So I realised recently we haven't had a video night in *forever*, so invitations went out for the return of the DAIS video nights.

Had Doc, Neil, and @CLBradley over for epic pizza for dinner (the sweetie decided we needed *three* NY sized pizzas from Mills and Grills!!), and then watched War Games first up, followed by Passengers.  Quite a pleasant evening, and will need to do them more often.

For the rest of the weekend..

Friday night we watched Doctor Strange which we quite enjoyed.  Is Benedict Cumberbatch ever NOT awesome at anything he does?

Saturday morning was mostly just house tidying/organising, then I accidently spent a good chunk of the afternoon building a roller coaster out of plastic.  It's pretty cool :)

Today I watched Monday's survivor, and had a very productive day going through piles and piles of paper clutter that never seems to stop building up.  Was pretty happy with that.  But I didn't finish removing silicon sealant from the base of the shower like I wanted to.  Oh well.

So 2016. Not too bad a year for me personally. But memorable for a spate of celebrity deaths (two I'd seen in real life - David Bowie and Carrie Fisher) and two overseas trips.

My first trip of the year was by myself to Sydney to see mum and the uncles/aunties for a Christmas party in early January where I cooked a big baked dinner for everyone. Also saw two Lego exhibitions on the same day while I was up there. Came home from that trip to a pool party in full swing. In January we did a two week trip to Hong Kong (to see Chris and Anne one last time there before they came home) and Singapore. The weather was the biggest downer of the trip - grey and rainy in Hong Kong, and unbearably humid in Singapore. In April we went to Sydney again for my cousin Ben's wedding. Later in April I went to Europe for six weeks with mum. The first two weeks was for a "reformation tour" of sites pertaining to the protestant reformation. That was a really interesting trip and a good group of people. Had a couple of days in Salzburg before heading up to Scandanavia for a three week tour. We saw some amazing things on that tour, but the size of the group (forty people) made it incredibly draining for me. In June mum and I went down to Junee to visit David and celebrate mum's 70th birthday. We only went down to the coast once this year in July. And we did our yearly trip to Queensland, but in November, which was a lot later in the year than I wanted to (Stu had uni work making it to hard to go any earlier). Fortunately the weather wasn't *too* hot and humid.

At work my most interesting work was some firewall migrations. Our first attempt in the test environment though was a bit of a disaster. It took the cleverer network guys about a month to solve a super weird MTU issue in the switch infrastructure they were plugged into. After that, the migrations went very smoothly. I also did an authentication system migration which also went well. So the first half of the year I was pretty busy and the work was interesting. In the second half of the year though I had to deal with the proxies again which drains my will to live. Is there actually such a thing as a *good* proxy? I'm beginning to think not. They caused me a lot of stress this year, including *three* failed attempts to upgrade them to the lastest version. Other than that I was feeling way too dumb to be in the team I'm in. But things picked up towards the end of the year with another firewall migration that went pretty smoothly and a stocktake, which is kind of my super power.

Socially at work I ran another trivia night in March which was packed. We won the next trivia night in June, but luckily the second place getters agreed to run the next one. Which we then won in September, so now I have to run the next one. Had a Gatsby ball in June, although I didn't get with the theme. Had a whiskey night in July. And for our section Christmas party (with various hangers on) I organised a bbq for nearly 40 people.

Healthwise I've been ok. I find lying down uncomfortable due to my deformed spine, which results in a lot of insomnia due to not being comfortable. Early in the year I did some proactive stuff that I'd been putting off forever - I got my skin checked, went to the dentist for the first time in twenty years and got new glasses. I got a minor cold in July, and a more severe one in November.

