Monday.  21st.  Did you miss me? :)  Probably not on account of I post so sporadically anyway right?  And the fact there's only like three people that read my blog anyway.  

We went here!

With all the photos on the Canon taken here

So Plan A was a cruise out of Florida that we were just to scared to go on, even after they finally started offering insurance for medical expenses for covid.  I was stressing about losing thousands of dollars, but eventually Carnival were like, ok fine, if you want to get out of if they'll let the charter company do a cruise credit.  It's supposed to be for next year's cruise, but I want to try and go the year after if possible.

Plan B was Tasmania.  But even that we thought was too risky.  If one of us got covid while we were there we'd be stuck there with no way home.

So Plan C was regional Victoria.  We figured then if one of us got it we could be home in a day.  So off we went Saturday three weeks ago.  We were still a bit paranoid about getting covid, and avoided Melbourne and any large regional towns (well sort of anyway).  And it turned out to be a pretty awesome trip.  We only booked motels basically a night in advance, although stayed at most of them a couple of nights.  The weather was amazing, only a bit overcast on a couple of days, and barely any rain.  The biggest disappointments were the Grampians and the Great Ocean Road, in terms of all the photos I wanted to reproduce I couldn't because of the risk-averse government fencing off access to everything.  Moral of the story: go back in time to see stuff, and never go back to things you thought were awesome back in the day.

If you want to read the blog, you can start here, although no photos are up yet.  

So we got home on Monday, then the afternoon was just unpacking and getting organised.  Pizza for dinner, hrmm.  And photo processing.

Tuesday.  Urgh, epic insomnia - couldn't get to sleep til like 1am.  Now that I'm home I'm stressing about All The Things that need doing.  And I was thinking about Shandee too, hrmm.  I'm physically incapable of relaxing, and my muscles were all tensed up to prove it.  Got some weeding done in the morning (it was nice and cool which helped).  Went and got some medical checkup tests done.  Then I had to fight with Geosetter.  Google "changed something" which rendered the application completely broken some time while we were away.  Turns out it was just a matter of changing the Google url from http to https, and specifying a newer api version in the uri.  Phew.  Because I needed Geosetter to geotag all my photos.  Spent the afternoon applying the GPS tracks to photos, and then going through and checking/tweaking as needed.  I did have a break and do some weeding in the afternoon, and went for a walk in the evening.  Dug some cooked mince out of the freezer and finished a box of risoni for dinner. 

How cool was the date today too.. too many twos today (Tuesday)!  (I wasn't up for 2:22 or 22:22, so 20:22 on 22.2.2022 would have to do!)

Wednesday.  Took ages to get to sleep again, but then slept ok.  6am is actually really dark now, who knew.  Spent an hour in the morning clearing periwinkle out of the front yard garden beds (now that I can get to them after Tony chopped the hedge back before we went away). 

Then it was geochecking and filing photos.  Spent another hour or so in the afternoon clearing out the drain in front of the garage.  Which hasn't been done since we moved in.  Thirteen years ago.  

I didn't even know there was a hole there, I thought this was just a stormwater drain for the driveway!

While I was showing the sweetie what I'd done, this itty bitty baby blue tongue ran practically under our feet (probably chasing all the worms I'd chopped in half digging out all the soil from the drains)

I was exhausted, so it ended up being a frozen pizza and fries kind of an evening (Chris didn't have any chicken kiev)..

In the evening I watched Downfall: The Case Against Boeing, which is a pretty sad state of affairs really.  

Thursday.  Got to sleep ok, but then woke up at 2am til well past 4am.  Hurrah.  So zombie day.  Took 332 bottles and cans (basically a year's worth) to Return It.  Going first thing sure did work, I got there as it opened and grabbed a couple of trolleys, and didn't have to wait to put them through.

But omfg the humidity!  So bad.  Then it was just house tidying and photo stuff.  And I started the next (last!) section of the Disney behemoth.

In the afternoon got a lift to the Pot Belly for a few drinks with some of the guys I haven't seen in months.  Just as I arrived the rain started, and it got heavier and heavier!

The Pot Belly has stripped all the vintage wallpaper off their toilet walls, and most of the tiles too.  At least they retained one row of Pigs and Chickens tiles!!

KFC for dinner (I'd been craving it for weeks).

