Saturday, after documenting daffodils and cherry blossoms, we headed out to Hardly Normal to check out the new version of our couch.  We decided we'd take it.  

The sweetie likes the new couch

Did our food shopping before heading home.

Our plans for having people over on Saturday night fell through, so we drank the beer and did the roast chicken anyway.  After seeing a Hollywood apocalypse video on Neatorama, I thought we should watch a disaster movie, so settled on Armageddon, given that it was also a Michael Clarke Duncan movie, who sadly died this week.

Today we had Damien over.  We (they) chatted for a while before they went downstairs for a war game. 

I finished this jigsaw in the meantime.  Someone had done some research and labelled it "La Compania de Jesus Church, Cusco, Peru" .. a google image search of that found some stuff that didn't look like it, but a reverse image search found this site, so looks like it's actually Iglesia de la Compañía, Quito, Equador

And so ends another weekend.

Oh right, Thursday night.

So after the little meltdown, I decided I needed to watch something fun, so we put on Shakespeare in Love.  Which has a great soundtrack, and had the desired effect.  Fiona eventually came home and had a geeky friend in tow, who was gained admittance with his approval of our doormat (there's no place like 127.0.0.1).  He'd never seen buckyballs, so of course had to be educated :)  The boys talked games, and us girls, well we painted our nails.  Glittery blue-green.  I still maintain they are more blue than green!

Friday. Bosses were out of the office, which meant doing fun stuff.  Like documentation :)  Went home a little early.  The sweetie and I watched The Fellowship of the Ring.  And then my throat started getting sore.  *sigh*

Saturday morning up at sparrow-fart to drop Fiona off at the bus station.  Back home to attempt to sleep, but my feet were too cold and wouldn't warm up.  And did I mention the sore throat? :(

Got up late, then back to Jolimont, this time to pick up Stu's friend Gene.  We went to Cafe Essen for lunch, before dropping him off to watch the Swans game.  

Eggs benedict at Cafe Essen

We cleaned up the house then picked him up again after.  Had dinner at Kingsland in Dickson.  I'm always impressed at how their soy "meats" are close to real meats.

Sang choi bao, and a corn boat

Shantun "chicken"

Tofu hotpot

Mongolian "lamb"

We took Gene up Mount Ainslie

This morning we went and picked up a friend of Gene's and went to the southside markets.  Lunch was at home before heading into town to wander around the lake, and out to Belco to Lake Ginninderra.  And not a single black swan in sight anywhere!

Someone swimming in Lake Burley Griffin

Fountain-bows.  Totally going to send one of these into the Riot-act!

Stu thought the cockatoos would be more interested in the food he was offering if he threw it at them.  They weren't.

Buckbeak has a little brother

Finally, Stu dropped Gene off late in the afternoon while I put on the dinner (a nice roast we picked up at the markets this morning with some yummy ball carrots) and washing.

So after having people in the house since last Wednesday it was kinda weird to go back to just being us two.  Trying to get back into routine now..

Coughing a bit from the cold I got, but seems it's just a cold, not a flu.  Also Thursday was just a false start, real start was today.  

Saturday was a very quiet day, didn't leave the house.

Watched Fantasia 2000 after a couple of beers, which brought back so many memories of watching it in Marrickville in 2000-2001 after cointreau and/or vodka and vanilla coke.  Except this time was the first time watching it on Blu-ray, which was just stunning.  Beautiful and clear and none of the pain of VHS!

Sunday was also pretty quiet.  

Went for a walk to the bakery for pies for lunch.

Watched Kundun in the afternoon.  I missed out on seeing this in 1998 at the cinema because friends had gotten special screening tickets, but the only ticket I could get for the night would have been sitting by myself, so didn't end up seeing it.  Vic's comment at the time when I asked him how it was, was "Mao zedung was a f!@#%it".  Stu and I were a little emotional after watching it.

Then we went off to do our food shopping.  5pm on a Sunday you'd think the place would be deserted right?  Well the carpark was certainly more empty than usual, but Coles was *packed* :(  Ended up being quite stressful.

Came home and cooked dinner.  The sweetie must have liked it, he wanted thirds.

So all I've achieved this weekend is a bit of photo sorting and some photo dvd burning.  And lots of Laserwar played.

Tuesday was a great day.

Wednesday was a crap day.

Thursday wasn't too bad, finishing up with mulled wine and beer.

