Results matching “Spring”

So this was a reproduction of a dinner we had at EffanC's a few weeks ago.  

A couple of basa fillets, lemon zest and juice, hot english mustard, panko bread crumbs, parmesan cheese, spring onions, olive oil.

Crumbed basa ingredients

We used the juice of two large lemons here, but that was too much, probabaly really only needed the juice of one lemon.  Soak the basa in the lemon juice and rub on some hot english mustard.  The crumb is a mix of the panko bread crumbs, a bunch of parmesan cheese, olive oil and sliced up spring onion.

Crumbed basa

Pile the crumb on top

Crumbed basa

Bake for a while (I think about three quarters of an hour)

Crumbed basa

There was too much liquid so it didn't really crumb up, but it was very tasty and we'd definitely do this again.

Monday.  Day after first covid shot.  Just a sore arm, but otherwise felt fine - oh well, no day off! ;)  Labelled most of my quota of photos before dinner, and all 193 by 19:19.  Watched some Alfred Hitchcock Presents and Netflix Human: The World Within.  

Tuesday.  Took ages to get to sleep - just super restless.  Had most photos labelled before dinner, but had to stop and turn the computer off because of the passing storm (One Drive was being a poo, and so was FTP to my hosting server and I hadn't backed up the computer that night yet).  Finished labelling day 18 by 19:33 then watched some more Alfred Hitchcock and Human show.  CSS is evil.

Wednesday.  Slept ok for a change.  Cleaning day when I wasn't getting distracted by stuff.  More Human show.  CSS is definitely evil.  I gave up fighting with it to get things how I wanted for my USA 2000 gallery.  I've pretty much finish it for now.  I'm not entirely happy with the design of it, but it'll do for the moment.  Now to start on the next holiday gallery ;)

How dumb is Whittaker's chocolate?  This salted caramel dark chocolate is very nice, but it refuses to break where it's supposed to, instead breaking through the middle of the pieces, making an awful mess, even after I attempt to cut through with a knife!

Whittaker's fail

Whittaker's fail

Thursday.  Annual whiskey night at work.

2021 Whiskey Night

The Midleton was very smooth but the Kilchoman was smokey which made it the winner.

First three whiskeys

We also bought snackages for people to have on their tables 

Snackages

Afterwards Con and I went over to Lachie's mate's place cause it was Lachie's thirtieth.

Lachie 30

Friday.  Felt like peppermint tea in the morning.

Peppermint tea

Met up with the Chrises and Neil for lunch at Herbert's

Herbert's Mac and Cheese

I gave myself all week to do a bunch of doco I needed to do for the next round of cleaning, yet still didn't manage to finish it by Friday arvo :(  X-Files with the sweetie in the evening, and I watched Gifted, which was very sweet, and Mckenna Grace is pretty awesome.

Saturday.  Didn't get a whole lot done because I was somewhat distracted listening to the Classic 100.  

We did pop out in the morning so Stu could pick up a package, and get petrol, and have brunch with Kit.  My phone is playing up at the moment (iOS 14.6 maybe??) and sometimes just doesn't save a photo when you take it.  So it never saved the photo I took of my eggs benedict I had a Stella's by the Lake (no longer Black Pepper).  

Cactus in a cup

Stu and his smashed avo

Kit and her Rosti

Got home and put dinner on.  We found this cut of pork the other week and got it - because I feel like it's a waste of all that crackling to use it in a pulled pork.  Also made it a lot less fatty!

Pulled pork

Raspberry candle

Sunday.  Rinse and repeat of radio listening.  Stu and Immy came over for a bit to play with Stumpy.

Stumpy and Stu

I pulled out some pens to test them.  These Pentel pens I've had since 1986.  They don't work too well, but all of them at least wrote something.. thirty five years later!!!

Pentel pens

These gel pens are somewhat newer.  Although they could be as old as ten or fifteen years old.  None of them work properly (in fact some of them had issues from day one).  So sadly they all got tossed.

Gel pens

In the evening we went to EffanC's for dinner which was nice - first time we've really caught up with them all year.

Champagne and stinky cheese

Lola and Meg

All the roast veggies

Stu really liked this crumbed basa (so did I actually) - lemon juice, basa, then a thick layer of breadcrumbs, parmesan cheese and spring onions.

Crumbed basa

Monday.  Today.  Alternated between house stuff and photo stuff and even started a new section of the Disney behemoth jigsaw. 

Made pizza scrolls for lunch, with tomato paste, three cheeses, herbs, garlic powder, mushroom, olives and sundried tomato, but my phone didn't save the before photo I took, and stuffed up one of the after photos, so this is all I got.

