I bought my first car in January 1997.  It was a 1984 Ford Laser and I paid $5650 for it.  It was kidnapped and murdered in January 2001.  I was devastated.  

I bought my second car off my friend Cynthia in February 2001.  It was a 1989 Ford Laser and I paid $4300 for it.

I drove it a lot when I lived in Sydney, but not very much once I moved to Canberra ten years ago (except for a lot of trips to Sydney in it when Dad was dying and afterwards to help clear out the garage and house).

The last time I had it serviced, they said I'd need new tyres, but also they were having trouble sourcing parts.  There just weren't enough of those Lasers around anymore. 

This week I wanted to get it serviced before going to Sydney next week.  For some time recently the brakes had been quite squishy and I wanted to get them looked at.  But apparently it was going to need a new master brake cylinder and cost $600.  Considering how relatively little I've actually had to pay to maintain this car over the years I wouldn't have minded that cost.  But with new tyres it was going to be upwards of $1000.  Again, I'd be ok with that.  But.  If something more serious died it would be crunch time, and it would be sad to have spent all that money and not gotten any value out of it.  And given how little I drive it nowadays I had to make the hard call.  Keep it going or let it go.  In the end I decided to let it go.  With rego and insurance it's over $1000 a year just to have it sitting in the garage.  If necessary renting a car or getting taxis would probably not even come near that.  Rego is due in a month or two so now would be a good a time as any.

I took it out to get a few last photos.

And then yesterday morning I took it out to Queanbeyan to become an organ donor.

This was the final odometer reading.  I was so close to 250000km (Stu didn't want me doing even a final trip to Sydney in it).  And so close to having it for seventeen years.  And it was only a year off becoming a "classic" car!

This is what I got in return.  I'm tempted to keep it....

Every time I look at the empty garage I get sad.  Goodbye little car..

This morning was super frustrating because apart from about fifteen minutes scraping old sealant off the shower, all I did all morning was housework - cleaned the kitchen, dusting, vacuuming, put away washing, did another load of washing, cleaned up the dining room, cleaned up the bedroom.  Seriously it was just boring housework and nothing actually useful.  Soo annoying.

Went out so Stu could get his degree framed, then had some lunch at Can Tho, then got some new fishies (five black neon tetras for the two foot and a bristlenose for Chrissie's tank).

Also went and saw Serkan's fish room.  It's a pretty impressive setup.  He has one big air pump that does the whole room with bubble filters in each tank.  He has a hose which fills aging tanks at the top, and they are plumbed with irrigation to all his tanks below for easy water changes.  Very cool.

Then home to do silicone sealant scraping and not much else of any consequence.

Went into the city (via Mt Ainslie) for dinner at Hero Sushi, which, like last time, was super disappointing.  Never go there when it's not crowded - all the hot food is cold and disgusting.  Then we saw The Last Jedi, which I'll save for another post.

But I did want to post these photos today.  A year ago I mentioned that after our church burnt down in the Como bushfires in 1994 I retrieved a page of one of our hymn books and a piece of the baptismal font I was baptised in.  This is them..

Bit of hurty overnight but not too bad.

Finished tidying up receipts in the morning and finished filing photos from last year into appropriate directories.

Headed out for lunch (gotta keep my 40 week check-in streak going haha) and then went shopping for some new shorts (my "good" shorts from Colorado when they closed down - reduced from $70 to $20 - and I'm glad I didn't pay more than $20 cause they fell apart very quickly - aren't good anymore, and the daggy ones aren't the best for wearing around).  Amazingly the first ones I tried on fitted reasonably well.  For once a clothes shopping experience that didn't end in tears!

Just bits and pieces in the afternoon frittering my break away.  

Sarah came by late in the afternoon, followed by David, followed by Ben.  Sat in the pool til relatively late past dinner time.  We had food for ourselves but not for David so ended up getting pizza and watching Fawlty Towers.  Whoops.

But David did swap some taps around to fix the tap that broke in the bathroom a couple of days ago (the plastic disintegrated so couldn't turn the tap on anymore).  Have I ever mentioned my little brother is awesome? :)

Last night we had no plans for new years, and in the evening we watched Fuller House and Rake.  Then Ben and Sarah came over to Kit's so we went down for a quiet celebration.  Watched the fireworks at midnight then we all had a swim.  Bit of a late night for me, because I still wake up at stoopid o'clock no matter what time I go to sleep.  Yeah I woke up at 6:30 hurrah.

