On the weekend I somehow managed to end up with three cracked fingernails.  First world problem I know.  One of them was below the skin line, and has been ripping off more and more ever since.  Tonight it drew blood.  Yay.  

So.  Fricken.  Annoying.

If I went to everything that's going on this weekend I'd be pretty exhausted .. hrmmm

Possible dinner with Ken and Jeanine on Friday, Canberra show, possible club night, Paul Kelly and Neil Finn Sunday night.

Although with all that stress I'll just as likely do none of it.. hrmmmm

The Paul Kelly and Neil Finn concert on Sunday could be good.  If I had someone to go with :/

Then there's Verticool coming up, which I'd love to do, but the $880 suggested fund raising is a little daunting.. bit off-putting actually .. makes it all too hard.. and it sounds like you can't really just go in it for the fun of walking up the stairs .. *sigh*

And work was just as crappy as I expected it to be.  Possibly even a bit worse :(

Last night was ok but today was a bit of a disaster.  Had a bit of a slow start, thinking we'd be going out for breakfast.  But we didn't because the sweetie wasn't feeling well. So got all my news feeds caught up and did a bit of jigsaw when hurty started.  Worst I've had it in a long time.  Even made me throw up. *sigh*.  So that wasted the whole middle of the day.  I was feeling delicate afterwards and felt like KFC, so talked the sweetie into going and doing our shopping as well.  Except the mall is a nightmare on the weekends, and today was among the worst it's ever been.  So the poor sweetie felt like crap within a few minutes :( In the end did our shopping at Jamo, then came home.  

Didn't really achieve much tonight either, other than finishing all the South West Rocks trip blog entries, and making this Mars Bar slice of Lisa's.  I swear we're going to get diabetes just looking at the thing.  It's got like half a kilo of sugar in it!  Yipe!

Have been doing heaps of jigsaws lately.  Here's some from the last quarter of last year.

This jigsaw had a 4x4 square of pieces that were basically the same shape (very similar, not identical).  So when it got down to the last bit of yellow and green tree, I sorted the pieces into 16 piles.  Then it was just a matter of picking the piece from the right pile and slotting it into place.  Super fast - took about half an hour to do a quarter of the jigsaw!

Jasper

Greek town

Angel

The little brother was in town and helped with a chunk of this

And then he was back again the next weekend and did all of the building in this one

Some coral

Jelly beans!  This jigsaw cost me a whole dollar in Kmart :)  I set it up at work before Christmas, and all sorts of people came to put in pieces :)

Australia Day morning we went to Black Pepper for breakfast, and then did some shopping.

In the afternoon we went out to the club with new tent in tow.  Even though there were storms forecast.  Hrmm.

So we got there and assembled the tent.  It took quite a while because we'd never done it before, and the instructions were pretty crappy.  Got a bit hot and bothered.  So had a little break in the middle to have a drink and a chat with some of the people there.

Continued on. 

Made it in the end.

Inflated the air mattress, and filled the tent with all our crap, then went up for a swim.  And it being nearly 5pm, we declared it beer o'clock.

The swim was really nice .. until they setup the water volleyball net.  Hrmm.

Dinner was a lamb broth for entree, then another lamb stew, and haggis! and tatties and salads.  Lamb for Australia Day, haggis for Burns night.  The haggis wasn't quite as good as I remember from Scotland, but not too bad.

Desert was a cranachan made by Chris

Did I mention the storm?  It *poured*.  And continued to rain for hours.  Apparently not as bad as back in Canberra though.

So we got back down to the tent to assess the damage.  The tarp on the vestibule had been covered in water/mud/leaves, but the interior of the tent was ok.  Just the end of the mattress/sheets were a bit wet from being pressed up against the edge of the tent.  Unfortunately neither of us could get to sleep.  The air mattress is quite sensitive, so each little movement rocks the other person around.  So I think we kept each other awake.  For hours.  Plus I was stressing about my bladder.  And of course the more you worry about needing to go, the more you think you need to go, even if you don't really need to go.  Blah.  I think I got to sleep around 2am.  Woke up at 4am for at least another hour.  Then another couple of hours sleep til 7am.  Yeah four hours sleep is probably not enough.

So we got up and had leftover haggis and tatties for breakfast.  Stu fried it, so it turned out more like the haggis we'd had in Scotland.

Then back down to disassemble the tent.  After removing spiders.

I wiped the tent down with a towel and we didn't try to properly fold it up, would do that at home after properly drying it all.  Just a quick fold and put it in the back of the car, with all the rest of our crap on the back seat.

And then home.

To find the power had been out since 7:10pm the night before :(  Fortunately the seals on the fridge are pretty good, so everything was still cold to touch, and stuff in the freezer was still frozen (a bit of meltage on the ice cubes but still mostly frozen).  

