So 2013. Busy year!

We saw in 2013 with a small pool party at our place with Nat and Andrew and also Steve for a while.

  
We did a bit of travelling this year.

In January we went up the coast to South West Rocks to a school reunion of sorts for Stu and to visit Stu's dad. We drove up and down the coast, swam, visited Trial Bay Gaol, and caught up with Fiona and Margie on the way home.

We only managed to get to the coast once this year, in May. It was somewhat of a disaster with the spa being too cold on Friday night and too hot on Saturday night and a few other things that made it all a bit unpleasant (except for during the day on Saturday which was pretty good). Almost went again later in the year but had to go to Sydney and otherwise we've just been too busy.

We went to Queensland in July for a lovely long weekend to visit Chay and David.

At the end of July we flew up to Sydney for my Dad's 70th and one of my 40th parties (see below).

In October we decided at the last minute to go to Hong Kong for a week at the end of October. It was a great week, even if a little too humid. It's the most spontaneous holiday I've ever taken. I didn't do too much planning for it, because the more I researched, the more things I found of interest to see. So I stopped researching altogether and we took it as it came.

  
At work I had a mostly good year. I started off the year cleaning and pretty much cleaned all year. I started with the knowledge base articles for our team, then moved onto the log transfer system, then the load balancers. I also rehashed an old domino database for documentation which brought back a lot of memories of my last job. For the rest of the time it mostly felt like I was the "goto" person for any and all problems that came along. We were partly restructured, but the powers that be didn't really have a clear idea of what they wanted, so things didn't change as much as we originally thought they would. I made Stu drag out his tuxedo again for the work ball which was a lot of fun.

Healthwise I felt like I was sick the whole first half of the year - with colds in January, March, April, May and June. So that was pretty horrible. Not flus though, just annoying colds. Got another one the night before we went to Hong Kong too - yay :( But have been ok otherwise.

  
We had a super busy social year this year. In fact it was so busy that we went from May to September without having a free Saturday night. As a consequence our Buffy and Angel watching was almost non-existent. There were plenty of visits to/from Annie and Potty and the families. Various people came over for dinner and/or swims at the beginning of the year. Nat and Andrew came over a few times, as well as Andrew by himself when Nat was travelling. There were various after works drinks with my colleagues and Stu's and family and friends. Various Singstar/Mario Kart nights were had. Several BBQs at @CLBradley's. Several games nights at Mishi's. Had a video night at our place with work people. We visited people for lunches/dinners such as Matt and Helen, Andrew and Jen, Chris and Geoff, Josh and Ally, Windy and Nanette etc. We saw Daniel and Fi a few times when they came down. Several people came to stay including David and Yvonne, Ken and Jeanine, Fiona a couple of times and Stu's old school friend Tom. I met up with @StuartCRyan a few times in Sydney (we met in real life for the first time at my birthday). I also went to visit David in Junee.

Speaking of birthdays, I turned forty this year. To celebrate I had *three* great parties - one in Sydney, a big one at home the Saturday before my birthday, then a big lunch at work on my birthday followed by a nice dinner and seeing Phantom of the Opera. I was certainly in a different place mentally for my fortieth. During the whole run-up to my thirtieth I was very depressed, and my actual birthday was pretty meh. Such a different story this year though.

  
In sadder news, my Nana died of old age earlier in the year. And then I found out at the funeral that I have another cousin that I'd never heard about before!

Also in sad news, my father got diagnosed with a brain tumour in March. He had surgery immediately (and they had to cancel a holiday to New Zealand), followed by chemo and radiotherapy. Unfortunately it didn't really help, and he was hospitalised in July because he kept falling over and wasn't able to walk properly. He's been getting progressively worse and has been in a nursing home since September. In August I started going up to Sydney fairly regularly to see Dad and help Mum with the mammoth task of clearing out the garage and workshop. We've mostly been sorting things so far as I don't want to get rid of things until Dad goes. Fortunately I've been able to work out of the Sydney office so not having to take leave at the moment.

