Wow, another strange year. Another crazy busy year.

Our year began very quietly with just the two of us. We didn't go out to the club because of Omicron taking the country by storm.

Travel-wise this year has been.. interesting. It started off with us desperatly trying to get out of the cruise we were due to go on. The charter company had postponed it a year, but with Omicron raging, government travel bans still in force, and lack of insurance for covid-related hospitalisations, we just couldn't justify it. The travel bans did get lifted and insurance companies started insuring for covid, but we still didn't think it was worth the risk. In the end, something like two weeks before the departure date, Carnival were like, ok fine, we won't charge the charter company if people don't want to come. Great. So we didn't go. The charter company were still @$$holes and would only provide a cruise credit for next year's cruise not the year after. It's caused me so much stress and angst and I would NEVER deal with them again. So plan B for February was Tasmania. But with Omicron raging and mandatory lockdowns for testing positive, we decided against that too. If we'd gotten sick while in Tasmania we would have nowhere to go and no way to get home. So plan C was regional Victoria. We only booked motels a night in advance, and if we'd gotten sick we could be home from anywhere in Victoria in a day. So that's what we did. And we actually had a lovely time with almost perfect weather (if a tad hot!). We had a very busy first week, cramming in lots of things, but took it a lot easier in the second week. In April there was a day trip to four Sydney dams to see three of them spilling which was super cool. In May was another sneaky trip to Sydney to see Woronora Dam spilling, and Brickman's Lego Jurassic World. I hadn't been planning to go see the Lego, but then was inspired by Lego Masters so went when it only had a few days to go. And then they extended it. Oh well. And then back again to Sydney in June for Mum's birthday where Kellie had organised to see Mary Poppins. Met up with Tony the next day and wandered the city and went out to Cockatoo Island, then met up with Mum again and saw Vivid. Finally a visit to Ansto at Lucus Heights which was very cool. We only made it down the coast once this year, in July, to see Kit and Pete. In September I went overseas for the first time in nearly four years. Mum and I went and saw the Oberammergau Passion Play, which I'd been wanting to see since the late 80s. We then drove through Austria, Liechtenstein and Switzerland (four countries in one day!!) and into Italy, where we ditched the car and toured northern and central Italy by train. We saw *heaps* of stuff, much more, and for much cheaper, than if we'd done it with the tour company like originally planned. I got filled with rage how Qantas and Emirates won't talk to each other to do seat allocations on code share flights. Jet lag hit me in a major way when I got home. It certainly didn't help that I got a cold as soon as I got home and so didn't go outside and see the sun in days. I was awake for hours every night for a week, and a complete zombie for much of it. Finally, we went back to Tumut for the Tumut 3 Power Station Open Day and another TRBC tour.

Work was, well, work. It's not that I don't like it, it's just that it takes up so much time out of my days. I have way too many things on my todo list to have time to go to work every day. Sigh. But at least working from home a few days a week makes it tolerable. I didn't actually go into the office at all until March (with Omicron raging and minimising people contact before we went on holidays). Then when I did eventually have to go back in I found it super loud and stressful and distracting and PEOPLE!! I had to be Neil a few times during the year and did some doco on his stuff (which he won't keep up to date heh). There were a couple of firewall migrations that went quite smoothly. A couple of load testing days in May and June. A few proxy upgrades which introduced more bugs than they fixed. But we did PoC a proxy from another company that actually looked pretty good. Migrated some servers. And All The Cleaning. Just call me Sadie. There was a whiskey night in July (which I actually missed, but was able to try everything the next week), and I ran my Christmas bbq at the lake for the tenth year in a row.

Healthwise I've been pretty good. Had a very slight cold in June and another one when I got home from Europe. Had booster jabs in January and July. The one in January caused a strong immune reaction so had to take a half day off and have a little lie down. Other than that just a sore arm so far is all I've had from the shots. Other than that just the usual bouts of insomnia, waking up with numb hands, and going blind.

We've been pretty slack at keeping up with friends and family this year. Although we have seen some friends a bit. We've seen Tony and Jess a few times for games and music. Damien came over in January, April and June for games. Jenn came over a couple of times in April and December. I had heaps of lunches at Herbert's with various Chrises and Tonys and other peeps as well. David came to stay before the Canberra Airport Open Day. Kit came to stay in July. Mum came to stay in December and we did our family Christmas with Kellie's family at the Burn's Club. We saw Annie and the family a few times - for Annie's 50th, Mila's 21st and Christmas, as well Immy coming over a couple of times to hang out. EffanC and R&F came over they day before my birthday. Had a lovely housewarming for R&F in November (it was cold and wet). Caught up with Aaron in December, probably as long as ten years since I last saw him. Finally saw Chrissie for the first time since covid in December. And met up with James and George and the kids for lunch in December on their way to Melbourne.

We only made it out to the club four times this year. It's been that kind of year. With quarantining and being on holidays for several events, the only times we made it out were for the Mexican night in March, the formal night in June, our Christmas in July and the Christmas party in November. We didn't even make it out in any non-event weekends which we like doing over winter.

I did a bit of work on processing Dad's slides early in the year but that fizzled out. I geotagged all of Mum and Dad's Tasmania photos in case we ended up going there. I also geotagged all our Victoria and South Australia photos from previous holidays to try and reproduce those. I started to scan Mum's Minolta negatives from the beginning (1983) and got some spectacular results, but that ground to a halt when I got up to 1994 and got into a batch of badly discoloured negatives that were unscannable. Not that there's even all that many past 1994 that I'm interested in keeping so no big deal I suppose. I managed to cull and label and get some photos onto the blog for the tenth anniversary of my 2012 Eurasia trip. That was a lot of work for the first few months of the year but it was so good to get it done. I also got 719 Victoria photos (plus bugs/flowers/panoramas) labelled and online in time for the six month anniversary of us leaving on that trip. After that I got really slack in the evenings - with no pressure or deadlines nothing much got done. For this year's Europe trip it took me a good six weeks just to geotag everything, then I got slack again. I was thinking I might be able to get the photos online by Christmas. Yeah right. Instead I used the evenings to start filing by 2022 photos and taking notes for my year in review post.

Stumpy is still doing great. We've had him (her?) nearly five years now! He'd be at least 13 by now. The fish are puttering along. My two main guppy tanks (the two foot upstairs and the two foot downstairs) look amazing - lots of plants (at least upstairs) and hardly any algae. But our guppies are two years old now and getting inbred. We really need to get some new genetics for them. I still have my "angel" 620T tank with a guppy, a platy, and an ancient cory. I still have Chrissie's tank with her two clown loaches and a guppy, but I'm considering moving them and getting rid of the tank. It's got horrible black hair algae which is not fun. I have the two two foots, as well as several small tanks downstairs, all with just guppies. And Stu has his four foot which is still full of algae. Really must move more juvenile guppies in there.

I lost heart in trying to complete any more of Vic's Lego sets, so decided to inventory what was left (I'm going to need to do that at some point anyway before selling it). I found a website called Basebrick which integrates with Bricklink which is super useful. Did heaps but ran out of time to finish it before I went overseas and haven't been back to it. For my birthday I got 10497 Galaxy Explorer and 75329 Death Star Trench Run Diorama which are pretty cool. I decided to sell the box of "MISB" Harry Potter Lego I got from 2003-2006. There were ten sets and they sold for quite a lot (I probably made the buy it now too small), but ebay makes it so you have to jump through all their hoops otherwise you can get totally screwed over buy the buyers. As it was I got totally screwed over by ebay who not only take 12.5% of the sale, but also 12.5% of the *postage* which I think is a complete scam. Not to mention the stress. If things go well it's actually quite simple, but if anything complicated happens (like people pay for everything and *then* want combined postage, or come to pick up from your house but don't mark online that they've done so, or the value is over the $100 Australia Post will cover you for) then it's a nightmare. I calculated how much profit I made, taking into account the cost of interest for not having the money in my mortgage all these years and all the fees, and I figure I made a total net profit of about $50. But, I'm sure I made a lot of people very happy they could get their hands on 15-20 year old brand new Lego sets. For Christmas I was going to get myself the Lego Titanic. But after not getting a Black Friday special on it, I decided to sit down and buy it on the Saturday. By which time it was out of stock. Sigh. But I did get a different Lego set for Christmas - in a manner of speaking. Neil lent me his Saturn V rocket that he bought a few years ago but had never done. So I've been having fun with that. Then will pull it all apart and give it back to him :)

I finally finished the Disney 40320 piece behemoth this year - finishing up with the Bambi section. I still haven't assembled the whole thing yet because I lost access to the really useful skybridge so don't know where I'm going to assemble it. Maybe Damien's driveway. Other than that, the usual jigsaws at home and work, although feeling like I really don't have time to do them.

