Monday.  Christmas Day!  Late night because of the carols, but then woke up at 6am.  Because that's what I do.  Ok sleep in between though.  Never turned my computer on all day because of storms coming and going and needing to do All The Things anyway. 

When you plant mint seeds and poppies grow instead

Cooked up an epic Christmas Day feast for the two of us.

There was a woollies turkey roast, some sweet potato and sage, a blue cheese potato bake, brussels sprouts with bacon and hazelnuts and onion and sage stuffing.

Just cleaning and Lego after lunch, then headed over to Annie's for drinks and dessert.  It's been exactly a year since we saw them all last.  We're such slackers.

Tuesday.  Boxing Day.  Got to sleep ok but then awake from 4am for ages.  Spent all morning cooking and cleaning.  Stu went to pick up the mother type person.  Then everyone else got here.  Had snackages and did presents and stuffs.

Lunch was epic roast pork (crackling was great but the pork was a little over done), epic potato bake (there were heaps of leftovers!!), potato and sweet potato, peas, home made apple sauce and gravy.

After lunch David went on a shopping and visiting expedition, so I put up the America photos from my blog (they really need culling for a slideshow though).  David was gone for hours haha.  When he eventually did get back we put on Mum's Tasmania slide show.  Meanwhile, we got a message from Annie (who we saw yesterday and who said when we got there she had a sore throat) that she was covid positive.  Sigh.  Had dessert for dinner and an early night.

Wednesday.  Slept okish I think.  Spent most of the morning with Mum looking at Tasmania photos from three out of four of her trips there (1968 with YHA, 1971 with Dad, 2023 with Evelyn and Outback Spirit).  Mum went off to lunch with the others.  I was going to go to Tony's birthday lunch at Dickson, but decided not to "just in case" stoopid covid (it would have been fine).  Instead cleaned up and sorted cables.  When everyone got back David told me what all the cables were so I labelled everything.  We then had a game of Five Crowns which I won.  Put on the news for Mum and made her some garlic prawns with some of the prawns D&K brought up.  Then we watched Luca, which Mum even managed to stay mostly awake through.

Thursday.  Awake from like 3:45 and never got back to sleep.  Sigh.  Dropped Mum off at Jolimont and had a full on meltdown on the way home.  Too much stress?  Release of stress?  I dunno, but over half my break was over and all I've done was cleaning and cooking and family and haven't had a chance to relax yet.  Man I still miss uni holidays.  So.  Much.  Put on some washing and tidied up the fridge and labelled stuff.  Then just another day of trying to get All The Things done.  Did I mention I haven't had a chance to relax yet?  Finished season one of Mash.. the blue ladies!!  They played that episode *a lot* in the eighties.  Then The Orville 2.6.

After sorting the cables that came out of this box and putting them all back in.. sigh..

Friday.  Slept relatively well.  Another day of All The Things.  Got heaps done.  Rewarded myself later in the afternoon by starting a jigsaw.  Stu got pizza for dinner, then Mash, Death in Paradise 7.5 and Twin Peaks 1.7.

Saturday.  Slept relatively well.  Another day of All The Things.  Got heaps done.  In the afternoon I watched the 1964 Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer because I don't think I've ever actually seen it.  I actually really really HATE the song.  Yeah let's all bully someone for being a bit weird, and only like them if we can use them for something.  So horrible.  The tv special isn't any better, but Clarice is nice.  The Crown 6.5, Twin Peaks 1.8 (which is the end of season one - I thought that would be the end, but it keeps on going haha).

Sunday.  New Year's Eve.  Slept mostly ok although awake around 4 for a while.  Another busy day, mostly catching up on blogging and finishing my year in review post, with a bit of jigsaw as well.  We might have had peeps over tonight, but we're still isolating "just in case" we get covid.  So will be a nice quiet night with just the two of us.

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.

Wow, another strange year. Another crazy busy year.

Our year began very quietly with just the two of us. We didn't go out to the club because of Omicron taking the country by storm.

Travel-wise this year has been.. interesting. It started off with us desperatly trying to get out of the cruise we were due to go on. The charter company had postponed it a year, but with Omicron raging, government travel bans still in force, and lack of insurance for covid-related hospitalisations, we just couldn't justify it. The travel bans did get lifted and insurance companies started insuring for covid, but we still didn't think it was worth the risk. In the end, something like two weeks before the departure date, Carnival were like, ok fine, we won't charge the charter company if people don't want to come. Great. So we didn't go. The charter company were still @$$holes and would only provide a cruise credit for next year's cruise not the year after. It's caused me so much stress and angst and I would NEVER deal with them again. So plan B for February was Tasmania. But with Omicron raging and mandatory lockdowns for testing positive, we decided against that too. If we'd gotten sick while in Tasmania we would have nowhere to go and no way to get home. So plan C was regional Victoria. We only booked motels a night in advance, and if we'd gotten sick we could be home from anywhere in Victoria in a day. So that's what we did. And we actually had a lovely time with almost perfect weather (if a tad hot!). We had a very busy first week, cramming in lots of things, but took it a lot easier in the second week. In April there was a day trip to four Sydney dams to see three of them spilling which was super cool. In May was another sneaky trip to Sydney to see Woronora Dam spilling, and Brickman's Lego Jurassic World. I hadn't been planning to go see the Lego, but then was inspired by Lego Masters so went when it only had a few days to go. And then they extended it. Oh well. And then back again to Sydney in June for Mum's birthday where Kellie had organised to see Mary Poppins. Met up with Tony the next day and wandered the city and went out to Cockatoo Island, then met up with Mum again and saw Vivid. Finally a visit to Ansto at Lucus Heights which was very cool. We only made it down the coast once this year, in July, to see Kit and Pete. In September I went overseas for the first time in nearly four years. Mum and I went and saw the Oberammergau Passion Play, which I'd been wanting to see since the late 80s. We then drove through Austria, Liechtenstein and Switzerland (four countries in one day!!) and into Italy, where we ditched the car and toured northern and central Italy by train. We saw *heaps* of stuff, much more, and for much cheaper, than if we'd done it with the tour company like originally planned. I got filled with rage how Qantas and Emirates won't talk to each other to do seat allocations on code share flights. Jet lag hit me in a major way when I got home. It certainly didn't help that I got a cold as soon as I got home and so didn't go outside and see the sun in days. I was awake for hours every night for a week, and a complete zombie for much of it. Finally, we went back to Tumut for the Tumut 3 Power Station Open Day and another TRBC tour.

