So after not really getting any sleep at all, I was a bit of a zombie on the Saturday morning.  I raided my food supplies and had some cheese and salami for breakfast.  Had a shower and wandered out to the shed to help setup.

The others surfaced, and we started getting ready.

Audrey steam-ironed the dresses.

The dresses all hanging up.  Guess which one is mine?

The makeup and hair ladies came around 9-9:30.  I was first to get makeup done (this is sans-lipstick).

Chloe plied me with champagne (Henkell) while I was getting my hair done.

Ending up with a sort of "messy bun" style.

We even got little flowers glued in.

Kit got us all matching jewelry.

Chloe's mum did the flowers.

I had time to go and photograph some of the setup.  This was where the ceremony was held.  Such a pretty spot.

Hazel did an amazing job with the flowers.

The tables had books and bottles and greenery and it all looked very rustic.

Kit's mum prepared a stack of fruit, and there were some party pies and sausage rolls which became lunch.

Kit getting her hair decorated.

Kit all ready.

Then it was off to the ceremony.  Being in the ceremony I didn't get any of my own photos.  Not that I would have been allowed anyway, they said "no photos" which would have made me PISSED at any other wedding.  I can understand not wanting people to take photos during the ceremony, but where's the harm in letting people take a few photos during the entrance and setup? #grunt.  

This is me and the sweetie afterwards.

And I did get a few of my own other photos after the bridal party photos were done.

Including one or two of Kit and Pete.

And a couple of the venue

There was pizza for dinner, and speeches and dancing, a pretty fun night.

At the end of the night the wedding party stayed up a little longer just hanging out which was pretty nice.  Did make for a late night though.

Three weekends ago we headed down the coast for Kit and Pete's wedding.  We left on the Thursday after lunch.  I was still sick and coughing and had been in bed all morning.  Hurrah.  

Driving down Smith's Gap we saw the fires over at Braidwood.

This was the last weekend we were to see blue skies this year.  As I write it's been three weeks since we saw properly blue sky (except maybe a day or two).

This C-130 water bomber (N134CG) had just left HMAS Albatross.  

We stayed at the Springs Shoalhaven, quite close to the wedding venue.  Pleasant enough place.  It had a pool although I didn't have a swim (Stu did).  Both those beds were *very* soft.  I took the single to give myself a bit of distance from the sweetie with my coughing.  

We chilled out for a bit, then went next door to the Ex Serviceman's Club for dinner.  It had a lovely aspect, facing north over the golf course.  At the far northern end of the golf course was the venue for the wedding. 

Pasta I had for dinner

Spent half the night coughing.  Of course.

Stu thought it might be nice to have room service breakfast on the Friday, so we ordered that the night before.  Unfortunately because I'd had so little sleep I really wasn't hungry when it turned up at the appointed time.  It was nice enough though and I would have enjoyed it on another day.  

I pretty much spent the morning in bed.  We were waiting for word from Kit to see if they needed our help transporting anything or setting anything up, but they were running late and a bit frazzled.  In the end the sweetie and I went into Nowra to get some supplies (I still wasn't very hungry) and stuff for the wedding.  Then we headed all the way down to the end of Greenwell Road to have a look at the water.  That was quite nice.

Dropped the sweetie back to the motel, then met up with Chloe, Katie and Kit so we could all get our nails done.  I've never had my nails done professionally before.  

The result!

Picked up the sweetie, then it was off to the rehearsal.  There were quite a lot of people there and it was a little bit chaotic, so took quite a while to get through.  

Dropped off the sweetie again, then to Kit and Pete's to load up the car with food.  Swung by the motel on the way back and got Stu to drop me at the venue with all the gear/food.  He'd had a rotten time at the Ex-Serviceman's club - it was super noisy and crowded and he had to wait *forever* for food and couldn't even go get another drink because otherwise he'd have lost his table.  Poor thing.  Then he headed back to the motel while I stayed at the venue.

At the venue four of us girls stayed in the "Bunk House", while Kit stayed by herself in her own room (at Chloe's recommendation to get a better night's sleep).  

Chloe got us some takeaway burgers for dinner (and very nicely got me a kids meal so it was a lot smaller ;) ).

Chloe and Audrey made up little bubble blowers.

And Katie and Kit made up decorations.

I supervised ;)

I slept on my inflatable mattress.  Or rather, I *didn't* sleep on the mattress.  I was so stressed about my coughing/snoring keeping Katie awake, that I couldn't get to sleep til very very very late.  And then I woke up early.  I think I might have gotten about two hours sleep.  How to recover from a cold - get lots of rest.  Yeah right.  Vowed never to sleep in the same room as anyone else (aside from the sweetie) ever again in my life.