Today I had a nice quiet day pottering around the house tidying up and Getting Things Done.  I tested the pool water pH and added some more acid, and more chlorine as well.  Fingers crossed things might stay stable now.

Stu cooked up some of the fish for dinner tonight and then we watched Fuller House, the last episode of Rake (hoping they'll film the next season in Canberra) and then The Danish Girl, which was only loosely based on a true story.  One thing that annoyed me: identifying as a woman is a very different thing to having fettish for women's clothing.  Just sayin'.  And it turns out the real Lili Elbe died after complications from a uterus transplant (it was rejected).  What's amazing is how long ago they were attempting such a thing, and how long it's taken for it to be successful (first actual live birth from a transplanted uterus was only a couple of years ago!!).

Oh the other thing I've been doing with the blog is back-dating a lot of photos in some of my older posts.  If you feel inclined you could go through the archives for this year and you may see something new. 

Wow this has certainly been a busy year, and a very very social one. I left writing up the friends and family section til last because it just seemed to go on forever and ever!

Our year began at home, with Ben and EffanC over for nibbles and a small party. Annie and the family came over the next day for chaos and Turkish food. Saw Scott and Kerry and the kids on the first day back at work before they went home.

We had one holiday this year - a cruise on the Queen Mary 2 out of Hong Kong (with a couple of days in Macau beforehand). I was super excited about it, and it lived up to expectations. Although I felt like we didn't quite belong there, on account of not being retired highly paid executives. We never made it to Queensland this year - things were just too *complicated*. I did do two day trips to Sydney to inspect my flat. And there was a work trip to Melbourne for two days.

At work I swapped teams after not quite fitting in with the old team (I'm too dumb for that team!). Still doing much the same work, but with different technology. The project I joined had been going for about two years, and I figure I have about two years of work to clean up the mess that has been made! I had a little bit of weekend work doing upgrades to various things and monitoring of some events. The majority of my new section is in Melbourne, so we went down in September for a two-day planning session. The highlight of the trip was the amazing flight down, and catching up with David twice. We ran a trivia night in March. Unfortunately the winning table weren't going to be around to run the next one, so we asked the second-place getters if they'd do it. They said yes, but never did it. So I'll probably run another one in February or March. We had a whiskey night in June which was a bit of fun. I went with the sweetie to SplunkLive! and I'm *still* bitter that a big data company couldn't get the distribution of tshirt sizes right. We had a DAIS video night in August, as it had been way too long since the last one. Finally, I ran our annual floor barbeque at the lake for forty people and everyone seemed to enjoy it.

I was pretty healthy this year. I had a bit of a cold in February, and then another one picked up on the Queen Mary 2 (it was going around the entire ship), but after that I didn't get any more colds all year. The other thing we got on the way home from our holiday was a bout of gastro, which hit Stu just after we got home, and me a day or so later (although I seemed to only get a fairly mild case of it). I went to the dentist after one year instead of twenty and will probably keep going regularly now. I did battle with insomnia quite a few times during the year. Usually for no apparent reason, although it tended to be associated with a sore spine and/or a brain that wouldn't shut up. I rage-quit on Stu's bed earlier in the year and more often than not sleep in the spare room. That room has the bed Yvonne gave me in 2005 which has a much firmer mattress than Stu's. I don't get a sore spine *as much* in that bed, and my restless legs don't play up nearly as much there either (don't know why that is - different fabrics??). We've been meaning to go shopping for a new king size bed, but we just haven't gotten around to it yet.

