Backdating, story of my life ;)

So where were we?  I'd been sick.  Starting Friday afternoon, most of Saturday in bed or sitting in the car.  On Sunday I felt a little better although super tired on account of very little sleep.  I decided it would depend how much sleep I got whether I would feel up to going to work on Monday.

Monday.  I actually slept really well - and for nine hours!  I was feeling a lot better, so thought I'd go to work, and go have a lie down if things got too much.  But I was actually ok all day so that was nice.

Had all my UK photo labelling done before dinner which was good.  Had a bit more of a think about hosting and gallery apps.  Had a serious meltdown because I was feeling underappreciated for all the cooking and cleaning I do.

And the kitchen light fitting caught this epic centipede.

Tuesday.  Woke up at 3:30 and never got back to sleep *sigh*.  Did a bit of UK photo labelling but stopped at Stonehenge - because a couple of hundred photos will basically just be a copy/paste so will be very quick to do.  Instead I was looking at cameras (mmm Sony A7C) and playing with Geosetter (see Geosetting for Fun and Pleasure).  

Wednesday.  Slept well.  Seems I can only sleep well every other day.  Got myself a gmaps api key (see previous geosetting link).

Thursday.  Slept well.  Two nights in a row!  Went into work for the day - six months to the day that I started working from home.  Went up to Pot Belly for drinks after work.  Watched the second episode of the Netflix show "High Score" (watched the first one the other night, not sure when).

Friday.  Woke up at ~1am til well after 4am *sigh*.  I'd planned to take a random day off, which was going to be a bit sucky to be so tired through.  Had a bit of a slow start then got stuck into my day.  I thought I'd do some fish tank stuff in the morning, then maybe some tax stuff in the afternoon.  Well the fish stuff took All. Day.  I started with the upstairs two foot (and managed to smash the lid in the sink when I was cleaning it :(:(:( ), moved onto Chrissie's tank after a break, then the angel tank (with no angels in it), and finally the downstairs two foot.  With an hour at work in the afternoon for a meeting.  I had plans for the other tanks too, I just ran out of time. 

I also took photos of the new bracket David installed out the back for the clothes line.  This way you can extend the line only half way out - where it's all under cover - so if it's going to be rainy it'll stay out of the elements.  Have I ever mentioned I have the bestest brother ever?  And this was after he mowed the front lawn as well.  He's just too awesome :)

Caught a bus into town (second bus in six months).  Met up with the sweetie and Damien who were having a drink, then we went to Happy's for dinner.

Came home and watched third episode of High Score.

Saturday.  Slept well!  Hurrah!  I didn't think I would on account of all the meat I had for dinner at Happy's.  Stu was still sick though.  He had a full week at home off sick, then all this week he was still coughing and spluttering, but his work would still rather he went to the office than work from home and keep his germs to himself.  Silly people.  

Did quite a lot of stuff on the todo list - which worked out to mostly fixing up slide scanning (the dust and scratch filter is sometimes a bit too enthusiastic and blats out real details, so have to redo those with no filter), photo processing, and blogging.  We felt like wedgies for dinner, so that's what we had!  With lots of sour cream and sweet chili sauce.  Watched the fourth episode of High Score, then Spirited Away, which I first (and last saw) in 2005 in Brisbane.  I had no memories at all of it.  Hurrah for dementia.  Hrmm.

Sunday.  Hurty kept me awake for hours in the middle of the night so that sucked.  Bit of a nothing day in the end.  Did a bit of blogging.  

David brought home a packet of Dinner Winner, so I had to make that for our dinner :)  Watched a documentary on Ruth Bader Ginsburg in the evening.

Early on in the year the sweetie decided he wanted to go to Tasmania for his 50th birthday.  We'd go down for a long weekend and just have a nice quiet weekend in Hobart.

Then Covid-19 happened. 

We couldn't plan anything in advance.  We couldn't even guarantee we'd be allowed across the border into NSW much more than a few weeks in advance.  So we sat on the idea and wondered what we might be able to do or where we might be able to go.

Then in early August Lorraine Elliot of Not Quite Nigella blogged about her trip to Tumut, Tumbarumba, Gundagai and Yass, including a visit to the Tumut River Brewing Company.  I thought a brewery tour and a weekend in Tumut sounded like a great idea and suggested it to the sweetie.  He thought it sounded like a great idea too.  The Sunday before we planned to go down I called up to see if tours would even be running (because, covid), and they were, and got ourselves booked in.  I didn't book accommodation until the day we left, because I didn't want to have to go through the drama of cancelling if one of us got sick in the intervening time.

We took the slow way to Tumut on the Saturday, via Adaminaby, snow and dams.

Sunday morning we visited Blowering Dam and the Tumut lookout before walking up to the pub.

The brewery itself is setup in an old store building, and the pub is setup next door in what used to be a tyre store.  Out the front all the tables are full of people enjoying lunch and a beer in the glorious late winter day.

There's a hand santising station out the front, setup like a beer tap!

Inside is full of comfy couches, and the day's live performance act, Toby Mobbs, is getting setup.

We enquire about our tour booking.  It seemed to have gone astray, however there's two other groups for a tour booked, so we pay and go in to sit down.  There's a couple of different options you can get - the tour; tour and tasting; or tour, tasting and meal.  We opt for the latter - tour, tasting and meal.  This includes the talk by Tim Martin, one of the owners, four 7oz tasters, and a burger or mini pizza.  All for $35.  Absolutely excellent value!!

