Wednesday.  8th.  Arrived home mid morning.  Had a shower and put on a load of washing.  Then spent ages unpacking and putting everything away.  Then I went into battle to get my photos downloaded.  The SD cards are easy enough, they "just work", well, when windows recognises them after inserting/reinserting several times before it'll read the cards.  The iPhone on this computer does seem to be at least presenting all my files (when I was away, I was finding that the phone simply wasn't even presenting all the files to windoze so I couldn't actually even back everything up properly.  Very frustrating).  At least they seem to work on my home computer.  Well, except for the odd jpg and mov file that refuse to copy - they copy with 0 bytes for jpgs, or simply unreadable for the movs.  At least I got most stuff off.  Managed to stay awake all day which was actually pretty impressive.  Washed my hair before dinner because I didn't think I'd feel like it after.  The sweetie got Chong Co for dinner which was nice.  Then I went to bed.

Thursday.  Slept from about 20:20 to 5:12.  Got up and backed up files to memory sticks.  Also got the last of the GPS tracks off.  Had breakfast with the sweetie at 54 Benjamin which was nice.  Had a good chat about a few things.  Had to be Neil at work, as well catching up on the over 500 emails I got while I was away.  Sausage sizzle at drinks so didn't need dinner, so the sweetie made himself a pizza.  Another early night.

Breakfast Roll at 54 Benjamin

Friday.  Went to bed at 19:30 and slept til a bit after 3.  Tried to get more sleep for another hour but gave up and got up after 4 to continue backing things up and catch up on RSS feeds.  Continued being Neil and catching up on emails at work.  In the afternoon a big disk array had a sad which took a bunch of stuff offline which kinda wrote off my afternoon.  And I couldn't see either so that wasn't much fun.  Called it at 16:15.  Tried to do some weeding but it was too hot.  Went through holiday receipts to start sorting out our holiday expenses and what David and I owe each other.  Chicken kiev for dinner.  We started watching the first episode of The Book of Boba Fett but I was struggling to stay awake because i was so tired.

Caught this super cute little gecko hiding under our recycling bin

Saturday.  Went to bed early again, but this time woke up around 1am and never really got back to sleep.  Sigh.  Used the fact I was awake to go see the balloons.  Except by 6:50 there were still no balloons aloft, which wasn't a good sign.  Sure enough, they weren't flying because the wind was blowing towards the airport.  Oh well.  So went and said hi to Neil.  Also stopped at the arboretum to see the commercial balloons that were out there.  Then home to do All The Things.  Did some washing and got the problematic jpgs and movs off my phone.  Also fixed the timestamps on all the movs and pngs because Apple messes with them.  Had lunch at Pattysmiths with the sweetie then did our food shopping.  Unboxed the Titanic and made a start on it.  Had Asian style salad for dinner, since we'd had such a big late lunch.  After whatever the last patching did, Notepad in windows is now tabbed.  But.  If you have multiple Notepad windows open, windows doesn't actually tell you the name of the file, they're all just labelled "Notepad".  Far out I hate windows.  Turns out this new "feature" is in fact a bug.  Sigh.

Crispy bbq chicken burger at Pattysmiths

Sunday.  Went to bed at like 7:50 and slept til after 5 hurray!  Still awake early enough to go do balloons take two.  It was quite breezy so I was surprised they took off at all.  And it was quite cloudy so not great for photos, but did get the sun a couple of times here and there so got a few nice shots.  Worked on photo renaming and filing (and fixing exif time data on photos where the time zone hadn't been set right).  Also did a bit of weeding.  Stu cooked a Japanese curry for dinner which was quite nice.  Then watched When Harry Met Sally. 

I decided to use the tin of blueberries in the pantry before they were like ten years out of date.  This tin was only six months past its best before..

Stu made Japanese curry for dinner

Monday.  Slept from about 21:30 til around 5:44 which was nice.  Had another day of doing All The Things.  Lots of house/fish stuff, photo processing, cooking, and a couple of sections of Titanic.  Such a busy day and nowhere near done on my todo list.  I don't have time to go to work there's just too much to DOOOOOO!!!  Super frustrating.  

Sunday.  22nd.  Here's the turkey roast from last week.

Monday.  23rd.  Took forever to get to sleep then awake at 4 for an hour with hurty.  And it was so cold in the house I put a jumper on!  Super tired all day.  Picked something new to clean and worked on that at work.  Made up some tomatoey mince and salad for dinner and blogged last week.

