I've already unfollowed a few people for retweeting and just followed the RSS feed instead (which doesn't have retweets in it).  The catch is the people that are private I have no choice with, or you see all the one-sided conversational tweets they post which are almost as useless.

EPIC TWITTER FAIL!!!!!

Friday night built Lego

I loved the mist coming off the pool edge and damp towel

I must have looked at them funny..


We have these gorgeous bean plants growing.  Unfortunately they're completely sterile (grown from leftovers of the original crop) and not a single bean on the plants :(  So not taking any care of them, but they're still growing like crazy..




Even had some eastern rosellas down

Nat and Andrew came over after dinner for some wiiing. That was a bit of fun.  Tried to get the sweetie to play Billionaire with us but he wouldn't so we didn't play (cause you really need at least four to play) :(  Had a repeat of the Robert Pattinson conversation that we had at Shogun, which was pretty darned funny ;)  Edward from Twilight is Cedric Diggory in Harry Potter people! :)  Baked a coconut cake, but had the oven up too high, so it was sufficiently burnt around the edges that we had to cut them off - doh!  And I also attempted to make icing, which I probably haven't done since I moved out of home ten years ago :)  First batch was a bit of a fail cause I put wayyy too much water in it (it's not like making gravy! heh).  And then just before midnight (oops, we didn't realise the time) we put on Toy Story.  Nat & Andrew fell asleep by the end (and I have photographic evidence mwoooahahah)

Got to bed very late (after 1:30), then woken up by stoopid alerts at 3:20 and 8:20, so no sleep in for me.  Got up to feed the birdies and found the beans somewhat destroyed by frost and the pool frozen over (it'd been below zero since 9:30pm last night).  Super awesome day just being at home.  Emptied, organised, rehomed and repacked ten storage boxes I'd had in the dungeon so that it would be clearer for the sweetie to have as a retreat.  The sweetie made a nice (but a bit too spicy for me) lentil dish for dinner.  Made more Lego.  Watched a very stoopid movie (cause Kristen Bell was in it and the sweetie wanted to watch it). 

At this point I'd be feeling a bit blah cause it'd be the end of the weekend.  But oh the bliss of a long weekend!! :)

So my old CIA email address is no longer being used.  Not sure how long they'll keep a forward going for it.  Be nice if it was a while longer yet.  When you have the same email address for fourteen years lots of people you don't contact much will still be able to contact you (Pirjo found me last year because of it!).  Of course you also get craploads of spam.  Will try and keep my new address off the net as much as possible, except for actual personal email.  The domain catch-all will still be used for the majority of other mail. 

Still, it was the end of on call tonight which meant plenty of beer and then dinner out with the boys :)

Two years ago today the sweetie and I went to Legoland Deutschland!! Which was an epic win day :):):)  And people do you have *ANY IDEA*.. I mean *ANY AT ALL* how hard it was to cull down my photos from that day????  I took 550 photos that day, and that was severely hampered by how much memory space I had at the time.  I cut it down to 58 for the blog...

Two years ago today we left Cologne and headed for Berlin...

Saturday arvo we went and fed Yoda before heading to Mishi's for a games night.

Had some nibblies and then some yummy chicken wings and sausages at Mishi's.  After dinner played a game of Trivial Pursuit (in teams so we had half a chance) except everyone else got questions that generally we could answer, yet the three or four times we actually got a go they were stoopidly hard questions that not even Stu knew the answers to.  So that was all very depressing, but at least the game was over very quickly.  There was then talk of playing Ticket to Ride, but there were seven people which made it too hard, so just had some tea and chatted for a while longer.

Sunday we got up and went over to Potty's cause Jeff and Ruth were in town and visiting.  Helped do some hedging, but Potty came along with his electric trimmer after we were done and redid the whole lot, so we needn't have bothered *sigh*.  At least we got a nice lunch.  Did our shopping and came home.  

Sunday evening we headed over to Windy's for eating and drinking and being merry.  Lots of yummy roast pork and potato bake.  I made a caesar salad and most of that got eaten which was a good thing.  Then played some Singstar until got booted off so the kids could do High School Musical.  So that was pretty meh.  But Windy and I had a couple of games of Monty Python Fluxx before everyone left and we were finally allowed back on Singstar.  Had a great time at that until everyone else got too tired.  Surprise of the evening was doing exceptionally well at Aqua's Barbie Girl.  Who knew I could be so good at a song I've barely heard in twenty years!

Today we decided to have a quiet day at home (with a quick trip to Bunnings thrown in).  Did some gardening and a bit of tidying and watched last night's Bones and Castle online.  Then cooked our anniversary dinner.  $50 worth of ingredients!  Would almost have been cheaper to go out! heh.  I did Lana's stuffed chicken (the recipe that has won her a trip to Sydney to cook for Margaret Fulton!), which was yummy, but a little over cooked and a little too salty.  Also did an asparagus bake (another one of our new favourite recipes) and for dessert did these mini pavlovas which epic rocked!

Still very full, but quite sleepie and thinking about going to bed soon...

We decided to go to Shogun in Civic and have the Teppanyaki bar.

Starting with a Yebisu

We had to wait a little while because he had to come and setup in the second room.  Another group of three people came in, and a single guy.

After a while the dude started cooking.  He cooked up some egg first and had a go at throwing it into our mouths.  He actually got it in a few people's :)

It was yum yum yum! :)

We just had the cheap teppanyaki menu ($35.90 for fish, chicken and steak)

At the end he signed thankyou on the hotplate in salt - backwards for him!