They said La Niña would finish by the end of summer. It didn't. There was a massive storm in January which caused a lot of chaos in northwest Canberra. There were power outages all around Belconnen and Coles lost all their fridge and freezer stock. Chris kept power to his store, but his house had no power for days. We were lucky and just had a couple of small outages while they were fixing things. And the water. All The Water. In spring half of NSW was flooded. Insanity. And there was so much water there was no lettuce in Australia for a while. Craziness.

I've had a whole stack of problems with Windows 11 on my new computer. I hate it (windoze 11) so much. Like the fact you can't ungroup task manager icons which makes it so damned slow to switch between windows now. Before you could just click on the icon. Now you have to click or just hold and *wait* for the popup before you can switch windows. I took to making whole new desktops for the browser and explorer windows I need for different hobbies (such as music or lego) but even that has its bugs - like not displaying the wallpaper at the right size at random and then fixing it and then breaking it again all without me changing anything. Or that after a reboot only two of the desktops will display the right wallpaper at all, and if I switch between the working and non working one it'll put the wall paper from the working desktop onto the non working desktop I've just switched to. And after a few days it'll come good. Utter trash. Then there's the fact my GPS won't work at all (and there's no replacement drivers for it), my scanner won't work (even though it originally did), Eudora wouldn't work to begin with, then came good. My SD card reader only works intermittently. The front USB ports take at least thirty seconds to recognise there's anything plugged into them. My second monitor wouldn't work so had to buy a new one. It's great but the resolution is so high it's difficult to see. Windows 11 *still* only ever puts the screensaver on the left-most monitor, even if that is not the primary monitor. Excel 2003 dates wouldn't work, so had to put on Libre Office instead. You can't drag a file onto the application on the task bar, have said application pop up, and open the file in that application. That just doesn't work at all anymore. Similarly I can't drag anything into Eudora to attach it, I have to go to a menu and manually attach files. Printscreen didn't work to begin with, then started working. Hate hate hate hate hate. I've been playing a lot of Wordle style games, although cut back on those while overseas and only play a few of them now. I like Symble because you have to think more about it. Redactle is challenging. Wheretaken is a new favourite. Also Worldle, Waffle and Framed. In February Google changed one of their apis to enforce https, so had to hack Geosetter to get it to work again. Then in December Google finally killed the IE api, killing Geosetter completely. A few weeks later they released a new version of Geosetter which still has some issues, but at least will display the map again. Our printer is having a tonne of issues with jamming and poor quality printouts. It might just need a clean. Or a new printer. hmmm. Had to setup an app password in June for Eudora so it can backup my gmail. In July OneDrive took it upon itself to backup/sync all my desktop, documents and downloads directories to OneDrive. But all it succedded in doing was making a complete mess of things, bringing back files from my old computer that had long since been filed. Turned off backups everywhere and I minimise use of those directories completely. IOS 15.3.1 (or thereabouts) went back to putting photos into files by year/month (which I actually prefer). But Apple is STILL messing with the timestamps on my files. I got myself a 14 Pro for Christmas (it arrived instore literally the Friday night before Christmas, I was thinking I'd have to wait until January). Its camera has.. issues.. I lot of the first photos I got off it were utter crap. Primarily because I was using the 2x lens a lot to compare with my old phone. Firstly. Don't. The 2x "lens" is a digital interpolation of the 1x optics. So it's crap. The macro setting will work (if the stars align) but while it's good for getting actual closeups, it's crap at taking photos of flowers where you want the background all out of focus. Use the 3x lens as before just be far enough away for it to focus. Optus charged me 50c for an international SMS I didn't make in July. I got onto their online chat and they gave me a credit, but firstly said they couldn't find out the exact date/time and number, which was a total lie, because when I pressed them for it they could, and then I figure out what it was (it was a reply to a string of text, not a number, so it got translated to an international number). I bought myself new sandshoes in January, for the first time in like fifteen years. And new black shoes in August for the first time in seven years. I bought a G5X before our overseas trip. And got a brand-new-second hand wok on freecycle (to replace ours whose non-stick surface was coming off).

Around the house. I needed to move all the ornaments off the top of my desk to setup my new computer and rearrange monitors and crap. I moved them all into the shevles I bought for David in the spare room. I can see everything there a lot better, so I'm enjoying having them all there. The top of the desk has remained clear all year, although I do currently have my birthday presents up there at the moment. Tony came over in January to chainsaw off the oak tree sprouts and the front hedge. And then in December to attack the photinia. In between is all the weeding. Never. Ending. Weeding. Except in winter cause it's too damned cold heh. When the big storm went through in January water was coming out of places that water should not be coming out of. Like bricks next our bins, and bricks on one of the back steps at the back of the house. So got the plumbers to come out and do all the eeling. The sewage pipes were the easiest because we know the deal with them. The front courtyard was easy when we realised it's not a proper drainage pipe, just a 50mm pipe that goes just across the courtyard and drains off to the side. Looks to have been an afterthought. Then the stormwater. They went in via the sump next to the garage and it was like thirty metres down before they found the blockage. So they cleared that. Like the sewage, we'll just need to do that every couple of years. Finally they looked at the drainpipe near the bins. Under the concrete the pipe had come adrift and was full of roots, so the drain from the roof was just pooling under the stairs, and then going through the bricks next to the bins. So they dug up the front stairs, dug a wholly new trench, resealed, relaid the pipes, filled it all in, and got someone to put in some new stairs. Fifteen thousand dollars later. Ouch. Mice were scritching around the roof in March, which caused some sleepless nights. But then they went away. Which was good because I practically had a panic attack trying to figure out how I was going to get across to the far side of the roof without falling through it and getting covered in disgustingness. I tried to cut back the ivy in May. It's now covering more of the side wall than ever. Our largest stove element died. But we still haven't replaced the element or the whole stove. Found out in early spring that a pair of crimson rosellas had been chewing through the beams holding up our roof. Tried plastic sheeting, tinsel, scaring them, and scat. Nothing much seemed to work very well. They've found more interesting things to eat for now but I suspect they'll be back again next winter. We moved a shelf out of the dungeon because Stu wanted to put in a proper shelf there. Underneath was a massive growth of dark brown mold. We don't know if it's current or historical. hrmmm. The Dyson I got for my birthday two years ago stopped working. Don't know if it just needs a clean, or if the battery is dying, or if the Dyson is just a dud. My money is on the latter. Brought home the Electrolux from the club where we'd had it to use until I can get around to cleaning the Dyson. Got lots of strawberries from plants around the back yard. Including some from our paver weeds. The snails clearly didn't get the memo, so we got the strawberries instead of them. We had solar panels and a battery installed in December. They still don't work.

Our favourite restaurant this year was still Chong Co - we got deliveries from them in January, twice in April, twice in August, and October. Herberts is also popular for work Friday lunches (and their Christmas in July was a lot of fun). I didn't get to have any workday Kingsleys lunches because the building opposite blew up from a gas leak and they've never gone back, or been allowed to, not sure which. I did finally have some Kingsleys from Kippax a few weeks ago. We had Sichuan Chinese pickup from Belco a couple of times and were pretty impressed with them. We had brunch a few times at Market St Eats. Some others we went back to after long breaks included Mills and Grills (Stu went low carb so hardly any Dominos this year either), Chez Kimchi and Bella Vista. Tried out SpudBAR and 1919 Langzhou Beef Noodle which opened in the mall. Other one-offs included Co Dung (fried chicken wings were awesome), Lazy Su, Turqoise Turkish, Edgar's, Flavours of Jiangnan, Teddy Picker's, Badger & Co, Little Steamer, The Howling Moon, Mr Shabu Shabu, Little Oink, Master Bao (which had no bao), Magpies (for Jim's farewell), Pattysmiths, and Chinese Inn (from Kippax, just as bad as last time).

