When I went out to the kitchen yesterday morning this is what I saw:

Snow!  I didn't think it was cold enough for snow, but there was a big dumping on the hills above Googong.

The morning was spent cleaning, tidying, organising.

Then went on several missions:

• dump three boxes of books at Lifeline: success
• dump a bag of junk at the Green Shed: success
• exchange or get a refund on the DODGY Aqua One LED lights: fail*
• get 10c refund on some drinks bottles: success, maybe**
• food shopping: success***

* Remember I had to replace a dodgy Aqua One LED back in January?  Well that light we bought last October died a month or so ago.  And then another light we bought in March died a couple of weeks ago.  So that's ALL THREE DODGY lights from Aqua One have failed - one after just four months!!  In January Jem Aquatics replaced the light on the spot without any drama.  But this time they weren't playing ball.  They took the two lights and the receipts and said they'd talk to the Aqua One rep and get back to me.  Well they haven't yet.  Not only that, but that light that was replaced in January?  IT WAS DEAD THIS MORNING!!  THAT'S ALL FOUR DODGY AQUA ONE LIGHTS HAVE FAILED!!!!!  I am completely pissed.  If I pay twice as much for a light, I want it to last twice as long, not HALF as long!!  I really want to get my money back on them and go back to flouros.  And NOT Aqua One.  They completely suck.  Dodgy cheap made in China crap.  I've always hated Aqua One.  The whole episode left me feeling a bit stabby.

** So the ACT has started doing 10c refunds on bottles.  There's a collection point at Vinnies in Belco, so we took a box of bottles there.  I was expecting a machine that would scan the barcodes of the bottles and provide cash on the spot.  You know, like EVERYWHERE ELSE.  But no, there's a computer screen and a human.  You have to REGISTER to return your f@%$ing bottles!!  How f$@*ed is that??  They want name, address, phone number and even a freakin security question such as mother's maiden name.  Are you freaking kidding me???  All for a dollar or two at a time's worth of bottles.  And I didn't even get any money back - they just bag everything up and tell you "you'll get your money some time".  Yeah right.  As we were leaving they were packing up, so you can't even go at a convenient time.  Return-IT you SUCK!  I really should have just told them to screw themselves and just dump everything in our recycling bin.

*** I was pretty upset from the lack of outcome with Jem Aquatics and terrible experience from Return-It, so food shopping wasn't much fun.  We got a turkey roast and other stuff.  Got home and was on my feet for the next couple of hours preparing dinner and making a caramel slice.  Collapsed in front of an Anthony Bourdain and Frozen.

So most of this morning was going through the year's receipts and cross checking them with bank statements to make sure things tallied up (they pretty much did).  I did find the Jem Aquatics receipt from October for the second LED light, so if that goes pffft at least I've got a receipt for it. 

After lunch went with Chrissie for a doctors appointment at the hospital.  Sadly it looks like I won't be allowed to be present at the birth.  Sad times.  

In the afternoon Stu did some tidying up of the fish stuff in the garage, so I did some cleaning up in the garage as well which was good.

Headed out to Bunnings so Stu could pick up some tubing to redo some of his little fish tanks.

Then I cooked a mostly vegetarian feast of roasted vegetables.  First course was mushrooms stuffed with mushroom, bacon, tomato and cheese.  Then there was potato bake (would you like some potato with your cream and cheese?), brussels sprouts and parsnip with bacon, and roast sweet potato and potato.  Pretty yummy.

In the evening we watched Star Trek Discovery (still not convinced - most of the episode was Klingons just rambling on), and Snowpiercer, which was like 1984 meets The Cube meets The Hunger Games meets Brave New World.  I just didn't *get* it (there were far too many issues with the messy plot to distract me - just go read some of the reviews on IMDB which list the issues I also had with it), but Stu was like "it's an allegory" and I'm like .. hrmm

Wow this has certainly been a busy year, and a very very social one. I left writing up the friends and family section til last because it just seemed to go on forever and ever!

Our year began at home, with Ben and EffanC over for nibbles and a small party. Annie and the family came over the next day for chaos and Turkish food. Saw Scott and Kerry and the kids on the first day back at work before they went home.

We had one holiday this year - a cruise on the Queen Mary 2 out of Hong Kong (with a couple of days in Macau beforehand). I was super excited about it, and it lived up to expectations. Although I felt like we didn't quite belong there, on account of not being retired highly paid executives. We never made it to Queensland this year - things were just too *complicated*. I did do two day trips to Sydney to inspect my flat. And there was a work trip to Melbourne for two days.