Friday.  Not a great sleep but not as zombie as yesterday.  Weeding, photo stuff (burning DVDs and culling photos), bit of jigsaw, not too much else. 

How to make your regular toasted cheese sandwich even more awesome - just plonk a handful of shredded parmesan cheese underneath and on top.  So good!

It RAINED in the afternoon.  I went out to check on the nearly cleared drain (the sump is still blocked, but I'm hoping to get that eeled this week), and noticed this...

It's actually *outside* the house proper, but not sure where all the water is coming from.  It's possible it's coming from the downpipe in one corner of the roof which is struggling to find somewhere to go since the garage drain is blocked.  I guess we'll see what happens once the drains are cleared.  Either that or run a hose down that drainpipe and see what happens - one of the things my brain thinks about when trying to get to sleep at night.

Had leftover pork (from the freezer) with some cabbage (which never goes off, it's been in the fridge for like six weeks) and rice (which I cooked in stock a couple of days ago) for dinner.  Then we watched 1917, which was interestingly done.  It *appears* to be one long continuous take, but we knew it wouldn't have been, and sat there guessing the transition shots.  A few of the things that annoyed me were on IMBD's goofs page, but a few weren't (like an epic boggy field in one shot, and a completely dry area just a couple of hundred metres away, or the truck getting bogged trying to go around a tree on the road, when why was there even a bog there at all, and why didn't they just go a couple of metres around it, or in fact on the other side of the road!?, or the medic tent being *so close* to the trenches).

Saturday.  Slept very well for a change.  The morning was house stuff and getting organised.  All the organising!  But I'm drowing in photo work.  I want to get Eurasia 2012 photos culled and onto the blog before the 10 year anniversary.  It's going to be an insane amount of work!!  Basically I need to cull a day of photos per day for the next two months.  But I suffer from decision paralysis which makes the process extremelly difficult and time consuming :(  Then just to increase my photo work load, I started to scan Mum's Minolta camera negatives (I installed the driver/software I had for windoze 10 and it worked fine in 11).  For some reason the scanner takes about 5-10 times longer per frame than for slides.  I fiddled around with settings some more, and went up to 3200 dpi, the highest native resolution the scanner will go.  Sadly all Mum's negatives from 1983 have a bit of a redshift to them, so the photos are a bit green once scanned, but can be tweaked post.  Another oddity is that any sort of blemish which would normally be black is epic white for a negative, so the dust and scratch filter works a whole lot better, with less false positives and weird artefacts.  But it's also completely necessary to use, as epic bright white spots are harder to ignore than black ones.  So it took pretty much all afternoon just to scan one roll of 36 photos.  Strangely, I've looked in the next two envelopes of negatives and both of them have missing strips, which is going to be annyoing if they don't show up.

We needed to go to the chemist and get more bark for Stumpy's tank, so made an errand day of it.  We tried out Co Dung at the back of Belco for lunch.  Had to wait ages (over twenty minutes) for the food.  The fish cakes weren't great (not hot, and tough) but the fried chicken wings were epic awesome - hot and crispy and delicious!

Most expensive petrol I've seen ever...

Leftover mince and pork for dinner, then we watched The Mauritanian which was pretty sad really. 

Do not harm the iguanas, $10,000 fine.  I wonder if that sign was actually there.  Probably is.  

Sunday.  Sigh.  Epic insomnia, didn't get to sleep til about 2am, and then still woke up at 6:30.  So definitely a zombie day today. 

I had a go on my clarinet for the first time in weeks, and it was epic crap.  I'm so bad at it.  

IOS 15.3.1 or whatever I last got upgraded to has gone back to putting files into folders by year/month (which I prefer!!).  I wonder how long that will last before they change it again.  And Apple is STILL messing with the date/timestamps on my files.  During our holiday I was downloading photos every night and noticed that sometimes I could get movies/pngs without the dates being messed with.  But then the next time I looked the next night, the files will have been changed.  NFI what Apple is doing with my files.  Epic hate.  The sweetie cooked dinner (a nice tasting pasta) while I downloaded the week's photos and blogged the last two weeks.

19:30 is bed time right?  I wonder if I'd get to sleep if I went to bed this early.. 

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.

So I finally *finally* finished labelling photos from our Dubbo trip waaaayyy back in April, and today I've gotten everything online.  Check it out!

