So the house has been a disaster this week.   Got back from Hong Kong then turned around and headed back to Sydney.  Got home Wednesday night and collapsed.

Thursday and Friday nights, rather than face the mess, I played Diablo with the sweetie.

So Saturday was full steam head cleaning the house and geotagging photos - I alternated between the two.

In fact I was planning on not going anywhere or do anything else all weekend.  But after getting pretty much the whole house tidied up and some of the cleaning done, and a lot of geotagging done, I decided to meet the sweetie out at the club.  There were quite a few ex members there for a pizza night - they'd all left en masse due to conflicts with another committee member.  They were a nice group of people, hopefully they might come back one day.

This morning we came home again via breakfast at the Scottish Restaurant.  Spent the afternoon geotagging (all the photos from the Canon and Random Camera are done now) and playing Candy Crush and also did the dusting and vacuuming.  

Tonight we played some more Diablo before Elementary.

Still haven't downloaded any photos from the past week.. should really do that..

Last night I finished reading Airport by Arthur Hailey.

I love this book.  I've read it before too.  Before our holiday I wanted to read something I knew I'd enjoy while we were travelling, so took this.  Sure enough it was a great read.  I know the movie pretty well too, so had images from the movie in my head most of the book, and interesting to note the differences as well.

Might have to watch the movie this weekend :)

So you probably wouldn't have noticed the past week's silence, on account of I'm often silent for a week (although I usually try and catch up on the weekends), but we've just come home from a week in Hong Kong!

Here's the blog, without pictures.  I'm going to get the pictures up pretty soon, as I want to show them to Dad in the next couple of weeks.

Friday night we went and picked up Stu's old school friend Tom from the station.

Saturday morning they headed into town to see some anime at the Dendy.  I took the opportunity to get the house in order.  In the afternoon Damien picked me up and we went to the Wig & Pen for drinks, and then Stu, Tom and I went to Happy's for dinner.  Came home and watched Star Wars.

Sunday morning we went to Black Pepper for breakfast.  Afterwards, David came by to look at my car (see here for more on that).  Then we took Stu to the airport and Tom and I went to see Garden of Words and Ghost in the Shell: Arise with Gaelian and Steph.  I thought The Garden of Words was lovely, stunningly beautiful and detailed, and the "been-there's" were pretty cool too.  Ghost in the Shell was a lot harder to follow who was on who's side, so didn't get into that one as much.

We had a late lunch/early dinner at Ali Baba, then came home with drinks and nibbles and proceeded to watch Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi.

This morning got up at stoopid o'clock to drop Tom off at the station, then came home to get more sleep.

With only 1100 steps on the pedometer by 5pm and it being such a beautiful day and all, I also went for a walk, although only put another 4000 steps on the pedometer in forty minutes.

And some cool clouds and rainbows out the back

All of this actually started in March. My alternator died so I had to get a new one. Then in August that alternator died. So I had to get another one, which I was not happy about. Fortunately I didn't have to pay for the alternator, just the labour.

The next weekend I went to Sydney. I noticed the engine seemed to be running pretty rich, and the car was using more petrol than it should. Then on the Wednesday night when I went to come home and the car wouldn't start - the battery was pretty flat and wouldn't turn the engine over. So I clutch started it and came home without any issues.

A couple of weeks passed by and a couple more trips to Sydney.

Then three weeks ago I was about to leave for Sydney when my garage door broke. The power had tripped and when that happens, the door goes up and down to figure out if it's up or down, and in doing that it broke off the bracket that holds it onto the motor. So Damien and Stu manually wound it round so I could get out, but then my was *completely* dead. No power whatsoever. So I thought it was the battery. Because I had a new alternator and all. So got NRMA to come out and give me a new battery.

Off I went to Sydney again, and came back no problems. Left the car parked outside because the garage door was broken. A week later I went to start my car. Dead. Dead dead dead. Brand new battery and it's flat. Stressed about how much damage I've done to a new battery, that I probably didn't actually need a new battery after all, that I needed the car on the weekend and it wasn't working. I caught the bus to work, and Stu connected up my charger. But no lights came on. And in fact when I got home on that Friday night, there was still absolutely nothing. Super super stressed now to the point of feeling queasy. But then Tony was able to come by with his charger and it seemed to work. Same brand, but a different model. So I'm thinking my charger is dead too. Yay.