Work was, well, work. It's not that I don't like it, it's just that it takes up so much time out of my days. I have way too many things on my todo list to have time to go to work every day. Sigh. But at least working from home a few days a week makes it tolerable. I didn't actually go into the office at all until March (with Omicron raging and minimising people contact before we went on holidays). Then when I did eventually have to go back in I found it super loud and stressful and distracting and PEOPLE!! I had to be Neil a few times during the year and did some doco on his stuff (which he won't keep up to date heh). There were a couple of firewall migrations that went quite smoothly. A couple of load testing days in May and June. A few proxy upgrades which introduced more bugs than they fixed. But we did PoC a proxy from another company that actually looked pretty good. Migrated some servers. And All The Cleaning. Just call me Sadie. There was a whiskey night in July (which I actually missed, but was able to try everything the next week), and I ran my Christmas bbq at the lake for the tenth year in a row.

Healthwise I've been pretty good. Had a very slight cold in June and another one when I got home from Europe. Had booster jabs in January and July. The one in January caused a strong immune reaction so had to take a half day off and have a little lie down. Other than that just a sore arm so far is all I've had from the shots. Other than that just the usual bouts of insomnia, waking up with numb hands, and going blind.

We've been pretty slack at keeping up with friends and family this year. Although we have seen some friends a bit. We've seen Tony and Jess a few times for games and music. Damien came over in January, April and June for games. Jenn came over a couple of times in April and December. I had heaps of lunches at Herbert's with various Chrises and Tonys and other peeps as well. David came to stay before the Canberra Airport Open Day. Kit came to stay in July. Mum came to stay in December and we did our family Christmas with Kellie's family at the Burn's Club. We saw Annie and the family a few times - for Annie's 50th, Mila's 21st and Christmas, as well Immy coming over a couple of times to hang out. EffanC and R&F came over they day before my birthday. Had a lovely housewarming for R&F in November (it was cold and wet). Caught up with Aaron in December, probably as long as ten years since I last saw him. Finally saw Chrissie for the first time since covid in December. And met up with James and George and the kids for lunch in December on their way to Melbourne.

We only made it out to the club four times this year. It's been that kind of year. With quarantining and being on holidays for several events, the only times we made it out were for the Mexican night in March, the formal night in June, our Christmas in July and the Christmas party in November. We didn't even make it out in any non-event weekends which we like doing over winter.

I did a bit of work on processing Dad's slides early in the year but that fizzled out. I geotagged all of Mum and Dad's Tasmania photos in case we ended up going there. I also geotagged all our Victoria and South Australia photos from previous holidays to try and reproduce those. I started to scan Mum's Minolta negatives from the beginning (1983) and got some spectacular results, but that ground to a halt when I got up to 1994 and got into a batch of badly discoloured negatives that were unscannable. Not that there's even all that many past 1994 that I'm interested in keeping so no big deal I suppose. I managed to cull and label and get some photos onto the blog for the tenth anniversary of my 2012 Eurasia trip. That was a lot of work for the first few months of the year but it was so good to get it done. I also got 719 Victoria photos (plus bugs/flowers/panoramas) labelled and online in time for the six month anniversary of us leaving on that trip. After that I got really slack in the evenings - with no pressure or deadlines nothing much got done. For this year's Europe trip it took me a good six weeks just to geotag everything, then I got slack again. I was thinking I might be able to get the photos online by Christmas. Yeah right. Instead I used the evenings to start filing by 2022 photos and taking notes for my year in review post.

Stumpy is still doing great. We've had him (her?) nearly five years now! He'd be at least 13 by now. The fish are puttering along. My two main guppy tanks (the two foot upstairs and the two foot downstairs) look amazing - lots of plants (at least upstairs) and hardly any algae. But our guppies are two years old now and getting inbred. We really need to get some new genetics for them. I still have my "angel" 620T tank with a guppy, a platy, and an ancient cory. I still have Chrissie's tank with her two clown loaches and a guppy, but I'm considering moving them and getting rid of the tank. It's got horrible black hair algae which is not fun. I have the two two foots, as well as several small tanks downstairs, all with just guppies. And Stu has his four foot which is still full of algae. Really must move more juvenile guppies in there.

I lost heart in trying to complete any more of Vic's Lego sets, so decided to inventory what was left (I'm going to need to do that at some point anyway before selling it). I found a website called Basebrick which integrates with Bricklink which is super useful. Did heaps but ran out of time to finish it before I went overseas and haven't been back to it. For my birthday I got 10497 Galaxy Explorer and 75329 Death Star Trench Run Diorama which are pretty cool. I decided to sell the box of "MISB" Harry Potter Lego I got from 2003-2006. There were ten sets and they sold for quite a lot (I probably made the buy it now too small), but ebay makes it so you have to jump through all their hoops otherwise you can get totally screwed over buy the buyers. As it was I got totally screwed over by ebay who not only take 12.5% of the sale, but also 12.5% of the *postage* which I think is a complete scam. Not to mention the stress. If things go well it's actually quite simple, but if anything complicated happens (like people pay for everything and *then* want combined postage, or come to pick up from your house but don't mark online that they've done so, or the value is over the $100 Australia Post will cover you for) then it's a nightmare. I calculated how much profit I made, taking into account the cost of interest for not having the money in my mortgage all these years and all the fees, and I figure I made a total net profit of about $50. But, I'm sure I made a lot of people very happy they could get their hands on 15-20 year old brand new Lego sets. For Christmas I was going to get myself the Lego Titanic. But after not getting a Black Friday special on it, I decided to sit down and buy it on the Saturday. By which time it was out of stock. Sigh. But I did get a different Lego set for Christmas - in a manner of speaking. Neil lent me his Saturn V rocket that he bought a few years ago but had never done. So I've been having fun with that. Then will pull it all apart and give it back to him :)

I finally finished the Disney 40320 piece behemoth this year - finishing up with the Bambi section. I still haven't assembled the whole thing yet because I lost access to the really useful skybridge so don't know where I'm going to assemble it. Maybe Damien's driveway. Other than that, the usual jigsaws at home and work, although feeling like I really don't have time to do them.

