Tuesday I finished labelling day 19 of our holiday photos, and at five and a half thousand photos, officially half way through.  And I was hoping to be all done by the end of June.. hrmmmm

Wednesday morning was freezing.  Literally.  I mentioned this to the sweetie who was in the study looking out the back window, and he said "The pool didn't freeze over"  *cries*.  

Also on Wednesday I finished scanning all of Mum's analogue photo prints.  Nearly eight thousand of them!  

Thursday morning I started scanning Mum's slides.  She wasn't quite as obsessive in the beginning - they don't have dates on them!!  Best some of them have is a month and year. 

During the day went for a little walk with Neil and a bunch of others.

Might have had Kingsley's for dinner.  Whoops.

Friday was week three of Rashay's $5 lunches.  I went back to calamari this time.

In the evening was pretty sad to hear that they finally had to put Pookie to sleep. 

Might have had pizza for dinner.  Whoops.  (and here I was thinking we got out of it by having takeaway the night before.. hrmm).  Watched Solo in the evening, which we'd both seen on the plane on our last trip.

Saturday was pretty much just regular weekend stuff - housework and shopping.  Although we did go get our democracy sausage.

In the evening EffanC came over for election night event.  The sweetie made pea and ham soup for dinner.

Sunday was pretty quiet.  Spent a good chunk of the morning cleaning the house again.  Just did a bit of photo filing in the afternoon.  Also on the weekend finished watching through Lego Masters.  I was pretty happy with the result, I think those guys deserved it.  Cooked roast pork for dinner and watched Death in Paradise.

Today another busy day at work.  Got home and started working and at 20:30 I'm still not done working, and I haven't even *started* doing any photo labelling.  Stop the world I want to get off.

Sunday night we chatted to Kit for a bit when she got home from the wedding.  I was all ready for bed but it meant a bit of a late night.  Not too late though.

Monday we had to move desks.  Our areas were already struggling to get enough seats, and instead of giving us more like the original plan, they took desks away.  So our group got split up but we are closer to comms so that's ok.  Just such a mess.  So much stress.  Then we had seven SEVEN people from other locations come during the week so it was a seating crisis.  I felt anxious about it all week.

Tuesday was another team lunch at Chompy's.  This time I had the Motley Crue hotdog.

Also got a big bunch of herbs off Cath!

Thursday picked up pizza and saw this!  Not really one big pizza though, just four regular sized ones in a big box.

Friday sunrise.

Friday we went to Rashay's again.  This time I had the steak, because the others said they were pretty decent.  I asked for medium rare, and some of it was, but some was a bit overdone for my liking.  Still, I'm not complaining for $5!

This week I've been catching up on Lego Masters.  Have seen the first five episodes.  Some of the builds are amazing.  I wish they'd kick Kale off though, don't like him at all.

Friday had a drink with the Stus at the Waldorf, then went to dinner with the sweetie.  We were going to try Kimchi but there weren't going to be any seats for half an hour, so we went a couple of doors down to Tasting China instead.  Had a very nice (if somewhat expensive) meal.

Just a small sample!

Peking duck

Chengdu Zhong dumplings - two chili rating, a tad spicy for me, but quite nice

Braised beef brisket - delicious, except for the chunks of fat, just not a fan if the chunks are too big

Red fried rice - good but VERY expensive ($18 for small)

Somewhat disturbing placemats..

Saturday morning I made a caramel slice, and then we went over to EffanC's for a late lunch.  Quite a pleasant afternoon.

In the evening we watched Thunderball.

Today was just a nice quiet day doing house stuff and a lot of photo sorting and filing (although not much on the holiday photos, did get day 9 of our last trip online though).  Cooked a tomato bake using some of Cath's basil.  Watched some tv and suddenly it's the end of the weekend :(

Monday I went shoe shopping for Kit's wedding.  Needed to get the shoes before I ordered the dress to get the right heights.  Found a nice pair of silver shoes but they've got a bit of a heel which would hurt my feet so Kit said probably not best to use those.  I might keep them anyway as I can wear them for other things.  Got up to 4000 out of 10500 photos labelled from the last trip.  Also found out that Foursquare killed their RSS feed for my checkins back in March.  How the heck am I meant to get an offline backup of my history now?!?  Stu said I should try IFTTT to get it.  So I did.  About half a dozen clicks later I had IFTTT downloading each checkin to a Google docs spreadsheet.  So disturbingly easy and I didn't touch the keyboard in the whole process.