We've had a super social year this year. We've continued our visits to "the club", going to events and committee meetings in February, March, June, did a Christmas in July, October, twice in November (one of them we fed seventy-plus people) and December. My best friend from high school Chris moved down to Canberra at the end of last year so we've seen quite a bit of her - either dinners here, there, or out, or just going for walks (she lives in stumbling distance which is super handy!). We've also spent a lot of time with Kit, and also Ben and Serena - mostly just hanging out in the courtyard, but the occasional parties, meals as well, and even a p0ker night. Ben moved into a new place earlier in the year and we had a small housewarming there. I did an impromptu hanami party with Chris, Kit and Serena, and another one a week later with Nat and Andrew and the sweetie. Unfortunately that was the only time we saw Nat and Andrew all year. We've seen quite a bit of EffanC and Scott this year as well which as been nice - alternating between our places and enjoying champagne or a local equivalent. We had games nights at Mishi's in July and August. Also caught up with Damien and Amanda at the Dumpling Inn, and Damien and Tom at the Durham on a trivia night. Managed to see Ding twice this year, although the second time was a lot more chaotic with a heap of people in the house. Luc came to stay a night in March, Stu's ex colleague Jenn came for dinner, and we had an afternoon tea at Chris and Glenda's.

Dave and Kat came to stay with us five times this year which was great - in February, April, August, November and December. Mum stayed in June and December. Kerry and the kids dropped in in April, and Potty and Jake came to stay a night on the way to the snow and ended up staying for several nights. Didn't see much of Annie's family, only saw them a couple of times. Graham and Pam came to stay in April as well, and we went to the Dumpling Inn for dinner. Uncle Colin dropped in to say hi in December.

Various people came to swim in the pool in the summer months. For Christmas we did roast pork for Mum, Dave, Kat, Chris and Zac.

In the fish tanks I had four baby angels at the beginning of the year but three of them died. One of them survived, and it shares the AR-620T tank with four huge danios and a cory catfish. The two foot tank was a disaster at the end of last year with toxic black algae. I moved the fish downstairs over summer and cleaned it out completely. The black algae did start to come back, but with a bunch of plants, snails and a siamensis the tank has stabilised nicely and looks really good. The two remaining black neon tetras died this year - but they'd had a good run - I'd had them for ten years!! Amazing for such small fish. I bought some danios to be dither fish for the rummy nose tetras which worked really well - you can see them and their colour a lot better now. So in the upstairs two foot I have the five rummy nose tetras, five danios and a siamensis. Downstairs I had four of Chris's platies that I looked after while she moved house, but three of them died so there's only one left now. It shares the tank with four danios. Stu also has a tiny tank with a betta and some really small fish, and his four foot which got overrun with algae for a while but it's settled down a bit now.

I did a 5000 piece jigsaw this year which was good, but the quality of it was shocking. Did other jigsaws as well, but not as many this year. I've been doing a lot of nonograms online ever since the GCHQ Christmas puzzle last year. And just a couple of days ago I rediscovered Loops of Zen. I didn't buy any Lego this year, but I did spend a couple of months sorting out all of Zac's Lego.

The weather was *hot* this year. Summer seemed to last *forever* this year - global warming anyone? Made good use of the pool, but suffered in the heat. Had a lot of heat-induced insomnia and generally felt miserable for months. We got some hail in January. The pool only froze over twice this year in late June. It actually snowed one morning in July, but then a week later had the warmest overnight July temperature in recorded history. The El Niño finished up and it rained *a lot* over winter and spring.

We did a lot of stuff with the house this year. We got all the guttering replaced (while I was overseas). No more flooding of the garage after heavy rain! We got gutter guards in one corner where the oak tree is, but probably should have gotten them along the back as well, as one end still clogs up from that tree. Our twenty five year old hot water system died in the middle of winter, luckily a plumber could come the same day to replace it. The same plumber came a month or so later to clear out the sewer pipes which had been blocked by roots. We put evaporative cooling in which has been amazing for the most part, except this whole Christmas break which feels like the humidest week in Canberra ever! And we got a solar blanket for the pool (basically glorified bubble wrap) which has made a small difference to the temperature, but also has added bonuses of keeping most of the light out so algae doesn't grow as much, and keeps most of the leaves and bugs out as well.

I got a bit frustrated with technology this year. Had to fight with Logitech's Harmony remote software again. In the end never got it working with our tv. Upgraded my computer to Windows 10, which actually went ok, but had some drama with Windows Defender, and got sick of it rebooting without permission whenever it feels like it. I thought I'd bricked my iPhone because the battery got so dead it wouldn't turn on, even after charging overnight. Warming it up fixed it. Did this several more times over the next few months before finally replacing the battery in late November. I would like to get an iPhone 7, but I want one as small as I have now. Still having issues with the scanner, but still haven't gotten around to testing it on another computer to see if it's the computer or the scanner. And this blog got moved to new hardware by my hosting company so it's a lot more responsive now.