Pizza scrolls

Stoopid useless Apple.

Download photos off my phone this arvo for first time since 14.6  Photos are now arranged by month, instead of being in a new folder every time the phone clocks a thousand photos.  But Apple is STILL messing with the timestamps on my files.  I don't think they're EVER going to fix that bug.  Thinking my next phone is more likely going to be a Samsung.

14.6 fail

Managed to get photo downloading and processing done, a bunch of Eurasia photo labelling done, cooked dinner (lots of roast veggies and some steak for me) and cleaned up, and watched the last episode of Human: The World Within (although Netflix played them in reverse order for reasons unknown) by about 20:45.  An hour later and I've also managed to blog.. hurrah..

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

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!! 

Backdating again.. I'm such a slacker!!

Monday/Tuesday/Wednesday nothing eventful, just UK photo labelling and jigsaw.  By Wednesday I'd labelled 1706 photos in three weeks.

Thursday morning I passed 1000 slides of Dad's scanned.  Was up to episode 7 in Lego Masters.

Friday morning I found a date on one of Dad's pieces of RADOS paper.  The ABC used to print out the runsheets/programmes on paper and the system was called RADOS.  I'm sure Mum/David could correct me on the details.  The point is they only used the paper once then it was scrap.  So Dad used to bring it home for us as scrap paper.  All the time I was living at home I used that paper.  So did the rest of the family.  In the back of each slide box, Dad has used RADOS paper to summarise what is in each box.  The box I opened on Friday had the date - December 1980.  I already knew that Dad had rearranged slides somewhat from their original order, but this put a date on it - after 1980.  Fun times.  

RADOS

Friday also happened to be the fifteen anniversary of when the sweetie and I first met in real life.  We had chicken kiev for dinner and watched Lego Masters.

Saturday I had a body corporate annual meeting for my flat in Sydney.  I've been to a couple over the years, but this year because of COVID-19 they did it as a phone meeting.  Which made it great for me - I could attend one without even leaving home!  The strata lady reckoned it was good because they got people calling in that wouldn't or couldn't normally come (like me!) and she even had one call in from South Africa for one of her buildings!

I also might have finished The Little Mermaid section of the jigsaw.  I cooked two trays of home-made potato wedges for dinner, which were epic awesome.  Then we watched some Lego Masters, which was the episode under water.  Which all tied in nicely with "Under the Sea" theme because we also watched The Little Mermaid that night.

The Little Mermaid Memorable Moment  

Sunday was bits and pieces of housework, epic pizza scrolls for lunch, Lego part picking, and bribing the magpies not to swoop me come spring time (they came flying over before I'd even seen them - so fricken cool!)

Bribery and corruption

Pretty sure we finished Lego Masters that Sunday night.  Was really happy the guys that won did, they looked like they were having fun the whole way through and their builds were amazing.

Monday we went food shopping.  Did a bit of housey stuff.  Cooked "lemon butt chicken" for dinner (just a roast chicken with a whole lemon as stuffing).  Turned out really nicely.  Didn't get a lot of leftovers though ;)

Lemon butt chicken

Long weekends are great.....

Backdating a week cause, well, I'm a slacker ;)

Sunday we watched the second episode of Lego Masters where everything when kaboom!  Fun times.

I remembered on Monday that I hadn't posted a funny I found in the new Lion King movie.  In the original movie during the song Hakuna Matata, Pumbaa sings "And I got downhearted, Every time that I .." and Timon cuts him off and says "Pumbaa not in front of the kids".  Well in the new one he actually sings "farted" which cracked me up ;)  Got my quota of UK photos labelled early, all the more time for the jigsaw!  Frustratingly slow though, because even if you know the *exact shaped piece* you still have to search through hundreds and hundreds of pieces to find it.  Also started season 10 of BBT.

This was on my walk on Monday.  I'm bribing these guys not to swoop me come spring time ;)

Magpie bribing

Tuesday I worked from home in the morning, then went into the city with the sweetie.  We had lunch at Gus's which was really nice (both being able to go out and share a meal with the sweetie, and lunch wasn't bad either ;) ). 