Anyways.  I'll leave the day of the wedding to the next post.

This magpie was hand raised by the owners of the venue, and hung around while we cleaned up.  Very cool.

After driving Pete's ute back to their place late morning, with everyone's cars full of *stuff* that we'd spent all morning packing up, we finally headed home.  

We couldn't even see Smith's Gap through all the smoke.

This was leftovers of a massive antipasto platter that we had at the wedding (I put it in the fridges overnight, everyone thought I was mad heh).  We didn't need to do any food shopping that week - we just ate this all week!

Yeah so Sunday night had a great night sleep but woke up with a sore throat Monday morning.  By Monday evening I knew I was getting sick.  Didn't sleep well - in fact was in bed for four or five hours before getting any actual sleep.  So Tuesday spent most of the day in bed.  Watched a documentary on Die Hard (from "The Movies that Made Us").  

Slept quite well Tuesday night so worked from home Wednesday.  But OMFG the STOOPID!!  Just dealing with people who don't understand basic networking, or in fact how their own applications work.  So frustrating.  Even the brother type person got cranky at me and I just wanted to rage quit the whole day.

Got the sweetie to trim my hair.  Asked for two inches, got six.  oops.

Wednesday night I was awake for hours coughing and so zombie tired Thursday morning, so gave up on that day as well.  Spent all morning in bed, then we got ready and headed down the coast for a long weekend for Kit and Pete's wedding.

Back home Sunday night.  Still sick.  Still coughing.

Back at work today.  Still sick.  Still coughing.

My todo list is out of control.  The house is out of control.  

Stop the world, I want to get off.

At the end of June I was so filled with rage at the hypocrisy of our change management team that I took a slightly long lunch and went jigsaw shopping at Vinnies.  This 400 piece one wasn't priced though, so they had to make up a price at the register.  The 1000 piece one I got was $5, so you'd think this would be $2.  No, they charged me $4.  #grunt.  Did it in early July on the window sil.  Complete too, surprisingly.

This was the other jigsaw I got that day.  The California coast line.  At 1000 pieces it's a bit of a struggle to fit on the window sil, and took a lot longer to do.  Also complete.

It was very badly cut though - it'd gotten misaligned in the machine, so the cuts were too close and pieces were broken.

This one was in the break out area.  After a morning tea it was still there with most of the sky and water to be done.  So I finished it.  Whoops.

Had to dig into my supply of completed jigsaws for another small one to do at work.  Did it without the box, because the box has five jigsaws in it.  I did have photo from last time though. 

I was with Neil when he bought this.  I might have strongly encouraged him to do so, so that I could do it as well ;)  He never ended up doing it (he started at Christmas with his family but didn't finish it, and hadn't cleared space to do it at home).  So I borrowed it and did it in a weekend.  So much fun.

It has visual puns/clues for one hundred different movies.  I think I got about 3/5ths to begin with.  Then I looked at the location guide which lists the movies in alphabetical order.  From that I was able to guess some more movies, and realise some of my guesses were wrong because they were out of order.  From that I ended up with about 3/4 of the movies.

Spoilers ahead now. 

The problem with the jigsaw was the lack of resolution on some of the pictures.  Like this one.  It looks a bit like a black Admiral Ackbar, but is in fact Iron Lady.  Which maybe I would have had half a chance of getting if I could have seen her face.

Same with this one.  Looks like Airplane! to me, but was in fact Snakes on a Plane.  How am I meant to even see that?

Or this.  Some little kid sitting on a building.  How the heck are you meant to see that's Young Frankenstein?  You can *just* see it once you know.

This I thought was Super Eight until I saw the order was wrong.  Turns out it was The Angry Eight.

Some of them were a lot of fun to guess (like this one, guesses?).

Others even with the answer I was like.. how..?  This one took me *ages* to get even once I knew the answer.

Anyone see it?

And some were a bit of a stretch, like Reservoir Dogs

Definitely a lot of fun though.

And this other small one from the same pack as the tigers.

Monday night the sweetie was home so he cooked dinner - salmon with a tartare sauce he made himself.  Very nice and very much appreciated.

After dinner and photo labelling I wanted to have some *fun* with Vic's Lego (after it all just being work so far).  So I started on the Cinderella Castle, because it was almost complete (likely because girls take better care of their things than boys do).  The palette sure is different to boys Lego too.

Tuesday lunch had lunch with Chrissie which was nice, although fairly brief.

Tuesday the sweetie was home but he didn't cook dinner.  We had leftovers.  

Then I finished the castle.

Wednesday the sweetie was home but he didn't cook dinner.  We had pizza delivered. 

