How good is this?

(From @JessHarwoodArt)

Stu and I are definitely owls.  Other than working from home and not catching up with friends on weekends, everything is much the same.

So our COVID-19 routine is not too different to general reality.  I started working from home on March 17.  Mainly because I had the hint of a sore throat and cough, and while it was extremelly unlikely to be Coronavirus (what with only about half a dozen cases in the ACT at the time), I didn't want to be *that person* that spread it around. 

My home setup is *ok* for working from home.  The biggest problem is my monitor setup.  At work my primary monitor is on my left, and the secondary is to the right.  At home my primary monitor is straight in front, and the secondary is smaller and off to the left.  So everything is a bit backwards for me.  Also I'm in what would be the formal dining room of the house, between the kitchen and the living room.  So just need to be a bit mindful of having Stu or David seeing stuff they shouldn't (which really isn't much).  We're lucky because our work is very well setup for people to work remotely, and our infrastructure supports it quite happily.  The only tricky situation came with all staff broadcasts flooding our internet links, but they've started streaming those to an external website, so even that is not such an issue anymore.  Skype, however, sux donkey balls.  It's fine for text chat, but that's about it.  Anything more is just asking too much of it.

Stu started working from home about a week and a half after me.  It took him a while to get the hardware/software he needed from his work setup.  But once he got that he's been doing ok.  We had started to setup my Lego room as a study for him before any of this started (with David mostly taking over the other desk in the dining room study, Stu wanted his own desk and private space).  It worked out really well for him to work in that room.  This weekend we've done a whole heap more rearranging.  Stu pulled out *lots* of books to be given away (sadly Lifeline are not currently taking donations due to covid-19 so they're just piling up at the moment).  I took all my models (well, all the ones from the big shelves) downstairs, and Stu took all his work/study and some of lifestyle books upstairs.  The bookshelves are super messy and unorganised right now due to all the rearranging, but I still need to get rid of the Lego minifig workstation on the table before I can pull out all the remaining books for sorting.  And it's starting to get really cold down there, so running out of time.  I suspect the bookshelves will stay messy for a while yet.

David has to keep going to work outside the house.  He's a shift worker, and unfortunately for him, we're home all the time now, which means he can't watch DVDs/Netflix while we're at work.  Well at least not on the TV.  He could probably setup his laptop to watch things with headphones if he was so inclined.  His work also means that if covid-19 does start spreading in Canberra, he's on the front lines for exposure, and it's probably inevitable that it hits our house at some point over winter.  

Lunches during the week are almost always leftovers of some description.  Pretty simple.  What has been suffering though is any sort of exercise and vitamin D.  Usually I would get a ten minute walk each way to go get food for lunch, but if I'm just heating up leftovers I don't get that.  So I've started going for a little walk at lunch.  Usually only about ten minutes, but enough to get me out of the house, get the blood circulating, and get a little vitamin D.  

Probably the single nicest thing about working from home is the lack of commuting.  I've been using the extra time in the mornings to scan more of Dad's slides.  I've been smashing out two boxes a week.  The evenings are a little less structured.  I've got a little list of things to do in the extra time between 5pm and 6pm, but haven't really done too much constructive with the extra time.  I am able to knock off work when I want to though, and not either have to wait for the sweetie or catch a bus.  So that's really nice.  My flex time is a bit too high at the moment, so will try and ease that down a bit, then will keep mostly fairly regular hours, which will also be nice.

Shopping is the biggest challenge of all of this.  I want to minimise how often I go out, so need to do bigger shops when I do go (and go by myself which is super sad - the sweetie and I have always gone shopping together).  There's three people eating here, two of us eating all meals at home, which means we need a lot more food in the house.  If I'm shopping fortnightly I have to get stuff for the first week that has to be eaten quickly, and stuff for the second week that lasts longer.  Fridge space is a huge issue at the beginning of the fortnight.  The supermarkets are out of various things at various times, so there's no guarantee that when you do go shopping you'll be able to get what you need.  I haven't seen toilet paper in Coles since we got one of the last packs when we got back from Pete's 40th at the beginning of March.  Fortunately I've been able to get it at Chris's so we haven't run out.  As I mentioned in another blog entry, we don't eat a lot of packaged food, mostly fresh food.  But the stuff that we do use all the time (tinned tomatoes, tomato paste and rice) has been difficult to get.  Again, I've been able to get things from Chris's when really needed.  