They said La Niña would finish by the end of summer. It didn't. There was a massive storm in January which caused a lot of chaos in northwest Canberra. There were power outages all around Belconnen and Coles lost all their fridge and freezer stock. Chris kept power to his store, but his house had no power for days. We were lucky and just had a couple of small outages while they were fixing things. And the water. All The Water. In spring half of NSW was flooded. Insanity. And there was so much water there was no lettuce in Australia for a while. Craziness.

I've had a whole stack of problems with Windows 11 on my new computer. I hate it (windoze 11) so much. Like the fact you can't ungroup task manager icons which makes it so damned slow to switch between windows now. Before you could just click on the icon. Now you have to click or just hold and *wait* for the popup before you can switch windows. I took to making whole new desktops for the browser and explorer windows I need for different hobbies (such as music or lego) but even that has its bugs - like not displaying the wallpaper at the right size at random and then fixing it and then breaking it again all without me changing anything. Or that after a reboot only two of the desktops will display the right wallpaper at all, and if I switch between the working and non working one it'll put the wall paper from the working desktop onto the non working desktop I've just switched to. And after a few days it'll come good. Utter trash. Then there's the fact my GPS won't work at all (and there's no replacement drivers for it), my scanner won't work (even though it originally did), Eudora wouldn't work to begin with, then came good. My SD card reader only works intermittently. The front USB ports take at least thirty seconds to recognise there's anything plugged into them. My second monitor wouldn't work so had to buy a new one. It's great but the resolution is so high it's difficult to see. Windows 11 *still* only ever puts the screensaver on the left-most monitor, even if that is not the primary monitor. Excel 2003 dates wouldn't work, so had to put on Libre Office instead. You can't drag a file onto the application on the task bar, have said application pop up, and open the file in that application. That just doesn't work at all anymore. Similarly I can't drag anything into Eudora to attach it, I have to go to a menu and manually attach files. Printscreen didn't work to begin with, then started working. Hate hate hate hate hate. I've been playing a lot of Wordle style games, although cut back on those while overseas and only play a few of them now. I like Symble because you have to think more about it. Redactle is challenging. Wheretaken is a new favourite. Also Worldle, Waffle and Framed. In February Google changed one of their apis to enforce https, so had to hack Geosetter to get it to work again. Then in December Google finally killed the IE api, killing Geosetter completely. A few weeks later they released a new version of Geosetter which still has some issues, but at least will display the map again. Our printer is having a tonne of issues with jamming and poor quality printouts. It might just need a clean. Or a new printer. hmmm. Had to setup an app password in June for Eudora so it can backup my gmail. In July OneDrive took it upon itself to backup/sync all my desktop, documents and downloads directories to OneDrive. But all it succedded in doing was making a complete mess of things, bringing back files from my old computer that had long since been filed. Turned off backups everywhere and I minimise use of those directories completely. IOS 15.3.1 (or thereabouts) went back to putting photos into files by year/month (which I actually prefer). But Apple is STILL messing with the timestamps on my files. I got myself a 14 Pro for Christmas (it arrived instore literally the Friday night before Christmas, I was thinking I'd have to wait until January). Its camera has.. issues.. I lot of the first photos I got off it were utter crap. Primarily because I was using the 2x lens a lot to compare with my old phone. Firstly. Don't. The 2x "lens" is a digital interpolation of the 1x optics. So it's crap. The macro setting will work (if the stars align) but while it's good for getting actual closeups, it's crap at taking photos of flowers where you want the background all out of focus. Use the 3x lens as before just be far enough away for it to focus. Optus charged me 50c for an international SMS I didn't make in July. I got onto their online chat and they gave me a credit, but firstly said they couldn't find out the exact date/time and number, which was a total lie, because when I pressed them for it they could, and then I figure out what it was (it was a reply to a string of text, not a number, so it got translated to an international number). I bought myself new sandshoes in January, for the first time in like fifteen years. And new black shoes in August for the first time in seven years. I bought a G5X before our overseas trip. And got a brand-new-second hand wok on freecycle (to replace ours whose non-stick surface was coming off).