As always I end up doing quite a bit of cooking and trying new recipes, as well as doing old ones a few times. One new favourite is stuffed baby capsicums - fill with whatever mince you like and lots of cheese and roast. Yum yum. I made a few lemon cheesecakes, as well as a lime one and a cherry one. One of Stu's favourite meals is Cath's basa bake we've done that a few times. We did san choy bow a couple of times. We really like the potato, onion, blue cheese and bacon bake from my Gratins and Bakes book, but with Stu going low carb we only did it like once all year. The slow cooker gets a workout over winter. Favourite recipes for that are Alan's beef stew, brisket, and even pulled pork. And we tried slow cooking pork ribs (nice but lots of little fiddly bony bits). Beef cheeks are slow cooked on the stove. After doing turkey rolls that actually turned out this time at the club Christmas in July (on account of doing them in the oven instead of on the bbq), we tried one ourselves in August and also November (and likely New Years Eve as well). They turn out really nicely and we'll probably always keep one in the freezer to do when we feel like it. From Not Quite Nigella I tried a chicken marbella but wouldn't bother again, from the Gratins and Bakes book I tried potatoes with lemon and tomato but wouldn't bother again with that either, and from my Slow Cooker Kitchen book I tried honey rosemary chicken which was too salty. Completely evil meals included uunifetapasta, cheese nachos, and no-carb pizza (made with no base at all, just cheese). Slow cooked mini tomatoes are amazing, really must do them more often. Tried pork crackling by itself but I do prefer it done on the meat. A favourite lunch is grilled cheese sandwiches - but with shredded pizza cheese on the outside as well. Favourite veggies (well other than my favourite which is potato bake) include brussels sprouts with bacon. Over winter we discovered kalettes which when roasted for 35-40 minutes turn into little bliss bombs. Almost as good is kale chips, but it's a bit too easy to overcook those and have them go bitter. I made pesto with the last of the summer basil, and tried cheese biscuits in June (but need to find a better recipe). And made a coconut cake (Yum! Delicious!) in June and October.

Theatre/Shows/Exhibitions
* Australian Wind Symphony in May at the B (next to the Q)
* Lego Jurassic World in Sydney
* The Queen and Me exhibition at the National Capital Exhibition
* Mary Poppins in Sydney
* Canberra Lego Brick Show at Thoroughbred Park
* Australian Wind Symphony in November at St Andrews

Movies (at the movies)
* Top Gun: Maverick

Movies (TV)
* The Courier
* The Young Black Stallion
* The Grand Budapest Hotel
* Six Minutes to Midnight
* Sleeping With the Enemy
* Munich: Edge of War
* The Laundromat
* 1917
* The Mauritanian
* Zero Hour (twice) / Flying High
* Dr Strangelove
* No Time to Die
* Operation Finale
* Logan's Run
* 6 Underground
* The King's Speech
* Encanto / Luca
* The Death of Stalin
* The Royal Tenenbaums
* Gladiator
* Knives Out
* Edward Scissorhands
* The Monuments Men
* Pride and Prejudice (the Keira Knightley version)
* Mary Poppins / Saving Mr Banks
* The Little Mermaid II / Ariel's Beginning
* The Man from Snowy River
* An Affair to Remember / Sleepless in Seattle
* A Clockwork Orange
* The Constant Gardener
* Top Gun
* The Silver Brumby
* Kingsman: The Secret Service / Kingsman: The Golden Circle / King's Man
* Careful, He Might Hear You
* Moulin Rouge!
* Shine
* Blue Murder
* Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (twice - before and after Italy)
* Breaker Morant
* Matrix Resurrections
* Romeo+Juliet
* The Butterfly Effect
* Die Hard 1/2 / Love Actually
* Enola Holmes 2
* Operation Mincemeat
* Herbie Goes Bananas

TV
* Sex Education (season 3)
* The Simpsons (seasons 20 to half way through 31)
* The Girl on the Train in the Rear Window, or whatever it's called
* Mentour Pilot (about 3/4 of the air crash investigations episodes)
* Gunther's Autopsy
* Lie to Me (end of season 2 and season 3)
* Black Books
* Gunther's Anatomy
* The Crown (season 1 and most of season 2)
* Lego Masters (season 4)
* Martin Bashir's Diana interview
* The Diana Interview: Revenge of a Princess 2021
* Epstein's Shadow: Ghislaine Maxwell
* Obi-wan Kenobi
* Super Cub
* Andor (season 1)
* Lego Masters Bricksmas special (last year's and this year's)
* Survivor Canberra (fan produced)
* Picard (season 2, haven't finished)

Books
* Read the first four books of the New Testament, but got behind in February when we travelled and never really caught up. Will try again next year for the rest of the New Testament.

Other stuff
* Tried to catch up on This Day in History posts, but there's still too much work to be done with Mum's photos to do it properly, so that stalled
* Car wouldn't start in January. Turns out it was the battery, which was probably original, so it would have been nearly eight years old
* Petrol got insanely expensive
* Balloon Fiesta in March
* Canberra Airport Open Day in April
* Dam Busters trip to Sydney in April
* Climbed Mt Rogers a couple of times
* Saw the planet/moon alignment in April
* Jupiter and Venus were having a sneaky early morning kiss in April
* Sneaky trip to Sydney in May to see Lego Jurassic World (and Woronora Dam)
* Got a democracy sausage in May
* Climbed Mt Ainslie in May (hadn't been planning to it just happened)
* Whiskey Live in May
* Queen Elizabeth II 70th Jubilee in Canberra - all the purple lights on buildings around Canberra
* ABC's Classic 100: Music for the Screen in June
* Inspected my flat, went to Cockatoo Island, saw Vivid and visited Ansto in June (after seeing Mary Poppins for Mum's birthday)
* Surprising Science at the Shine Dome in June, August, and December
* Walked up Mt Painter
* Stu cracked a tooth and needed it taken out
* Fought with Qantas' booking system again. I hate Qantas. So. Much.
* Had a hair cut in August
* Stu got a 3D printer which he's been using to make little models for his wargamming
* Total lunar eclipse in November
* Took a drive out the back of Dunlop/Holt to see the West Belconnen Pond
* Got a beer advent calendar from Plonk
* Went to the Green Shed a couple of times, dropped off a few things, came home with more jigsaws
* Continued to practise the clarinet

Have a very happy and safe new year!!

Sunday.  Christmas!!  Woke up at 5am.  Of course.  Had a pretty chilled morning.  Had bacon and eggs for breakfast.  Opened some presents.  Watched some crap on the internet.  Setup my new phone.  Cooked and ate lunch - roast pork!!  Played with some Lego.  In the evening we went over to see Annie and the family for D&D (drinks and dessert).  You gotta love it when the entire planning for a family Christmas event was done in literally half a dozen smses.  "What you want do?"  "Drinks and dessert"  "What time?"  "7"  "ok"  So easy :)

Finished the Plonk beer advent calendar!  So much fun!

Monday.  Got overwhelmed by my todo list.  I planned out a huge todo list, with the idea of trying to catch up on a bunch of stuff for a few hours each day, and also have time for projects.  Except the catching up stuff took most of the day.  Sigh.  Downloaded Geosetter 4.0.4 (still beta) and at least the maps work again.  Hurray.  And I think the fifth episode of Picard.

Tuesday.  Brunch at Pollen with the hills and testing out the new phone.  Caught up on some blog entries.  Did a Bunnings run.  Worked on year in review post.  Had Chinese Inn from Kippax delivered for dinner.  It was just as crap as last time heh.  Sixth episode of Picard.

Wednesday.  Booked flights to America and tickets to Busch Gardens.  Did some camera testing in the afternoon.  Oh the lastest bug with Apple, and this happened once recently on my old phone too, so is prolly an iOS 16 thing - sometimes I can't copy off or even look at photos on my phone from Windoze.  I can't open them in explorer on the phone, and if I copy them they either copy as 0 bytes, or occasionally it'll copy as just a thumbnail.  Very upsetting.  To get the files off I have to email them to myself.  So lame.  Maybe I should have bought the Pixel....  Stu cooked dinner or mushroom/cabbage/pork/bacon.  Watched Operation Mincemeat in the evening.  

Thursday.  Spent pretty much the whole day catching up on blogging.  If anyone cares there's a bunch of new entries in April, May and June.  Homemade pizzas for dinner.  Episode 7 of Picard, and Luca.

Friday.  Tony came over and chainsawed the photinia.  Three trips to green waste later   .. !!  Then year in review post writing.  So much for having fun this break.  Or doing anything like music practise or paint by numbers.  Pretty much the only fun I've had was building the Saturn V.  Chicken kiev for dinner.  Picard episode 8.  Herbie Goes Bananas.

Saturday.  New Years Eve.  OMFG I couldn't get to sleep and had no idea why.  It felt like I never got to sleep until after 3am.  Although Stu said I slept a bit between 22:30 and midnight.  Sigh.  Slept in til 8.  Did an Ikea and Officeworks run.  Finished the Saturn V.  Bit of house tidying.  The plan is for a quiet NYE at home..

Monday.  12th.  Backdating.  No notes other than "blogged".

Tuesday.  Super crazy busy day all day.  Went with the hills to another Surprising Science talk.  The first talk was by Professor Naomi McClure-Griffiths about uses of colour in nature, not just for visible light but also near infra-red, and how that might have applications in heating and cooling control.  The second one was by Professor Drew Evans and was a lot more physics-based, looking at invisibility, and he did mention about how most butterfly wings that look blue aren't actually blue from chemistry but physics.  

Wednesday.  Had a go at picking up some work I started before my last holiday (that I had to stop looking at cause the proxies blew up).  Went into town and had dinner at Chez Kimchi.  They've simplified their menu which is *much* nicer.  Then went to Coles to do some Christmas shopping.

