Results matching “Movies”

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

Pulled port with veggies

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

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

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

My little patch of Floriade is sprouting

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

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

Piece sorting craziness

Right edge progress

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

Empty car park at Jamo

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

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

Covid testing sunset

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

Dumbo progress

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

Salmon and salad

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

Imitation Dominos pepperoni and feta puff pastry pizza

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

Kiev and veggies take one

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

Rosemary closeup

Daffodils

Daffodil closeup

Daffodil closeup

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

Dumbo progress with edges

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

Cooking all the food

Arribbiata bake sans basil

Moon in August

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

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

July lamb roast

July veggie bake

Epic leftovers

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

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

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

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

Thermometer sadness

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

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

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

Dumbo progress

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

Dumbo cheating

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

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

Mid Sunday jigsaw progress

Dumbo progress

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

All the food

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

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

All the veggies

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

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

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

myDHR wtf

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

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

Journal

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

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

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

Made pancakes for lunch.

Pancakes

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

Garran Surge Centre

Inside Garran Surge Centre

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

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

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

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

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

Thursday.  Slept pretty well for a change.  

Hanging chrysanthemums

Chrysanthemums

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

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

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

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

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

And corn and zucchini fritters
Herbert's corn and zucchini balls

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

Herbert's rose

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

Stumpy

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

The District eggs benedict

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

Cheese platter

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

Twister !?
Chimney clouds

Epic mushroom cluster
Epic mushroom cluster

Before I start, this is the lemon cheese cake I made last weekend.  Similar to the previous one, except using light evaporated milk instead of cream, and made in a much bigger container to thin the base out a bit.  I also tried to melt some cooking chocolate (not baking bits), but it just wouldn't melt.  I then had flash back memories to have a similar problem with cooking chocolate when I was living in Sydney.  Note to self: never buy that again (I don't think I even bought it, I can't remember where it came from).

Lemon cheesecake

Lemon cheesecake

Monday.  22nd.  Got two boxes of Dad's slides fixed up before work (had some extra time, and not as many needed fixing up).  Being at home is sooo much better for my mental health, especially in the evenings.  I feel so much more relaxed and can get so much more done.  Even though it's only an hour and a half or so extra it makes such a difference.  Watched last night's Amazing Race.  The top three teams all really annoy me.  The girls are full of themselves and take every opportunity to tell everyone how awesome they are.  The sikhs I liked to begin with but they're just as mean to people they don't like as anyone else, and while they claim to have helping people ingrained in their culture, they really only help people they like.  The cowboys are ok, but were still out to get Chris and Aleisha.  No idea why those two are so unpopular with everyone.  Did get 346 photos labelled today, although 63 of them before work.  It'll certainly take the pressure off the rest of the week.

Tuesday.  All the stoopid.  Had dinner out with the sweetie which was nice.  Dumpling Inn was closed (have they even reopened since Covid?) so we went to Pizza Artigiana. 

Quattro Formaggi - SANDRA $22 - mozzarella, provolone, gorgonzola and shaved pecorino.  Yum yum.

Artigiana quattro formaggi pizza

Diavola - RINO $22 - tomato, ricotta, Nduja hot salami, and marinated red peppers.  Ok, spicy but not insane, just a bit meh.

Artigiana diavola pizza

Then we did our food shopping.  Watched last night's Amazing Race and was sad to see Chris and Aleisha go.

Wednesday.  Blerf day.  Had a stoopid meeting in the afternoon where they put me on the spot *on the phone* arggh.  But then Skype had a spack which saved me so I could troubleshoot offline.  Seriously DO NOT ask me to troubleshoot something over the phone, especially in a whole group situation.  Hate hate hate.  But we did managed to shut down a good chunk of the old network which was pretty awesome.  Didn't do a whole heap of work past four pm, chatting to peoples about all the things.  Super late home.  Salmon and salad for dinner which was very nice.  I stepped on one of those little bastard millipedes though while I was cooking and it popped and left a smudge on the floor.  So gross.  Labelled photos while watching Amazing Race.  Eyes felt very tired.

Ducks in the new Belco swimming pool

Thursday.  Despite being tired it took forever to get to sleep.  Sigh.  Good drinks, lots of peeps came.  Had Kingsley's for dinner (since we'd already had pizza this week), Simpsons, Laid Back Camp, Encore.  

Friday.  Awake in the middle of the night for hours.  Sigh.  So even more of a zombie than yesterday.  Which was a pity because I was having a random day off.  So I couldn't concentrate on anything that required brainpower.  But still, I had a super productive day getting things done around the house. 

This jungle has to go.  Ten minutes at a time.
Welcome to the jungle

Another last chance summer flower seen on my walk
Last chance summer flowers

Our next door neighbour when I was growing up had one of these bushes.  So many little red berries!!

Red berries

Red berry bush

Watched more X Files in the evening, and started watching Becoming.  

Saturday.  Slept well!  Hurrah!  Except I spent the entire morning finding where photos on our Dubbo trip in 1981 were taken.  Some were easy, but others super tricky.  Like exactly whereabouts is the old platform at Newnes?  And did we drive along the new railway line being constructed between Sandy Hollow and Gulgong?  (since some of the places look a little tricky to get to by car).  After lunch we headed out to the club.  I wanted to do some painting, but Stu wanted a sleep, so no painting for me. 

I don't know which way up this flower goes...
Upside down club flower

Instead I worked on a tapestry by the fire. 

Tapestry by the fire

Matt and Michelle put on an awesome Mexican feast, we all had a lovely evening.

Mexican feast

Mexican feast

Mexican feast

Mexican feast

Mexican feast

Mexican feast

Sunday.  Today.  Slept okish, then we came home.  Spent entirely too much time trying to sort out Dad's slides (for anything that doesn't have a date on it - when were they taken?  What else was on that roll?  hrmm).  Michelle (a different one) came over for a while, and then we all went for a walk, but the magpies weren't around. 

Silver lining, with rainbow

Had slow cooked beef stroganoff for dinner with a packet mix from before 2000, was actually quite nice. 

Should be fine right

Should be fine right

Blogged while watching the Amazing Race finale (both took nearly two hours all up).  Just finished blogging as the race finished.  Pretty happy with the outcome actually.

No movies so no movie quotes.. 

Monday.  8th.  Woke up at 4am-ish for a while.  A day of cleaning and creating a bunch of new objects on various firewalls, fixing up all the problems I found along the way. 