We saw a lot of F&C (EffanC) this year which was really nice. Went to their place a number times and had them over here as well. Also saw Scott with them a few times. We saw quite a lot of Kit, with various combinations of Serena, Ben, Sarah, Anita and Pete. David came to stay in January, April, August and December, and Mum came to visit in February and August. Only saw a little bit of Annie the family - they came over for a Turkish feast in January, we went to their place for dinner in March, had them over here in April, their place for cake for Noah's birthday, and them here for Christmas dessert. Saw even less of Potty and the family - seeing them at the beginning of the year before they went home, Kerry brought over sick kids in July, then everyone came at Christmas (twice). We met Chrissie's new boyfriend in January, and by July they were living together with a baby on the way. I've gotten to go to a few of the ultrasounds which has been pretty cool. They came over for our first hanami party, and we had Zac come and stay in December so Chris and Mike could celebrate their anniversary. Nat and Andrew came over for our second hanami party, but sadly that was the only time we saw them all year. We had Damien and Amanda over for dinner in May, and went with them to Olive at Hawker in July, and saw just Damien for drinks in August. James and Rachel came down for a cake decorating course in May and they stayed with us which was nice. James also came down for work in November and we caught up for dinner at Bella Vista. We met up with Jenn at Chong Co in January, and had Jenn and Nick over in June for dinner. Jenn was getting set for a foodie trip to Mexico, which she went on later in the year and we got copies of her travelogue which was pretty cool. Had dinner with Luc and Cynthia and the boys when they came down in January, had @Chrispycon and Anne over for dinner in June, went to a barbeque at @CLBradley's in June, had dinner with Luc when he was down for work in September, and went over to Lachie's for darts (which I was crap at) and Jenga (which I didn't lose at) in November.

At "the club" we went to a couple of swim nights, and several socials at the club. One of them we did pea and ham soup, and another we did Christmas in July for forty people.

Pretty quiet year for the fish. I got some more danios for the two foot, and a couple of bristlenose catfish for my big tank and the two foot. We did get another tank from Chrissie as well which is quite a nice little tank. In the big angel tank is the angel, two big (probably female) danios, a cory, the bristlenose I bought, and a big bristlenose I got off Chris. In the upstairs two foot there's five danios, four rummy nose tetras and a bristlenose. In the little tank from Chris are her two clown loaches. They're really too big for that tank but haven't decided where to put them yet. It could really use a bristlenose as well, as the tank gets direct sunlight so there's lots of algae starting to grow. Downstairs there's four danios and the platy I got off Chris two years ago. Stu has two guppies in the little tank on his desk, and heaps of fish in his four foot. We bought expensive LED lights for two of the tanks instead of regular fluoros, but one of them died after only eight months which is very disappointing. Hoping the other one we bought doesn't die as quickly.

I didn't get any new Lego this year, although I did get a Nanoblocks Empire State Building for Christmas. I did a bunch of jigsaws throughout the year including a very cool 3D one of the Sydney Opera House. I finally assembled the 24000 piece "Life" jigsaw, because I figured I *had* to before I could get going on the 40320 piece "Memorable Moments" Disney jigsaw! I had fun with papercraft as well, making some Villarceau circles, completing a geodesic dodecahedron and two geodesic octahedra (or hexahedra), making a four frequency geodesic icosahedron which is pretty spectacular (and I had this hanging from the roof at work for a while which is probably how they noticed ceiling cat), and an icosidodecahedron and a geodesic icosidodecahedron.

For some reason I always mention the weather in my year in review posts. This year seemed quite cold in winter, but the pool only froze over a couple of times. We had hail and snow on the same day in August which was pretty exciting. October seemed like a very cold month, and as per usual December had its fair share of cold days as well. Not that I'm complaining, I'd prefer it to be cold than hot. Our evaporative cooler works very well, although I swear last summer was the most humid summer in Canberra ever (the evaporative cooler doesn't work very well when it's humid). This summer we've used it a little and it's quite lovely. I'm even noticing a temperature inversion now - often it's cooler upstairs than downstairs! But the best part is being able to use it on fan only to simply bring cool air into the house once it's cooler outside than in. In the past it could be quite cool outside, but still hot inside simply because the air is so still and there's no crossflow ventilation. Having the fan bring it in is wonderful.