Thursday.  Work.  Christmas party planning.  Posted a package to Potty.  $16 for regular, $20 for express.  They said regular *might* get there by Christmas.  hrmm.  Last drinks of the year.  Cheese kransky and salad for dinner.  Then it was getting ready for the Christmas party and cleaning the house.  Into season 31 of The Simpsons.

Our non-functioning solar setup.

Is Don!  Is good!  I miss those things, we used to have them all the time when I first came to Canberra.

Friday.  My Christmas party!!  Had about forty people come.  Once again I overspent on booze, although did bring home quite a lot of leftovers so hoping it'll even out.  It was slightly windy but otherwise it was a very pleasant afternoon.  That was my tenth year running it!!  Didn't catch any ducks, but did catch a honeyeater in flight, so to speak.

Went and picked up Mum from Jolimont.  Had toasted cheese sandwiches for dinner then pretty much just collapsed.

Saturday.  Proxy upgrade first thing.  Still haven't fixed any of their bugs.  Lame.  Had a look at Mum's last two holiday slideshows which was nice.  Then headed down to the Burns Club (had to join #grunt) for Kellie's family Christmas lunch.  They did a Kris Kringle thing where the budget was 5c to $30 .. and I was like.. um what?  Weird.  Stu ended up getting some cash and I got a bottle of Apple Pie Baileys yummm :)  And I ate too much.  All. The. Food.  !!

This time like three.. whoops..

Came home and collapsed in a heap from too much food and too much people.  David/Kellie/Hayley dropped in on their way back to Junee after they'd been to Ikea.  Had a super healthy dinner, then an early night.

Sunday.  Decided to drop in unannounced to see Chrissie.  I haven't seen her since before Covid!!!  It's been a running joke over the last three years that whenever I messaged them to see about catching up one of them would be sick.  And sure enough, Chris was sick this time.  So we all wore masks.  And had a nice long chat.  Dropped off Mum at Jolimont then headed home.  Stressed about people drama.  Stressed about the solar system not working properly and noone responding to our emails/smses.  #grunt.  But forgot about all that for a while and went to Herberts with Frank and Karen and Tony which was nice.  

Watched the third episode of Picard in the evening.

Sunday.  10th.  Cooked a massive tray of brussels sprouts and bacon, cauliflower and broccoli bake, and reheated some brisket in jelly.  So good.  Hardly any leftovers!  Whoops!

Monday.  Slept ok.  Another proxy cleaning/documenting day.  Music after work, and made honey mustard chicken for dinner.  Worked on Victoria photos - flowers and resizing the iphone panorama set - all 258 of them!  Yipe!

Tuesday.  Slept ok I think.  More proxy stuff.  Music, brisket and veggies for dinner.  Victoria photo labelling - flowers and bugs.  Started watching The Silver Brumby.  A kids film, but beautifully filmed.  The cinematography is awesome.  The lead lady character was pretty cool, although that story arc is not in the books at all apparently.

Wednesday.  Slept ok, although had *two* dreams stressing about the trivia night - both dreams I turned up in the room where everyone had already turned up but we had nothing prepared.  The second dream I was telling everyone about the dream I'd literally just had.  Salmon and cabbage for dinner.  Labelled all the Victoria panorama photos.  Then finished The Silver Brumby.  So it was a bit silly in that they had a very well groomed palomino mare playing a "silver" brumby stallion.  And to be honest it was hard to feel any sympathy for the brumbys' story - they really don't belong there anyway.  I was hoping Russell Crowe's character would win .. or at the very least get his own horse back.  

Thursday.  Slept ok I think.  Another proxy day.  So for me it was pretty peaceful.  Stu on the other hand went to the dentist because he'd been in agony for a few days, and came home minus a tooth!!  Nice enough drinks.  Opened an ancient Midori Crush Neil threw out from a Christmas party a few years back.  It was fine :)

The travel insurance people also got back to me - they were happy to simply cancel the old policy and reissue it with the new PDS.  Hurray!

Friday.  Woke up at 01:50 when the sweetie got up in pain.  But then stayed awake til like 04:00.  Sigh.  Had a bit of a cleaning day - mostly cleaning out my inbox(es).  Also playing with proxy settings to prevent uploads of certain files.  Kit arrived late in the afternoon.  Had drinks and pasta/mince for dinner and a lovely catchup.

Saturday.  Kit went out to go shopping and catch up with Katie, so I did a heap of work on my Victoria photos.  And made a lemon cheesecake.  In the evening was Christmas in July at Herbert's.  I might put that in another post.  It was quite fun, if very loud.  

Sunday.  Slept like crap.  Apparently eating and drinking too much will do that to you, who knew.  Kit went out most of the day with her brother and his family.  Finished off Victoria photos, hurray!!  Did some music in the afternoon then All The Cooking.  

Thursday.  16th.  Fairly uneventful drive up to Sydney.  Stopped at Weemeeraa Lookout to see Lake George full of water.  Also at Sutton Forest for a loo break and some morning tea.

Got to Mum's just after 12:00.  Had some lunch (bubble and squeak), then setup her new printer (which didn't come with a USB cable, so had to use her old one), and had a bit of a look at our itinerary for Italy.

Later in the afternoon we took a train into Central.  OMFG I HATE people!  The train was full of noisy Caringbah high school kids not wearing masks (they all got off at Hurstville then it was quieter).  

Then took a tram up to Star City.  Again with people not wearing masks.  #grunt.  The tram took *forever*.  I swear it would have been quicker to walk from Town Hall.  We arrived pretty early, so found the restaurant then wandered down to the harbourfront.

I wanted to go to one of the bars and have a drink (to be more relaxed meeting a whole bunch of strangers) but nothing opened til 17:00.  Sigh.  So had to meet people sober which was pretty stressful.  Dinner was at Cucina Porto.  I had crumbed veal which was quite nice.

The lemon sgroppino was also very nice

It was nice to meet Kellie's family, although mostly ended up talking to her Mum's friend Annette.

So that was all nice enough, but we had to wait for Kim and Laila (Kim couldn't get off work til late) and by the time they'd ordered and then had to reorder (because their first pizza was undercooked) and then everyone (not me! ha) got dessert it was getting really damned close to 19:00 and I was getting epic stressed because theatres often don't let you in if you're even a minute late and I had visions of us missing a chunk of the show.  Everyone had to rush through their dessert so we could race across the way to the theatre and we sat down literally at 19:00.  I was not happy.  Just sayin.  But it all worked out in the end, and the show started a few minutes late anyway, and it was actually pretty awesome!  It was somewhat different to the Disney movie, but it seems it was probably more similar to the first couple of books.  They had a bit of a singalong of Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious which was a lot of fun, and I maintain that Mum was singing louder than me during the other bits ;)  (Mum wasn't *quite* surprised, on account of her friends guessed for her what the surprise might be)

After the show a bunch of the group wandered off to find a convenience store and I NEEDED to get home to sleep, so decided we should walk to Town Hall rather than waiting fifteen minutes for the next light rail.  They did all come back just as we were about to leave so did get to say goodbye.  

'

We walked right onto a Waterfall train at Town Hall, and definitely got home earlier than if we'd taken the light rail.  But bed time was nearly midnight.

Friday.  17th.  Slept ok but still woke up at 6:30.  Because that's what I do.  We decided we'd drive to go see my flat, because a few years ago the RETARDS at Transport NSW decided that you can't get a direct train to Kogarah anymore (NFI why) so it was going to take an hour by public transport or less than half an hour by car (even in peak hour traffic).  We ended up getting there pretty early so went for a walk around the block.  Then we waited for the real estate agent to turn up.  When she hadn't by 9:05 I called them and hassled them and then had to wait while they tracked her down.  Meanwhile the tenant is waiting for us so she could go into work.  Eventually (like twenty minutes late) the real estate agent turned up, spent most of the time on her phone, I think said "apologies" once, and we got to go in.  The tenant is quite lovely and the flat is fine.  But pissed that we were so late because of the agent. 

Took Mum home then hopped on a train into the city.  Found a sign that says that masks are in fact still required on public transport, but Transport NSW is doing NOTHING to enforce it.  The train trip was horrendous - again people not wearing masks, and some guy making an absolute racket on his phone.  I hate people SO MUCH!!!!

Met up with Tony at Central.  

Had a light lunch at the Great Southern Hotel

Took a tram from Central to Circular Quay.  Had my mind BLOWN that all of George Street is now trams-only and no cars!!  Such a bizarre thing to see!!  (and I didn't even get any photos!)

We got to Circular Quay thinking we might go to Cockatoo Island, but OMFG Transport NSW information is ABYSMAL.  Other than an electronic "which wharf?" sign there was no details whatsover at the wharf about timing of ferries to Cockatoo Island. 