I tried the cheesecake for morning tea.  It turned out quite well!  The base is 250g pack Nice biscuits and 125g butter.  The filling is 2x 250g packets cream cheese, vanilla essence, 1/2 cup caster sugar, 300mL thickened cream (whipped), gelatine, and the juice (~200mL) and zest of four lemons.  I was going to use the bigger tray but I was using that for roasting some veggies.  So the whole thing is quite *thick*.  It was also quite soft.  I have another recipe I want to try before I publish the final results.

Lemon cheesecake

Sausages and salad for dinner.  Got pretty much caught up with Eurasia photo labelling.  By 20:30!  So watched another episode of Encore.  Had to put a blankie around me because it was so cold!  Although I did forget to do the dusting/vacuuming and my washing in the morning.

Tuesday.  Had a very early start because Stu needed to be at work early.  So no scanning although I did manage the dusting and vacuuming.  And I bought a bed.  More cleaning work in the morning.  Went jeans shopping again at Target at lunch but that was an epic fail.  Either too skinny or too much room in the crotch.  And something popped in my knee which hurt a bit, but nothing too crazy.  I did manage to find some more sheets for our bed though.  Leftover lamb and greek salad for dinner.  Had all my photo labelling done by 20:10 so watched the first episode of the new season of The Amazing Race.  I actually tried to watch this on the weekend, but Channel 10 stuffed up, and the episode they'd labelled as episode 1 was episode 3.  Buttheads.  But they'd fixed it by Tuesday.  This season was filmed last year, but because of covid they stayed in Australia.  But it still must have been a logistical nightmare with various state border closures.  

Wednesday.  Couldn't get to sleep til after midnight, then woke up before 6am.  hrmm.  Finished prep work on some tidy up work, awaiting feedback so I don't break anything.  Tried again jeans shopping, this time at Best & Less.  I did find one pair that at least fitted without even needing to be taken up.  But of course the pockets are way too small - even smaller than what I have now.  I'm going to have to invite Sarah over for dinner and ask her to make me a bigger pocket!  They also have a button up fly which is a big poo.  But they only had one pair in stock, so I still need to keep going.  Sigh.  Just before 5pm our bed arrived.  They said three to five business days.  That was next day.  I'll save that for another post though.  Saw the second episode of The Amazing Race.  

Thursday.  Took ages to get to sleep again, then woke up at 4am with hurty.  Sigh.  When I was getting some painkillers I thought I heard a plop.  Kept getting stuff out of the fridge but I thought I heard another plop.  So I turned the lights on and looked behind the digital radio, and there was a fish.  Not in its tank.  Stoopid fish.  I must have freaked it out moving around in the near darkness and it zoomed out of the tank and onto the bench.  Lucky I heard it otherwise there'd have been a dried out fish by morning :(  Drinks, Dr Oc pizzas, Hibike Euphonium and Encore.

Friday.  Hurty again.  In the evening we had C over for dinner.  She tries to be gluten free, but we didn't have any gluten free pasta and Chris doesn't sell it either.  So my solution was to use an epic zucchini Connor brought in on Thursday.  I used the mandolin to slice it up thin and mixed in with bolognase sauce.  It actually turned out really well!  Except I forgot to take an after photo.  Whoops.

Zucchini spaghetti

Saturday. 

February fog

A day of All The Things.  I tried to have a bit of fun, but mostly just tidied the house.  And we made the bed.  Jenn came over for dinner (Stu had Turkish feast delivered).  Then we played Carcassonne, which I just won.

Turkish feast

Sunday.  Valetines Day.  I'd have wished the mother and the brother happy anniversaries, but, well .. Went for a walk in the morning.  Tried to count the species of birds I saw.  Magpies, currawongs, cockatoos, galahs, crested pigeons, rosellas, wattle birds, an lbb.. heard a raven and peewees but didn't see those.  They've also blocked the direct route up to try and restore the slope from erosion, and diverted the path a bit to the side.

Mt Rogers blocked

Mt Rogers trig

Mt Rogers view

We finished season one of Hibike Euphonium at lunch.  In the afternoon I did quite a bit of work organising the filing cabinet and pulling out stuff to be scanned and tossed.  Downloaded and processed phone photos but only managed to get half way through blogging last week before dinner was ready (roast pork with epic crackling!!).  Simpsons and into season two of Hibike Euphonium.  Finished last week's blog entry at 9pm.  

Monday.  Today!  Ok sleep I think.  Spent ages in the morning looking at a problem that was never going to be ours but how do you prove that.  After Ward and I couldn't find anything obvious we passed it to another team who actually quite quickly figured out the problem.  Felt like I'd wasted too much of my time though hrmm.  But I did managed to cut over to the new piece of poo firewall in test in the afternoon, which was super epic awsome, on account of it's taken nearly a year to get there.  Leftover sausages and veggies for dinner, labelled over two hundred photos, and did this blog entry.  Time to collapse...

No movies this week!  Gasp!  What am I going to do for a blog title.. 

Sunday.  24th.  Half way through our long weekend.  Watched Your Name in the evening.  Kinda like Freaky Friday meets The Lake House?  Not that I've ever actually seen The Lake House.  Nice enough, although a tad confusing.  

Monday.  We both took a random day off to have a long weekend. 

Baby guppies!!!

Baby guppies

Did all the washing in the morning - regular clothes washing, then the curtains from the east side window of the study.  Then headed out for the day.  Dropped in at The Scottish Restaurant for brunch, then onto Ikea.  Stu wanted to get a shelf unit for his study for the inside wall.  So we found that and got a couple of bits and pieces but not too much.  Did our food shopping on the way home. 

I'd just filled his water bowl when Stumpy decided to redecorate the place.

WTF Stumpy

So just for that we gave him a bath.

Stumpy in the sink

Stu built his shelves and suddenly the house is a mess again.  Doh. 

Stu building his shelves

Stu's new black shelves

It was also very hot.  All weekend.  We had the cooler going pretty much all weekend, but that did make it a bit humid in the house.  Salmon and salad for dinner, but no photo labelling.  Watched Honey, I Shrunk the Kids in the evening.

Tuesday.  Australia Day.  Our two biggest holidays celebrate invading other countries.  David's suggestion was make New Years Eve a public holiday, so all the poor saps that have to work NYE while everyone else parties will at least get paid overtime for it.  Then Australia Day could be January 1.  That was actually the day we became Australia.  Just a thought.  The day was spent avoiding the heat, a bit of housework, labelling photos and a bit of paint by numbers.  Stu wanted to hang up an aerial for his software radio, so I hacked out all the cherry tree suckers, and pruned the geraniums quite brutally (they were bigger than me!).  Didn't take any before photos unfortunately.  