At the end of last year I was considering getting a backpack vacuum cleaner because I *hate* dragging a barrel vacuum cleaner around. David suggested we get a cordless one instead. I was a bit reluctant because they are essentially glorified dustbusters, and all the ones we saw had rollers that just tangle up hair. But we ended up getting one anyway. It sat unused for probably six months, but I've finally gotten into the habit of doing a room or two per day, and now the house is actually getting fully vacuumed every week. Amazing! Our Cisco switch died while we were on holidays in March. And we never did get the NAS working again with it - it's still going through a little old 100Mb switch. Our home internet has always been bad here, and getting steadily worse. When we got back from holidays it was completely unusable. We called Internode to have a look. They got Telstra to have a look, and confirmed a problem with the line something like 400m away. They fixed this and things did improve somewhat, but our internet is still painfully slow (2Mb down). Netflix seems to buffer relatively well but Stan is abysmal. We're hoping NBN will improve things a little, but given that our node is like a kilometre away I doubt it's going to be amazing. My blog and hosting/email was offline for a few days while we were on holidays. Possibly a DOS, but don't know if it was ever explained. Then Vic sold everything off and retired. I'm wondering how long it takes them to figure out this hosting is a freebie and either shut it down or make me start paying for it. I really really need to move this blog off, but it's such a huge beast it's going to be very difficult. Even backing up the site via FTP takes a couple of days. I might have more luck tarring up the whole thing into one file which would transfer more quickly and efficiently, but I'm hampered by not having any shell access. And I couldn't find the perl script I used to have which lets you run commands interactively via the website (yes I know - super dangerous, which is why it's not online, and hence I can't find it). We had dramas with our dvd players. The video on my old dvd recorder kept dropping out, and it was getting worse. The PS3 dvd part stopped working years ago. I even had issues with my old Toshiba. So in the end we spent $80 on a new player that will play everything including media on usb stick. The remote is faulty - any time you press a button it fires off the action multiple times. But we got it working with our Harmony remote, so in the end didn't bother to swap it (especially since JB HiFi price matched it with Big W). The old Android of Stu's that I used for Ingress got so old that the Play Store wouldn't work anymore, which meant I couldn't update Ingress, so the thing essentially became a brick. Maybe I could still use it as a media player, since my phone doesn't have space for that sort of thing. I upgraded my five year old iPhone to 10.3.3 without any dramas. It's faster after unlocking than iOS 9 was which is pretty cool.

Around the house, we discovered our shower was leaking, probably from old cracked grout in the corner. We scraped it back (mostly) but still haven't regrouted/siliconed. It's on the todo list for our staycation! The snifter valve exploded on our hot water system, but I still haven't gotten around to calling up Aquamax. It's on the todo list for our staycation! We had a heap of pool dramas this year. At the beginning of the year there was way too much stabiliser (sunscreen) which meant the chlorine didn't work at all. Got that under control with a bunch of water changes (dear Adelaide: you're welcome), but then this summer the pool has been unbuffered and unstable and keeps going green, even with adding plenty of chlorine. Sad times. Possibly the pH has been too high, so have adjusted that, vacuumed the last batch of algae to waste, raised the total alkalinity and added a bunch of chlorine and *hopefully* it'll settle down now. The tenants of my flat in Sydney moved out after seven years, and the place needed to be fully renovated, costing me something like $16000 :( Did two trips to see the before and after. Good news is it's getting a lot more rent now that it's all shiny again.

We didn't eat out too much this year, and when we did it was generally when meeting up with other people. We did go to Bella Vista a few times - for our anniversary, for my birthday, and when James came to visit. We only went to Dumpling Inn a couple of times because they were closed for much of the year. Both times were with Chris, Mike and Zac. We also tried The Scholar in Dickson with them, but I wasn't impressed with the very slow service. Also wasn't impressed with Chinese Inn at Kippax where we went for Sarah's birthday. Went to Hero Sushi in the city a couple of times, the first experience a lot better than the second. Went to Malaysian Chapter with Cath and Scott for Stu's birthday, and Chong Co with Jenn. Only had brunch out a couple of times this year, once at Market St Eats at Belconnen markets and once at Gus' Place. We often have lunch at Saigon Streetfood when doing our food shopping, or sometimes Ali Baba or more recently Alaska Seafood. We did get to try out a few new places too - The Courtyard Restaurant at Mercure with Luc and Cynthia when they were in town, Olive at Hawker with Damien and Amanda, and Black Fire in Braddon with Luc. We tried out Mills and Grills pizzas this year which are pretty good, and Stu loves the karaage chicken pizza from Pizza Capers. And finally I went with Neil to the Brokenwood Wine dinner at Monster Kitchen and Bar in Hotel Hotel.