Transport NSW information is so bad, they literally have laminated A4 printouts telling you to go find a human to talk to

So (after waiting to see if the next Manly Ferry that came in was a Freshwater class ferry (they're retiring them but I thought a couple might still be running)) we abandoned that idea and headed for the Harbour Bridge Pylon. 

Anti-vehical barricades - looks nasty if you try to drive over them!

Chips on a Stick truck!!  I wanted to get one of these, but they weren't open in the afternoon and later I was way too exhausted and wanted to go home.

So on the way to the pylon we looked up their website and they close at 14:00.  WTF??  It was about 13:20 at that point and wouldn't be worth the $19 to get just a quick view and no time in the museum so abandoned that idea and went back to Circular Quay.  

Talked to a human at Circular Quay and got a bit of info and caught a ferry to Cockatoo Island (which I'll save for another post).  

Got back to Circular Quay and took a train to Central.  Had some drinks at the Covent Garden Hotel, then met up with Mum at Super Bowl for Peking Duck!  I haven't been there since the last time I was there with @StuartCRyan at the end of 2014, but nothing had changed and the Peking Duck was amazing (and Mum enjoyed it too - she'd never had it before!! *gasp*).

After dinner we did Vivid, which I'll save for another post.  Another night of getting to bed after midnight.   *sigh*.

Saturday.  18th.  Slept ok but still woke up 6:30.  Because that's what I do.  Picked up Tony at Sutherland and headed out to Ansto.  I'll save that for another post too.

Got lunch at Maccas drive through at Menai, then came home, via a quick stop at Sublime Point and Lake George.

I think this is the fire at Bluescope Steel

LAKE George!

It was *so awesome* to get home to the sweetie, we sooo just want a quiet life.  Chicken Kiev for dinner and then a super early night.

Tuesday.  5th.  Took me a while on Monday to get to sleep.  Still woke up early though.  Did my music practise in the morning.  Busy day, but I don't even know where most of it went.  Did washing up at lunch time and weeding after work.  Stu cooked dinner - creamy mushroom and chicken fettucini.  Nothing of use in the evening though, just jigsaw and rss feed reading and feeling blah.  Did the washing up.  Again.  Watched some Lie to Me.  Found that "print screen" started working again.  WTF is it with windows 11 that things just stop and start working at random (still haven't had time to fight with the scanner that just stopped working a couple of weeks ago).

I also raged at All The Things.

For example.  People complaining about fortnightly rubbish pickups (that have recycling and food/green waste pickups).  I just don't *get it*.  Growing up we didn't have any recycling (to begin with) and just one little metal bin for a family of four.  Nowadays we put out like one bag of rubbish a week.  We're lucky to put out the rubbish bin once a month, and then it's rarely more than half full.  What are people even doing now?  Putting literally everything into the rubbish bin, including all their recycling and food waste?  Maybe they only eat packaged food and nothing fresh.  No idea.  Like I said, I just don't *get it*.

Also.  If they want more people living in higher density buildings, there needs to be bigger units at a "reasonable" price.  These days the only units you can get are *tiny* little two bedroom units, or maybe a three storey penthouse - usually for a *lot* more than a house of the same size.  People probably have to get a house because they need the indoor space.  I'm sure plenty of families would be happy to live in a unit if you could get a decent size one without paying twice as much for it. Far out, we'd be much happier in a unit because we wouldn't have a yard to try and keep weed free.  But try getting anything the size of our place in a unit.  Good luck with that.

Also.  If they want more people to use electric cars, fricken standardise on power connectors.  At the moment it's like a Beta vs VHS war or HD-DVD vs Bluray.  And an electric car is fine if you have two cars and one is the city car and one is for holidays.  Good luck travelling anywhere much in Australia outside the big cities with an electric car.  Much of Australia is simply inaccessible without petrol at the moment.

Wednesday.  Slept mostly ok.  Another busy day but at least I got stuff done.  Did some weeding at lunch.  Cooked up some veggies to have with lefover pork for dinner.  Went through half of my Eurasia blog photos tweaking the colour balance a little (my old camera had way too much red and not enough blue) and cropping as necessary.

Thursday.  Took ages to get to sleep but still woke up super early (like 5am).  Ok day.  *At* work blerf.  It's noisy and distracting in the office.  Drinks was good, but ours was literally the only table there - noone else was there!  Too much covid in the office I guess.  Watched the first episode of Black Books.  Had a raging battle with the printer that is now jamming literally every page.  It puts toner down but then jams before fusing it.  Ended up angry and depressed.  Also had some Spar pizzas for dinner because Chris didn't have any Dr Oc.  Definitely not good.

Friday.  Busy day, had fun making up dashboards for some testing we're doing in a few weeks.  Chicken kiev for dinner (the Steggles ones are nowhere near as good as the Ingham ones).  Watched a couple of episodes of Gunther's Anatomy series.

Saturday.  A day of All The Things.  House, jigsaw, photos.  

This magpie came down after I'd been weeding for a while to see if I'd disturbed any bug noms for it

We dug Stumpy out cause we hadn't seen him in days.

Dinner was the last of the pork, refried in jelly, with some leftover rice from during the week and cabbage and kewpie sesame dressing

Watched The King's Speech in the evening, which we hadn't seen since we saw it at Stu's dad's place in 2013.

Today.  Rinse and repeat really.  Although mostly getting Eurasia photos sorted and ready for the blog.  Basa fillets for dinner, which will be in next week's post.

Happy tree is being obscured by another tree.. doh!

Third episode of Black Books.  19:30 is bed time right?

Sunday.  13th.  Roasted up some veggies for dinner and had it with some leftover lamb.  Watched Logan's Run in the evening.  Kinda like Soylent Green meets The Time Machine.  I want to go to the Fort Worth Water Gardens that'd be cool.  

Monday.  Epic insomnia.  Went back to sleep for an hour after the alarm went off.  Then it was just house/photo/jigsaw stuff.  

My aim here wasn't so much to completely get rid of the periwinkle this go, but give the area some light so the freesias will grow.  I'll keep going at it when I get the energy.

Special fried rice I made for lunch - leftover rice, fried up with a chopped up sausage, peas and corn, some of Stu's teriyaki sauce, and topped with kewpie mayo

Cheating

Didn't get to do more important things, like putting ratsak into the roof.  Made stuffed capsicums for dinner.  The sweetie doesn't even like capsicums much but he went back for seconds haha.  Then the last three episodes of the girl on the train in the rear window.  Completely ridiculous of course.

Tuesday.  Slept ok-ish. 

Had to be Neil at work.  Except I can't help myself and try and deal with problems that he's just happy to delete heh. 

An hour and a quarter of weeding after work.  Whoops.  Then had to go to back to work late in the evening to do a cert replacement.

I don't think this is all going to fit in the green bin..

Wednesday. Took forever to get to sleep - cold and still too wired from working late.  So pretty tired day.  Was Neil again.  Did music but no weeding after work.  Eh, it was wet anyway.  Late dinner of lefover lamb, cabbage and rice.  Did some photo culling (onto London now).

Cheating on the edges

Thursday.  Slept well for a change!!  Another day of being Neil.  Did some fun mail stuff I wouldn't have gotten to do if Neil was around.  Really not comfortable being in the office.  Too many people off with covid (which means they've likely been in contact with people in the office).  And at drinks someone was sniffling away.  omfg if you're sniffling stay home!  Even if it's "just a cold" I don't want to get your germs.  I guess it could have been hay fever but sheesh..!  Stu want home feeling sick during the afternoon (not covid related), so let him get pizza for dinner.

Friday.  Woke up some time after 3 and never got back to sleep.  Epic sigh.  Pizza=>insomnia?? 

Saw Tico out the window

Zombie day.  Did a bit of cleanup for Neil because I can't help myself.  And more of the fun mail stuff.  TV dinners for dinner.  Finished Bambi!  And not just Bambi, but the entire Disney Memorable Moments Behemoth!!  40320 pieces!  DONE!!!

Watched Flying High in the evening (after seeing Zero Hour! last week we had to)

Saturday.  Peed once but otherwise slept through from ~10pm til 5:30!! Hurrah!!  House stuff in the morning, and some weeding.  Then just photo culling.  Well other than going out late morning to do a chemist and bakery run for Annie's family, several of which have covid at the moment.  

This sweet little geranium is flowering even though it's just sitting in a glass on the window sill, and had been mostly eaten by an epic caterpillar.

Remember that cute little cow from last week?  This is the scene it went into.  So cute!

Got this off Chris and Glenda.  Any guesses what it is? :)

I was going to do some greenery with this.  Really I was.  But the chicken kievs were pretty big and this old bread needed using up, so it ended up being a pretty big meal.  And it was so awesome!!!