The Dumpling Inn was still our most visited restaurant this year. We went for Chrissie's birthday, again with Pam and Graham, again with Chrissie, with Chris and mum in June, and Damien and Amanda in July. I finally got to go to Smoque in Civic, fortunately, because it closed down later in the year. I went with Neil to a degustation dinner at Sage which was awesome. We went to Shogun for Ben's birthday, The Hungry Buddha with EffanC and Scott, and Casey Jones with Annie and the family for my birthday. With the sweetie we had dessert at Max Brenner in Civic, went to Chong Co, and tried Jamie's Italian and Pappa Rich. Generally we didn't eat out as much this year - trying to save a bit of money. Although we still had a lot of pizza! And bacon and cheese loaded fries from Maccas. omfg sooo good! Sadly the last time I tried to get some they didn't have them anymore :(

I didn't do a whole lot of creative cooking this year. I did make some cream cheese bacon balls which are so evil they're amazing. I made "epic" stuffed zucchini. I made some cheese and spinach pastries with some pastry inherited from Kerry before they moved which turned out pretty well. I did a zucchini lasagna. And a I tried a couple of different breakfast casseroles - one pretty evil and I made it a few times, and one I wasn't too fussed about.

Theatre/Shows/Exhibitions:
* Art of the Brick Exhibition in Sydney
* Sydney Icons in Lego in Sydney
* The Proclaimers

Movies:
* Sherlock - The Abominable Bride
* The Big Short
* Whiskey Tango Foxtrot
* Independence Day: Resurgence
* Finding Dory
* Star Trek: Beyond
* Rogue One

TV:
* Finished the last seasons of House
* Season 1 of Fuller House
* Documentaries on Netflix
* First four seasons of Homeland
* Most of Star Trek: the Original Series
* Australian Survivor
* Start of season 2 of Fuller House

Books:
* The Tower by Richard Martin Stern
* The Hindenburg Disaster by Jeff Rovin
* Raise the Titanic! by Clive Cussler
* Grey Mountain by John Grisham
* Penguin Bloom by Cameron Bloom and Bradley Trevor Greive

Other Stuff:
* Started off year with an impromptu neighbourhood party at Kit's
* Didn't dance on Lachie's table
* Saddened by deaths of David Bowie, Alan Rickman, Prince, Gene Wilder, Kenny Baker, George Michael, Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds, and the end of the world as we know it, ie, the US presidential election results.
* Went to the Mint open day
* Went to Canberra's new Ikea for first time
* Went to the Canberra Show with Chrissie
* Watched Das Rheingold with the sweetie, but still haven't gotten around to watching the rest of it
* Saw the Canberra balloon fiesta - twice
* Digitised my USA 2000 blog, although still haven't added photos to it
* Did the Granite Tors walk with Kit, nearly trod on a brown snake
* Ben and Stu fixed up the festoon lights out the back (only took seven and a half years to get around to doing!)
* Went to the Canberra Airport open day
* Installed Windows 10 on my travel laptop and my main computer
* Scanned ten of mum's photo albums
* Voted twice, but only got one #democracysausage
* Went out to Cotter Dam in August to see it overflowing, and went back again a week or two later to get it with better lighting
* Did a flying visit to Sydney in August to drop Stu off at the airport early Sunday morning, and saw the Sea Cliff Bridge on the way home
* Chrissie brought up her steam cleaner and made the bathroom all sparkly
* Saw James Turrell's Skyspace at the Art Gallery
* Kept myself busy in September with a massive photo project
* Popped into the War Memorial for an hour to look at the newly done WWI memorial halls
* Saw the first flight from Singapore to Canberra land, and the first flight from Canberra to Wellington depart
* Went to Costco for the second time. I think Coles and Aldi are actually cheaper.
* Did a massive photoshoot around Canberra to compare thirty years ago til now
* Photographed the super moon
* Spent several days over the break cleaning out cupboards

These are my jigsaw efforts for all of 2016.  Not as many this year - too busy!  (and the big one took ages, then I was away for a while).

