Friday night after the party, we headed off down the coast.
I always love coming down this bit of road
This spider terrorised me in our bathroom. The next morning it ran up my arm. I screamed a bit.
Had a bit of a go in the spa Friday night, but was pretty tired after the party so didn't stay up late.
Saturday morning I started a jigsaw. Someone had mostly separated out the sections into baggies, so I emptied the baggies and sorted them one at a time. The pile at the left there is all the trees. The pile at the top is the lake. The pile at the front is all the edges. The stuff on the right is the "interesting" pieces - ones with bits of building etc in them. The one small thing missing? All the pieces for the castle!! Fail!! So had a look for the missing bag in the other boxes of jigsaws that came with this one, but it was nowhere to be found. So threw it out :(
Saturday afternoon went up to Myrtle Beach. It was pretty hot, although not sunny. But the water was a bit chilly. And it was the calmest I've ever seen the place.
Kangaroos on the road on the way back
Saturday night's dinner was three medium pizzas - a puttanesca, a big mama, and their meatlovers. There was basically one whole pizza leftover, which got eaten at breakfast and lunch the next day.
Aftermath
Finished the other jigsaw on Sunday morning.
Then packed up and came home.
So apart from having Doc wander up for some Mario Kart and Singstar on Saturday night, we didn't do anything this weekend. Well not outside the house anyway. Just the usual cleaning and tidying and photo sorting and catching up on rss feeds.
Oh we did watch the first episode of Brideshead Revisited this afternoon. Jeremy Irons is pretty hot even at 33. And plenty of been-theres at Oxford :)
Cause there's a whole stack of old entries to read.
Saturday night we went over to Annie's after dinner and hung out for a while which was nice.
Today we dropped a monitor and the Lord of the Rings series over there, bought a printer and did our food shopping.
Then I spent the rest of the afternoon taking care of the pool and the house. And still feeling like I've not made any progress.
Cooked a nice potato bake and carrots and zucchinis for dinner, and shared a nice bottle of Pinot Grigio.
And just like that the weekend is over :(
Yesterday morning we went to As Nature Intended for breakfast.
Then went to Bunnings and also did our food shopping.
Pretty much the rest of the weekend (aside from the
Nara Candle Festival) was spent cleaning and tidying around the house. Spent quite a while yesterday cleaning the pool while the sweetie did some gardening. Organised a big pile of computer bits and pieces. Did some video dubbing (until the DVD player had an error - hoping not a permanent one). Freecycled our leather lounge suite (the one Stu got on Freecycle when he moved to Canberra in 2006). Cleared everything off the lounge and study floors.
The space in here looks *massive* at the moment. It's quite nice to not see clutter everywhere! It got to the point tonight where you could *finally* see all the effort that I put in all weekend. At least in here. The dining table, family room and downstairs are another matter...
So where were we up to? Hrmmm.. Wednesday. Will add some photos to this post later. At the moment I'm in transition and I don't want to lose things.
Thursday was Neil's birthday, and we got invited over to Chris B's. Picked up some sausages and headed over. Trampolined with Margaret which was fun. Lots of food, lots of booze, a pretty good night :)
Friday, pub lunch at the Lighty. I had quite a nice calamari salad. Then shared a bottle of bubbly with Neil and Doc after work.
Saturday did some video dubbing to DVD. Then out to vote and do some shopping. Gave away some things on Freecycle. Did some bits and pieces around the house and more dubbing. Went over to Potty's for pizza and Jake's birthday party. Lots of peoples there.
Sunday morning I spent an hour and a half in the back garden hacking a path to the back gate (I should have taken a "before and after" photo to show the difference!). And gave away the Hills Hoist that we've been wanting to give away since we moved in four years ago. Yayyyyyy!! Cooked some okonamiyaki for lunch in an attempt to get through our veggie box. Watched The Last Samurai with the sweetie. Responded to a wanted on Freecycle from someone wanting computers for "homework" heh. Hopefully he'll take the three working computers and any other bits and pieces that he might find useful. So spent the evening sorting all the computer crap into piles to give away and piles to keep, and wiping hard drives.
The back yard is a disaster. We have this very vigorous plantage at the side fence that is taking over. Even if we chop it back, we'll have piles and piles of vegetation to get rid of. Not entirely sure how to go about doing that. Heck even with a green waste bin it'd be a challenge. Might have to revisit the idea of a gardener...
I finally gave away this laptop last weekend. It was originally a uni laptop that belonged to Jim, but was thrown out when it reached the end of its useful life. I took it all around the USA/Canada in 2004 to download my photos, a trip to Queensland in 2005 and Lord Howe Island in 2007. It was a great little laptop because it was so small and light. But it was what, thirteen years old?, and only running Windows 98, so attaching devices became problematic. We replaced it with the first
Eee PC in 2008 and I hadn't used it since. So last weekend I gave it to my Dad. If he can make his camera and memory sticks work with it, he'll probably find it useful, but otherwise it's probably only good for landfill :(
Friday - couple of beers at Ha Ha, then to the Labor Club with the parents who had just arrived in town.
Saturday - rainy - the parents went into town and went to the National Portrait Gallery and New and Old Parliament Houses, while we stayed indoors and I did a jigsaw. Cooked a nice tuna pasta bake for dinner and then we watched the slideshow of our UK 2010 trip (all the photos that are now on the blog).
Sunday - nice day - the parents went to church, and then for a walk along the lake, while we stayed indoors and did not much. Then they went home, but I was still feeling unsettled and blah. Watched the Julian Assange story on telly. Stu suggested a scotch after dinner, but a phone call from work left me wondering if I'd have to go in, so couldn't relax.
Monday - still feeling blah. Did some house organising but that was about it.
The other week we were given a couple of oranges, but not navel oranges - something a bit more sour. On the weekend I had the crazy idea to coat them in chocolate. Actually not completely crazy, they turned out reasonably well. For oranges, that are very wet, wetness being the sworn enemy of molten chocolate.
Yeah, so a bit messy, but pretty tasty :)
Yeah so I'm totally behind on photoblogging. Heck I hadn't even download photos off my cameras in over a week.
Even though I had a lot of time at home this weekend, I spent most of it on UK photos and playing Flow. All the panoramas for the UK trip are done, as well as photos for the rest of the trip.
Check it out.
636 steps on the pedometer today. Disaster.
Really not wanting to go to work tomorrow. I just have to keep reminding myself that if I have a bad day and screw up, noone will die...
So PopAsia played Gangnam Style this morning. And the family might have danced to the YouTube video this afternoon. But there would never be any video of that, no no no. Because some of us might get into trouble if that ever leaked onto the internet :)
Yeah so most of Stu's family came over for a roast of (fairly) epic proportions. There was a chicken roast with apricot and herb stuffing, to which Stu added Dutch carrots, and there was a lamb roast with garlic and Tony's rosemary, to which Stu added parsnips and turnip, my (sort of, not really) famous potato bake, a veggie roast, and beetroot, potato, sweet potato, peas, corn, beans and gravy.
And funnily enough, there's even plenty of leftovers. Guess what we'll be eating all week? :)
The kids were (mostly) behaved enough to sit through Star Wars which Annie suggested we put on. They might be back next weekend for Empire Strikes Back :)
Two years ago today we left Newquay via the Headland Hotel, which featured in The Witches, which was on TV last night! Stopped in Polperro. It rained. Then in Lyme Regis and Portsmouth before ending up in Bognor Regis for the night.