All the chopping

Stu really didn't like being up a ladder

Stu no likey

I well and truly filled the green bin, with a pile still left to go.  Taco Tuesday for dinner (I'd bought the shells and was going to have them before David left but we never got a round tuit).  The ten taco shells go really well with three people (four each for the boys and two for me), so we end up with leftovers if there's just the two of us.  Then I was loading the dishwasher after dinner and one of Stu's bowls slipped out of my hand and shattered all over the floor.  I seriously had a meltdown.  I really like those bowls, I use them every day, and it was one of the few complete sets we have of anything.  I don't deserve nice things.  Sigh.  Didn't feel like doing any photo labelling, or even watching a movie, so just watched random crap on YouTube.

I don't deserve to live

Wednesday.  Nothing much.  Bit of photo labelling, but not nearly enough to catch up for the week.

Thursday.  Ok day; work drinks; pizza.  Got sad that I had noone to fight with over the garlic dregs from the garlic bread.  Started watching Sound! Euphonium anime series.  Then I watched Honey I Blew Up the Kid.

Friday.  The rain!  All the rain!  In the afternoon I spent an hour and a half renaming and documenting all the objects someone else in our team had created that didn't match our naming scheme.  Le sigh.  Watched Honey We Shrunk Ourselves in the evening.  I'd never seen this one.  Silly of course, but not too bad.  Then I watched the first half of a 2016 New York production of Hamilton.  I had literally no idea what the show was about, well, other than it was an American period piece.  I have to say I struggled with it.  It's mostly all rap, and I *hate* rap.  I struggled to keep up with the pace of it and what was going on and the exposition.  I also found having African Americans playing white guys pretty distracting.  Also.  Jonathan Groff as King George III.  Completely distracted by his spagging all over the place.  Also I reckon he looks a little bit like Freddie Mercury (front teeth and cheeks), he'd look more like him if he lost a little weight..

Saturday.  Woke up at 3am for nearly two hours.  Hurrah.  Did all the hosueworks in the morning.  Did a bit of paint by numbers and photo labelling of Dad's slides in the afternoon.  I'd relied on the dust and scratch filter for the first half of the scanning of his slides, but as it turns out, the hairs that were all over the roof of the scanner were there from the beginning.  The filter doesn't remove the hairs and the slides look terrible, and I'm going to have to redo *a lot* of the first half.  Sigh.  But probably not until I've scanned more of the filing cabinet.  Had a bit of a play with Gimp to make Lego mosaics using custom palettes.  Had chicken kiev for dinner.  Watched The Garden of Words, which I saw at the movies in 2013.  I reckon they must have videoed rain falling in puddles and traced it frame by frame.  Can't see any other way it'd be *that good*.  Then I watched the second half of Hamilton.  For some reason I enjoyed the second half a lot more.  Maybe because it was a bit slower, and I had a better idea of who everyone was??  I think if I watched it again I'd pick up a helluva lot more and possibly enjoy it more.  Or maybe I could just go read a transcript.  Found out that the dude who played Hamilton actually wrote the whole thing.

Sunday.  Today.  Not backdating for a change ;)  Although I am going to need to backdate a whole bunch of This Day in History posts.  Spent the day alternating between housework, computer work (photo labelling) and fun stuff (paint by numbers and jigsaw).  Went out and did a small food shop.  Although with fragments of covid detected in Belconnen sewage, I feel like we should have done a bigger shop in case we end up in lockdown.  Roast lamb for dinner.  Or there will be.  Very shortly :)

2020.

Oh my.

We started the year at EffanC's, suffocating in bushfire smoke. We didn't go out to the club because I was too nervous about bushfires, and in fact even suburban fires. In 1994 I saw spotfires go a full kilometre from the bush, just a couple of hundred metres from our house. So I wanted to stay close. The bushfire smoke hung around for much of January and the devastation the fires caused was just heartbreaking.

The bushfires ended, then we got a massive hail storm that wrote off thousands of cars. I know *lots* of people that had their cars written off. And then it rained. And rained. And rained. Just a few weeks after the fires finished, much of the landscape was flooded. Which apparently is exactly what the river ecosystems *don't* need. Coastal communities begged Canberrans to come down and spend some money to help them recover. So we did. Although just an overnighter for Pete's 40th.

But then.

The C word.

As it hit, coastal communities begged Canberrans to stay away. When we got back from the coast, we dropped into Coles at Gungahlin to pick up a few supplies, including toilet paper (we were down to our last roll at home). We managed to get one of the last packets of toilet paper on the shelves. It was the last time I was to see toilet paper in Coles for about six or seven weeks. Fortunately I was able to get it at Chris's, otherwise things would have been pretty messy. The panic buying extended to all paper products that could be used in lieu of toilet paper - all the tissues and paper towel was gone for weeks as well. Pasta, pasta sauce, rice and even flour and yeast all disappeared off the shelves. I really didn't understand the flour/yeast thing - bread was still freshly available throughout the whole thing. In the second week even fresh food was mostly gone. Long lasting vegetables such as potatoes were nearly all gone, as was most fresh meat. One day (22 March) we went to the Belconnen markets and all three butchers had closed by lunch time Sunday because they'd simply run out of meat to sell.

On Monday 16 March I had the slightest hint of a sore throat and a cough. So Tuesday 17 March I stayed at home. And there I stayed. For six months. Other than a couple of odd days, and dropping in on a couple of weekends to swap out my backup hard drives, I didn't work in the office in any regular fashion until September. As it turns out I love working from home. Who knew. Previously I didn't really like it, partly because of my monitor setup is a bit backwards, but also because if I didn't go into the office every day I would lose the claim to "my" desk. But with everyone else working from home as well, and in fact they had a sticker on my desk for most of that six months saying don't work here (trying to keep people further apart), it wasn't an issue. And I got somewhat used to the monitors being backwards.

By 22 March, most flights around the world had been cancelled. The government imposed a travel ban. For every country they said "Do not travel". Restaurants, bars, cinemas and anything "non-essential" was shut down. I was quite upset by the impact that would have on low income earners. And then I raged at people whinging about their pay raise getting delayed six months. My holiday to Oberammergau to see the Passion Play got postponed two years. They started doing that play to thank God for saving them from the plague. And this year they had to postpone. Because of a plague. There's got to be some irony there somewhere. Qantas grounded all their 747s - forever. I was super sad about this.