After having so much fun with the 1000 different coloured piece jigsaw, Stu got me its big brother - a 5000 piece version - for Christmas last year (although it didn't arrive til January).  It was certainly a lot more challenging, and would have been quite awesome, except for the fact that the quality was shocking and there was a piece missing.  I really want a refund it was that bad.  I'm going to do a full post and send it to the manufacturers to complain.

This was a jigsaw I did out at the club - of the entrance to Dreamworld.

These were the three jigsaws I did at the coast in July.

This is a 1500 piece jigsaw brought home from mum's at some point.  Did most of it myself then David helped finish it when he came up in August.

This 1000 piece jigsaw of balloons we all smashed out in an evening.

So the next day we very quickly did this one of buttons.

This is supposed to be "the world's most difficult jigsaw" as it's got the same picture on the back, but rotated ninety degrees.  So each piece (except a diagonal line through the middle) exists twice.  So yes it was a bit difficult, but certainly not the most difficult jigsaw ever.  I started it at work the day I was watching graphs and finished it over lunch breaks in the next few weeks.

A jigsaw of New York that I bought shortly after the World Trade Centre attacks of 2001.  I'd done it once back then, and we did it when David came to visit in November.

This was setup at work in a different team's area.  I discovered it just after they'd separated the pieces and done some of the edge.  We finished it in forty minutes flat.

And this is my own jigsaw of the world that David mostly did when he came up for Christmas.  He also did another jigsaw on Christmas morning but I didn't document it because I barely helped at all - was too busy cooking lunch!

Where'd I get up to?

Thursday night we had a whiskey tasting night.  Nothing really stood out for me.  Mostly because Neil didn't get any peaty whiskeys heh.  The four Scottish ones were much the same (one was slightly rougher than the others).  The Nikka was probably my favourite, just because of the hint of smoke.  Early night and slept reasonably well.

Friday I got a bunch of cleanup work done, then left early and headed with the sweetie down to the coast.  Stopped in Batemans Bay for dinner at KFC (bad move - they're even more inefficient than Belconnen and we took fifteen minutes to get our food!).  Chilled out at the house, and I started a jigsaw.

Saturday I finished the first jigsaw and moved onto a second.  Went to Myrtle Beach and even had a swim (well a wade really, I hadn't taken my glasses off and didn't want to lose them).  It was cold, but not freezing.  Couple of weirdos though - one meerkat and his wandering mate.  Yeup.  Saturday night we got pizzas from Steveo's.  We got three, but really only needed one.  Two tops - having some for breakfast we *still* brought home a full pizza!  Then watched Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull to see if it was as bad as we remembered.  It was.  And then some.

Today I finished the second jigsaw and decided to squeeze in a third while the sweetie did reading for uni.  Then cleaned up and came home.

Almost hit two kangaroos - one on the way down on Friday night, and one on the way out to Myrtle Beach.  The second one was panicking and actually slipped over on the road in front of us.  We'd slowed right down though so it was all fine.  The first one just bounced gently across the road in front of us but didn't do anything stoopid.

Tried to doze on the way home but didn't succeed.  

I'm still sick with this damned cold.  Stuffed up nose so haven't been able to breathe in days.  I didn't feel like doing *anything* when I got home.  So *blip* there goes another weekend with nothing achieved at home :(  (I did manage to look at and geotag day 22 of the holiday though, so I guess that's *something*).

All up a pretty decent year.  Nothing too life shattering.  Quite busy as always.

We didn't manage to get overseas this year.  Stu's work was being a bit special and didn't want to give him one of the weeks off in November.  We could have pushed a trip back a week, but then would have started missing Christmas parties, so we decided to postpone.  The only flying holiday we did was to Queensland to visit Chay and David which was a lovely relaxing long weekend as always.  We did get down the coast a couple of times.  Firstly in March, where we also went down to Bermagui, and over the June long weekend as well.  I only went to Sydney once this year - in May to inspect my flat, go to a body corporate meeting, and stay with mum.  We also did a weekend in Junee to visit the little brother.  And did a two night trip to the snow in September, after a failed proxy upgrade, and I was so flustered I forgot the charging cable for the GPS, *and* couldn't find the android.

