Accidentally overflowed the pool last night.  AGAIN.  Fricken.  Fortunately the heat was keeping us awake and Stu heard it shortly after it started overflowing.  Almost broke my ankle racing downstairs in the dark (and in a state of delirium) to turn the hose off.

This morning I emptied many buckets worth onto the front garden, because it's completely parched.  Then this afternoon Annie wanted to come over for a swim.  Which was fine, but the pool was still completely full, and the displacement of five people (well, seven actually) was going to be a disaster.  So I spent ages emptying more buckets onto the garden.  Then did a backwash and rinse of the filter which needed doing anyway.  Was hot and stressed but felt better after the swim.  For about five minutes until the heat made it unbearable again.

Watched some Sherlock with the sweetie but otherwise just sweltered and tried to keep the fish tank temperature down with ice.

Came up to Sydney today.  Saw Dad.  Got grumpy.  Because he has that affect on people.  *sigh*

We threw out a whole lot of monitor and tv service manuals today.  Dating back to the seventies.  And all mum's meat orders from 1982 to 2010.  Because she kept those all in a file.  But she didn't think she'd ever need them again.  Did you know a 1.5kg leg of lamb cost $7 in 1985?  And 500g of mince was $1.55.  

We kept a bunch of cutouts from electronics magazines dating back to the seventies.  They contained projects that a hobbyist *might* be interested in (I'm not holding out much hope).  Dad had copied them all from magazines he'd bought and ordered them neatly in folders, with a typed up description on the front of the folder with what was in it.

Tonight we scanned a whole stack of photos of Dad.  We're only up to about 1987..

So 2013. Busy year!

We saw in 2013 with a small pool party at our place with Nat and Andrew and also Steve for a while.

  
We did a bit of travelling this year.

In January we went up the coast to South West Rocks to a school reunion of sorts for Stu and to visit Stu's dad. We drove up and down the coast, swam, visited Trial Bay Gaol, and caught up with Fiona and Margie on the way home.

We only managed to get to the coast once this year, in May. It was somewhat of a disaster with the spa being too cold on Friday night and too hot on Saturday night and a few other things that made it all a bit unpleasant (except for during the day on Saturday which was pretty good). Almost went again later in the year but had to go to Sydney and otherwise we've just been too busy.

We went to Queensland in July for a lovely long weekend to visit Chay and David.

At the end of July we flew up to Sydney for my Dad's 70th and one of my 40th parties (see below).

In October we decided at the last minute to go to Hong Kong for a week at the end of October. It was a great week, even if a little too humid. It's the most spontaneous holiday I've ever taken. I didn't do too much planning for it, because the more I researched, the more things I found of interest to see. So I stopped researching altogether and we took it as it came.

  
At work I had a mostly good year. I started off the year cleaning and pretty much cleaned all year. I started with the knowledge base articles for our team, then moved onto the log transfer system, then the load balancers. I also rehashed an old domino database for documentation which brought back a lot of memories of my last job. For the rest of the time it mostly felt like I was the "goto" person for any and all problems that came along. We were partly restructured, but the powers that be didn't really have a clear idea of what they wanted, so things didn't change as much as we originally thought they would. I made Stu drag out his tuxedo again for the work ball which was a lot of fun.

Healthwise I felt like I was sick the whole first half of the year - with colds in January, March, April, May and June. So that was pretty horrible. Not flus though, just annoying colds. Got another one the night before we went to Hong Kong too - yay :( But have been ok otherwise.

  
We had a super busy social year this year. In fact it was so busy that we went from May to September without having a free Saturday night. As a consequence our Buffy and Angel watching was almost non-existent. There were plenty of visits to/from Annie and Potty and the families. Various people came over for dinner and/or swims at the beginning of the year. Nat and Andrew came over a few times, as well as Andrew by himself when Nat was travelling. There were various after works drinks with my colleagues and Stu's and family and friends. Various Singstar/Mario Kart nights were had. Several BBQs at @CLBradley's. Several games nights at Mishi's. Had a video night at our place with work people. We visited people for lunches/dinners such as Matt and Helen, Andrew and Jen, Chris and Geoff, Josh and Ally, Windy and Nanette etc. We saw Daniel and Fi a few times when they came down. Several people came to stay including David and Yvonne, Ken and Jeanine, Fiona a couple of times and Stu's old school friend Tom. I met up with @StuartCRyan a few times in Sydney (we met in real life for the first time at my birthday). I also went to visit David in Junee.

Speaking of birthdays, I turned forty this year. To celebrate I had *three* great parties - one in Sydney, a big one at home the Saturday before my birthday, then a big lunch at work on my birthday followed by a nice dinner and seeing Phantom of the Opera. I was certainly in a different place mentally for my fortieth. During the whole run-up to my thirtieth I was very depressed, and my actual birthday was pretty meh. Such a different story this year though.