Tuesday I had another go at shoe shopping after Kit said she'd be happy if we all wore nice thongs.  I sent her pics of a few and saw one she liked so I bought a pair.  Only $15 w00t.  Stu was sick Tuesday and we might have had Kingsley's for dinner.  Whoops.  Made up a tomato sauce with a big bunch of Kit's tomatoes I defrosted on the weekend.

Thursday I went back to the shoe store and bought another two pairs of the thongs so all three bridesmaids will have the same shoes.

Friday a bunch of us went to Rashays for their $5 lunch special (just for the month of May).  Great value that's for sure!

But they are seriously trolling people with their serviettes!

In the evening we started on MacGyver season 2.

Kit had picked up keys during the day as she was up for Katie's sister's funeral (kid was only 12 :( ).  She got home after 1am.  We hadn't slept.  Yay.  I was just uncomfortable and restless.  Torture.  When Kit got home Stu poured us a small nightcap and we chatted to Kit for a while and helped her finish her Big Mac.  Even that didn't help much, and it was after 3am before I got to sleep :(  Woke up at 5am with a sore spine so struggled to get back to sleep.  So that was a fun night.  Not.

Saturday had a little bit of a sleep in.  Kit spent much of the day sleeping and doing uni work (pyjama day for the win!).  I did houseworky stuff and jigsaw.  In the evening I cooked a lasagna with the tomato sauce I made during the week and we watched a Netflix (Stan?) show on street food, this one on Singapore, and The Imitation Game.

This morning Kit and I had a long chat about wedding planning.  I even took notes haha.  Stu and I went out to for lunch and food shopping, and Kit went off to her friend Sophie's wedding.  

She came back for a couple of hours between the ceremony and the reception so we mostly just chatted.  And there may have been cheese.  Other than that I was sorting photos - filing photos into more logical directories.  Some work directories have 1000 or 1500 photos in them that need to be filed more logically.  And then I need to crowdsource labelling them.  Cooked a lamb roast for dinner and watched Death in Paradise.

So a fairly quiet weekend which was nice.  Achieved some stuff, although maybe not as much as I'd have liked, but it was generally quite relaxing. 

So Monday.  Day four of our break.  But I didn't get anything much done around the house because I spent the morning getting organised to go to the club.  Made some cheese twists for lunch before heading out.  The previous owners of the van left a lot of kitchen stuff and tools behind which is great, but *all* the cupboards were full of stuff, with no free space to put any of our stuff.  Got a bit overwhelmed by it on Monday afternoon.  And it poured with rain.  A lot.  Had some leftovers we'd brought for dinner, and watched the start of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade on tv, but went to bed before it finished.

Tuesday I spent pretty much the whole day cleaning out the cupboards and reorgansing everything so it fitted into the cupboards more logically, and left most of the big cupboard free for our stuff.  Did a couple of loads of washing up to wash stuff in the drawers and some of the cookware.  Felt a lot happier with things by the end.  Although still nowhere good to store food.  D&I fired up the fire in the oasis, so we had a beer with them which was nice.  Tried out the bbq.  It doesn't light with the lighter thingie, but runs ok if you light it.  Cooked some sausages for dinner and we had a nice bottle of 2011 shiraz I got in 2014.

Wednesday morning we came home.  Thanks to Tony though for taking our bins out - they'd been collected by the time we got home, and the recycling bin in particular would have been a disaster if we'd missed the pickup.  Cooked some pizza scrolls for lunch.  In the afternoon cleared/cleaned the middle shelf of the pantry and the two drawers under the oven.  Cooked honey mustard chicken for dinner, watched Homeland and From Russia With Love.

Didn't do much Thursday.  Did some photo filing in the morning, then headed over to Chrissie's for a bbq for lunch.  James was in town, first time I'd seen him in twenty five years, with Anita, and Susannah and Rob were there too.  So it was quite the family gathering for them.  And then they got out all the family photos that survived the bushfire (as an aside, Como Presbyterian Church reopened twenty three years ago on this day as I type this, same day as Port Arthur massacre.. moving on..).  David and Kat came over late in the afternoon and we had lamb roast and started a 2000 piece jigsaw.

