Wednesday I turned off our old proxies (finally).  We'd had them for six years, and while I'm mostly happy to see the back of the pain they caused, it was still a little sad.  Friday I completely cleared them out of the environment, so even if we turned them back on, they wouldn't work.  Actually it was a mostly cleaning sort of a week.

Thursday night the little brother came to stay for a couple of days (training day at the museum on Saturday).  We got pizzas and chillaxed.

Friday was a swim night (after I cooked a pasta carbonara for dinner, and the brother couldn't help himself - he had to mow our front lawn hehe - but even so, a whole lawn of flowers survived).

Saturday the little brother left.  We did some shopping and had lunch out.  In the afternoon we went out to the club for an Oktoberfest dinner which was nice.  And the same couple who brought the lambs last time had brought two orphaned joeys this time.  One was only just getting its fur, but the other was hopping around when not curled up in a towel pouch.  He was so freakin cute, and also happy to be picked up and held.  Too cute!

Today I've been alternating between re-typing dad's photo labels (he lost the files for the first thousand photos, fortunately there's still a hard copy), and cleaning out the pantry and spice/tea/coffee cupboard.  They certainly look neater, but there's still a lot of stuff on the counter tops that I want to avoid putting back in the pantry if I can.  Even if that means using it up.  Which is a problem considering the salt content of most of it.

This time I really did!  But more on that later.

So it all started at drinks on Thursday night.  Steve and Simon asked if I wanted to go to the snow on the weekend.  I said sure, so long as my planned upgrade on Friday arvo went ok.

Well Friday arvo came along and my upgrade went badly.  Really badly.  Beg for help from *real* comms guys to help fix badly.  But the worst part was knowing that Steve was waiting for me.  I tried and tried and tried to get them to go without me, but they wouldn't so I just got more and more stressed.  It was an awful awful night.  Then I was so flustered I forgot the cable for my GPS, and I thought I'd left the Android at work, when turns out I'd actually left it at home.  So I pretty much lost it.  Fortunately the sweetie found the Android and was able to hack portals to keep my Sojourner badge going.  Phew.  But the GPS not being chargable really sucked.  It did the whole first day and til about 10:30 the second.  Sadmaking.

I was so stressed I couldn't eat anything on the way down Friday night, so I didn't actually have any dinner.  I think I would have thrown it up if I'd tried.  (and a very meat-heavy lunch certainly didn't help).  Woke up about 1am hungry, but got through it.

We stayed at a guy from work's place.  $30/night for an apartment in Jindabyne.  Pretty awesome value.  And I woke up naturally both mornings - much better than being woken up at 4am and being a zombie most of the morning.

So onto the snow.

It was very warm, and the snow was quite slushy in the morning, and even worse in the afternoon.

Day one we started at Front Valley, headed over to Mount P for a couple of runs, then I left the boys and did Pleasant Valley, then Guthega, then back to Blue Cow for lunch.  After lunch we did Roller Coaster, up Ridge, Excelerator, then by myself again Summit, back across to Pleasant Valley, Copperhead Road, Pretty Valley, Interceptor, then back to Telemark and done for the day.

Olympic from Mount P

Riding the Mount P triple

Main ranges from near the top of Mount P

Pleasant Valley

Riding the Pleasant Valley quad

Main ranges from Guthega

Guthega Pondage

Milk and pie.  Don't even talk to me about how much sodium is in that thing.

Obligatory selfie

Day two we started at Smiggins, headed across via Interceptor to Roller Coaster, then I left the boys and went down to Guthega, back to Blue Cow, Pleasant Valley (the GPS conked out at this point), over to Mount P, back up and down the Quad Express.  At this point I thought I'd aim for the top of Telemark to go down that way back to Smiggins (from Mid station), but I must have taken a wrong turn somehow I got stuck somewhere I really didn't want to be - possibly in Wine Glass.  I got part way down and there was pretty much nowhere to go.  I had to take my skis off to get down.  Which really mucked around with my confidence.  I trudged back to Smiggins and collapsed in the cafe for lunch.  After three quarters of an hour I felt better again so did some runs in Smiggins while waiting for the boys to get back.  Was there for well over an hour an a half waiting and doing the same few runs.  Whoops.  

Ridge quad

I told you several times this view never gets old for me

Happy Valley from Mount P

A bit after three I found a nice spot under a tree to sit and watch the world go by.  And I built a snowman.  Only a little one.  But kinda cute.

Taking a photo on my phone and the battery gave out and it turned off.  hrmm no way to contact the boys.  So cleared some space on random camera (it was full) and got some photos on it.  Then headed down to see if I could find electricity, or at least wait at the bar.  Turns out the boys had just gotten there, so that was good timing.

Went back to the apartment to tidy up and pack up, then came home.