In late March I went out at lunch time on a Monday to do the food shopping, when Jamo was a lot less crowded, and did that a couple of times. Still not much in the way of pasta/rice etc. We did big shops fortnightly to minimise having to go out. And I did the shopping by myself for a while too which was no fun because I like going with the sweetie. Every time I went shopping I swore I was getting a sore throat straight after. It was late April before I saw toilet paper again in Coles. June saw an outbreak in Melbourne, and panic buying started up again. In July I finally got my money back from Emirates for my Europe trip, although not the extra I paid for seat allocations.

Things eased up a lot in the second half of the year with no community transmission in Canberra since March. Restaurants opened and stayed open. We were able to start seeing our friends again. It hit Melbourne pretty hard in the middle of the year.  By December it looked like Australia was getting on top of things again. But then a driver of international flight crews got it in December and started spreading it around Sydney. Sydney went into lockdown of sorts and Mum couldn't come visit us after Christmas.

So a pretty wild year on that front.

Very little travel this year, for obvious reasons. I flew up to Sydney in February for Ryan's 21st birthday. But with all the delays it would have been quicker to take the coach. And that turned out to be my only flight for the year. I stayed with Mum and went to the 21st, where I put up a video of all the photos I'd taken of Ryan every week/fortnight/month/year since he was born. Caught the coach back the next morning. In March we went down the coast to stay with Kit and Pete for a surprise party for Pete's 40th. That was a bit of fun. Came home the next day. Did a quick trip to Sydney in late June to inspect my flat after the previous tenants decided to move out. We also dropped in to visit Luc and Lizzi, and on the way back I saw Nepean Dam. My flat ended up being empty for a month, and I had to drop the rent *a lot* which was pretty sad. In late August we wandered around the Snowy Mountains to Tumut, visited several dams and had a lovely afternoon at the Tumut River Brewing Company for Stu's 50th. In November Stu's brother convinced us to go up to Port Macquarie and South West Rocks to visit him and his father.

In lieu of actual travel, I did a *lot* of work on my travel photos. Throughout last year I'd gotten our Hong Kong/Singapore 2016 trip labelled, and had the blog ready for the fourth anniversary since we went. I geotagged my USA 2000 trip, fixed up all the labels, and got photos into the blog. I started geotagging my USA 2004 photos in February, but ran out of steam with that after about a week's worth, because it's *really* hard to geotag photos taken out of a moving car in the middle of outback USA. Next I labelled all twelve and a half thousand UK 2010 photos, finishing in December. I registered a Geonames account, and a Google Cloud account so I could use the Google Maps API in Geosetter.

Work was work. Still doing mostly internetty type stuff like firewalls and proxies. As mentioned previously, it turns out introverts like me like working from home. It's just so much more flexible and it *feels* like I'm home, even though I'm working. It means I can pop something in the slow cooker at lunch time, or something in the oven a bit earlier than I would if I got home at nearly 6pm. Or if it's a quiet Friday afternoon I can flex off for a bit without having to wait for the sweetie to go home or catch a bus. I got a bunch of our gear finally converted over to SNMP v3. I shut off access to an entire old environment. I fought with a particular firewall for months, including spending three hours on the phone to support one weekend trying to fix it. Still no resolution in sight on that one, but Wardie, bestest guy ever, has basically taken over, because he's awesome. Did a bit of training here and there, mostly free stuff. Got a new service desk tool in December, and had a lot of fun making shiny dashboards for it, which a bunch of other sections copied for themselves!  Socially, we had a gin night in early March, just before the lockdown. I actually missed the last work drinks before shutdown because of the slight sore throat I had. In August the guys started going to the Pot Belly for drinks, which we did for a little while before actual work drinks started up again. And I got to run my Christmas barbeque at the lake for over forty people. It was a lovely cool day, which made nice change from so many years where it's been crazy hot or shrouded in bushfire smoke.

Healthwise I was generally pretty good. Bouts of insomnia came and went a few times. Completely frustrating and debilitating. From mid March I felt like I had a permanently sore throat and slight cough for like a month or two. It was likely all in my head though. Got a flu vaccination in April. David came home with a cold in late August. He went home but it was too late - Stu caught it about a week later, and I caught it about five days after that. I was sick for a weekend. Stu was sick for a month. At least. I decided to go on short walks around the neighbourhood every day at lunch to get a little bit of exercise and vitamin D. I passed a lot of magpies, and decided to bribe them to not swoop me in spring by feeding them little bits of roast meat. All through winter they would see me coming and fly over. So cool! But come spring time they lost interest - there was obviously plenty of their own food around which they were more interested in. I also never got swooped :) Went up Mt Rogers once with David. Got some new reading glasses in December (should NOT have gone to Specsavers).

On the friends front, really things only went quiet for about two months from mid March to May. Other than that it was actually pretty much business as usual. We saw our fair share of EffanC at ours or theirs, including drinks over Zoom. We caught up with Kit and Pete when they came up in January to avoid the fires, and in February when they came up again, as well as Pete's 40th at their place in March. Had a few games of Kismet with them as well. We went to Rob and Lynne's with a bunch of peeps in January and again in December, and had them over in May. Went to a bbq at Brett and Sharon's in January, and the middle of the year we saw quite a bit of the A/M/C group, including some dinners, parties and walks. Got to see Rob and Fiona a couple of times too which was nice, as they really went into hibernation during the lockdown. Unfortunately didn't see much of Scott. Also didn't see much of Chrissie. Saw her on her birthday in January and I think that was it. Doesn't help that they are all always either crazy busy or sick. We didn't end up having a hanami lunch with Nat and Andrew.  I invited them but never heard back.  I would have chased them up but Stu was too busy and stressed with a uni assignment.  Had a lovely time at Aquila's 60th in January. Had Nelson and Susan over in August for vegan lasagna and games. Had drinks with Damien in September, I think that was the only time I saw him all year. We were supposed to go to Ben and Sarah's wedding in Queensland in October. Yeah that didn't happen. But Ben was able to have a nice 40th at Gungahlin Lakes on the day. We also had them over for dinner in December. And Doc organised drinks at the George for a bunch of work peeps between Christmas and New Year which was nice.

