Friday - 6.9.24

Out the door at 9am, but had to get some extra things for Jeff's "hamper". Then we needed to get breakfast. So it was after 10 by the time we got away from Canberra.

Lake George shining

Stu put on an audio book - The Easy Life in Kamusari.

At the Nattai River hill we were passed by a hoon. I was disappointed there wasn't police on the other side of the hill (there often is). When we got to the M7 turnoff in Sydney there was a bit of a traffic jam and we were in the wrong lane to turn onto it, so that was a bit stressful. We were finally able to merge in and when we got to the pyramid there were police cars and the same hoon pulled over and under arrest (literally saw him in handcuffs on the ground haha).

Stopped at Ourimbah for petrol and lunch.

New freeway and overpasses at Hexham

I'll miss the old bridge at Hexham

Then just drove on. Mostly finished the book.

Arrived in Port Macqaurie just before 6. Dumped our stuff then headed out again.

Went out to Potty's for drinks and pizzas. Most of the family was there so that was nice. The kids were very loud heh.

Saturday - 7.9.24

Didn't sleep very well - the pillow was too thick and the bed too soft. I did go and get my own pillow which helped, but kept getting a sore spine from the soft bed.

Got ready then went out for a good long walk around the beaches which was pretty nice.

Folly, on Windmill Hill

Butcherbird

Nobby Head

Oxley Beach

Flagstaff Lookout

Town Beach

Oxley Beach

Waves crashing off Oxley Beach

Town Beach

There was a small formation of vintage aircraft flying around

Port Macquarie Observatory

Gak gak birds!!

Then I tried to find coffee and breakfast. I'd already passed one busy cafe at Town Beach but wasn't ready to get stuff yet. I found one other cafe but they didn't have any nice pastries just a couple of cakes/banana bread type stuff. Looked for a few other cafes but they didn't look the sort to do takeaway coffee. So #fail. In the end got some snackages and coffee in a can from the Foodary.

Annie stopped by to drop off a dress (I don't own dresses lolz). It was a bit big but looked marginally ok. Stu thought I should wear it.

Then we headed up to SWR, and finished the book on the way. It was kinda funny. Nice story.

Kempsey Northern Gateway Sculpture

At Jeff and Ruth's we arrived in time for morning tea (everyone was already there, so that was a bit stressful), and they put on a slide show which was pretty cool.

Jeff about to go through the slide show

Then we headed off to lunch - The Old Bank in Gladstone. They'd setup a table outside under a big tree overlooking the river - absolutely lovely setting. Had a pretty awesome lunch there. And there were lots of speeches hehe. And there were two snakes. Or the same snake doing the rounds. I thought it was Sally's leash that was moving, and things weren't computing, and everyone thought I was having a seizure or something. But I hope I didn't step on it (I don't think I did). Left after 3.

Family photo

Ruth and Jeff

Arancini balls

Chicken sausage rolls

Prawn platter

Green tree snake (take 2 - the other one that I nearly trod on got away before I could get a photo)

Beef tenderloin I had for lunch

Annie reading her poem

Jeff's birthday cake

Happy birthday!!

The plan was to go back to Jeff and Ruth's to get changed to go for a swim. But then it was decided to drive around the beaches to see which one would be the best. But then it was decided which beach they were going to go to, but noone told us, and most of them didn't come back to Jeff's. This made it Too Hard, so I just stayed with the Stu's.

Then back to Port for dinner of snackages (still full from lunch). Watched some Big Bang Theory then to bed.

Sunday - 8.9.24

Still too soft a bed to sleep very well. Woke up at 5.

Got ready then headed out to Potty's for coffee. We were first there which was nice.

Had breakfast at The Scottish Restaurant then tried to get petrol. But if you're coming from the restaurant side it's incredibly confusing and we drove around a couple of times and in the end came in through the back cause they made it too damned hard.

Put on the next Kamusari book which we got most of the way through (Kamusari Tales Told at Night).

Hexham Bridge

Had lunch in Ourimbah, and got petrol in Marulan.

At Lake George (which is still very full) a wallaby on the side of the road started moving onto the road. Stu slowed down, gently, then rapidly, then to a hard stop. We were lucky we didn't hit the thing. The dude on the right didn't slow down at all and zoomed past us while we were stopped. If the wallaby had kept crossing the road it would have been hit. In the end it went back off to the left. So that was a bit rattling.

Home a bit before 6.

This view coming into Canberra never gets old!

Sunday.  7th.  Epic roast chicken and veggies for dinner.

Then watched first part of Pretty Baby - a documentary on Brooke Shields.  Funny that Judd Nelson appeared in that one, but not Andrew McCarthy's one.  

Monday.  Slept mostly ok.  omfg NEW Teams is so trash.  They hid away the contact list so I had to Google how to find it.  You have to click on Calls on the left, then up in the top right click on View Contacts.  This starts up a "People" menu option on the left menu bar, but that's not persistent unless you pin it.  But then if you message someone from the contacts list it pops out into a new window instead of opening in the existing chat window.  Utterly hopeless Microsoft TRASH.  Spent most of the day looking at other peoples' problems.  Saw my birds at lunch for the first time since last winter.  They didn't fly over straight away, but did when I called them.  Cooked satay chicken for dinner with some leftover chicken and a Masterfoods satay sauce base.  Turned out ok.  The sweetie went back for seconds so must have been ok.  