We start with a pint of Full Grunt and enjoy drinking a beer in front of all the equipment.

While we're waiting, we have a look around.  There's the processing tanks, as well a series of fermenting tanks.

On the other end of the building are the stores of grains and hops, and cans ready for canning.  The canners come and setup in the middle of the floor and can on the spot.

On one side is a keg cleaning? filling? both? station

12:30pm rolls around and Tim gets started on his story.  Two guys have a dream to make great beer.  They all live happily ever after.

Not quite!

The story has been going on for years, and has been one drama and set back and battle after another, over and over and over again.  Which is such a shame, because they do in fact make great beer, and the brewery is an amazing thing for Tumut to have going for it.  

We have a couple of breaks during the talk (once you break that seal.. ;) ), and we get started on our tasters.  You get four tasters each, so the sweetie and I worked our way through eight different beers.

Some of the others got the Full Grunt burger and were raving about it, so for lunch we got one of those, and a mini pizza.  I wasn't quite concentrating when I went to order the food - I should have gotten something a bit more adventurous than pepperoni ;)  Sadly the sweetie had eaten half the burger before I got a chance to get a photo!

After telling the story of how the brewery came to be, Tim then went into the details of the beer making process, explaning the whole thing from start to finish, and how they use locally sourced ingredients where possible.  Did I mention this brewery is great for the local area? :)

And if you want to know about the bubble wrap marks on the side of the vats, you'll have to go and take a tour to hear the story!

After the tour is done, we head back out into the lounge.  We grab another pint each and listen to the last couple of songs by Toby Mobbs.

His last song of the day is "Three Cities" about "coming from" three cities - Albury-Wodonga and Wagga Wagga.  

I also have a bit of a wander round the pub.  

The bottle wall is amazing.  There's all sorts of historic bottles and cans there, and it was cool to try and pick ones I'd had.

We had a thoroughly lovely afternoon there, and it was a great way to spend Stu's 50th (even tho that was the next day, shh! ;) ).

The next morning on our way out of town we dropped in to pick up a mixed case of beer.  You can buy them individually, or in four packs, six packs or cases.  We opted for six different four packs, as the four packs were already bound and easy to pick up.

Tim saw us there and brought out a small glass of a sour that's nearly ready for canning.  It was very refreshing - it will be good in summer!

I truly hope Tim gets a "happily ever after" - he's put in sooo much effort!!

PS, as I started writing this this afternoon I was chatting to Tony, and he said Tim? or someone from TRBC was at Herbert's just down the road!  Today!!  And I missed it!!!  Gahh!!!!  They also tapped their 50 Shades of Purple last night, I'm going to have to get down there to try it!!

One fun thing I did on our Tumut weekend two weeks ago was reproduce four photos Dad took in Adaminaby on a trip there in June 1961 (a group of them did a tour around the Snowy Mountains Scheme which was still in the process of being constructed).

Just look at the growth of the trees in sixty years!

1961 and 2020 photos below for comparison.

And here's me comparing the scene!

747s are the most beautiful aircraft in the skies.  Concordes were too but they don't fly anymore.  A380s are just big and fat.  No the 747 was just beautiful.  And I am going to sorely miss them. 

My first flight on a 747 was on VH-ECB in 1983 when we went to America for the first time. This was taken at our stopover in Honolulu.  

On the next leg of the flight, from Honolulu to LA, David and I were allowed to go up to the cockpit before we arrived into LA.  I remember seeing LA from the cockpit of that 747.

My last ever flight on a 747 was from Hong Kong to Sydney coming home from our East Asia cruise.  In fact the flight over and the flight back were both on 747s.  I was hoping to go up to the flight deck on one of those flights.  Unfortunately we very late getting into Hong Kong on the way over and didn't want to hassle them, and I was far too tired on the way back.  So that was the end of that.  Here is VH-OJS in Hong Kong, the last 747 I ever flew on.

The week before last, Qantas flew its last 747 around Sydney, Brisbane and Canberra for a series of farewell flights.

And as it turns out, I'd been on that particular 747 before - when she was painted bright red Wunala Dreaming in 2004.

Here she is at Sydney Airport next to VH-EBU (Nalanji Dreaming).

And here she is at LA as we left for Denver.

Since I couldn't get a ticket for the joy flight out of Canberra because Qantas' website sux donkey balls, I did the next best thing and headed out with a bunch of planespotters to see a 747 in flight for likely the very last time (it got a lot more crowded than this later on).

I actually took this on my phone looking through binoculars.

There was a pretty strong southerly wind, and most flights were taking off to the south.  The tower asked which way they wanted to go, and they said they wanted to take off to the north, with the tail wind.  

They turned quite quickly round to the south - a lot more tightly than any of the commercial flights.  She passed round the back of Mt Ainslie behind the trees.

And then headed down to the Snowy Mountains, so we all stood around waiting for three quarters of an hour.  We were all watching the radar for the return, and I spotted her first through the binoculars.

And then the flybys of Canberra.

First from the south up and over Mt Ainslie where we all were.

Going pretty slowly too - flaps were partly extended

Coming back over the airport

Did a loop, then came back the other way

Then another loop and straight into land.

Water cannon salute (C-130 taking off in the background)

Last week VH-OEJ left for the Mojave Desert to the aircraft graveyard :(  But on the way she left this goodbye..