Sunday.  14th.  Cooked All The Food for dinner.  Started into season 18 of The Simpsons.  Started watching the 2020 version of The Witches but didn't end up finishing it (finished it later in the week).

(dinner was basa fillet bake, although I probably cooked it a bit too long - it was pretty dry)

Monday.  Awake for a couple of hours in the middle of the night, feeling hot, even tho it was *cold* (13C in the house when we woke up - cold enough to turn the heater on!).  Saw my birds at lunch - needed my jacket because it was *cold* !  And noticed one of the sunflower seeds had sprouted (didn't see any others though).

Also picked the first strawberry off the plants Michelle gave us last year.  I considered splitting with the sweetie but in the end ate it all myself ;)

Weeding after work, and 78 photos labelled before dinner.  I figure I have time for two out of three things between finishing work and dinner - weeding, music practise, photo labelling.  Had time after dinner/Simpsons for a bit of music practise, and managed 182 photos labelled all up.

Tuesday.  Slept ok.  Was Neil for the morning.  Did a whole pile of doco for some rules which had never been documented before, so that I could do doco for my one simple little rule that needed adding.  Also did some thinking about the next round of cleaning that needs doing.  Lunch was leftover tacos.  Taco Tuesday!

After work was weeding and music, with mango chicken I cooked on Sunday for dinner (the chicken is somewhat buried under all that rice)

Managed to label 353 photos! Although Aaron called, which stopped me finishing day 53 in Asahiyama Zoo.  

Wednesday.  Spent all morning writing up details for cleaning out of a super complicated system no longer in use, but may come back one day, so want to be sure we have a good record of what we would need to do for it.  

Not much in the afternoon, spent too much time helping people with stuff.  Then worked late, had a quick break for dinner, then back online for work for more upgrades.  So behind in labelling for the week after all.

Thursday.  Couldn't do any fixup scanning in the morning because the computer wouldn't talk to the scanner.  I mean I know I really needed to reboot my computer but it takes so damned long to do it.  Started the process at 7:54am.  It was 8:28 by the time I'd saved/noted/closed everything, patched and rebooted, and 8:31 by the time I'd gotten Chrome loaded.  Le sigh.  The sunflower hasn't changed much in a couple of days..

Spent the day cleaning all the things.  Creamy fettucini for dinner.

Simpsons, whisky tasting, Speed Cubers

Then I watched The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.  I'm not usually a fan of Adam Sandler/Ben Stiller movies, and this one started off pretty silly, but the scenery in Iceland was stunning and it turned out to actually be quite sweet a movie.  Even managed to label 57 photos.  

Friday.  Another day of cleaning.  Watched Soylent Green in the evening.  It was made in 1973 but set in 2022 (we should have watched this next year!).  I reckon they could have at least *tried* to not make it look like the 70s in terms of fashion and decor :)

Today's pickings!

Saturday.  Did all the Saturday morning things.  Downloaded my email and found out they wanted to charge me another $1000 for the cruise I'm trying to get out of (for port fees or some such crap).  Had a little freak out and ended up calling them (don't know how much that's going to cost me).  At least I managed to get them to defer it til the end of December, but this whole covid thing has really put me off ever booking a holiday in advance if there's no option of refunds. We've already lost thousands on Europe, and likely to lose even more on the cruise. Makes me sick thinking about it actually.  

But then.

I've had this in my rss feed for a couple of weeks that I can't bring myself to mark as read.  It's a reminder to me that my problems are First World Problems.  So What if I lose $10000 dollars on some holidays I can't take.  At least I'm not displaced from my country due to or war or famine or whatever.  Life is good.  Really.

Then I spent the entire day alternating between the jigsaw and filing club photos (I've been sorting 9 years of club photos into folders for posterity).  Actually managed to finish photo filing!

This was the jigsaw progress mid afternoon.  A bit difficult to see what's going on, because I'm doing one half literally on top of the other half.  

Leftovers for dinner, and in the evening watched Official Secrets - a really interesting telling of the story of Katharine Gun and her efforts to prevent the 2003 war in Iraq.

Sunday.  Today.  Really just spent the whole day on the jigsaw (and finished season 4 of You Can't Ask That at lunch).

This is the progress in the morning.  Already I've done heaps since last night.