Tuesday.  Took a while to get to sleep but then slept ok.  Busy day of Everything Everywhere All At Once.  Had a drink after work.  Not a great idea because then I didn't feel like doing anything.  Least of all cook dinner.  So asked the sweetie to cook dinner.

Shallot rings, prawn toast, shredded beef Peking style, cashew chicken and rice.

So I had another drink.  And we both ate entirely too much.  And I only did like 1100 steps all day.  But I did finish a day of Queensland photo culling and watched some Lego Masters.

Wednesday.  Slept mostly ok but woke up at ~5:15.  Day of all the BS.  Hurray.  Photo culling and Lego Masters in the evening.  And the sweetie cooked dinner!  Miso mushrooms!

Thursday.  Slept mostly ok.  Everything Everywhere All At Once.  Quietish drinks.  Made pizzas.  Started a new anime series.  Remind me to ask Stu what it was called.  Edit: Girl Band Cry.

Friday.  Slept mostly ok.  Spent a chunk of the morning talking to people about moving all their stuff to our new environment.  Decom work in the afternoon.  Opened a bottle of bubbles I got for my birthday and shared it with the sweetie.

Had fried chicken pieces and veggies for dinner (Chris didn't have kievs! *gasp*!!)

After dinner I watched Parasite.  It was actually kinda fun for the first half, then just got silly and ultimately pointlessly violent.  Also.  Why the hell doesn't he just *leave* at the end??

Saturday.  Slept mostly ok.  Got ready and headed out to the club for a working bee.  Spent a couple of hours mattocking tussock.  Until I whacked the mattock into the ground and felt something move beneath my foot a good half a metre away.  Uh oh.  Sure enough, I'd hit a hose and it started leaking.  Went and found Boyd and he was like, eh, just turn off the water at the tank, then he came and dug around it and then cut through it and said, easy fix don't worry about it.  This is it a while later when I went back for a photo.

There's banksias flowering in the garden.

In the afternoon helped with hazard reduction around the back.

And there was this chunky bluetongue!

Came home (the sweetie and I had some good life conversations on the way to and back) and collapsed.  Had leftover satay chicken for dinner, Death in Paradise 10.1, then an early night.

Sunday.  Even though I went to bed early it still took ages to get to sleep.  And woke up around midnight with cranky bowels.  Maybe it was that tiny bit of rotten egg that got into the veggie hash browns at lunch yesterday.. I saw nothing..!  Super busy day.  Spent an hour each on Tassie culling, Queensland culling, Lego wishlisting, Mum photo picking, downloading bank statements, and shopping, with an extra blog post, music practise and phone backing up, then it was time to cook dinner and just like that the weekend is over.  Sigh.  I have so many projects going on at the moment it would be a full time job just to keep up with it all.  I don't have TIME to go to work full time.  It's killing me.

Sigh....

Sunday.  23rd.  Basa bake, veggie bake and potatoes for dinner.

Then Mash and Laid Back Camp (I think it was the end of season 3).  Such a delightful show.  They go to such cool places and cook amazing food.  Makes us wanna go motorbike camping around Japan :)  Then started season 2 of Lego Masters USA.  This time with Michelle from the Australians vs the World series.

Monday.  24th.  Slept mostly ok (bit restless and hands kept going to sleep).  Fairly busy day.  Cooked up a bag of mushrooms with cream and leftover corned beef from the April club night and veggies from the June club night.  Yum.  Into Mash season 7.  Watched an episode of Lego Masters USA.  Went to read an entry of my Tasmania blog for the day I was photo culling.  But my site wouldn't load.  504 Gateway Time-out - nginx.  And CageFS error in Terminal.  And scripts were broken.  Oh no.  Not again.  Need to give Vodien a bowl of petunias.  And so began a week of angst that I may post separately.  

Tuesday.  25th. 

HTTP working on the blog but scripts and terminal still broken.  Busy day at work.  Made "Mexican Mince" (in that I used some taco seasoning on it) with leftover peas and carrots from the club night, and made up some taco slaw as well.  The sweetie went back for seconds so must have been good.

Wednesday.  26th.

Took ages to get to sleep because I was cold.  Got frustrated with NRMA because they've been charging us twice (I think) for membership.  Filled in an online form asking about it.  And the insurance wanted us to update a couple of things on the policy but of course insurance and membership is two different accounts in totally different places on their site and it wasn't at all obvious how I could even update what they wanted.  I should have taken a screenshot of what they wanted on the renewal because it's literally written in Engrish.  Their help is trash too.  All trash.

Busy day.  Didn't do the One Thing I wanted to get done.

NRMA got back to me.  Said they couldn't sort out my problem over email and I'd need to phone in.  Sigh.

Also.  People drama this week.  In an effort to avoid drama, or indeed be the cause of it, I pushed away a good friend, possibly forever, which makes me pretty sad.  I keep telling people i'm a horrible person, maybe now they'll believe me.  Sigh.

Thursday.  27th.  Slept ok.  Another busy day at work not getting done the One Thing I wanted to do.  Pizza for dinner.  Montage episode of Mash.  Braindead response from Vodien.