Gus's chicken and chorizo paella

Gus's salt and pepper calamari

Went to the sweetie's doctor's appointment, then chucked one in for me as well.  Went into work for a bit in the afternoon while I waited for the sweetie to do stuff at his office.  They'd just put a sticker on "my" desk saying don't sit there.  The disadvantage of hotdesking (with TINY desks) is you don't get proper social distancing.  So whateves - whilever that sticker is on my desk I'll continue working from home.  So being "at work" for the afternoon meant that I really didn't feel like cooking when I got home.  So the sweetie got pizza.  Hrmmm.  The sweetie and I are relishing our time at home and working from home.  We'd very happily never go into the office again.  Of course we'd be even happier just being hermits and having a quiet life and not ever having to deal with people :)

Wednesday was too cold and miserable for a walk at lunch.  And crazy crazy busy.  And too much stoopid.  Wasn't til after 5pm that I could actually leave all the busyness and get stuck into prep work I really needed to do for Saturday.  For dinner I cooked the last of the leftover pork from the weekend with the last of a cabbage that I bought like six weeks ago, a sausage from the other night, a handful of green beens and the last of the pork jelly.  It was a pretty random meal but tasty enough and used up a bunch of stuff in the fridge.  And there was even leftovers for David!  That morning I scanned 28 of Dad's slides, and in the evening got up to 1094 photos labelled from UK 2010.  Nothing on the jigsaw though.

Thursday was chicken kiev for dinner (since we'd already had pizza this week).  And watched Lego Masters episode 3.

Autumn leaves

Stumpy's blue tongue

Friday hurty kept me awake from 12:30 to 3:00 so was pretty tired all day Friday.  Although I did manage to finish scanning a third box of Dad's slides for the week.

Saturday I was at work all day watching graphs during some DDoS testing.  Stu made pea and ham soup for dinner from a soup packet mix I got from Chris's last year some time. I actually liked it better because it had chunky bits in it that didn't all just disintegrate like the peas do.  Watched more Lego Masters.

I think Tassie is a little out of scale...
Vegemite shapes

Sunday I alternated between the jigsaw and housework.  Had Rob and Lynn over for roast lamb for dinner which was nice.  

Lamb roast

Lynn's cake

Monday morning I actually scanned a whole box of 36 of Dad's slides all before work.  I still wonder if I should have (or should) invest in a slide scanner.  Rob and Lynn said they did and managed to get through thousands of slides in just a few weeks.  Dad actually did, and I have it downstairs, but I haven't really played with it and not sure how good it is (or how fast it is).  I'm actually really happy with the results that I'm getting from the scanner Stu got me for Christmas in 2005.  It's slow, sure, but the quality seems pretty good (to me).  And if I continue to scan a box a day I'll be done by Christmas.....!  In the evening I did another 200 UK photos.  All of them in Japan.  hrmm :)   Also roasted a couple of trays of potatoes to have with the leftover lamb.

And that's up til then.  No movies to quote though for the blog subject.  Guess I'll just have to use one from last week ;)

Three weekends ago we headed down the coast for Kit and Pete's wedding.  We left on the Thursday after lunch.  I was still sick and coughing and had been in bed all morning.  Hurrah.  

Driving down Smith's Gap we saw the fires over at Braidwood.

Braidwood fires

Braidwood fires

This was the last weekend we were to see blue skies this year.  As I write it's been three weeks since we saw properly blue sky (except maybe a day or two).

Pretty clouds

This C-130 water bomber (N134CG) had just left HMAS Albatross.  

BMBR134 C-130 over HMAS Albatross

We stayed at the Springs Shoalhaven, quite close to the wedding venue.  Pleasant enough place.  It had a pool although I didn't have a swim (Stu did).  Both those beds were *very* soft.  I took the single to give myself a bit of distance from the sweetie with my coughing.  

Our room at Springs Shoalhaven

We chilled out for a bit, then went next door to the Ex Serviceman's Club for dinner.  It had a lovely aspect, facing north over the golf course.  At the far northern end of the golf course was the venue for the wedding. 

View of the golf course from Shoalhaven Ex Servicemen's Club

Pasta I had for dinner

Dinner at Shoalhaven Exservicemen's Club

Stu looking out the window

Spent half the night coughing.  Of course.

Stu thought it might be nice to have room service breakfast on the Friday, so we ordered that the night before.  Unfortunately because I'd had so little sleep I really wasn't hungry when it turned up at the appointed time.  It was nice enough though and I would have enjoyed it on another day.  

Room service breakfast

I pretty much spent the morning in bed.  We were waiting for word from Kit to see if they needed our help transporting anything or setting anything up, but they were running late and a bit frazzled.  In the end the sweetie and I went into Nowra to get some supplies (I still wasn't very hungry) and stuff for the wedding.  Then we headed all the way down to the end of Greenwell Road to have a look at the water.  That was quite nice.