I tried a few new recipes this year. Lemon ginger chicken from a Coles magazine was very nice, beef cheeks from Not Quite Nigella was also pretty good, and Jamie's five ingredient Asian fishcakes were simple but nice. Stu cooked Scotch eggs a couple of times, and pork larb a few times. I had a go at fondue, but didn't follow a recipe so the cheese split. Chrissie gave me a book of fondue recipes, and I got a proper fondue set, but we've yet to have another go at it. Kit and Serena's gardens provided an excess of produce that we happily used up, and we got to eat some young roosters that Kit had raised and processed. I made Anzac biscuits on Anzac Day, caramel slice at least three times, a mint rocky road and a cheesecake.

Didn't see any theatre or shows or exhibitions this year.

The only movie we saw at a cinema was Silence - in Hong Kong!

Stu likes to watch tv while we eat dinner. I feel like being forced to sit in one place for three quarters of an hour is pretty stressful, especially on weekday evenings. Having said that, some shows are better than others and with some shows it didn't feel so much of a burden.

• Sherlock - season four
• Fuller House - season two
• Star Trek: The Original Series - finishing up what we started last year
• Star Trek: Voyager - the entire thing, which took most of the year and was the most stressful to have to watch
• Homeland - season five
• Black Adder Goes Forth - borrowed off Annie years ago but hadn't gotten around to finishing, watched this on my computer
• Monty Python - season four - borrowed off DC years ago but hadn't gotten around to finishing, watched this on my computer
• Air Crash Investigations - various episodes watched online while doing other things on my computer
• Australian Survivor - season two of the current incarnation - the only commercial tv we watched all year
• Fuller House - season three (in two parts)
• Dad's documentaries - stuff he'd taped off tv over the years. I've been working my way through them while I do jigsaws downstairs in the summer months
• The Good Place - season one and the first half of season two
• Rake - season four

Books Read

• Tales of Two Cities, various short stories
• Bones Never Lie, by Kathy Reichs
• Uncle John's 24-Karat Gold Bathroom Reader
• The Barefoot Investor, by Scott Pape
• ET: The Book of the Green Planet, by William Kotzwinkle
• One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nets, by Ken Kesey
• No Place to Hide, by Glenn Greenwald

Other stuff

• Kit had baby bunnies but Vicki killed them by "playing" with them
• Neil won Ali Baba's "Chance to win $1000000" - but that's all it was - a chance to win. He didn't actually win the $1000000.
• Went to the Multicultural Festival with Chrissie for beer and meat (and potatoes) on a stick, while remembering Dad from three years earlier
• Had to do some actual clothes shopping for formal and other nice clothes for the cruise. Material Pleasures was awful, City Chic was much more successful, then again so was Vinnies and it was a lot cheaper
• Went to the farmers markets in April but I find it too stressful and it's too early for Stu so we don't really like going
• Stopped going to Coles at Jamison for the most part, because Jamison couldn't be arsed putting in enough trolley return bays around the car park
• Made a classic 80s space guy costume for Kit's 30th birthday party
• Had a brief play with IMosaic
• Setup a blog for the Queen Mary 2 with photos of the ship
• Went to Shepherd's Lookout and down to the river with Kit
• Paid off our mortgage
• Went to Hall Markets with Kit and Pete
• Got access to my old CIA mailbox and downloaded seven years of mail
• Setup a blog to compare Canberra between 1986 and 2016, sent it to the RiotACT but they didn't link to it. Johnboy would have.  Just sayin'.
• Had to be official photographer for Roz's 60th at The Abbey which I found very stressful
• Saw some of Kit's chicks hatching
• Kit had more baby bunnies but they died, we don't know why
• Had my democracy sausage photo feature in Atlas Obscura 
• Got long service leave
• Accidentally bought Twisties that make your tongue turn blue. I couldn't eat them. Ewww. Stu said it wasn't the only thing that turned blue..!

Just a few photos I took playing with light nearly a year ago..

By the time I got home, cooked dinner, did a load of washing and cleaned up the kitchen it was nearly 8pm :(  And that wasn't even watching any tv!

Read through January's blog entries for my year in review post, then spent the rest of the next hour fighting with photo file labels.  If created in other apps, the date taken metadata will still be correct, but the file name (renamed by a script I have) will be the date it was created in the app.  So things end up all out of order.  Pain in the @$$.  I didn't have time to actually file any photos, let alone do any photo labelling.  