Friday.  Slept ok (surprisingly, after last night's Vodien rage).  Until 4:35 when the sweetie had to get up to fly to Sydney.  Busy morning before work tidying up the house so I wouldn't have to spend time on the weekend tidying up the house.  Relatively quiet day at work, finished the One Thing I wanted to get done from the other day, then basically caught up on a bunch of crap.  House and fish stuff after work.  Lego Masters.  Vodien fixed cagefs and scripts but broke my access to cpanel and I realised with horror that my mysql database had been restored to a point from LAST OCTOBER.  Then watched The Shape of Water .. which was .. interesting.. 

Saturday.  Slept ok.  Made this!  How cool is this :)  Been meaning to make this for ages (found a gif I'd made ages ago while I was cleaning out my in tray).

Bit of house stuff, bit of photo stuff, bit of Lego part wishlisting.  

When the Vodien nonsense started at the beginning of the week I quickly exported my database in case anything happened.  At the time I thought.. funny.. that's significantly smaller than my last backup (taken in May).  But then didn't think much more of it.  On Saturday I realised to my HORROR that the backup I'd made was of the REVERTED database FROM LAST OCTOBER!!  I freaked out.  I couldn't login to cpanel anymore (they broke that on Friday) to do a tar.gz of the site.  I couldn't FTP anything (same login problem).  In the end I just loaded the May/June entries in my browser and manually saved them.  Then if all else failed at least I had the latest content since my May backup.  I also have it in a local RSS feed reader.  Although I do worry about having to ever do a mysql restore.  So much potential for things to go Very Badly with my blog.

The last of my mini capsicums is actually slowly ripening all by itself indoors!

Leftovers for dinner.  Second part of the Mash montage episode.  Then watched The Good Son, which I'd seen once a long time ago.  All I could remember from last time was the Highway Man and the cliffs at the end.

Sunday.  Slept mostly ok although woke up early and started stressing about my database.  Got up to find the cpanel password reset email.  Cool.  But cpanel was full of scary errors, terminal had different errors and NONE OF MY WEBSITES OR EMAIL ACCOUNTS WORKED!!!  Finished getting ready, and thankfully by an hour later everything was working again.  I went to backup my database but phpMyAdmin had this error "mysqli_sql_exception: Access denied".  A quick Google said to just reset my cpanel password again so did that and it all came good.  Backed up the database.  Made a test blog post.  Hoped like hell this would be the end of the drama.  Until next time.

More drama with Rob and some club photos.  Sigh.

Bit of Tassie culling but mostly just Lego parts wishlisting.  Put some lamb into the slow cooker mid morning.  Lunch at Pattysmiths.  The cheesy chicken burger doesn't have actual cheese, just cheese sauce.  Still nice though.

Then food shopping.  I was worried going into Woollies that I wasn't in the right frame of mind for it.  Just about every time I go to Woollies I can go in in a completely happy mood, and be wanting to kill people by the end of it.  So after the terrible week I've had I knew things were going to be bad.  And I was right.  I took a few deep breaths before I went in.  But then I was trying to find the dried fried shallots.  They're usually down the bottom in the Asian section.  But there was this couple and their trolley in the way and while they did move a bit, they still stayed there in front of everything for AGES and I couldn't see the damned shallots and I was getting more and more frustrated and stressed and when that happens I literally go blind and can't SEEEEE and then all these people were trying to get past in either direction and I just about had a panic attack.  I gave up looking and carried on but I obviously looked distraught enough that a staff member actually asked if I was ok and I was like no because I can't FIND anything and he very sweetly went and looked for me (it took him ages to find them too).  What a lovely guy.  Grabbed our last few things then got out of there.  Should go back to shopping at 7am, so much less stressful.  Pity the sweetie is allergic to mornings.  Not much else in the afternoon.  Mostly Lego wishlisting.  Glimmer of hope that good friend may not be lost.  And now to see if I can post this...

15.5.24

4:51 wakeup.  5:30 departure.  Stopped in Sutton Forest Maccas for breakfast and wondered if we'd missed the apocalypse - the car park only had a few cars, and the restaurant itself was completely empty.  Bizzarest thing ever!

This blew my mind because this place is *always* busy.  The staff were quite old too, guess all the kids are in school.

After Maccas the car lost connection to the ipad.  I finally started having a play with it around Pheasants Nest.  Of course I happened to be looking down as the Picton Road turnoff came up and we missed it (I looked up just as we were passing the air field).  Sigh.  So had to deal with M5 traffic all the way to Heathcote Road.  But haven't been down there in like thirty years though so that was nice.

Got to Mum's right on 9.  Dumped my crap then train to Sydenham.  Had a very slow walk to Westconnex (it takes ages when you stop every two seconds to take photos of stuff).

Talk/tour was quite interesting.

Then walked back to St Peters.

Took a train to Museum (via Circular Quay and was super super excited to see the old Freshwater class Manly ferries running again!).  Got to the museum a bit after 14:00, checked in bags, then saw the Ramses exhibition.

Afterwards did a bit of a wander of the museum.

My favourite thing in the museum - the Bone Ranger!

Gymea lily in bloom

Needed a drink after all that, so walked down to Hotel Sweeney for a couple of beers and dinner.

Then train back to Mum's and collapsed.

16.5.24

Slept fairly well.  Woke up at 5 for a bit then til 6:30.  Had a look at all Mum's Japan photos which was pretty cool.

Then went and played tourist for the day.

