We left work just after lunch on Thursday, as our flight was 4pm.  Two flights for the day - Canberra to Sydney, then Sydney to Brisbane.  So weren't scheduled to arrive in Brisbane til after 7pm.  Then our flight from Sydney to Brisbane was delayed for half an hour due to heavy traffic in Brisbane.  We did three big loops around the coast off Ballina/Tweed Heads.  But to keep us entertained, they announced that Cate Campbell and Emily Seebohm were on the plane, and they wandered down the aisle showing off their medals!  It was amazingly cool!  Got to touch Emily Seebohm's silver and gold medals!  They were very heavy!  But not as shiny as I thought they'd be! heh.  Finally arrived in Brisbane, picked up our hire car then headed out to Chay and David's.  Fairly quiet night.  Only stayed up til 12:30 drinking and chatting :)  But did get to meet their new bird - Ichy - an Indian Ringneck, who is amazingly cool :)

Have I ever mentioned how much I love flying? :)

Pretty clouds over NSW

Sydney shining

Look mum, I can see your house from here!

This dude is taking this plane for a walk

I was quite surprised by the *glass* bottles!

Cate Campbell and her gold medal

Emily Seebohm and her two silver and one gold medal

Cate Campbell and Emily Seebohm on our plane!

The girls had some cool "Australia" luggage

Brisbane Airport

Mine!

After a fairly slow morning, we headed out to Ipswich for lunch and went to the Hog's Breath Cafe for lunch.  I didn't feel like anything too heavy, so had a "side" of caesar salad, and a "side" of curly fries.  Because if you go to the Hog's Breath Cafe you *have* to do curly fries :)   Stu had a pretty awesome "finger food" platter.  On the way back, we stopped in at Dan's to pick up supplies for the rest of the weekend.  Dinner was lots of Eagle Boys pizza.  There was drinking.  There was Buzz.  There was Singstar.  And it was very good.

Finger food platter

Caesar salad and curly fries

Supplies for the weekend

Stu and Ichy

Ichy!

Ichy!

Saturday after a bit of a sleepin (and the sweetie had headed out to meet a friend), C&D and I headed over to the markets next to Orion.  But they were pretty boring, not much there.  So headed into town to wander around South Bank and the markets there.  Was a very lovely wander.  Dinner that night was some roast chicken that we picked up from Chay's mum, along with the kids who were quite sick with the flu.  (David did his "best potatoes in the known universe" which were pretty decent :) ).  Their friend Storm came over after dinner too which was pretty cool.  There were mojitos.  There was drinking.  There was Buzz.  There was Singstar.  And it was very good.

Near Orion

Southbank

Brisbane from Southbank

Southbank

Southbank (taking after Japan, much?)

Bored lifesaver. The water looked lovely.  I'd have liked to have gone for a swim.  But I didn't have any swimmers.  And I think they'd have arrested me if I went skinny dipping!

Brisbane from Southbank

Lizard at Southbank

Nepalese pagoda at Southbank

Chookens!

Mojitos!

After a bit of a sleepin, we packed a picnic lunch and headed out to Wivenhoe Dam.  We'd thought of this too late last year which was a bit sad as we would have seen it spilling over.  As it was this year, they'd closed off the viewing area so you couldn't even see the front of the dam.  But I did walk over most of it while the others took photos of me heh.  Dinner was roast pork, along with a stack of pork skin.  But after dinner I started feeling a bit off-colour.  Thought I was coming down with the flu the kids had.  But also felt quite queasy.  Didn't even feel like drinking!  Tragic I know!!  Storm came over again and we played a card game called "Frustration" which I think I'd like to play some more.  There was no Buzz.  There was no Singstar.  There was no more drinking.  And it was very sad.

Wivenhoe Dam

Extra spillway at Wivenhoe Dam

Blue-faced honeyeater

Isn't he a cutie? :)

Wivenhoe Dam

Wivenhoe Dam

Wivenhoe Dam

Wivenhoe Dam

Wivenhoe Dam

Wivenhoe Dam

er..

We'd bought a big bag of purple carrots.  If you boil them, their water turns bright indigo!