The rest of my routine hasn't changed.  I still get up at the same time (Stu plays on his phone a little longer before getting up).  I still shower and wear the exact same thing - my uniform of jeans a tshirt, with a jumper when it's cold.  I do the same things on the weekends - housework stuff and whatever projects/hobbies I'm working on.  I don't have any more time on my hands than normal, so it's not like I have time to binge watch anything.   Maybe if we do get sick we can binge watch stuff.  

The clutter is getting to me though.  We have things that need to go to the tip (like our old oven), or the Green Shed, or Lifeline.  But while I think the tip and the Green Shed are still open, I would classify them as non-essential.  So we have piles of stuff around the house.  And Stu could really use a better desk in his study, but we can't just go shopping for a new one.  Well, again, we probably *could* but we're trying to be good about this whole staying at home except for essential stuff thing...  

The only other significant change is not catching up with friends.  We would go out or have people over I guess on average every other weekend.  So that's not happening (other than a couple of virtual catchups).  It's a little sad, but remember, we're owls.  We like keeping to ourselves :)

In all of this we have been extremelly lucky/blessed.  We haven't had to stress about losing our jobs, or have to take care of kids as well as work, or wonder where the money for our next meal is going to come from.  2020 is sure going to be one hell of a year .. 

I'm backdating this entry a week, because I've been a complete slacker and haven't blogged in two weeks, but it gets too hard to date things in the future if there are too many gaps ;)

I forgot to mention that David mowed our lawn the other day.  Have I mentioned he's the bestest brother ever? :)

Tuesday night we christened the new oven.

And then geotagged day 5 of our USA 2004 trip.

Took this of Stu's study space setup for him to work from home.  He's really enjoying his study.  There's still a bunch of work we want to do in there, hampered by our lack of ability to just go shopping or to drop off books at Lifeline or all the normal stuff that we'd do.  He's now working from home full time as well.

Wednesday night I blogged and ended up staying up a lot later than I wanted to.  Couldn't get to sleep til closer to 11pm, but slept well.

Thursday was hacking my way through Cisco idiosyncrasies (every style of device/ios works completely differently and commands that work on one device don't work on others).  Beer and pizza, but at home.  Started season 6 of Brooklyn 99.

Friday I work up at 4am and never got back to sleep.  Kept thinking I had a sore throat (hypochondria much???).  Watched Frozen II in the evening.  It was ok but not as good as the first.  The first half was pretty meh and the songs were pretty forced, but it got a bit better towards the end.  Afterwards had a drink with Kit and Pete.

Saturday I woke up at 2:15 for over two hours. Slept in til 8:30, but had a slow morning, just housework.  Then Lego part picking in the afternoon.  Made tamarind chicken for dinner (finally finished off the tamarind paste we'd had in the fridge since I got it off Kerry when they moved to the coast!!  .. what? four years ago?).  Also made meringues because Stu had some leftover egg whites from some hollandaise sauce he made in the morning.

Watched BBT and Fuller House and Picard.  

Saturday night I took a couple of melatonin-precursors of Stu's and slept the best I'd slept all week.  

Sunday mostly just houseworky bits and finished Lego part picking for another six sets.  In the evening I roasted a bunch of veggies for dinner (and grilled some cheese onto some corn chips ;) ), and watched the Lindsay Lohan/Jamie Lee Curtis 2003 remake of Freaky Friday, which I'd never actually seen.  Also saw another Picard and was a bit sad about Qantas grounding all their 747s, possibly forever :(

Wednesday.  Bit of a disaster at work due to some expired certificates (that were so deeply hidden they don't show up in the browser, so took a while to troubleshoot and fix).  

Thursday had Thirsty Thursday with Kit and Pete and had a game of Kismet (Kit won).  We were going to try Skip Bo but it would have been too complicated.

Friday I finally watched Toy Story 4.  It sure does look stunning.  Not quite entirely convinced by the ending.