On the family side, well my family has been here the whole time! David has been living with us for a little over a year. While it can be challenging sometimes (mainly menu planning and trying to remember to vacuum around a shiftworker) it's generally been pretty good. And he fixes things! While he was here he replaced the light fitting in our ceiling fan (I think that might have been before he moved here), fixed the leaky ensuite toilet, installed new taps in the bathroom, installed LEDs everywhere, including some smartlights in the loungeroom that are pretty cool, installed a new extentible clothes line, installed a new oven, fixed the display on Stu's CD player, fixed the frequency on our digital radios, fixed up the bedroom curtain string which had come off the rails, fixed our back fence which had been pushed out by vines and photinia and finally broken in strong winds, phoned up and ordered and picked up a new fix tank lid for me, installed a bracket for the clothes line so we can extend it half way instead of the whole way, helped Stu build his new shelves, rewired the LEDs in Stu's four foot tank so it'd work with a standard transformer, installed a couple of new smoke detectors, fixed my scanner (cable had come loose, and I would have eventually figured this out because I would have moved it to test it on another computer). And he mowed the lawns. Seriously, most awesomest brother ever!!! And super handy having a qualified electrician in the family! About the best we could do to thank him was cook lots of roasts. Including roast lamb on his birthday, and he had a few friends over to help celebrate. I stayed with Mum in Sydney a couple of times - when I went up for Ryan's 21st, and when I inspected my flat in June. We saw a bit of Stu's family as well. Went and visited a few times in August, October and Christmas.  And we saw Scott and Kerry and the family and Jeff and Ruth in November.

Our social club events had to be curtailed somewhat, and I missed out on doing Christmas in July which I've done for a few years in a row now, but at least I got to do Christmas for something like fifty people (a whole bunch had to stay outside due to capacity restrictions). We had a few weekends out there while Stu was on the committee, including in January where I did some cleaning out of the "tool shed", a night in June, our first since February, where we really appreciated the little wood fireplace, and in July where I stared priming the cabinetry. Also had some time in early October. We went out for the last event before lockdown - an epic Mexican feast in February. One of the raffle prizes that night was a six pack of Corona beer with an attached N95 mask. There was a working bee in July where I scraped concrete off a glass door. That night would have been the Christmas in July night, and the alternative was going to be a bonfire, but it rained, so we cooked marshmallows in the wood heater in the shed. The first event post lockdown was a halloween party where I got to be Lego 80s Classic Space guy again. And then my Christmas party. And we finished the year there with a few friends and a lot of bubbles.

Another fairly quiet year with the fish. I bought ten zebra danios in April and put a few in my three tanks. Half of them died, some fairly quickly. I lost the angel in my 620T tank in September, and Chrissie's catfish was looking super depressed. I stuck my hand in to see if it was still alive, and the water was COLD. The heater had died, taking my angel with it. Pretty upset about that. I took a random day off in September, thinking I'd do some fish stuff in the morning and other things in the afternoon. But I ended up doing fish stuff *all day*. And I managed to break the lid of the upstairs two foot while I was trying to clean it. Stu got some little sucking catfish and some guppies at the end of the year. So Stu's four foot has ten congo tetras, one loach, one siamensis and four tiny sucking catfish. My 620T has Chrissie's huge sucking catfish, a huge old cory and two female danios. My upstairs two foot has two male danios, one who has been sick since shortly after I got him, but refuses to die. Little trooper. It also has a sucking catfish, and six of the guppies Stu got at the end of the year. My downstairs two foot has four of the male guppies and two sucking catfish from Stu's purchase. Also downstairs are five little tanks, all with two or three guppies in them to cycle the tanks.  No change with Stumpy.  He's just as much a gumby as ever.

Not much going on with the Lego. I'm still sporadically sorting Vic's Lego but it's just so painful. If sets were complete it would be a joy, but none of them are, so it's just depressing. I think the only sets I built all year were the set of Shanghai Stu got me for Christmas, and Neil's International Space Station.

The year started slowly with jigsaws - most of the first quarter was taken up with a three thousand piece jigsaw of The Bombing of Algiers. I did two sections of the forty two thousand piece Disney behemoth - Peter Pan and The Little Mermaid. Very few at work thanks to the lockdown, and not too many at home because I'm just too damned busy all the time.

I continued working on labelling and sorting photos. As mentioned above I geotagged and labelled thousands of photos. I also did a lot of filing of photos, but there's still sooo much to be done in that space. In March I started scanning Dad's slides. I started out doing a box a week, and at that rate it was going to take me four or five years. But working from home during lockdown gave me an extra half hour in the mornings that I used to scan a box a day. I managed to get all his slides scanned by Christmas, although I still had a bit of work to rescan slides that had dust on them on the first pass. Didn't quite complete that by the end of the year. In December I had a bit of a play with a gallery generator. The only reason I'm labelling all my holiday photos is because I want to get the majority of them online. I did consider Flickr, but I just have this feeling they're not going to last. Too many buyouts and changes of conditions. Most likely I'll just use S3 and pay the few cents a month it'll likely cost.

I continued to rage at Apple and the crappy things it does. It still messes with the timestamps on my files. I can't download movies first go, or second or third or fourth in a lot of cases. And can't download timelapse videos *at all* to my PC, I have to save them to Google Drive first and then if I'm lucky the encoding/dimensions will be right for me to play them on my PC. Calendar and contacts refuse to sync to Google like they used to (I don't think it's worked since I got my new phone two years ago and I've tried *everything*). The contacts don't even sync to Apple Cloud. I'm about ready to give up on Apple.

Most of the stuff around the house was done by David. Because he's awesome. Our oven element died in March. I cleaned the oven while he investigated getting a new element, but in the end we got a whole new oven. While I was on a work break. With no sleep. Yeah really not the best mental state to be buying home appliances. In April we went out to buy half turn taps. Again, while on a work break, from a situation at work I probably should not have left. The anxiety of that day was terrible!! But the new taps are amazing, I love them! Unfortunately the dripping shower was still there. Guess it's not the taps that are leaking. We had a plumber come look at it, and he did a whole heap of tests, and decided the membrane was gone (duh) and most likely just leaking through the grout. I could have saved myself four hundred dollars if I'd just done the "cover the drain and splash water on the walls" trick which I did just after and proved the same thing. We got a resealer to come have a look and give us a quote. But he was confused about why there would be so much leaking through the grout, promised to send a quote for a complete retile/reseal, but never did. Even when I mailed them again and asked. In March we cleaned out the dumping ground room so that Stu could have his own office. He'd been wanting to do that for ages. The timing was great, as it meant he had a private office during lockdown. He got new shelves later in the year and a whole heap of toys, and he really loves his little space. I spent a weekend tidying up the dungeon and under the house and rearranging everything to keep it clear of the drip. We had to get the Chinese pistachio tree removed in August because the trunks were sagging apart and it was in danger of falling down (onto Kit's garage). I was super sad about that because it was such a beautiful tree, and the birds absolutely love it, and as it turns out it was a great shade for the eastern side of the house, so our house is a lot hotter in the mornings now. We also got the tree guys to be brutal on our photinia which was getting out of control. Again. We had a roof restoration done in October and the roof looks very shiny now. Next up: solar. The garden continued to stay out of control. Although we did get a few strawberry plants off Michelle and got some very nice strawberries off them in October (the ones the slugs didn't get at).

