Thursday night: after Wednesday night's insomnia I got to sleep quite quickly.  But then I woke up at around 3am on Friday morning and never got back to sleep.  Actually I lie.  I got up at 6:15 and made up a potato bake, and went back to bed while it cooked, and got about half an hour more sleep.

Friday: got home, spent three quarters of an hour packing the car up, then headed down the coast.  Arrived a bit after eight, fired up the spa, then realised the Sandy Foot pizza place closes at 8pm :(  So had potato bake for dinner.  Then went in the spa and stayed up entirely too late.  

Saturday: had a very slow start.  We might have all been a bit seedy.  Well ok not all of us.  D and F were suitably restrained and were only a bit tired heh.  I cooked some bacon and eggs for brunch, then we headed up to Myrtle Beach for a swim.  The water was nice and it was all very pleasant until we all got a bit out of our depth and then struggled to get back.  I managed ok, but I could see how easy it would be to panic.  Stu and C got a lot more stuck but were ok in the end.  Had some bubbly and some fruit on the beach, then had another quick dip before heading back.  

Went into Bateman's Bay for dinner - to the Little Restaurant and Bar.  We'd been there before, and the food was just as good this time.  I had a very nice wagyu steak.  Went for a bit of a walk to walk off dinner, but ended up getting some ice cream for dessert.  Went in the spa again, but didn't stay up as late.

Sunday: fairly early start.  Headed out around 9:15 and headed down to Armand's Beach.  But the weather closed in, so after a bit of a swim, we adjourned to shelter to have some bubbly and cheese (too cold for fruit).  Headed back to the beach a bit later for another quick swim.  Got some ice cream in Bermagui at the Gelati Clinic.  Then headed back to the house.  Chillaxed for a while, then ordered some pizzas for dinner.  Then we danced for a while to C's music before getting in the spa.  But after a long day we were pretty tired and were all in bed by 10pm.  Silly really.

Monday: had a biggish breakfast of bacon, eggs, mushrooms and zucchini hash browns, then cleaned up the house then headed home.  I got part way through unpacking and doing some washing, before heading up to Mount Rogers to kill a layered blue field (good for the step count though).  Then a quiet evening just gathering ourselves.

Tuesday: back to reality.  Downloaded all my photos, but haven't chosen any for the blog yet.  This will probably get updated at some point in the future :)

So spent the beginning and the end of the weekend swimming with EffanC.

Friday night was a club swim night at a private indoor pool.  Which should be nice in winter.  Except.  The room has terrible acoustics, which meant it got very loud with not many people.  And then people started pegging balls at each other which made it all kinds of tedious.  But then some people left and it quieted down which made it nicer.  Went back to EffanC's and we had some wine and cheese and watched Peter Jackson's Braindead, which apparently used the most fake blood in a movie ever.  But the horror was all so cheesy and fake that it didn't bother me.  Then a couple of episodes of The Katering Show which was hilarious.

Saturday was very quiet, just housework and painting and tv.

Sunday we did some food shopping and then more of the same.  In the evening we met up with EffanC for dinner.  We were going to go to Kinh Do, but it was booked out, so ended up at Chong Co.  

Then back to our place for a chilly swim.

Thursday I had a horror night from not feeling well in my stomach (I hadn't even drunk that much at drinks), to hurty hitting at midnight.  So not much sleep then.

Friday I donned my Sadie gloves for a little cleaning (although not as much as I would have liked).  That night I watched the Shawshank Redemption which I hadn't seen in years. I wouldn't mind reading the book some time.

Saturday morning first thing we had brunch, did some food shopping and went to Bunnings.  And then it was after midday.  How does that happen?

Lamb mint chili chocolate sausages from Market Meats Belconnen - they were pretty good!

Then headed out to the club.  Did a bit of trench digging, but ended up helping measure curtains up for hemming.  We hung them in the bus later and they looked amazing.  Had dinner there and chatted to J&H for quite a while and I even went in the sauna.

This morning we came home earlyish via breakfast at Quangers Scottish Restaurant and Office Works.  

I did some painting and fish stuff and gardening.  Accidentally started watching Secondhand Lions on tv and ended up watching the whole thing, was quite good.  Then went and did our food shopping for the week.  Tonight was Veronica Mars and dad's documentaries.

The piles of crap on my desk are getting higher and higher.  Really must clean them up ..

Last Wednesday night, we went out for dinner with EffanC (to Kinh Do - lots of really yummy food).