The last day is always a quiet day.  Didn't really do anything before heading off with ten baby plecos and three baby guppies in tow at 11:30am.  Pretty uneventful trip home (two flights - Brisbane-Sydney then Sydney-Canberra, and Lake George looks very full!).  After a long weekend of entirely t-shirt weather it was a bit sad to get home to the freezing cold.  

Jaffas at the Brisbane Qantas club

Citrus lemon shortbread on the plane

Northern beaches of Sydney

Drinks with Libby Trickett at the Qantas Club in Sydney

A-380 taking off

Been to a couple of parties down there

Sunset over Botany Bay

I've never seen Lake George completely full!

Home!!

I dumped all the fish into the two-foot tank.  The next morning (Tuesday) I couldn't see any of the new fish at all - alive or dead.  Wednesday morning I saw one of the plecos swimming around.  So who knows if any others have survived.

Also fought the infection for a couple of days, but I think I have beaten it and not really gotten sick.

As always, same time next year guys, it was fun :):):)

So adorable!

Although one of them is hiding in the corner most of the time, I'm a little worried about it...

Hopefully these ones will have better luck breeding that the last batch.  Which only took up the tank for ten years!

Update: the fish died :(:(

The cafe is super dog-friendly - they even have a section on the menu for dogs!

There was Donkey Kong to be played (sadly the batteries were going, so couldn't see really well enough to play it properly)

The usual suspects (lots of others too, just not great photos heh)

I had a cheesy spinach calzone which was yummy

Damien had an enormous bowl of cheesy wedges

The service was a bit sporadic.  Actually it was completely inefficient and some people had finished eating by the time other people got food.  But they did very nicely split the bill up, even though it said on their menus they don't do that.  So that was nice of them.

We sat outside which was lovely in the sun, although a little chilly when clouds came over.

Lovely lunch catchup, happy birthday Damien! :)

It just puzzled me, that's all, what the logic for that decision was...  Any vegetarians/vegans out there want to comment?

First things first though - a phone lineup!

(mine is the crappy old 3GS on the end, Fiona's is the "phablet" at the large end of the scale)

We ordered rice noodles with vegetables and bean curd..

.. flaming chicken with onions, shallots and capsicum in hoisin sauce..

.. braised squid with lemon grass and chili..

.. and caramelised pork..

All excellent!

Saturday hanging around the house for the most part, except to go shopping in the afternoon.

Then off to Mishi's for a games night.  We sat and chatted for a good while, and eventually had a game of Ticket to Ride.  I won that, but everyone else tied with the exact same score :)

Today was another day hanging around the house.  I spent some time on a 555 unit phizz torus, but it quickly became un-fun as I didn't realise when I cut the paper so small that putting it together would be really hard due to the lack of friction of bigger pieces of paper :(  Seriously considering gluing it together to hold it together while assembling :/  Also did some geotagging of holiday photos.

The sweetie cooked an awesome roast pork belly dinner, and we had Josh and Ally and Soph over to share it.  They put on Akira after dinner but I just couldn't stay awake :(

And that's the end of that..

Strangely enough, the three days at work were actually pretty good.  

But I just didn't get enough time at home :(

Out again for dinner tonight for Annie's birthday.  It was a very rushed affair, as we got there ten minutes late, by which time the kids had mostly eaten, and the girls wanted to get out of there as soon as possible, but didn't want to go home with Stu so Annie could stay and chat to us.  Yah.

Oh and Ginger & Spice Gungahlin: nice enough food but pretty terrible service (just confused and disorganised).

The whole lot is in the recycle bin now :)

Other than that, had a lovely day.  Went into town and had breakfast with the sweetie at Cafe Essen.  Walked around Civic for a little while.  Then out to Jamo to do our food shopping.  Was a really nice morning with the sweetie.

Came back and turned on the heater and had a nice quiet afternoon doing a mix of computer things and non computer things (like unpacking - still haven't finished that!).  I put a beef stew in the slow cooker and it's been bubbling away all afternoon.  Can't wait!

Because on days that I don't drink enough, I can't stand the idea of eating salty food. 

So I wonder which is worse for your blood pressure/kidneys.. not enough water or too much salt?  Probably both ;)

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..