We still managed to eat out a little bit this year. We took Kit and Pete out for dinner in January to Bella Vista. Went to Kinn Thai in January, February and March (which was our last eating out before lockdown). It's always fast service and the food really good. Had some very nice pizzas at Grease Monkey in January. Went to Grill'd with Neil in January to avoid the food court during school holidays. Tried Malatang Hotpot in January too. The one I had was fairly bland, and the one Neil had was super epic spicy, even for him. Need to try something in the middle, but then there was lockdown, and they're still not allowing you to handle the tongs to choose your own food. Tried Wild Panda in Civic when I got back from Sydney, but I don't remember it being anything special. Had lunch with the sweetie at Gus's in May - first eating out post lockdown. Had brunch at Rocksalt in June. Had some nice pork belly with crackling at the Lake George hotel a week before my birthday. It was going to be my birthday meal, but we ended up going to Chong Co on my birthday. And KFC for lunch of course. Went to Happy's a couple of times with the sweetie in September and October. Met up with a bunch of N-Gang people for dinner at Indian Pantry in October for a feast. Tried out Herbert's in November, and went there a couple of times in November and a couple in December with Tony and/or the Chrises. Had drinks a few times with the sweetie at the Beirut Bunker Bar. Had Disappointing Sushi, aka Hero Sushi in Civic in December. It lived up to expectations. It's literally a running joke with us now. You can be guaranteed that the hot food will be cold and everything has avocado in it.

As always, I do quite a bit of interesting cooking. I don't quite know how I manage that, since I'm not really a very good cook. Actually I'm basically a lazy cook. I like cooking things that don't require a lot of fiddly preparation or a lot of cleaning up. I cooked two pavlovas in January. I think this was the first time I'd ever made a full pavlova. I thought I'd have another go at Christmas and failed miserably. Twice. We had cheese and bacon sausages we got from Coles a few times. They're great to have in the fridge because they last ages, so we can use them when we've run out of other food. Made curried sausages in March to try and use up some of the many tins of curry powder we have in the house. We tried out Dominos "deep pan" pizzas a couple of times. They were pretty disappointing. Nothing like the crispy doughy deep fried goodness of pizzas in the eighties. Tried a slow cooked marinated beef in March to try and use up some of the mustard powder we have in the house. It turned out pretty well. Made nachos in late March, probably the first time I've ever made nachos myself. Several of our lunches during lockdown consisted of various types of puff pastry scrolls - cheese and vegemite and pizza scrolls being favourites. Did a coq au vin in April. Cooked a couple of "Yum! Delicious!" cakes and a cashew slice with Mum's peanut slice recipe. I also did Anzac Biscuits on Anzac Day which has become somewhat of a tradition in recent years. I did a few tomato based stews as we went into winter, and we think all the extra tomato set off David's gout, so we had to cut those right back. There was Sizzler cheesy toast a couple of times, and taco Tuesday multiple times - soooo bad but soooo good!! Did an epic lasagna in May. Tried a pulled pork in May. It was pretty amazing, but such a waste of crackling ;) David obliged me with a Country Cheese and cheese sauce craving and had quite a bit of that over winter. Whenever a packet is open it evaporates very quickly. Tried a couple of non-tomato based bakes from my gratins and bakes book - a broccoli and cheese penne with garlic and lemon crumbs, and a potato, bacon and blue cheese bake, both were very nice but also quite similar to my regular veggie bakes. Made an Irish stew in July - Stu was going to make it but life got in the way so I did it.  It was nice enough. Tried slow cooking beef brisket in July and fell in love with it, and did it several times. As well as some slow cooked pulled beef and NQN's beef cheeks as well. Slow cookers are amazing for hearty winter cooking! David reminded me of our youth and Dinner Winner, and we had Coles' One Pan Dinner a couple of times, and even had authentic Dinner Winner once. There may have been a rocky road in there at some point, and a fairly nice gingerbread cheese cake I made at Christmas. There were several weekends where I spent several hours cooking up meals for a week or more, to save cooking during the week (which is really no fun at all when you don't heat up the kitchen to save money on heating costs).

I saw exactly one movie/theatre/show/exhibition this year -
* Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker

As usual for recent years I/we worked my/our way through a lot of movie series. This may have been aided *a lot* by Disney+ !
* finished up watching through all the James Bond movies
* watched Star Wars episodes VII and VIII before seeing IX at the movies
* finished up the Pixar series with Coco and Toy Story 4
* watched a *lot* of original/remakes of Disney movies - Aladdin, Dumbo, Lady and the Tramp, Freaky Friday, The Lion King, The Parent Trap (just 1 and 2 they don't have 3 yet), 101 Dalmatians and Mulan
* saw a few "Australian classic" movies - My Brilliant Career, which I really didn't like, and Ned Kelly, which I thought was better
* in March was the 30th anniversary of seeing Labyrinth for the first time, so we watched it on David's Bluray
* we had to watch some pandemic disaster movies, so watched World War Z first up because Contagion had been pulled from Netflix, but David had Contagion on DVD so we all watched that later too
* Frozen II
* Airport series
* Naked Gun series
* Star Wars - I think we saw all nine this year
* almost all the Ghibli movies, except Grave of the Fireflies which wasn't on Netflix. Some of them are amazing. Some of them are crap.
* a few of the Herbie movies (still a couple to go, it's a bit of a struggle since they're very silly)
* Die Hard 1 and 2 and Love Actually at Christmas. David dissed Love Actually on Facebook, but he had the choice to leave but didn't and he seemed to be enjoying himself. Just sayin ;)