  
In sadder news, my Nana died of old age earlier in the year. And then I found out at the funeral that I have another cousin that I'd never heard about before!

Also in sad news, my father got diagnosed with a brain tumour in March. He had surgery immediately (and they had to cancel a holiday to New Zealand), followed by chemo and radiotherapy. Unfortunately it didn't really help, and he was hospitalised in July because he kept falling over and wasn't able to walk properly. He's been getting progressively worse and has been in a nursing home since September. In August I started going up to Sydney fairly regularly to see Dad and help Mum with the mammoth task of clearing out the garage and workshop. We've mostly been sorting things so far as I don't want to get rid of things until Dad goes. Fortunately I've been able to work out of the Sydney office so not having to take leave at the moment.

  
We've been enjoying a lot of visits to our little social club. We camped there over the Australia day long weekend, and the new tent survived a storm and massive downpour fairly well. But then a caravan came up for sale, so we bought it! We went to most of the club nights during the year, and plenty of other times as well. It's Stu's little get-away-from-the-world place and he thoroughly enjoys it.

With work people or the sweetie, tried out a few new restaurants. Continued going to Black Pepper for brunches and also Pulp Kitchen a few times. Went to Dumpling Inn a few times and Bella Vista as well. Didn't try too many desserts this year, although did make a Mars Bar slice and a peppermint rocky road, as well as an apple crumble and caramel slice that we tried at the club.

  
We bought another four baby angels for the angel tank. One died but the other three survived, so now have four angels and about seven danios in that tank. We got a lovely little betta for the macquarium, but he never thrived and died in six weeks. So thinking I'll probably give the macquarium away. The four foot still has a school of duboisis, two multies, a lelupi and a J.transcriptus. There's three multis downstairs, but after breeding once, the single baby I saw disappeared and haven't seen any since. There's still three or four quite old kribs downstairs as well.

Not much Lego action this year. I did get a cute little plane from Fiona, and a small City set from Ric for my birthday. I went with Nat and Andrew to Brick Expo, but was very frustrated with the crowds. I dismantled the Millennium Falcon which had been out for four years! Also over the Christmas break got to sort out and build all of Jake's lego which has been fun.

I did a lot of jigsaws this year. Mostly downstairs until downstairs got too cold. Mostly little ones, but also another section of the huge "Life" puzzle. Gave up on the skies of two jigsaws because their quality was just too poor.

I celebrated my tenth blogiversary this year. To mark the occasion I upgraded to Movable Type 5. But got very frustrated with the fact that I now cannot SSH to my host. Also with Movable Type which is *very* buggy. Next year my domain is up for renewal and I'm thinking about moving my domain to a new host with a new blogging platform. But the whole idea is pretty scary, so we'll see about that...

Shows

• The only show I saw this year was The Phantom of the Opera on my birthday.

Movies
Not many movies this year either...

• The Hobbit - An Unexpected Journey
• Star Trek - Into Darkness
• Garden of Words and Ghost in the Shell: Arise

Books

• Time Enough for Love by Robert Heinlein
• Polgara the Sorceress by David and Leigh Eddings
• Careful, he might hear you, by Sumner Locke Elliott
• To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
• Déjà Dead by Kathy Reichs
• A Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute
• I Hate You - Don't Leave Me by Jerold Kreisman and Hal Straus
• The Naked Husband by Mark D'Arbanville
• Death du Jour by Kathy Reichs
• Airport by Arthur Hailey
• Body of Evidence by Patricia Cornwall

Other stuff

• Had a full day at the War Memorial with Ken and Jeanine
• Had a jigsaw race with Nat
• Found my first geocache with Nat and Andrew
• Saw a Roller Derby bout
• Mum got her first mobile phone
• Had a random day off work to tidy up all the fish tank stuff in the garage
• Went for some walks around Palmerville with the sweetie
• Spotted the ISS a few times and waved to @Cmdr_Hadfield. Wasn't quite the same when he came back to earth.
• Went to the balloon fiesta on Canberra Day
• Watched the last couple of episodes and finale of House, which considering the timing with dad was pretty sad
• Took Stu's car for a drive up Mount Ainslie and got covered in lady bugs
• Our PS3 stopped playing DVD disks. Bluray is still ok though.  We considered getting a PS4 but the device isn't backwards compatible with old games.
• Went out to Captain's Flat on our fifth wedding anniversary
• Finished a cross stitch I got for Christmas in 1992
• Went up Black Mountain Tower
• Voted in ABC Classic FM's top 100 music in the movies, and most of my votes were in the top two hundred
• Did a blog for our trip to America in 1983
• Gave up reading Boing Boing, Life Hacker and Neatorama, Dooce and Dilbert
• Got extremely pissed off when Google Reader shut down. Destroyed my faith in Google.
• Looked at Comma Feed, Feedly and The Old Reader. Stuck with The Old Reader.  The Old Reader subsequently crashed from all the extra load of departing Google users, but was able to get funding to run on better hosting and has been fine ever since.
• Got more of my photos onto the RiotACT
• Cancelled Aussie Farmers Direct orders
• Had a look around Wintercon at EPIC
• Stu had a few car dramas that Melba Motors didn't fix
• I had a LOT of car dramas that Melba Motors didn't fix
• Saw the Skywhale
• Played through Diablo with the sweetie.  On easy mode.  Sue me.
• Did proper karaoke for the first time ever (and I've been to Japan four times!)
• Went to a Christmas Carols service at Como