Tuesday.  Took quite a while to get to sleep but then mostly slept ok.  More cleaning.  Music after work and leftover turkey for dinner.  I setup a simlink to fool iTunes into backing up my phone to my D: drive, and backed up the new phone (and moved the backup of the old phone across too).

Wednesday.  Cleaning.  Also figured out how to replace a certificate on one of our appliances, and updated doco for it.  Watched Onward in the evening which was sweet and magical, enjoyed it.

Thursday.  Slept ok.  Did a bit of house stuff in the morning.  Did some organising of crap the rest of the day.  Realised, due to covid, I don't even have a complete set of circulation coins from 2019-2022, cause I just don't spend cash anymore.

There may have been a lamb roast for dinner.  Not Un-Australian.  Although if it were we could live in a land of lamb forever!  haha.

Friday.  Spent like All. Day. going through finances - downloading statements and sorting tax and crap.  Watched the first episode of season 3 of The Crown.

Saturday.  Checking receipts off against credit card statements.  Which took like All. Day.  Had to fight with booking.com and paypal.com and tripadvisor/viator dumbness.  Terrible web interfaces and they make it so damned difficult to find details on transations.  Paypal by default only shows you 90 days of past transactions.  To see more you have to click on the Date button (it's not obvious you even can) to choose dates.  Wtih Tripadvisor I booked three tours in Rome.  One on paypal and the other two just credit card direct.  Well at least the paypal one sent me their own email which had a reference number I could cross reference.  But the ones on credit card had literally nothing.  No email confirmations.  No invoices of any sort.  So I have two entries on my credit card, both for the same amount, but no idea which one is which.  Why is that a problem, since they're the same value?  BECAUSE THEY WERE DIFFERENT PRICES ON THEIR WEBSITE!!.  They've totally ripped me off for one of the tours.  I WOULD NEVER BOOK ANYTHING THROUGH TRIPADVISOR AGAIN!!!   It didn't help that I was having a bad eye day too.  Screen was out of focus all day.  I couldn't even do music for very long because I kept missing notes because I couldn't see where they were.  

For dinner we had a Luv-a-Duck Peking Duck kit.  omfg it was epic amazing!  I scoffed half of them (sorry sweetie! haha).

In the evening we started on season 4 of Death in Paradise.  We had stop watching this series a few years ago when the buttplugs at Netflix pulled it.  So we're watching it on Prime now instead.  Then watched the first episode of A Spy Among Friends.  Which was funny after seeing another of the Cambridge Four (Five) in The Crown the other night.  Maybe that was Stu's inspiration for watching this series.  

Sunday.  Pretty much the whole day consolidating receipts for our holiday last year.  Today's drama was with booking.com.  There were five hotels that didn't charge me directly, but charged through booking.com.  But booking.com only emailed me about one of them when they were about to take the money off the credit card.  The other four were a mystery.  And there's nowhere on their site that gives you invoices or anything actually useful.  You have the "estimate" in the booking, but that's not exact.  Two of the hotels actually gave me printed invoices, but they didn't line up with what I was charged either.  So I basically had to guess which one was which based on the prior guesstimate.  Fricken hopeless.  I also strained a muscle in my back helping the sweetie move the bed to vacuum behind it.  I don't think seriously, but I think it's going to hurt tomorrow.  I washed towels today and hung them out under cover.  But with rain on and off all day and Oh The Humidity they didn't dry.  And we got a whole bag full of new guppies!!  Music then cooked all the food for dinner.

So really a blerf longgg weekend dealing with finance crap.  I really need to be better organised and do it a bit more piecemeal so it doesn't take up an entire long weekend to catch up.  Sigh.

Monday.  16th.  Ok day.  Well other not being able to see all day.  Everything was out of focus all day :(  Music after work.  Did another tuna casserole, but forgot to put in the mustard I got out, and didn't have any chili.  Also didn't fry the onions first because I didn't have time. 

I also fixed the search on my blog.  For reasons unknown it's now taking ~12 second to do a search, which is over the throttle limit.  No idea why, it never used to do that before.  Anyways, in 
MT-5.2.2/lib/MT/Core.pm
I changed
'SearchThrottleSeconds'     => { default => 30 },
(it was 5 previously).

I still haven't fixed the problem of getting a "405 Not Allowed" (nginx) whenever I post.  Fortunately it does actually post.

Tuesday.  Had Kit come over in the evening.  Had sausages and salad for dinner and ate and drank and chatted so that was lovely.