Around the house. I needed to move all the ornaments off the top of my desk to setup my new computer and rearrange monitors and crap. I moved them all into the shevles I bought for David in the spare room. I can see everything there a lot better, so I'm enjoying having them all there. The top of the desk has remained clear all year, although I do currently have my birthday presents up there at the moment. Tony came over in January to chainsaw off the oak tree sprouts and the front hedge. And then in December to attack the photinia. In between is all the weeding. Never. Ending. Weeding. Except in winter cause it's too damned cold heh. When the big storm went through in January water was coming out of places that water should not be coming out of. Like bricks next our bins, and bricks on one of the back steps at the back of the house. So got the plumbers to come out and do all the eeling. The sewage pipes were the easiest because we know the deal with them. The front courtyard was easy when we realised it's not a proper drainage pipe, just a 50mm pipe that goes just across the courtyard and drains off to the side. Looks to have been an afterthought. Then the stormwater. They went in via the sump next to the garage and it was like thirty metres down before they found the blockage. So they cleared that. Like the sewage, we'll just need to do that every couple of years. Finally they looked at the drainpipe near the bins. Under the concrete the pipe had come adrift and was full of roots, so the drain from the roof was just pooling under the stairs, and then going through the bricks next to the bins. So they dug up the front stairs, dug a wholly new trench, resealed, relaid the pipes, filled it all in, and got someone to put in some new stairs. Fifteen thousand dollars later. Ouch. Mice were scritching around the roof in March, which caused some sleepless nights. But then they went away. Which was good because I practically had a panic attack trying to figure out how I was going to get across to the far side of the roof without falling through it and getting covered in disgustingness. I tried to cut back the ivy in May. It's now covering more of the side wall than ever. Our largest stove element died. But we still haven't replaced the element or the whole stove. Found out in early spring that a pair of crimson rosellas had been chewing through the beams holding up our roof. Tried plastic sheeting, tinsel, scaring them, and scat. Nothing much seemed to work very well. They've found more interesting things to eat for now but I suspect they'll be back again next winter. We moved a shelf out of the dungeon because Stu wanted to put in a proper shelf there. Underneath was a massive growth of dark brown mold. We don't know if it's current or historical. hrmmm. The Dyson I got for my birthday two years ago stopped working. Don't know if it just needs a clean, or if the battery is dying, or if the Dyson is just a dud. My money is on the latter. Brought home the Electrolux from the club where we'd had it to use until I can get around to cleaning the Dyson. Got lots of strawberries from plants around the back yard. Including some from our paver weeds. The snails clearly didn't get the memo, so we got the strawberries instead of them. We had solar panels and a battery installed in December. They still don't work.

Our favourite restaurant this year was still Chong Co - we got deliveries from them in January, twice in April, twice in August, and October. Herberts is also popular for work Friday lunches (and their Christmas in July was a lot of fun). I didn't get to have any workday Kingsleys lunches because the building opposite blew up from a gas leak and they've never gone back, or been allowed to, not sure which. I did finally have some Kingsleys from Kippax a few weeks ago. We had Sichuan Chinese pickup from Belco a couple of times and were pretty impressed with them. We had brunch a few times at Market St Eats. Some others we went back to after long breaks included Mills and Grills (Stu went low carb so hardly any Dominos this year either), Chez Kimchi and Bella Vista. Tried out SpudBAR and 1919 Langzhou Beef Noodle which opened in the mall. Other one-offs included Co Dung (fried chicken wings were awesome), Lazy Su, Turqoise Turkish, Edgar's, Flavours of Jiangnan, Teddy Picker's, Badger & Co, Little Steamer, The Howling Moon, Mr Shabu Shabu, Little Oink, Master Bao (which had no bao), Magpies (for Jim's farewell), Pattysmiths, and Chinese Inn (from Kippax, just as bad as last time).

As always I end up doing quite a bit of cooking and trying new recipes, as well as doing old ones a few times. One new favourite is stuffed baby capsicums - fill with whatever mince you like and lots of cheese and roast. Yum yum. I made a few lemon cheesecakes, as well as a lime one and a cherry one. One of Stu's favourite meals is Cath's basa bake we've done that a few times. We did san choy bow a couple of times. We really like the potato, onion, blue cheese and bacon bake from my Gratins and Bakes book, but with Stu going low carb we only did it like once all year. The slow cooker gets a workout over winter. Favourite recipes for that are Alan's beef stew, brisket, and even pulled pork. And we tried slow cooking pork ribs (nice but lots of little fiddly bony bits). Beef cheeks are slow cooked on the stove. After doing turkey rolls that actually turned out this time at the club Christmas in July (on account of doing them in the oven instead of on the bbq), we tried one ourselves in August and also November (and likely New Years Eve as well). They turn out really nicely and we'll probably always keep one in the freezer to do when we feel like it. From Not Quite Nigella I tried a chicken marbella but wouldn't bother again, from the Gratins and Bakes book I tried potatoes with lemon and tomato but wouldn't bother again with that either, and from my Slow Cooker Kitchen book I tried honey rosemary chicken which was too salty. Completely evil meals included uunifetapasta, cheese nachos, and no-carb pizza (made with no base at all, just cheese). Slow cooked mini tomatoes are amazing, really must do them more often. Tried pork crackling by itself but I do prefer it done on the meat. A favourite lunch is grilled cheese sandwiches - but with shredded pizza cheese on the outside as well. Favourite veggies (well other than my favourite which is potato bake) include brussels sprouts with bacon. Over winter we discovered kalettes which when roasted for 35-40 minutes turn into little bliss bombs. Almost as good is kale chips, but it's a bit too easy to overcook those and have them go bitter. I made pesto with the last of the summer basil, and tried cheese biscuits in June (but need to find a better recipe). And made a coconut cake (Yum! Delicious!) in June and October.

Theatre/Shows/Exhibitions
* Australian Wind Symphony in May at the B (next to the Q)
* Lego Jurassic World in Sydney
* The Queen and Me exhibition at the National Capital Exhibition
* Mary Poppins in Sydney
* Canberra Lego Brick Show at Thoroughbred Park
* Australian Wind Symphony in November at St Andrews

Movies (at the movies)
* Top Gun: Maverick

Movies (TV)
* The Courier
* The Young Black Stallion
* The Grand Budapest Hotel
* Six Minutes to Midnight
* Sleeping With the Enemy
* Munich: Edge of War
* The Laundromat
* 1917
* The Mauritanian
* Zero Hour (twice) / Flying High
* Dr Strangelove
* No Time to Die
* Operation Finale
* Logan's Run
* 6 Underground
* The King's Speech
* Encanto / Luca
* The Death of Stalin
* The Royal Tenenbaums
* Gladiator
* Knives Out
* Edward Scissorhands
* The Monuments Men
* Pride and Prejudice (the Keira Knightley version)
* Mary Poppins / Saving Mr Banks
* The Little Mermaid II / Ariel's Beginning
* The Man from Snowy River
* An Affair to Remember / Sleepless in Seattle
* A Clockwork Orange
* The Constant Gardener
* Top Gun
* The Silver Brumby
* Kingsman: The Secret Service / Kingsman: The Golden Circle / King's Man
* Careful, He Might Hear You
* Moulin Rouge!
* Shine
* Blue Murder
* Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (twice - before and after Italy)
* Breaker Morant
* Matrix Resurrections
* Romeo+Juliet
* The Butterfly Effect
* Die Hard 1/2 / Love Actually
* Enola Holmes 2
* Operation Mincemeat
* Herbie Goes Bananas