I'm worn out.

On a lighter note, I did get some pretty cool timelapse videos of the storm clouds this evening.

Friday night we finished the last episode of Voyager where they finally get home.  The last season had some pretty good episodes.  But now I'm looking forward to a break in *having* to watch an episode every night.  It just takes up so much time.  Then we watched The Tuxedo.  Because hey, Jason Isaacs, if only for a little bit.  And Jackie Chan.  Completely ridiculous fluff but a bit of fun.

Went to bed relatively early Friday night, but then woke up at about 1:30am.  And did not get back to sleep.  Til like 5:30am.  And then a couple of hours of broken sleep.  I was a complete zombie on Saturday.  I didn't have the energy to do *anything*.  Certainly no house work. I think I did about an hour or so of jigsaw and that was it.

After lunch we headed out to the club.  I helped decorate the hall while others prepped dinner.  Then we had a swim which was nice.  Fiona did a huge Christmas feast which was pretty epic.  I even managed to stay awake into the evening heh.  Came home before midnight.

Slept a lot better Saturday night (although only for about six hours).  So Sunday was bits and pieces of housework, jigsaw and food shopping.  Cooked pizzas for dinner and watched an episode of The Good Place, and then Sisters.  I'd said "something fun" for a movie to watch, and that's what we got.  hrmmmmmm! :)

Last night was an even better nights sleep so that was good.  I've finished scanning the last four albums mum brought down, with only their wedding album to go.  But it's very big and all the photos are glued in, so won't be able to scan it on the flatbed, so thinking of other ways to digitise it. Probably have it outside and just take digital photos of it.

So last Tuesday was a big Kingsley's lunch followed by me taking photos of people watching horses run around in a circle followed by a bunch of us heading back to Lachie's for darts, jigsaw (ok that was just me) and imitation Jenga (I didn't lose!)

Friday night we caught up with Kit and Pete for a while which was nice.

Saturday was pretty quiet.  Just housework and getting things done in the morning, and mostly jigsaw in the afternoon.  For dinner we went to the Dumpling Inn (which has *finally* reopened after being closed for like six months for "renovations" but we could barely notice any difference) with Chris and Mike and Zac.  We got there pretty early which meant we didn't have to wait all night for food which was good (and the place didn't fill up either, people must not realise it's reopened).

Sunday was also quiet, with housework type stuff interspersed with jigsaw.  In the evening we watched Beauty and the Beast - the live action one.  I quite enjoyed it, but not too convinced by Emma Watson as Belle, it felt like I was just watching Hermione.

And then back to it.  I've got my Sadie hat firmly on at the moment which generally makes me pretty happy.  Just puttering through work at my own pace and cleaning up mess.

Friday night we watched The Last Samurai, which we'd last seen in 2012.  

Saturday morning was just houseworkey stuff.

In the afternoon we headed out to the club.  G&A did a great pork roast for dinner.  Later there was epic Jenga which I didn't lose at :)

Going back a step.  The other week I saw this in the window of Games Capital:

OMFG!!!

I totally want one!  The price was obscured, but it looked like $500.  Given that I paid $385 for the Life jigsaw (24000 pieces), this didn't seem unreasonable.

So anyway.  Stu said I could get it if i could clear enough space in the dungeon to do it down there.  So guess what I spent a couple of hours Sunday afternoon doing?  I should have taken some before and after photos, it made a huge difference.

In the evening we got pizza and watched Short Circuit (getting through movies I've bought on DVD but haven't watched - this one I'd bought in 2004).  

!!

Whoops.

So Monday morning I called the Games Capital to check if they still had the jigsaw in stock, and if so how much it was.  Yes they said.  $1500 they said.

Fricken. OUCH.

That's like $150 for each of the 4000 piece sections.  Which, considering we paid $150 for the piece of crap 5000 colours jigsaw (which was appalling in quality and was even missing a piece!  I've yet to rant about that here), is not *completely* ridiculous, but still...

Anyway, so I had a sad on Monday morning.  We finished stacking Stu's books (badly) into shelves, clearing the floor and a table.  I set up the tv (which we hadn't even plugged in since we replaced the upstairs one like a year and a half ago) and set myself up with a jigsaw and did that for a while in the afternoon.  

I could get used to three day weekends.