After lunch Neil and I popped into Sanity so Neil could get series 3 of Dark Matter.

And I accidentally bought six Disney Blurays and the Lego Batman Movie.

It's all his fault I swear.

That and I wanted to get all the movies I'm building a jigsaw out of (they were only missing Cinderella).

So tonight we watched the Lego Batman Movie.  Because we somehow never managed to see it at the movies.

OMFG.

I soooo need to go back and watch like every Batman movie ever.  Because there were so many references to them and I'm sure I only *got* a tiny fraction of them.

And there were Daleks. And Sauron. And SIRI. And VOLDEMORT.  And GREMLINS!!!!  (and too many more things to mention)

Silliest thing was - Ralph Fiennes did the voice of Alfred, but not Voldemort.  Silly really.

The other day I was doing a FunTrivia quiz that reminded me of Grizzly Adams - a late 70s tv show about a guy who went bush and teamed up with a bear cub.  I remember watching it as a little kid although the only thing I remember about it in any detail was the opening credits and him standing on a spectacular rocky ridge (right at the end of the video).

Back in the day, when I used to read more news feeds, one of them (can't remember which) often used to print snippets taken from Uncle John's Bathroom Reader books.  So when this one came out I got it as a birthday present for someone, promptly borrowed it, and had it sitting in my room for years.  Finally got through it last night (helps going to bed a bit early so you have time to read for a bit).  Lots of interesting factoids.  I should probably have written some of them down for our next trivia night ;)  But I did take photos of a couple of the pages for use in our next trivia night :)

First quarter 2017 jigsaws..

This Simpsons jigsaw was done by some of the guys at work, and late last year I found it in a bin.  !!  So I retrieved it and did it at work.  It's one of those jigsaws where every piece is an "edge" so you can't start at the edges.  I mostly did it by picking up a piece and putting it where it was meant to go.  So it took quite a while.  Tried to finish it by Christmas but ended up finishing it the first week of January.

This one David mostly did when he was up in January.

The next one I did at home was a jigsaw James and George gave me for Christmas or birthday in about 2004 or 2005.  I remember starting it, ie doing the edges, when I was visiting Stu when he was living in Queensland.  But I never finished it.  This is why:

It took forever to do because I simply lacked motivation.  Here it is finished:

After that I was super busy with trivia night and holiday planning.

On the Queen Mary 2 they have two big tables setup on either side of the ship in the games corridors where there's always jigsaws going.  

I did quite a bit of this 1500 piece one:

And this 1500 piece one in the same series:

Someone else started this one of York Minster, but I spent a good chunk of an afternoon on it and finished it:

This 1500 piece one had been going by some others since Sydney.  When I arrived in Hong Kong, there was just a little bit left and I helped finish it.  They put it away, but later on it came out again.  I started it one evening, spent most of the next day on it, getting it to about the point it was when I first came to it in Hong Kong.  I was going to go back to finish it the next morning but was busy reading info boards, and when I did get back to it, a lady from Wales had finished it.  But I feel like I did pretty much the whole thing :)

I helped with another couple of jigsaws on the ship but either didn't see them finished or hadn't helped enough to warrant a photo.

Well not much really.

Wednesday night we ran the trivia night which was pretty well attended and enjoyed.  Only two questions that noone got right, but twenty-three that *everyone* got right - whoops!

Thursday had a training day which I always find a bit draining, but learnt some things, even if I won't get much exposure to them in real life.

Friday night we had dinner at Hero Sushi and did some clothes shopping.  The girl at City Chic was quite nice and unthreatening which made the whole process of clothes shopping not *completely* stressful.  And only spent nearly $300 on four items.  Hrmmmmmmm!!  (Vinnies was *much* better value!!)

The weekend was pretty much just *getting things done*.  Had dinner at Annie's last night, but really the weekend was just getting things done that hadn't been gotten done on account of trivia nights and stuff...

Tonight we watched some Voyager, and Particle Fever, which was pretty interesting.

And I made a zucchini bake using one of Serena's epic zucchinis

Other than going out on Saturday to do some clothes and food shopping, pretty much all I did all weekend was work on our next trivia night.

And tonight was finding images to make it all pretty.

Except Open Office is completely retarded.  It crashes spectacularly when it runs out of memory.  But it doesn't just crash, it corrupts the file as well, so half the slides will lose their background, or all the images will disappear.  Super frustrating and I lost maybe half an hour or an hour's work when it did that to me - twice.  So I've got fifty thousand backups of backups in the hopes that further corruption won't lose too much work.  At least it's pretty much finished now, so hopefully won't have to change much more on it.

The other day Doc hummed a couple of notes of You Got It (The Right Stuff) and it's been floating around my head ever since.

Then tonight we watched the episode of Fuller House with the New Kids on the Block in it.  Gah now it'll never get out of my head!! hehe

And I was never even a fan of their music!