Sunday.  Today.  I swear brown meals cause insomnia.  Last night took *forever* to get to sleep because I was restless/itchy/uncomfortable.  And then I woke up around 5 and took forever to get back to sleep.  When I went to pee I could hear a pipe running and water dripping.  I thought it was the cooler dripping down the roof.  Slept til about 7:15 but it wasn't enough.  Sigh.  Realised after I got up the dripping was actually from the tap in the bath.  I must have turned it on slightly when I wiped down the bath on Friday night.  This is the only drawback of half turn taps - they are *very* easy to accidentally turn on!  Went out to do ten minutes of periwinkle hacking in the morning but John saw me and couldn't help himself.  He dug into the worst of the roots and pulled out all the rocks and suddenly (an hour and a half later) there's no periwinkle left there at all (I'll have to spray any shoots that come up).  Whoops.  I gave him a couple of beers but he definitely deserved a whole sixpack!!  Maybe a case!!

Does anyone want these rocks?

Then just alternating photo and jigsaw stuff.  

Can you guess now?  Easy bit is done, the rest is going to be horrendous :)

In the afternoon I put on Bambi.  I swear I had a bluray of this.  But maybe I just had the VHS and hadn't gotten around to getting a bluray of it yet.  Anyway, I couldn't find my own copy to watch so put it on on Disney+

As per usual, the jigsaw doesn't actually match the movie.

I mean, there *is* shot of the three of them

But Thumper on the ground is a different shot

So is Flower being bashful

And the flowers overhead aren't even there until Bambi grows up

Silly really.

Then photos and blogging and rain!

Sunday.  9th.  Not backdating ;)  During the week I bought these mini capsicums, so thought I'd do a stuffing for them - a bit of mince, some brown rice, and feta.  Topped with a bit of shredded cheese and roasted for like 40 minutes.  Yummy!

Monday.  Woke up at ~3:45 hungry and needing to pee.  At this point the sweetie hadn't actually been to sleep yet!  Poor thing.  I didn't get any more sleep after that either.  It seems on a given night one of us will be awake.  hmmm.  Spent all morning doing finance and tax stuff, and most of the afternoon checking receipts against bank statements.  Had to laugh - the RTA *finally* closed off my etag account, but funnily enough they refunded me the deposit for the tag, even though I never returned it (it was crushed with my old car).  Maybe they figured it was so old it wasn't worth it.  Shrug.  And guess how many times I went to the ATM last year?  Once.  ONCE!!  And that was only to get cash out for the kids' Christmas presents.  At least ACT covid cases were down a bit (well maybe - chances are a lot aren't being reported now because RATs are taking some of the load).  Leftover pork (refried in jelly) and cabbage for dinner.  Then I watched Die Hard with a Vengeance.

Stumpy is a bit retarded sometimes!

Tuesday.  Awake for a while around dentist time - probably from the neighbourhood dog barking at a possum.  Depressed about losing all our money on the cruise, depressed about going back to work.  So my tolerance for the stoopid was at rock bottom.  After work went and got my booster jab.  They had plenty of people working the family queue which seemed to move quickly, but there was only one person processing the adult queue.  So I was waiting for over half an hour in a queue.  I think they moved a few nurses across from the family section once that queue quietted down, because they had a few people going by the time I got seen.  

Picked up Crust pizza on the way home, but they don't keep their pizzas in the oven like Dominos do, so one was a bit cold by the time I got there and got it home.  Bit sad to find out that Bob Saget died.  In the evening tried to file photos, but I just can't *see*, especially at night.  Super frustrating.  And my resized to 1280 wide photos only take up a quarter of the screen now.

Wednesday.  Dog was barking in the middle of the night again, but not for too long.  Otherwise I think I slept ok.  Felt in a much better mental state about work.  Decided to document Neil.  After lunch I started feeling trippy - the feeling you get when you're having an immune reaction.  Went and had a little lie down.  Didn't sleep of course, but did rest.  Felt weak and floppy all afternoon/evening.  But at least my immune system is *doing* something about covid, which is a relief.  Leftover lamb and salad for dinner.  As usual we put on The Simpsons over dinner, and as soon as it started I was like OMFG wide screen!  This episode (Take My Life, Please) first aired in February 2009.  And it was glorious!  Clean and crisp, so much nicer than the old animations.  Didn't feel like doing anything much, so put on the Disney 2003 version of The Young Black Stallion, which was ok for a kids movie, but short and sweet.

Thursday.  Felt much better after a decent sleep.  Ok day, more being Neil and documenting him.  Leftover stuffing mix and cabbage for dinner.  Started geotagging Mum and Dad's 1971 Tasmania trip photos.

Friday.  Took *forever* to get to sleep, but slept ok after than.  Ok day, more documenting and writing test plans.  Chicken kiev for dinner, and watched The Grand Budapest Hotel.  I'd seen it before and thought it was quirky but overly violent.  Stu thought it was weird.  Except I swear they sanitised the violence, because it wasn't nearly as violent as I remember it.  

This is the saddest thing.  These booties were on my baptism cake!  Mum had them in her china cabinet until she moved, then they'd been on top of my computer desk gathering dust.  They had already started to absorb moisture and collapse, but when I cleared off the top of my computer desk I moved them temporarily to the dining table.  Where they sat under the cooler vent.  And promptly melted into a puddle.  Sad times!!

Super annoyingly, the rear element of our oven seems to have died - it just didn't heat up the oven when I turned it on.  The thing is less that two years old which is a big stinking poo!!!

Saturday.  Spent much of the day geotagging Mum and Dad's Tasmania photos (and I got as many of them geotagged as I could of their trip).  In the afternoon I went down to Tony's to look at / pick up some maps and brochures for Tasmania.  Ended up staying for dinner which was nice.

Sunday.  House stuff and music in the morning, and looking at Tassie locations in the afternoon.  At lunch time we were sick of our usual lunches so went out for a drive to get some takeway.  Drove past the shop where a gas leak blew up the building. 

Then picked up some Oporto drive through and went to Diddams Close park to eat it by the lake.  That quite nice, although we did have a very captive audience watch us the entire time!!

Of course now I have to go and geotag all Mum's slides from her YHA trip to Tasmania in 1968 :)

1981

I was eight. In bed asleep.

1991

Chrissie's and my family went to the Reid's

Graham, Dad, Susannah, Di, Mum

Chrissie on the couch

I think this was Andy, and Chrissie

2001

Literally no idea, there's no photos.  Might have done something with James/George/Luc/Lizzi, but actually no idea at all.

2011

Stu's friend Kore was in the country, so we had a touristy few days with her, including staying at a ridiculously overpriced hotel in the city.  We saw the 9pm fireworks from the hotel, and went over to North Sydney to watch the midnight fireworks from Lavendar Bay.  We got there very very late, so couldn't really see the bridge.  After the fireworks we went to Central to meet up with David and Yvonne who had come up from Canberra on the train (David was helping run it), before it went back to Canberra.

2021

We were originally going to go out to the club, but Omicron had us worried about being with a group of people, so we had a lovely quiet night at home with just the two of us.

Bubbles and dinner delivered from Chong Co

Glow stick fail!  I bought these in May for Kit's birthday.. turns out these things have a shelf life!

Guess what movie we watched to keep us awake til midnight? :)

Sydney fireworks are the best fireworks in the world I reckon ;)

Happy New Year!

See 2020. Rinse and repeat. Another crazy crazy year. Wondering if life will *ever* get back to any sort of normal.

Our year started out at the club with friends. It likely would have finished there too. Except Omicron. So it is going to just be the two of us for a lovely quiet night.

Life for the first seven and a half months in Canberra was actually relatively normal. Then in mid August (two days before my birthday) someone tested postive (thanks Delta) and we got put into a snap seven day lockdown. That lasted a couple of months. For us it meant the bliss of not having to go into the office. Things did start to open up again in October/November/December but case numbers here and in NSW and Victoria are higher than ever right now due to Omicron (the numbers are staggering - 21000 per day in NSW at the past couple of days - twenty times higher than at the peak of Delta.  462 today in Canberra - it's basically been doubling every couple of days, and now also ten times higher than Delta). We got put into lockdown in August for one case, yet now we have hundreds of cases per day but there's basically no restrictions other than having to wear a mask indoors. Craziness. I mean sure, 98.5% of 12+ year olds are fully vaccinated here, but most of us haven't had boosters yet. Stu and I plan to hide from people as much as possible over the coming weeks.