Rest of the weekend was pretty quiet.  We did go over to Potty's so he could build a Cornetto stand for the sweetie.  Because he's a manly man.  And has power tools. :)

So a relatively quiet Sunday.

Well sort of!

This morning Doc came by to play with his Christmas present - a hedge trimmer!  He hacked away at the side hedge, and only tried to electrocute himself once (the house decided it didn't want to comply).  And he took me out to show me the free greenwaste recycling centre out at Holt - who knew!

Lunch of salad, then Doc and the family came by for a swim which was very pleasant.

Stir fry for dinner, to use up the last of the vegies, then Tristan came over to drop off some guppies before he moves to Brisbane.  And there was much chattage and story telling for an hour or two.

And there's been rain! So much wonderful rain!! :)

And sadly the weekend comes to an end...

So this little blog turned ten years old today!

Happy blogiversary to me! heh

Ten years, or a quarter of my life in writing and online.  Ten pretty big years with a lot of ups and downs, four big overseas holidays, a wedding, a new house, a new job.  And mostly all chronicled here, to varying levels of detail.

I had no idea when I started this blog how dependent on it I would become.  Simply as an easy place to find when I did things or find a photo to show someone.  A place to put photos online for friends/family/strangers. My only regret with the blog is not starting it earlier (even though there really wasn't such a thing much before 2003).

I had wanted to update the style/design of the blog, but ran out of time, on account of being away the entire Christmas holiday, and having last weekend taken up by simply FTPing files up and down.  So I may get something new online in the next little while.  Maybe.  The best I could do was update a few things like the footer, my blogroll and the site description, add navigation links to each entry, and republish the whole site (took twenty seven minutes this time).

Thanks to everyone that's come along for the ride, it's been great!

So 2012.  

The year started with us in Sydney with Stu's friend Kore who was visiting from the USA.  We saw the Sydney fireworks on New Year's Eve, then came home.  Went to River Island with her and D&Y and had another week off just hanging around Canberra.

This year saw us have our biggest ever trips away from home.  Stu had decided to take some long service leave and spent three months in Japan - two and a bit of those studying Japanese, and some travel at the end.  So when the parents said they were going to the Middle East I decided I would go too.  I spent two weeks with them on a tour round Israel and Jordan, then we appended that with ten days in Egypt.  I still had a couple of weeks to fill in before I was planning to meet up with Stu, so took myself off to London and then wandered across the top of Europe from Paris to Copenhagen via Brussels, Amsterdam, The Hague, Rotterdam, Hamburg and Billund.  Finally I flew across to Japan and after a couple of days around Osaka had some time in Hokkaido.  It was an epic trip and I saw some amazing stuff!  I was quite nervous in the lead up to the trip that I'd get sick or something would happen and it would all fall apart.  But fortunately nothing went wrong.  In fact probably the only "disaster" of the whole trip was an airline going out of business while I was on my trip, costing me several hours out of my day in Copenhagen because I had to bus/train it there from Billund instead of fly.

In other travel news, we went to Dave's coast house in July and December, and visited Chay and David in Queensland in August.  Finished off December with Boxing Day in Sydney, then a couple of days in the Hunter Valley.

I got my UK trip photos blogged - finishing up two years after the trip.

At work I came to the realisation that I like doing documentation.  Tragic I know ;)  As always a pretty busy year, although things did let up a bit for me after the trip, as we had several new people getting up to speed so we were able to spread the workload out a bit.  So the latter part of the year gave me some time to do my other favourite thing - tidying!  The year finished with a massive downer though, with one of our team members refusing to do oncall anymore and thereby increasing the work load for the rest of us.  It's been causing me all sorts of stress/anxiety :(

Otherwise my health had a pretty good year, just a couple of short colds (got a flu vaccination which possibly helped).

We had a very social year this year, visiting, being visited and going out with lots of people.  There were several games nights at Mishi's in February, March, April and July, although somehow Stu never managed to meet Lana.  From Stu's work, we saw Josh and Ally a few times, Gaelian and Stephanie, Tristan, and Kirily.  From my work there were a few bbqs at Chris', a Japanese feast at Doc's, a couple of dinners with Tony and Heather (that Stu missed for one reason or another) and some movie/singstar nights with a big group in January and October, and one with just Doc.  Nat and Andrew came over a few times, including a hanami party.  We saw Damien and Amanda a few times - for a birthday lunch (that Stu missed because he was in Japan), a Christmas dinner party, and a war games day.  There were meetups with internet friends - we went out with Fiona and Chrispycon a few times, and Stu's friend Gene came to visit.  From Sydney, we had beer with Luc, had the parents come down to stay for a weekend, although Stu wasn't feeling very well so we didn't spend much time with them, and Peter came to stay with us for a month while on a short term contract.  Hao also came for a conference and we had a good catchup.  David came to stay a few times, and Yvonne came once as well.  All of that socialising meant we didn't have DC over as often, so the Buffy and Angel watching suffered somewhat.