But if anyone has an mp3 or wav of the first few notes can they send it to me, I'll use it in my next trivia night in a few weeks :)

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

Stu's high school friend Tom came to town this week, so we went along last night with him and Damien to the Durham in Kingston.  It was trivia night so the place was packed, and we had fun playing along with the first two rounds of trivia, even though we weren't officially participating (the table next to us might have overheard some of our answers ;) ).  The food service was pretty awful though.  They got our order wrong to start with.  And didn't bring us any sort of cutlery or napkins (they had been for other tables).  Had to go to the bar and try and get some stuff, although didn't end up with any forks so ended up eating salad with our fingers.  And the ribs we had were overcooked to the point of being a bit burnt.  Quite disappointed.  But other than that had a good catchup, and a lovely pleasant night to be sitting outside.

So aside from a plane blog entry, I haven't blogged in two weeks.  Whoops.

Monday two weeks ago I took a six hour lunch and finished a photo project that I'll get online soon.

The next Wednesday we won another damned trivia night.  Even without DC's help.  So will run the next one, which could very well be the last.

The Friday that week I went to Chrissie's for dinner.  She cooked a really nice pumpkin, gnochhi and sage dish, and for once we actually watched a movie (usually we talk about watching a movie but then just end up chatting all evening).  So watched Independence Day.

Saturday Chrissie brought up her steam cleaner to attack the bathroom.  

I'm too short to see this so never actually knew how bad it had gotten

So I made lunch (as you do).  I cooked up a bit of a hanami lunch - teriyaki chicken wings, tuna sushi and okonomiyaki.  There was heaps of food and Serena had been planning to have lunch with Kit so invited both of them up as well.

This was my first ever attempt at sushi!  It turned out pretty well

Chrissie finished up in the bathroom later in the afternoon, and Zac mowed the lawn.

On Sunday I went to pick up the sweetie from the airport.  And sorted Zac's Lego which Chrissie had brought up.

Monday I wore new jeans to work.  But backing up a little.  I am thoroughly sick and tired of paying a fortune for Jeanswest jeans that only last a year.  And I hate that you can't get decent quality demin in girls jeans anymore.  Why don't they make girls jeans in *real* demin and not that thin crappy stuff that is the only thing you can get now??  #hate  Even at 40% off, Jeanswest jeans are still pretty expensive.  So I thought screw this, and tried somewhere cheaper.  I tried Target first, but there was only like one style of jeans there that weren't already ripped to shreds.  wtf??  What idiot fashion designer thought that would ever be fashionable??  At least the idiots that wear jeans like that will look back at photos of themselves and wonder what in the world they were thinking.  Suckers.  So nothing at Target so tried Kmart.  Found some clearance jeans that were $7.  Each.  And they were more comfortable that the Jeanswest jeans as they have a slightly higher cut.  The next day I took them to get tailored and they were having a special - $10 jeans hemming.  So for $68 I got four pairs of jeans in the right size.  Normally that would be the cost of *one* pair of jeans.  So even if these cheap ones only last a quarter as long, I'll still be ahead.

Thursday we went down to see the two day old chickies!

Friday the sweetie and I went into town for dinner.  We ended up at Jamie's Italian, which I'd never actually been to before.  The service was pretty slow but the food was delicious.

This crispy squid was crunchy and delicious

These polenta chips weren't bad, but quite heavy.  Nothing like the awesomeness of the polenta chips we had at Pandanus on Lord Howe Island in 2007.

Stu's Pumpkin Panzerotti.  I only got the smallest of mouthfuls and then got distracted by the waiter, shoulda had a bit more.

This spaghetti carbonara was sooo tasty.  It's making me hungry just looking at it.

Salted caramel and chocolate sundae

After dinner (it was getting a bit late), Stu took me around to finish off the night shots for my photo project.

Saturday we had Nat and Andrew over for hanami lunch take two.  Same menu basically, although sushi options modified slightly for the fussy eaters :P

Okonomiyaki (Lisa's recipe)

We chatted all afternoon and then put on Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade which was fun.

In the evening the sweetie and I watched The Silence of the Lambs, which I hadn't seen in years and Stu had never seen.

Sunday was more food shopping, and more Lego sorting, with a roast dinner thrown in as well.

Also yesterday we realised that our sewage pipes were blocked.

Oh crap.

Literally.

So called Six Star Hot Water this morning and the same dude who replaced our hot water system came out and brought an eel.  He dug through a big clump of roots and everything started flowing again.  He said we could spend $5-10k getting it all dug up and fixed, or just spend the few hundred dollars every couple of years to get it cleared with an eel.  So we'll probably end up doing that.

Other than that, today was just Lego sorting.  In fact I only left the house to go hack a portal.  Step count will be a bit sad today.

Oh, and I blogged.  Finally.