Instead of photo labelling I spent all evening typing up all the notes from the last chat Kit and I had had about the wedding.  

Thursday we were going to go to Dumpling Inn with Hannah and Rita, but someone had the idea we should try Pizza Artigiana.  So we did that.  We had three very nice (and very thin!) pizzas - Patate e Salciccia - PAOLA - thinly sliced potatoes with mozzarella, Italian pork sausage (I think they forgot that ingredient) and thyme ($20); Quattro Formaggi - SANDRA - mozzarella, provolne, gorgonzola, and shaved pecorino ($20); Prosciutto Crudo - AMBRA - tomato base, prosciutto, mozzarella, rocket, parmesan and balsamic vinegar ($21).

And a nice Rocket and parmesan salad - rocket lettuce with shaved parmesan and a balsamic vinegar and virgin olive oil dressing ($10).

And we might have gotten the nutella pizza (which I don't think is on the menu).  

Friday I took a random day off, so used that do a bit of houseworky stuff, and then get ready to go down to the coast.

It was crazy windy on the drive.  All the wind turbines at Tarago were shut down.  I was a bit nervous about a tree branch falling on the car (and we did have to round a small tree partially blocking the road).  (edit: a father and son died when a tree fell on their car in Victoria on Sunday night :( )

Had dinner and just chatted when we got there. 

Pete has a new fish tank with nine neon tetras (Clone 1-9), six male guppies (red spotty tail 1 and 2, yellow spotty tail 1 and 2, blue and grey 1 and 2) and a sucking catfish (Dyson).

And Petal was very excited to see us.

Kit has a new snake.  She wants to call it Richard.  Pete wants to call it Monty.

And three of these are still going something like eighteen years later..

Saturday morning was more animal stuff.

Then we headed out to have a look at the wedding venue and ask questions and take notes.

Had lunch at the Australian Hotel in Nowra.  $10 for quite a nice steak (better than the Rashay's $5 ones).

Then we all went to the zoo.  It was still crazy windy.  I'll save that for another post.

Pete made pizzas for dinner (epic thick with toppings heh)

Chatted and played a game of Kismet (I won, somehow).

Sunday morning I showed Kit the bridesmaids dress.  We debated the best way to fix the problems with it.

Then I sat down and went through the wedding planning notes with them.  Well I tried to.  I'd been wanting to do it all weekend but getting the two of them to pay attention for more than thirty seconds at a time was like trying to herd cats.  Super frustrating.  So we left a lot later than we'd planned to, and just got chips and snacks at the servo for a very late lunch.

Got home and the house was freezing (10C when we got home, minimum of 6C).  Had chicken kiev for dinner and super stressed out by Apple.

Tonight I caught up on last week's photo labelling, as well as getting a good head start on this week's.  Was in a completely different mental state and was able to process all my photos from the past week.  I was so stressed out last night my brain couldn't *see* what I was doing.  Blinded by rage???  

So no movies at all this week.  Just a lot of feeling cold.  And a lot of pizza.  And a (mostly) nice weekend away.

Two weeks.  Whoops.  

So two weekends ago was our coast trip.  On the Sunday evening, it being March 17 and all, we watched Labyrinth.  I think I may have missed doing this last year.  Whoops.

Wednesday we went to Indian Pantry with Cath.  Had a few different curries which were all very nice.

Friday we had a farewell at Malaysian Chapter, but their lunch menu doesn't have any sort of chili rating scale.  I don't mind probably "medium" spiciness, but I don't enjoy burning my mouth off.  So stuck with something a bit boring.  In the evening we watched Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, which I don't think I enjoyed as much as the first one.

Saturday was a good weekend day Getting Things Done.  Did some food shopping.  Went over to R&F's with some of the N-Gang for dinner.  Which was nice until the rest of them all talked about tv shows that I'd never seen .. for like half an hour or more straight.  I got boreder and boreder.  But I did get my own back by inflicting them all with our holiday slideshow (which I got down to 600 photos).

Sunday I spent a good couple of hours processing iPhone photos.  The drama of it randomly screwing with my date stamps is still there.  I ended up writing a full page of instructions for processing all the different sorts of files it outputs, and the full six applications I use to process them all.  Also went to the Green Shed and finally got rid of a whole heap of mum and nana's Tupperware.  Made me kinda sad, but I don't use the stuff and it was just taking up space.  Came home with a card table and some jigsaws.  Did a lamb roast for dinner (yummy) and watched Discovery and Fuller House.

Monday we got home early and in the evening continued Homeland.