Wednesday.  18th.  Twenty years since the bushfires in Canberra.  I wasn't here then, but I did blog about it.  Herbert's with Frank and Karen and Tony, as a last hurrah before going into quarantine.

This was on Spider's monitor at work and I rescued it and took it outside

Chicken burger at Herbert's

Thursday.  Woke up at ~3:20 for like two hours.  Sigh.  Felt like a Friday because I was home after being at work.  

Friday.  Slept somewhat better.  Except then it felt like a Saturday.  Sigh.  Did twenty minutes of weeding during the day.  Did some actual cleaning in the afternoon which made me feel like I'd actualy achieved something.  Felt like I had a sore throat all day.  Leftover chicken for dinner.  Two episodes of Bocchi the Rock.  Went for a wander with the sweetie so he could play with his new camera.

Saturday.  Woke up at ~1am and didn't get back to sleep until after 5.  Sigh.  So a complete zombie day.  Also my throat was very sore - it hurt to swallow.  But not like a viral sore throat - more like a bacterial sore throat. I know I did a load of washing and a couple of small jigsaws, but I don't really remember much else.  Oh I did setup a travel blog. Made a nice salad to go with dinner Stu cooked - pork mince meatballs.  Then finished Bocchi the Rock.  

Sunday.  So by all accounts it seems third party apps are officially banned from Twitter.  I put up post that said something like

"I can't believe @elonmusk is still blocking @echofon.  Is he *trying* to push people away from the platform??  What a bad manager.  Watching @twitter die a slow painful death".

And had my account suspended for 12 hours for "engaging in targeted harassment of someone".  Bots clearly can't read tense, or understand any context.  Just pick up on a few key words and make assumptions.  It's still suspended I think because it wanted my phone number to reactivate.  Meh.  Twitter is going to implode.  At least if Elon Musk is allowed to keep running it into the ground.  And then I'll laugh.  I joined fifteen years ago as a way to post updates on our honeymoon.  Other than Chris Hadfield, Aviation Herald, Flightradar24 and posting Wordle scores I really don't care about Twitter anymore anyway.  

Talked to David in the morning about our cruise and we planned out the shore excursions we want to do.  We both like to see as much as possible, don't want to pay for crap we don't have to, and stress about taking cameras near water.  And he one point he said "isn't it nice that our interests align" which I thought was pretty cool :) 

Went for another walk with the sweetie in the afternoon.

Roast turkey for dinner, and finished season 2 of The Crown.  And my throat was feeling much better hurray!

Wow, another strange year. Another crazy busy year.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Movies (at the movies)
* Top Gun: Maverick

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

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

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

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

Have a very happy and safe new year!!

Monday.  7th.  Backdating this cause I'm a slacker.  Got back into a migration project for our mail archive servers.  Weeding after work and music and a day of geotagging.  Then watched crap on the internet.

Tuesday.  Busy busy busy all day.  Got our test archive server accepting mail and started on the prod one.  Weeding, beer, music, dinner - basa bake! and geotagged a day of holiday photos.  And was too lazy to get out my tripod for the blood moon, so handheld it was.

Wednesday.  Another super busy day.  Got the prod archive server working.  Turned out to be a lot easier than I thought it would be because there were no issues with the custom dlls/scripts that prod has.  Tried out 1919 Langzhou Beef Noodle (with pork!) which was quite nice.  They make their noodles fresh for each order!  Home late so no time for music or weeding.  Leftovers for dinner and geotagged a day.

Thursday.  Busy busy.  Finished season 29 of The Simpsons.  

This bird was collecting insects off the windows at work.

Friday.  Not quite so busy as the rest of the week.  Went and saw Jess in the AWS for a Remembrance Day event.

Speaking of Rememberance Day...

I've never actually been inside St Andrews so that was pretty cool

They've totally ruined the front of St Andrews with a heap of parking and boom gates and lights and poles which throw awful shadows everywhere.

Saturday.  All The Things.  So fricken busy trying to keep up with life.  

Yeah this is totally going to be snail/slug food..  (these strawberries are literally weeds in our pavers.. really need to rip them out haha)

In the evening went over to Rob and Fiona's new place for a lovely housewarming evening.  Even though it rained.  And got really cold.  hehe.  Quite a late night (the sweetie for once was the one wanting to stay late while I wanted to go to bed ;) )

Sunday.  Slept ok but still woke up at my normal time (the storm rolling through didn't help).  Then another day of All The Things.  The sweetie wanted to get out of the house so we took a drive out the back of Dunlop/Holt to see the West Belconnen Pond.