Goodbye Queen of the Skies

Wednesday last week.

Flowers!

Saw Stumpy for the first time in ages.

Had leftover lamb for dinner.  I cooked it with broccolini, snow peas, dark soy sauce and some brown sugar, served with rice, cashews and sesame seeds.  For something so random it turned out ok.  Well Stu really liked it and he even went back for seconds.  Looked like crap but hey :)

Then spent a good chunk of the evening blogging.

Thursday.  Slept well!!  What a refreshing change.  Beer, pizza, and Naked Gun 2 1/2.

Stumpy kept Stu company for a while at work

Friday.  Slept well!  (with assistance).  Finished scanning box 14 of Dad's slides (three this week!).  It takes about ten minutes to scan a batch of four slides, but I can do other things while it's going.  Had a productive morning churning through tickets.

Did our food shopping at lunch.  OMFG Coles had toilet paper!!  First time I've seen toilet paper in Coles since the beginning of March.  Still depleted on the flour/rice/pasta/tomato section though.  

Had a pretty stressful afternoon.  Trying to help someone fix something at work.  Couldn't figure out why it had broken - by rights it should never have worked.  Came up with a workaround, but then had to go with David to get new taps.  Remember a few years back the shower was leaking, and I took a year to regrout and seal it?  Well the shower was still leaking.  Not as much, but it was still dripping downstairs.  And the bath had mismatched taps after our last attempt to get the vanity working, and the vanity taps (at least the cold water) was broken as well.  So really we needed to replace everything in the bathroom.  So David finally had some time to replace the taps, and normally I'd could flex off an hour or two with no problems.  But with the issues at work, plus all the other work I needed to do that afternoon, I was feeling super anxious about being away.  Never a good start to a shopping expedition.  So we went to Reece's first.  They have quite a large supply room, but you can't look at that, you can only look at the show room...  which only had a couple of different options, and we couldn't get any service.  The only person in the room was on the phone (on speaker phone no less) and wasn't going anywhere.  We waited about ten minutes before giving up and going to Bunnings.  So we found a bunch of taps but when we went to check fittings, realised the gooseneck for the vanity is a couple of millimetres too big for the new fittings.  ie, a new gooseneck would be too small for our current t-piece.  #grunt.  So asked someone if we could speak to a plumbing expert.  They called someone and they said he was with a couple of customers.  So we waited.  Eventually he turns up, says, oh there's more options at the back of aisle 58, and I'm leaving for the day, bye.  Great.  So sure enough, the back of aisle 58 has more options.  But the why the #$^@ couldn't all the taps be together???  Idiots.  So looked at the options.  Not really all that many.  Especially because I wanted those fancy taps where you *know* the tap is off, you don't have to grind into the washer to turn it off.  They're called half turn taps, did you know?  But there was only one gooseneck available that was "guaranteed to fit" - because it had the two different sized fittings - we could see it through the plastic.  But it didn't have the half turn taps.  We tried again to get a plumbing expert.  Eventually one came along.  We told him the gooseneck was a different size now.  And he was like.. oh..? really..?   So much for an expert.  Can you tell I was having fun being there just waiting around and not knowing if we were even getting the right thing?  hrmm.  So in the end decided to forego the gooseneck and just get three pairs of taps - two wall mounts, one vanity top.  All the same half turn style.  And also.. OMFG Bunnings was *packed*.  It wasn't even after hours, but I guess because of the long weekend everyone was there trying to get stuff for their home improvements.  Busier there that it normally is even on a weekend!!  Craziness!!

So got home, and I got back into work.  Figured out how/when/why aforementioned problem had occurred (the shopping break was probably good for that).  Ploughed through my work for an hour, then gave David moral support in the bathroom.  The new flanges don't quite cover things on the vanity, we'll need some extenders, and the old ivory gooseneck does look a little odd with the chrome finished taps.  But it does seem that the leak has stopped!  And the new taps are *amazing*.  You can turn them off with just a finger.  Bestest brother in history! :)

I told him he could have anything he wanted for dinner (that was practically possible) .. takeway, delivery, or I could cook anything we had in the house.  He chose the butterfly lamb roast :)  So it was a late dinner, but very nice.  Photo makes it look scary, but it was pomegranate and rosemary marinade, so looked very pink even when cooked.

Saturday morning I woke up at ~1am.  Lay awake for two hours.  Got up for a while.  Still couldn't get back to sleep.  So Saturday was a zombie day.  

First real fog of the year

I was too tired to concentrate on anything much.  Did a couple of loads of washing, did a bit of tidying downstairs, and a bit of time on the jigsaw (annoyingly there's places where the picture on either side of the jigsaw is almost identical, and because the cut is identical either side, you can actually put in pieces that are wrong, and it takes a bit of effort to figure out which bits are right).  

I got this book when I was a little kid..

When I got to this page I literally blew on it!

Progress shot on the dungeon.  See that floor?  So can I!  First time since 2014 I've been able to see that corner.  It's been filled with Dad's slides, DVDs and records.

Oh, and I made Anzac biscuits.  Photo was a bit of an afterthought, but they were pretty awesome, and still chewy, despite looking brown in the photo.

Had a few drinks with EffanC before they Zoomed someone else, then had a blissfully early night (asleep by 9pm).