At work I swapped teams after not quite fitting in with the old team (I'm too dumb for that team!). Still doing much the same work, but with different technology. The project I joined had been going for about two years, and I figure I have about two years of work to clean up the mess that has been made! I had a little bit of weekend work doing upgrades to various things and monitoring of some events. The majority of my new section is in Melbourne, so we went down in September for a two-day planning session. The highlight of the trip was the amazing flight down, and catching up with David twice. We ran a trivia night in March. Unfortunately the winning table weren't going to be around to run the next one, so we asked the second-place getters if they'd do it. They said yes, but never did it. So I'll probably run another one in February or March. We had a whiskey night in June which was a bit of fun. I went with the sweetie to SplunkLive! and I'm *still* bitter that a big data company couldn't get the distribution of tshirt sizes right. We had a DAIS video night in August, as it had been way too long since the last one. Finally, I ran our annual floor barbeque at the lake for forty people and everyone seemed to enjoy it.

I was pretty healthy this year. I had a bit of a cold in February, and then another one picked up on the Queen Mary 2 (it was going around the entire ship), but after that I didn't get any more colds all year. The other thing we got on the way home from our holiday was a bout of gastro, which hit Stu just after we got home, and me a day or so later (although I seemed to only get a fairly mild case of it). I went to the dentist after one year instead of twenty and will probably keep going regularly now. I did battle with insomnia quite a few times during the year. Usually for no apparent reason, although it tended to be associated with a sore spine and/or a brain that wouldn't shut up. I rage-quit on Stu's bed earlier in the year and more often than not sleep in the spare room. That room has the bed Yvonne gave me in 2005 which has a much firmer mattress than Stu's. I don't get a sore spine *as much* in that bed, and my restless legs don't play up nearly as much there either (don't know why that is - different fabrics??). We've been meaning to go shopping for a new king size bed, but we just haven't gotten around to it yet.

We saw a lot of F&C (EffanC) this year which was really nice. Went to their place a number times and had them over here as well. Also saw Scott with them a few times. We saw quite a lot of Kit, with various combinations of Serena, Ben, Sarah, Anita and Pete. David came to stay in January, April, August and December, and Mum came to visit in February and August. Only saw a little bit of Annie the family - they came over for a Turkish feast in January, we went to their place for dinner in March, had them over here in April, their place for cake for Noah's birthday, and them here for Christmas dessert. Saw even less of Potty and the family - seeing them at the beginning of the year before they went home, Kerry brought over sick kids in July, then everyone came at Christmas (twice). We met Chrissie's new boyfriend in January, and by July they were living together with a baby on the way. I've gotten to go to a few of the ultrasounds which has been pretty cool. They came over for our first hanami party, and we had Zac come and stay in December so Chris and Mike could celebrate their anniversary. Nat and Andrew came over for our second hanami party, but sadly that was the only time we saw them all year. We had Damien and Amanda over for dinner in May, and went with them to Olive at Hawker in July, and saw just Damien for drinks in August. James and Rachel came down for a cake decorating course in May and they stayed with us which was nice. James also came down for work in November and we caught up for dinner at Bella Vista. We met up with Jenn at Chong Co in January, and had Jenn and Nick over in June for dinner. Jenn was getting set for a foodie trip to Mexico, which she went on later in the year and we got copies of her travelogue which was pretty cool. Had dinner with Luc and Cynthia and the boys when they came down in January, had @Chrispycon and Anne over for dinner in June, went to a barbeque at @CLBradley's in June, had dinner with Luc when he was down for work in September, and went over to Lachie's for darts (which I was crap at) and Jenga (which I didn't lose at) in November.

At "the club" we went to a couple of swim nights, and several socials at the club. One of them we did pea and ham soup, and another we did Christmas in July for forty people.

Pretty quiet year for the fish. I got some more danios for the two foot, and a couple of bristlenose catfish for my big tank and the two foot. We did get another tank from Chrissie as well which is quite a nice little tank. In the big angel tank is the angel, two big (probably female) danios, a cory, the bristlenose I bought, and a big bristlenose I got off Chris. In the upstairs two foot there's five danios, four rummy nose tetras and a bristlenose. In the little tank from Chris are her two clown loaches. They're really too big for that tank but haven't decided where to put them yet. It could really use a bristlenose as well, as the tank gets direct sunlight so there's lots of algae starting to grow. Downstairs there's four danios and the platy I got off Chris two years ago. Stu has two guppies in the little tank on his desk, and heaps of fish in his four foot. We bought expensive LED lights for two of the tanks instead of regular fluoros, but one of them died after only eight months which is very disappointing. Hoping the other one we bought doesn't die as quickly.

