Eighteen months ago today we explored the Scottish Highlands north and west of Fort William.

So yeah.  Work.  Busy.  Slightly insane actually, and only going to get worse in the next little while :(

Friday arvo went to the Wig and Pen with Tristan and Gaelian.  And got absolutely drenched in the downpour on the way back to the car.  

Saturday.  All day at work (from 5:30am!).  Was there really just to keep an eye on things since our monitoring was down.  So used the opportunity to make good progress on the trivia night.  So the morning was all good, but there were problems in the afternoon and people disappeared before they were fixed which was not happy making.  In the end I passed things off and went home, as was going out for dinner.  

Went to Josh and Ally's for dinner.  They're in stumbling distance which is pretty cool.  Had a lovely roast chicken dinner, and fell in love with their cat Rosie - a "burmilla" - half burmese half chinchilla.  Friendliest cat I've ever met.  Totally wanted to take her home.

Today was a bit of a slow start.  Did a bit of holiday research, but really not much today.  Went to Annie's for a bit to help fix their internet.  

Definitely need more weekend.  Felt completely robbed on Saturday.  Missed out on seeing Potty and the family who came over in the afternoon.  Or going to Jindabyne with a group of people from work.  Le sigh.

Pretty uneventful week.  I think.  I think I was pretty busy at work.  I counted up my todo list and realised I'm in the middle of thirteen different projects at the moment.  Yikes.

This weekend I had a relatively productive Saturday.  Well sort of.  Did a few days of UK photo sorting.  And a bit of cleaning.  And some work.  And mostly cleared news feeds.  But mostly jigsaw.

Saturday night we went to Mishi's for our semi-regular catchup/games night, which was lovely as always.  First we played Pass the Popcorn (Thrills and Chills Edition).  Which would have been more fun as the regular edition.  I don't know enough about "scary" movies.  Then we played Way Back When in History, which was an American history board game where you answer questions and move your way around the board.  Most of the questions were completely basic, but a few things we'd never heard of.  I think Stu and I won in the end.  It wasn't very well thought through in terms of game play (well maybe it was, but the instructions certainly didn't help).  Like it said if you land on someone's token move to the next available space.  But there were some spaces that were "go back one space". But if someone was there you would end up in an infinite loop.  Silly.

Today was pretty much just jigsaw all morning.  And went and saw Excalibur at the Film and Sound archives (which I quite enjoyed, despite a faded and dirty print).  And went to Dumpling Inn for dinner.  And did our food shopping.  Might have gone to the multicultural festival but Stu was not up for crowds of people.

So this is the jigsaw.  Nearly finished.  Maybe a couple of hundred pieces left.  Should knock it over tomorrow.  Then can get back to regularly scheduled programming..

Super busy day today.  So much to do that I didn't know where to start, so didn't achieve nearly as much (I'm like the exit of a building.  If there's a steady stream of people going through the exit, everything flows through nicely.  But if too many people come at once and start jamming up the exit then less people exit cause they're all trying to get out at once.  Give me too much to do at once and less gets done).  I did organise the todo list a bit tho :/

Bit of progress on jigsaw and trivia night.

Went and saw Hugo tonight.

Unfortunately for me I heard too many people say how good it was.  Because whenever people do that I start to expect too much.  And then I enjoy it less.

Don't get me wrong, it was a lovely film, it's just it got over hyped in my brain and I was expecting miracles.  Doh.

We saw it in 3D as recommended.  And it was nicely done.  But really.  3D?  Meh.  I'm still not convinced, even by a movie that's supposed to be one of the better ones.

So anyway.

Had a light dinner at Gus' beforehand.  

Vegetarian nachos for the sweetie

And "Miti paigani" for me.  Not really sure what I was expecting, but it really wasn't this.  Oh well.

* You believe that stubbies can be either drunk or worn. 

* You think it's normal to have a leader called Julia. 

* You've made a bong out of your garden hose rather than use it for something illegal such as watering the garden. 

* You understand that the phrase 'a group of women wearing black thongs' refers to footwear and may be less alluring than it sounds. 

* You pronounce Melbourne as 'Mel-bin'. 

* You believe the 'l' in the word 'Australia' is optional. 

* You can translate: 'Dazza and Shazza played Acca Dacca on the way to Maccas.' 

* You believe it makes perfect sense for a nation to decorate its highways with large fibreglass bananas, prawns and sheep. 

* You call your best friend 'a total bastard' but someone you really, truly despise is just 'a bit of a bastard'. 