Tuesday I read a heap of feeds/emails, had dinner, watched an episode of tv on Netflix, burnt some dvds of photos, backed up my computer, labelled 150 photos, and finished a jigsaw.  All by 8pm.  I don't understand how some days I can get so much done, and others I can barely keep my head above water.

Friday had lunch with the Chrises and Neil.  We shared some food, so I only ended up spending $14 (still $4 more than I wanted to spend).  Watched the first episode of season three of Death in Paradise again.  The one we saw last year where Colin Frizzle turns up, but I was in disbelief it was real.  Think it was pretty far fetched as far as murders go.  

Saturday burnt more dvds of photos and brought all Vic's Lego upstairs so I can work on it on my computer (my old computer doesn't have enough grunt to have five word documents open at once, and my laptop probably doesn't really either (that, and it doesn't have Office, only Open Office which sux donkey balls)).  And it's getting too cold to work downstairs now anyway.  Setup the card table next to my computer so I can pick parts and mark them off as I go.  Popped into the shops to get some supplies then headed out to the club.  Helped a bit with setup etc.  Dinner was quite nice.  Supposedly "Swedish" but just as much Finnish.  Came home so the sweetie could have a full day at home to do uni work.

Today was quiet.  And COLD.  OMFG.  I relented and turned the heater on a month early.  Just for fifteen minutes first thing in the morning to take the edge off the house.  Did some housework.  Spent entirely too much time rechecking the sets I'd picked parts for at the end of last year, because I wasn't sure where I got up to with them.  Read more of Julie Powell's original blog and watched a couple of videos on her.  Filled the green bin.  Roasted some veggies and had them with leftover lamb for dinner.  Watched Discovery.  Download and processed iPhone photos.  Blogged.

So here we are :)

It started the Wednesday night.  I did all the prep for a beef stroganoff.  So the beef, mushrooms, bacon, onion and garlic, frying it all up so the only work on the weekend would be plugging it in, filling up the slow cooker, and letting it go all afternoon.

And by the end of it, on a weeknight, I still managed a clean kitchen!

Friday evening we headed down the coast.  I snapped a picture of one our new trams.

Drive down was uneventful.  We listened to John Williams the entire way that Stu had downloaded on Spotify.  Couldn't enjoy the scenery though cause it was dark most of the way.

We'd booked to stay at an Airbnb in Sussex Inlet.  Neat little apartment, quite spacious, and a well equipped little kitchen (stovetop but no oven, washing machine/dryer but no dishwasher).  Although previous reviews weren't wrong about rock hard pillows (I brought my own), incorrect wifi password (it was correct in the notification Stu got just before we arrived though), and lack of privacy from a useless curtain on the window above the door, with a view straight from the flat above into our bed (but noone was staying there so not really a big deal).  Pretty much just collapsed into bed (after Stu had a shower that was barely a trickle).

In the morning I went to have a shower, only to find no water at all.  The taps in the sinks were still running slowly, but even they stopped after a flush or two of the toilet.  My first stay at an Airbnb and THIS is my experience??  I smsed the number we had but got no response.  But Stu used the app a while later and got a response within a few minutes so that was ok.  The cleaner said feral kids think it's funny to turn off the water at the street.  (I had asked Stu to go check that earlier but he hadn't gone out to the street).  So they turned it on again and it was ok.  Although a lot of bubbles all through the pipes made for some interesting noises.

I'd been chatting to Kit about it as well, and they weren't doing much better with their water.  They have solar hot water, but it had been rainy, and with so many people in the house they were getting slightly warm at best.

Had some breakfast then went for a wander around Sussex Inlet.  Just walked down to the inlet, north along the river, then back through the town.  It was only 22C, but with the humidity it felt a lot hotter :(

Then we drove to the hall where the party was being held so I could setup the slow cooker.  The hall is quite lovely.  Poured everything into the slow cooker and asked Pete to stir it every hour or so.

Went back to see Kit and Pete's new house which is pretty cool.  Pete has an EPIC shed, and there's heaps of room for all the animals.  Although the dogs didn't like being relegated out the back heh.

We didn't actually see Kit - she was out with Mel.

Headed off again.  We went into Huskisson to have some lunch.  So much fried goodness.  Oh and some salad.

Wandered down to the water to have a look.  

Drove down to Hyams Beach to have a look.  It was full of people.  Yuk.

Then we went for a bit of a drive south, and ended up in Booderee National Park, in the Jervis Bay Territory.

Drove around the loop through Jervis Bay Village, and Stu was like - oo look the Federal Police :)

Stopped at Scottish Rocks and wandered down to the beach, then wandered all the way along to Hole in the Wall, then walked back along the road (because it was cooler out of the sun).