I didn't get any new Lego this year, although I did get a Nanoblocks Empire State Building for Christmas. I did a bunch of jigsaws throughout the year including a very cool 3D one of the Sydney Opera House. I finally assembled the 24000 piece "Life" jigsaw, because I figured I *had* to before I could get going on the 40320 piece "Memorable Moments" Disney jigsaw! I had fun with papercraft as well, making some Villarceau circles, completing a geodesic dodecahedron and two geodesic octahedra (or hexahedra), making a four frequency geodesic icosahedron which is pretty spectacular (and I had this hanging from the roof at work for a while which is probably how they noticed ceiling cat), and an icosidodecahedron and a geodesic icosidodecahedron.

For some reason I always mention the weather in my year in review posts. This year seemed quite cold in winter, but the pool only froze over a couple of times. We had hail and snow on the same day in August which was pretty exciting. October seemed like a very cold month, and as per usual December had its fair share of cold days as well. Not that I'm complaining, I'd prefer it to be cold than hot. Our evaporative cooler works very well, although I swear last summer was the most humid summer in Canberra ever (the evaporative cooler doesn't work very well when it's humid). This summer we've used it a little and it's quite lovely. I'm even noticing a temperature inversion now - often it's cooler upstairs than downstairs! But the best part is being able to use it on fan only to simply bring cool air into the house once it's cooler outside than in. In the past it could be quite cool outside, but still hot inside simply because the air is so still and there's no crossflow ventilation. Having the fan bring it in is wonderful.

At the end of last year I was considering getting a backpack vacuum cleaner because I *hate* dragging a barrel vacuum cleaner around. David suggested we get a cordless one instead. I was a bit reluctant because they are essentially glorified dustbusters, and all the ones we saw had rollers that just tangle up hair. But we ended up getting one anyway. It sat unused for probably six months, but I've finally gotten into the habit of doing a room or two per day, and now the house is actually getting fully vacuumed every week. Amazing! Our Cisco switch died while we were on holidays in March. And we never did get the NAS working again with it - it's still going through a little old 100Mb switch. Our home internet has always been bad here, and getting steadily worse. When we got back from holidays it was completely unusable. We called Internode to have a look. They got Telstra to have a look, and confirmed a problem with the line something like 400m away. They fixed this and things did improve somewhat, but our internet is still painfully slow (2Mb down). Netflix seems to buffer relatively well but Stan is abysmal. We're hoping NBN will improve things a little, but given that our node is like a kilometre away I doubt it's going to be amazing. My blog and hosting/email was offline for a few days while we were on holidays. Possibly a DOS, but don't know if it was ever explained. Then Vic sold everything off and retired. I'm wondering how long it takes them to figure out this hosting is a freebie and either shut it down or make me start paying for it. I really really need to move this blog off, but it's such a huge beast it's going to be very difficult. Even backing up the site via FTP takes a couple of days. I might have more luck tarring up the whole thing into one file which would transfer more quickly and efficiently, but I'm hampered by not having any shell access. And I couldn't find the perl script I used to have which lets you run commands interactively via the website (yes I know - super dangerous, which is why it's not online, and hence I can't find it). We had dramas with our dvd players. The video on my old dvd recorder kept dropping out, and it was getting worse. The PS3 dvd part stopped working years ago. I even had issues with my old Toshiba. So in the end we spent $80 on a new player that will play everything including media on usb stick. The remote is faulty - any time you press a button it fires off the action multiple times. But we got it working with our Harmony remote, so in the end didn't bother to swap it (especially since JB HiFi price matched it with Big W). The old Android of Stu's that I used for Ingress got so old that the Play Store wouldn't work anymore, which meant I couldn't update Ingress, so the thing essentially became a brick. Maybe I could still use it as a media player, since my phone doesn't have space for that sort of thing. I upgraded my five year old iPhone to 10.3.3 without any dramas. It's faster after unlocking than iOS 9 was which is pretty cool.

Around the house, we discovered our shower was leaking, probably from old cracked grout in the corner. We scraped it back (mostly) but still haven't regrouted/siliconed. It's on the todo list for our staycation! The snifter valve exploded on our hot water system, but I still haven't gotten around to calling up Aquamax. It's on the todo list for our staycation! We had a heap of pool dramas this year. At the beginning of the year there was way too much stabiliser (sunscreen) which meant the chlorine didn't work at all. Got that under control with a bunch of water changes (dear Adelaide: you're welcome), but then this summer the pool has been unbuffered and unstable and keeps going green, even with adding plenty of chlorine. Sad times. Possibly the pH has been too high, so have adjusted that, vacuumed the last batch of algae to waste, raised the total alkalinity and added a bunch of chlorine and *hopefully* it'll settle down now. The tenants of my flat in Sydney moved out after seven years, and the place needed to be fully renovated, costing me something like $16000 :( Did two trips to see the before and after. Good news is it's getting a lot more rent now that it's all shiny again.