Roast turkey and veggies for dinner.

At some point in the past week or two I watched Ariel's Beginning which was kinda fun.  It would have been nice to have her introduced to Scuttle as well (maybe the actor had died though?).  

Saturday.  8th.  Arrived home from our overseas adventure zombie tired.  I partly unpacked.  Had a nap but didn't really rest because I was too stressed about wasting a weekend day.  Went to Chris's to get some milk.  Did some clothes washing.  In the afternoon I started to feel the twinges of a sore throat.  The sweetie ordered Chong Co for dinner.  Then had an early night (20:30).

Sunday.  Woke up around 12:30 and stayed awake til around 06:00.  With a sore throat.  I got another couple of hours sleep after that, but it wasn't good quality and I was stressed about losing half the day.  Took a RAT which was negative.  The sweetie did the food shopping.  Had to fight with my phone to get all the files off it (I decided to recopy in case I'd missed any doing it piece-meal while I was away). And fighting with windows and memory sticks.  Cooked roast pork for dinner with heaps of crackling, so that was nice.  But basically achieved nothing much all day.  Simpsons and saw the first episode of Andor.

Monday.  Woke up at ~1:15 and stayed awake until like 4 or 5.  Sigh.  Slept til about 8:30 but again not good quality and felt zombie tired all day.  I flexed off most of the day, but could maybe have taken it as sick leave.  On account of I was sick.  Fortunately not super sick.  Just zombie tired.   Fought with SD cards and windows explorer - my computer kept showing the old card even with the new one plugged in.  Tried rebooting.  Then it wouldn't read my SD cards at all.  Sigh.  So got the files off using my old computer.  Gonna be pissed if the SD card reader is dead, the computer is less than a year old.  Nothing much else.  Logged onto work for a couple of hours in the afternoon to check my emails and catch up with Con.  Cooked san choy bow for dinner.  

Tuesday.  Work up some time after 1, til past 3.  Sigh.  Went to work (well, logged on), but brain dead.  Not as sick though.  Did a bit of weeding after work (attacking the huge growth of weeds next the lemon tree).  Was making good progress when John came and helped me and we ploughed through the rest.  Stu made pizzas for dinner.  And I made a coconut cake.  It was that kind of day.  

Wednesday.  Woke up a bit after midnight, didn't get back to sleep til like 4.  Sigh.  Zombie day yet again.  Went out and did some weeding at lunch for like 3/4 hour to get some sun to try and convince my brain that day time was actually day time.  Took some extra vitamin D as well.  Possibly being a bit sick and zombie tired meant not even setting foot outside the house, so not seeing any intense sunlight so not resetting the circadian rhythms??  Red curry with leftover pork for dinner.

Thursday.  Slept relatively ok, if restless.  Went into work for the first time in two months.  Had sort of farewell drinks for Jim, although not many people came, and dinner at the Brindabella/Magpies.  

Friday.  Ok sleep.  Our home internet died in the morning.  Unplanned outage.  Not that Internode ever bothered to update their status page.  They've gotten really bad since being taken over by iinet.  Flexed off the rest of the morning then headed down to Herbert's for lunch with the Chrises and Tony.  Except that Braddles had a Floriade shift conflict, and then Aquila got caught up at work, so ended up being just Tony and me.  The internet still hadn't come back after lunch, so got a bus to work for the afternoon (although the internet came back shortly after I got to work, doh).  Leftover san choy bow for dinner, finished season 28 of The Simpsons, and watched second episode of Andor.

Saturday.  Woke up at 6.  First time since I'd gotten home a week ago that I'd woken up naturally at normal time and actually felt human.  Did some house tidying in the morning, did our food shopping (we went together for like the first time since covid, but at Woollies Kippax where everything is *different*).  Then got stuck into organising photos from the trip (reorienting, and renaming with date/timestamp).  In the end I took 3727 on the big Canon, 5486 on the G5X, 3467 on the phone, and Mum took 1997.  Also 41 videos (11 on the G5X, and 30 on the phone).  So 12680 photos all up from me,14677 total.  Whoops.  Stu cooked sausages for dinner.  Also couldn't find my memory stick purse (that had backups on usb sticks, as well as the orginal SD cards not in the cameras).  Grunt.  Reread the travel brochure I wrote.  That was a bit of fun.  We did make a few changes to it, and missed out on a few things.  Did some weeding while Stu mowed the jungle.  Put the clarinet back together and had a bit of a play.  Was surprised I could still remember how to play.  Then Simpsons and Matrix Resurrections (which I'd seen on the plane on the way over, but was good to see again on a big screen).