We drove to the end of the road at Murray's Beach, but didn't get out, because it was getting quite late.  We were going to be late for the party, so did the long drive back to Sussex Inlet.  Had a shower, then back to the hall for the party.  The stroganoff was still quite liquid which was a bit disappointing.  Probably shouldn't have used all the stock that I did.  Or at least added a bunch of corn flour.  People did seem to like it though.  Would have done better with something to soak up the juices.

So not only is there quite a large hall, but there's a huge open area all around the hall, including a playground for kids.  People spread out all over the place, meaning the hall was only sparsely populated heh.

And there were some very friendly horsies.

Party food.

And there was some dancing (see what I mean about the hall looking empty!).

I may have called it a night once Bohemian Rhapsody was played and sung along to :)

Came back to crash.

In the morning we dropped by the hall to pick up the spoon I'd left behind, although we didn't stay to help clean up because Stu was anxious to get home to do some uni work.  So just drove home, home by lunch time.

Quite a nice weekend, although I did feel a bit grumbly on Sunday afternoon that the weekend was nearly over and I hadn't had any time at home.

So the beginning of the year. We began the new year at Kit's with Ben and Sarah for a nice start to the year.

We took the first two weeks of January off, so three weeks all up, but during the first two weeks our house was a revolving door of people wanting to use the pool. I do enjoy having people over, but we needed a break!! I think in that two weeks we socialised every single day which was completely exhausting. Later I was able to do a deep clean of most of the kitchen, and organised the garage.

Somehow we managed to go overseas twice this year. In April we made an impromptu trip to Wellington, New Zealand for a lonnng weekend for our tenth wedding anniversary. We only arranged it a few weeks in advance (taking Wello's lead of going to New Zealand just because (actually he did it for status points haha)), and got one of the very last direct Canberra to Wellington flights on Singapore Airlines. In December we avoided the family Christmas obligations and headed to the northern hemisphere. We had a couple of days in Japan before heading to Southampton to board the Queen Mary 2 for a transatlantic crossing and Caribbean cruise. Christmas and New Year were on board the ship in the North Atlantic. I went up to Sydney in January for the mum/uncles post-Christmas chatchup, where we went to Pandora's in Rouse Hill for lunch and sat in Ken and Jeanine's spa all afternoon; and again in June for Mum and Uncle Ken's birthdays, and we went and saw Vivid Sydney which was pretty cool. I went to Junee in May and we went and saw the Bricktastic Lego exhibition, which was awesome because no crowds, and we went to the circus as well. I went to Melbourne in June for work, and again with the sweetie in August for Kit's graduation.

Work was pretty stressful this year. The work itself was fine (I completed a massive cleanup project in around a year, much less than my estimate of two years) and my supervisor is great, but we switched to hot-desking which is all kinds of stressful for me. Not to mention that "activity based working" means we should be sitting with the people we work with, but because there's not enough seats that's often not the case. I get in relatively early (thanks sweetie!) so at least I get *some* consistency. We had a Ball in March which was very .. blue! and a lot of fun. Our work bar closed in June and we had an amazing final night. We got a new one, but it's half the size and not as practical. One of the first nights in the new bar was a whiskey night which was good. I organised a trivia night for March, but it was cancelled at the last minute due to lack of interest. Tried again in May and this time it was a packed house, and the last one in the old bar. We won the first one in the new bar in October, but the organisers said as incentive to win, the second place winners should run it. Let's hope they do or I'll be running another one!

Healthwise I've been pretty good. Just had a cold in May and another in July. Other than that it was just a lot of insomnia. A lot a LOT of insomnia. Omigosh sometimes I was convinced it was going to kill me.

