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Lego BrickExpo 2010

So way back in August (!) Canberra (the Southern Cross Club at Woden) hosted "BrickExpo".

I went by myself but saw Neil driving up as I was walking to the queue (which was half way up the street) so we went in together (and had a beer afterwards).

My new camera was less than a day old at this point so it was a good chance to try it out. I didn't have a great deal of success. On automatic mode, the camera focuses in odd places (usually the foreground) and not the subject of the picture. So didn't get great pictures (that didn't stop me taking hundreds anyway!). Also discovered that you can take a heap of photos with the flash in quick succession, but after a certain point it takes *ages* to charge up the flash again.

And it was epic crowded!! Stu would have hated it. My patience was tested. Little kids don't understand that their fat heads get in the way of people trying to take photos.

There was lots of "hey I've got that set!!". Maybe I should do a table next year with all the Harry Potter or Toy Story Lego (there was lots of Toy Story Lego this year) or all the Classic Space Lego sets.

The highlight for me was a custom Hogwarts Castle. The owner of that castle asked me about photographing Lego (cause it can be tricky with flash reflection) so showed him a shot I took and he was impressed. Someone also asked him about insuring Lego, to which I contributed that it's actually really hard - I asked once!

When I was your age

So Dave dragged me along to George Hrab's show in King O'Malley's today. I'd heard some of his stuff before (including the song "When I was Your Age" down the coast one time) and bits and pieces of podcasts. But as always with these things, it's always super cool seeing and hearing someone you've only ever heard electronically before.

He did a bunch of songs for a while, then did an "Ask George" bit, then a few more songs. At around 3pm I think he finished up, but then he hung around the bar and chatted to people for ages, and then later on played a few more songs to the few of us that were left.

All in all it was a lot of fun and very cool :)

Some other bits and pieces from the past few days

Tried out Mario Kart online. Fun, but not the same as playing with people in the same room. Plus you don't get the bots to play against, and the power up thingies don't seem to be as good.

After being home for two months I have *finally* seen all my UK holiday photos. All 12000 of them. !

We accidentally killed a bird the other day. There's a big tub outside that had filled with water over recent weeks. The bird must have been trying to get a drink and slipped in and drowned. Sad sad sad.

This is a fun watch to prove that nothing new ever happens in soap operas.

Got MRTG working again on the router and three pcs. Although the router did lose its config after we kicked it the other morning which was quite annoying.

I made the RiotACT with yesterday's pictures!

Tonight's Glee (Furt) started off a bit lame but the second half was pretty awesome.

And because blog posts seem a little empty without pics.. here's some dramatic clouds taken a month or so ago..

Deathly Hallows (Part 1)

So last Friday night we went to see Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (part 1) (found a single person to take the third seat so we could book them, thanks Dave).

Not bad. Not hugely great, but decent.

What I did really like about it was that it was fairly faithful to the book. The movies haven't been this faithful to the books since the first couple of movies.

Of course that meant it dragged on while they're wandering round the forest. Which was a major complaint in the book.

No explanation offered as to how the Burrow was magically rebuilt since the last movie. No pun intended ;)

The ridiculous "coincidence" scene was thankfully dropped (where they *just happen* to be around some people they know and get some useful information).

Anyways..

Six months or so to go...

Dodger's Death

Oh Ann Polley how I miss you!! I really really must track that girl down.. I never realised (because I didn't *get* people) what a kindred spirit she was til years later...

Who could forget such gems as "The Boogey Man" (The boogey man is gonna getcha, the boogey man is coming today, the boogey man is gonna getcha, just keep outta his way) or the Suicide Song (Are you going to end your life, arsenic ratsac and cyanide, or find a cliff and jump at low tide (don't remember the next line)).

But what I did find tonight was "Dodger's Death". Written in around 1989 it fancifully described what might have happened to Dodger..

Coast Weekend

Headed down the coast again this weekend. Some other people were invited but they ended up not coming, so it was just us and Dave.

As usual, very relaxing, doing such things as..

Whale watching from the kitchen window..

Documenting Benny..

Doing a jigsaw..

Going for a walk along the beach..

..in the rain..

Eating lots of pizza.. (we felt a little guilty getting them deliver it when it was *pissing* down with rain from the storm.. oops..!)

And enjoying the spa..

Not much today, as the sweetie needed to get home early.

Slightly quieter weekend

Being on call and all :/ Which fortunately (so far) has been relatively quiet.

Yesterday was Jake's 6th birthday party where I managed to generally avoid people by playing official photographer. And where we watched the clouds roll in. Party was ended abruptly by rain, before all the presents were opened, so headed back to the house to do that.

Today was a nice quiet day at home. Read news feeds, started sorting out our UK bits and pieces for the scrapbook, made lots of panoramas of dams and such things.

Woods Reserve

Scrivener Dam and Molonglo River

Tharwa Bridge

Lambrigg Lookout, Tidbinbilla Road
Lambrigg Lookout on Tidbinbilla Road

Corin Dam

Have pork roasting and watching Masterchef... is making me hungry!!