Going to have to call it there for now.  Need to wash my hair.  With any luck I'll finish this tomorrow :)

Monday into BBT season three, photo labelling.  Tuesday and Wednesday rinse and repeat.

Had this on Tuesday.  It's been in the freezer since before I moved to Canberra.  Since before iPhones were invented.  Before social media was a thing.  The world has changed around this little ice block.  Then I ate it :)

Thursday was a long pub lunch for Jeff's farewell.  First appearance of Bernadette in BBT in the evening.

Friday met up with the sweetie for a drink (joined by some of his colleagues) and dinner (Kimchi because the sweetie wanted KFC).  

Then I left the sweetie home alone and drove down to Kit and Pete's.  Kit was finishing up her last assignment for the year.  So she finished up that, then we had a drink and went to bed.  After meeting this little monster.  He looks like George but is nothing like him.  I mean he's nice enough and all, but *really* doesn't like being picked up.  And he eats *everything*.

Saturday morning Pete cooked breakfast - turkey egg and bacon mcmuffins with hash browns.  Yum yum yum.

Then went and said hello to all the animals.

Then headed out to pick up some feed for Kit's horse.  There were birdies.

Went and visited Jet.  He's quite pretty.

Back to Kit's.

Chloe came over with three of the kids, and we had a bit of a wedding planning session.  Went through the todo list and discussed all the things.  And did a trial run of the table decorations.

When it cooled down later in the afternoon we went back to have a ride of Jet.

I even had a little ride.  But because of the design of the saddle, changing the stirrup length is too hard, so I could only just reach the stirrups with my toes so it wasn't very comfortable, and I certainly didn't feel stable enough to do anything other than walk.

Came back and looked at the sunset and had a drink outside with the girls.

Pete cooked a nice dinner of chorizo and mushroom pasta.

After dinner we played Kismet.  With the snake.  Kit won the game.

And I got snake kisses.

Played a couple of games of Monty Python Fluxx.  Kit won a game and Pete won a game.

Sunday typed up wedding planning notes.  Then we went into Husky for lunch of fish and chips.

And for a walk along the beach and rock pools

I thought these looked pretty colourful

Then we went back to the house.  I packed up all my stuff and went home.  I nearly hit a tortoise that was just standing in the middle of the road on Macs Reef Road or Bungendore Road.  And it rained.  A lot!

Didn't feel like going food shopping, so the sweetie ordered Chong Co delivery - several meals worth so we could have leftovers all week :)  Watched Goldeneye in the evening.

Tuesday got the shock news that Aunty Di and Uncle Graham had been murdered, apparently by their son.  I went over to Chrissie's Tuesday night and we shared some wine and just tried to process.

Wednesday night I got off the bus where Tony gets off and we walked up the hill.  I finally had a look inside the little library, which turns out to be in an old dishwasher!  Picked up three James Bond books.  Cooked tacos for dinner, which turned out quite well, but we ended up eating too much.

Thursday and Friday I had training which was pretty intense.

Thursday I was sick of pizza (we had it on Tuesday night at Chrissie's).  We ended up having leftovers.  Hurrah.  I watched You've Got Mail.

Friday had pizza (hey, it was a different sort) at Pizza Artigiana, and did some food shopping.

Saturday morning it snowed.

!!

Then we headed out to the club.  I did jigsaw while the meeting was on, then we had lunch with EffanC at the Lake George Hotel.  We didn't tempt fate (they wouldn't let me) to see if they could get the crackling on the pork belly right this time.  Instead we got a meal each, but could have easily done just two meals and shared.  The servings were huge.  Most of us conceded defeat and I took all the leftovers away in containers.

In the afternoon I measured all the windows for curtains, and did a little photo culling.  Had the fire going which made the cabin all nice and toasty warm.  Talked to the mother type person and the brother type person in the evening and had leftovers from lunch for dinner.

Anyone care to guess what this is?

There was more snow overnight, still visible this morning.

The house was cold when we got home and my feet never warmed up.  At all.  All day.  They are still cold.

Started going through a book Doc gave me a while ago, gathering questions for our next trivia night.  Other than doing some washing, that's all I managed to achieve all day.  Watched The Terminal in the afteroon/evening.  Stu cooked a dal for dinner and we watched a Veronica Mars.

Bit of a crazy intense week.  

Over Saturday/Sunday last weekened I watched The Breakup.  To start with I don't know why on earth she ever got together with him when clearly he was never going to listen to her anyway.  And I'd be just as ticked off as her at his behaviour at the beginning.  But then it all got a little childish and silly.

Monday night I got up to three quarters of the way through holiday photo labelling.  I finished sorting Death Star Lego into types of pieces.  Pretty insane.  

Tuesday I dug out my phone microscope lens to take a photo of the spelling mistake on our $50 note.  

I also thought I'd been sorting Lego Death Star 75159, when in fact the set I have is 10188.  They're almost identical.  Dumb Lego, dumb.  Also started watching Bridget Jones' Diary which I haven't seen in forever.

Wednesday morning it was a little frosty.  In the evening I finished labelling day 26 of the last trip and finished watching Bridget Jones.

Thursday was whiskey night!  I was sensible and only had half nips of them all ;)

Friday I had a lot of fun playing with a new monitoring tool we have.  And we finished the jigsaw Lachie left for us.  Had a nightmare ride on the bus sitting in front of a youth smacking gum the entire way.  Smack smack smack smack smack smack smack smack.  Urgh.  I hate people.