Then we headed into Civic to see Citizenfour.

I thought it was very interesting and thought-provoking, although I did get distracted from time to time by the whole film making process.

My dad used to lose it at governments doing that sort of stuff.  He was completely paranoid, hated the idea of "big brother" and even raged at having to do the census.  But, probably because he was like that, I feel a lot less paranoid.  Maybe because I feel like I have such a boring life that why would anyone *care*?  Probably not the right attitude, but I suppose it's one of the lesser likely things to keep me awake at night.

And, relatedly, it was just that same morning that I was doing some testing of our proxies (Simon says!) to see what is logged during image searches, and what images are returned from sites that are blocked.  It seems the image searches return images from Google rather than from the blocked site itself, means that things can show up that shouldn't.

So for anyone watching, that image search I did on "weapons making" was just for testing!

..

So this was dinner at Kinh Do

And this was the bar at the theatre

Headed out to the club first thing yesterday.  That is, we didn't leave til after 10am and with a shopping trip didn't arrive til nearly midday.  Had a bit of lunch and then the sweetie went to work on his essay, and I went up to the kitchen to help prepare dinner.  

Yup.  

Several of us spent the entire afternoon prepping veggies while others cooked.  We cut up ten kilos of potatoes, half a sack of onions, a kilo of garlic (garlic oil *hurts*, who knew?), thirty cucumbers, half a box of bullhorn peppers, lots of zucchinis, several large bunches of spring onions, several large bunches of bok choi, a couple of huge pots full of cabbage, a bowl of ginger, a huge bowl worth of mini egg plants.  And that was just the veggies.  There was also probably 10L worth of fried rice, fifty drumsticks, fifty chicken wings and a *mountain* of pork.

All to feed forty people.

Yup.

As you can imagine, there was a lot of leftovers.  And I mean *a lot*.  We could have easily fed another hundred people with the leftovers.  In fact most of it (including at least three quarters of the garlic (which *hurts*)) wasn't even cooked up.  The whole thing offended me actually.  There was so much left over there wasn't the fridge space to store it.  Although I did make a valiant effort at it before bed.

But the food that we did manage to eat was really good, and after dinner R&L put on some music and a whole bunch of us danced for ages which was heaps of fun.  Mostly sixties and seventies music, with a couple of Adele and Kylie songs heh.

This morning I woke up early stressing about all the food and whether it would all go to waste.

Went with EffanC to Bungendore for a light breakfast, then came back with lots of freezer bags and bagged up all the veggies for people to take home.  I made a cabbage bake for dinner tonight which was evil but good, and used up some old cream and bacon that was in the house.

Other than that it was just painting and watching Veronica Mars and dad's documentaries.

I think I need a weekend to recover from my weekend.

And my fingers still smell like garlic.

Another week, a different scientist/mathemetician.... last night we went along with EffanC to see The Theory of Everything.

I quite enjoyed it.

Eddie Redmayne's performance was brilliant.

I found it quite emotional (but then, we went to Palace Electric, so I'd had a couple of glasses of wine).  

But it is mostly about the relationships.  For the geek in me I would have liked a bit more of the science as well.

Didn't get much done for the rest of the day yesterday.  Just a bit of house tidying, jigsawing etc.

Today not much either, other than a bit of food shopping at the markets this morning.

But you'll be pleased to know I finally did the vacuuming.

Friday night we finished watching season 1 of Veronica Mars through.  I think that was my third time watching it through.  Still just as good.

I didn't sleep very well on Friday night.  Too many restless legs :(  Was awake for hours, so was tired and grumpy on Saturday morning.

Saturday morning I spent the entire morning cleaning the house.  Yay.  Although I *still* haven't done the vacuuming.  Have I ever mentioned how much I hate vacuuming?

Marc and Jo arrived around midday and we chatted for a while.  

Then did a trip to Costco.  Because I'd never been and was interested to see the place.  It started off ok, looking around the home entertainment stuff and another non-food stuff.  But then we got to the food and thought we should see what inspired us for dinner.  Ended up picking up some lamb shanks.  But then we needed to find stuff to go with it, but it's really horrible to shop for fresh food there.  Smallest bag of potatoes was 5kg :(  Plus we didn't know where anything was and it was somewhat crowded, so it all became quite stressful.  Got through the checkouts, and then they take your receipt and count every item in your trolley to make sure it adds up.  And I'm like *what the??*  Seemed quite insane to me.  And the girl couldn't grasp that there was something buried under something else, which meant our tally was one item *under* and so she spent ages counting and getting confused.  Bizarre bizarre bizarre.  Then we thought we'd get some super cheap petrol (under a dollar a litre) but then we saw the queue, which was at least six cars waiting per bowser and thought screw that and just got out of there.