Home

Well I'm quite convinced that if I stopped blogging and tweeting noone would even notice, much less care. My last tweet was a week ago and only two people commented - my brother and a friend who doesn't have a twitter account. I considered stopping blogging/tweeting altogether. I considered going somewhere else and starting again or going totally private. But I have to keep coming back to the only real reason I blog - it's just too good a diary not to. The years before I started blogging are almost like the dark ages, where I don't really know what I was doing from day to day. I love the chronicle, and going back to find out when I did things. And all the photos. And occasionally reading a random month or search results and reading stuff I'd completely forgotten about. Twitter is a supplement to the blog, and records stuff that doesn't seem blogworthy enough for a whole post. It's crap as an online archive, but regular backups mean I still have an offline record. So as much as I'd like to wait around for someone to miss me, I doubt that'll happen any time soon, and not blogging is hurting me more than anyone else.

So we got back from Japan and the UK on Saturday morning. Managed to survive most of the day before collapsing at 4pm for a couple of hours. Slept ok Saturday night and was basically fine on Sunday. Although did stay up waaaayyy too late on Sunday night. Whoops. Monday was more recovery from Sunday than from jetlag heh.

The holiday was decent enough. The biggest downer was the weather. It was grey most of the time. Rainy a lot. Very little sunlight. Which is pretty depressing as a photographer. And Legoland was closed the last two days we were there, which is when we were planning to go. I, of course, was devastated. It was supposed to be one good thing to finish the trip off on, and instead it was the biggest let down. It really soured my mood about the whole trip and harder to think of the highlights. Which included our first day in London, Harry Potter filming locations, some lovely cathedrals and Scotland. We also missed quite a few things I wanted to see because we didn't have the time. And the things we did see were rushed. But I'm not planning to go back any time soon (except maybe to Edinburgh, and Legoland if I can face it) as there's too many other places in the world to see. I took around 12000 photos (haven't got an exact count yet). I still haven't seen most of them.

Our weeping cherry tree was nice enough to wait til late September to flower this year. It made me very happy to come home and see it in full bloom.

In the afternoon there was a cool rainbow

Tonight there were storms south of us, and Mt Ainslie was all black, the sky was dark, but it was sunny on the foreground. Made for some cool lighting conditions.

Although this spider freaked me out by coming up next to me while I was taking photos out the window.

I spent some time on the weekend building this model of Tower Bridge I picked up in London. It was quite fun to build, but not really a puzzle, as all the pieces are numbered and there's instructions. But a pretty cool result.

And even cooler? An email from Lego on the weekend with a Lego version!!

This of course I must have. The Lego version doesn't have the other piers on the ends, so I'll probably get some extra bricks off BrickLink and make up my own.

For reference, the real thing -

So it was back to work today. I had planned to spend an easy day getting back into things, reading emails etc. And mostly that's what I did. Took til around mid afternoon to get through five weeks of emails. I did get given two projects, both of which are fairly urgent. One will be significantly easier than the other though. And also got caught up in *problems* which are just painful and suck time like you have it to spare.

Epic win of the day was an incorrect shelf price at Toys R Us, which meant I got the Toy Story garbage truck in Lego (RRP $99.99 and $109.99 normally at Toys R Us) for $65.99 !! Epic win!! Only one more Toy Story set to go now. And the new Imperial Shuttle. And the new Diagon Alley. And the Eiffel Tower.

With daylight savings, and a beautiful warm afternoon/evening, it felt like summer. Had a walk, dusting done and two episodes of Survivor watched before 8pm. And the sweetie cooked dinner :)

Queensland, July 2010

Thursday morning (1st July) we had a bit of a sleep in. An hour before we had to leave I thought I'd better pack heh. Left on time and arrived at the airport with plenty of time to spare.

We had an Embraer E190 which is one of the smallest commercial jets flying. Two seats each side of the aisle. And surrounded by screaming kids. Yay. So a very noisy trip. And no music to listen to either - no headphone sockets. There was cloud cover over Eastern Australia so didn't have much of a view so ended up just reading the Virgin Blue magazine which kept me occupied the whole trip.

Our Embraer E-190

This sticky tape on the wing tip was a little disturbing

Canberra

Interior of the E-190

Brisbane

Brisbane Air Traffic Control Tower

Arrived just before 2pm and went and picked up our hire care. Took the scenic route through Brisbane so we could drive past Stu's old flat. There's so many new bridges and tunnels here now it was a little bit freaky!

New overpass being built near the airport

Stu's old flat

Go Between Bridge - opening the next Monday

Got to Chay and David's around 3pm and then we chatted for ages before going on a booze run. Had beer and ordered pizza and ended up watching V for Vendetta. Then the others went to bed and David and I stayed up til a bit after 1am Singstarring.