Sunday.  Ok sleep again which was nice.  Did some house stuff in the morning, and a Bunnings run.  Dropped into work and found my memory card purse.  Also did some weeding and photo processing. And fish tank stuff and planted some seedlings and seeds.  Made some Lego.  Did some music.  Had to clear some space on one of my backup drives which is full, in order to backup holiday photos.  Basa bake for dinner.

When the weeds in your pavers are actually strawberries..

Why can't all days be like the last two??  I don't have time to go to work, I have far too many other things to do!!!

Sunday.  24th.  Had leftover lamb for dinner with All The Veggies.  Watched the fourth episode of Obi-Wan and more of The Crown.

Monday.  Spent a bunch of time going through my todo list and tidying it up and actually doing some things on it.  Went and got my fourth jab at lunch - moderna this time to spice it up.  Tidying and cleaning in the afternoon.  In the evening fought with Optus' website.  OMFG their personal portal is just as bad as their enterprise portal.  Literally went round in circles three times trying to get myself re-registered and logged in.  I was trying to find out why I'd been charged for an international SMS when I hadn't made any.  But Optus' bills are completely useless and don't give you the time/date/number of SMSes, even online.  So got online with a chat bot and eventually a human, and the first thing they did was credit the account as a "valued customer" and I'm like, thanks, that's great, but I want to know why it's on the bill at all.  But she was like, oh we can't see that information.  hrmm.  So then she was like, oh btw, we can save you some money on your plan.  So that took a while longer.  But hey, it'll save me $15 a month, so the fact I lost an entire evening sorting it out was not all in vain.  But I was still like, is the date of that sms actually the date it was sent, or was it just because that's the last day of the billing cycle.  So she went off and found the date/time/number.   WTF??  Why say you can't do that when you totally can??  With the date/time I was able to find the offending sms.  I'd been replying to a message my real estate agent sent me that day, but the contact information was faulty, and the reply didn't go to a "real" number, it went to some text which got translated to a number.  The number was 0011 23553776774 which is like Chad or something.  If they'd have just put that information into the damned bill I wouldn't have had to waste an evening chasing them.  Le sigh.  

On a lighter note, we had very delicious stuffed capsicums for dinner.  This mix had bolognase mince, feta, spinach, mushrooms and parmesan.  I then topped them with cheese and roasted them.  Delicious!  And no leftovers ;)

Tuesday.  Slept okish.  Very sore arm.  And quite tired.  Had a quiet cleaning day.  The sweetie cooked some Pialligo duck breast with spinach and mushrooms for dinner which was very nice.

Wait what?

Wednesday.  Still a very sore arm.  Did more cleaning planning at work.  Brought home my hard drive from two weeks ago and did a restore of my desktop/documents/downloads.  Turns out the files I thought OneDrive had deleted weren't actually there - they must have been there from an ancient backup of my old computer.  Those files had been filed when I moved to my new computer.  So all it's done is make faulty restores of files that weren't there just to confuse things and potentially create duplicates.  Sounds like something Apple would do.  And Microsoft is no better at it.  Hopeless.  My old computer doesn't load OneDrive at boot anymore.  And my laptop wasn't signed in, so I was able to clear things out before OneDrive got its hands on things.  Signed in on the laptop, and sure enough it tried to restore the same old files to my desktop.  Will have to go and completely clear out whatever is online with OneDrive.  I also turned backups OFF thankyouverymuch.  

Thursday.  No notes.  Probably cleaning.  Probably drinks.  Blah blah blah.

Friday.  Ok morning but super busy crazy afternoon trying to get All The Things done in the limited windows we have to Get Things Done.  Because I also wanted to log off early so we could go do the food shopping for the club Christmas in July event we were doing.  So went and did that after work.  All the pork and all the food.  Fun times.  Leftovers for dinner then watched the fifth episode of Obi-Wan.

Saturday.  It was cold.  Got up and ready then headed out to the club.

Did I mention it was cold?

Got out to the club and brought in All The Food (and a bunch of lucky door prizes on the left).

Then my whole day got thrown into dissarray because John bought a brand-new-second-hand oven!  So instead of having to do the turkey in advance and reheat it later, I could actually do it independently in the separate oven!

So spent a couple of hours prepping all the foods.  There was 8kg of pork, 3kg turkey, two epic potato bakes, 2kg peas, my (Coles) "winter salad" which I totally forgot to take a photo of, apple sauce and gravy, and I made a tray of "Christmas skewers" as well.