Had a drink with the sweetie at Shorty's.  Which was quite loud and the table next to us was full of drunk people.  hrmmm.

Then we went to Kimchi.  Or Chez Kimchi actually.  What's with that?  They trying to do fusion French/Korean or something?  What *was* a fusion, or rather a hot stinking mess was the menu.  It was all different styles as you went through it which doesn't work well with my brain. 

And a bunch of things were labelled "spicy" but no indication of *how* spicy.  I don't mind some spice, but not really hot spice, but trying to get that information off a menu is problematic in most places (I like menus that have a chili rating on each dish).  

Anyways, the condiments came out and we were hungry so scoffed these, they were pretty good.

Next up were "Modeum-Gunmandu" - Assorted pan-fried dumplings.  Ok, but two of the ones I had were cold in the middle.

Then "Dolsot-kimchi bokkeum bap" - Kimchi fried rice in a hot stone bowl.  This was pretty good.

And finally "Snow cheese chicken" - Snow on the branches of the fried chicken! (Cheese).  This was pretty good too although I was getting too full to enjoy it as much as I would normally have ;)

We loled at the Engrish on the door on the way out

Saw this in the Canberra Centre and thought it looked pretty cool.

Then we had a look in Muji - kinda like Japanese Ikea.

Didn't turn the heater on when we got home because there seemed little point when we were going to bed soon anyway.  But it did mean the house was *cold* overnight.  6C in the study according to the min/max thermometer!!  Yikes.

Saturday was at work all day watching graphs.  Nothing particularly exciting happened, although we did have a couple of complete mysteries we'll need to solve.  

Stu made up a vegetable stock in the slow cooker, and cooked cheesy polenta for dinner.  The polenta would have been nice enough as a side, but as the only dish I was practically gagging by the end of it :(  Watched Live and Let Die in the evening.

Today was a nice quiet day.  Did a bit of housework, a bit of Lego inventorying, and food shopping.  

Watched Bridget Jones Edge of Reason, which I didn't think I'd seen since seeing it at the movies with George in 2004, but according to the blog I watched it in 2007 as well. 

Stu cooked a mushroom risotto in the slow cooker for dinner, which actually turned out pretty good.

Watched Brooklyn 99 (first episode of season 3), then cleaned the kitchen and blogged.

Remind me to email the mother type person ..

Quite a busy quarter.

I came across this one that had just been started on the Queen Mary 2 at the beginning of the year.  I stayed and finished the whole thing, with another dude for some of it, before lunch on New Years Day.

And now for a whole series of jigsaws from the club office cleanout.

This one had fourteen pieces missing.  I'm usually willing to put a note in the jigsaw for future users, but fourteen was a bit excessive so threw it out.

A tiny little jigsaw (under 200 pieces) I did very quickly one evening.

Life on the Farm, another single-evening jigsaw.

1933 Leyland Fire Engine

This Goosebumps one glowed in the dark.

But the glow faded very very quickly it was so old.

And then I had my appendix out.  Sitting wasn't too uncomfortable so I could do smaller jigsaws where I didn't have to stand up to lean over to reach pieces.  This also glowed in the dark but I forgot and dismantled it before it got dark.

Another few fun little ones.

Ten days after surgery I was able to face bigger jigsaws again.  Of course I started with a very tough jigsaw.  Annoyingly the pieces were badly cut.  Not only had they not all been separated properly, but the cut was so similar you could have the piece be "correct" on two sides, but still be wrong.  Very frustrating, especially with all the very similar green at the bottom and blue at the top.

Struggling on..

Finally finally finished.  If it hadn't been so horrible I may have kept it, as I'm still vaguely interested in getting a keeper jigsaw for Neuschwanstein.  Here is also where I started using Office Lens to de-keystone the photos.

Egeskov Castle, Denmark

This looks small but is actually huge.  It's labelled as a floor puzzle and each piece is about 10cm square.  It glowed in the dark too but the glow lasted for like a second before completely fading.

A couple now my brother brought over at some point.  The first is a fairly horrible one of the Grand Canyon.  The building and sky were easy enough but the whole lower half is just trees and snow.  Tough going.

And this one of Hautefort Castle, France.  That green was pretty tough.

This one has been downstairs forever.  It may have come from when we cleared out Mum's place.  It's 1500 pieces, and there's a *lot* of blue, so it was looking like it'd be quite tough.

The water and ship were (relatively) easy.

But here's where I started cheating.  The jigsaw had been cut in two, then one side was rotated 180 degrees and then both pieces were cut into 750 pieces.  Meaning identical halves.

Which you could literally put on top of each other and then it was a hundred times easier to find the next piece of sky you were looking for.

The pieces all had "twins", so once I was done with all the pieces that I could by laying them atop each other, I paired up the pieces, and then only had to "half" the jigsaw.  You'd put the piece in one side, and put its twin in the same place on the other side.

And presumably a previous owner had decided all that sky was way too hard and drew blue and red lines all over the sky with pens.  That sure did make pieces easier to find!

But they didn't know about the pieces having "twins".  And a couple of times they got it wrong.  See the pieces and far left and right just below and above centre.  They're darker blue here.

But lighter blue here.  So they had it wrong before drawing lines all over it.

Finally finshed.