Took ages to sort out the GPS tracks.  I did fifty runs according to the Perisher dashboard.  Day one I covered fifty five kilometres up and down.  Day two nineteen kilometres before the battery died.

Fun times.  But my everything hurts.

OK not really.

I've only finished scanning three of mum's photo albums.  She has dozens more.  But I've finished until she can come down with more for me to scan.

In the meantime, I'll start scanning the thousand photos of dad's that got lost somewhere along the line (which, considering how obsessed he was with backups, is very surprising).

So I've got a new blog.  Well, subblog.

For a while I've thought about my Australian holiday blogging.  They never seemed major enough to warrant a whole new subblog like my overseas trips did.  So I embedded them into my main blog.  But now I'm scanning all mum's photos, and there's trips there that I'd like to blog, but don't want to clutter up my main blog.  So I decided to create an Australian Holidays blog.  There's already a few trips I'll probably migrate into it, and I'll also start blogging some of my childhood holidays there (well posting photos anyway, and any memories that I still have of them).

Check it out!

http://kazza.id.au/oz_holidays/

Just some more photos gathering dust that need blogging.

These were all the dried up paint-by-numbers paints I threw out.  In February.

This was taken during a walk around Lake Ginninderra. In May.

Italian thick white hot chocolate in a Hug Mug.  OMFG soooo good!

After a very long lunch to farewell our team as it was, I built this.

We brought this box of Cadbury Creme Eggs home from Junee with us (they'd been sitting in David's pantry for about five years).  We're still getting through them.

Stu got kitty snuggles with George

This was my lemon meringue mush a while back.  It tasted great but the recipe needs work.

This time I got George (and Petal) snuggles

Holy beer it's your birthday!

We had a bourbon night a few weeks ago.  They all had fairly unique smells but tasted relatively similar.

Cute little flowers we saw on the walk up the Owl to complete a mission

Awww

I totally love daffodils

Just some of the weather-related pictures that have been accumulating for the past few months..

Some morning fog in June

This winter *felt* very cold, although the pool only froze over a few times - and only once or twice thick enough to hold things

Snow out past Queanbeyan

And snow in Belconnen for TJ's farewell (didn't get any good photos of it - taking photos through a rain-soaked window is difficult - who knew?)

Had a reasonably quiet weekend.  Stu has been sick since last week, so didn't go out Friday night.  

Saturday was the club AGM, but we only went out for it and came home again after.  I cooked duck for dinner and we watched The China Syndrome, which Stu had never seen.

Today Stu studied and I did jigsaws.  Correction.  The same jigsaw, just the other side.  All will be revealed soon.  And housework.  Always housework.  And started setting up another blog for all my Australian holidays (since I'm scanning all my old holiday photos and would be good to get some of them online).  Tonight I did a lamb roast (we have sooo much food in the fridge it's not funny) and we watched Highlander.  I don't think we've actually seen it since we went to Scotland in 2010.  Been theres! :)

Twenty One. Again.

Today I turned twenty one again. Supposedly now I should know the meaning of life, the universe, and everything. Or some such nonsense.

Last weekend when the little brother was here, he asked me about the photos he'd just sent me - photos he'd just had scanned of my 21st birthday. I did actually have the originals of the prints, which I'd scanned a couple of years ago. But it was still fun, and I said it was actually pretty scary how many of the things in the photo I still had. Then he said I should recreate the photo. I laughed, but then had a think about it, and for the most part decided it wouldn't be too hard to do.

So over the past few days I've collected together all that remains of my 21st birthday presents, as well as some of the other things in my room at the time.

Here they are!

An ongoing project of mine is scanning photos.  At the moment I'm scanning Mum's photos of our trip to Western Australia in 1984.  This morning I scanned this photo of the Leaning Tower of Albany - a replica of the Leaning Tower of Pisa in a guy's back yard.

At the time, the tower was two years old - it apparently having been built in 1982.

This is what the tower and the dude who built it looked like in 2006.

And this is what the tower looked like in 2011.

And here's Google Street View of it in 2015.

So the dude who built it, Aldo Scamozzi, is apparently still alive, and still living in the same house.  The National Library even interviewed him once.

Fun times!

So since the start of the weekend I've been to Sydney and back.

On Friday night I headed up to Sydney, listening to podcasts for the drive.  Got to Mum's place and saw her photos of her recent trip to New Zealand.  Stayed the night - first person to sleep on her new sofa bed, which was actually fairly comfortable.  

In the morning we headed to my old flat to have a look at it - turns out the estate agents haven't fixed *anything* that was broken from last time.  Grunt.  Then had a body corporate meeting.  Same problems that have been plaguing the place for the last fourteen years as it turns out.  

Came back to mum's place and had a barrumundi lunch, then I headed back home.

Saturday night Stu had slow cooked some lamb shanks that were pretty tasty.

Today was just a bit of stuff around the house, food shopping, cooking dinner (coq au vin!) and Sherlock.