We didn't eat out too much this year, and when we did it was generally when meeting up with other people. We did go to Bella Vista a few times - for our anniversary, for my birthday, and when James came to visit. We only went to Dumpling Inn a couple of times because they were closed for much of the year. Both times were with Chris, Mike and Zac. We also tried The Scholar in Dickson with them, but I wasn't impressed with the very slow service. Also wasn't impressed with Chinese Inn at Kippax where we went for Sarah's birthday. Went to Hero Sushi in the city a couple of times, the first experience a lot better than the second. Went to Malaysian Chapter with Cath and Scott for Stu's birthday, and Chong Co with Jenn. Only had brunch out a couple of times this year, once at Market St Eats at Belconnen markets and once at Gus' Place. We often have lunch at Saigon Streetfood when doing our food shopping, or sometimes Ali Baba or more recently Alaska Seafood. We did get to try out a few new places too - The Courtyard Restaurant at Mercure with Luc and Cynthia when they were in town, Olive at Hawker with Damien and Amanda, and Black Fire in Braddon with Luc. We tried out Mills and Grills pizzas this year which are pretty good, and Stu loves the karaage chicken pizza from Pizza Capers. And finally I went with Neil to the Brokenwood Wine dinner at Monster Kitchen and Bar in Hotel Hotel.

I tried a few new recipes this year. Lemon ginger chicken from a Coles magazine was very nice, beef cheeks from Not Quite Nigella was also pretty good, and Jamie's five ingredient Asian fishcakes were simple but nice. Stu cooked Scotch eggs a couple of times, and pork larb a few times. I had a go at fondue, but didn't follow a recipe so the cheese split. Chrissie gave me a book of fondue recipes, and I got a proper fondue set, but we've yet to have another go at it. Kit and Serena's gardens provided an excess of produce that we happily used up, and we got to eat some young roosters that Kit had raised and processed. I made Anzac biscuits on Anzac Day, caramel slice at least three times, a mint rocky road and a cheesecake.

Didn't see any theatre or shows or exhibitions this year.

The only movie we saw at a cinema was Silence - in Hong Kong!

Stu likes to watch tv while we eat dinner. I feel like being forced to sit in one place for three quarters of an hour is pretty stressful, especially on weekday evenings. Having said that, some shows are better than others and with some shows it didn't feel so much of a burden.

• Sherlock - season four
• Fuller House - season two
• Star Trek: The Original Series - finishing up what we started last year
• Star Trek: Voyager - the entire thing, which took most of the year and was the most stressful to have to watch
• Homeland - season five
• Black Adder Goes Forth - borrowed off Annie years ago but hadn't gotten around to finishing, watched this on my computer
• Monty Python - season four - borrowed off DC years ago but hadn't gotten around to finishing, watched this on my computer
• Air Crash Investigations - various episodes watched online while doing other things on my computer
• Australian Survivor - season two of the current incarnation - the only commercial tv we watched all year
• Fuller House - season three (in two parts)
• Dad's documentaries - stuff he'd taped off tv over the years. I've been working my way through them while I do jigsaws downstairs in the summer months
• The Good Place - season one and the first half of season two
• Rake - season four

Books Read

• Tales of Two Cities, various short stories
• Bones Never Lie, by Kathy Reichs
• Uncle John's 24-Karat Gold Bathroom Reader
• The Barefoot Investor, by Scott Pape
• ET: The Book of the Green Planet, by William Kotzwinkle
• One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nets, by Ken Kesey
• No Place to Hide, by Glenn Greenwald