So that's the end of 2013.  New Year's Eve will be spent out at the club with food and booze and friends and fairy lights and fireworks :)

Christmas Eve was a nice morning tea at work, followed by an early mark.  Went to Potty's to do a water change and bring home some lego.  Had lunch at KFC then came home and had a small siesta.

In the evening we got the Dominos wagyu three ways pizza and watched carols (or half watched really, I was playing on my phone).

Christmas morning I finished off some last-minute cleaning of the house, then prepped lunch.  Annie and family came over and we sat around and nibbled and chatted while the Stus played Diablo.  Then had a roast pork and potato (and other things) feast.  Sadly the crackling wasn't as good as last time I did a roast pork.  Oh well.  Several food comas were had by people during Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, and we also watched the beginning of Monty Python and the Holy Grail (keeping with the theme).  The others went home and we finished watching it.  It was a lovely afternoon, pretty much stress free which was good.  Hurrah! :)

Didn't get any photos of all the food except for these cheese and bacon balls - cheese, bacon, more cheese, more cheese, sweet chili sauce and chives.  They could have done with more bacon.. next time.. :)

In the evening we watched the 7pm Project, and then Shrek the Third.

Today, Boxing Day, I got stuck into some holiday projects I'd been hanging out to do.  Tidied the shelves in the spare room cupboard, got half way through dismantling the Millennium Falcon, downloaded some bank statements and organised things there a bit, downloaded all the photos off all my cameras, started preparing my year in review post, built my nanoblock Schloss Neuschwanstein, and watched Storm Boy in the evening (I haven't seen that movie in probably thirty years).

So since I last blogged I've been to four parties.

Last Friday was our division party.  It was at the Novotel, so it was a little pricey, but most of the food was really good.  Had some silly but fun activities afterwards, then kicked onto the Wig & Pen.  Went to Zierholz as well after that, but didn't stay long there.

My Christmas cracker joke

We didn't get this.  Turns out "penguins" are like Freddo Frogs - chocolates with individual wrappings

Space Invaders school!

Saturday I did house organising type stuff in the morning then went out to the club.  Had a swim and after dinner we played some cards (Fluxx and Uno) with A&J.

Sunday morning I headed up to Sydney.  

Signs burnt by the bushfires in October

Fog on Appin Road - really weird considering how hot it was

Went to the home to take dad out for chips, but we got a retarded wheel chair and had an extremelly frustrating time trying to get him to the shops.

In the evening we went to mum's church for a sausage sizzle and carols which was quite nice.

The last time I saw Ruth she was about six years old.. now she's 22!

Monday night I went over to Luc and Lizzi's for dinner.  Lizzi cooked us scotch fillet steaks - yum yum :) Was great to catch up with them.

On Tuesday it was the nursing home's Christmas party.  David and Yvonne and Uncle Ian came along too, and we had our own table too.  A friend of Ian's was the entertainment - she sang lots of Christmas songs.  So was a pretty good afternoon.  Did a bit of workshop tidying afterwards.

Yvonne being a goofball

Uncle Ian being a goofball

Possibly our last ever family photo

Christmas selfie

Wednesday mum did a great roast pork before I came home.

The car behaved itself too.  The water seems to have gone down a *little* bit but not too much.

Friday was our section party at the lake.  It was super hot and Neil and I were suckers and walked the whole way there.  Dranks lots of beer and bubbly, but also lots of water so had an early night and was totally fine the next day :)

Henrch won the race to the top of the rope pyramid

I would love to have joined the boys in a dip in the lake :)

Yesterday the sweetie and I went out for brunch at As Nature Intended, then did our food shopping.  It was miserably hot and I barely achieved anything all afternoon.

