I clocked my phone last night.

Ten thousand photos taken on my phone in two and a half years (although a number of those were on my last phone that were ported over to the new one).

!

Work has been super stressful the last little while.  On Friday night stayed back a little trying to resolve a problem for someone, which I did, so that was a relief leading into the weekend.  In fact I was just packing up to go when EffanC called to see if we wanted to go out for dinner.  Sounded great!  So we went into Mezzalira.  I'd never actually been there before.  At C's suggestion we had the five course degustation menu with matched wines.  On my!  So delicious.  A really great meal.

Pan seared scallops with smoked eel and jerusalem artichoke

Tortellini in sage butter

Mushroom risotto with truffle oil

Steak!

Lemon tart

Saturday was a nice quiet day at home.

In the evening we went to the Ha Ha Bar for drinks for Kit's birthday.  It's not the sort of place that's really designed for that sort of gathering though - it's more a restaurant than a bar, so they say they do table service, but if we'd waited for table service we never would have gotten drinks.  And when I went to order some nibbles they said they'd come over and take food orders, but they never did so didn't end up getting food.  Anyway things settled down a bit when we all just went to the bar for drinks, and several platters of fries were ordered.  Pool at the Lighthouse afterwards.  A good fun evening.

Today was another quiet day of getting things done around the house.  In the afternoon we went for a walk to hack some portals and do some missions, then did a little food shopping.  Cooked honey mustard chicken for dinner.  Yum!

So nothing of any particular significance for May 16 this year.

Tonight when I went to bed I'd pretty much stopped sniffling.  And I was totally fine today.  Who's ever heard of a cold that lasts less than 24 hours?? Maybe I wasn't actually sick but had some sort of hayfever-like reaction ??

Weird.

Started looking at Turkey photos tonight, since it's coming up on a year since I went.  But ten minutes in and I was already overwhelmed. hrmm.  That was the trip where I smashed my old lens, and had awful trouble trying to get it to focus, especially in low light at the beginning of the trip, but also in daylight later on.  I was surprised how many of my Gallipoli photos were out of focus when I went looking for pics the other day.  Sad times.

So was planning to do more photo culling tonight.  But after cooking dinner, watching two episodes of Rake (we finished season 2), downloading photos and backing up my computer, suddenly it's 10pm and I haven't done anything.

And if it wasn't clear, the links to my travel blog that I'm putting in now have pictures.  Not that anyone other than my mother (maybe my brother) will likely bother to click through.

This morning I finished scanning all my analogue photos at 600dpi.  At least I think I have.  I'd have to double check everything, but pretty sure I'm done.

But I don't think I'll ever fully label my holiday photos from the digital age.  At least with them geotagged all I need to do is load them into GeoSetter or some such and it instantly shows me where a photo was taken.  Then it's easy enough to research on the internet what it was.

Also today I realised it was three years ago today that I took off for my "Eurasia 2012" holiday.  So I've been frantically labelling photos for the blog entries.  I doubt I'll get much past Israel/Jordan in this round, as it simply takes too long to choose photos to display, and I've only culled down the first two weeks of that two month holiday.  It's hard work I tells ya!

So anyway, three years ago today I spent two days getting to the other side of the planet all by myself.

So a pretty quiet weekend.  Went out to the club yesterday and helped de-nail all the planking ripped up from around the pool.  Today was just scanning photos from the nineties and not much else.

I cooked some lamb shanks in the slow cooker today.  The meat was great but the sauce was way too watery.  Need to use less water, more flour and just rotate them more often I think.  ie, I need to keep practising.

Oh, and booze revooze - watched a few episodes of The Katering Show again.  Sooo silly but funny.

Yet another week goes by.

Thursday: after yet another night of Wednesday night insomnia, didn't have the energy to stay at drinks, so went home and had a tv dinner and watched Tangled (which was pretty good).

Friday: headed out to the club.  Pulled out the fridge that had never worked on 240V and did some jigsaw.  Quite a few people came up for happy hour which was nice.

Saturday: more stuff around the van, and did some hazard reduction, more jigsaw, and happy hour again with everyone in the evening.

Sunday: continued hazard reduction, came home around lunch time.  Had a pretty quiet afternoon.  Dinner at EffanC's, watched The Prestige.

Monday: nothing much.  Scanned a hundred photos from 1998, sorted finances, went for a walk with the sweetie, cooked an epic potato bake, and some veggies, watched a couple of episodes of Rake.  Got annoyed at channel 7 which was off the air until about 9:20pm.  But did enjoy the RAIN!

Friday: Scotch Malt Whiskey Society tasting.  A lovely evening of nice whiskeys and great friends.