The Saturday morning I had to go to work, and luckily Tony's charger had worked and I was able to start the car and go to work. I took the "scenic" route to make sure the battery was fully charged. After work it started again no problems, and I went out to the club. Next day came home no problems.

Potty came over with his manly man friend, and they were able to fix the garage door! They reckoned that if I'd had to get a professional, they probably would have declared it too hard and wanted to sell me a new door. So that was pretty awesome.

But my car problems remained: the engine was still running rich and my battery kept flattening. Something had to be done.

So I took it to the mechanic the Tuesday after Family and Community Day and told Mick of my dramas. I told him that I wanted a *real* laser alternator that has a third wire to power the choke heater. I told him I was convinced there was *something* in the alternator that was draining my battery while the engine was off.

Wednesday I got it back. They couldn't find a laser alternator, but he'd had an autoelectrician in to wire in power to the choke. Dubious, I took the car home. At least the choke now worked and turned off when the engine was warm. I measured the voltage on the battery when I got it home. 10V according to our crappy multimeter. Kept an eye on it for the next few days. It stayed at 10V until Sunday morning, where it had dropped to 5V. So my battery problems were still there :(:(

Sunday lunch, the little brother came by after finishing working on the train at the museum. With his multimeter he was able to see that the car was drawing 0.25A of current. We went through all the fuses testing stuff but still there was current being drawn. Then he disconnected the alternator. The current stopped.

!!!!!

How can a mechanic *and* an auto electrician not figure this out? I was furious.

David was able to trace the alternator to a 40A fuse in the engine bay that I can pull out when leaving the car for more than a day. So next time I'm in Sydney I think I'll take it to Bargwanna's and see what they can do. Because I don't think I can ever go back to Melba Motors again.

As a side note, it seems my charger isn't actually dead, but won't work with a completely dead battery - only a mostly dead one.

And thanks *heaps* to David.. have I ever mentioned how much my little brother rocks?!

I've barely spent any time at my computer this week.  News feeds are way behind.  Blogging is way behind.  Photo sorting is way behind.

Saturday night we all went to a games night at Mishi's.  We played Geek Battle, which our team won, then 80s Trivial Pursuit, which Damien and Amanda won.  I'd gotten 80s Trivial Pursuit some years back from somewhere or other, played it once and not really liked it (I was only a kid in the 80s, so didn't have much concept of news, sport, and even music for pretty much the whole first half).  We gave it to Nat and Andrew, but they eventually returned it, considering they weren't even born until 1983 ;)  So when Amanda said they wanted it a while back, I wholeheartedly passed it on :)

Sunday morning Fiona went out, and the sweetie and I had brunch at Black Pepper and did our food shopping.  I continued to enjoy a full weekend at home and got a bit more of the house tidied.

Sunday night we did a roast pork, although I failed somewhat on the crackling.

Standard working week, although have been on call, and have had alerts wake me up Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday ... blah :(

Tuesday night (and more of Monday night) Mum and I continued working on the garage.  I pulled lots of things down off high shelves to sort out/chuck.  There were several boxes of commercial VHS tapes, and a couple of boxes of tapes Dad had taped off tv.  There were several unopened copies each of DOS 5, Windows 3.1, old Word versions and other stuff.  There was a box of papers dating from 1981-1983 including church office newsletters, magazine/newspaper articles, and even a long letter writing to the rail authority complaining that he had not in fact fare evaded, as he had bought a weekly ticket but had inadvertantly thrown out the new one and had been carrying the old one around.  We piled up several recycling bins worth of paper in the garage, so that'll keep mum's bins full for a couple of weeks.

Came home last night via Yvonne's to drop off some stuff.  Had Harry and the car in front of me doing the same speed to keep me company and awake.  

This morning I wasn't really sure what day it was.  I alternated between a weekend day, Monday, and Friday before realising it was Thursday.  Oh well, at least there's beer to look forward to in 8.5 hours.

On Friday night I came home feeling a bit depressed because instead of being able to relax I had to do housework, because I have no other night to do it :/

Saturday morning I went the opposite direction to my usual weekend drive - this time to Junee to visit the little brother. I asked Google Maps where to go, and it sent me off the Hume at Jugiong and up to Cootamundra.  It was a nice drive, although the roads weren't the best.  And canola sure is yellow.

David's house is very nice.  But smaller than their place at Picton, which could make things .. *interesting* to try and fit it all in.

We rearranged some furniture and I sorted out his blurays and put them in a cupboard, and just hung out.  Watched the election coverage until we got too depressed, then watched Deathly Hallows on tv.