TV
* Sex Education (season 3)
* The Simpsons (seasons 20 to half way through 31)
* The Girl on the Train in the Rear Window, or whatever it's called
* Mentour Pilot (about 3/4 of the air crash investigations episodes)
* Gunther's Autopsy
* Lie to Me (end of season 2 and season 3)
* Black Books
* Gunther's Anatomy
* The Crown (season 1 and most of season 2)
* Lego Masters (season 4)
* Martin Bashir's Diana interview
* The Diana Interview: Revenge of a Princess 2021
* Epstein's Shadow: Ghislaine Maxwell
* Obi-wan Kenobi
* Super Cub
* Andor (season 1)
* Lego Masters Bricksmas special (last year's and this year's)
* Survivor Canberra (fan produced)
* Picard (season 2, haven't finished)

Books
* Read the first four books of the New Testament, but got behind in February when we travelled and never really caught up. Will try again next year for the rest of the New Testament.

Other stuff
* Tried to catch up on This Day in History posts, but there's still too much work to be done with Mum's photos to do it properly, so that stalled
* Car wouldn't start in January. Turns out it was the battery, which was probably original, so it would have been nearly eight years old
* Petrol got insanely expensive
* Balloon Fiesta in March
* Canberra Airport Open Day in April
* Dam Busters trip to Sydney in April
* Climbed Mt Rogers a couple of times
* Saw the planet/moon alignment in April
* Jupiter and Venus were having a sneaky early morning kiss in April
* Sneaky trip to Sydney in May to see Lego Jurassic World (and Woronora Dam)
* Got a democracy sausage in May
* Climbed Mt Ainslie in May (hadn't been planning to it just happened)
* Whiskey Live in May
* Queen Elizabeth II 70th Jubilee in Canberra - all the purple lights on buildings around Canberra
* ABC's Classic 100: Music for the Screen in June
* Inspected my flat, went to Cockatoo Island, saw Vivid and visited Ansto in June (after seeing Mary Poppins for Mum's birthday)
* Surprising Science at the Shine Dome in June, August, and December
* Walked up Mt Painter
* Stu cracked a tooth and needed it taken out
* Fought with Qantas' booking system again. I hate Qantas. So. Much.
* Had a hair cut in August
* Stu got a 3D printer which he's been using to make little models for his wargamming
* Total lunar eclipse in November
* Took a drive out the back of Dunlop/Holt to see the West Belconnen Pond
* Got a beer advent calendar from Plonk
* Went to the Green Shed a couple of times, dropped off a few things, came home with more jigsaws
* Continued to practise the clarinet

Have a very happy and safe new year!!

A few in the last quarter, but still too busy to feel like I have time to do them much at home.

This one (from AH) we started before I went on holidays.  We did the shore stuff then off I went.  Hardly any of it had been done by the time I got back - because it was all blue!  Didn't take too long to finish it after that.

These next three I got from the Green Shed.  It was such a shame the third one was missing a couple of pieces.  500 pieces each and get done in like three seconds flat.  Lots of fun.

I'm still looking for a good Neuschwanstein jigsaw.  This was not it.  Lots of pieces that fit even if they're wrong.  And a couple missing.  And.  You wouldn't notice this unless you've been there.  The thing is BACKWARDS!! hahaha.  

This is what it is *supposed* to look like!!

A 300 piece Where's Wally from the Green Shed.  Once the top half was done I laid out all the pieces in shape/orientation and found pieces that way.

The final two were from AH as well.  The top combi took us a little while but not too long

And the second combi we did in like a day

Not much jigsawing in the third quarter - I was too busy at home planning holidays to have time for jigsaws.  And at work we did finish one, but then started another one not long before I went into quarantine and overseas.

This was the one I did at home.  Probably from the Green Shed.  Missing quite a few pieces.

Jim gave us this before he left.  Took us quite a while because you basically had to hunt and hunt to find where a piece would go.  Finished late July.

Did someone say Tumut 3 Power Station Open Day?!?

Friday

Left work a little early and headed down the Hume.  We stopped at the lookout at the north end of Gundagai to see All The Water.

Then took a drive down to the flood plain to see All The Water.

Middleton Drive across the Murrumbidgee was closed to traffic.  Because All The Water.

Also had a look from the south end of town.

Straight after arriving in Tumut we headed up to TRBC for a couple of beers and noms.

We had a potato and rosemary pizza which was lovely and the Amazeballs were actually totes amazeballs! 

Saturday

Bacon and egg rolls for brekky then off we headed to Talbingo.

We got the second shuttle from town, in time for the second power station tour at 9:10.

They had a bunch of staff doing the tours.  These guys were not normally tour guides!  We had an electrical fitter? engineer? (can't remember) and another tradie as well.  We had to wear a hard hat and highvis, and also safety glasses which were pretty pointless because they didn't fit over my glasses (and the "tour guide" wasn't wearing them anyway).  They also said "no photos" but then "you'll be told where you can take photos" and our guide was like, um what places would they be? heh.  Part of it they were worried about people dropping things down some very big holes, but also apparently they were a bit secretive of the electronics at the top of the turbines.  The rest of it is all pretty much common knowledge anyway.  We walked down and past the busbar room and onto the generator hall floor.  I did ask if we could take photos of the old control room which is no longer in use (they remote control everything from Cooma these days and just have a skeleton crew on site, plus whatever projects are going on).  

After we got out I said we should take the earliest penstock tour we could do to beat the crowds.  We walked straight onto a coach and it wasn't full - winning!