By late morning I'd done every piece that was on top of the other half.  So everything here is identical on either side.

Once that was done, I twinned up all the "special pieces"

At lunch I put on dinner - devilled lamb shanks (with de-boned meat I found at Coles)

And by mid afternoon I'd finished the jigsaw!!  Amazing that it took about seven weeks to do the first half of the jigsaw, then two days to do the second half!

Then did some music practise before Annie and the girls came over to chat for a bit.  Then it was photo downloading and blogging and dinner is just about ready!

Sunday.  10th.  Not backdating ;)  Leftover roast pork with a whole bunch of freshly roasted veggies for dinner.  Watched The Pursuit of Happyness which wasn't bad.  It did remind me of sometimes when we were kids getting home late from something, and we'd pretend to be asleep in the car so Mum and Dad would carry us upstairs and put us to bed :)

Monday.  Slept fairly well.  Day went pretty quickly - busy fixing up proxy profiles.  Saw all the birds at lunch.  Leftover chicken wings from a club night with rice and cabbage for dinner.  Finally hit 20000 photos labelled!!  197 done all up, only 15 behind (into Legoland Billund).

Tuesday.  Took *forever* to get to sleep - stressing about All The Things, holidays, health, having to go to the chemist etc etc etc.  Then I woke up at 3am hungry and needing to pee, so did that, then saw an email from the cruise company with bad news about our trip next year (I'm trying to get out of it because too many retarded Americans won't get vaccinated) so then it took *forever* to get back to sleep.  Zombie tired all day, didn't really get much done all day.  Was too tired and depressed to feel like weeding or music practise or labelling, so instead had a couple of beers, watched an episode of Connected (Clouds), and had an early night.  I really need to keep reminding myself that even if we lose all the thousands of dollars we've spent on our holidays we might not be able to go on, we're still a helluva a lot better off than so many other people this pandemic.  We still have jobs, food, a roof over our heads, and haven't gotten sick from covid (so far).

Wednesday.  After the early night actually slept quite well for a change.  Busy day, although didn't get to do the *one thing* I wanted to do because of interruptions and people wanting stuff.  Did some weeding and music practise, but had a tv dinner for dinner.  208 photos labelled all up, now 115 behind.

Sometimes I get down about fish keeping, because tanks get manky and fish die.  Then I get a tank like this which i super healthy and all the plants are growing like crazy and no algae and the little fishies are breeding like rabbits.  Such a joy this tank.

Thursday.  Somewhat broken sleep, not helped by a couple of storms rolling through.  Headed out early to get blood tests done for a checkup.  Got to see a bit of floriade in Belco.

Ok day.  Got rained on seeing the birds, but they were pretty eager.  No virtual drinks this week.  Started watching 50 Shades of Grey, but only made it about half an hour in.  Really didn't like the guy at all.  Watched Lie to Me instead.  

Friday.  Awake from 3-5am so zombie morning (although somewhat better afternoon).  Did manage to achieve some stuff too which was useful.  Watched Inferno in the evening which we hadn't seen before.  Pretty much just like the other two, and fun distractions with the been-theres in Turkey :)

Saturday.  Up at stoopid o'clock and then spent the entire day doing upgrades, first with HBZ then with Con.  A few hiccoughs along the way, but I think we got there in the end.  See what happens Monday I guess.  Did some weeding and music and talked to the mother type person.  She ended up cancelling our Oberammergau trip because the tour company were being pooheads.  I would certainly never travel with them again.  Mainly because they were *hideously* expensive for what you got.  Basically all it included was hotels, a coach and a tour guide - no lunches, very few dinners, and not much in the way of attraction entries either - it was all "free time in the town".  If I'm paying that much, I want them to take me to as many places as possible, not just dump us in a town and tell us to fend for ourselves.  If I wanted to do that I could take a train.  So we're actually considering doing that - taking trains around northern Italy, and maybe hire a car for a few days to see some harder to get to places in the mountains.  And even after all the money we lost, the trip will probably still be cheaper to do it ourselves.  The sweetie got Chong Co for dinner, and we watched Tora! Tora! Tora! (on Disney, even though I inherted Dad's DVD of it - shoulda watched the DVD though - Disney's subtitles were a bit hit and miss in places - like only flashing for a fraction of a second and not giving you enough time to read them).  