Saturday morning in at work to do some maintenance, but got screwed over by someone hard coding something where hard coding was never even needed, and hadn't been done in test, which I'd done prior, and so took me (and Con) ages to figure out.  Not happy Jan.  So spent the entire morning there.  Afternoon just housework and stuff on the todo list.  In the evening I watched both versions of Dumbo.  I haven't seen the original in *years*.  The remake actually follows the original relatively closely, with the addition of people that help him learn to fly instead of a mouse (who you still see a hint of).  Except they didn't get him drunk for pink elephants on parade, they did it with bubbles, which was pretty cool.  Then it keeps going to see what might have happened next.  As I was watching I was thinking it sounded a bit like Danny Elfman.  And there was Michael Keaton and Danny DeVito who were together in Batman Returns.  And then at the end it's like, directed by Tim Burton, and it all fell into place :)

Sunday was just doing stuff on the todo list.  In the evening I watched the 1999 Kathy Bates version of Annie.  And cooked an epic lamb roast.  Which I had to myself.  With epic leftovers.

Monday was USA 2004 photo processing.

The rhododendron really suffered this summer.  It's having a quick catchup now.

Tonight was taking the geodata I did in Google Earth in probably 2005 or 2006 and translating that into geotagged files.  I'd located a bunch of photos from the flights, and had done selected photos from half of the trip, so that'll give me a good head start for geotagging the rest.  It's going to be a lot harder than the 2000 trip, because there were a lot of out and about photos, photos on walking trails, photos taking from moving cars etc.  Road trips are a lot harder than walking around in cities!

Last Tuesday.  Couldn't get to sleep again last Monday night so Tuesday was another zombie day.  But came home a bit early and had quite a productive evening doing housework and photo stuff.  Did most although not all of the things on the todo list, but actually felt pretty relaxed about it all which was good.

Tuesday night slept really well, which worried me I'd ruin Wednesday night's slep heh.  Did a bunch of planning work at work.  In the evening was blogging USA 2000 photos, and had another quite productive and fairly relaxed evening.

Another good night sleep Wednesday night, and more planning Thursday.

Well the good sleep had to end.  Friday morning woke up at 3am.  At 4am I got up and blogged.  Went back to bed and got a *little* bit more sleep.  But pretty tired Friday.  Finished of my planny plan plan and sent it around for review.  Got home and started watching Clutch Powers which Chrissie lent me forever ago, while waiting for Kit and Pete to arrive up from the coast.  They came and got me and we headed over to Pete's Mum's place.  We walked to the Labor Club only to find that Kit had been banned... fifteen years ago!!  And she didn't know.  Because she'd been to the Labor Club *multiple* times over the years.  Weird stuff.  My theory is that for years they would scan your licence, but probably there was nothing electronic to tie it back to a person, it was just as evidence.  Nowadays they OCR the licences and look people up electronically so it's finally linked her back.  Anyway so Kit was pretty upset and Leisa was hungry and Carol didn't want anything too salty and Kit's not a fan of Asian so we're all like.. um.. Anyway we thought we'd try Charnie's Noodles and Dumplings.  So the girls sat down while Pete and I went to the bottle-o.  When we got back they said it was an hour and a half wait for food.  And we were like WTF.  There were like three other people in the restaurant.  But apparently they have an epic takeaway/delivery service.  So we said forget it and walked out.  Back to the drawing board.  So we ended up getting Crust takeaway which we took back to Carol's.  A bit of a debacle, but we ended up having quite a nice evening of chatting.  And there was a puppy.

Slept relatively well Friday night, but didn't end up getting much done on Saturday.  Did a bit of USA 2000 photo stuff but not a lot else.  Watched Skyfall in the evening.  No good quotes from that movie or iconic one liners (at least from Bond).  

Another relatively good night's sleep Saturday.  Finally finished getting our tax organised to be posted off to the accountant.  Did a bunch of processing of the scans I have of Mum's photos (for future blogging).

Also saw this wild blue tongue lizard in the back yard twice on Sunday.

Dropped Stu off at the airport, then did food shopping.

Also.  Oh no, not again.

Monday I went to cook lemon chicken using some of the lemons that dropped over Christmas, but sadly they don't last forever and most of them had dried out.  Sadness.  Did find a few to use so that was nice.  Didn't get much else done though.

Tonight managed to get the photos off my phone without ending up in tears which is always a win.  Helped by not having any videos this week, and none of the pngs had had their timestamps screwed with by Apple.  Also watched the Dirty Dancing episode of The Movies that Made Us.

And look, it's before 9:30.  Although I still need to wash my hair.  Dammit.

.. or not..