Once again we had a *very* social year. As I mentioned earlier we had a lot of visitors in the first week of January. David came to stay a few times. He came in January and fixed some taps in the bathroom, and later in January to see about the Railway Historical Society and whether or not they'd try and reopen. He came with Leanne in February, to stay after the Airport Open Day (that I never managed to get tickets for), again in April, September and October with Kat. Always great having him here. Chrissie got bigger and bigger with Beavis and I got to see a couple of ultrasounds. She had a quite small but quite cute Nathan at the end of February. Visited them a little but not nearly often enough. Didn't help that Chris was completely exhausted from lack of sleep. Aunty Di and Uncle Graham came down a couple of times and we did fondue with them at Chrissie's in April and October. Had lunch a few times with her as well which was nice. Chris also gave me a kick up the butt in July and helped me grout half the shower. We caught up quite a few times with the extended N-Gang, going to either EffanC's, R&F's, Scotts for pizza, and beef cheecks at our place in July. We saw quite a lot of Kit and Pete during the year. It was sooooo nice having cool neighbours you could pop down to for a quiet drink. Pete is into games, so played a few with him (Kit played begrudgingly) - including Travel Trivial Pursuit, Cards Against Humanity, and Kismet. We went out to the George for Kit's birthday in May, had Ben over for roast in March, and had BBQ at Serena's for her birthday in October. Kit and Pete had a farewell party at the beginning of November (much drama ensued) but we still got to see them every weekend until they left. Helped pack their truck at the beginning of December, and they moved down the coast the same weekend we went overseas. We met up with Damien and Amanda at the Dickson Dumpling House in April, and Stu had a wargame with Damien in July, followed by dinner at Laziza House. Jenn came over in February with various Tequilas she'd bought on her trip to Mexico. Hao came up for work in May, so caught up with him at Alice's. Had our annual Hanami lunch with Nat and Andrew in late September. Stu's dad came over for dinner sans Ruth in January. Scott and Kerry came down at the end of June on the way to the snow and we had the whole family over for dinner. Had Wello's 40th at Casey Jones in October, and went over to @CLBradley's in November for BBQ for his birthday.

We didn't do as much club stuff this year. The event dinners are getting out of control with so many people going, and Stu has to go out once a month for committee meetings, which leaves us with no enthusiasm to go out at other times. We did go a couple of times, including a nice night in November with only six of us out there. We did an epic Burns Night in January, with two huge pork roasts, a huge haggis, tatties, neeps, peas, carrots and cranachan, for about forty five people. We did another round of two huge roast pork roasts and veggies for Christmas in July, and something like fifty people came. We were going to help with the Christmas party, but Stu got a migraine just before we were going to head out. During the committee meeting in August I regrouted the shed's kitchen splashback, because I could scrape out the old stuff with a fingernail, and I had the last of the grout from our bathroom that I thought I could use up. Only went to a couple of swim nights.

Pets. For years we've only ever had fish in this house. In February Chrissie was heavily pregnant and overstressed and the stress of Stumpy not eating was too much for her (Stumpy being a lovely blue tongue lizard). Kit had had Stumpy since he was born in her last place (I remember when they first moved in seeing the tank in the spare room, thinking at the time it was fish). Stumpy spent many years living in Kit's garage generally being neglected. So a couple of years ago Kit gave him to Chris and Zac. He fattened up nicely. But as I said, Chrissie couldn't deal, and asked if I'd take him. Well our front entrance way was still full of clutter that had been there for like five years that I'd been wanting to get rid of. So she took the majority of the stuff to sell on Gumtree one day, and we got Stumpy. He didn't eat at all for the first six months we had him. Didn't help that I didn't have lights through the early part, and then it was winter. So he sat doing not much for the whole time. Then later in the year (I'd been increasing the amount of heat/light to match the seasons) he suddenly started eating. It's been lovely having him. Stu really likes him and gives him lots of cuddles.

On the fish front. I got five new black neon tetras in January for the two foot, and some harlequin rasboras in May. I got a little sucking catfish to keep the algae at bay in Chrissie's little tank. We went to Serkan's for killifish study group meetings in March and August. Stu has been trying to breed killifish, with mixed success. He gets all enthusiastic for spurts, then they get neglected for weeks at a time. The other drama was the epic stress caused by dodgy Aqua One LED fish tank lights. All three, plus one I'd already had replaced died in the space of a couple of months. In the end got all my money back and went back to fluoros. Confirming my hatred for all things Aqua One.

Lego, jigsaws, and other hobbies. In January, Vic came down from Sydney with an entire bootfull of his kids' Lego he wanted to sell. It wasn't sorted so I spent months sorting it and checking each and every damned piece for FAKE Lego. Had to stop working downstairs in April when it got too cold, but didn't really do too much at the end of the year - I was too busy getting ready for our holiday. I'd bought some nice Willow storage tubs to replace all the cardboard boxes I have for storage, and they got pressed into service holding sorted Lego. I really want to get rid of it all to get the space back (and my storage tubs back!), but need to do something about the computer I'm using down there - it doesn't have enough grunt to keep five word docs open at a time containing the parts lists for the sets. I did a LOT of jigsaws this year, including several sections of the Disney behemoth. Another reason I want the space back downstairs...! Didn't do much else hobbywise. Spent a lot of time fighting with Apple. I downloaded Image::ExifTool and used a perl script to rename the files based on Date taken instead of Date modified which I've been doing all these years with all my other photos. I processed, labelled and blogged all the photos from our New Zealand holiday within two months, then I went back and labelled all the photos from our East Asia holiday and got that blogged by the end of the year.