Saturday: went out to the club.  Chilled out, had a nice dinner by C&G, a bit of fun with cards (I might have won the plastic spoons - not the wooden spoons that the loser got :) ) and a lazy Sunday morning.

Sunday: not a lot.

We've watched three episodes so far of Rake on Netflix.  Netflix does seem to be working well, despite our crappy internet.  And I think the sweetie likes Rake heh.  

Busy couple of days at work.  

The housework is sliding a bit.

But I did also finish re-geotagging my Hong Kong and Taipei photos.  I can't actually remember even doing it last year.  But I must have.  Surely??  I think I'm getting dementia. :(

Thursday night: after Wednesday night's insomnia I got to sleep quite quickly.  But then I woke up at around 3am on Friday morning and never got back to sleep.  Actually I lie.  I got up at 6:15 and made up a potato bake, and went back to bed while it cooked, and got about half an hour more sleep.

Friday: got home, spent three quarters of an hour packing the car up, then headed down the coast.  Arrived a bit after eight, fired up the spa, then realised the Sandy Foot pizza place closes at 8pm :(  So had potato bake for dinner.  Then went in the spa and stayed up entirely too late.  

Saturday: had a very slow start.  We might have all been a bit seedy.  Well ok not all of us.  D and F were suitably restrained and were only a bit tired heh.  I cooked some bacon and eggs for brunch, then we headed up to Myrtle Beach for a swim.  The water was nice and it was all very pleasant until we all got a bit out of our depth and then struggled to get back.  I managed ok, but I could see how easy it would be to panic.  Stu and C got a lot more stuck but were ok in the end.  Had some bubbly and some fruit on the beach, then had another quick dip before heading back.  

Went into Bateman's Bay for dinner - to the Little Restaurant and Bar.  We'd been there before, and the food was just as good this time.  I had a very nice wagyu steak.  Went for a bit of a walk to walk off dinner, but ended up getting some ice cream for dessert.  Went in the spa again, but didn't stay up as late.

Sunday: fairly early start.  Headed out around 9:15 and headed down to Armand's Beach.  But the weather closed in, so after a bit of a swim, we adjourned to shelter to have some bubbly and cheese (too cold for fruit).  Headed back to the beach a bit later for another quick swim.  Got some ice cream in Bermagui at the Gelati Clinic.  Then headed back to the house.  Chillaxed for a while, then ordered some pizzas for dinner.  Then we danced for a while to C's music before getting in the spa.  But after a long day we were pretty tired and were all in bed by 10pm.  Silly really.

Monday: had a biggish breakfast of bacon, eggs, mushrooms and zucchini hash browns, then cleaned up the house then headed home.  I got part way through unpacking and doing some washing, before heading up to Mount Rogers to kill a layered blue field (good for the step count though).  Then a quiet evening just gathering ourselves.

Tuesday: back to reality.  Downloaded all my photos, but haven't chosen any for the blog yet.  This will probably get updated at some point in the future :)

Friday, July 23rd 2004...

FQ Topic: Decorated

FQ1: How have you decorated the walls of your living space (photos, posters, works of art, etc.)?
Not much.  We're total slackers.  We've been in this house over six years and we've only hung like half a dozen things.  Actually Stu has.  All I've got up is a Lego mosaic.  Most of the walls are still bare.

FQ2: How have you decorated your body, both intentionally (piercings, tattoos, etc.) and unintentionally (wounds, scars, etc.)?
I have my ears pierced.  And a few small scars.

FQ3: How have you decorated your computer's "desktop"? Post a snapshot if you want.
My computer at work cycles through several holiday's worth of photos at random.  At home I have a photo of the earth at equinox 2013 taken from APOD.  I used to use my own photos but most of them aren't any good.

FQ PROJECT: Decorate your blog today! Create some art with an online Etch-a-Sketch (like the one here) and post a snapshot of your efforts (or, if you're not an Etch-a-Sketch fan, draw us a picture using whatever you want).
Ha.  I'm not creative at all.  So here's a sneak preview of what I'm working on at the moment.  Art without the creativity!!

Compare with last time ...

Realised yesterday morning that I've somehow managed to delete the resized and geotagged copy of our Hong Kong and Taipei photos from last year.  Dunno how or when.  And I'm not holding out much hope that they'll be on my backup disks, because I do mirroring and any deletions will be gone from them too :(  So that totally sucks because it means I'll have to geotag all my photos all over again :(  At least it wasn't the masters I suppose.  I should have done a dad and made 17 backups.

Also, we finished watching Veronica Mars season two last night, and started on season three.

Vacuumed the pool today and went in it.  It was pretty cold, under 24C, but very refreshing on such a hot day.