Thursday we watched the live action Aladdin.  It was pretty underwhelming.  None of the charm of the original.  Will Smith's genie was probably the best thing about the movie, and he ain't no Robin Williams.  It felt like watching a Bollywood movie rather than a Middle Eastern one.

Friday Neil and I tried out Malatang Hotpot.  You choose your ingredients, pay by weight, choose a sauce, and they cook it for you.  ok value - my 275g of food was $7.95 or thereabouts (I can't remember the numbers).  They have four sauces in the built in sign above the food, but there were five on the counter (with spiciness ratings).  The ones above don't give any indication of spiciness, so I went with big bone broth, which sounded pretty mild.  And it was.  Neil got the spiciest, which was too hot for me.  I'd be happy to try a mild or maybe even a medium next time.  Biggest problem was the *huge* bits of spinach which made it super messy to eat.  They really need to cut things a bit smaller.

In the evening I watched My Brilliant Career, which was to be honest pretty boring.  Full of unlikeable characters behaving badly.  Meh.  But with a stoopidly young Sam Neill and Robert Grubb.

Friday night was stoopidly hot and I just could not get to sleep.  Epic grunt.  Might have had a meltdown around 1am.

So was pretty tired on Saturday.  Did a bit of house stuff, and a bit of photo stuff.  Did some food shopping, although I was nervous about leaving the house because it was super hot and very windy.  

As I was cooking dinner (beef stronganoff from an old packet of Mum's), EffanC called, so they ended up coming over for dinner and chatting and snackages.

Slightly late night but not too crazy.  

Sunday I spent the entire freakin day trying to get caught up on finances, getting bank statements etc to get organised for tax.  Yeah didn't even finish.  #grunt.

But the sweetie did cook a slow cooker chickpea curry for dinner.

Monday I took a random day off, had a super productive hour or two of housework, and processed all Ryan's morph photos.  Made several videos for the party.  Later in the afternoon I pointed Picasa at my work photo directory and had it see who was in photos.  Interesting stuff.  It did find a lot automatically once tagged, but the majority it wants confirmation on.  It rather nicely saves all the people in each file into an ini file in the directory, to make for easy extraction later.  But I did forget to do my washing.  Whoops.  Cooking chicken teriyaki for dinner with a packet that was best before the exact same day Dad went and carked it..

Tuesday.  Even though last night was *much* cooler, I *still* couldn't get to still til some time between 12 and 1am.  So frustrating.  So zombie day today.  Salmon for dinner.  And then Stu challenged David to fix our two digital radios which stopped working last year.  And he did.  Because he's the most awesomest brother ever.  Also fun: we were both labelling photos from flights across America.  Me from late 2000.  Him from early 2020.  Fun times.

And there's a reason I don't tell Certain People stuff - cause whenever I do they basically tell me I'm doing it Wrong and make me feel dumb.  Le sigh.

Sunday afternoon watched the finale of The Amazing Race.  I quite enjoyed the season, although with a limited Australian budget they only went to two other continents (Africa and Asia).  After "the influencers" went, there wasn't really anyone I *didn't* want to win, except maybe the nurses, they came across as a bit dumb.  Good on the guys that won!

Monday was too busy to actually achieve anything much at work.  hrmm.  I did manage to get dinner/washing/kitchen done by 19:25 which was nice.

Tuesday wasn't much better at work - so busy I don't know where to start, and when I do start it's just interruption after interruption.  So much smoke around too!  And I totally ruined David's day by preempting Christmas shopping on him.  

Tuesday evening went to Chrissie's for dinner - some yummy fried chicken, skewers and fried rice.

We started calling the smoke Five O'Clock Charlie because it keeps coming around in the evening.

Tuesday night I couldn't get to sleep - stoopid restless legs.  Then work up really early.  Hurrah.  Got cranky at Italian Bite putting the price of their small place up from $7.90 to $9.50.  So went to Ali Baba, only to get cranky at them because they've downsized their kebabs - meaning if you ask for a small you get a small, but it's the price of their "original".  So $9.90 for a small.  Not. Happy. Jan.  They'll go out of business at that rate, with Yarralumla kebabs offering about four times the food for only $5 more.  

Wednesday night I went to bed early, but another night of restless legs keeping me awake late.  Zombie day Thursday.  Finished BBT up to the end of season 4.  Had a wildly unhealthy lunch with the sweetie at Kimchi.