This one I got from the Green Shed last time I was there.  The box said it had 6 missing pieces.  It actually had 9 missing pieces.

And another one from the Green Shed.  The pieces of this were very small, so the whole jigsaw was quite small too.

And that's that for first quarter!

So the beginning of the year. We began the new year at Kit's with Ben and Sarah for a nice start to the year.

We took the first two weeks of January off, so three weeks all up, but during the first two weeks our house was a revolving door of people wanting to use the pool. I do enjoy having people over, but we needed a break!! I think in that two weeks we socialised every single day which was completely exhausting. Later I was able to do a deep clean of most of the kitchen, and organised the garage.

Somehow we managed to go overseas twice this year. In April we made an impromptu trip to Wellington, New Zealand for a lonnng weekend for our tenth wedding anniversary. We only arranged it a few weeks in advance (taking Wello's lead of going to New Zealand just because (actually he did it for status points haha)), and got one of the very last direct Canberra to Wellington flights on Singapore Airlines. In December we avoided the family Christmas obligations and headed to the northern hemisphere. We had a couple of days in Japan before heading to Southampton to board the Queen Mary 2 for a transatlantic crossing and Caribbean cruise. Christmas and New Year were on board the ship in the North Atlantic. I went up to Sydney in January for the mum/uncles post-Christmas chatchup, where we went to Pandora's in Rouse Hill for lunch and sat in Ken and Jeanine's spa all afternoon; and again in June for Mum and Uncle Ken's birthdays, and we went and saw Vivid Sydney which was pretty cool. I went to Junee in May and we went and saw the Bricktastic Lego exhibition, which was awesome because no crowds, and we went to the circus as well. I went to Melbourne in June for work, and again with the sweetie in August for Kit's graduation.

Work was pretty stressful this year. The work itself was fine (I completed a massive cleanup project in around a year, much less than my estimate of two years) and my supervisor is great, but we switched to hot-desking which is all kinds of stressful for me. Not to mention that "activity based working" means we should be sitting with the people we work with, but because there's not enough seats that's often not the case. I get in relatively early (thanks sweetie!) so at least I get *some* consistency. We had a Ball in March which was very .. blue! and a lot of fun. Our work bar closed in June and we had an amazing final night. We got a new one, but it's half the size and not as practical. One of the first nights in the new bar was a whiskey night which was good. I organised a trivia night for March, but it was cancelled at the last minute due to lack of interest. Tried again in May and this time it was a packed house, and the last one in the old bar. We won the first one in the new bar in October, but the organisers said as incentive to win, the second place winners should run it. Let's hope they do or I'll be running another one!

Healthwise I've been pretty good. Just had a cold in May and another in July. Other than that it was just a lot of insomnia. A lot a LOT of insomnia. Omigosh sometimes I was convinced it was going to kill me.

Once again we had a *very* social year. As I mentioned earlier we had a lot of visitors in the first week of January. David came to stay a few times. He came in January and fixed some taps in the bathroom, and later in January to see about the Railway Historical Society and whether or not they'd try and reopen. He came with Leanne in February, to stay after the Airport Open Day (that I never managed to get tickets for), again in April, September and October with Kat. Always great having him here. Chrissie got bigger and bigger with Beavis and I got to see a couple of ultrasounds. She had a quite small but quite cute Nathan at the end of February. Visited them a little but not nearly often enough. Didn't help that Chris was completely exhausted from lack of sleep. Aunty Di and Uncle Graham came down a couple of times and we did fondue with them at Chrissie's in April and October. Had lunch a few times with her as well which was nice. Chris also gave me a kick up the butt in July and helped me grout half the shower. We caught up quite a few times with the extended N-Gang, going to either EffanC's, R&F's, Scotts for pizza, and beef cheecks at our place in July. We saw quite a lot of Kit and Pete during the year. It was sooooo nice having cool neighbours you could pop down to for a quiet drink. Pete is into games, so played a few with him (Kit played begrudgingly) - including Travel Trivial Pursuit, Cards Against Humanity, and Kismet. We went out to the George for Kit's birthday in May, had Ben over for roast in March, and had BBQ at Serena's for her birthday in October. Kit and Pete had a farewell party at the beginning of November (much drama ensued) but we still got to see them every weekend until they left. Helped pack their truck at the beginning of December, and they moved down the coast the same weekend we went overseas. We met up with Damien and Amanda at the Dickson Dumpling House in April, and Stu had a wargame with Damien in July, followed by dinner at Laziza House. Jenn came over in February with various Tequilas she'd bought on her trip to Mexico. Hao came up for work in May, so caught up with him at Alice's. Had our annual Hanami lunch with Nat and Andrew in late September. Stu's dad came over for dinner sans Ruth in January. Scott and Kerry came down at the end of June on the way to the snow and we had the whole family over for dinner. Had Wello's 40th at Casey Jones in October, and went over to @CLBradley's in November for BBQ for his birthday.

We didn't do as much club stuff this year. The event dinners are getting out of control with so many people going, and Stu has to go out once a month for committee meetings, which leaves us with no enthusiasm to go out at other times. We did go a couple of times, including a nice night in November with only six of us out there. We did an epic Burns Night in January, with two huge pork roasts, a huge haggis, tatties, neeps, peas, carrots and cranachan, for about forty five people. We did another round of two huge roast pork roasts and veggies for Christmas in July, and something like fifty people came. We were going to help with the Christmas party, but Stu got a migraine just before we were going to head out. During the committee meeting in August I regrouted the shed's kitchen splashback, because I could scrape out the old stuff with a fingernail, and I had the last of the grout from our bathroom that I thought I could use up. Only went to a couple of swim nights.