Friday was pretty short, on account of being given an early mark at work, so we went down to the lake for lunch/beer, as you do :)

Baked a batch of cookies whose dry ingredients were a Christmas present from Guy and Sammi.  From when I was in Sydney.  Yep.  The jar of ingredients has been around for *at least* five years.  Stoopidly, I was too full from a big lunch and dinner to eat any of them!  The sweetie approved though :)

Other than that I've just been playing laserwar most of the evening.  Whoops.

Sadly the sweetie is sick now, just in time for the weekend :(  Poor thing.

We left work just after lunch on Thursday, as our flight was 4pm.  Two flights for the day - Canberra to Sydney, then Sydney to Brisbane.  So weren't scheduled to arrive in Brisbane til after 7pm.  Then our flight from Sydney to Brisbane was delayed for half an hour due to heavy traffic in Brisbane.  We did three big loops around the coast off Ballina/Tweed Heads.  But to keep us entertained, they announced that Cate Campbell and Emily Seebohm were on the plane, and they wandered down the aisle showing off their medals!  It was amazingly cool!  Got to touch Emily Seebohm's silver and gold medals!  They were very heavy!  But not as shiny as I thought they'd be! heh.  Finally arrived in Brisbane, picked up our hire car then headed out to Chay and David's.  Fairly quiet night.  Only stayed up til 12:30 drinking and chatting :)  But did get to meet their new bird - Ichy - an Indian Ringneck, who is amazingly cool :)

Have I ever mentioned how much I love flying? :)

Pretty clouds over NSW

Sydney shining

Look mum, I can see your house from here!

This dude is taking this plane for a walk

I was quite surprised by the *glass* bottles!

Cate Campbell and her gold medal

Emily Seebohm and her two silver and one gold medal

Cate Campbell and Emily Seebohm on our plane!

The girls had some cool "Australia" luggage

Brisbane Airport

Mine!

After a fairly slow morning, we headed out to Ipswich for lunch and went to the Hog's Breath Cafe for lunch.  I didn't feel like anything too heavy, so had a "side" of caesar salad, and a "side" of curly fries.  Because if you go to the Hog's Breath Cafe you *have* to do curly fries :)   Stu had a pretty awesome "finger food" platter.  On the way back, we stopped in at Dan's to pick up supplies for the rest of the weekend.  Dinner was lots of Eagle Boys pizza.  There was drinking.  There was Buzz.  There was Singstar.  And it was very good.

Finger food platter

Caesar salad and curly fries

Supplies for the weekend

Stu and Ichy

Ichy!

Ichy!

Saturday after a bit of a sleepin (and the sweetie had headed out to meet a friend), C&D and I headed over to the markets next to Orion.  But they were pretty boring, not much there.  So headed into town to wander around South Bank and the markets there.  Was a very lovely wander.  Dinner that night was some roast chicken that we picked up from Chay's mum, along with the kids who were quite sick with the flu.  (David did his "best potatoes in the known universe" which were pretty decent :) ).  Their friend Storm came over after dinner too which was pretty cool.  There were mojitos.  There was drinking.  There was Buzz.  There was Singstar.  And it was very good.

Near Orion

Southbank

Brisbane from Southbank

Southbank

Southbank (taking after Japan, much?)

Bored lifesaver. The water looked lovely.  I'd have liked to have gone for a swim.  But I didn't have any swimmers.  And I think they'd have arrested me if I went skinny dipping!

Brisbane from Southbank

Lizard at Southbank

Nepalese pagoda at Southbank

Chookens!

Mojitos!

After a bit of a sleepin, we packed a picnic lunch and headed out to Wivenhoe Dam.  We'd thought of this too late last year which was a bit sad as we would have seen it spilling over.  As it was this year, they'd closed off the viewing area so you couldn't even see the front of the dam.  But I did walk over most of it while the others took photos of me heh.  Dinner was roast pork, along with a stack of pork skin.  But after dinner I started feeling a bit off-colour.  Thought I was coming down with the flu the kids had.  But also felt quite queasy.  Didn't even feel like drinking!  Tragic I know!!  Storm came over again and we played a card game called "Frustration" which I think I'd like to play some more.  There was no Buzz.  There was no Singstar.  There was no more drinking.  And it was very sad.

Wivenhoe Dam

Extra spillway at Wivenhoe Dam

Blue-faced honeyeater

Isn't he a cutie? :)

Wivenhoe Dam

Wivenhoe Dam

Wivenhoe Dam

Wivenhoe Dam

Wivenhoe Dam

Wivenhoe Dam

er..

We'd bought a big bag of purple carrots.  If you boil them, their water turns bright indigo!