Friday I woke up at 4:15 stressing about the party.  Then. Smoke.  So. Much. Smoke.  One guy thought we should cancel, but I already had all the meat.  We thought about doing it on prem, but the poo-pooers probably would have had a hissy fit, so we went ahead with the lake anyway.  Noone did any running around, we just chilled and ate and drank and had quite a lovely time, and there was even a slight breeze to make it all less unpleasant.  At one point there was just me and twenty-eight other boys ;)  Unfortunately there was a *lot* of extra food as there were less people and it was so damned hot.  I caught my duck again, although I didn't catch her wings so she was a bit more stressed and uncomfortable.  Then she pooped on my hand haha.

Came home and we watched Die Hard 2.

Saturday morning I woke up at 5:00 stressing about the leftovers.  Because that's what I do.  Le sigh. 

Spent much of the day scanning mum's negatives and labelling Singapore photos.  David and I had some of the leftover sausages in the morning, and we didn't die of food poisoning, w00t. I might have made gingerbread cookies.

Went to the Green Shed in the afternoon and did a bit of shopping in Gungahlin.  Finished off last week's lamb for dinner, watched some BBT, then Carols in the Domain.  We haven't watched commercial television in literally months, and when we turned on the tv guess what, a commercial.  Le sigh.  I reckon there's more adverts and promotions and just *fluff* than actual singing.  Next year I might time it.  The Sydney one is always a bit lame.  No Ode to Joy or Hallelujah chorus, and only one or two hymns.  And I was surprised that they allowed candles during the total fire ban, but apparently they're allowed for "religious ceremonies" so long as there's suitable containment.

Today was pretty much all just housework and getting the place tidied up for Christmas and having peoples over.  I did play through the "Rime" escape game which was pretty good.  Got stuck in a couple of places where I didn't even realise you could click on certain things.  The "ending" was a little odd, and got a bit complicated, probably wouldn't have been able to solve it without walkthroughs.

And there's a big white bird outside our window eating Kit's plums.

The truth is I never read you ..

Not on the internet.  This is what happens when stuff is broadcast on the radio before the internet was a thing.. 

Moving on.

Monday the sweetie cooked dinner because he was home all day.  He called it cabbage hash - cabbage, halloumi and egg.  Starting getting a cold sore.  In a spot I haven't had one in in like thirty years.  I thought I was pretty much immune to the ones I had as a kid.  I normally get them in a spot I first had them in in 1999 when I got one off Marc when he was two.  So this is either a relapse, or potentially a new strain from somewhere.  The horror.

Tuesday smashed out my photo labelling.

Wednesday someone rang me up, started ranting at me, and I'm like *breathe*, and then she hung up on me.  I hate hate HATE the phone, HATE talking to strangers and can't deal with being put on the spot like that.  Everyone around me was all WTF too, apparently she has a reputation for being rude.  Welcome to my black list.  Couldn't concentrate properly the rest of the afternoon.  Didn't do any photo labelling that night, just watched For Keeps?

Thursday was still feeling delicate.  My computer had a spaz and wouldn't unlock and ended up having to reboot it.  So was feeling like everything is awful on Thursday too.  

Friday I took a Random Day Off, but spent most of it doing housework.  Met up with the sweetie and Jenn for a drink at Hippo Bar (very slow service, I gave up, eventually Stu got me a drink).  Had Grill'd for dinner.  Went into the Canberra Centre to wash my hands while the sweetie minded my bag.  Tried to buy dessert but the buttplugs at the little macaron/dessert bar near the gym don't take cash (remember I didn't have my bag with me so no credit card).  So I literally said "too bad so sad bye bye" and walked off.  Cranky the rest of the evening.  

So generally a pretty damned crap week.

On a lighter note.. seedlings!

Stumpy has been *starving* this week.  He'll often see me in the morning and come running hoping to be fed.  This week had BBT's first visit to the comic store, and the first use of "bazinga" (at the end of season 2).

Saturday took my bridesmaids dress to the seamstress to get fixed up (this is why I never buy clothes on the internet).  In the afternoon we headed out to the club.  Had a bit of a life planning meeting with the sweetie, then had an Oktoberfest feast.  Not of the wombat though!  

Today I got photos online for the five Caribbean island shore days we had on our last trip, check them out in the links.  