We couldn't go overseas in 2021, so our only travel was within NSW. We went to the coast to Kit and Pete's for Pete's birthday in March. We got to see their new house, went for a drive to the coast, had a ride on Elle, went out for Pete's birthday, went to Myrtle Beach, and saw Old Blotchy on the way home. We also visted them in May for Kit's birthday, going to Mollymook for lunch and having snacks and drinks by the fire in the evening. In April we had a five day long weekend over our anniversary and went to Bathurst, Lithgow, Newnes, Glen Davis, Gulgong and Dubbo. We tempted fate by having Mum come down at Christmas, and went to Junee on Boxing Day to visit David. The tour company we'd booked Oberammergau through was being difficult, so in the end we cut out losses and cancelled our trip with them. I booked tickets for the show itself later next year, and if things work out we'll plan a trip around it closer to the date. We're still desperately trying to get out of a cruise out of Florida early next year, but again, the tour company is being buttheadful and are refusing any sort of refund. Our only hope is that the whole thing is cancelled and we can get our money back. Come on Omicron, you can do this!

At work I did an awful lot of *cleaning*. Tidying things up, documenting, deleting old crap. Helped shut down an old environment and migrated to new firewalls. A floor shuffle in April meant an annoyingly loud team moved in next to us which was all sorts of stressful. But then another floor shuffle in July moved us away. Rereading blog entries for most of the year it was amazing how stressed out I was just having to go into the office. Things were so much nicer from August once in lockdown. In October we had a farewell lunch for someone at the Lighty - which was the first time I'd seen any of my colleagues in person in two and a half months. Went back into the office to work for a day a week in November. I did a whole heap of overtime from October to December doing upgrades and migrations. There was a whiksy night in June, and we had "virtual" drinks a couple of times during lockdown. We tempted fate and had our usual Christmas bbq by the lake (in the rain!).

Healthwise, the main problem for me is still bouts of insomnia every so often. I thought I might have been getting sick in April but fought it off. I got my vaccines in June, with basically no side-effects at all, other than a sore arm, and perhaps a sore neck a couple of weeks later (both times). We both got colds in July, probably from someone at the club the previous weekend. Stu got tested (negative), I didn't bother, I just isolated.

Our biggest change in home life this year was David getting a job driving freight trains out of Cootamundra, so he moved out in January. Mum came down at Easter and Christmas to visit both us, and David in Junee. We saw David for about half an hour in February, and he came and stayed the night before the air show. I finally got to meet Kellie, who I found out about in about August. A lovely, thoughtful person who has a lot of the same thought processes/opionions/life outlook as me - freaky! We saw Stu's family a few times during the year including a couple of visits by Immy to see Stumpy, an afternoon tea at Annie's in October (first human contact we'd had with any of our friends/family in two months), a visit in November, and Christmas afternoon with them. We saw a bit of the N-Gang, although not so much as previous years. There was Rob's 51st in May, dinner at EffanC's in June, a couple of virtual drinks with EffanC during lockdown, and dinner with all those guys at Hachiko in July and Indian Pantry in October. I was feeling like noone liked me in July, but these guys reminded me I do have some pretty great friends. Who needs stinking young people anyway. We had brunch with Kit in June when she was up, and had Kit stay overnight in November - first time she'd been here in probably nearly two years, and the two visits to their place as well. Jenn came over a couple of times in February and July (the latter for an Indian feast that Stu cooked). CRD came over for dinner in February, and we had her at the club a couple of times too.

At our social club we went out for most of the social functions in the first half of the year (except April because we were in Dubbo). There was Robert's Chinese New Year feast in February, Matt & Michelle's Mexican feast in March, Italian night in May, Ian and Chris's anniversary dinner in June, and we did Christmas in July. CRD came out with us in May, and I did some more priming of the cabinetry. I haven't done any more tho because we've just had so little free time. There was a bbq in late October which was the first time we'd been since lockdown, and we went a week later as well for the working bee. Then for Rob and Fiona's Christmas party in late November.

I got a massive amount done on my photos this year. Early in the year I thought I was done doing fixup scans of Dad's slides, but as I started processing them I realised how bad a lot of them still were. So I spent the rest of the year (well, from March to October) redoing them *again*. Even then, a lot of the early ones still have lots of fluff on them, but I'm kinda over it now, and they can stay as they are now. I did come up with CLI commands (in Excel) to add a whole heap of exif data into his slides. If he went to the trouble of recording the aperture, shutter and F stop, then why not add it into the data files! I also have commands to add the date (if known) and captions for them. I've started (well restarted for some of them) processing them with aforementioned scripts and cropping/colour correcting, but it's still a lot of work to try and sort out the mess he's made combining things that probably shouldn't have been combined, not to mention geotagging them as I go ;) I'm basically happy with 18 boxes so far, which is about 10% of the way through them all. If I'm lucky I'll be finally finished mid next year. Just in time to start scanning Mum's negatives which started in 1983 :) I won't be scanning all of Mum's negatives that's for sure - just the ones I care about, such as holidays and family photos. A lot of the early prints are pretty crap and discoloured. In the first week of January I started labelling my Eurasia 2012 photos. At five hundred per week it was going to take most of the year. But I did it! Twenty four and a half thousand photos in eleven months. In fact I actually finished one day early :) I had a play with some gallery generating apps, and even got my USA 2000 photos online with it. The main blocker for getting more online (other than time) is deciding where to host it (likey it'll just stay on my current host), but also how to integrate it with the blog. Seems silly to have two different sites that are very similar yet one has just highlights and the other has almost everything. Because it also means the gallery doesn't have the blog detail. It's a bit of a dilema. I finished filing all my club photos into directories by event/category. One of these days they might go into some sort of club archive, but need to get permission from people first. I spent months on and off tagging people in work photos with Picasa. Still not sure how to get that data into a useful format, but at least the data is there. Still need to get Wello and Ray over to help me tag people I don't know. I also realised only last week that I hadn't been backing up the Picasa DB directories, so if my C: drive had died I would have lost all that work - yikes!

Fish. So many baby fish! I got five platies in January - first time I'd ever had platies. They had some babies, of which two survived to adulthood, but all five original ones died, so I currently just have the two babies left. Stu's tank is still overgrown with algae, but I have a solution to that - guppies!! The two foot I have upstairs (and now the one downstairs as well) is basically algae free, which I put down to having so many guppies in those tanks. So as babies (so many babies!) get big enough, I'm transferring them to other tanks, including the big one, to work on the algae.
Inventory:
Angel tank (the 620T): 1 ancient cory, 2 platies that were born in that tank (the twins!), 1 zebra danio, 2 guppies
Two foot: guppies! - a bunch of adults that we mostly got a year ago, and a tonne of babies. Some of the juveniles have been moved to other tanks
Four foot: 14 congo tetras, about half a dozen guppies I moved in fairly recently, some suckers (we think), a loach (sadly his siamensis friend died recently)
Chrissie tank: 2 clown loaches and a sucker (really need to move that medium sized sucker into the angel tank and bring one of the little ones up from downstairs, because Chrissie's big sucker in the angel tank died)
Downstairs two foot: four adult males, two adult females, and a tonne of babies, and two small suckers
Nursery tank: a few babies and juveniles, including a couple of very pretty spotted ones I'm hoping will be female
Other one foot tanks: more guppies
Stumpy is still doing well. I do think he got hungry earlier this year though. And now at the height of summer he's barely coming out at all. Silly lizard :)

No Lego building this year. We (David) moved the four-baseplate mosaic into the hallway so Stu could have the wall back for his things. I had a play with Gimp for making Lego mosaics (you feed it the colours you have in stock into a pallette file, then apply that pallette to your photo - voila! Mosaic pattern!), but haven't actually made one yet. I wanted to make one this break. Maybe I still will. If I can think of a picture that would work. I had some fun playing with Lego Digital Designer to continue working on the Lego model of our house. I got pretty much all the main floor done, but got stuck when it came to doing the roof design. The slope of the roof matches approximately a 1:4 slope brick, which you can get, but you can't get corner pieces, so doing corners would be messy. Might have to look into making the roof slops with plates/tiles. I still really haven't done any more work sorting out Vic's Lego. It just got too time consuming and depressing (because so much of it was missing). I did spend a bit of time sorting/constructing minifigs (so we can get the dungeon room back) but that was short-lived too. I might spend another couple of weekends trying to finalise another few sets, then just give up and start buying Lego to replace what's missing. Because after that is the really fun part - actually building sets.

This year was a year for *big* jigsaws. I did three sections of the Disney Behemoth - Dumbo, Snow White and Fantasia. Only one section to go now. I could have gotten it done by Christmas but it's very distracting and I had a tonne of other things that needed doing. Did a bunch of jigsaws at work too, although a lot slower on account of not being there as much (or at all). David and I made a 3D jigsaw model of the Titanic at Easter. I'm totally drooling over the Lego Titanic. I reckon I could do it, wait for it to not be on sale anymore, then sell it, and probably make a profit. Maybe I'll keep an eye out for sales ;) Very slow progress on the paint by numbers I got last Christmas. The main blocker there is the difficulty just *seeing* it - even with reading glasses I still need a magifying glass to see the tiny numbers. I took the plunge and bought myself a clarinet in September. I've been practising most days, but I still really struggle with bridging the register and the upper register notes. And reading music. I'm ok with the notes but not the tempo, so really struggle with playing music I don't know the tune to already.

