Been a bit of a boozy few days.

On Thursday, and dude from McLaren Vale came up to offer a wine tasting, mainly for the bar, but for others as well.  So a small group of us partook.  There were five whites, a muscato, a rose, four reds, a dessert wine, a tawny "port" and a "Delight" - which is much like a Baileys.  It was a fun night, had a taste of some lovely boutique wines, and I bought a mixed case of things.

Yesterday we went along to Whisky Live.  $99 for 100 whiskys in three and a half hours.  Stu and I shared tastes to start with, so we could try more things.  But then it got a bit complicated trying to have any working method of working the room, so I ended up wandering around by myself towards the end.  There was an ample supply of hot food (cheesy risotto balls!) as well which was great.  A fantastic event, I'd be interested in going again next year.

Afterwards we went over to F&C's (who were also at Whisky Live) for a yummy moussaka.  And I ate blue cheese for the first time since 1987 (I've had it a couple of times on pizza, but it's a bit different cooked).  Then we watched Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.  But I just didn't *get* it.  It was funny reading reviews on IMDB as well - people either loved it or hated it.  I'm on the hated it side heh.

Today was fairly quiet.  I finished geotagging my holiday photos, and have started culling them down.

Kit bought three more chickens and two ducks today ..

This afternoon I was craving a roast dinner, but we had nothing to roast, so I popped over to the markets to get something.

Sunday night: 2:30am
Monday night: 12:30am
Tuesday night: 3:00am

Yeah I'm pretty much a zombie at the moment.  Don't really understand what's going on with my sleeping, given that the first few days at home I was totally fine.

Been busy at work solving other people's problems (which are usually much easier than my own problems!)

And I got another three days photos geotagged tonight and a couple of episodes of tv caught up on.

After unpacking and organising everything from the trip, I put together my purchases and souvenirs for a photo ..

Yesterday we went out to the club for the afternoon/evening for the club's birthday party.

The mushrooms are getting bigger ..

There's also a super cute ringtail possum that hangs out around the sauna

Woke up in the middle of the night and took forever to get back to sleep, so we came home mid-late morning and I crashed for an hour or so.

Really didn't get anything much useful done today, although I have geotagged three days of photos from our trip.

And I went and played with Kit's new chickies

Since I don't post regularly, you might not have noticed that it's been a little quiet around here lately.

Well this time I have a good excuse - I was on the other side of the planet :)

Check out the blog (without pics) here.

After getting home just before midnight, I actually slept fairly well and had a decent sleep-in, so basically back to normal today.  

Today I unpacked, did some washing, finished downloading photos and blogging, tidied up and generally caught up with life.  The day went entirely too fast!

Tonight we had duck and venison sausages from Eco Meats, but they weren't as good as the last ones we had.  Then we watched Harry Potter (on DVD not tv).

6.4.14

Not a regular follower of news, I had no idea the Canberra Airport Open Day was on until I drove past the sign to it on Friday night when I was heading out to the club.

But it was dilemma, because I needed to be in Sydney by 2pm.  So I decided I'd make a flying visit (arf arf) and go for just an hour and try to get onto one plane.

Coming from the Queanbeyan side of the airport was an epic win.  I turned straight into the carpark and only had to wait a minute or so to get in.  Traffic from the north was backed up for who knows how long.

I parked and hurried up to the gate just after opening.  I headed straight down to the 717 as I'd never been in one of those before, and there didn't look to be much of a queue.  As it turns out, they were still securing the plane so noone was allowed near it yet.  I was there less than a minute when they opened it up and I was in the second group of people to go through it!  Win!

Got to set in the pilot's seat too :)  I asked the copilot whether it is "ok" to poke my head into the cockpit after flights as we're getting off, and he said generally it is, so might have to do that some time :)

Then I walked up and down the line of planes taking photos and generally marvelling at being up close to planes :)

The crowds!!  It was super super busy this year.  Definitely getting more and more popular.