Train back to Mum's.  Had a shower then Luc and Cynthia came over (I was gonna go meet them at theirs but they very nicely came over to Mum's).  We went to Moim Japanese Kitchen for dinner which was very nice.

We also went and got some ice cream for dessert.  A lovely meal and catchup.

17.5.24

Early start.  Took the train to go inspect my flat.  The tenant talked for an hour about her baby coming soon and their life there.  The real estate agent didn't seem to mind, I guess it saved him from doing other work heh.

Took another train to Martin Place and walked down to the Mint.  I think I went there when I was in school but haven't been in at least thirty years so went there.  There's not a huge amount to see there so were done by lunch time.

I thought I'd look to see if there was a Tim Ho Wan in Sydney and got very excited when it showed one in Westfield.  But when we got there we couldn't find it.  Had another look and on closer inspection it was "Permanently Closed".  Yeah thanks Apple Maps.  Oh well, had Din Tai Fung instead.  

And Krispy Kreme from the station ;)

Back at Mum's I had a look at her backups.  Syncback doesn't seem to have been working since her computer was rebuilt last year.  When I loaded Syncback it complained about not having any profiles.  So I made two that matched the arguments in the windoze scheduled tasks.  I set them up to "backup" rather than "sync" - which is a better option for retrieving accidentally deleted files, not so good for a disaster recovery scenario.  Dunno what had been used previously.  I also tried to backup more of her recent photos to my disk, but ran out of time.  

Then took two trains All The Way to the other side of the world (Brooklyn).  Took like two hours.  But nicely I could change trains at Town Hall so didn't have to cart my bag all the way up to the other platforms at Central.

At Brooklyn I walked up and checked into the motel.  Ok room, but a little dated.  And no soundproofing so I could cearly hear the pub across the road.

Went across to aforementioned Angler's Rest for a couple of beers and some salt and pepper squid.  It said it came with salad, so that was a lot more meat and a lot less salad than I was expecting!

Trent Crawford was there doing live music, old pub rock, so that was pretty cool.  

Then I went back to the motel and had some wine and did my nails while listening to Trent Crawford and waiting for the sweetie.

18.5.24

Slept fairly well.  Had a leisurely start.  Picked up some pastries at the cafe for breakfast.

Then suddenly it was 9:30 and we still weren't ready so it was a bit of a rush to get out by 10:00.  Just made it though. 

Drove down to the marina to see how close you can get to the bridges.  Turns out not anywhere near them at all.  Sigh.

Then up to Rachel and Hayden's wedding.

Didn't escape til like 16:30.

Got home a bit before 20:00.  Had wine and chippies and ice cream for dinner then collapsed.

Sunday.  19th.  Had a mini lamb roast for dinner which caused maxi fat spatter all over the oven.  Hurray.  

There may have been a whole tray of garlic.  I left three pieces for the sweetie..

Then Mash, Shogun 1.7.  My brain is weird.  I recognised one of the dudes in Mash (Larry Wilcox) as being one of the dudes in CHiPs.  

I haven't seen that show in FORTY YEARS.

So I recognised someone from an entire lifetime ago, but didn't recognise Thomas at the wedding (figured it out after looking at the photos).

Monday.  Slept mostly ok.  Ignored new proxies and finished writing up paperwork for our exclude problem.  Also seeing what policies we could disable on the current proxies (they're nine years old now and overloaded to the point of crashing most days, sometimes multiple times a day).  Did a bit of music after work.  2.5 reeds are HARD.  Blogged the Airport Open Day and watched some Lego Masters.

Tuesday.  Took ages to get to sleep - stressing over all the conversations I had at the wedding.  Like, total cringe.  This is what happens when you don't let me drink while socialising, people!  I'm awkward.  Urggh.  Worked through exclude changes at work.  Music, leftovers for dinner, Mash, picked photos for the Wagga Brick Show post, culled the first day of Tassie photos.

Wednesday.  Slept mostly ok.  Finished the excludes reworks and disabled some proxy policies.  Backed up my computer to two different disks (the little one barely holds anything these days).  Then Lego Masters.  Started culling day 2 of Tassie while I was doing all that, but hard to concentrate.

Thursday.  Nothing very exciting.  Good drinks.  Shane was in town so we stayed a bit later.  Pizza/Mash/Lego Masters (I think).

Friday.  Updated some doco from some previous decom work.  Fought with kerberos all afternoon.  Failed.  Sigh.  Kiev for dinner.  Into Mash season 6.

Kit and Oreo arrived a while later and we chatted a bit before bed.

Saturday.  Slept ok.  Kit went off to meet up with some friends and didn't come back til late in the afternoon.  I put the Lego train away, did some Tassie photo culling, weeding, blogging.  So a nice quiet day.  When Kit got home we had a few drinks and had Yat Bun Tong delivered (Dumpling Inn was being a bumhead and not appearing online).

Early night because everyone was tired.

Sunday.  Slept ok.  Cooked cheesy hash browns for breakfast.

Kit left mid morning.  Did some Tasmania photo stuff.  Had Grease Monkey for lunch (they've got a food truck at the markets at the moment).

Did our food shopping.  Did Lego and weeding in the afternoon.  Leftover Chinese for dinner.  Mash/Orville 3.8 (movie length episode .. with Dolly Parton .. !!).