And again, somehow we managed to watch our way through a lot of TV. I always feel like I don't have time to watch tv/movies, and yet somehow we see a lot. Mostly from Thursday to Sunday, as Monday to Wednesday is "work" nights.
* first episode of Who is America
* Star Trek: Picard
* The Mandalorian (season 1)
* Big Bang Theory - finished mid year, took a little over year to watch all 12 seasons
* Brooklyn 99 until it ran out of episodes (up to season 6?)
* Fuller House (last seasons)
* Lego Masters (second Australian season)
* Unorthodox
* Filthy Rich
* The Dismissal
* The Miraculous Mellops
* The Simpsons (most of the way through season 5)
* High Score (documentary)
* Against the Wind
* Discovery (season 3)
* The IT Crowd (all of it)
* The Mandalorian (season 2)
* The Queen's Gambit

Not a lot of reading this year. I don't catch the bus much and I mostly feel too tired to read when I go to bed.
* Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, by J.K. Rowling
* Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy (all five books in the trilogy), by Douglas Adams
* Penguin Bloom, by Cam Bloom and Bradley Trevor Greive (I also started Heartache and Birdsong)

Other stuff!
* Started "This day in history" posts
* Got Disney+ and watched a *lot* of Disney
* Got some cute "living stones" - succulent plants that grow extremelly slowly
* Played with Picasa for Ryan's 21st "morph" series
* Got our NBN fixed in January - because last time they did work they broke one of our connectors so we were only getting half the speed we should. David organised that because he's awesome.
* Used Picasa to tag people in a lot of work photos, still a long way to go on that
* Collected the next batch of Stikeez - got all but one of the specials
* Our rose bush and rhododendron out the front put out just a couple of flowers right at the end of summer when it finally rained
* Had cheese and nibbles with bubbly, and Chong Co delivered for our anniversary
* Went bed shopping in June but didn't find anything we really liked
* Went to Ikea and bought storage cubes for David and drawers for stu
* My domain - kazza.id.au turned 18
* Had a big outage of my web hosting in late June. Went looking for a new host and found VentraIP, but they didn't support Perl DBD::mysql so had to cancel it all again. But it did force me to do an upgrade of a dll in Eudora which allows secure downloads without ssl errors, so that's a win
* Had issues with the vacuum cleaner - it kept getting jammed - with my hair :(
* Got so much rain in August all creeks and rivers around Canberra flooded a bit
* The boys bought me a Dyson cordless for my birthday
* Couldn't get on the Qantas 747 joy ride flight out of Canberra, because Qantas' website sux donkey balls. So I watched it fly over central Canberra from Mt Ainslie instead (arguably better for photos anyway!)
* Listened to some podcasts with the sweetie - The Eleventh, Winds of Change, Thirteen Minutes to the Moon
* Got super sad at all the 747s around the world being retired
* A neighbourhood yappy dog pissed me off by barking non stop for literally hours at a time
* The winter was so warm our potatoes survived the whole winter without freezing
* Enjoyed Floriade in the suburbs!
* Went for a drive with the sweetie around Denman Prospect and out to Cotter
* Had a Bunnings sausage in October for first time since lockdown
* Voted in the ACT elections early so I didn't get a Democracy Sausage (most places I don't think were doing them anyway)
* Had a free run to the tip because what we took was mostly all metal
* Had to fight with windoze to maintain access to our NAS - its ancient version of SMB is making windoze super sad
* Tidied up all the packing materials in garage, with the idea to use it all to sell stuff
* Vodien moved my blog to a new host, but didn't tell me. Well, apparently they did tell me - to an email address that doesn't actually work anymore.
* Failed at jeans shopping
* Tried out Return-It's bulk facility which is only marginally better than their drop off system
* Saw the moon and Saturn and Jupiter near each other, but not at their closest point

Our year was finished off at the club. We headed out there on New Years Eve eve and stayed two nights, and had a fairly relaxed New Years.

2020 sure was one crazy year. Here's hoping 2021 settles down quickly into the "new normal".

Happy new year!! 

Not backdating for a rare change...!

Monday.  At lunch time a shower sealer dude came to look at the shower.  Basically he was stumped.  Never a good start.  Sigh.  David mowed the lawn in the afternoon - bestest brother ever!!  Spent some time in the evening dumping the sql from my old gallery apps into csv.  I dumped the two tables - one with the file names and one with the descriptions, then did vlookups in excel to merge them together.  Really I just wanted a dump of what I had since I can't get the gallery app to work (it's just too old and the mysql calls don't work in php7 - I'd basically have to convert mysql_ to mysqli_ *everywhere* and there'd still be no guarantee that it'd work).  Then I dropped the two databases and cleared out all the content.  

Tuesday.  December.  Seriously wtf?  I remember things in July being super recent, how can it possibly be December already?  Such a bizarre year.  Spent the evening doing more tidying up of my hosting.

Christmas tree 2020

Wednesday.  Went jeans shopping at lunch.  Arrghh.  I was hoping that the trend towards bigger phones would eventually filter back into a trend for bigger pockets in jeans.  Well half the jeans I looked at didn't have any pockets at all!!  And the ones that did were that horrible fake wear style that I thought died a fashion disaster years ago.  Hate. Hate. Hate.  I'm going to have to replace them soon though as they're falling apart.  I looked up my blog to see when I bought them - September 2016!  Four pairs, which meant each pair lasted about a year's worth of wear.  Take that Jeans West with your stoopid crappy jeans that only lasted the equivalent of like six months - last half as long and pay four times the price?  I don't think so!  Apple continued to be a piece of crap, and I got the "device attached to the system is not functioning" error - while copying photos!  Piece of crap.  Worked second go through, and even got both movies off it first go.  Didn't get anything else much done though after backing up the phone and backing up my computer and paying bills.  On a lighter note, our recycling got picked up.

Thursday.  Cirrus has unveiled its west tower.

Cirrus Belconnen

In other news, it was revealed that the garbos wanted a 4% pay rise.  Per year.  For three years.  !!  Taking them up to something like $110k/year.  Which is a *lot*.  Certainly a lot more than I make.  Craziness.  Had a good long play with making dashboards in our new service desk system.  Took my notes that I'd written last week up to load a new beer into the till.  Seemed to work :)  Mandalorian in the evening.

Friday.  Woke up at 3am.  Hurrah.  So a bit of a zombie day.  Had a bit of a play with reporting in our new service desk system.