We went up past the dam wall, and across the top.  People could have gotten out at the far end, but it would have meant waiting for the next coach in half an hour to come back, so noone did (plus I had better photos from last time when we had glorious weather).  

Then onto the top of the penstocks.  They gave us ten minutes there and it was super cool!

Then back down.  The queues were already getting long now.  I totally called it.

The signs said no climbing on the pipes.  Nothing about standing under them to show how damned big they are!

The last time we were here I had a sad that this wasn't open to go in and have a look.  So I was pretty excited that we could this time.

The turbine hall is super cool.  Six turbines.  Three of them only generate, and the other three can either generate or pump water back up the penstocks when power is cheaper.  The generators were upgraded from 2006-2012 to 300 megawatts, so the whole power station can generate 1800 megawatts.

Looking across to the old control room.

One of the inlet pipes

They also have a super cool working model of one of the turbines.

And a model of the area around the dam and power station

I'd love for this thing to be on the internet - it's a graphic of all the different powerstations on the Snowy Hydro system and which ones are in use.  Only like three were in the whole system - lots of solar and wind around or something.  

Finally we took a shuttle back to Talbingo.  The guy organising the queues for the buses (one for the penstocks and the other for the town shuttle) clearly wasn't used to doing this sort of thing and was completely overwhelmed by the crowds.  Luckily most people seemed to be queueing for the penstocks, so we walked straight onto a shuttle back.

Stopped by Jounama.  It was flowing pretty hard, and Blowering was full right back up to this dam.

Last time we were here Blowering was a *lot* lower.  Blowering was actually over full.

We tried to get a good view of the spillway which was spilling *hard* but as I discovered last time there's not really any good views of it.  And sadly the road to the top was closed off, so couldn't even walk across the top to see it (we saw people up there so no idea how they got there).

We did find this suspension bridge over the Tumut River.

The Tumut River was flowing hard with All The Water.

Found somewhat of a view of the spillway on the way back.

Had a pie back in Tumut for lunch, then headed out to Adelong.  It had been flooded just last week.  Water was up to the level of that bridge.

This house had water midway up the shed, and the yard was full of damaged gyprock from the house.  The owner's story is here.

This is that bridge from before showing all the damage from debris.

The sculpture walk was closed, but we did see this rabbit sculpture which reminded me of Donnie Darko.

The mine area was closed off too, so just got a view from the viewing point.

We tried to get out to the truss bridge over the Tumut River east of town but All The Water was over the road from both directions.  It *probably* would have been fine, but we decided not to risk it.

Back in Tumut we walked down to the Old Bridge park.  Last time we were here the water was a lot lower!  The bridge itself had a big gate across it as well.

The walkway either side of the bridge was flooded in various places.  This is on the south side with the bridge over Mcfarlane's Creek.

The park was also filled with All The Water.

Had some bubbles back at the motel before heading over to Mendrinas at Brooklyn for dinner.  The steak was just a teensy bit over done but the lamb was quite overdone which was a bit sad.  The salad was pretty amazing though.

Sunday

Went for a bit of a wander around town to fill in some time.

The Tumut River with All The Water from Wee Jasper Road.

At 11:00 it was time for our tour at TRBC.  Unfortunately we didn't get Tim this time (apparently he has to have time off *sometimes* hehe) although we did see him in the bar and chatted for a while.  So the story wasn't as rich this time.  They do have more brewing tanks now, and they've recently got their own canning run, so they can can their beer as needed and not have to wait for the canners to come in.  They're still getting used to it.

The tour isn't nearly as good value for money either now.  Last time the four tasters were larger and included lunch.  Now the tasters are smaller and lunch is not included.  Oh well.

For lunch we had maple bacon and blue cheese pizza and a salad with smoked trout.

Bought a mixed case of beer, then headed home.

Sunday.  31st.  Leftovers from Saturday night for dinner.  Finished watching Obi-Wan.  I liked that they had James Earl Jones voicing Darth Vader.. only .. they *didn't* ..!! they deep faked him!  And having Ian McDiarmid was pretty cool too.

Monday.  Slept ok-ish but woke up early.  Started panicking over my todo list.  Started trying to get in control by giving the house a bit of a tidy.  But had a meltdown as soon as I logged into work because people were making mess and it was all too much.  Had a cleaning planning day.  Leftover pork for dinner.

Oh, the other week my everyday walking shoes split (I bought these in 2015 and worn them almost every day since) so last week I bought some new ones.  Almost the same, look slightly different.

In the evening I tried to book flights to Europe with Qantas.  Big mistake.  I tried to book the exact same itinerary as I did three years ago (when it failed epically and I spent *hours* trying to sort it out and in the end said "screw you" and went with Emirates).  Well in three years QANTAS STILL HASN'T FIXED THEIR BOOKING SYSTEM!!!!  As with last time, you select a multi city trip (I only had three legs, nothing too complicated), it lets you get all the way through including doing seat allocations, but when you go to pay you get this error:

Sorry, an error seems to have occurred, and this page cannot be displayed (15079, 23951, 420)

Thanks a fricking lot QANTAS.  I can't believe they're still so bad at this crap.  It's like they're actively trying to deter business and alienate customers.  Literally every time I have to deal with Qantas I have to go through the sheer agony of their booking systems (if it wasn't for their AMAZING flight crews I'd probably boycot them completely).  

I used Webjet to hunt around for alternatives.  But THANKS COVID.. NOT.. there's very limited options at the moment.  Etihad had no flights available at all for the legs I wanted, and Emirates for the same legs was going to cost three thousand dollars more.  Yikes.  Lufthansa would have been ok except they had some really crazy connections that totally blew out the travel times.  So I booked the flights through WebJet, which was going to cost $200 more.  And sure enough, their APIs had the same issues with Qantas.  I got this error:

Customer Service Advice
We have been unable to confirm your requested itinerary, but have retained a copy of your requirements under Webjet Booking Reference: <redacted>
We will now process your itinerary manually and confirm your booking within 48 hours.
If you are departing within the next 48 hours we will contact you today. Please do not attempt to make another booking on this site or another, as this may result in a duplicate. Please wait for us to contact you.
Thank you for your co-operation.
Customer Service Centre

So I left it.  At least someone at WebJet will have to deal with Qantas and not fricken ME!!   