At work I started the year busy but "comfortable" - in that I knew what I was doing most of the time.  We changed proxy vendors in May - and traded one set of problems for another.  At least the performance of the new ones is generally a lot better (I was still sad when we finally turned the old ones off for good).  At the end of June our team was restructured out of existence, and I lost most of the work I'd been doing to another team (I could have gone with the work to the new team, but decided I'd rather pick up new work with a more local team). Neil was away for the first month after the restructure, which mean I was literally the only person doing half the work of our old team.  So that was a super stressful month.  Then I moved desks away from Neil which made me feel even more isolated.  I spent several months in the new team really having no idea what I was doing.  But towards the end of the year I've been fairly well immersed in some new firewalls and am starting to get the hang of them.  Just before Christmas I organised a BBQ for fifty people which was pretty cool.

Healthwise I've been ok, but starting to notice the whole getting old thing.  It seemed I blogged quite a lot about insomnia.  Not able to get to sleep for no good reason, or waking up and not being able to get back to sleep.  I had a one-day cold in April, and a one-month cold in October.  I was at home for a full week in October, and was coughing for another three weeks after that :(  I started monitoring my blood pressure again, and noticed it was high *all the time*.  I tried a low-salt diet for a time, and it did come down, but it was pretty much impossible to maintain.  Go out for dinner?  High sodium.  Go out for lunch?  High sodium.  Pretty much anything in a jar or can?  High sodium.  Cheese?  High sodium.  I started taking my lunches into work several days a week which helped for lunches.  And was a bit more careful about dinners too, as well as buying low-sodium breakfast cereals.  But I was getting sick of the same boring stuff all the time, and let's face it, I can't live in a world without cheese, so I went on medication.  Still working on a dosage that will suit, although what I'm on now I think is causing some skin issues, so will see the doctor again in the new year to see if it's related, and maybe try a different medication.  I also realised in March that my bottom two wisdom teeth have finally fully erupted.  And my eyesight is getting worse.  Next year will definitely be an eye/teeth/skin/blood pressure sorting kind of a year.

We spent a lot of time with our "whisky" friends earlier in the year - dinners and movies etc - but less later in the year.  We only saw Nat and Andrew once this year in January which is a bit sad-making.  We had games nights at Mishi's in March, June and November, with a special party for her in December.  Met up with @phonakins when she was in town for Eat, Drink, Blog, and @Chrispycon and Anne when they were back from Hong Kong briefly.  Doc came over in September for some MarioKart and Singstar, but the TV died in the middle of a race, and we still haven't gotten it fixed because we're slackers.  Had dinner at the Dumpling Inn with Damien and Amanda in September.  Various people came to stay including Jo and Marc, the little brother several times, Chrissie a few times, and Mum in January and December.  Chris applied for a job and had moved to Canberra (in stumbling distance of us) within the space of a month, so that's pretty cool.  We've spent quite a bit of time with Kit and Ben over the year too which is fun.  It's nice having cool neighbours.  And finally we've still been enjoying our visits to "the club"  and going to the social occasions.  The pool exploded there earlier in the year, and we helped build the new one.  We also provided a Christmas in July feast there, and did pork again for the proper Christmas party.  Any excuse for me to do a big roast pork with crackling ;)