The last day is always a quiet day.  Didn't really do anything before heading off with ten baby plecos and three baby guppies in tow at 11:30am.  Pretty uneventful trip home (two flights - Brisbane-Sydney then Sydney-Canberra, and Lake George looks very full!).  After a long weekend of entirely t-shirt weather it was a bit sad to get home to the freezing cold.  

Jaffas at the Brisbane Qantas club

Citrus lemon shortbread on the plane

Northern beaches of Sydney

Drinks with Libby Trickett at the Qantas Club in Sydney

A-380 taking off

Been to a couple of parties down there

Sunset over Botany Bay

I've never seen Lake George completely full!

Home!!

I dumped all the fish into the two-foot tank.  The next morning (Tuesday) I couldn't see any of the new fish at all - alive or dead.  Wednesday morning I saw one of the plecos swimming around.  So who knows if any others have survived.

Also fought the infection for a couple of days, but I think I have beaten it and not really gotten sick.

As always, same time next year guys, it was fun :):):)

Back at work I thought I'd tidy up a little documentation so that I could add some IPV6 stuff to it.  Ha.  I'd underestimated how much there was to do, and ended up spending all day on it.  Whoops.

Work.  Yeah, busy.  What else is new.

Tuesday the sweetie and I had a flex day off together which was pretty awesome.  My plan for half the day was to pull out the old amplifier and replace it with the new one we bought last weekend.  But by the time I'd pulled everything out, cleaned it all, cabled everything up, and put it all back together, it was mid afternoon.  And by the time we got the amp configured it was 4pm :(  So what started off as a great day (take a random day off work - highly recommended!) became a bit frustrating at the end.  And I don't even have any documentary evidence of my work :(

Tuesday night we met Peter at the Dumpling Inn for dinner.  We had our usual shredded beef peking style, chinese broccoli, and something we hadn't tried - bbq lamb in shantung sauce.  That was a bit heavy, and not as good as the other stuff.  But we all had room for dessert!

Also on Tuesday our new buffet arrived.  So we moved that last night to its position in the lounge room.  The contents to adorn the top of it are still being decided upon ;)

Today I mostly just felt blah and not inspired to do anything much (like the whole cleaning of the house that I need to do).  So just read news feeds, organised photos and did a jigsaw I started on the last coast trip.

Here's a couple of fun things..

My geotagging of Legoland in Denmark.  The big cluster of blue is "miniland"

The big circle across the globe.  Copenhagen->Zurich then Zurich->Narita

This is the furthest north I've ever been on (or above) the planet.  68 degrees, 29 minutes, 29 seconds.

And a photo taken near that northernmost point.

So arrived, and marvelled at the STARS!!  

Then set about turning everything on.  Except I couldn't turn on the gas.  Knob was jammed.  I was already hungry at this point, so was getting stressed and grumpy from low blood sugar level.  Then we heard from Dave - he hadn't even left home yet! (people had bailed at work so he had to fill in for them).  So we abandoned thought of using the spa that night, and went into Bateman's Bay to get some dinner.

We went to "Little Restaurant and Bar".  With a super friendly waitress and chef.  Lovely service.

Stu had a pork croquette dish off the specials board.

And I had lamb cutlets

For dessert Stu had banana and pecan nut pudding

And I had a Lindt Swiss chocolate slice

Accompanied by a nice pear cider.

All super delicious, a great find.

So we get back to the house and Dave had just arrived, to tell me I'd been doing it wrong, turns out there's knobs on each gas cylinder as well.  That I couldn't actually see, from my angle, in the dark.  Yeah so I felt completely useless.  So had a breakdown and went to bed.  As you do.

Saturday was just doing a jigsaw, a walk to the shops, crosswords, and that was about it for the day.

In the evening we cracked open the Heineken keg and ordered pizza (three smalls which got demolished in short order).

Warmed up the spa and enjoyed that for quite a while, getting through almost all of the keg between us.  I was quite impressed with our effort heh.

This morning just more jigsaw, although I didn't finish it - sky is taking far too long.

Then we tidied the house and headed home, stopping at the Scottish Restaurant for lunch.

Did some fish tank stuff when I got home, as well as geotagging holiday photos and house tidying.  So a productive afternoon/evening, but that didn't stop the Sunday night depression :(

While I was away on my last holiday she died :(

Because I'd never had any success breeding the angels, and because every other fish I put in there died fairly quickly, I gave up and decided that when she died I'd clean out the tank and start again with baby angels.

So that's what I did on the weekend.  Spent a couple of hours cleaning surfaces and bits of the filter system that hadn't been cleaned in the nine and a half years since I got the tank.

It looks lovely now.