The next day I got an email from WebJet that everything was sorted and the flights had been booked.  Hurray.

Tuesday.  Cleaning day and holiday research.  Did a basa bake for dinner which was lovely.

Wednesday.  Rinse and repeat of Tuesday.  I had a whole commentary in my head about how getting older makes you more *fearful*.  I really noticed this a while back riding Kit's horses (I literally had no fear about riding horses when I was younger but now they're so *big* and it's a long damned way down!) and let's not mention The Nerve Test.  So I was stressing about all the ways things could go wrong with our holiday.  Although in the grand scheme of things, mostly all we'd lose is money.  I really need to keep that perspective.  

I did an experiment with the brussels sprouts - would they crisp up better "right way up" or "upside down"?  Turns out, didn't really make a difference!

Thursday.  Lay awake until like midnight stressing over All The Things (mostly holiday stuff).  Then woke up at 1am by the storm for an hour or so.  Then woke up early too.  Sigh.  Zombie day.  Farewell for Alex at lunch.  Quiet drinks.  All The Water!!!

Friday.  Slept a lot better.  There was even a lovely sunny day after the wild weather all day yesterday.  I needed milk for breakfast so went over to Chris's to get some.  I didn't have enough for the eftpos minimum so thought I'd get a bottle of cab sav.  But he didn't have any singles out of the one I like so he was going to open a box but I said I'd buy the box.  It was on special too, so that was a bonus.  Except carrying it back home the box split and smashed all over the car park.  Lost two bottles of wine right there.  And then I was trying to clean up the mess and pricked myself with a shard of glass and started bleeding.  Sigh.  Another customer came up and I asked her to ask Chris for help.  So he came out and took away all the broken glass and gave me a bag for the other four bottles and the milk.  They say not to cry over spilt milk but you can cry over spilt wine, surely?  Another cleaning day. Chicken kiev for dinner.  Watched Kingsman: The Secret Service which was a bit of silly fun.  

Saturday.  Went food shopping first thing.  Then a bunch of house work.  Then dropped off my backup drive at work, bought some new fish tank lights for the 620T, and accidentally bought myself an early birthday present.

Got home and then it was time to do All The Cooking.  I made a low(ish) carb, vegetarian lasagna.

Slightly over done, whoops..

Had the hills over to enjoy it and Jess had a lot of fun playing Stu's instruments.  Wait, that sounds wrong.  ;)  Specifically, his cornettos.. cornetti?  After dinner Jess and I played a whole bunch of stuff together and she played all the harmonies around me trying to keep up with her awesomeness.  It was so much fun :)

Sunday.  Did a bunch of research on countries that we plan to visit on smartraveller.  Should all be fine.  Then a whole heap of fish tank stuff.  Also some camera side-by-side testing.  The new camera is much on par with my Canon and my iPhone for most things, but it does excel in extremelly low light.  Read: under the house with just vent holes for light.  It's not so great on closeups (but some of that may be me needing to get used to the settings) and it does struggle to focus.  The iPhone probably wins on difficult lighting (with pretty decent HDR), and the Canon wins on speed and focus (except in very low light).

It's almost completely dark under the house, so this shot is actually pretty impressive.

Then it was cooking All The Food.

Six months ago today the sweetie and I headed off for a two week road trip around regional Victoria.  We packed quite a lot into the first week, then had a more relaxed second week.  We had almost perfect weather almost the whole time.  I was somewhat disappointed returning to places I'd been to before, because a lot of the views simply weren't accessible anymore.  But other than that we had a pretty fantastic time.

It took me a bit over five months to get all the photos online and extra blog entries done.  But here it all is!  Enjoy!!

Sunday. 26th.  Backdating this on account being out the Sunday evening this was due.

Starting with the epic blue cheese potato bake I made.  I hated blue cheese for the longest time, but having it cooked adds such a wonderful savoury flavour.

Monday.  Went to bed nice and early, but then hurty kept me awake from 3-5 :(  Spent all day documenting proxy policies.  Leftover pork ribs and vegies for dinner.  Labelled 160 Victoria photos.  Then watched Martin Bashir's Diana interview, which in twenty five years I've never actually seen.  

Tuesday.  Took a while to get to sleep - feet were cold.  Didn't achieve anything much useful all day.  Too many problems and people talking to me.  Labelled another 100 or so photos.  Then watched "The Diana Interview: Revenge of a Princess 2021" which was a documentary about the interview mentioned previously.  

Wednesday.  Slept ok.  Did a bunch of test proxy cleaning.  Then dealing with more problems.  Leftovers from the club for dinner (which Stu was decidedly unimpressed with).  I might have had a sad.  Labelled another hundred photos.  Then watched Epstein's Shadow: Ghislaine Maxwell (part of it anyway, finished it later).  After seeing Filthy Rich I'm so glad they went after her too.

Thursday.  Took ages to get to sleep.  Had a good morning doing proxy stuff.  Optus had a Very Bad Day in the afternoon, cutting work off from the world.  I hadn't gone into the office on account of all the covid floating around, so had a couple of drinks with the sweetie in the evening, including my own little whisky tasting, on account of missing the work one.

We watched the first episode of Obi-wan Kenobi which wasn't bad.  Then I watched The Man from Snowy River.  Such a glorious Australian film.  Don't think I've seen it in years though.