Monday.  Awake from 2:15 to 5:15 or so.  Sigh.  Finished the Lego minifig, did some Tassie culling, blogging, cooked dinner, had lunch, weeding, fish stuff.  And suddenly it's 3:30 - time to finish the weekend - backup phone, backup phone photos, blog etc.  No time for music.  Sigh.

Sunday.  4th.  Cooked an epic keto feast - tuna casserole, cauliflower with blue cheese and cream, broccolini with butter and lemon juice, and capsicum.

Then the finale of The Crown.  Although they still have another twenty years of history to cover, so who knows, there might be another season.  And I picked York Minster!  Win!

Monday.  Slept mostly ok.  Ok day at work, some training and some bits and pieces.  Realised in the evening that at some point OneNote decided it copy itself to OneDrive and make that my active OneNote.  Which means for I dunno at least six months I haven't been backing it up because I've been editing the cloud copy.  After the epic disaster Dave2 just had with The Cloud, I was horrified.  I was also pissed, because it meant I had to go through each and every page and find out if there were any changes made to the cloud copy that needed to brought back on prem.  Hate hate hate hate hate.

Tuesday.  Slept ok.  Ok day - more training and bits and pieces.  Fighting with certificates.  So painful.  Weeding at lunch and after work.

Wednesday.  Took ages and ages to get to sleep but then woke up early.  Sigh.  Built some new proxies at work.  After work went in to meet Aaron.. except he overslept at home and didn't make it.  Sigh.  But the sweetie came and joined me and we had Kinn Thai for dinner which was lovely.

At least it was a nice night to be stood up..

Nam tok wagyu beef - grilled wagyu beef with ground roasted rice, dry chilli, herbs and lime dressing.. this was a little too hot for me but so delicious!

Ka na moo grob - stir fried crispy pork with garlic, chilli and Chinese broccoli

Also remembered Dad who went and carked it ten years ago tonight.

Thursday.  Slept ok.  Did some work on some mail rules for our new notifications db.  Made pizzas for dinner then Death in Paradise 8.4.

Friday.  Slept ok I think.  Bit of training and some work on proxy acls.  

Cooked up some beef from the freezer with cabbage for dinner.

Mash and Orville 2.13.  They do have some creative story lines in The Orville.

Saturday.  Slept ok I think.  Got plenty done although could have gotten more done.  Weekends are too damned short.  Did some house stuff, food shopping, some Turkey photo culling, even did a bit of jigsaw.  Cooked epic cheesy mince for dinner - so fricken delicious (bacon, onion, mince, cream, tasty cheese, cream cheese).  

Then watched The Queen, written by Peter Morgan, so it had very much the same vibe as The Crown.

Sunday.

Slept ok.  Another day of just trying to get All The Things done in such short weekends.  Achieved lots but still So Much to do.  Sigh.  Caught up on blogging and have an epic feast in the oven...

Last weekend we headed down after work Friday to Tumut!  We took Tony, as J was meant to come too but she got covid.. !!

We stayed in the caravan park which I've been wanting to stay at since the first time we went in 2020.

Yep, that's the Tumut River right there!

Gear dumped we headed for TRBC.  They've got rather a nice path the whole way now, no scrambling up and down embankments anymore!

Except as I was telling the story of Tom Scott's last video I nearly stood on a snake (I was literally blind because I was focussed on Tom Scott flying with geese) and Stu grabbed me to stop me but it HURT!!  And I never even saw the snake (it slithered off) because I was trying to figure out why I was suddenly being hurt.. :(  Put me out of sorts all night.  But thanks to the sweetie for saving my life anyway hehe.

Grabbed ourselves some beers (I had Volkslager Märzen and a Rose Gose) and ordered dinner.

We got a maple bacon and blue cheese, and something else but I forget what it was and I can't find it on their menu..

Also a house salad and the amazeballs

After dinner Tony and I went for a short walk to see the swamp

And saw All The Bats

Which look pretty trippy with the phone's long exposure..

Saturday.  Slept like crap.  Sigh.  Tony and I went for a short walk while the sweetie got ready.

Then I cooked breakfast

The view from breakfast!

Some ducks came by hoping for a handout

After breakfast Tony and I went bridgespotting

For lunch we met up with Frank and Karen at the Oriental Hotel.  I had salt and pepper squid.

Then the sweetie and I headed back to the van to chill for a bit.

Around 15:00 we went back and met up with the others to head down to the Tumut River Tap Days.

Unlike Sydney or Canberra festivals this one was pretty relaxed.  Helps not having thousands and thousands of people.  There wasn't a lot of shade left in front of the stage by the time we got there, which was ok because it was a bit loud anyway.  So we went slightly further away and got ourselves setup.  

There were several bands although they mostly played music I didn't know.

And half a dozen or so brewerys (Big Niles, Dalgety, Jindabyne, Squinters, Tuckerbox, Willie the Boatman and of course TRBC).

A couple of places did food (there was Indian, gozleme and TRBC were doing pizzas).  

The only problem.. it was HOT!  Over 30 degrees which wasn't ideal.  But with a few cold beers we all had a lovely relaxed afternoon and evening!

Frank took this of Stu

We actually stayed til the end, which we weren't really expecting to do on account of sleeping so badly and it being so hot

Sunday.  Slept somewhat better.  

Cooked breakfast again.