Friday Stu went to work.  David pulled apart our bedroom fan light which had died a couple of months ago.  We'd gotten a new bulb but it hadn't worked either.  Turns out the ballast had gone.  Someone let the smoke out.  This fan light had been installed in November 2008.  A "Brilliant" branded fan light we got from Bunnings.  Don't do that people.  We never could get a replacement light for it.  The last one we got was a much smaller T4 bulb because we couldn't find any the right size.  Pretty sure that was in April 2014.  So instead of trying to replace the ballast and not get a bulb that fitted anyway, we decided to get a similar sized LED oyster light and mount that instead.  It looks slightly odd, but works just fine and cheaper than a whole new fan light.  Most awesomest brother ever!

So that was done in the morning and we were like.. now what?  D/K went out for a wander round Canberra and I got stuck into cleaning out the "gardening" corner of the garage.  Too many spiders and other disgustingness for my liking.  D/K gave me a lift into town later where I met up with the sweetie for a drink and dinner for our anniversary (and they went off and did their own thing).  We went to Temporada and had quite a delicious, if very expensive, dinner.

Saturday and David couldn't help himself, he wanted to replace our ancient fluoro kitchen/family room light fittings with LED ones.  So a trip to Bunnings (where it was decided against getting the "Brilliant" branded ones, even though they looked nice because a) Bunnings staff couldn't/wouldn't get the panel of test lights turned on to look at them, and b) they're Brilliant branded, which we've already established seems to be non-standard anyway), and then a trip to Project Lighting.  Got some flat round lights that don't quite cover up the old holes, so we'll need to sand/bog/paint that at some point.

We did one of the lights in the morning, then headed out to the club to show D/K the new van (and get out of Stu's way as he was trying to study).  Had a bbq out there (we really need a new gas cylinder), then came home again, and David replaced the other light.  Had pizza for dinner, watched Goldfinger, and finished the big jigsaw.  Pretty good effort for two days. 

Sunday D/K went home and I spent the day coming to terms with the end of my holiday :(  Tidied up a lot of the house, did two loads of linen washing, got some holiday blog entries online, got some kiev balls from the shops and cooked those for dinner, watched Brooklyn 99 and Death in Paradise.

Ten days is not enough time off.  I really need those three month holiday I used to get when I was at uni... *sigh* ....

Monday we got home a bit late which left me a little stressed because I need to do All The Things on Mondays, in addition to a backup I was meant to run on the weekend but never did.  I thought it was going to talk all night because I'd done a heap of moving files around, which means robocopy would then have to delete/recopy everything.  But in the end I moved them around on the disk first so it was pretty quick.  I ran Spacemonger over the disk and it added up 1.3 million files in 51000 folders.  Freaky.  We also started watching Brooklyn 99.  Stu has actually seen it all through before but suggested watching it anyway.  Not a bad show.  A bit silly but a bit of fun.  But.  KEEP THE DAMNED CAMERA STILL!!  It's got the whole Modern Family can't-keep-the-damned-camera-still thing going on which I HATE.  It's even worse than Discovery's damned lens flare.  

Must be mother's day soon..

Tuesday had the club committee meeting here so I half listened in while labelling photos (1/3 way through w00t!).  Also baked a Yum! Delicious! cake which all got eated.

The neighbour's ducks

Hey sucker!

Wednesday I was surprised to find an actual light meal at the Labor Club, so didn't end up stuffing myself silly.  Because for dinner we went to Dumpling Inn with Hannah to talk Harry Potter.

Labor Club caesar salad

Dumpling Inn

Thursday night I swear it actually got warmer as the evening progressed.  We made the most of one of the last mild evenings of the season.  At home, Stu ordered extra large pizzas for dinner hrmmm.  Then afterwards had a drink with Kit and Pete and played a game of Kismet (I won, w00t!).  The fact they are 130km away is irrelevant.

Friday we Marie Kondo-ed our clothes.  We actually pulled everything out and put it all out on the bed.  My pile was somewhat bigger than I thought it would be, but nowhere near as big as some of the piles we saw on the show.  Finished watching the Desolation of Smaug, then watched Thor Ragnarok which is a bit of fluff (reviewers either completely loved or completely hated it).  We'd seen Dr Strange so knew who he was, but not sure if there were other references we didn't get, on account of only seeing a few MCU films (it's creeping up - have seen Guardians of the Galaxy 1&2, Dr Strange, now this).

Saturday just bits and pieces.  Did a Bunnings run (no tubs in the size/style I wanted that weren't crap).  Spent some time Marie Kondo-ing the linen cupboard.  Finally sorted out the wine that's been making a mess under the house - consolidated boxes (down to about 7.5 boxes now) so it's all a bit more organised.  Watched the Battle of the Five Armies.  Just as dumb as I remembered it.