Friday had a huge sleep in (10:30!!) and got to up to find we'd kept everyone awake :( Decided to go out for coffee and shopping. Went down to the lake for coffee and other drinks. Then went to the Orion shopping centre. I got a couple of Singstars for $20 each. One of these days we'll have to get a Playstation... Had a look in BigW at Lego prices and wandered round looking at other things too. Had a sushi snack. Looked in the Reject Shop. Then did some food shopping in Woollies. Got home at 15:45 oops :)

Boats being raced on the lake

Kailyn on a mall ride

Feeding the guinea pigs

So David and Daemon cooked a roast chicken for dinner which was highly nom. Started watching The Backup Plan but lost interest in that and ended up just playing Mario Kart and then some Singstar til midnight.

Miss Mog

Saturday had another reasonable sleep in. Went out with Chay to a few garage sales so she could look for books, but they were all pretty crap. Mostly clothes.

Feeding the guinea pigs again

Played through the 50cc Mario Kart cups to unlock all the locked ones for them then played a few rounds with the kids.

Chay made a fantastic lasagna for dinner - better than any of the lasagnas I've ever made.

Then we went out and saw Toy Story 3 which was pretty awesome but a bit dark for a G rating I thought. Came back then played some Buzz. First the general one which I was an epic loser at, then the music one which I was still a bit crap at but at least the scores were a lot closer. Then the others went to bed and David and I stayed up and did a couple of ten-course Mario Kart cups.

Sunday we got up at a more normal time, dropped Kailyn off at a friend's place and the four of us grown-ups went to breakfast at Ascot Provisions (Stu got random breath tested on the way which was a bit.. random). I tried the "breakfast pizza" because its toppings of cheese kransky, hashbrowns, cheese, egg and onion relish intrigued me. It was pretty good actually :)

Clem 7 Tunnel

Breakfast pizza at Ascot provisions

Next we headed to South Bank. Went on a bit if a scenic tour if Brisbane cause we didn't have a real GPS but even if we did, so much has changed recently it probably wouldn't have worked anyway. So we got there and managed to find parking in one of the parking stations. Unfortunately it's a flat rate $15 which is a bit rude if you only plan to be there for a couple of hours :(

Victoria Bridge, Brisbane

Brisvegas!

Anyway, wandered our way past a Scottish festival and up to the Gallery of Modern Art (GoMA) to see the Ron Mueck exhibition. It was pretty awesome, I'll post pics in a separate post.

Kurilpa Bridge

Scottish Festival

We were all pretty tired and peopled out at this point so headed for home (via a short detour past The Jazzy Cat Cafe where I first met Stu five years ago but it wasn't there anymore!)

David and I went and picked up Kailyn and then to Coles for supplies. Came back and reheated the leftover lasagne with some pan bread and we made up a salad too. Watched Merlin and then Waynes World (party time, excellent) which the kids didn't appreciate nearly enough ;) Played some Mario Kart then some Singstar Eighties.

We dressed up Wallace in Kailyn's clothes

Monday morning Chay cooked up a pretty awesome breakfast of bacon, tomatoes and cheese, spaghetti and toast. Then we played a little Mario Kart before packing up our stuff and saying goodbye.

Gateway Bridge(s) (didn't realise a second one had opened earlier this year)

Returned the rental car to the airport then caught the first of two planes of the afternoon. Was a bit bummed that our seats were over the wing (I couldn't get anything further back - looks like a young sporting team had already booked out most of the back of the plane). Then someone from my old job said "Karen" and then just stared at me. Most awkward. I of course was a bit thrown, and she wasn't any help reminding me who she was. Hrmmmmm. People. They suck sometimes.

Qantas 767

View of a wing, and the Brisbane River

Gold Coast

Sydney Harbour Bridge

Sydney CBD

Had a snack in the Qantas Lounge in Sydney but the creamy sauce I put on my salad was actually really really hot horseradish. Hurt my mouth :( Sigh.

Last plane home was a 737 and we were right near the back, but it was too dark for photos. And the flight was so short that they'd only just come round with snacks/drinks before we had to put up our tray tables. Oops. In the end I brought the little bottle of wine home unopened.

These beetroot chips were cool, but they make your poo purple - which is pretty darned freaky!

So had a really nice trip. It was very relaxing and *warm*!! Winter is definitely the time to visit Brisbane! Really not looking forward to going back to work tomorrow though.. The stress is a little bit ridiculous at the moment....

Two in a row

Tonight we went out for dinner with Damien and Amanda. Went to the Dumpling Inn and had lots of yummy food and talked about all sorts of vitally important things. TV (Amazing Race, Masterchef etc), travel (their plans and urs), politics (boring hehe). Was a good night :)

One of the jigsaws the parents started while they were here and that I finished was labelled "Switzerland".

Now remember people I have a weirdly obsessive brain. I had to know where this photo was taken. So out with Google Earth. Took circling five lakes before I found it. It's Spiez on Thunersee. The sad thing is, if they'd just angled the photo a bit better, they could have gotten the Swiss alps in it too..

Spiez stolen from http://www.panoramio.com/photo/24511326

Anyways. Really terrible jigsaw in that they obviously hadn't sharpened the cutters any time recently, so the pieces were butchered and it was hard to tell if they actually went together at all. I was expecting the lake to be impossible to do, but actually it wasn't so bad. Funny repeating pattern too which I discovered right at the end.

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