The ducks came again

And I blew some bubbles

Then just cleaned up and came home.

Sunday.  28th.  Backdated because life.  Cooked up some mince for a taco casserole (see previous entry), and had it with lots of veggies.  The Crown 6.9.

Monday.  Woke up at like 1:47 and didn't get back to sleep til well after 4.  Sigh.  Ok day at work, spent most of the morning catching up on emails/chats.  Afternoon was bits and pieces and attacking the todo list.  Bit of house stuff after work, and cooked a dinner of fried beef and salad.

Too hot to go for a walk (was still like 28C at 19:30).  Sigh.  I'm going to get fat again.

Also had a look at my blog commenting.  After pushing through the errors about things not being secure and send anyway, I was getting this error:

Your comment submission failed for the following reasons: Invalid request

After a bit of googling found this page - https://www.kiffingish.com/blogs-etc/ - and it was like total facepalm - the scripts weren't being loaded due to mixed content.  Until I get around to hardcoding the scripts as https, make sure you force my blog to http:// instead of https:// which your browser will now do WITHOUT YOUR CONSENT!!

Tuesday.  Slept ok.  Awake early enough to go for a walk before work.

I was feeling a bit blah after work and none of the food in the house was inspiring me.  So the sweetie got KFC on the way home.  hrmmm.  Mash then Turkey photo culling, and some photo filing.

Wednesday.  Went to bed at 21:45 and didn't get to sleep til after midnight.  And then woke up at 6.  Sigh.  It's like every second night I sleep like crap.  Just bits and pieces during the day then called it early and joined Tony and Frank at the pub.  Beef and salad again for dinner.

Thursday.  Nothing much.  Some doco at work and bit of doco planning.  Death in Paradise 8.3

Friday.  Looked into a bizarre firewall logging problem.  Stoopid firewalls are buggy as hell and seem to get worse with every version.  Finished up early and headed off to Tumut.

Yes these LR-44 batteries are over twenty five years old and still work!!

Sunday.  Got home.  Depressed.  Because Sunday.  Tried to get the house a bit tidier.  Mostly failed.  I really need to chop this back...

Sunday.  14th.  Cooked up an epic feast for dinner/leftovers.  There was a tuna bake, a broccoli/cauliflower bake, capsicum and broccolini with butter/lemon juice (which I stoopidly overcooked).  

Then Mash and The Crown 6.7.

Monday.  Slept relatively well!  All. The. Rain.  !!  Ok day.  Bit of planning for a new database we're hoping to get setup for notifications.  Did an hour of weeding after work and Stu helped cook dinner which was nice.  Then went for a walk up Mt Rogers.

I think I might get moist... (spoiler: I did!)

Then had a look at the Tassie map.  Then it was bed time.  WTF.  Every day I want to do music, weed the garden, keep the house clean/tidy, cook dinners, exercise, process photos, plan holidays.  Except I can only do a couple of those every day because work takes up too much damned time.  And let's not even mention actually having fun and doing my hobbies.  I. Do. Not. Have. Time. To. Go. To. Work.  Sigh.

Tuesday.

Slept mostly ok although woke up at 4:45.  Did housework for a HOUR before work.  And some effing cat sprayed our laundry door.  Buttplug.

Work.  I dunno.  Forty-five minutes of weeding after work.  I rescued some geraniums that had been cut off the plant by accident a couple of weeks ago.  Yeah these stems had been sitting on the ground for a couple of weeks, yet they were still flowering!!  So I stuck em in water.

Stu cooked dinner of cabbage and bacon (and I threw in the last of some leftover turkey).

Tried to finish the jigsaw we started on the weekend, but it's such terrible quality it was pretty much impossible.  It's made of soft plastic and you have to force the pieces together even when they're correct.  Now imagine pieces that are *almost* identical in shape, so you literally have no idea whether they're correct or not.  I got down to four pieces left a couple of times but they just would not go in.  Stoopid.

Wednesday.  Slept mostly ok.  Even got back to sleep after waking up at 4:45.  The other week Tony gave me a container of basil which is growing like weeds in his yard.  But of course I'm a complete slacker and didn't do anything with it.  Well it was getting desperate so before I work I made some pesto.  But first had to contend with a microscopic reanimated spider that's been in hibernation for a couple of weeks..

The pesto turned out quite well.  Even if I did end up having to throw out half the basil.  Sigh.

Ok day I guess.  Managed to find some jeans at kmart.  The only two in my size in the whole store.  As with Target, everything is "skinny".  Well some of us *aren't* skinny.  Hate.  So either *everyone else* wants skinny and that's why they stock so many.  Or *noone* wants skinny which is why that's all there is and hardly anything else.  Also why TF can't women's clothing standardise on sizes??  Last time I bought jeans they were size 8.  This time - 10.  I've had everything from 8 to 12 over the years cause they keep changing.  I really should try on some boys jeans some time.. Or go to a workwear place..

Westfield didn't get the memo about the 12 days of Christmas.. 

Late home, leftover pork (fried in lamb jelly (cause needed to clear freezer space)) and salad for dinner.  Backed up my computer and then it was time to wash my hair and go to bed.  Sigh.

Thursday.  Tidying up and bits and pieces at work.  Showed the newbies some stuffs on one of our firewalls.  Drinks at Lighty then Death in Paradise 8.1.