  
We've been enjoying a lot of visits to our little social club. We camped there over the Australia day long weekend, and the new tent survived a storm and massive downpour fairly well. But then a caravan came up for sale, so we bought it! We went to most of the club nights during the year, and plenty of other times as well. It's Stu's little get-away-from-the-world place and he thoroughly enjoys it.

With work people or the sweetie, tried out a few new restaurants. Continued going to Black Pepper for brunches and also Pulp Kitchen a few times. Went to Dumpling Inn a few times and Bella Vista as well. Didn't try too many desserts this year, although did make a Mars Bar slice and a peppermint rocky road, as well as an apple crumble and caramel slice that we tried at the club.

  
We bought another four baby angels for the angel tank. One died but the other three survived, so now have four angels and about seven danios in that tank. We got a lovely little betta for the macquarium, but he never thrived and died in six weeks. So thinking I'll probably give the macquarium away. The four foot still has a school of duboisis, two multies, a lelupi and a J.transcriptus. There's three multis downstairs, but after breeding once, the single baby I saw disappeared and haven't seen any since. There's still three or four quite old kribs downstairs as well.

Not much Lego action this year. I did get a cute little plane from Fiona, and a small City set from Ric for my birthday. I went with Nat and Andrew to Brick Expo, but was very frustrated with the crowds. I dismantled the Millennium Falcon which had been out for four years! Also over the Christmas break got to sort out and build all of Jake's lego which has been fun.

I did a lot of jigsaws this year. Mostly downstairs until downstairs got too cold. Mostly little ones, but also another section of the huge "Life" puzzle. Gave up on the skies of two jigsaws because their quality was just too poor.

I celebrated my tenth blogiversary this year. To mark the occasion I upgraded to Movable Type 5. But got very frustrated with the fact that I now cannot SSH to my host. Also with Movable Type which is *very* buggy. Next year my domain is up for renewal and I'm thinking about moving my domain to a new host with a new blogging platform. But the whole idea is pretty scary, so we'll see about that...

Shows

• The only show I saw this year was The Phantom of the Opera on my birthday.

Movies
Not many movies this year either...

• The Hobbit - An Unexpected Journey
• Star Trek - Into Darkness
• Garden of Words and Ghost in the Shell: Arise

Books

• Time Enough for Love by Robert Heinlein
• Polgara the Sorceress by David and Leigh Eddings
• Careful, he might hear you, by Sumner Locke Elliott
• To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
• Déjà Dead by Kathy Reichs
• A Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute
• I Hate You - Don't Leave Me by Jerold Kreisman and Hal Straus
• The Naked Husband by Mark D'Arbanville
• Death du Jour by Kathy Reichs
• Airport by Arthur Hailey
• Body of Evidence by Patricia Cornwall

Other stuff

• Had a full day at the War Memorial with Ken and Jeanine
• Had a jigsaw race with Nat
• Found my first geocache with Nat and Andrew
• Saw a Roller Derby bout
• Mum got her first mobile phone
• Had a random day off work to tidy up all the fish tank stuff in the garage
• Went for some walks around Palmerville with the sweetie
• Spotted the ISS a few times and waved to @Cmdr_Hadfield. Wasn't quite the same when he came back to earth.
• Went to the balloon fiesta on Canberra Day
• Watched the last couple of episodes and finale of House, which considering the timing with dad was pretty sad
• Took Stu's car for a drive up Mount Ainslie and got covered in lady bugs
• Our PS3 stopped playing DVD disks. Bluray is still ok though.  We considered getting a PS4 but the device isn't backwards compatible with old games.
• Went out to Captain's Flat on our fifth wedding anniversary
• Finished a cross stitch I got for Christmas in 1992
• Went up Black Mountain Tower
• Voted in ABC Classic FM's top 100 music in the movies, and most of my votes were in the top two hundred
• Did a blog for our trip to America in 1983
• Gave up reading Boing Boing, Life Hacker and Neatorama, Dooce and Dilbert
• Got extremely pissed off when Google Reader shut down. Destroyed my faith in Google.
• Looked at Comma Feed, Feedly and The Old Reader. Stuck with The Old Reader.  The Old Reader subsequently crashed from all the extra load of departing Google users, but was able to get funding to run on better hosting and has been fine ever since.
• Got more of my photos onto the RiotACT
• Cancelled Aussie Farmers Direct orders
• Had a look around Wintercon at EPIC
• Stu had a few car dramas that Melba Motors didn't fix
• I had a LOT of car dramas that Melba Motors didn't fix
• Saw the Skywhale
• Played through Diablo with the sweetie.  On easy mode.  Sue me.
• Did proper karaoke for the first time ever (and I've been to Japan four times!)
• Went to a Christmas Carols service at Como