Sunday.  Today.  Up at stoopid o'clock to finally go do food shopping at Coles (first time since 8 September!!).  Then came home and finally got to have my weekend.  Spent all morning doing all the usual weekend stuff I need to get done, then weeding, lunch, music, photo processing and blogging.  And now's just after 3pm and I'm about to go spend a few hours cooking all the food so I don't have to do much in the next week or two.  

Monday.  23rd.  Backdating this.  Slept ok.  Fighting with vendors over strange intermittent problems.  Otherwise cleaning and tidying.  Kiev and veggies again for dinner.  Got most of my quota of photos labelled.  Watched Air Crash Investigations while blogging (took over an hour to blog the last week).

Tuesday.  Slept ok.  Cold and wet and miserable day!  Had to have the light on all day it was so dark.  Ok morning but a bit of a crazy afternoon (trying to concentrate on a meeting while trying to help people with crap).  Labelled 101 photos before dinner.  Only five rows of Dumbo to go.  Finished labelling after dinner.  

Stumpy got hungry early this year

Nearly there!

At this point I twinned up all the pieces, so progress went a lot faster.

Wednesday.  Ok day.  After work we headed back out to Brindabella to get our 14 day covid test.  At 5pm (peak hour) the main roads of Canberra looked like this:

Testing went a lot quicker this time.  We basically drove straight up to the big tent.  All up we were there just twenty minutes. 

Even afterwards in the heart of Civic it was pretty quiet.

Came home and got 72 photos labelled before dinner (just veggies and cheese sauce) and finished Dumbo in the evening.  This was probably the hardest section of the jigsaw so far.  Just so much brown/grey/blue/dark stuff so pieces could go anywhere.  I'm really *not* looking forward to Fantasia!

Thursday.  Slept ok.  Ok day.  Got our test results - negative.  Knew they would be :)  So left the house for the first time in over a week and went and saw some of my birds (they recognise me from a distance even with a mask on.  Clever birds!!). 

 Also stopped in at Chris's and picked up some supplies (including Corona!!).  

Simpsons/X Files (X Files: how to put a downer on your evening).  Started watching Forrest Gump.

Friday.  Slept ok.  Woke up to an SMS saying they couldn't find my test results, and I had to send them a screenshot to prove my negative test result *sigh*.  The whole handling of this outbreak has been a complete debacle!!  They had Stu's though.  Later I had a sad that I wasted two or three days rescanning slides last Christmas holidays, and yet I'm *still* trying to scan them to not have fluff/specks on them.  I'm *still* fixing up a box of slides per day.  Up to 130 out of 181 and wondering if it will *ever* get any easier.  hrmmmm. Ok day.  Made burritos for dinner with leftover wraps and mince from the club night a few months back (didn't eat all of them!).  

Simpsons and The Trial of the Chicago 7 in the evening.  I'd never heard of the incident.  Was fairly interesting anyway.

Saturday.  Nice quiet day of house stuff.  Put on Dumbo (on Disney+ even though I also have it on Bluray) so I could get a photo with the jigsaw.  As always, the jigsaw doesn't quite match an actual scene in the movie.  In this case, the jigsaw has Timothy Q Mouse, but in the movie he hadn't even met Timothy yet when he was having his bath.  

There was Mexican style fried rice for lunch (using the last of the rice and mince).

And am I a glutton for punishment of what? :)

Finished day 32 Eurasia labelling, only 86 beind the 500 per week schedule.  Lamb roast for dinner.  Watched The Girl on the Train in the evening.  It was ok I guess.

Sunday.  Achieved mostly nothing at all.  Saw my birds in the afternoon. 

I have to admit sometimes I'm pretty impressed with the iPhone camera.  I mean seriously.  This.  From a PHONE!!

Cooked all the veggies for dinner.  The sweetie even went back for seconds, so he must have liked them ;)  Super dumb episode of the X Files (Die Hand Die Verletzt) then Air Crash Investigations on MH17.

Monday.  28th.  Backdating.  No symptoms from my second Pfizer jab, other than a sore arm, which wasn't even as bad as the first time.  First day of "the mask" except I didn't actually leave the house.  A project forced the hand on a cleanup I'd been wanting to do in forever only I was hesitant to get approvals to do it - cause if it ain't broke don't fix it.  Except it was broked, so was going to have to do the cleanup which was a big win.  Finished all of my labelling by dinner time.  Same club leftovers as last night - empanadas, potato, salad.  Finished off day 21 labelling after dinner, then Alfred Hitchcock and first episode of Diagnosis (produced by someone who was actually a consultant on House!