Two epic potato bakes

This was the sweet potato for the winter salad (which I didn't get a photo of!)

8kg pork!  So good!!

3kg turkey.  There would have been four except when I opened one, it had been dropped while still unfrozen and the seal was open too, so decided it would be safer not to use it.  We did run out of turkey (after everyone got seconds), but there was still pork so noone starved ;)

The potato bakes cooked

Mulled wine anyone?

These were the "Christmas skewers" I made - bocconcini balls, olives, tomato, basil, with balsamic glaze and olive oil.  A little time consuming to make, but actually simple and effective and they all got eaten.  

My dinner.  I might have already pigged out on pork and crackling so wasn't feeling super hungry at this point ;)

Stu and Chris helped decorate the pavlovas

All in all it went really well.  The food all turned out well and we didn't get much leftovers.  We won't mention the one woman who literally made a vomit face over the olives.  And when I said I'd be putting rocket lettuce with the sweet potato I asked if she'd vomit over that too, and she said yes so I said well maybe you could grab a few pieces of sweet potato before I do.  Seriously who does that?  If you don't like something you can just say "yeah not a fan" and not eat it.  But to make vomit faces and say you hate it makes you look like a three year old.  For someone in their 60s or 70s.  Lame.  Later she came into the kitchen and literally stood right behind me while I was cutting up the crackling obviously hoping to get some and I said NO!! OUT OF THE KITCHEN!!  Sigh.  But other than that, pretty damned awesome night!!  And not too late either, I think we went to bed around 22:30.

Sunday.  So last time we were out at the club I couldn't sleep because even with two doonas I was COLD.  So the other week I went and bought a 75% down doona.  And it was awesome!  We were quite comfortable all night.  Well other than be being awake for a couple of hours feeling bloated.  All that eating and drinking I guess.  Eventually got up and I spent an hour and a half packing up chairs and tables and vacuuming and washing up to get the place all tidy.  Although I didn't put away all the decorations because I didn't want to ;)  Got home and the house was COLD.  7 degrees!!  Craziness.  Two hours of running the heater later and it was still only half way to 19.  hrmmm.  Pretty nothing afternoon, although did download all my photos and do some music practise and blog.   

I also had to laugh at this.  This is a meme I saw this week about skies:

Which is so damned true!!  

This was the sky on Monday night when I went to Chris' for supplies

and this was at Jamo on Friday night

Merry Christmas in July!

Monday.  18th.  (Not backdating).  Yay for catchup days.  Pretty good sleep.  Went into battle with my computer trying to get the scanner and GPS to work.  Neither do in windows 11.  The GPS won't work in windows 11 because it complains the driver is no good.  Transystem hasn't put out any new software/drivers in years which is pretty upsetting.  So had to get the dam trip GPS off on my laptop.  Now dreading what will happen if something happens to the laptop and I have to replace it.  I'll have to find an alternative to my little PhotoMate 887 which is one of the best inventions in history.  Was also fighting with the scanner which fricken USED TO WORK in windoze 11, but just stopped one day.  I've yet to reconnect it up to my old computer to test it.  Hate Microsoft.  Hate hate hate.  Did some weeding, and a magpie came right up to where I was working to see if I'd disturbed any bug noms for it.  Very cool.  Potted some geranium cuttings.  In the afternoon we tidied up the shelves in our bedroom cupboard that had been getting messier and messier.  Did a water change in the upstairs two foot for the first time in forever (there's always babies in that tank I'm worried about sucking up).  Then got frustrated yet again with Apple because it dropped out while downloading my photos and refused to show up in windows afterwards.  Was thinking I was going to have to reboot my computer.  It certainlly meant I couldn't blog the previous week.  Hate Apple.  Hate hate hate.  Then cooked all the food.  I prepped a chicken marbella from Not Quite Nigella, cooked some mince/bacon/onion/garlic, and we had salmon and cabbage for Monday night's dinner.  Then we watched the first episode of The Crown which was pretty good.  Got pretty stressed out about having to go back to work.  Even four day weekends are just not enough time to get everything *done*.  Eventually managed to reconnect to the phone and was able to download photos, but bed time so no blogging.

Was digging under the old pool and found all this steel reinforcing.  Maybe to stop slippage of the pool???

Tuesday.  Slept ok until hurty kept me awake half the night.  Ok day trying to catch up on stuff.  Then demoing stuff to peeps and trying to deal with all the stoopid.  It was a wine and candle kind of a night.  Also made the chicken marbella which was nice enough but a little watery.  