Tech. Our NAS power supply died in March (someone let the smoke out). Stu bought a new one and replaced it himself. At some point we should probably get something more modern (with a higher version of SMB). The E: drive died in my computer, and since it was nine years old decided to get a new one. Haven't used it much but it seems pretty snappy. Continued frustration with Apple. Apple decided after one update this year to arrange all photos on the phone by month. This was great! But in the next update they reverted to a thousand photos per folder. And it's *still* messing with the datestamps on my photos. Hate Apple. Hate. Other purchases. Had to get new jeans. Eventually found some that are mediocre. Hating the fact that they don't make girls jeans with decent pockets. We also got a frame made (online) for my last paint by numbers, but the mounting bracket was mounted off-centre. Sigh.

Around the house. Had a lot of frustration at the beginning of the year with bathroom sealer companies not getting back to me. Eventually got a shower sealing company to come have a look. They confirmed loose tiles/cracked grout, but wouldn't replace them because there's asbestos in the walls. We bought a new mattress and then a new frame. King size which is great, but ultimately disappointed with it all. We watched a bunch of videos from Solar Quotes, but a year later we still haven't done anything about solar. Before winter I was doing a little bit of weeding, and got back into it when it warmed up. I make piles and piles, but everything grows back faster than I can get rid of it. I'm really really looking forward to getting green and organic waste pickups every week. It'll be easier to stay on top of garden waste, and our regular bin might go out like once every six months instead of every month or so like it does now.

Didn't eat out much this year. We did go to Ramen O a few times, and Koku Super Kare a couple of times, but would be good for both of those to have a cheaper, smaller lunchtime option. I went to Herbert's a few times, mostly with Tony and/or the Chrises and Neil. The sweetie and I tried KorBQ in the mall for our last work lunch together. We went to Pizza Artigiana once, and Dumpling Inn seems to be closed permanently which is sad. Had brunch with Annie at The District in April. We had Chong Co in May, and delivery from them a couple of times. Had brunch with Kit at Stellas by the Lake in June (it's no longer Black Pepper). Went with EffanC and R&F to Hachiko in July and Indian Pantry in October (which was our first outing post lockdown). Had Charnie's Noodle and Dumplings delivery in November, which was somewhat underwhelming, and Sichuan Chinese takeaway a couple of times in December, which is expensive but nice. Subway did a "cheesy garlic bread" (garlic butter, plus extra cheese) for a while which was awesome.

Cooking-wise, tried a few new things and some old favourites. There was zucchini spaghetti early in the year from some epic zucchinis we got from Con. I tried oven baked feta pasta (Uunifetapasta) from Tik Tok which wasn't too bad (but all that feta is way too salty for my blood pressure). I had a go at replicating Dominos puff pastry pepperoni and feta pizza. It was almost identical to the Dominos version - so amazing. But did someone say something about salt and blood pressure? We had Cath's crumbed basa a couple of times. I tried Ray's method of reheating pizza - frying it in a little oil with the lid on. OMFG this was so good - even better than it eating it fresh. Had that 80s deep pan vibe about it. Sooo good. I had a go at san choy bow in September which worked pretty well (Chris only has iceberg lettuce, so thought I'd have a go at doing something with that since I hadn't been to Coles in forever). I made meat jelly rice a few times - to use up meat jelly that you can't think of a better use for, mix with water and rice to make quite a flavourful rice. I experimented with slow cooker lamb roast (which I tried at the club for Christmas in July but only managed a mouthful of it because the rest of it got snapped up by everyone - I *think* it was really good?? :) ), and also slow cooker turkey (the first time it was fairly dry; it was better the second go but really works better with fattier meat). I made three new things from my Women's Weekly Gratins and Bakes book - Seafood Mornay Lasagna (expensive and fiddly and, well, seafoody), Spaghetti Rosa Bake (nice, but spaghetti is messy), Penne Arribbiata Bake (good, even with anchovies, and easy enough that I've done it a few times). We got a few nice strawberries off our strawberry plants, and there's chillis coming. I made a couple of different lemon cheesecakes in February and March, and combined them to come up with a definitive, easy to make recipe (that I tried before Christmas) that I'll probably use moving forward. I made a rocky road in February. I made Not Quite Nigella's mint slice in August, which was pretty good so made it again for Christmas.

And now for the lists!

Theatre/Shows/Exhibitions
* Hamilton (on Disney+ so you may not want to count it ;) )

Movies (at the Movies)
* Penguin Bloom

Movies (TV - not all movies, but I've included series)
* Studio Ghibli movies
* Honey I Shrunk the Kids series
* A whole heap of true stories and spy movies, which is what Stu tends to pick when it's his turn
* The Poseidon Adventure (saw the remake at some point earlier, the original is way better)
* Some old Australian movies - Playing Beatie Bow, Gallipoli, The Shiralee
* Fantasia 2000 a few times, and Fantasia
* Nanny McPhee 1 and 2
* The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel 1 and 2
* Snow White original and remake
* Dan Brown series
* Some Bette Midler movies
* Some Tom Hanks movies
* The Matrix trilogy
* Die Hard 1 and 2 and Love Actually in December

TV
* Discovery (finished season 3)
* The Simpsons (started off in season 5, ended up nearly finished season 19)
* The X-Files (seasons 1, 2 and a bit of 3)
* Laid Back Camp (seasons 1 and 2)
* Hibike! Euphonium (seasons 1 and 2)
* Encore!
* Amazing Race Australia
* Lego Masters
* A Place Further than the Universe
* The Surgeon's Cut
* Aircrash Confidential
* Alfred Hitchcock Presents (a bit of it)
* Human: The World Within
* Pandemic
* Diagnosis
* Brides of Christ
* The Movies that Made Us
* Air Crash Investigations (some recent seasons I hadn't seen)
* Love on the Spectrum
* Connected
* How the Mind Works
* Lie to Me (season 1 and most of season 2)
* You Can't Ask That (seasons 1 to 6)
* Sex Education (seasons 1 and 2)

Books
* Heartache and Birdsong by Sam Bloom, Cameron Bloom and Bradley Trevor Greive
* To Catch a King by Harry Patterson
* Seizure by Kathy Reichs
* Doctor No by Ian Fleming

Other stuff
* neighbourhood dog barked nonstop for hours on end for months. It make me super cranky all last summer break and well into the new year
* scanned a whole heap of stuff in the filing cabing
* Disney+ launched "Star" with a whole heap of new content it could take me a lifetime to watch
* saw the RAAF 100th Anniversary airshow which was pretty amazing
* went down to Lake Burley Griffin for a wander round with the sweetie on Easter Monday
* saw my magpies throughout the year
* voted for and listened to ABC Classic FM's top 100 "Music You Can't Live Without"
* had to start wearing masks indoors for two weeks in June - my first time was in July for seeing my dentist. I continued wearing a mask in the mall even though I didn't have to, because you can't trust people to stay home when they're sick.
* snap 7 day lockdown in August that lasted three months
* had a lovely quiet birthday at home with nice food and hobbies and had Chong Co delivered
* we were in an exposure site the Wednesday before the lockdown, but didn't find out until Wednesday a week later. Had to get tested but it meant only a week of full lockdown at home. It was a good thing I'd done a big food shop that morning. The Saturday after that we got an sms from Canberra health that we'd been in an exposure site - literally a week and a half after we'd been there. Fricken hopeless.
* I missed the earthquake! (in September)
* in September I found out the super annoying yappy staffies down the road killed each other. No more annoying barking!!!!
* the first of October was an epic news day. 52 covid cases recorded - highest ever in Canberra for one day. ScoMo announced opening of international borders a lot sooner than we first thought. Gladys resigned.
* saw the remains of Floriade in Belconnen, but missed out on seeing it sans-crowds in Commonwealth Park
* would often go three weeks between Coles shops during the lockdown, getting essentials at Chris's
* went to the online funeral for Win Cartan. Still annoyed I didn't get to see them when I was at church in early 2019. Oh well, will see them in heaven soon enough.
* planted sunflowers across the road. One sprouted and is still going (last I looked)
* petrol prices hit an all time high in November
* mask mandate reintroduced just before Christmas (I reckon it should have been weeks earlier)

So there we have it. Another epic year. And for once I have this review done *before* the end of the year! It took *hours* :) Have a happy and safe new year. Get your booster. Eat less. Drink less. Sing. Floss. Stretch. Dance. Wear sunscreen.