Stu had some "protein pizza" bases delivered this week, so tried those out tonight.  Not bad.

Tonight just BBT and The Good Place, blogging and an early night.

Sunday night neither of us slept well - felt too hot.  But the house was 18C which is how it normally is over winter.  Weird.  I seem to recall having similar sorts of thermoregulation problems last spring as well.

Monday night it took *forever* to label the day's quota of photos - over two hours - normally takes about one.  So no time to do other things on the todo list.

Monday night slept a little better.  On Tuesday evening I burnt copies of the DVDs my Dad made from news reports I taped off TV for the 1994 Como-Jannali bushfires, to give them to Chrissie's Dad who expressed an interested in them when I saw him at Diana and Graham's funeral.  urk that was a long sentence.  I started watching one to make sure it recorded ok.  And couldn't tear myself away.  I haven't watched that footage in like twenty five years, but still get emotional, and still remember names and faces and places pretty vividly.  Except for then premier John Fahey walking through our church grounds the day after, didn't even know I had that.  Go figure.  Chrissie came over to drop off some stuff and picked up the dvds.  Got through my photo quota much much more quickly.

Tuesday night took *ages* to get to sleep.  #grunt.  Went to Officeworks on Wednesday evening to get Kit's Hen's invites printed.  Man I shoulda got them printed properly through their printing house rather than relying on amateurs with a laser printer to do it.  Just a mess.  They even called me in the evening to confirm requirements.

Thursday woke up stoopid early (4:20) and never really got back to sleep.  Went to collect my printouts from Officeworks and they'd managed to stuff up the printing - making them slightly too large.  But it just meant I had to cut into the border bleed area, so it was ok in the end.  But don't think I'd trust Officeworks (in store) with anything that actually mattered.  Watched Pretty in Pink in the evening.

Friday woke up at 5:30 which was a slight improvement.  Saw this at the post office while getting stamps for the invites.

Watched Licence to Kill in the evening.  After birthday drinks with Neil, Simon and Wello.

Saturday morning slept in!  Til 6:30!!  Did all the houseworks in the morning.  Started slicing up Kit's Hen's invites.  Stopped when I managed to slice a finger.  Got ready and went to the ball (which I'll save for another post).

There was too much food for me at the ball, which did mean I didn't get too silly, but also meant being a wake for quite a while in the middle of the night trying to digest.  Slept in til 8:30 though.  I didn't have much planned for the day.  Tried to have a nap with the sweetie at one point but think I mostly failed.  I did finish slicing up Kit's Hen's invites and get them posted, and trimmed the cherry tree and a bunch of suckers, and a fish tank water change.  The sweetie cooked salt and pepper squid for dinner and we watched The Good Place.  

So Monday was a much appreciated day off.  Caught up on all my blogging.  The internet died for three minutes between 13:22 and 13:25.  Didn't get a whole lot done in the afternoon, although did tidy up the plants on the kitchen window sill and plant some more seeds.  Started season four of The Good Place, and watched Oblivion which was a little confusing, but not too bad a movie.  

Tuesday went and got photos for my new passport and submitted the form, although botched my signature and wished I could redo it - I'll be stuck with that for ten years hrmm.  In the evening we were going to go to Raijin in McKellar with EffanC, but they were full so we ended up at Malaysian Chapter.  Which was somewhat disappointing because I was looking forward to Japanese and I really don't like the menu at Malaysian Chapter (I never remember which curries are which, and which are hot or not (and they don't indicate how hot they are on the menu)).  And it was nearly 7:30pm and I was *hangry*.  Grunt.  But did get some food into me and felt a lot better.  For reference I had the Chef's Special Curry with fish, and Stu had the Mamak Mee Goreng which was very nice.

Wednesday was a Lighthouse farewell for our director, and churning through Hong Kong photo labelling in the evening.

Oh we also finished season 5 of Brooklyn 99 this week, and I watched a couple of episodes of Murder in the Bayou at a recommendation from someone at work, but listening to that much bad english got very grating and I found it hard to sympathise.  Getting through season 2 of Big Bang Theory.

Friday was a Lighthouse farewell for a contractor, two pub lunches in one week, oops.  But did share a pizza with Connor both times to avoid overeating.