Other stuff

• Kit had baby bunnies but Vicki killed them by "playing" with them
• Neil won Ali Baba's "Chance to win $1000000" - but that's all it was - a chance to win. He didn't actually win the $1000000.
• Went to the Multicultural Festival with Chrissie for beer and meat (and potatoes) on a stick, while remembering Dad from three years earlier
• Had to do some actual clothes shopping for formal and other nice clothes for the cruise. Material Pleasures was awful, City Chic was much more successful, then again so was Vinnies and it was a lot cheaper
• Went to the farmers markets in April but I find it too stressful and it's too early for Stu so we don't really like going
• Stopped going to Coles at Jamison for the most part, because Jamison couldn't be arsed putting in enough trolley return bays around the car park
• Made a classic 80s space guy costume for Kit's 30th birthday party
• Had a brief play with IMosaic
• Setup a blog for the Queen Mary 2 with photos of the ship
• Went to Shepherd's Lookout and down to the river with Kit
• Paid off our mortgage
• Went to Hall Markets with Kit and Pete
• Got access to my old CIA mailbox and downloaded seven years of mail
• Setup a blog to compare Canberra between 1986 and 2016, sent it to the RiotACT but they didn't link to it. Johnboy would have.  Just sayin'.
• Had to be official photographer for Roz's 60th at The Abbey which I found very stressful
• Saw some of Kit's chicks hatching
• Kit had more baby bunnies but they died, we don't know why
• Had my democracy sausage photo feature in Atlas Obscura 
• Got long service leave
• Accidentally bought Twisties that make your tongue turn blue. I couldn't eat them. Ewww. Stu said it wasn't the only thing that turned blue..!

I recently finished reading "No Place to Hide" by Glenn Greenwald.  I enjoyed the first part of it, because it was the more detailed story of the meeting in Hong Kong with Ed Snowden that we'd seen in Citizenfour and the Snowden movie.  But then it got bogged down in a lot of the technical stuff and I really struggled to get through it.  It picked up a bit at the end though.  On Friday night we watched Citizenfour again, which I got more out of this time, on account of having a lot better background about the whole thing (the first time we saw it (nearly three years ago!) I had no background at all).  And I still got distracted by the film making process. 

The majority of my new team is in Melbourne, and this week we had a couple of day catchup with the whole team.

It was a pretty productive session but somewhat tiring.

The highlight of the whole thing was the flight down.  The back of our 737 was almost empty.  Connor and I were on the right side of the plane, and we took off to the north, and then banked around to the left.  So as soon as the seatbelt sign turned off, we jumped up and over to the other side of the plane.  We had the most spectacular view of Canberra I've ever seen!  Just amazing.  

Qantas Boeing 737-800 VH-VXB

Canberra from the air

Canberra from the air

Canberra from the air

Belconnen from the air

Belconnen Town Centre from the air

Canberra from the air

Tidbinbilla

Tuggeranong

After passing out of Canberra I went back to my seat and Connor went to the seat behind.  But we got up again to see the SNOW!

Mt Kosciuzsko is centre of frame

Khancoban

I stayed in my seat for the rest of the flight.  Usually when I fly into Melbourne it's on runway 27, which is a completely boring approach.  But this flight flew in over the Melbourne CBD before swinging north into 34.  I didn't realise how far south we'd come until I saw the Exhibition Building!  So awesome!

And what flight would be complete without going to say hi to the flight crew at the end :)

Another highlight of the trip was catching up with David not once but twice!  Firstly for dinner on Monday night, and then again for breakfast on Wednesday morning.  That was super cool.

On the Tuesday night a bunch of us went out for dinner.  We ended up at Kollabo Kitchen for *lots* of fried chicken.  All this plus two bimimbaps for three people?  hrmmmm!!  Similar amounts of chicken were ordered by others.

We didn't finish it.

So I took all the leftovers back to the hotel.  Some of it David and I ate in the morning, and most of the rest of it we had for lunch later on.

Oh and also, had my first Uber rides.  They were pretty good.  The drivers were certainly a lot less aggressive on the road that taxi drivers!

It was nice to sleep in my own bed again at the end!

Friday night we watched Arrival.  Stu enjoyed it but I found it rather .. boring .. People on IMDB either loved it or hated it, there was no middle ground.  

Saturday first thing we headed out to the club.  I did some jigsaw while the committee meeting was on, then there was a bbq lunch, then the AGM.  So by the time we got home it was dinner time and *blip* there goes half my weekend.  Went down to Kit's after dinner for a couple of drinks and caught up with Katie before she disappeared off to Queensland to live.

Sunday was just house and computer stuff in the morning, food shopping and lunch, then cooking and cleaning.  Cath came over for dinner (epic roast pork) which was lovely.  (and it hailed and later *snowed* on Sunday!!)

Monday morning I was stressed at the state of the house and the state of All The Things going on and literally thought "I don't have time to go to work".  Seriously I can't cope at the moment.  I'm just not getting enough time at home to get everything done.  Self inflicted though.  We keep socialising.  cf next paragraph.

Monday night we were going to meet Damien at the Pot Belly for drinks, but turns out it's not open on Mondays.  So we ended up at the Labor Club instead.  Was good catching up, but it meant all I managed to do all evening was run the dishwasher and do my clothes washing.