Crookhaven River at Greenwell Point

Stu at Greenwell Point

Pier at Greenwell Point

Crookhaven River at Greenwell Point

Pelican at Greenwell Point

Pelicans at Greenwell Point

Dropped the sweetie back to the motel, then met up with Chloe, Katie and Kit so we could all get our nails done.  I've never had my nails done professionally before.  

Kit and Katie getting their nails done

The result!

Chloe's, Katie's and my nails

Picked up the sweetie, then it was off to the rehearsal.  There were quite a lot of people there and it was a little bit chaotic, so took quite a while to get through.  

Dropped off the sweetie again, then to Kit and Pete's to load up the car with food.  Swung by the motel on the way back and got Stu to drop me at the venue with all the gear/food.  He'd had a rotten time at the Ex-Serviceman's club - it was super noisy and crowded and he had to wait *forever* for food and couldn't even go get another drink because otherwise he'd have lost his table.  Poor thing.  Then he headed back to the motel while I stayed at the venue.

At the venue four of us girls stayed in the "Bunk House", while Kit stayed by herself in her own room (at Chloe's recommendation to get a better night's sleep).  

Chloe got us some takeaway burgers for dinner (and very nicely got me a kids meal so it was a lot smaller ;) ).

Chloe and Audrey made up little bubble blowers.

Making up bubbles

And Katie and Kit made up decorations.

Making up decorations

I supervised ;)

I slept on my inflatable mattress.  Or rather, I *didn't* sleep on the mattress.  I was so stressed about my coughing/snoring keeping Katie awake, that I couldn't get to sleep til very very very late.  And then I woke up early.  I think I might have gotten about two hours sleep.  How to recover from a cold - get lots of rest.  Yeah right.  Vowed never to sleep in the same room as anyone else (aside from the sweetie) ever again in my life.

Anyways.  I'll leave the day of the wedding to the next post.

This magpie was hand raised by the owners of the venue, and hung around while we cleaned up.  Very cool.

Magpie helping

Stu and the magpie

After driving Pete's ute back to their place late morning, with everyone's cars full of *stuff* that we'd spent all morning packing up, we finally headed home.  

We couldn't even see Smith's Gap through all the smoke.

Smith's Gap

This was leftovers of a massive antipasto platter that we had at the wedding (I put it in the fridges overnight, everyone thought I was mad heh).  We didn't need to do any food shopping that week - we just ate this all week!

Leftover antipasto

Sunday night neither of us slept well - felt too hot.  But the house was 18C which is how it normally is over winter.  Weird.  I seem to recall having similar sorts of thermoregulation problems last spring as well.

Monday night it took *forever* to label the day's quota of photos - over two hours - normally takes about one.  So no time to do other things on the todo list.

Monday night slept a little better.  On Tuesday evening I burnt copies of the DVDs my Dad made from news reports I taped off TV for the 1994 Como-Jannali bushfires, to give them to Chrissie's Dad who expressed an interested in them when I saw him at Diana and Graham's funeral.  urk that was a long sentence.  I started watching one to make sure it recorded ok.  And couldn't tear myself away.  I haven't watched that footage in like twenty five years, but still get emotional, and still remember names and faces and places pretty vividly.  Except for then premier John Fahey walking through our church grounds the day after, didn't even know I had that.  Go figure.  Chrissie came over to drop off some stuff and picked up the dvds.  Got through my photo quota much much more quickly.

Tuesday night took *ages* to get to sleep.  #grunt.  Went to Officeworks on Wednesday evening to get Kit's Hen's invites printed.  Man I shoulda got them printed properly through their printing house rather than relying on amateurs with a laser printer to do it.  Just a mess.  They even called me in the evening to confirm requirements.

Thursday woke up stoopid early (4:20) and never really got back to sleep.  Went to collect my printouts from Officeworks and they'd managed to stuff up the printing - making them slightly too large.  But it just meant I had to cut into the border bleed area, so it was ok in the end.  But don't think I'd trust Officeworks (in store) with anything that actually mattered.  Watched Pretty in Pink in the evening.

Friday woke up at 5:30 which was a slight improvement.  Saw this at the post office while getting stamps for the invites.

Mobile phone lockup

Watched Licence to Kill in the evening.  After birthday drinks with Neil, Simon and Wello.

Neil birthday drinks

Saturday morning slept in!  Til 6:30!!  Did all the houseworks in the morning.  Started slicing up Kit's Hen's invites.  Stopped when I managed to slice a finger.  Got ready and went to the ball (which I'll save for another post).