For some reason I always mention the weather. We had the extremes this year. We had a dust storm in March. In fact all through March the max temperature was around 30C almost every day. It was freaky hot. Then throughout July it was crazy cold. We got so much ice on the pool it was ridiculous. One time it was 14mm thick in places! Maybe the super thick ice was the beginning of the end for the pool - I did consider that all that ice can't be good for all the joints.

New toys! My iPhone 5 got more and more annoying. For some months the lock button was really sticky. It either wouldn't work at all, or would spend the whole time in the lock position, so the phone would think you were trying to turn it off. I waited til the Apple announcements in September to see if they'd release a small form factor phone, but alas none came. So I bit the bullet and got a HUGE XS. The new phone and iOS STILL screws around with the date modified on my files. Pissed off at that. But the camera is very nice. Especially the HDR capabilities. My old phone feels like such a sweet little phone when I pick it up (I've kept it around because it has a bunch of apps that won't run on the new one). Also before our holiday I decide to replace the seven year old Asus Eee PC. It was always under-powered (what is it with Asus and not enough memory?) and spent most of its life swapping to disk and not actually doing anything. It was pretty much unusable and frustrating, so got a little Lenovo net book which was just great to travel with.

A few house sagas this year. The first being the leaky shower. It took me forever to finish scraping off the old sealant and scraping back the old grout. And then it sat there for months doing nothing. Eventually Chrissie gave me a kick up the bum and helped me grout half the shower, and I finished it a week or two later in July, followed by the sealant in August. Took a little over a year to get that shower back into use, but it doesn't seem to leak anymore. I also attacked the cloudiness on the shower glass but NOTHING worked - not bathroom cleaner, not vinegar, not diluted CLR, not straight CLR, not straight CLR left there on the glass for weeks on end. I gave up the idea of ever having that glass clear again. We came home from New Zealand to find the power had gone off in the house and had been off for four days. We lost some fish in the cold (the rummy nose tetras), and I chucked out a bag of stuff from the fridge just in case, but the freezer didn't defrost completely (still had a couple of whiskey balls in tact) so didn't chuck anything out from there. Then there was the epic stress over the blown hot water release valve. It had died *just before* it was one year old, but I didn't call them for ages because I'm allergic to the phone. When I did call them it sounded like they were going to charge me, but when the dude turned up he was all "is that all?" and replaced it for me on the spot (and left me a spare to boot). Fortunately Rheem didn't charge me for their second defect in its first year. Then there was the circuit breaker that caught fire, taking out all our power points. Fortunately we got it fixed the same day, and used the lack of computer to do a lot of cleaning and organising. And finally the pool. Maybe all the ice over winter stretched all the seals to breaking point. But we had a leak that I don't know how old it was and we couldn't see how much damage had been done to the structural wall. The pool turned out to be around thirty years old! So even though it broke my heart we (I) decided to drain it and say goodbye. We did have a win - Pete replaced the laserlite sheeting on our back pergola, as well as the front piece of wood that had been positioned right under the old sheeting and had gotten rotten.

We ate out a little this year but not too much. Went to Iori with EffanC, Yat Bun Tong a few times (Stu likes the dumplings), with Damien and Amanda we went to Dickson Dumpling House and Laziza House, went with EffanC and Scott to Pialligo Estate for a "Meet the Maker" dinner with wines by Shaw and Smith in April which was delicious, Happys with the sweetie, Malaysian Chapter a couple of times with the N-Gang, The George for Kit's and my birthdays, Lake George Hotel in Bungendore with EffanC - disappointed with the pork belly, Tipsy Bull in Braddon for Stu's birthday which was great, and Sushi Bay sushi train with the sweetie. Went to Chong Co a couple of times. Probably others I didn't mention.

Didn't have too much blog-worthy food. A guilty pleasure was nachos - simply corn chips topped with cheese and baked for five or so minutes. Did Lorraine Elliot's Asian Style Beef Cheeks a couple of times (is it possible for something to have *too much* flavour?), and had a go at Sizzler cheese toast!! OMFG!!! SO GOOD!!! I'd make it all the time if given half a chance...

Theatre/Shows/exhibitions
* Bricktastic in Junee which was great and no crowds of kids
* Circus in Junee which had exotic animals to my surprise, but convinced their no photography rule is simply to not have anyone get it on video if they fall off stuff or get eaten by lions
* Ben Law and Jenny Phang at Library Up Late which was interesting
* *Didn't* see Cartier, but did wander around a bit of the National Gallery with Cath
* Brickman Lego exhibition by Ryan McNaught with Neil which was also awesome and also no crowds of kids (sensing a theme here?)