Friday.  More proxy work.  Made "special fried rice" for dinner which was qute nice.  Then watched An Affair to Remember.  I've been wanting to see this movie for ages because of its references in Sleepless in Seattle.  I probably should have not wasted a couple of hours of my life on it.  It was pretty silly.  And dumb.  Like Ken is the sweetest guy ever, even standing by her and taking care of her even though she admitted an affair and wanted to leave him.  Why would you give up someone like that to run off with someone who's a playboy and has already proven his willingness to cheat and run off with someone else??  Stoopid.  But what was funny about it was they agreed to meet on July 1st.  Which just so happened to be the night we watched it.  Synchronicity!

Saturday.  Tried to tidy the pantry in the morning because we keep losing stuff in there.  Then did some food shopping at the markets and chemist.

Yikes!

Stu was sad the markets fish is in pieces (I think this thing was in the Sydney 2000 Olympics opening ceremony).  They might still be planning to put it back.

Then spent most of the rest of the day cooking.  hrmm.  Put on a brisket first, then made up a breakfast lasagna for the sweetie, and also cooked up a bunch of chicken.  And all the veggies.  

These things are so good - just cream cheese and fried bacon bits rolled in chives.  So simple but so tasty!  Had to hide them so the sweetie wouldn't eat them all ;)

Breakfast lasagna I made for the sweetie

Brisket and veggies for dinner.  I might have served myself way too much meat.  Whoops.

Watched A Clockwork Orange in the evening.  Strange strange movie.  Although not as disturbing as the book apparently.

Sunday.  A bit of fish stuff, but mostly Lego counting and scanning.  Scanning is being problematic now.  I'm getting through more rolls because I'm not scanning everything in them.  But it does mean it's more hands on which I don't have the time for during the day (when doing a whole roll you stick two sheets in at a time and come back half an hour later to swap them out.  But I don't really have time to sit and choose which ones to scan and swap them out more often).  The other problem is that the negatives from 1994 have started to go very blue.  Which means they scan bright yellow.  hrmmm.

Finally got to try out drinks at The Howling Moon, a lovely rooftop bar with great views at sunset.

Oh yes, there were noms - olives (unfortunately not pitted) and arancini balls

Tried for dinner at Bentspoke but it was *packed* - don't come the first night of school holidays!!

So ended up at Mr Shabu Shabu

Couldn't be stuffed blogging when I got home, and then the week kicks in and it's all too hard... 

Tuesday.  5th.  Took me a while on Monday to get to sleep.  Still woke up early though.  Did my music practise in the morning.  Busy day, but I don't even know where most of it went.  Did washing up at lunch time and weeding after work.  Stu cooked dinner - creamy mushroom and chicken fettucini.  Nothing of use in the evening though, just jigsaw and rss feed reading and feeling blah.  Did the washing up.  Again.  Watched some Lie to Me.  Found that "print screen" started working again.  WTF is it with windows 11 that things just stop and start working at random (still haven't had time to fight with the scanner that just stopped working a couple of weeks ago).

I also raged at All The Things.

For example.  People complaining about fortnightly rubbish pickups (that have recycling and food/green waste pickups).  I just don't *get it*.  Growing up we didn't have any recycling (to begin with) and just one little metal bin for a family of four.  Nowadays we put out like one bag of rubbish a week.  We're lucky to put out the rubbish bin once a month, and then it's rarely more than half full.  What are people even doing now?  Putting literally everything into the rubbish bin, including all their recycling and food waste?  Maybe they only eat packaged food and nothing fresh.  No idea.  Like I said, I just don't *get it*.

Also.  If they want more people living in higher density buildings, there needs to be bigger units at a "reasonable" price.  These days the only units you can get are *tiny* little two bedroom units, or maybe a three storey penthouse - usually for a *lot* more than a house of the same size.  People probably have to get a house because they need the indoor space.  I'm sure plenty of families would be happy to live in a unit if you could get a decent size one without paying twice as much for it. Far out, we'd be much happier in a unit because we wouldn't have a yard to try and keep weed free.  But try getting anything the size of our place in a unit.  Good luck with that.

Also.  If they want more people to use electric cars, fricken standardise on power connectors.  At the moment it's like a Beta vs VHS war or HD-DVD vs Bluray.  And an electric car is fine if you have two cars and one is the city car and one is for holidays.  Good luck travelling anywhere much in Australia outside the big cities with an electric car.  Much of Australia is simply inaccessible without petrol at the moment.

Wednesday.  Slept mostly ok.  Another busy day but at least I got stuff done.  Did some weeding at lunch.  Cooked up some veggies to have with lefover pork for dinner.  Went through half of my Eurasia blog photos tweaking the colour balance a little (my old camera had way too much red and not enough blue) and cropping as necessary.

Thursday.  Took ages to get to sleep but still woke up super early (like 5am).  Ok day.  *At* work blerf.  It's noisy and distracting in the office.  Drinks was good, but ours was literally the only table there - noone else was there!  Too much covid in the office I guess.  Watched the first episode of Black Books.  Had a raging battle with the printer that is now jamming literally every page.  It puts toner down but then jams before fusing it.  Ended up angry and depressed.  Also had some Spar pizzas for dinner because Chris didn't have any Dr Oc.  Definitely not good.

Friday.  Busy day, had fun making up dashboards for some testing we're doing in a few weeks.  Chicken kiev for dinner (the Steggles ones are nowhere near as good as the Ingham ones).  Watched a couple of episodes of Gunther's Anatomy series.

Saturday.  A day of All The Things.  House, jigsaw, photos.  

This magpie came down after I'd been weeding for a while to see if I'd disturbed any bug noms for it

We dug Stumpy out cause we hadn't seen him in days.

Dinner was the last of the pork, refried in jelly, with some leftover rice from during the week and cabbage and kewpie sesame dressing

Watched The King's Speech in the evening, which we hadn't seen since we saw it at Stu's dad's place in 2013.

Today.  Rinse and repeat really.  Although mostly getting Eurasia photos sorted and ready for the blog.  Basa fillets for dinner, which will be in next week's post.

Happy tree is being obscured by another tree.. doh!

Third episode of Black Books.  19:30 is bed time right?