In the fishy world, I've been making better attempts to maintain the health of the fish and the fish tanks, although not until a bunch of disasters (and still had disasters after).  The original AR-620T had some small angels in it, but they had died over summer.  The last one had been in there a couple of days, and we only pulled it out just before putting in the last remaining duboisi and sucking catfish in there.  They died within two days which upset me rather a lot.  Tank of Death living up to its name :(  So the big four foot remained empty for a while.  My AR-620T also remained empty for a while.  I gave it a good cleaning out, and left it running with just plants for a couple of months to try and stabilise it.  Eventually I got five danios for it, which have survived, and later four baby angels which are also still alive.  That tank is actually looking really good at the moment, and I'm keeping up the regular water changes in it (it helps that with all the heat the potplants need a lot of water, so fish tank water goes onto the plants).  Stu gave his four foot a cleaning out and later in the year, and has set it up with really bright lights, and a soil-based substrate to make a planted tank.  He has some native fish in there too and it's looking pretty good.  The two foot tank has massive issues with this black slime algae, and I think it's pretty toxic.  The two nine-year-old black neon tetras and five rummy-nose tetras are still going ok in there.  I had five new danios in there which I've since taken downstairs to avoid the worst of the heat.  And then I bought five cories for that tank, hoping that maybe they'd eat some of the algae.  They started dying off pretty much straight away. :(  I moved the last two into the angel tank.  One continued to deteriorate and die, but the other one recovered and is still going strong in there.  The light in the two foot also just died the other day, so I'm going to completely clean that tank out and start again.  Downstairs the ten-year-old krib is still going, but she's looking pretty old.  I put five danios from upstairs in with her for the summer.  When Chris came down from Sydney she had nowhere to put all her platies, so I filled a spare tank for them.  I put four of them, and the big sucking catfish, in with the krib and the danios and the rest are still in a small tank awaiting their new home to be ready.  Stu also has two small tanks on his desk.  One has two endler guppies and a cherry shrimp, and the other has four teeny shrimp he just got the other day.  So currently seven tanks with animals in them at the moment!

I got two Lego sets this year - both from the Lego Movie.  I got the Double Decker Couch and SPACESHIP!!  I also made mosaics of the Ingress Enlightened logo in two different sizes (32x32 and 48x48)

I continue to do jigsaws.  I seem to have a never-ending supply of them.  Once they're done I usually give them away.  I still want to have some sort of jigsaw exchange going in Canberra, but I'm allergic to organising people, so good luck with that.  I finished a paint-by-numbers set of a fox earlier in the year, and bought a much larger one which took me months to do, but looks really good.  At the club I finished a longstitch that I'd inherited off Nana *years* ago.  It looks pretty good too but I've not done anything with it, it's just sitting downstairs.  I spent December evenings filing digital photos from the past year into folders by subject.  With a clean slate, it might now be time to start tweaking the folder filing system a bit.  Really the goal is to make it easy to find stuff, and obvious what things are in case I go and cark it.  Although if I go and cark it, noone will care about *any* of my photos .. or mum and dad's .. Speaking of which, I scanned three of mum's photo albums, and so far nearly a thousand of dad's photos this year.  All of my own scanned photos (from my own cameras) are all now digitised, labelled and renamed to include the date, roll and frame number.  I haven't filed those into folders yet though.

Weatherwise, the pool didn't fully freeze over much, but did form some beautiful ice flakes a couple of times.  It snowed once in September.  We've already had some quite hot days this summer, and I'm somewhat worried about the fish over January in this El Niño year.  I'll be doing a bit of fish tank rearranging to try and minimise casualties.

New food/recipies I tried this year included honey mustard chicken, made with actual ingredients, not out of a jar (except the mustard); duck breast fillets which are expensive but yummy; chicken kievs made from scratch, which were nice enough, but lacking the *salt* of the pre-prepared stuff (why does everything that tastes good have to have so much salt and fat???); a failed attempt at a lemon meringue pie, which was still tasty, just very goopy; various recipes trying to use up a kilo of white beans, the best being a cassoulet (salt and fat anyone?); a chocolate cake to celebrate Neil working at the same place for forty years - I haven't baked a cake in years!; a couple of things using wombok out of our garden (well, a planter box, to keep it out of reach of snails); and gingerbread cookies.

Didn't eat out as much this year.  We went to Kinh Do a couple of times.  Tried the degustation menu at Mezzalira which was pretty awesome.  Discovered Italian thick white hot chocolate in a hug mug at Max Brenner.  Finally got back to the Dumpling Inn after it had been closed for like a year.  Had dinner with Stu's dad at The District in Crace which was pretty good.  We tried the Wig & Pen at its new premesis, but it lacked the atmosphere of the old place.  Also tried its offshoot - Bentspoke which was nice enough.