So that's the end of 2013.  New Year's Eve will be spent out at the club with food and booze and friends and fairy lights and fireworks :)

I've got a whole stack of photos of new food and fooderies around the place, but somehow never got them online.

This was just after Chong Co Express opened in the mall.  I've been wanting a place that does nice lunchtime chicken red curries since I left Sydney.  This wasn't quite it.  It was a tad too spicy for me, and a little pricey too (around $10 from memory).  Haven't been back.

This was Adana at the back of the mall.  The chicken dish (top I think) was really good, the meatballs ok, and cutlets pretty good also.

Beef nachos from Cafe on Benjamin.  The beef was ok (I got chicken the next time I went) - strips of beef rather than ground beef.  But the chips were awesome - super crispy and yummy

In Sydney I'm on a quest to find good takoyaki.  These were ok - from Kura in Chinatown.  They were burn-your-mouth hot (as they should be) but didn't have much octopus in them.

These were from Lord of the Fries on George Street.  I went there because they did a "Canadian" style topping - supposedly a poutine, but I suspect probably just a cheese sauce.  But they didn't have any of that so I got their Italian sauce.  But they were pretty average so don't know that I'll bother going back.

This was crispy duck from Asian Noodle House shortly after it opened.  Not too bad, altho not so crispy under all that salad.

And a dosai from Spice India in the mall.  Weird because they didn't put the filling in the dosai.  And it was ok, but not super awesome, not like Ruchi's.

On Friday (after a productive morning which included cleaning out the shelves in the bedroom cupboard) we headed into the city so the sweetie could pick up a package.  Except that the post office was closed.  Doh.  So went to the Canberra Centre so we could return the Wii-U game that wasn't going to work on our Wii.  Had lunch then went to Myer and got a few bits and pieces on special, including a variable temperature kettle, a picnic set, and a beach towel for Stu.

Got a lot more of the Millennium Falcon put away in the afternoon as well as watching The Hunger Games with the sweetie.

On Saturday I got quite a bit of stuff done in the morning, including finishing dismantling the Millennium Falcon.  I found the sheet of timings I did from when I built it - at the end of 2009!!  The thing has been assembled for four years!!  Oops!  

Had lunch at Ali Baba, then did some food shopping.   The sweetie got a migraine too which wasn't much fun.

Did a bit of a cleanup in the afternoon and put on a lamb roast.  For dinner, Jan, Bruce and James came over and we chatted for a while before dinner.  I followed a recipe Stu found at Annie's suggestion - which involved lemon juice and lemons put into the meat.  It worked really well and gave it a nice zing.  Will try it again sometime.  After dinner, Annie and family came over.  The kids played Mariokart while we all chatted.  Was a really nice night.  It was still pretty hot after everyone left so we both jumped in the puddle.  Heard Kit had visitors so invited myself over.  After chatting for ages, Kit and Ben came over for a swim.  We might have accidently stayed up *very* late.  But of course I always wake up early, and never did manage to get back to sleep.  So pretty tired today.  This afternoon I finished sorting Jake's Lego, and started assembling the sets.  

So a pretty good few days.

Christmas Eve was a nice morning tea at work, followed by an early mark.  Went to Potty's to do a water change and bring home some lego.  Had lunch at KFC then came home and had a small siesta.

In the evening we got the Dominos wagyu three ways pizza and watched carols (or half watched really, I was playing on my phone).