At home we started prepping dinner (it was like 4pm by this point).  But I was tired and stressed and grumpy and things just kept falling *down*.  Why does everything have to fall down??  Plus mess, and multiple people working just made it even more stressful.

But once we got dinner in the oven and cleaned up the kitchen I could start to relax a little.  So we chatted and looked at holiday slideshows before dinner.  Which turned out reasonably well.  The lamb shanks were *huge* and I didn't finish mine, and they could have done with being done a bit slower and longer.

After dinner we (read me - everyone else wussed out) went for a swim.

But then we started prepping breakfast (Marc's breakfast mince) and I accidentally knocked a wine glass onto the floor.  It *shattered*.  Into tiny pieces all over the kitchen floor :(:(:(:(  I was pretty upset because it was one of the nice ones Stu got when he left his job in Queensland nearly nine years ago.  But I really lost it when I tried to nibble a bit of onion of the spatula a bit later and dropped it trying to put it into my mouth.  I was just so sick of everything falling down I just lost it and went to bed.

Today was a fairly slow start.  Had the breakfast mince (too much food for me) and then Marc and Jo went home around midday.

Then the sweetie and I jumped in the car and went for a nice long drive out to Uriarra Crossing and Mt Stromlo (Scope is closed - boo).  We had a good long chat about life and stuff so that was really nice.

Got home and started on season 2 of Veronica Mars.  I remember watching this in Sydney, but found my dvds were still wrapped, so was wondering how I could have seen it.  Then figured I must have watched *live*, on *tv* .. surely not!  Actually watching tv as it airs?  Unheard of! heh

So yesterday was photo sorting, painting, and watching dad's documentaries.  We went down to Kit's after dinner for a while which was nice.

Today was a meandering start.  I cooked cheesy hash browns for brunch yummm.  Went to the markets for some food shopping late morning.  Jo and Marc popped in briefly.  Did a bit of cleaning and photo sorting in the afternoon.  Still haven't vacuumed :(

Nat and Andrew came over for dinner (roast chicken and epic potato bake) but while we were waiting for it to cook we looked at our photos from Hong Kong (both trips) and Taipei.  After dinner we read through Geek Battle questions, and put on various YouTube videos.

Whoops so I didn't post all weekend..

This ring tail possum was at the club on NYE.  I touched its tail because I could.

Friday was super hot.  The birds were suffering.  Crows and magpie larks were coming to the fountain at the Labor Club to get a drink and cool off in the shade.

Did our food shopping and came home.

Saturday I did some housework, and got a bit annoyed that it feels like I'm *always* cleaning the house.  It's just never ending :/

We did jump in the pool to cool off though which was nice.

In the evening we went over to EffanC's to have a glass of bubbly and some cheese before we went to the movies.  

Wine at the Palace

Then back to their place for a fairly late dinner (of some very nice quiche and salad).

Sunday was more suffering in the heat.  

In the afternoon mum came down from Sydney to stay.  She *finally* had a swim in our pool (for one reason or another it'd never happened before).  I had a beef stew going in the slow cooker all afternoon.  For dessert we had Heston Blumenthal's Hidden Orange Pudding.  I'd seen these advertised on tv before Christmas, but didn't get one.  Then on Friday saw them for half price so grabbed one.  It was pretty good.

And today was back in the deep end trying to stay afloat again.  

The other week in Sydney I was wandering through the upstairs Westfield food court in Sydney and happened across Din Tai Fung.  It *had* to be tried out - to compare with Taipei.

There was a little bit of a queue, and at the beginning of the line there was a pile of these order cards that you fill out while waiting in line.  This makes the ordering process quite efficient and you just pay when you get to the register.

They give you a buzzer then you wait.  This is the production line for filling orders.  They were powering through orders, but my dumplings took *forever* to come out - almost fifteen minutes. 

Finally got my order and found a seat in the very crowded food court.

The pork xiao long bao (left) were pretty much as good as I remembered them in Taipei.  Little parcels of flavour in delicate pastry.  Yum yum.  The shrimp and pork jiao ze were pretty good too.