In the evening I went over to Kit's for another party so she could christen her new bbq.  Around 10pm I snuck into the lounge room to watch the end of Carols in the Domain.  Even the anti-carols people ended up watching with me :)  *and* they played the Hallelujah chorus which the Sydney one never does, so that was super awesome :)

This morning the house was ten degrees cooler so got stuck into tidying up the house.  Was at it most of the day.  But of course it got hotter and hotter and by later in the afternoon I was pretty much spent.  Had a swim, then went to Potty's to feed the fish.

And so I'm finally caught up.  Well sort of.  There's still more house tidying to be done.  And photos from the last two months to upload to the blog.  But might get it done by the end of the year.  Maybe  ....

I've been really slack with blogging this year, especially the second half.  Lots of trips to Sydney mucking up my routine and cutting deeply into my "home" time is certainly not helping.  And the lack of comments is also not helping either, I feel like noone's really out there anymore.  Since my birthday in August I've had a whole *two* comments from regular readers.  Not that I do this for you, I do it for me, which is why I'm a bit annoyed I'm not keeping up - as this provides a valuable record for me of my life.

Anyways.

Thursday night after drinks we went to the Lighty for dinner, and then onto Karaoke.  I've never done karaoke like this before.  And found it a lot more difficult than Singstar.  With Singstar the lead vocals are at full volume compared to the music, and the timings are on screen.  With karaoke the lead vocals are basically non existent, which means you're pretty much on your own getting the timing right.  And when people are singing very loudly and very badly, it's very hard to try and get it right.  In the end with a lot of songs I blocked an ear and closed my eyes and was able to keep the timing a lot better.  And the videos are crap - at least with Singstar you mostly get the original video clips.  But it was a great fun night - we stayed for two hour-long rounds.

Friday night I made the sweetie watch Love Actually with me.  Because, you know, Christmas.

Saturday morning I was up at normal time to go help out with the big work Christmas party.  Neil and Henrch and Windy had spent a couple of hours on Friday afternoon moving things up onto the loading dock, so in the end it only took half an hour to load the truck.  We had the whole place setup by about 10:30, and then just needed to wait for the booze to turn up and then we were done.  Quickest setup *ever*.  After everything was done, I went on a couple of rides and took a lot of photos, then had my lunch and came home.

Saturday afternoon we headed over to Mishi's for a games evening.  We read a stack of Geek Battle questions which turned out to be great conversation starters.  Then we played a couple of games of Fluxx - Geoffrey won one game and I won another.  Then we watched Inception because Mishi had never seen it, and the sweetie and I hadn't seen it since we saw it at the movies.  Quite enjoyed it the second time around.

Sunday we went to Potty's for a big family BBQ.  Essentially it was the family Christmas gathering, as everyone was there, and won't be for Christmas itself.

And then back to work.  I have *sooo* much to do it's not funny.  And yet I got so many interruptions and problems to deal with that yesterday I barely got *any* of it done.  So much for a nice wind-down to Christmas ...

Friday night the sweetie and I watched Airport (finally) and then finished Diablo.

Saturday morning we went to Black Pepper for breakfast, then did a large food shop.

After lunch we headed out to the club.  Had a swim and then joined the Christmas party.  There was a secret santa after dinner that went a lot longer than expected as people fought over a picture frame and two envelopes with $10 in them.  The ginger bread mini village I'd brought wasn't well received, so I swapped it with the person that got it, and so now I have a village *and* a train to make :)  Had a sauna as well, but I'm still not convinced by them.

Sunday morning we helped Andrew repair some of his roof and had another swim.

On the way home we stopped at Potty's and the whole family came over.  Stayed there for a while before coming home to cook our roast pork.  The crackling was up there with the best I've ever done, but the meat was a little over cooked.

Standard week so far - work, insomnia, jigsaws, photo sorting.

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..

On Tuesday I met up with @StuartCRyan for lunch at Super Bowl in Chinatown.

We had a whole Peking Duck.

And it was amazing :)

We ated the whole thing :)

Tuesday night David and Yvonne came over to mum's bearing pizza (they forgot to take the leftovers, so mum and I had them the next night). 

After the pizza we all trekked downstairs and David made some suggestions about what was likely to have any interest for people and what could safely be thrown out.

We also found more of Dad's not-very-secret chocolate stash.

Wednesday night I came home again.

So went to the Sydney office today.  It was a very weird experience.  Mostly because there's just not the same office chatter that we have normally.  It was very quiet in terms of my interactions with people, which made me feel a lot like I was working from home.  Sure you get plenty done, but you also get worn out faster and just want to go home.

And I don't get the toilets to myself like I normally do ;)

Tonight mum cooked roast pork! Yum! :)

And then we spent three quarters of an hour tidying up just one pile in the garage.  Chucked a couple of bits and pieces, but mostly just tried to find better homes for things.