Shows:
* Of Mice and Men

Movies:
* The Imitation Game
* The Theory of Everything
* Citizenfour
* x+y
* Cinderella
* Jurassic World
* Spectre
* Star Wars VII: The Force Awakens

Books (I really stopped reading because I pretty much never catch the bus anymore, and tend to just play on my phone before bed):
* Conqueror of Darkness by Phyllis Garlick
* Letters to Karen by Charlie W. Shedd
* Pollyanna by Elanor H. Porter
* Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

Other stuff:
* Started the new year at the club but weren't very inspired by the whole evening and struggled to stay awake til midnight
* Started doing the FridayQ again for a while. Stopped when I got stumped and never took it back up again :( 
* Spent the summer watching Dad's documentaries while doing jigsaws and the like
* Finally fixed up our wedding photo book and had it reprinted
* Watched all three seasons of Veronica Mars
* Went to Costco for the first time
* Wandered around Mount Stromlo with the sweetie
* Almost quit Candy Crush in February, but took it up again.  Am currently within seven levels of the end (until they move the goalposts)
* Accidentally siphoned a huge amount of water out of the pool. Twice.
* Japanese culture night with Stu's Japanese class, which he has since stopped going to
* Came second in a work trivia night
* Went to the Balloon Fiesta on Canberra Day
* Got Netflix
* Scotch Malt Whisky Society tastings in March and in June
* Watched all three seasons of Rake
* Got Israel trip photos from three years ago online
* Finished scanning all my analogue photos
* Lost our really cool number plate and had to get a new set
* Watched all of Sherlock
* Got frustrated that you can't buy quality denim anymore for ladies' jeans
* Been with the sweetie for ten years!!
* Saw Nick Davies (investigative journalist who exposed the News of the World phone hacking scandal) at the Library
* Went to Whisky Live
* Chris and Zac came to visit in July. Went to the curry festival and went ice skating in Garema Place
* Cleaned out the "winter" hobby room in July, although didn't actually use the room
* Whisky night at work in July
* Cooked a Christmas in July feast the club - including four kilos of pork and two kilos of turkey, which all got eaten
* Watched all the Harry Potter movies
* Played through all the working maps I have for Unreal Tournament
* Celebrated turning 21 again, and recreated a photo taken on my 21st birthday
* Won a work trivia night. Busy planning the next one.
* Started a new blog for my Australian holidays, but haven't added much to it yet
* Saw "So You've Been Publicly Shamed" by Jon Ronson at the library
* Freecycled a bit of stuff, but still a lot more to go
* The watch I got for graduation died, and Mister Minit in Belconnon could not fix it, even after replacing the movement three times. Still pissed about it.
* Stu bought a battery-operated whipper snipper and a hedge trimmer and spent many evenings attacking the weeds
* Upgraded my phone from 6.1.4 to 9.1. There's a couple of things I like about the new OS (most especially the logical numbering of the photo directories when you attach the phone to your computer, photo sorting in general, as well as being able to manage attachments in SMSes), but mostly things are uglier and clunkier and it makes my phone chug, especially after unlocking the screen.
* Went to an Ingress First Saturday event
* Saw First Dog on the Moon at the Library
* Did a first aid course. Apparently now I'm qualified.
* Went Go-Karting for a vendor event
* Wore a dress to a wedding
* Hosted family Christmas lunch here
* Hosted a Christmas day lunch here
* Used the holiday break to do some thorough cleaning of the garage and fridge

So there goes 2015.  Have a happy and safe 2016!

Wednesday night we did a big food shop.  And I got some stuff for Friday's BBQ.

Thursday Kit came up for drinks and pizza, and then Chrissie came up with a bag of fish that she'd been carting around for a couple of days.  So I filled a small tank and dumped the fish in that.  The next morning I moved four of the platies and the catfish in with the krib.

Friday morning it was out to Hawker to pick up 160 sausages - this year a full half of them were the chili ones that everyone loves (except me heh).  Also to the mall to pick up bread and salad stuff.  Thought we had *heaps* of money, so spent it on things like Tim Tams and ended up using up the entire budget.  So that worked out well.