Wednesday.  Woke up for a while a couple of times.  Was sick of the stoopid by 8:40.  Fairly busy day prepping a firewall migration and prepping rules for a big project.  Did some music, then did a red curry with mushrooms, asian greens and leftover sausages.  Did some work on Eurasia panoramas but still no blogging.  

Thursday.  Another busy day, and a tonne of interruptions and meetings.  Did a firewall migration after lunch which took all of ten minutes (including testing) and was one of the most anticlimactic changes I've ever done.  Pretty quiet drinks.  Tried McCains frozen pizzas which weren't really any better than Spar.  Need to stick with Dominos or Dr Oetker (Doc Oc/Dr Octopus).

Friday.  Finished prepping a big ruleset, and even managed to deploy them the same afternoon which was good.  Had a craving for mac and cheese for lunch.  Lazy Su pickup for dinner and watched third episode of Gunther's Anatomy.

Saturday.  Basically got ready then Damien came over.  We chatted for ages, had frozen spring rolls and chips for lunch, then played Jaws in the afternoon.  After playing for a little while we put the movie on in the background (because I don't seem to have the soundtrack).  Stu has never actually seen it?!?!  Will have to watch it properly with him some time.  Damien and I played Brody/Hooper/Quint, and Stu played Jaws.  Stu got a really good start, pretty much totally evading us and getting lots of points for act 2.  But somehow we managed to survive and Quint finished him off with the machete.  Just as the movie was finished, amazing timing.  As soon as Damien left we both collapsed in a heap - seven hours of socialising is super super draining, who knew.  Had sausages and cabbage for dinner, then Simpsons, Black Books and second episode of The Crown.

I actually spent cash that day too - to get the shiny on the right here.  And in the same change got all four head designs of the Queen.

Sunday.  Went and climbed Mt Rogers, did some music practise, did some cleaning, and filled the green bin.  And suddenly the morning was gone.  Went to the markets after lunch to get some fresh veggies, came home and cooked some Anzac biscuits and prepped dinner.  And suddenly the afternoon was gone.  Sigh.  Jenn came over for dinner (a cheese and spinach burek we found at the markets) and then we played Carcassonne which I won.  Was going to have an early night, but then Stu tried to print something.  It did a whole lot quite happily, then went back to jamming in the same place at every damned page.  So got super cranky about the whole thing.

I nearly rage quit at one point because the pantry is so full of crap I can't get at anything without everything all falling over

Unfortunately these were a bit dry

Burek and veggies dinner

Monday.  Got a reminder to go look at planets.  Because I was awake, I did.  It was actually worth getting up for, with the moon, Saturn, Mars, Venus and Jupiter very obvious (although not so much in the resized photo).  I'll take peoples' word for it for Neptune and Pluto.

Then it was all morning trying to catch up on photos and blogging.  Yet again, even with a long weekend I'm struggling to keep up with life.  Stop the world I want to get off.

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

I also raged at All The Things.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sunday.  27th.  Jigsaw sorting in the afternoon.  

Stu cooked dinner!  Pantry dinner basically, but it was very nice.

Monday.  Slept really well, hurrah!!  Scanned the second roll of Mum's negatives (found the missing sheet, it was just out of order).  It took All Morning.  Literally.  With each batch of eight taking three quarters of an hour or so, I could just set them going and then just spend a couple of minutes every hour swapping them out.  Back to work though.  Sigh.  Spent most of the day trying to get through emails (didn't finish), in between talking to all the people wanting all the things.  Had a look at the dashboard for the new system we put in just before I went on leave, only to find people haven't been doing things properly and making a mess of things.  Doh.  Got some music practise in, but no weeding before dinner.  Of pizza.  Because we still hadn't been shopping and there wasn't much food in the house (well nothing fresh anyway).  And the sweetie had had an insomnia-zombie day (we take it in turns).  Then I went food shopping.  By myself.  I don't think we've actually done a full Coles shop together in two years.  So the fridge is nice and full again!  Hurrah!  But then it was 20:30 and too late to feel like starting any photo stuff, so just watched an episode of Mentour Pilot.