Movies
* The Last Jedi
* Bohemian Rhapsody

Movies on TV
* Well lots but I'm not going to list them all
* Lord of the Rings series (in advance of going there)
* Kevin Smith movies
* Harry Potter series
* Star Trek series
* Pixar series. Saw what we could of these on DVD and Netflix, then saw most of the rest on various plane trips at the end of the year. The only one I didn't see (and have never seen) is Coco.

TV
* Star Trek Discovery (season 1)
* The Good Place (season 2)
* Pride and Prejudice (BBC series borrowed off @CLBradley)
* A lot of Dad's war documentaries up until April, and then again from October
* One episode of Altered Carbon
* Homeland (season 6)
* Star Trek Enterprise
* Addams Family (maybe season 2, would need to check)
* Anthony Bourdain's The Layover
* Back in Time for Dinner
* David Attenborough's Natural Curiosities
* Anthony Bourdain's Parts Unknown
* Rake (season 5, not as good as previous seasons, too over the top)
* The Good Place (season 3)
* Death in Paradise (seasons 1 and 2)

Books
* Prey, by Michael Crichton
* The Giant Book of Science Fiction Stories
* Black Beauty by Anna Sewell
* The Last Seven Months of Anne Frank by Willy Lindwer

Other stuff

* Got NBN!!!!!!! In January - haven't complained about our internet since. 12x faster than before!
* Stopped by Cataract Dam on the way home from Sydney in January
* Took my car to the wreckers. Realised six months later I'd left my RTA etag in it, so called the wreckers but my car was crushed. There goes $40. Also realised, when I went to charge Kit's car in December, that I'd forgotten the battery trickle charger attachment that had been mounted in the engine bay.
* Climbed Black Mountain from Bindoubi Street with Cath, Fiona and their friend Heather
* Saw the Canberra Balloon Fiesta
* Filled with rage at the tax office that refuse to send paper bills, so how the hell am I meant to know how much I owe them??
* Was super happy with the awesome customer service from Willow when I found one of the lids I'd bought was cracked. Saddedened at the appalling experience from ebay
* reCAPTCHA died, but have been puttering along without it since May, and doesn't seem to be getting comment spam these days anyway
* Watched Flying High twice this year
* Tried taking recycling bottles to Return-It, but (after they forced me to register all my personal details) they RIPPED ME OFF and never put any money in my account. Return-It is a SCAM!!  I've been collecting the bottles but I've never been back - I give them to David whenever he comes to stay and he takes them to NSW where they have a PROPER system, or take them out to the club where someone else takes them to NSW or I think the new one in ACT where you get a receipt on the spot.
* Went to Frank Bradley's funeral, on my birthday. Tried to go to Stanley's in Bruce for dinner but it's closed Tuesdays so ended up at The George.
* Got a green bin!!
* Ate some of Kit's chickens
* Stu chopped a foot of hair off just before we went away at the end of the year

We finished the year at nine o'clock in the morning, North Atlantic time.  Stu was in bed and I was eating breakfast.  And yet, even in the middle of the North Atlantic, I could still watch the Sydney fireworks live :)

Thursday night was BBQ at @CLBradley's which was nice.  Haven't seen them in ages (other than at Frank's funeral).  Chris and Glenda (and Junior) came too which was good but Neil and Doc couldn't make it.  Next time!

Friday night was BBQ at Kit's for a farewell party.  It was nice too, and chatted about nothing to Tarun for a while too which was good.  The only problem was the drama.  The Kit-Serena drama, the Sarah-Serena drama, the Kit-Pete drama.  Sheesh.  I don't like drama.  

Saturday was just doing All The Things.  Didn't even leave the property all day.  Had a pretty quiet evening, watched Up.

Sunday was just doing All The Things.  Didn't even leave the extended property all day.  Had a pretty quiet evening, watched Toy Story 3.

So a nice quiet weekend.  Got a fair bit done, although not as much as I would have liked.  

On Sunday morning we went down to say goodbye to Kit.  She went down the coast after that to start a new job.  We'll see her a couple more times before they're down there for good.  Gonna miss those guys.  Gonna miss George.  Gonna miss feeding all our kitchen scraps to the chickens.  David will not miss Fonzie!

In 2016 I borrowed the book, The Last Seven Months of Anne Frank, by Willy Lindwer, off Kit.  It's the transcripts of interviews Willy Lindwer did in the late 1980s with six women who knew Anne Frank, who all survived German concentration camps.  So it's all their stories in their own words.  I read the first three stories in 2016, but things got a little too real at the end of 2016 and it got too hard to read.  

But with Kit about to move down the coast I finished it off last week.  

A somewhat tough read because of the content, but stories that need to be told.

I'd like to see the documentary some time too.