Pets. For years we've only ever had fish in this house. In February Chrissie was heavily pregnant and overstressed and the stress of Stumpy not eating was too much for her (Stumpy being a lovely blue tongue lizard). Kit had had Stumpy since he was born in her last place (I remember when they first moved in seeing the tank in the spare room, thinking at the time it was fish). Stumpy spent many years living in Kit's garage generally being neglected. So a couple of years ago Kit gave him to Chris and Zac. He fattened up nicely. But as I said, Chrissie couldn't deal, and asked if I'd take him. Well our front entrance way was still full of clutter that had been there for like five years that I'd been wanting to get rid of. So she took the majority of the stuff to sell on Gumtree one day, and we got Stumpy. He didn't eat at all for the first six months we had him. Didn't help that I didn't have lights through the early part, and then it was winter. So he sat doing not much for the whole time. Then later in the year (I'd been increasing the amount of heat/light to match the seasons) he suddenly started eating. It's been lovely having him. Stu really likes him and gives him lots of cuddles.

On the fish front. I got five new black neon tetras in January for the two foot, and some harlequin rasboras in May. I got a little sucking catfish to keep the algae at bay in Chrissie's little tank. We went to Serkan's for killifish study group meetings in March and August. Stu has been trying to breed killifish, with mixed success. He gets all enthusiastic for spurts, then they get neglected for weeks at a time. The other drama was the epic stress caused by dodgy Aqua One LED fish tank lights. All three, plus one I'd already had replaced died in the space of a couple of months. In the end got all my money back and went back to fluoros. Confirming my hatred for all things Aqua One.

Lego, jigsaws, and other hobbies. In January, Vic came down from Sydney with an entire bootfull of his kids' Lego he wanted to sell. It wasn't sorted so I spent months sorting it and checking each and every damned piece for FAKE Lego. Had to stop working downstairs in April when it got too cold, but didn't really do too much at the end of the year - I was too busy getting ready for our holiday. I'd bought some nice Willow storage tubs to replace all the cardboard boxes I have for storage, and they got pressed into service holding sorted Lego. I really want to get rid of it all to get the space back (and my storage tubs back!), but need to do something about the computer I'm using down there - it doesn't have enough grunt to keep five word docs open at a time containing the parts lists for the sets. I did a LOT of jigsaws this year, including several sections of the Disney behemoth. Another reason I want the space back downstairs...! Didn't do much else hobbywise. Spent a lot of time fighting with Apple. I downloaded Image::ExifTool and used a perl script to rename the files based on Date taken instead of Date modified which I've been doing all these years with all my other photos. I processed, labelled and blogged all the photos from our New Zealand holiday within two months, then I went back and labelled all the photos from our East Asia holiday and got that blogged by the end of the year.

For some reason I always mention the weather. We had the extremes this year. We had a dust storm in March. In fact all through March the max temperature was around 30C almost every day. It was freaky hot. Then throughout July it was crazy cold. We got so much ice on the pool it was ridiculous. One time it was 14mm thick in places! Maybe the super thick ice was the beginning of the end for the pool - I did consider that all that ice can't be good for all the joints.

New toys! My iPhone 5 got more and more annoying. For some months the lock button was really sticky. It either wouldn't work at all, or would spend the whole time in the lock position, so the phone would think you were trying to turn it off. I waited til the Apple announcements in September to see if they'd release a small form factor phone, but alas none came. So I bit the bullet and got a HUGE XS. The new phone and iOS STILL screws around with the date modified on my files. Pissed off at that. But the camera is very nice. Especially the HDR capabilities. My old phone feels like such a sweet little phone when I pick it up (I've kept it around because it has a bunch of apps that won't run on the new one). Also before our holiday I decide to replace the seven year old Asus Eee PC. It was always under-powered (what is it with Asus and not enough memory?) and spent most of its life swapping to disk and not actually doing anything. It was pretty much unusable and frustrating, so got a little Lenovo net book which was just great to travel with.

A few house sagas this year. The first being the leaky shower. It took me forever to finish scraping off the old sealant and scraping back the old grout. And then it sat there for months doing nothing. Eventually Chrissie gave me a kick up the bum and helped me grout half the shower, and I finished it a week or two later in July, followed by the sealant in August. Took a little over a year to get that shower back into use, but it doesn't seem to leak anymore. I also attacked the cloudiness on the shower glass but NOTHING worked - not bathroom cleaner, not vinegar, not diluted CLR, not straight CLR, not straight CLR left there on the glass for weeks on end. I gave up the idea of ever having that glass clear again. We came home from New Zealand to find the power had gone off in the house and had been off for four days. We lost some fish in the cold (the rummy nose tetras), and I chucked out a bag of stuff from the fridge just in case, but the freezer didn't defrost completely (still had a couple of whiskey balls in tact) so didn't chuck anything out from there. Then there was the epic stress over the blown hot water release valve. It had died *just before* it was one year old, but I didn't call them for ages because I'm allergic to the phone. When I did call them it sounded like they were going to charge me, but when the dude turned up he was all "is that all?" and replaced it for me on the spot (and left me a spare to boot). Fortunately Rheem didn't charge me for their second defect in its first year. Then there was the circuit breaker that caught fire, taking out all our power points. Fortunately we got it fixed the same day, and used the lack of computer to do a lot of cleaning and organising. And finally the pool. Maybe all the ice over winter stretched all the seals to breaking point. But we had a leak that I don't know how old it was and we couldn't see how much damage had been done to the structural wall. The pool turned out to be around thirty years old! So even though it broke my heart we (I) decided to drain it and say goodbye. We did have a win - Pete replaced the laserlite sheeting on our back pergola, as well as the front piece of wood that had been positioned right under the old sheeting and had gotten rotten.