Christmas morning I finished off some last-minute cleaning of the house, then prepped lunch.  Annie and family came over and we sat around and nibbled and chatted while the Stus played Diablo.  Then had a roast pork and potato (and other things) feast.  Sadly the crackling wasn't as good as last time I did a roast pork.  Oh well.  Several food comas were had by people during Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, and we also watched the beginning of Monty Python and the Holy Grail (keeping with the theme).  The others went home and we finished watching it.  It was a lovely afternoon, pretty much stress free which was good.  Hurrah! :)

Didn't get any photos of all the food except for these cheese and bacon balls - cheese, bacon, more cheese, more cheese, sweet chili sauce and chives.  They could have done with more bacon.. next time.. :)

In the evening we watched the 7pm Project, and then Shrek the Third.

Today, Boxing Day, I got stuck into some holiday projects I'd been hanging out to do.  Tidied the shelves in the spare room cupboard, got half way through dismantling the Millennium Falcon, downloaded some bank statements and organised things there a bit, downloaded all the photos off all my cameras, started preparing my year in review post, built my nanoblock Schloss Neuschwanstein, and watched Storm Boy in the evening (I haven't seen that movie in probably thirty years).

So since I last blogged I've been to four parties.

Last Friday was our division party.  It was at the Novotel, so it was a little pricey, but most of the food was really good.  Had some silly but fun activities afterwards, then kicked onto the Wig & Pen.  Went to Zierholz as well after that, but didn't stay long there.

My Christmas cracker joke

We didn't get this.  Turns out "penguins" are like Freddo Frogs - chocolates with individual wrappings

Space Invaders school!

Saturday I did house organising type stuff in the morning then went out to the club.  Had a swim and after dinner we played some cards (Fluxx and Uno) with A&J.

Sunday morning I headed up to Sydney.  

Signs burnt by the bushfires in October

Fog on Appin Road - really weird considering how hot it was

Went to the home to take dad out for chips, but we got a retarded wheel chair and had an extremelly frustrating time trying to get him to the shops.

In the evening we went to mum's church for a sausage sizzle and carols which was quite nice.

The last time I saw Ruth she was about six years old.. now she's 22!

Monday night I went over to Luc and Lizzi's for dinner.  Lizzi cooked us scotch fillet steaks - yum yum :) Was great to catch up with them.

On Tuesday it was the nursing home's Christmas party.  David and Yvonne and Uncle Ian came along too, and we had our own table too.  A friend of Ian's was the entertainment - she sang lots of Christmas songs.  So was a pretty good afternoon.  Did a bit of workshop tidying afterwards.

Yvonne being a goofball

Uncle Ian being a goofball

Possibly our last ever family photo

Christmas selfie

Wednesday mum did a great roast pork before I came home.

The car behaved itself too.  The water seems to have gone down a *little* bit but not too much.

Friday was our section party at the lake.  It was super hot and Neil and I were suckers and walked the whole way there.  Dranks lots of beer and bubbly, but also lots of water so had an early night and was totally fine the next day :)

Henrch won the race to the top of the rope pyramid

I would love to have joined the boys in a dip in the lake :)

Yesterday the sweetie and I went out for brunch at As Nature Intended, then did our food shopping.  It was miserably hot and I barely achieved anything all afternoon.

In the evening I went over to Kit's for another party so she could christen her new bbq.  Around 10pm I snuck into the lounge room to watch the end of Carols in the Domain.  Even the anti-carols people ended up watching with me :)  *and* they played the Hallelujah chorus which the Sydney one never does, so that was super awesome :)

This morning the house was ten degrees cooler so got stuck into tidying up the house.  Was at it most of the day.  But of course it got hotter and hotter and by later in the afternoon I was pretty much spent.  Had a swim, then went to Potty's to feed the fish.

And so I'm finally caught up.  Well sort of.  There's still more house tidying to be done.  And photos from the last two months to upload to the blog.  But might get it done by the end of the year.  Maybe  ....

Friday night the sweetie and I watched Airport (finally) and then finished Diablo.

Saturday morning we went to Black Pepper for breakfast, then did a large food shop.

After lunch we headed out to the club.  Had a swim and then joined the Christmas party.  There was a secret santa after dinner that went a lot longer than expected as people fought over a picture frame and two envelopes with $10 in them.  The ginger bread mini village I'd brought wasn't well received, so I swapped it with the person that got it, and so now I have a village *and* a train to make :)  Had a sauna as well, but I'm still not convinced by them.