There was too much food for me at the ball, which did mean I didn't get too silly, but also meant being a wake for quite a while in the middle of the night trying to digest.  Slept in til 8:30 though.  I didn't have much planned for the day.  Tried to have a nap with the sweetie at one point but think I mostly failed.  I did finish slicing up Kit's Hen's invites and get them posted, and trimmed the cherry tree and a bunch of suckers, and a fish tank water change.  The sweetie cooked salt and pepper squid for dinner and we watched The Good Place.  

Back on 8 February I headed up to Sydney to catch up with Mum for Christmas.  Just a few weeks late haha.

Drove up Friday evening (after having a random day off which was nice) and looked at some of Mum's holiday photo slide shows.

On Saturday morning we headed into The Entertainment Quarter for the latest Ryan McNaught Lego exhibition - Lego Cities.  We took the train to Central and a bus down Anzac Parade (where I think it's amusing they're putting light rail back in after it being gone for so long).

Central Station

Central Station

Except the Entertainment Quarter is huge and there was literally no information whatsover on the tickets about where to go.  Lucky we were early because we walked around for ages, and had to ask two separate people where it was.  Pathetic event management.

I'll leave the Lego to a separate post.

So we were done by 11am but it was a case of "now what?".  It was such a lovely day I didn't want to just go back to Mum's and do nothing.  We were in Sydney for heavens' sake!  Even if we just took a Manly Ferry and back it'd be *something*.  But then I thought, you know I've never taken the ferry to Parramatta before.  So we hopped on a bus to Circular Quay, topped my Opal Card, and hopped on a River Cat.  I decided not to sit outside in the sun (I came for a Lego show, so no hat, sunscreen or sunglasses, and did get ripped off by the pharmacy at Circular Quay just to get some sunscreen), so got seats on the left, fortunately the windows open!

I'll leave the ferry trip to a separate post.

On the way Mum called Pam and asked if she'd like to catch up for lunch (it was about 13:30 by this point).  So she met us at the ferry terminal.  Parramatta had been hit hard by the storm the previous night, and there were a lot of downed trees.  Pam's place (which is brand new, and they are the first tenants in the place) got heaps of water from leaky windows.  Note to self: don't buy an apartment in any new building until the building industry can get their act together - shoddy work is the norm on anything built since the building deregulation thirty years ago or whenever it was).  

Tree blown down in storm

We wandered up to Church Street to look for some lunch (it's after 14:00 by this point).  I stipulated it needed to be a *light* lunch as I was going out for dinner.  So we ended up at Volcanos Steakhouse, where we thought we'd get a few starters and call it a day.  Except their starters were HUGE.  And then Pam said she doesn't eat cheese, after the things Mum and I ordered had cheese.  I wish she'd said that before.  #grunt.  If I'd known all that I wouldn't have got any more than two dishes, tops.  They were pretty good though!

Volcanos Parramatta Mozarella Sticks

Volcanos Parramatta Wedges

Volcanos Parramatta Cheesy Garlic Bread

After eating way too much, we headed for the station (the ferry is nice and all but it takes like an hour and a half). 

St John's Parramatta
St John's Parramatta

Parramatta Town Hall
Parramatta Town Hall

Caught an inter-urban back to Central, and another train back to Mum's.

I had twenty minutes, which gave me just enough time to have a shower, then head out again.

Met up with Daniel and Fi at Redfern station and we walked down to the Duck Inn Restaurant and Pub.  I started with a delicious Grifter watermelon pilsner (Serpent's Kiss) that was perfect for a humid Sydney summer evening, and had one other that it seems I didn't check in, so don't remember which.  Could have been the Mismatch Lager, but not sure.

Duck Inn Beers

Because I had such a big late lunch, I was happy with just starters again.  And Daniel and Fi had spent the day down at Wollongong with Daniel's parents so didn't feel like too much either so that worked out.  And they all had duck in them!

Starting with confit duck loaded fries with fig, burgundy, thyme mayo, liquid gruyere cheese and scallions, which was amazing

Duck Inn loaded fries

And also steamed bao buns with shredded five spice duck, pickled carrots and daikon, coriander, chili and hoisin sauce, also amazing, and peking duck spring rolls served with micro herbs and soy infusion dripping sauce.

Duck Inn bao rolls and spring rolls

Was a lovely evening catching up with those guys.  I owe them a beer though!

Sunday morning I went to church with Mum, hoping to see the Cartans, as they're in their nineties now and times to see them may be limited..  But they weren't there.

So then headed off to Luc and Lizzi's to do a penultimate donut photo with Ryan, and ended up staying for lunch which was lovely.

Then headed for home.  I took a slight detour to go see Cordeaux Dam.  Again you can drive right up to it which is nice.

I'll leave the dam to a separate post.

And finally home.