Saturday morning I did all the houseworkey stuff then did the design for the invitation for Kit's Hen's.  My ~23 year old copy of Photoshop wouldn't run on this computer (it loaded but just spinning wheels and stopped responding) so I downloaded Gimp.  All the tools are much the same as Photoshop, but I had to dredge up the memory on how to use them (and Google a few too).  Mid afternoon David came to visit, and we started a jigsaw.  A couple of hours later Scott and Kerry and the kids came over (they'd been planning to stay a lot longer but got stuck doing a longer bushwalk than they intended, so only stayed for a short while).  Then we headed out to dinner.  Labor Club, with Chicken Kiev for me yumm.

Then back home to work on the jigsaw for a little while.

We also finished off a couple of liqueurs that had been in the house *forever*.  That bottle of Midori I bought when I first moved out of home.  In the year 2000.  The Creme de menthe I've had for nearly as long.  Silly really.

This morning David and I headed out to Gungahlin for brunch (and was shocked to discover the parking under BigW is now paid parking (first two hours free) even on Sundays - how rude!)  David had a chicken and camembert grill and I had a rosti eggs benedict with chorizo that was quite nice.

Then we moved the car up to the Coles carpark and went and hopped on a tram!

I'd still never been on the tram, so thought it would be a fun thing to do with David.  Do you think he's having fun? ;)

I remember when this was just a grassy field.  Now there's apartments and a Woolworths..

Passing the Mitchell depot.  I was shocked that there wasn't a tram stop at Mitchell.  Why on earth not?

Ticket inspectors got on around Dickson.  In twelve years of catching buses I don't think I've ever had my ticket checked, but today they checked it on my first ever tram ride (and indeed my second ride on the way back!)

In the city we got off and took some photos, couldn't think of anything worthwhile to do in the city, so jumped on again for the ride back.

It was a little less crowded on the way back.  The ticket inspectors gave a warning to the drughead behind us who didn't have a ticket.  We wondered how many "warnings" he'd been given.

All up from start to finish it took an hour to go into the city and back on the same tram.

On the way back on the tram we saw a house bedecked for halloween, so went and had a closer look at it.

While we were there the owner came home and we were chatting and she said we need to come by again at night to see it all lit up.  

And we saw another tram go by :)

Then back home, finished the jigsaw, and David went home.

This afternoon mostly finished up the hen's night invitation, but didn't get a whole lot more else done, which was a bit distressing as I've got a *lot* that I *need* to do (like tax).  We did do food shopping though.  And I cooked a lamb roast.

And so endeth the weekend.

Monday was crazy stoopid busy again.  I thought I'd repeat my effort of last Monday and get some work done between 5pm and 6pm but that plan failed because I *still* got interrupted :(  In the evening planned out my todo list for the next couple of weeks, and worked on the trivia night, pretty much finishing the music round and deciding on filler rounds.

Tuesday was Big Bang Theory and trivia night.

Wednesday was a bit of trivia night but ended up down the rabbit hole of Sporcle.  Whoops.

The roommate agreement came up on BBT this week - part way into season 2.

Friday I finally got my random day off, and Stu took leave as well.  Couldn't sleep in though could I?  Spent the morning doing houseworky bits, finished off some Lego picking, started Neil's jigsaw, and did some work on the trivia night.

Stumpy found a warm spot!

Then got ready to head out to the club.

Anyone know what's going on on the hill at Barton Highway and Gundaroo Drive?

Did some shopping in Gungahlin then headed out to the club.

Got the fire going which was nice.

Had a couple of beers at happy hour, then had leftovers for dinner.  Stu talked to his dad for a while, then we went to bed.

Saturday I cooked bacon and eggs for breakfast, then I made three fires - one in our van, one in the shed, and the pizza oven.  Lunch was sausage sizzle, then the AGM.  Hung around for a while, and had pizza for dinner (which sadly wasn't cooked quite enough, so was pretty doughy).  Didn't have too late a night.

Today had leftover sausages for breakfast in the sunroom, then cleaned up and came home.

Did a bit of work on the trivia night, and some of Neil's jigsaw.

Then Annie and the whole family came over with a pretty spectacular birthday cake for afternoon tea.  Only problem was I got such a huge piece I felt full for hours.  

Haven't done any food shopping, so just roasted some potatoes, and a zucchini and a capsicum that were in the fridge for dinner.  There may have been mayo ;)

Dinner was too late to watch Veronica Mars this week, so just Brooklyn 99.