So then I headed for Sydney.  The traffic around the airport was INSANE.  Every approach to the airport was completely choked.  Traffic on Majura Road was banked all the way back to Mount Majura - probably nearly ten kilometres north of the open day entrance.  Hopefully the airlines were a little lenient with late arriving people to the airport...

10.2.14

My mother used to work in this building.  Like forty years ago.  Before I was born.  It was a bank then.  One of those things that you never think to take photos of until after it's gone, so I took some photos of it.

Yeah so I've been a complete slacker.  And then some.

Tonight since getting home all I've done is sort out photos for blogging.

Sixty-two new photos to blog.  Not to mention the older ones that still haven't been blogged yet.

So I'll see what I can do.  In between Mighty Planes and Revenge and my washing.

So last weekend (well really the weekend before.. sorry, I've been a slacker) we went down to Bermagui for the weekend.  We had a slow start and left Saturday morning and didn't arrive till nearly 4pm.

Cheese!!  I wanted to stop here and try cheese .. maybe next time..

A crappy photo of the Wallaga Lake bridge, which was recently used as a film set for Angelina Jolie's upcoming movie "Unbroken".  The bridge is meant to be in Japan!

When we arrived at Bellbird Cottage B&B we got out of the car and it was all BELLBIRDS!  They were peeping all around the bush and it was a lovely welcome!

The B&B is delightful.  They only rent out one (very large) room and it's downstairs and has its own entrance, so it's very private and has a wonderful bush outlook.  

I was sitting on the toilet for this photo..  :)

On the first evening they bring down a cheese platter as a welcome, so it was lovely to sit and nibble cheese and look at the bush and listen to the bellbirds.

We chillaxed for a while before heading out.  Unfortunately we were a little too late for the seaside fair, so we had a wander around Sculpture on the Edge.

This was probably my favourite - it's made with the tops of milk bottles and old bicycle tyres and has solar powered strings of led lights mingled through.  I would love to have seen these at night.

Wandered down to the wharf to find some dinner.  The cafe was booked out, so we got some fish and chips from the outside servery.

It was about 7:45 at this point, and there were fireworks scheduled for 8:45.  It was threatening to storm on us, so we went and found somewhere that we could park with a view of the fireworks.  This is the spot we found.

The fireworks were actually really good for a small country town

Had a pretty good night's sleep.

In the morning they brought down a fabulous breakfast with a yummy variety of food.  In fact there was so much food we couldn't finish it all, and I packaged up the leftovers for our lunch!

Then it was off to meet up with some people at the beach.  It had been raining in the morning and it did look a little miserable to start with, but the weather cleared into quite a nice day.

Came back to Bellbird Cottage and chillaxed and listened to the birds and sipped some wine.  Lovely!

Then we met up with J&H and D at Il Passagio down at the wharf for dinner.

A very nice salt and pepper squid

Polenta chips - crispy and yummy

Quite a nice steak

Good panna cotta

The next morning was another amazing breakfast

Saying goodbye to Bellbird Cottage - we hope to be back one day!

Went via the foreshore to hack some portals

Stopped by some cliffs and took photos of birds

Scratching himself on the wing?

Stopped at the rather green Blue Pool.

And headed home via Cooma.

Stu fell in love with this place overlooking a beautiful valley and across to Brown Mountain.

Fred Piper Memorial Lookout.  On a clear day you can see the ocean.

Glider south of Canberra

Hume Solar Farm

And then we were home.  A bit tired from what seemed like two days of travelling, but it was lovely weekend nonetheless.

This morning Lisa blogged an entry that contained pictures of Charlotte pretending to be on the phone, and wearing her high-heeled shoes.  I said I was pretty sure every parent had photos like that.

Here was mine :)

Tonight Crust came over to Mum's for dinner.  We chatted about stuff and looked through photos of Dad and had a very pleasant evening.  Was good to see her again.

Three months ago today we took buses to Stanley and Aberdeen, had some goose for dinner, and took a bus up to The Peak to see the view at night, and saw the Symphony of Lights from up the mountain.