We ate out a little this year but not too much. Went to Iori with EffanC, Yat Bun Tong a few times (Stu likes the dumplings), with Damien and Amanda we went to Dickson Dumpling House and Laziza House, went with EffanC and Scott to Pialligo Estate for a "Meet the Maker" dinner with wines by Shaw and Smith in April which was delicious, Happys with the sweetie, Malaysian Chapter a couple of times with the N-Gang, The George for Kit's and my birthdays, Lake George Hotel in Bungendore with EffanC - disappointed with the pork belly, Tipsy Bull in Braddon for Stu's birthday which was great, and Sushi Bay sushi train with the sweetie. Went to Chong Co a couple of times. Probably others I didn't mention.

Didn't have too much blog-worthy food. A guilty pleasure was nachos - simply corn chips topped with cheese and baked for five or so minutes. Did Lorraine Elliot's Asian Style Beef Cheeks a couple of times (is it possible for something to have *too much* flavour?), and had a go at Sizzler cheese toast!! OMFG!!! SO GOOD!!! I'd make it all the time if given half a chance...

Theatre/Shows/exhibitions
* Bricktastic in Junee which was great and no crowds of kids
* Circus in Junee which had exotic animals to my surprise, but convinced their no photography rule is simply to not have anyone get it on video if they fall off stuff or get eaten by lions
* Ben Law and Jenny Phang at Library Up Late which was interesting
* *Didn't* see Cartier, but did wander around a bit of the National Gallery with Cath
* Brickman Lego exhibition by Ryan McNaught with Neil which was also awesome and also no crowds of kids (sensing a theme here?)

Movies
* The Last Jedi
* Bohemian Rhapsody

Movies on TV
* Well lots but I'm not going to list them all
* Lord of the Rings series (in advance of going there)
* Kevin Smith movies
* Harry Potter series
* Star Trek series
* Pixar series. Saw what we could of these on DVD and Netflix, then saw most of the rest on various plane trips at the end of the year. The only one I didn't see (and have never seen) is Coco.

TV
* Star Trek Discovery (season 1)
* The Good Place (season 2)
* Pride and Prejudice (BBC series borrowed off @CLBradley)
* A lot of Dad's war documentaries up until April, and then again from October
* One episode of Altered Carbon
* Homeland (season 6)
* Star Trek Enterprise
* Addams Family (maybe season 2, would need to check)
* Anthony Bourdain's The Layover
* Back in Time for Dinner
* David Attenborough's Natural Curiosities
* Anthony Bourdain's Parts Unknown
* Rake (season 5, not as good as previous seasons, too over the top)
* The Good Place (season 3)
* Death in Paradise (seasons 1 and 2)

Books
* Prey, by Michael Crichton
* The Giant Book of Science Fiction Stories
* Black Beauty by Anna Sewell
* The Last Seven Months of Anne Frank by Willy Lindwer

Other stuff

* Got NBN!!!!!!! In January - haven't complained about our internet since. 12x faster than before!
* Stopped by Cataract Dam on the way home from Sydney in January
* Took my car to the wreckers. Realised six months later I'd left my RTA etag in it, so called the wreckers but my car was crushed. There goes $40. Also realised, when I went to charge Kit's car in December, that I'd forgotten the battery trickle charger attachment that had been mounted in the engine bay.
* Climbed Black Mountain from Bindoubi Street with Cath, Fiona and their friend Heather
* Saw the Canberra Balloon Fiesta
* Filled with rage at the tax office that refuse to send paper bills, so how the hell am I meant to know how much I owe them??
* Was super happy with the awesome customer service from Willow when I found one of the lids I'd bought was cracked. Saddedened at the appalling experience from ebay
* reCAPTCHA died, but have been puttering along without it since May, and doesn't seem to be getting comment spam these days anyway
* Watched Flying High twice this year
* Tried taking recycling bottles to Return-It, but (after they forced me to register all my personal details) they RIPPED ME OFF and never put any money in my account. Return-It is a SCAM!!  I've been collecting the bottles but I've never been back - I give them to David whenever he comes to stay and he takes them to NSW where they have a PROPER system, or take them out to the club where someone else takes them to NSW or I think the new one in ACT where you get a receipt on the spot.
* Went to Frank Bradley's funeral, on my birthday. Tried to go to Stanley's in Bruce for dinner but it's closed Tuesdays so ended up at The George.
* Got a green bin!!
* Ate some of Kit's chickens
* Stu chopped a foot of hair off just before we went away at the end of the year

We finished the year at nine o'clock in the morning, North Atlantic time.  Stu was in bed and I was eating breakfast.  And yet, even in the middle of the North Atlantic, I could still watch the Sydney fireworks live :)