Tuesday.  Didn't get to sleep til midnight, then awake from 2 (Stu still hadn't slept).  Had some cheese and went to loo, but itchy and uncomfortable and restless and my hands go numb if I leave them still for more than a few minutes and didn't get back to sleep til about 4:30.  Then woke up at 6:30.  Of course.  Zombie day.  Stu was double zombie so went back to bed and slept most of the day.  I went to work.  Scanned roll 3 of Mum's negatives.  Fairly quiet day, haven't looked at my todo list yet.  Weeding after work.  Salmon and salad for dinner - it's so nice having fresh food in the house.  Photo culling in the evening.

These passionfruit across the road look lovely when they flower, but their fruit are infertile.

Wednesday.  Slept well, hurrah!  The plumbers arrived first thing to attack all our pipes.  First up they had a go at the drain in the courtyard under the bedroom windows.  The hole was full of dirt and there was a 50mm pipe outlet pipe they didn't want to put the eel through, so they stuck a high pressure hose down it. And then tried to figure out where it went.  Turns out it goes off to the side of the property and then just drains into the side passageway. ?!?!  Probably it was put in as an afterthought.  Shouldn't be too much effort to keep that one clear.  Next they attacked the drain in front of the garage which blocks up during heavy rain.  They went in about thirty metres before finally finding a blockage.  !!!  So now all the stormwater drains properly which is pretty awesome.  Next was the sewer pipes, actually the easy one, the one I need doing every couple of years.  And finally they had a look at the NE downpipe.  We think it's supposed to flow into the drain in front of the garage.  But when they stuck a hose down the drainpipe, water started pouring out of the bricks behind the bins, and only a very little bit into the drain.  hmmm.  So they're coming back tomorrow with a camera to have a look at that one.  Ok day, cleaning and documenting the proxies.  Music practise, pork larb for dinner, photo culling.

It was cold and dark and miserable enough to light a candle

Thursday.  Ok day.  Plumber came back with camera.  He made a hole in the downpipe and had a look and couldn't get the camera down any further because the downpipe was actually separated from the other bit of the downpipe and there were roots everywhere and the whole thing is an epic disaster.  He spent ages poking around deciding what the best way forward would be.  Small Pot Belly session after work and KFC.

At Aquila's suggestion, Glenda brought these over!! :)

Friday.  Insomnia.  Spent some of that awake time stressing about the EMP apocalypse.  hmmm, what a useful way to spend my time.  Thought I'd do *one thing* at work, but never finished it because of interruptions and breaking things (well trying to fix something I broke in January - I did learn a whole heap about one of our products in the process though).  We tried watching Zero Hour! on archive.org, but it had issues buffering and synching audio/video so that was disappointing (I really wanted to see it).  The sweetie put on Dr Stangelove instead.  

Saturday.  Slept ok.  There was a pretty red sky in the morning that I didn't document.  Instead of doing anything useful, or anything I should be doing, I spent most of the morning tidying files on my computer.  hrmm.  And most of the afternoon on the jigsaw, so barely any photo culling.  Didn't help that the quote to fix the downpipe/drain was nearly $10000, plus another extra up to $2500 if they have to redo the concrete next to the bins if they can't blast through the half filled with concrete pipe that's there.  Sigh.  

I was feeling uninspired at dinner time, so the sweetie decided to make a very nice teriyaki sauce which we had with chicken/rice/cabbage. 

I was on a bleh mood so couldn't decide what to watch, so the sweetie put on No Time to Die.  Like longest Bond movie in history.  Went til way past my bed time.  Not that it mattered, I was still awake past 1am, when mice decided to start scritching around above our heads.  I couldn't sleep through that (omfg the anxiety), so moved into the spare room.  Where I still couldn't get to sleep til about 3am.  Sigh.  Woke up at 7am.  Of course.  Hurrah zombie day today.  

Had a look in the roof this morning.  The mice are way over there in the corner somewhere....

I was going to check on the situation and put down a mouse trap, but I only got that far before it all got too hard and I wasn't sure which beams were safe to walk on and it was dirty and spidery and I had to hold the torch in one hand and try and move around and I hadn't had enough sleep anyway and it was all too much and I freaked out and had a meltdown on that spot.  So no idea what we're going to do.  Probably we'll just get some Ratsak granules and literally just throw them at the corner and hope for the best.  I can't think of any other way to get across there.  Either that or just pay a professional to do it.  I'm totally not qualifed for home ownership :(:(:( 

So the rest of the day was basically a zombie waste.  I did make pretty good progress on the jigsaw though so I guess it wasn't a complete waste of a day??

The sweetie somehow managed to make this epic bubble while washing up

I fillled in a bunch more on Thumper after taking this photo

I think I'll be going to bed straight after dinner...