Sunday morning we helped Andrew repair some of his roof and had another swim.

On the way home we stopped at Potty's and the whole family came over.  Stayed there for a while before coming home to cook our roast pork.  The crackling was up there with the best I've ever done, but the meat was a little over cooked.

Standard week so far - work, insomnia, jigsaws, photo sorting.

Last Saturday night was a halloween night at the club.

In the afternoon some of us went out bird watching.

We heard more birds than we saw, but did see some kangaroos.

Lots of cool decorations ..

Some cool costumes ..

And some yummy food ..

I've barely spent any time at my computer this week.  News feeds are way behind.  Blogging is way behind.  Photo sorting is way behind.

Saturday night we all went to a games night at Mishi's.  We played Geek Battle, which our team won, then 80s Trivial Pursuit, which Damien and Amanda won.  I'd gotten 80s Trivial Pursuit some years back from somewhere or other, played it once and not really liked it (I was only a kid in the 80s, so didn't have much concept of news, sport, and even music for pretty much the whole first half).  We gave it to Nat and Andrew, but they eventually returned it, considering they weren't even born until 1983 ;)  So when Amanda said they wanted it a while back, I wholeheartedly passed it on :)

Sunday morning Fiona went out, and the sweetie and I had brunch at Black Pepper and did our food shopping.  I continued to enjoy a full weekend at home and got a bit more of the house tidied.

Sunday night we did a roast pork, although I failed somewhat on the crackling.

Standard working week, although have been on call, and have had alerts wake me up Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday ... blah :(

Dad moved into a nursing home today.

He's hating it.

To be honest I wasn't that impressed either.  At Calvary he had a wonderful view of the city and the planes, and a room to himself.  There was just nothing going on there to keep him entertained.  At this new place he's stuck in a room with a partly deaf guy who's basically just a zombie watching the television very loudly and hasn't talked to dad at all.  It was super hard for us to talk to dad because the tv was blaring and there was another person *right there*.  Dad was totally pissed off at the world - feeling like the doctors didn't want to talk to him, just a quickie conversation then off again, and complained that the food was cold etc.  Basically no matter what things were like he was going to be negative about it.

So that put me in a blah mood, and really upset mum. 

Sigh.

Friday night Andrew W came over and fixed a couple of plumbing problems we've had, but the toilet problem is much more complicated and he's referring us to a mate who's had more experience with that style of outlet.

Saturday we went to Pulp Kitchen for breakfast.  They've changed their menu slightly and the breakfast raclette is not there anymore.  I had eggs benedict with ham, and a side of streaky bacon, but the dude forgot to write down the side, so I had to get it after they brought out my eggs.  It wasn't as good as last time though, oh well.  But the ham was very nice on the eggs benedict.

Afterwards did some food shopping then came home.  I pottered around the house and Stu worked on his assignment.

Saturday night we actually had a night off.  It was the first Saturday night since May 11 that we've had where we didn't go out or have anyone over.  We watched some Star Trek and then Gladiator.

Sunday morning tidied the house a bit, then Damien came over for a war game.  I was planning to leave for Sydney around 11am, but firstly the garage door broke (a bracket came off and it wouldn't roll up - we did manage to roll it manually somewhat), and then my car was completely dead and wouldn't start.  Not even any charge lights at all.  *sigh*.  So got the NRMA battery dude out and he ended up replacing it (it was four years old - older than I thought).  So made it to Sydney a couple of hours later than I expected.

Went to visit Dad.  He's "sad" he described himself.  Mostly about facing the unknown of moving into a nursing home tomorrow.

Mum did an instant roast dinner for lunch with leftover pork, then we attacked the garage for an hour or so.  I climbed up into the shelves and pulled down piles of stuff.  I made an executive decision that VGA cards, other I/O cards, MS DOS 5, Windows 3.1, Microsoft Word etc etc could all be safely tossed.  We filled several large boxes with manuals for software that was out of date twenty years ago, a lot of it unopened. 

Fun fun fun ...