Tuesday.  Did the cleaning I planned yesterday.  Took my lunch so I wouldn't need to go to the mall and wear a mask.  Had a big outage in the afternoon although luckily I wasn't affected so pretty much business as usual.  Leftover club potatoes (one tray thinly sliced, one try a bit smashed, then baked - the smashed ones needed to be more smashed) and wings for dinner.  Labelled 220 photos after dinner.

Wednesday.  Woke up at 1:47 and didn't get back to sleep til well after 5am, stressing about All The Things.  I might have actually gone back to bed, except I had a dentist appointment in the morning - first in two years since I didn't go last year because of covid.  This was the first time of wearing a mask indoors.  Except I'd just been out in the freezing cold air, and as soon as I went inside the mask made my glasses fog up instantly.  I hadn't been to the dentist in their new location, and so I was trying to figure out where to go but I literally couldn't see.  No wonder people don't like wearing masks.  Zombie day.  Took my lunch again so I wouldn't have to go to the mall.  Did some bits and pieces of work but not terribly efficient.  Late home.  Even had a beer, tv dinners, and watched Fantasia 2000.

Thursday.  Woke up at 2:20 and didn't get back to sleep til nearly 5am.  Sigh.  Although strangely didn't feel as much of a zombie as yesterday.  Wearing the mask and having it fog up my glasses the whole time got pretty old pretty quickly.  First time at the mall, and (almost) everyone wearing masks.  Such a strange sight to see in Canberra!  There were police patrolling too, although they didn't pull up the one guy we saw not wearing his mask properly.  But also school holidays which made the mall all kinds of horrendous.  Neil bought a pack of ten reusable masks, so I bought a couple off him.  Pretty quiet drinks, then pizza, Simpsons, X Files, and the start of Fantasia.

Friday.  Woke up at 12:40 and didn't get back to sleep til around 3am.  Epic sigh.  During that time I felt like I was getting a bit of a cough and sniffle.  Started to work from home in the morning, but definitely sick, so gave up and went back to bed.  Spent most of the day in bed.  Not a single minute of sleep though.  Like I've missed about seven hours of sleep during the week and I was sick, you'd think I'd be able to sleep.  Nope.  My body simply refuses to sleep.  So fricken annoying.  Loaded potatoes with mince, parsley, cabbage, cream and sour cream for dinner then just watched crap on the internet.  Stu also started getting sick in the afternoon.  Most likely we both picked it up at the club on the weekend.  Hurrah. 

Saturday.  Took forever to get to sleep - couldn't breathe and restless.  But then did sleep okish after that til after 7am.  Stayed in bed all morning (aside from getting up for breakfast, and later cheesy hash browns with club potatoes for brunch).  Not sleeping of course. 

Spent the afternoon just watching stuff on the internet (a fair bit from Oversimplified), and puttering through rss feeds. 

Performed surgery on one of the masks I bought off Neil - simply threaded a paper clip through the top of it to make a nose bridge, to see if it'll make any difference to my glasses fogging up.

Tried to make NQN's accordion potatoes for dinner, but I think they really need to be raw first so they didn't really work.  Simpsons/X Files/stuff on internet in the evening.

Sunday.  Another very slow day, mostly just watching crap on the internet.  Cooked roast pork for dinner, although pretty fail on the crackling - possibly because I was using the deeper dish, so not as much air flow.  Also some mince to use with whatever, and lots of veggies.  Early night (didn't process photos or blog though).

Sunday.  Didn't post a pic of the pork roast..

Monday.  Busy day, trying to clean all the things, but getting deeper and deeper into the mess the deeper I go.  Leftover pork for dinner, photo labelling (into Jordan in Eursasia photo labelling), Lego Masters.

Tuesday.  Rinse and repeat of Monday really.

Wednesday.  Busy day.  XL has been off on training or sick all week so super busy with tickets.  This week we finished the Puntasic Musicians jigsaw so people had a lot of fun trying to find the musicians/bands.  Labelled 82 photos.  So 208 photos behind to keep up the schedule for the year.  Manageable.