Last night I was awake in the middle of the night stressing about everything (mostly about the flat in Sydney as well as our bathroom) so I was a zombie today.  I did sneak out to go to Chrissie's ultrasound which was pretty cool though.

Tonight Pete had a bit of a look at our shower as well and thought that no we probably aren't going to need to rip out the shower just yet (when were chatting on Saturday night he was thinking that we might have to).  Especially if there's no evidence of leaking after regrouting and sealing.  So that was a bit of a relief.  But by then it was already nearly seven o'clock, and I still had to get through Sunday's Survivor and eat dinner, download all my photos, backup my phone and backup my computer.  But our domain controller died overnight so I couldn't get onto the NAS to back it up.  So that was all a drama and everyone ended up grumpy.  I cleaned the kitchen while Stu tried to get a monitor plugged in to see what was up.  It eventually came back by itself, looks like it had some bad blocks, and was probably running a checkdisk which is why it took so long. 

And now it's 9:50 and I'm completely wasted.  Stop the world, I want to get off.

I've been sick this week.  Got a sore throat on Sunday night, felt all fuzzy on Monday (I should have stayed home), worked from home Tuesday to keep my sniffles to myself, and have felt better but coughing a lot the rest of the week.

Last night we took a couple of Dr Octopus pizzas down to Kit's for dinner and had a pretty relaxing evening.  When we came back up there was a huge huntsman in the entrance way, so we caught it and Stu said I should take it and show Kit.  So I did.  And then she fed it to her frogs.  !!  Poor spider..!!

Tonight we watched Oliver Stone's Snowden.  Quite well done and we both enjoyed it. 

So 2016. Not too bad a year for me personally. But memorable for a spate of celebrity deaths (two I'd seen in real life - David Bowie and Carrie Fisher) and two overseas trips.

My first trip of the year was by myself to Sydney to see mum and the uncles/aunties for a Christmas party in early January where I cooked a big baked dinner for everyone. Also saw two Lego exhibitions on the same day while I was up there. Came home from that trip to a pool party in full swing. In January we did a two week trip to Hong Kong (to see Chris and Anne one last time there before they came home) and Singapore. The weather was the biggest downer of the trip - grey and rainy in Hong Kong, and unbearably humid in Singapore. In April we went to Sydney again for my cousin Ben's wedding. Later in April I went to Europe for six weeks with mum. The first two weeks was for a "reformation tour" of sites pertaining to the protestant reformation. That was a really interesting trip and a good group of people. Had a couple of days in Salzburg before heading up to Scandanavia for a three week tour. We saw some amazing things on that tour, but the size of the group (forty people) made it incredibly draining for me. In June mum and I went down to Junee to visit David and celebrate mum's 70th birthday. We only went down to the coast once this year in July. And we did our yearly trip to Queensland, but in November, which was a lot later in the year than I wanted to (Stu had uni work making it to hard to go any earlier). Fortunately the weather wasn't *too* hot and humid.

At work my most interesting work was some firewall migrations. Our first attempt in the test environment though was a bit of a disaster. It took the cleverer network guys about a month to solve a super weird MTU issue in the switch infrastructure they were plugged into. After that, the migrations went very smoothly. I also did an authentication system migration which also went well. So the first half of the year I was pretty busy and the work was interesting. In the second half of the year though I had to deal with the proxies again which drains my will to live. Is there actually such a thing as a *good* proxy? I'm beginning to think not. They caused me a lot of stress this year, including *three* failed attempts to upgrade them to the lastest version. Other than that I was feeling way too dumb to be in the team I'm in. But things picked up towards the end of the year with another firewall migration that went pretty smoothly and a stocktake, which is kind of my super power.

Socially at work I ran another trivia night in March which was packed. We won the next trivia night in June, but luckily the second place getters agreed to run the next one. Which we then won in September, so now I have to run the next one. Had a Gatsby ball in June, although I didn't get with the theme. Had a whiskey night in July. And for our section Christmas party (with various hangers on) I organised a bbq for nearly 40 people.

Healthwise I've been ok. I find lying down uncomfortable due to my deformed spine, which results in a lot of insomnia due to not being comfortable. Early in the year I did some proactive stuff that I'd been putting off forever - I got my skin checked, went to the dentist for the first time in twenty years and got new glasses. I got a minor cold in July, and a more severe one in November.