Today spent some time in the garage in the morning, but barely made a dent.  Made some cheese and vegemite scrolls for lunch which were pretty awesome.  Marie Kondo-ed three shelves in the pantry in the afternoon.  Roast chicken for dinner, Discovery (finishing up season 2), and Dr No, which I haven't seen in ages.

I wasn't able to get my blog online for much of our last holiday because the internet on the Queen Mary 2 is practically unusable.  Even when we got to New York, I had better things to be doing than trying to catch up.  So only the first six days are online.  When I got home the focus was on processing photos, and now I'm busy labelling (have finished day 14, and a third of the photos done).  But I've also been choosing and uploading photos for the blog entries, and have finished those first six days.  So they're online at http://kazza.id.au/north_atlantic_2018/  

From now on the new entries will go up with pictures.  If you have a feed reader you can subscribe to http://kazza.id.au/north_atlantic_2018/atom.xml, or check every so often, or just wait until I'm done, hopefully in the next few months, when I'll let you know.

I woke up to the news this morning that Notre Dame in Paris had burnt down.  But looking at pictures tonight it looks like the fire was largely contained to the roof, and the interior stone roof is still intact in large chunks.  It will need some pretty significant repairs as heat stress can damage even stonework, but it doesn't seem as bad as I first thought.

I visited Notre Dame in 2012.  I was by myself after touring Israel, Jordan and Egypt with the parents, and six days by myself in London.  I had two and a half days in Paris and generally hated the place.  Oh sure the city itself was beautiful and I saw *lots* and walked *lots* (one day setting an all time pedometer record of 38450 steps in one day), but I couldn't stand the tourists.  And the queues.  Queues and tourists and more queues and more tourists.  And mainly because they were generally rude tourists.  I never had any problems with the locals, and if the French have a reputation of being rude to tourists, I'm sure for the most part it's because the tourists completely deserved it.  I think if I went back to Paris I'd enjoy it more if I didn't do anything "touristy".  I did tick off a major bucket list item though (going to the top of the Eiffel Tower).  

I actually saw Notre Dame all three days I was there.  These photos are going to focus on the roof and interior.  Most of the exterior, it seems, will be fine (we can hope!!).

First up in the afternoon I arrived, I wandered past while getting a lay of the Paris land.

Those copper statues had been removed prior to the renovation, so they were saved.

The next day I went up the Eiffel Tower and a whole heap of other things (this was the 38450 step day).  I made it back to Notre Dame around 16:30 and went inside this time.

My last day was also quite busy, but not as busy as the day before.  I stopped by Notre Dame in the morning because the sun was out (sort of) and it looked pretty.

Quite a busy quarter.

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

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

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

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

Life on the Farm, another single-evening jigsaw.

1933 Leyland Fire Engine

This Goosebumps one glowed in the dark.

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

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

Another few fun little ones.

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

Struggling on..

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

Egeskov Castle, Denmark

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

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

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

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

The water and ship were (relatively) easy.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Finally finshed.

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

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

And that's that for first quarter!

Two weeks.  Whoops.  

So two weekends ago was our coast trip.  On the Sunday evening, it being March 17 and all, we watched Labyrinth.  I think I may have missed doing this last year.  Whoops.

Wednesday we went to Indian Pantry with Cath.  Had a few different curries which were all very nice.

Friday we had a farewell at Malaysian Chapter, but their lunch menu doesn't have any sort of chili rating scale.  I don't mind probably "medium" spiciness, but I don't enjoy burning my mouth off.  So stuck with something a bit boring.  In the evening we watched Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, which I don't think I enjoyed as much as the first one.

Saturday was a good weekend day Getting Things Done.  Did some food shopping.  Went over to R&F's with some of the N-Gang for dinner.  Which was nice until the rest of them all talked about tv shows that I'd never seen .. for like half an hour or more straight.  I got boreder and boreder.  But I did get my own back by inflicting them all with our holiday slideshow (which I got down to 600 photos).

Sunday I spent a good couple of hours processing iPhone photos.  The drama of it randomly screwing with my date stamps is still there.  I ended up writing a full page of instructions for processing all the different sorts of files it outputs, and the full six applications I use to process them all.  Also went to the Green Shed and finally got rid of a whole heap of mum and nana's Tupperware.  Made me kinda sad, but I don't use the stuff and it was just taking up space.  Came home with a card table and some jigsaws.  Did a lamb roast for dinner (yummy) and watched Discovery and Fuller House.