Saturday.  All. The. Things.  Crazy busy productive day just getting things done, including food shopping.  Stu cooked mackerel in miso paste for dinner.  Mandalorian and then the live action Mulan in the evening.  I thought it wasn't too bad, certainly better than Aladdin (which was pretty lame) and even The Lion King (which was almost identical to the original but flat and lifeless).  

Lego nativity

Wooden nativity

Christmas tree

Sunday.  Not quite as productive a day but not too bad.  

These are nice - mini toasts (bought at Chris's for $2) with leftover cream cheese from the weekend, and blackberries we bought on Saturday.  The tomato ones were ok but a bit big to fit in my mouth and too hard to bite in half.

Blackberry and cheese toasties

Went for a walk at lunch and saw inside a mobile phone tower comms room that someone had left the door open on.

Mobile phone tower comms room

Had a huge roast beef for dinner (leftovers ftw!) and someone brought up planning Christmas, which is always .. tricky.. hrmm.

Monday.  ok day I guess.  Went for a walk and saw one of my birds (haven't seen them really at all in weeks and weeks).  Spent half an hour hacking weeds and cherry tree suckers and didn't even make a dent.  Sausages and salad for dinner.  Watched the first episode of a documentary series on The Mandalorian which was interesting.  But by the time that was all done it was 8:14pm, and too late to really feel like starting anything new.  So I blogged.  Hurrah.

Christmas tree

Backdating.  Oh hai.

Monday.  Scanning.  Work.  Actually wore shorts to work.  Ok so I was at home, but it still felt a little strange.  The only time I ever wear shorts to work is the day of our Christmas party at the lake.  Cooked the beef stew for dinner (I'd done all the prep on the weekend, so it was just a matter of chucking it in the slow cooker all afternoon.  Nice sunset.  Did my UK photo labelling, then caught up on RSS feeds, but no blogging.  Whoops.

Pretty sunset

Tuesday.  Scanning.  Work.  Saw my birds at lunch.  David came along and we noticed a flooded pit that shouldn't be flooded, so David called Icon water to come fix.  Did my UK photo labelling.  One more night to go!  Didn't feel like doing much else.  Filed some photos.  I thought I'd download my phone photos so I can blog them at some point.  Except Apple died copying the movies, as it always does, and no amount of disconnecting/reconnecting it would get it to even open the phone in explorer.  *sigh*  Hate Apple.  HATE.  Wondering if my next phone will be a Samsung.  I'm sick of Apple's crapfullness.  Did some blogging.

Wednesday.  Scanning.  Work.  OMFG no recycling pickup.  Suez workers want a 4% pay rise and are striking til they get it.  4% seems a little high to me given our rate of inflation, but they're prolly paid like crap to begin with, so whatevs.  But still.  No recycling pickup!!  Gah!! 

Went to Specsavers at lunch.  Honestly should NOT have gone to Specsavers.  There's too many staff and too many people and they're just not very well organised.  The first half of the appointment was fine.  The general staff did scans of my eyes, and then I got to see the optometrist and all that was fine.  But then she said I should do a field of vision test and I could either wait and do it now or make an appointment.  I asked how long it would be and she went off and found out and said oh they can do it now, and I'll see you straight after.  Sweet.  So I went to go have it but they realised someone was in the room, and did I want to look at frames while I waited.  No that's fine, shouldn't be long, I'll just wait.  So I waited.  And waited and waited and waited.  I saw the previous patient leave, but noone bothered to come get me.  When they *finally* did the test, they said, oh your optometrist has gone on break, it'll be twenty five minutes, do you want to look at frames while you wait.  And I'm like NO, you told me I'd just do the test then get to see the optometrist.  So he goes off to try and find someone else to look at my results.  Ten minutes later and I'm waiting and fuming.  So I get up to leave and the guy goes oh did noone see you and I'm like no.  So he goes to the original optometrist and she comes out of her lunch break to tell me oh your results are fine.  Fricken I could have just left and you could have called me if any issues.  Fricken hopeless.  So I was fuming at all the stoopid by the time I got back to work and then had to deal with all the stoopid at work, which of course I couldn't because I was in a crap mental state.  Sigh. 

I left early with Stu to go pick up the car.  And had wine.  Because it was that kind of day.  The highlight of the day was that I finally finished labelling all twelve and a half thousand UK photos!  But the drama of the day was not over.  Kit and Pete had missed a document that needed to be signed for their new house to settle, and so it was all going to get delayed and cost them who knows how much money to sort out, and then they'd be homeless until it all got sorted out.  Which is never great when you've got so many animals to look after.  And have to go back to work at some point but all your clothes are packed.  

Oh, and there was also the cicada I rescued when I got back from lunch.  It was on the wall in the stairwell of our building.  So I grabbed it and took it outside and got a few photos before it flew away.

Small cicada

Thursday.  Scanning.  Work.  Work drinks.  Continuation of Kit's dramas.

Friday.  Hadn't gotten a new box of slides out to scan (and couldn't get at it cause David's car was in the way) so went back and fixed up a few rolls of previous boxes that needed fixing up (eg straighting or cleaning).  Work.  Discovery and Mandalorian in the evening.

Saturday.  All the things in the morning.  Super productive morning by 9:30, although didn't get as much done after that.  Had to log onto work at lunch time to try and fix a stoopid firewall problem, but the vendor couldn't figure it out either.  Even after three and a half hours on the phone.  So that was a bit of a poo.  Went over to Chris's to see if he had any veggies going.  He had some zucchinis which were looking pretty sad, so he gave them to me for free!  Win!  Cooked the whole lot of them (other than a few of the worst bits) and had them with the beef brisket that had been slow cooking all afternoon.  Watched the episode of The Simpons with Tom Jones in it, and we were like, what was that spoof movie he was in, and realised it was Mars Attacks!  So we watched that after.  Rented from Amazon Prime.

Random plant flower

Sunday.  Houseworks in the morning.  I'm having to close the blinds on the south-east side of the house in the mornings now.  Our lovely pistachio tree that used to shade the house in the morning is gone, which is super sad.  Did a bunch of poking around with my hosting trying to tidy it up a bit.  Backing up files and rearranging things and deleting things and generally tidying up.  Still a lot of work I want to do in that space.  Culled photos for our North Coast holiday, and spent *hours* blogging it.  Also did a whole bunch of backdating of other blog entries.  If you don't use an RSS feed reader you may want to go back in time a few months, there's likely all sorts of entries you may have missed ;)  Leftovers for dinner.