We've had a super social year this year. We've continued our visits to "the club", going to events and committee meetings in February, March, June, did a Christmas in July, October, twice in November (one of them we fed seventy-plus people) and December. My best friend from high school Chris moved down to Canberra at the end of last year so we've seen quite a bit of her - either dinners here, there, or out, or just going for walks (she lives in stumbling distance which is super handy!). We've also spent a lot of time with Kit, and also Ben and Serena - mostly just hanging out in the courtyard, but the occasional parties, meals as well, and even a p0ker night. Ben moved into a new place earlier in the year and we had a small housewarming there. I did an impromptu hanami party with Chris, Kit and Serena, and another one a week later with Nat and Andrew and the sweetie. Unfortunately that was the only time we saw Nat and Andrew all year. We've seen quite a bit of EffanC and Scott this year as well which as been nice - alternating between our places and enjoying champagne or a local equivalent. We had games nights at Mishi's in July and August. Also caught up with Damien and Amanda at the Dumpling Inn, and Damien and Tom at the Durham on a trivia night. Managed to see Ding twice this year, although the second time was a lot more chaotic with a heap of people in the house. Luc came to stay a night in March, Stu's ex colleague Jenn came for dinner, and we had an afternoon tea at Chris and Glenda's.

Dave and Kat came to stay with us five times this year which was great - in February, April, August, November and December. Mum stayed in June and December. Kerry and the kids dropped in in April, and Potty and Jake came to stay a night on the way to the snow and ended up staying for several nights. Didn't see much of Annie's family, only saw them a couple of times. Graham and Pam came to stay in April as well, and we went to the Dumpling Inn for dinner. Uncle Colin dropped in to say hi in December.

Various people came to swim in the pool in the summer months. For Christmas we did roast pork for Mum, Dave, Kat, Chris and Zac.

In the fish tanks I had four baby angels at the beginning of the year but three of them died. One of them survived, and it shares the AR-620T tank with four huge danios and a cory catfish. The two foot tank was a disaster at the end of last year with toxic black algae. I moved the fish downstairs over summer and cleaned it out completely. The black algae did start to come back, but with a bunch of plants, snails and a siamensis the tank has stabilised nicely and looks really good. The two remaining black neon tetras died this year - but they'd had a good run - I'd had them for ten years!! Amazing for such small fish. I bought some danios to be dither fish for the rummy nose tetras which worked really well - you can see them and their colour a lot better now. So in the upstairs two foot I have the five rummy nose tetras, five danios and a siamensis. Downstairs I had four of Chris's platies that I looked after while she moved house, but three of them died so there's only one left now. It shares the tank with four danios. Stu also has a tiny tank with a betta and some really small fish, and his four foot which got overrun with algae for a while but it's settled down a bit now.

I did a 5000 piece jigsaw this year which was good, but the quality of it was shocking. Did other jigsaws as well, but not as many this year. I've been doing a lot of nonograms online ever since the GCHQ Christmas puzzle last year. And just a couple of days ago I rediscovered Loops of Zen. I didn't buy any Lego this year, but I did spend a couple of months sorting out all of Zac's Lego.

The weather was *hot* this year. Summer seemed to last *forever* this year - global warming anyone? Made good use of the pool, but suffered in the heat. Had a lot of heat-induced insomnia and generally felt miserable for months. We got some hail in January. The pool only froze over twice this year in late June. It actually snowed one morning in July, but then a week later had the warmest overnight July temperature in recorded history. The El Niño finished up and it rained *a lot* over winter and spring.

We did a lot of stuff with the house this year. We got all the guttering replaced (while I was overseas). No more flooding of the garage after heavy rain! We got gutter guards in one corner where the oak tree is, but probably should have gotten them along the back as well, as one end still clogs up from that tree. Our twenty five year old hot water system died in the middle of winter, luckily a plumber could come the same day to replace it. The same plumber came a month or so later to clear out the sewer pipes which had been blocked by roots. We put evaporative cooling in which has been amazing for the most part, except this whole Christmas break which feels like the humidest week in Canberra ever! And we got a solar blanket for the pool (basically glorified bubble wrap) which has made a small difference to the temperature, but also has added bonuses of keeping most of the light out so algae doesn't grow as much, and keeps most of the leaves and bugs out as well.

I got a bit frustrated with technology this year. Had to fight with Logitech's Harmony remote software again. In the end never got it working with our tv. Upgraded my computer to Windows 10, which actually went ok, but had some drama with Windows Defender, and got sick of it rebooting without permission whenever it feels like it. I thought I'd bricked my iPhone because the battery got so dead it wouldn't turn on, even after charging overnight. Warming it up fixed it. Did this several more times over the next few months before finally replacing the battery in late November. I would like to get an iPhone 7, but I want one as small as I have now. Still having issues with the scanner, but still haven't gotten around to testing it on another computer to see if it's the computer or the scanner. And this blog got moved to new hardware by my hosting company so it's a lot more responsive now.