I woke up at 6:20 as per usual and couldn't get back to sleep.  Hung out doing puzzles on the lounge room floor (no lounges yet).  

Just before lunch went and looked at one of Junee's tourist attractions - the licorice and chocolate factory.  But we were (David was! ;) ) running late so didn't get much of a look.  Got some white chocolate rocky road (although almost didn't because the service was pretty slow and we were late for lunch).

Then to lunch at the Junee Hotel for their $10 Sunday roast - pork - yum!  Didn't need dinner (I might have had a couple of slices of bacon, shh don't tell anyone).  

David went off to work, and I came home.

Felt a bit lost when I got home.  Tired and feeling like I really need a whole weekend at home.  Was feeling pretty blah tonight (it's Sunday after all), so Stu suggested putting on some music.  So I put on some John Williams, because that always cheers me up.  Used the hour to get my blog more or less up to date.

Thursday night: Slept til 4am then woke up and couldn't get back to sleep.

Friday night: Went to bed at 9:30pm.  Got up at 9:30am.  Only slept six of those twelve hours.  Spent the other six hours stressing about the party and the fact that I wasn't sleeping.

Saturday: Did a bit of house organising but not really enough.  Was too tired.  Went out for kebabs for lunch, then did party shopping.  And nearly killed people because there was too many of them in once place.  Came home and cleaned the house, but not really enough because we only had an hour and a half and there was just too much to do.  Chris P arrived at 4pm, then Neil, who forgot the salami so Stu went with him to get it.  Then others turned up in dribs and drabs for the next few hours.  After about an hour I finally managed to have a drink.  And finally another.  And finally started to relax.  And then finally to start enjoying myself.  There was *tonnes* of food.  We bought eight packets of frozen food to cook over the course of the night and it all got eaten (and the neighbours came up very late and brought some frozen pizzas and they got eaten too).  I spent so much time trying to make sure I talked to everyone that I didn't really talk to anyone, which was slightly sad.  A slow cooker and a half of mulled wine was drunk, along with a whole recycling tub full of beer and wine.  I think people had a good time?  Certainly the last of them didn't leave til 2am!

Windy took a few photos (thanks Windy!), but this was my favourite - a "Cognac of Chrises" (and a small ring-in whose middle name is Chris).  There'd have been eight if Henrch and the other Chris Bell had been able to make it!

Sunday:  woke up early (apparently that's what happens when you drink) but didn't get up til around nine.  Chris got up before me and cleaned up the entire kitchen and living room!  It was amazing!  She was my little cleaning fairy!  Quiet morning with Chris and Zac (Zac's quite a lovely kid, as kids go) and Potty, and we shared some of Chris L's bread and marmalade for breakfast.  Saw Chris off at lunch time, then tried to get ourselves and the house back into some semblance of sanity.

In the afternoon I went to Brick Expo, but I'll save that for another post.

Sunday night had a nightcap before bed, then slept very well from about 9:30pm til 6:30am.  I needed it!

Monday: Spent all morning dealing with fallout from the weekend's work.  

And it looks like life might get super complicated in the next little while...

So yes.  A whole week has gone by.  Whoops.

Had a roller coaster week at work.  Days where things went well and I was fixing problems all over the place.  Days where nothing went right and I felt like it should have been beer o'clock by 10am :(  Got a new computer so also had a bit of time making sure that was setup.

Tuesday night we met up with Dan (the cousin version) at The Wig&Pen for drinks, and then we went to Iori for dinner.  I'd had wagyu beef at Coo some time ago and it was awesome, so thought I'd try it at Iori.  It was pretty fail.  Not melt-in-your-mouth at all. Oh well.  But it was a good night catching up with Dan.

Friday night Neil opened the bar for a farewell, so we gate crashed, which made for a pleasant start to the weekend.

Saturday morning we went to Black Pepper for breakfast.

Then we did our food shopping and came home.

Spent pretty much the rest of the weekend (aside from visiting Annie and the family on Saturday night) cleaning and tidying the house.  Made a lot of progress on things that didn't matter so much (like the garage and dungeon) and not so much on the things that really need doing (like vacuuming).  But the study floor is almost clear now which is pretty miraculous.

George climbed a tree this morning

Ever wonder what over 25000 pieces of jigsaw would look like all mixed up?  Anyone want to find out? ;)

Saw two different rainbows several hours apart today.  Yet we didn't get any rain!