyone? Made good use of the pool, but suffered in the heat. Had a lot of heat-induced insomnia and generally felt miserable for months. We got some hail in January. The pool only froze over twice this year in late June. It actually snowed one morning in July, but then a week later had the warmest overnight July temperature in recorded history. The El Niño finished up and it rained *a lot* over winter and spring.

We did a lot of stuff with the house this year. We got all the guttering replaced (while I was overseas). No more flooding of the garage after heavy rain! We got gutter guards in one corner where the oak tree is, but probably should have gotten them along the back as well, as one end still clogs up from that tree. Our twenty five year old hot water system died in the middle of winter, luckily a plumber could come the same day to replace it. The same plumber came a month or so later to clear out the sewer pipes which had been blocked by roots. We put evaporative cooling in which has been amazing for the most part, except this whole Christmas break which feels like the humidest week in Canberra ever! And we got a solar blanket for the pool (basically glorified bubble wrap) which has made a small difference to the temperature, but also has added bonuses of keeping most of the light out so algae doesn't grow as much, and keeps most of the leaves and bugs out as well.

I got a bit frustrated with technology this year. Had to fight with Logitech's Harmony remote software again. In the end never got it working with our tv. Upgraded my computer to Windows 10, which actually went ok, but had some drama with Windows Defender, and got sick of it rebooting without permission whenever it feels like it. I thought I'd bricked my iPhone because the battery got so dead it wouldn't turn on, even after charging overnight. Warming it up fixed it. Did this several more times over the next few months before finally replacing the battery in late November. I would like to get an iPhone 7, but I want one as small as I have now. Still having issues with the scanner, but still haven't gotten around to testing it on another computer to see if it's the computer or the scanner. And this blog got moved to new hardware by my hosting company so it's a lot more responsive now.

The Dumpling Inn was still our most visited restaurant this year. We went for Chrissie's birthday, again with Pam and Graham, again with Chrissie, with Chris and mum in June, and Damien and Amanda in July. I finally got to go to Smoque in Civic, fortunately, because it closed down later in the year. I went with Neil to a degustation dinner at Sage which was awesome. We went to Shogun for Ben's birthday, The Hungry Buddha with EffanC and Scott, and Casey Jones with Annie and the family for my birthday. With the sweetie we had dessert at Max Brenner in Civic, went to Chong Co, and tried Jamie's Italian and Pappa Rich. Generally we didn't eat out as much this year - trying to save a bit of money. Although we still had a lot of pizza! And bacon and cheese loaded fries from Maccas. omfg sooo good! Sadly the last time I tried to get some they didn't have them anymore :(

I didn't do a whole lot of creative cooking this year. I did make some cream cheese bacon balls which are so evil they're amazing. I made "epic" stuffed zucchini. I made some cheese and spinach pastries with some pastry inherited from Kerry before they moved which turned out pretty well. I did a zucchini lasagna. And a I tried a couple of different breakfast casseroles - one pretty evil and I made it a few times, and one I wasn't too fussed about.

Theatre/Shows/Exhibitions:
* Art of the Brick Exhibition in Sydney
* Sydney Icons in Lego in Sydney
* The Proclaimers

Movies:
* Sherlock - The Abominable Bride
* The Big Short
* Whiskey Tango Foxtrot
* Independence Day: Resurgence
* Finding Dory
* Star Trek: Beyond
* Rogue One

TV:
* Finished the last seasons of House
* Season 1 of Fuller House
* Documentaries on Netflix
* First four seasons of Homeland
* Most of Star Trek: the Original Series
* Australian Survivor
* Start of season 2 of Fuller House

Books:
* The Tower by Richard Martin Stern
* The Hindenburg Disaster by Jeff Rovin
* Raise the Titanic! by Clive Cussler
* Grey Mountain by John Grisham
* Penguin Bloom by Cameron Bloom and Bradley Trevor Greive

Other Stuff:
* Started off year with an impromptu neighbourhood party at Kit's
* Didn't dance on Lachie's table
* Saddened by deaths of David Bowie, Alan Rickman, Prince, Gene Wilder, Kenny Baker, George Michael, Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds, and the end of the world as we know it, ie, the US presidential election results.
* Went to the Mint open day
* Went to Canberra's new Ikea for first time
* Went to the Canberra Show with Chrissie
* Watched Das Rheingold with the sweetie, but still haven't gotten around to watching the rest of it
* Saw the Canberra balloon fiesta - twice
* Digitised my USA 2000 blog, although still haven't added photos to it
* Did the Granite Tors walk with Kit, nearly trod on a brown snake
* Ben and Stu fixed up the festoon lights out the back (only took seven and a half years to get around to doing!)
* Went to the Canberra Airport open day
* Installed Windows 10 on my travel laptop and my main computer
* Scanned ten of mum's photo albums
* Voted twice, but only got one #democracysausage
* Went out to Cotter Dam in August to see it overflowing, and went back again a week or two later to get it with better lighting
* Did a flying visit to Sydney in August to drop Stu off at the airport early Sunday morning, and saw the Sea Cliff Bridge on the way home
* Chrissie brought up her steam cleaner and made the bathroom all sparkly
* Saw James Turrell's Skyspace at the Art Gallery
* Kept myself busy in September with a massive photo project
* Popped into the War Memorial for an hour to look at the newly done WWI memorial halls
* Saw the first flight from Singapore to Canberra land, and the first flight from Canberra to Wellington depart
* Went to Costco for the second time. I think Coles and Aldi are actually cheaper.
* Did a massive photoshoot around Canberra to compare thirty years ago til now
* Photographed the super moon
* Spent several days over the break cleaning out cupboards

Saturday spent the whole day at work looking at graphs.

In the evening we went to Mishi's for a games night but ended up just chatting all night and not playing any games.

Sunday was pretty much just housework and organising stuff all day.  Tried out the Casey Supabarn for something different.  They have some interesting stuff there.

Today I spent pretty much all day chasing a blip.

Tonight I got through my Monday night routine that included cooking and eating dinner, cleaning up the kitchen, doing a load of washing and watching an episode of Star Trek all before 7:30pm.  So I prepped tomorrow night's dinner which was done by 8pm and spent most of the rest of the evening going through a pile of crap that's been building since last year some time.