Monday we got home early and in the evening continued Homeland.

Tuesday I read a heap of feeds/emails, had dinner, watched an episode of tv on Netflix, burnt some dvds of photos, backed up my computer, labelled 150 photos, and finished a jigsaw.  All by 8pm.  I don't understand how some days I can get so much done, and others I can barely keep my head above water.

Friday had lunch with the Chrises and Neil.  We shared some food, so I only ended up spending $14 (still $4 more than I wanted to spend).  Watched the first episode of season three of Death in Paradise again.  The one we saw last year where Colin Frizzle turns up, but I was in disbelief it was real.  Think it was pretty far fetched as far as murders go.  

Saturday burnt more dvds of photos and brought all Vic's Lego upstairs so I can work on it on my computer (my old computer doesn't have enough grunt to have five word documents open at once, and my laptop probably doesn't really either (that, and it doesn't have Office, only Open Office which sux donkey balls)).  And it's getting too cold to work downstairs now anyway.  Setup the card table next to my computer so I can pick parts and mark them off as I go.  Popped into the shops to get some supplies then headed out to the club.  Helped a bit with setup etc.  Dinner was quite nice.  Supposedly "Swedish" but just as much Finnish.  Came home so the sweetie could have a full day at home to do uni work.

Today was quiet.  And COLD.  OMFG.  I relented and turned the heater on a month early.  Just for fifteen minutes first thing in the morning to take the edge off the house.  Did some housework.  Spent entirely too much time rechecking the sets I'd picked parts for at the end of last year, because I wasn't sure where I got up to with them.  Read more of Julie Powell's original blog and watched a couple of videos on her.  Filled the green bin.  Roasted some veggies and had them with leftover lamb for dinner.  Watched Discovery.  Download and processed iPhone photos.  Blogged.

So here we are :)

It was four weeks ago last night I had my appendix out.  Still doing all right.  Still random stabby pains all over my abdomen though.

Meanwhile.

Wednesday a week and a bit ago we met up with EffanC for dinner at Malaysian Chapter.  They have a new menu but didn't put any effort at all into its presentation, it's just bits of paper in dodgy old sheet protectors.

Thursday was the usual pizza.

Friday the sweetie and I had sushi in town and watched the new Ghostbusters.  It's rated quite poorly on IMDB, but I thought it was a bit of nonsensical fun.  Kit and Pete came up for Kit's brother's wedding, so I gave them the keys during the day but we didn't see them at all Friday night.

Saturday Stu went off for a war game with Tom and Damien and I had a quiet morning. Kit and Pete surfaced well after lunch, possibly still over the limit, so I drove Kit to pick up her mum and took them to Kingston so Kit could try on wedding dresses.  In the evening Pete and Leisa were having a combined birthday thing at the Old Canberra Inn, so I drove them to that as well.  Kit still wasn't hungry so I suggested splitting a schnitty, as I don't like huge pub sized servings either.  Worked great, although Kit ate so little of it I ended up having most of it anyway hehe.  Inflicted them with our slide show.  Still too big, at 729 photos.  Still needs more culling.

Sunday Kit and Pete went home.  I just had a quiet day doing stuff.  Finished watching the Stepford Wives which I'd last seen in 2006 and started watching the day before.  Kerry and the kids dropped in around lunch.  They'd come down for a flying visit to see the balloons.  We did some food shopping, and watched Fuller House and Discovery in the evening.

Monday I got up a bit early and went and saw the balloons.  Neil was operating the Square this year and not cooking.  Saw the beagle, mostly its butt.  Then came home.  Had a quiet but productive day.  Even pulled a whole heap of crap out of the spare room.  Including a huge pile to take to the Green Shed.  So can move in there again now, but still need to do a lot of organising.

Tuesday I bought some ten litre plastic boxes to store shoes that don't get used very often.  They stack nicely and are to replace cardboard shoeboxes that silverfish eat.  Trying to get rid of as much cardboard in the house as I can.  Had Turkish for dinner and watched Homeland.

Wednesday I got some more plastic tubs for shoes because I didn't have quite enough.  In the evening I prepped a big batch of steak/bacon/onion/garlic/mushrooms for the weekend.

Thursday was just MacGyver, but no pizza because we'd already had takeaway one night this week.

So there we are, all caught up.  Nothing particularly exciting in there.