And then it was organising transport for all the food and drinks.  So yeah organised and ran a BBQ for fifty people.  It all went really smoothly and I think everyone had a good time.  There were some drinks leftover, a bunch of the chili sausages (which I sent down the coast with Lachie), and some salad stuff (which I brought home but will need to be a bit careful about as it was sitting in the sun (in cold water) for a while).

Yesterday in the morning we went to the markets to pick up some deli meats and other goodies, then back home to make up about four salads - a caesar salad, a potato salad, a waldorf salad and a prosciutto and mango salad.  Annie and Stu came over first and the girls had a swim, then Potty and Kerry as well and we all ate lots of food.  Then there was more swimming.  And generally chillaxing.  A relatively stress-free family Christmas (it helped that I'd lowered my expectations *a lot* this year).  In the evening we watched Star Trek VI and the Carols in the Domain.

Also last night I moved the five danios from the two foot downstairs with the krib.  It's a lot cooler down there, and danios really don't like the heat.  I've left the five danios in the angel tank for now, and have been dumping ice in there as fast as I can make it.  I'd be making more, except our freezer (and fridge) are completely chock-a-block full.  We have enough leftovers from yesterday to last the entire week.  W00t!

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.

This jigsaw I started at the club a *long* time ago, but never did it because I really only had the space in the shed.  But there was always little kids around in the shed, so I never got it out.  Then there were a few times where they weren't around, so managed to finish it.  It was very very slow going to start with, but then I did most of the whole second half of it in a couple of hours.

Done in two nights

Done on our last trip down the coast

Done while David was staying with us a while back.  Red Rock Crossing, Sedona.  We drove through Sedona in 1983 and saw some of the stuff in the town, but not this.  Had Dad known about it I'm sure we would have gone there (btw, happy birthday dad ..)

And another one we did while David was here.  Just the other day I scanned a photo of us standing on that rock in 1984.

Saturday morning we packed up and joined the rest of Canberra in heading down the coast for the long weekend.

I started a jigsaw and other people just chilled and read and programmed etc.

For dinner we went to the Little Restaurant and Bar again for more delicious food.  We couldn't get a seat inside because they were all booked out, but were able to book the outside bench.  But that's cool, cause you know we're Canberrans and all and we're used to the cold.

Then spa til about 1am.

Sunday we'd been intending to go to the beach, but the sun never came out, so we didn't bother.  Went for two separate walks to the shops (one to hack portals and another get some stuff to make pikelets (C had a craving)).  In between I did jigsaw.

Dinner was pizza's from Stevo's (the Sandy Foot cafe had run out of dough! *gasp*).  Oh my, Stevo's pizzas were insane!  Huge, and *heaps* of cheese.  Completely decadent and we mostly all stuffed ourselves silly.  I had one and a half pieces and that was *plenty*!  We ordered three large pizzas, but only ate two of them.  Had a full pizza's worth leftover.

Then spa til after midnight.

This morning was just eating and packing up and cleaning, then came home.

Battled Sunday night depression, and then lost it when I dropped one of my corningware dishes onto the kitchen floor and it *smashed* :(:(  But then watched a very moving docudrama on Hiroshima on Netflix.  Did my washing, now time for bed.

Didn't get to do this last Friday on account of being down at the coast

Friday, August 13th 2004...   (it was Friday the 13th last Friday too)

FQ Topic: Ego

FQ1: What is an activity that you can do better than anybody else you know?
Documentation

FQ2: What is a subject where you are smarter than anybody else you know?
hrmm don't know about that one.  In my last job I often found myself in a position where there were no other "experts" in my team so I was on my own trying to solve problems.  This job is quite a bit different because there's so many people in IT that there's almost always people around that know more than me, which is great because I'm pretty dumb.  But I suppose there's a few geeky, "kids" things, like Lego or Harry Potter that I probably know more about than any of my adult friends.

FQ3: What is a trait you possess that makes you superior to lesser humans?
Attention to detail, meticulousness, ok anal retentiveness.  Good for some things, like doco or paint-by-numbers, but is probably annoying to a lot of people (especially the ones that don't meet my high standards ;) )

FQ FICTION: Which of your many stellar accomplishments should be recorded in the history books? (Can't think of one? Make it up!).
Gosh.  Um.  Too hard... 

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