He also signed happy birthday for the dude sitting next to us, whose birthday it was :)  We all sang happy birthday to him :)  And we paid out one of the girls who didn't know the Twighlight dude was Cedric Diggory in Harry Potter (or that he was British!).  

It was a heap of fun, we want to go again :)

After dinner (which actually included dessert) we went across to Koko Black for coffees.  I had a raspberry icecream - it was yummmm!

Then came home and got really grumpy with a broken system at work - grumpy because it was too slow and painful to actually try and do it remotely.  So I gave up in disgust and went to bed (fixed it this morning - MS10-024 which is a patch for the SMTP service in IIS completely resets your SMTP settings!! How fail is that!! We weren't the only ones that had the same thing happen to us - #microsoftfail )

Tonight the sweetie stayed back for after work drinks with his colleagues.  I'd probably have joined them except I was on call :(  But it did mean I could watch whatever I wanted on telly, so I watched the Bugs Bunny/Road Runner movie which was just a collection of the clips with a little bit of new stuff joining it together.  And repeats of Blackadder II.  Then went into town to pick up the sweetie when he was ready to go.

Watched our plane pull up, and took our seats up the back of the 737.  Fairly average lunch, and otherwise standard sort of flight.

Qantas 737-476 "Currawong" (VH-TJU)

Lake Eucumbene

Khancoban Pondage

Lake Dartmouth

Last getting off the plane, but no wait at all for bags :)

Then hopped in a taxi (no queue!) and headed into the city.

The Giant Cheese Stick and Zipper (aka "Melbourne International Gateway")

Our hotel (the Stamford on Little Collins) was very swishy for the cheap end of the swishy market.  Super cool glass elevators :)

Our room

View from our room window

We essentially just dumped all our stuff before heading out again for a wander.

Wandered past Hosier Lane and saw some people photographing the graffiti so went to see what they were looking at.  Found several adjoining lanes covered in lots of cool graffiti (there was even some being created while we were there!). 

Moving on, walked past Federation Square (which didn't exist last time I was in Melbourne)

.. and an Apple store ..

.. and past Flinders Street station (with the new Eureka tower behind it - also not there last time I was in Melbourne)

Then headed across the Yarra River 

MCG from Princes Bridge

Lights on Princes Bridge

Took photos of the Arts Centre

.. and horse and carriages on St Kilda Road

Then wandered through Southbank.  Stopped at this point for a snack to keep us going, as we thought we'd be having a late dinner.  

This girl played short pieces from a stack of tunes.. a lot of movie soundtracks .. we were having a guessing game of what they were while we had our snacks.

Next we headed for the Eureka Tower.  Fifteen years ago I went up the Rialto Tower.  This one is a fair bit bigger.

It has bugs on it!

We headed up to the Eureka Skydeck 88 ($16.50 each).  Unfortunately it's a disaster for photography.  The windows are tinted blue and gold in different sections which screws up colour balances, the glass is *very* reflective, and the building is at all different angles.  We didn't even attempt to do any sort of panorama.  But we did spend ages up there taking photos and looking at stuff (and went outside to get blown away, but didn't do the Edge which was another $12 or so).  

South west Melbourne CBD, including the Rialto Towers, Spencer St, the stadium and Docklands.  

Tinted windows

Flinders Street station and Federation Square

Spirit of Tasmania coming in to dock

We hung around for about an hour waiting for the sun to set so we could see the place at night, but after an hour (when it was just starting to get dark) we gave up and headed back down.

The Yarra River is a lot prettier at night than during the day..

Walked past Flinders Street station

.. and wandered up Swanston Street and ended up at City BBQ Chinese Restaurant in China Town.  Dinner was ok.  We shoulda ordered less food.  Or made one of the dishes vegetables.  It was a very *brown* meal.

Wandered back down Russell Street.  

Was amused by the plastic food we saw in one place.

Dropped off the sweetie who had had enough, then went out again looking for ice cream.  Tried bottom of Swanston St and Federation Square without success.  Then went across to Elizabeth Street and walked all the way up it to La Trobe Street before heading back, eventually getting Magnums at a local minimart place.  I suppose we can't complain - it was Good Friday yet there was *heaps* of stuff open, and open til late too.  Don't think that'd happen in Canberra!

"The Public Purse" - sculpture we liked in the Bourke St Mall

And so ended Good Friday.  It was a pretty good Friday :)  Lots of walking (really should replace the battery in the pedometer!) 

And this blog post only took fifty minutes to do.. no wonder I've been putting it off for days..

We only had to replace some of the current events questions and a few other questions here and there throughout the   set.  We did ten rounds of ten questions, as well as a couple of "filler" rounds - logos and ditloids.

Generally it all went fairly well.  Had a few *good* questions where people went "oohhhh" or "doohhhhh" when they heard the answers.  A few dud questions that really noone got, or *everyone* got.

Would we do another one...??  Don't know.. it was an awful lot of work .. DC keeps thinking of questions, so I have a feeling he'd be up for another one hehe :)

At work they have a file going on people's top scores.  I used to contribute until I was responsible for poor team morale (it was a different team) by posting my high scores.  

Today I completely shattered one of my own high scores - going from 166 to 460!!

I was pretty stoked :):)

But tonight I went online to see what other people around the world have gotten.  It was a little bit freaky.  Like the first video I found that was over 10000.  Or the next one I found that was over 50000 !!!  And finally looked at the Cloudcell scores - some dude got over 80000 on the default airport!  Somehow I don't think I'll get anywhere near that.

Current standings:

Default - 179

Hawaii - 193

Aircraft Carrier - 115

RFDS - 460