He's not missing a leg, but he did just leave that poop there

Friday.  Awake for like two hours in the middle of the night.  Sigh.  Climbed Mt Rogers. 

Mt Rogers has *pink* epic dandelions!

Then mostly just housework and getting organised, including bringing up the Lego from downstairs where it had been hiding for a few months due to the Silly Season.  Used the pesto I made yesterday with some chicken I dug out of the freezer, some broccoli and some "fake" pasta (kognac pasta) for a yummy dinner.  Stu went back for thirds, even though he doesn't really like broccoli, so must have been good haha.

Then The Orville 2.11.  I had the kind of day that I would like every day for the rest of my life.  kthxbai.

Saturday.  Slept ok until hurty kept me awake from like 3:45 to 5:45.  Sigh.  After not great sleep the night before either it was definitely zombie day.  Sigh. 

Dude, aren't you a bit far north of the border?

Did a bit of Turkey photo culling but not nearly enough.  Tried to sort out some Lego but my brain was too fuzzy and I'm sure I've stuffed something up. 

The baby capsicums are getting bigger.  That snail is just a shell.  Maybe a bluey got it.. 

Leftovers of the "pulled lamb" (which was still epic spectacular) and cauliflower with cheese sauce for dinner.

Mash and Sex Education 4.3.  Really had to feel for Jean (portrayed as my age even though Gillian Anderson is a fair few years older) and her exhaustion.. omfg there's no way I could have kids.. the sleep deprivation would kill me!!

I rescued those things on the right today too - their stem had broken off, possibly due to lack of water, so grabbed them and brought them inside

Sunday.  Slept fairly well hurray!!  Except I don't really know what I did all day.  I know I renamed all of Mum and Dad's Tasmania photos to get them into chronological order.  I also wrote out their itinerary for their 1971 trip.  They only had two weeks and managed to cram heaps in (including getting perfect days for Mt Amos and Cradle Mountain - totes jelly) and it was cool seeing the order of the photos plotted against the map.  Other than that I'm not even sure.  I didn't managed to do any photo culling.  Barely any dots.  Hardly any Lego inventorying.  There was a walk up Mt Rogers thoguh.  And food shopping.  And getting epic enraged by the pantry which descends into chaos the moment your back is turned.  Sigh.

Look at this trash.  This is what happens when you go low carb.  Everything's damnedwell GREEN haha

Now I just need a quote...

Monday.  8th.  30th anniversary of the Como-Jannali bushfires, my 21st blogiversary, David Bowie would have turned 77.  Slept mostly ok.  Oh The Humidity in the morning though!!  OMFG Con discovered Windoze 11 will FINALLY let you ungroup taskbar icons.  Totally made my day.  Mostly working on decoms.  Chatted to Chris and Glenda after work for an hour about Japan.  Then went for a walk.  Then cooked up some scrambled eggs for breakfasts this week.  And then it was bedtime.  Sigh.

My copy of unlink the rings was in an incomplete state.  I spent ages and ages and ages getting it into a 2x6 configuration that could be recovered with help online.  Then followed a tutorial to solve it.  Cause I was always too dumb to solve these puzzles.

Tuesday.  Low carb regime starts today.  Need to try and lose a few kilos in the next six weeks.  Except I didn't sleep.  Awake from like before 2 to after 4.  Then slept a bit but then awake again.  Zombie day. 

Mostly spent the day working backwards through my todo list finding things to work on.  Couldn't really concentrate on much though - too tired.  Cooked a nice dinner - leftover sausages, with mushrooms cooked in butter and a little cream at the end, and broccoli (from Chris's!  Just microwaved for a couple of minutes) with a sauce of olive oil, lemon juice, salt and pepper.  Looks simple but took 3/4 hour - mostly because I wasn't thinking clearly on account of being a zombie, and the not putting the mushrooms on til later (should have put them on first).

After dinner went for a walk up Mt Rogers.

And then it was bed time, because if you try and cook and exercise it takes up your entire damned evening.  Sigh.

Wednesday.  Was too tired to go to sleep.  Was almost asleep but the sweetie poked me cause I was snoring then it took another hour and a half to get to sleep.  So Wednesday was another zombie day.  When I went to feed the fish in the "angel" tank in the morning noticed the door was scraping the bottom which it wouldn't normally do.  So looked closer and there was water all over the bottom shelf.  !!!!  Looks like one of the filter wools up the top and drifted into the outlet and clogged it up, so it was backed up all over the top, leaking out the edge near the inlets for the powercords for the filter and lights, and flooding everything beneath.  Man they really should make fish tank stands out of real wood instead of chipboard which just swells up when it gets wet.  Yanked the power, got out some towels and dried it all as best I could, then setup a fan to blow on everything to dry it.  (But with Oh The Humidity all week I left that fan running for DAYS and it didn't even fully dry).  Continued looking at my todo list at work and more looking at decoms.  Went clothes shopping at Target at lunch.  It didn't end in tears, but it certainly wasn't successful.  The only jeans they have in stock (pretty much) are stoopid skinny ones.  I took two into try on but only tried the first one and knew the second one would never work.  But look at this.  Look at the pocket!!  Pity there was exactly ONE pair of this Yasmin style in store, nowhere near my size.  Pity, would have been cool.