With the fish, a fairly quiet year.  We let the numbers dwindle down before we went away, as we wanted to minimise the number of tanks for Doc to have to look after while we were away.  While we were away my last remaining original fish died - my ten year old angel.  I gave that tank a thorough cleaning and got some danios for it.  I also got five baby angels, but all but one of them died within a week :(  So at the moment there's the "angel" tank with danios and an angel, the two foot with a couple of guppies and the remaining black neon tetras, and maybe a catfish or three we got from Chay and David, the four foot with duboisi, multis, a leleupi and a j.transcriptus (the big catfish died Christmas eve) and the "krib" tank downstairs with the three remaining kribs and a golden panchax killifish.

Not much happened on the Lego front this year (apart from visiting *two* Legolands on my holiday).  Neil and I went to the annual Brick Expo, this time getting tickets to the VIP dinner.  That was a lot of fun, and got to see all the Lego displays without crowds.

I've been doing a lot of jigsaws recently, and I did the second section of the 24000 piece one.

New toys I bought this year included a new computer (the previous one was five years old) and an iPhone 5 (Optus data is worse on it than the 3GS but otherwise it's a pretty cool phone).  Had many long hours of stress fighting with iTunes - moving to a new computer, getting the iOS updated on the old phone and moving to the new phone).  I also stockpiled some Buckyballs before they were banned for sale in Australia and got the London Olympics for the wii (not as good as the original).  For the house we bought a purple "comfy" chair for Stu for the study, a new lounge suite and a buffet to match the dining table, and a new printer.

We're still eating out quite a lot, and I've become one of those annoying food photographers.  Our favourites are still Black Pepper for weekend brunches, and the Dumpling Inn.  Other places we went to this year included Sammy's, Gus', Happy's, Alice's, Ardeche (ourselves and for Noah's birthday), Mork's (with Tony, Heather and Jess, and also with Damien and Amanda), Café Essen, Asia Café, Bella Vista (don't get there as often as we'd like, but did go with work and James and George and the kids), Ginger and Spice (for Annie's birthday), As Nature Intended, Kimchi and Zierholz Fyshwick.  With work people there were also visits to Zierholz UC, Samiuz, Bolly Buds, 2 Yummy, Guzman Y Gomez, Chong Co and Mad Mex.  We also got into a semi-regular habit of going for drinks after work on a Friday, at such places as Ha Ha Bar, The Lighthouse and the Labor Club.

I didn't do as much dessert creating this year, but did attempt a blueberry cheesecake, chocolate oranges, and a pretty spectacular layered cherry pavlova (twice!).  Also made hollandaise sauce for the first time.

Shows seen:
Fiddler on the Roof
1927
ACO

Movies seen:
Tintin
Arrietty
Hugo
Excalibur
Prometheus
Brave
Skyfall

Books read:
War of the Worlds
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
(can't remember if I read any more books - didn't read many because of not getting the bus as much in the mornings, and taking a shorter bus in the afternoons and walking)

Other bits and pieces:

Blogged less - less to say during the week
UK photo sorting/blogging
Problems with a fish tank heater tripping the circuit breakers
Back fence latch ripped off by persons unknown
Enjoyed the new donut sculpture in Civic
Watched the new Cotter Dam overflow
Ran a trivia night at work that was "the best organised trivia night ever" (according to a couple of people)
Canberra Airport open day
Got annoyed at a major ramp up in comment spam
DC's dog Benny died
Poultry show at EPIC
Skiing - with Steve in July and twice with Peter in August
Whiskey night
Started getting veggie boxes from Aussie Farmers Direct
Moving Feast Winery tour at Murrambateman with Tony and family
Did a bit of recording of VHS tapes to DVD
Fought with the overgrown garden
Nara Candle Festival
Halloween party at Chris'
Neighbour's goat died
Saw and got some great photos of the solar eclipse
Turned off my PIII 866 computer which had been running for most of eleven years
Exercise bike broke
Go Karting for a work Christmas party
Drinks and pizza at boss' boss' boss' boss' boss' place
Joined a small social club, went to their Christmas party
Sold my iPhone 3GS to Heather
Christmas afternoon tea at Scott and Kerry's

Ended the year with a pool party with Nat and Andrew and Steve over for swimming, dinner and games.

The little brother and SIL came to town this weekend to run the booze train out to Tarago.  For Saturday lunch we went to Zierholz.  I have to say the service as MUCH improved since last time we were there.  Probably only twenty minutes wait for food.

In an effort to be more sociable, the sweetie found a small social club to join.  It's nothing fancy - basically just a private camping ground with a partly heated pool on the outskirts of Canberra.