Thursday.  Went with the sweetie to our doctor who has moved to a suburban location, maybe wanting to get into aged care much??  After a couple of days of people guessing musicians, we did the big reveal of the answers just before drinks.  Had pizza for the first time in a month.  

Dominos Florey is still advertising The Big One, but I asked and they're not selling them anymore

Watched several episodes of the Antarctica anime (Singapore been-theres!!!) then the second episode of The Surgeon's Cut (watched the first one the other day, not sure when).  

Friday.  Was helping out Aquila with some DNS stuff and he put a beer emoji in the chat, and that was enough of a trigger to suggest a Herbert's lunch.  @CLBradley couldn't make it, but Tony could so that was nice.  Had some of the Moon Dog white chocolate white ale which was amazing, and had the Mac and Cheese which was delish.  

Went down after work to help with Tony and Jess's horrible Bach jigsaw.  It's all black and white, but the worst thing about it is if you put two pieces together you can't actually tell if they're right or not.  Worst jigsaw in history, they may not ever finish it. 

Watched Nomadland with the sweetie in the evening.  It was pretty slow, but somehow still interesting.

Saturday.  A day of all the things.  Alternating between physical stuff (houseworky type stuff), photo stuff (Dubbo photo culling) and fun (playing with my digital Lego house model).  Stu had the oven on in the morning to make some baked eggs in an attempt to get through the epic jar of salsa we have, so at lunch I had a go at making a Dominos puff pastry pepperoni and feta pizza.  It actually worked really well, except for it being a little soggy in the middle, and it also blew up a bit.. maybe pricking the surface would have helped?  I'll post most of the pics in its own post.

Pretended to be healthy for dinner - cooked up some leftover pork with some shallot, garlic and cabbage, on rice, with dried fried onion on top.

Stu must have liked it - he went back for seconds!  After some Antarctica anime I watched the third episode of The Surgeon's Cut, about a transplant surgeon.  She talked about the liver being the centre of the body - where the soul is.. and all I could think about was alcohol making the soul happy .. only it doesn't.. haha

Sunday.  Got some stuff done in the morning, then headed out for brunch, a Bunnings run and some food shopping.  Spent the majority of the afternoon blogging - our Dubbo trip from 1981 (check it out!!), the Dubbo This Day in History posts from the past week, and downloading and processing photos for this week's blog.  Stu cooked a pea and ham soup for dinner.  Finished up with Lego Masters and this blog entry.

Today was 16 May, a day which has had various significant events over the years, but this year we didn't do anything of any particular note.  Oh well.  

Forty years ago today we left Dubbo and came home via Wollar and Sandy Hollow.  I didn't bother trying to recreate that part of the trip - partly because it would have meant taking an extra day off work, but also because some of the views would have been behind fences which would have made it pretty impractical.  Full entry of the day is here.

But there was a parting shot of the Macquarie River in Dubbo.  I was amazed I found the same tree!

Macquarie River at Dubbo - 1981

Macquarie River at Dubbo - 2021

Forty years ago today we went to the Western Plains Zoo and Old Dubbo Gaol.  Full entry of that trip is here.

Before we went to the zoo Dad took a photo of the Court House.  Look at that palm tree go!

Dubbo Court House - 1981

Dubbo Court House - 2021

Then we biked around the zoo.  I don't have exact replicas of the photos, but they're sorta close.

Giraffe at Western Plains Zoo - 1981

Giraffe at Western Plains Zoo - 2021

Giraffes at Western Plains Zoo - 1981

Giraffes at Western Plains Zoo - 2021

Zebra at Western Plains Zoo - 1981

Zebra at Western Plains Zoo - 2021

Rhinoceros at Western Plains Zoo - 1981

Rhinoceros at Western Plains Zoo - 2021

After biking around the zoo all day we went to the Old Dubbo Gaol.  I don't know how we were still standing as kids.  Stu and I biked around the zoo last month and were pretty worn out by the time we had to return the bikes.  I certainly wouldn't have had the energy to go to the gaol after!

Entrance to Old Dubbo Gaol - 1981

Entrance to Old Dubbo Gaol - 2021

Gallows at Old Dubbo Gaol - 1981

Gallows at Old Dubbo Gaol - 2021