The Dumpling Inn was still our most visited restaurant this year. We went for Chrissie's birthday, again with Pam and Graham, again with Chrissie, with Chris and mum in June, and Damien and Amanda in July. I finally got to go to Smoque in Civic, fortunately, because it closed down later in the year. I went with Neil to a degustation dinner at Sage which was awesome. We went to Shogun for Ben's birthday, The Hungry Buddha with EffanC and Scott, and Casey Jones with Annie and the family for my birthday. With the sweetie we had dessert at Max Brenner in Civic, went to Chong Co, and tried Jamie's Italian and Pappa Rich. Generally we didn't eat out as much this year - trying to save a bit of money. Although we still had a lot of pizza! And bacon and cheese loaded fries from Maccas. omfg sooo good! Sadly the last time I tried to get some they didn't have them anymore :(

I didn't do a whole lot of creative cooking this year. I did make some cream cheese bacon balls which are so evil they're amazing. I made "epic" stuffed zucchini. I made some cheese and spinach pastries with some pastry inherited from Kerry before they moved which turned out pretty well. I did a zucchini lasagna. And a I tried a couple of different breakfast casseroles - one pretty evil and I made it a few times, and one I wasn't too fussed about.

Theatre/Shows/Exhibitions:
* Art of the Brick Exhibition in Sydney
* Sydney Icons in Lego in Sydney
* The Proclaimers

Movies:
* Sherlock - The Abominable Bride
* The Big Short
* Whiskey Tango Foxtrot
* Independence Day: Resurgence
* Finding Dory
* Star Trek: Beyond
* Rogue One

TV:
* Finished the last seasons of House
* Season 1 of Fuller House
* Documentaries on Netflix
* First four seasons of Homeland
* Most of Star Trek: the Original Series
* Australian Survivor
* Start of season 2 of Fuller House

Books:
* The Tower by Richard Martin Stern
* The Hindenburg Disaster by Jeff Rovin
* Raise the Titanic! by Clive Cussler
* Grey Mountain by John Grisham
* Penguin Bloom by Cameron Bloom and Bradley Trevor Greive

Other Stuff:
* Started off year with an impromptu neighbourhood party at Kit's
* Didn't dance on Lachie's table
* Saddened by deaths of David Bowie, Alan Rickman, Prince, Gene Wilder, Kenny Baker, George Michael, Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds, and the end of the world as we know it, ie, the US presidential election results.
* Went to the Mint open day
* Went to Canberra's new Ikea for first time
* Went to the Canberra Show with Chrissie
* Watched Das Rheingold with the sweetie, but still haven't gotten around to watching the rest of it
* Saw the Canberra balloon fiesta - twice
* Digitised my USA 2000 blog, although still haven't added photos to it
* Did the Granite Tors walk with Kit, nearly trod on a brown snake
* Ben and Stu fixed up the festoon lights out the back (only took seven and a half years to get around to doing!)
* Went to the Canberra Airport open day
* Installed Windows 10 on my travel laptop and my main computer
* Scanned ten of mum's photo albums
* Voted twice, but only got one #democracysausage
* Went out to Cotter Dam in August to see it overflowing, and went back again a week or two later to get it with better lighting
* Did a flying visit to Sydney in August to drop Stu off at the airport early Sunday morning, and saw the Sea Cliff Bridge on the way home
* Chrissie brought up her steam cleaner and made the bathroom all sparkly
* Saw James Turrell's Skyspace at the Art Gallery
* Kept myself busy in September with a massive photo project
* Popped into the War Memorial for an hour to look at the newly done WWI memorial halls
* Saw the first flight from Singapore to Canberra land, and the first flight from Canberra to Wellington depart
* Went to Costco for the second time. I think Coles and Aldi are actually cheaper.
* Did a massive photoshoot around Canberra to compare thirty years ago til now
* Photographed the super moon
* Spent several days over the break cleaning out cupboards

A bunch more photos taken during the year that needed blogging..

One of Kit's brown frogs.  She had two or three of them that she'd had for years, and they died almost at the same time, she has no idea why..

Curious George..

Happy flower!

Petal snow!

Poppy

Teeny teeny bug at the Christmas party last week

It snowed in Canberra last week.  I woke up (a zombie due to lack of sleep) and walked out into the kitchen and thought it was a super heavy frost before realising it was snow.  That woke me up somewhat!

Then last night we had the warmest overnight July night temperature in recorded history.  Craziness.

Tonight I only geotagged some of day 24's photos, and didn't do any fish tank rescues, but did attack the piles of crap next to my desk.  Still a long way to go.