* You think 'Woolloomooloo' is a perfectly reasonable name for a place. 

* You're secretly proud of our killer wildlife. 

* You believe it makes sense for a country to have a $1 coin that's twice as big as its $2 coin. 

* You understand that 'Wagga Wagga' can be abbreviated to 'Wagga' but 'Woy Woy' can't be called 'Woy'. 

* You believe that cooked-down axle grease makes a good breakfast spread. You've also squeezed it through Vita Wheats to make little Vegemite worms. 

* You believe all famous Kiwis are actually Australian, until they stuff up, at which point they again become Kiwis. 

* Beetroot with your Hamburger... Of course. 

* You know that certain words must, by law, be shouted out during any rendition of the Angels' song 'Am I Ever Gonna See Your Face Again' 

And "Living next door to Alice". 

* You believe that the confectionery known as the Wagon Wheel has become smaller with every passing year. 

* You wear ugg boots outside the house. 

* You believe that every important discovery in the world was made by an Australian but then sold off for a pittance. 

* You believe that the more you shorten someone's name the more you like them. 

* Whatever your linguistic skills, you find yourself able to order takeaway fluently in every Asian language. 

* You understand that 'excuse me' can sound rude,

While 'scuse me' is always polite. 

* You know what it's like to swallow a fly, on occasion via your nose. 

* You know it's not summer until the steering wheel is too hot to handle and a seat belt buckle becomes a pretty good branding iron. 

* Your biggest family argument over the summer concerned the rules for beach cricket. 

* You shake your head in horror when companies try to market what they call 'Anzac cookies'. 

* You still think of Kylie as 'that girl off Neighbours'. 

* When working on a bar, you understand male customers will feel the need to offer an excuse whenever they order low-alcohol beer. 

* You know how to abbreviate every word, all of which usually end in -o: arvo, combo, garbo, kero, lezzo, metho, milko, muso, rego, servo, smoko, speedo, righto, goodo etc. 

* You know that there is a universal place called "woop woop" located in the middle of nowhere...no matter where you actually are. 

* You know that none of us actually drink Fosters beer, because it tastes like piss. But we let the world think we do. Because we can. 

* You have some time in your life slept with Aeroguard on in the summer. Maybe even as perfume. 

* You've only ever used the words - tops, ripper, sick, mad, rad, sweet 

- to mean good. And then you place 'bloody' in front of it when you really mean it. 

* You know that the barbecue is a political arena; the person holding the tongs is always the boss and usually a man. And the women make the Salad. 

* You say 'no worries' quite often, whether you realise it or not. 

* You understand what no wucking furries means. 

* You've drank your tea/coffee/milo through a Tim Tam. 

* You own a Bond's chesty. In several different colours. 

* You know that some people pronounce Australia like "Straya" and that's ok. 

* And you will immediately forward this list to other Australians, here and overseas, realising that only they will understand.

Happy invasion day ..

Three people died in that car :(:(  I'll be curious to know what happened.  Did the driver of the truck fall asleep momentarily?  Did he swerve to avoid something and lose control?  Was there any sort of mechanical fault?

But the most unsettling thing for me personally - my brother was just minutes behind this.  It could have been him under that truck...

Edit 22.2.20:  Googled this - the truck driver Vincent Samuel George was drug affected and fatigued and sentenced to jail.

I had this realisation that the thing I wanted to do most today was documentation.  Maybe because everything else on my todo list was less pleasurable heh ;)  Maybe it's because I realised that out of the eighteen large "client" projects I've worked on since I started there, seven of them are current and I'm working on them at the moment.  That's enough to make my head spin just thinking about it!

Documentation is something I can do quietly by myself, don't have to talk to useless vendors, don't have to talk to other people (except to ask the odd question), I can just *do it* and actually achieve something at the end of the day.

Just for fun, here's the time lapse I put together of the jigsaw I did yesterday...

Then spent pretty much the whole day cleaning the house.  Oops.  Finished up like a quarter of an hour before people started turning up.

So yeah, four Davids, a Neil and a Simon came.  We started off by playing some rounds of Buzz until everyone arrived.  Then DC arrived with pizzas, and we watched The Big Lebowski, followed by Blazing Saddles.  I struggled to keep awake through Blazing Saddles ;)   My favourite part was when they zoomed out of the fight scene to show the Warner Bros backlot.  Very cool :)

Then most people went home, but Doc and Windy stayed for a bit of Singstar (and I set a couple of high scores for Poison and Heaven is a Place on Earth :) ).  Slightly late night.  Oops.