Then I tried on seven (SEVEN) different bras.  !!  Only three of them even vaguely fitted.  One was a bit too small, one was a bit too big, and the one that was definitely the most comfortable had FOUR clasps instead of the usual three.  Damn my grandmother for giving me ginormous boobs to have to deal with.  In the end bought the one with four clips, but there weren't any more, so the hunt will continue. 

For dinner I fried up some leftover pork and cabbage in whatever jelly I could find in the freezer, which I think was lamb jelly because it was full of rosemary.  Don't eat those dried fried onions in future though, they are definitely not low carb.

Did some Turkey photo culling then went for a walk.  Hot.  Humid.  Sigh.

Got back and had to backup my computer but the external drive was being a poo and either not showing up in windows, or showing up but not being accessible.  Went and washed my hair (it was to damned HOT AND HUMID to deal with) then rebooted it again and was able to backup, but then it didn't finish til like 22:30 (after filling up the disk and I had to delete some crap) which is WAYYY past my bedtime.  Sigh.

Thursday.  Once again I couldn't get to sleep (til after midnight this time).

Oh the humidity!!

Another day of decom work and working through my todo list.  Drinks at Lighty after work (man after work drink prices, pub prices HURT) and KFC for dinner (we won't mention Subway for lunch, definitely not low carb!!).  Mr Miyagi in MASH and Death in Paradise 7.8.

Friday.  After like four nights in a row of not sleeping went into the other room and slept somewhat betterly.  Felt actually somewhat alive in the morning and was able to get through some housework before work.

Deleting Day at work which always makes me happy.  Lunch with the Chrises at the Burns Club.  No not that one, the other one.  There's another one, did you know?  Turns out I'd been there year and a bit ago when it was Magpies.  We won't mention the magpie that brought its kid along and wanted food.  And we're like, nah this salty stuff is no good for you.  Which is the exact same thing with me and unhealthy food.  I KNOW it's unhealthy but damn it tastes good.

Did I mention the humidity?

Fried up some leftover pork in lamb jelly and had it with salad which was very nice.

Saturday.  So the brother type person called on Friday night and offered to come and look at the oven (remember it tripped the power on New Years night) since I'd been too afraid to run it ever since.  So of course overnight I was stressing about the oven.  Because the damned DELONGHI POS is less than FOUR YEARS OLD and has already died TWICE.  And because I stress, I don't sleep.  Hurray for being me.  Got a bit of stuffs done in the morning but not really enough. 

The baby capsicums are still alive..

David arrived mid afternoon.  We turned on the oven.  It didn't trip at least but it didn't heat up.  So he pulled it out and found that sure enough, the rear element had blown (the one we use All The Time).

So we went out to buy a new oven.  Because it's too damned hard to get replacement parts for Delonghi POS we went with a Westinghouse.  And normally we wouldn't get extended warranty but this time we did.  Because they PROMISED that they would replace elements if they blew.  And at least for Westinghouse you CAN get replacement elements. Unlike Delonghi CRAP.  We took our car because it was supposed to rain like Any Second, and it did in fact start to rain while were picking up the oven.

We were too busy installing stuff to pay too much attention to the Epic Storm (which mostly passed south and east of us).  

Yeah doing electrical work during a massive thunderstorm is surely the greatest idea in the world.

But as I mentioned it was pretty sedate at our place.

Did I mention I have the bested brother in the entire universe?

Once it was all going (you have to run it for like half an hour to burn out all the manufacturing grease) we left it on and threw some veggies in it..

This oven probably runs a little hotter than the old one (or morely likely just has better air flow because of a bigger space for the fan to let out its heat..) so the bottom rack heated a lot more than I'm used to..

And of course then there was the lamb which was EPIC AMAZING.  Who knew you could stick a couple of kilos of lamb in a slow cooker all afternoon with garlic and rosemary and you end up with pulled lamb which doesn't even need gravy it's so tender and juicy.  Oh wait, I might have, if I'd actually gotten to taste any of the lamb I did this way back in 2021 for the club Christmas in July (ok, I got like one mouthful back then).  

Then we just chatted while David tried (and failed) to get Google to talk to our lounge room lights.

Sunday.  Woke up around 1:44 and didn't get back to sleep til well after 4 and then it wasn't great sleep.  Sigh.  Cooked some bacon and eggs and spinach for breakfast (spinach is a big fat poo - you cook half a bag of the stuff and get like two mouthfuls each).  Then David and I went to the tip to dump some flouros and batteries and course we needed to do a Green Shed run.  Don't tell Stu but I got some more jigsaws.  Then to Vinnies so David could look at DVDs and OMFG I actually bought a pair of jeans!!  ha!  Came back and had some lunch (well David did, I had mine later) and we started a jigsaw.  Which we did for the next several hours.  Whoops.  

Cooked up an epic feast for dinner, hopefully for leftovers for breakfast for the week...

Oh, also, Chrome (and of course edge) are being Big Fat Poos and aren't allowing commenting anymore because OMFG IT'S SO INSECURE.. Search does the same thing but at least you can click proceed anyway.  But posting comments is problematic - it won't save form data because OMFG IT'S SO INSECURE - but even if you click post anyway you get some error from the blog (don't have a copy on me right now).  I was going to hardcode the form posting to https this weekend but, well, life.  Maybe next weekend.  Anyway, thanks Dave2 for the comments (and Mum too), I did try to respond..