15.5.24 Australian Museum, Sydney

This was a fun display, lots of cool stuff, and not crowded.

Dark opal

Opal

Boulder opal

Pyrite from Peru

Hematite from England

Azurite sun from the Northern Territory

Mesolite from India (I think)

Crocoite from Tasmania

Fluorescent minerals

Sapphires

Nature's Artwork (copper minerals)

Welcome Stranger cast

Rhyolite

Good fun, enjoyed this

Sunday.  7th.  Epic roast chicken and veggies for dinner.

Then watched first part of Pretty Baby - a documentary on Brooke Shields.  Funny that Judd Nelson appeared in that one, but not Andrew McCarthy's one.  

Monday.  Slept mostly ok.  omfg NEW Teams is so trash.  They hid away the contact list so I had to Google how to find it.  You have to click on Calls on the left, then up in the top right click on View Contacts.  This starts up a "People" menu option on the left menu bar, but that's not persistent unless you pin it.  But then if you message someone from the contacts list it pops out into a new window instead of opening in the existing chat window.  Utterly hopeless Microsoft TRASH.  Spent most of the day looking at other peoples' problems.  Saw my birds at lunch for the first time since last winter.  They didn't fly over straight away, but did when I called them.  Cooked satay chicken for dinner with some leftover chicken and a Masterfoods satay sauce base.  Turned out ok.  The sweetie went back for seconds so must have been ok.  

Tuesday.  Took a while to get to sleep but then slept ok.  Busy day of Everything Everywhere All At Once.  Had a drink after work.  Not a great idea because then I didn't feel like doing anything.  Least of all cook dinner.  So asked the sweetie to cook dinner.

Shallot rings, prawn toast, shredded beef Peking style, cashew chicken and rice.

So I had another drink.  And we both ate entirely too much.  And I only did like 1100 steps all day.  But I did finish a day of Queensland photo culling and watched some Lego Masters.

Wednesday.  Slept mostly ok but woke up at ~5:15.  Day of all the BS.  Hurray.  Photo culling and Lego Masters in the evening.  And the sweetie cooked dinner!  Miso mushrooms!

Thursday.  Slept mostly ok.  Everything Everywhere All At Once.  Quietish drinks.  Made pizzas.  Started a new anime series.  Remind me to ask Stu what it was called.  Edit: Girl Band Cry.

Friday.  Slept mostly ok.  Spent a chunk of the morning talking to people about moving all their stuff to our new environment.  Decom work in the afternoon.  Opened a bottle of bubbles I got for my birthday and shared it with the sweetie.

Had fried chicken pieces and veggies for dinner (Chris didn't have kievs! *gasp*!!)

After dinner I watched Parasite.  It was actually kinda fun for the first half, then just got silly and ultimately pointlessly violent.  Also.  Why the hell doesn't he just *leave* at the end??

Saturday.  Slept mostly ok.  Got ready and headed out to the club for a working bee.  Spent a couple of hours mattocking tussock.  Until I whacked the mattock into the ground and felt something move beneath my foot a good half a metre away.  Uh oh.  Sure enough, I'd hit a hose and it started leaking.  Went and found Boyd and he was like, eh, just turn off the water at the tank, then he came and dug around it and then cut through it and said, easy fix don't worry about it.  This is it a while later when I went back for a photo.

There's banksias flowering in the garden.

In the afternoon helped with hazard reduction around the back.

And there was this chunky bluetongue!

Came home (the sweetie and I had some good life conversations on the way to and back) and collapsed.  Had leftover satay chicken for dinner, Death in Paradise 10.1, then an early night.

Sunday.  Even though I went to bed early it still took ages to get to sleep.  And woke up around midnight with cranky bowels.  Maybe it was that tiny bit of rotten egg that got into the veggie hash browns at lunch yesterday.. I saw nothing..!  Super busy day.  Spent an hour each on Tassie culling, Queensland culling, Lego wishlisting, Mum photo picking, downloading bank statements, and shopping, with an extra blog post, music practise and phone backing up, then it was time to cook dinner and just like that the weekend is over.  Sigh.  I have so many projects going on at the moment it would be a full time job just to keep up with it all.  I don't have TIME to go to work full time.  It's killing me.

Sigh....

Sunday.  23rd.  Basa bake, veggie bake and potatoes for dinner.

Then Mash and Laid Back Camp (I think it was the end of season 3).  Such a delightful show.  They go to such cool places and cook amazing food.  Makes us wanna go motorbike camping around Japan :)  Then started season 2 of Lego Masters USA.  This time with Michelle from the Australians vs the World series.

Monday.  24th.  Slept mostly ok (bit restless and hands kept going to sleep).  Fairly busy day.  Cooked up a bag of mushrooms with cream and leftover corned beef from the April club night and veggies from the June club night.  Yum.  Into Mash season 7.  Watched an episode of Lego Masters USA.  Went to read an entry of my Tasmania blog for the day I was photo culling.  But my site wouldn't load.  504 Gateway Time-out - nginx.  And CageFS error in Terminal.  And scripts were broken.  Oh no.  Not again.  Need to give Vodien a bowl of petunias.  And so began a week of angst that I may post separately.  

Tuesday.  25th. 

HTTP working on the blog but scripts and terminal still broken.  Busy day at work.  Made "Mexican Mince" (in that I used some taco seasoning on it) with leftover peas and carrots from the club night, and made up some taco slaw as well.  The sweetie went back for seconds so must have been good.

Wednesday.  26th.

Took ages to get to sleep because I was cold.  Got frustrated with NRMA because they've been charging us twice (I think) for membership.  Filled in an online form asking about it.  And the insurance wanted us to update a couple of things on the policy but of course insurance and membership is two different accounts in totally different places on their site and it wasn't at all obvious how I could even update what they wanted.  I should have taken a screenshot of what they wanted on the renewal because it's literally written in Engrish.  Their help is trash too.  All trash.

Busy day.  Didn't do the One Thing I wanted to get done.

NRMA got back to me.  Said they couldn't sort out my problem over email and I'd need to phone in.  Sigh.

Also.  People drama this week.  In an effort to avoid drama, or indeed be the cause of it, I pushed away a good friend, possibly forever, which makes me pretty sad.  I keep telling people i'm a horrible person, maybe now they'll believe me.  Sigh.

Thursday.  27th.  Slept ok.  Another busy day at work not getting done the One Thing I wanted to do.  Pizza for dinner.  Montage episode of Mash.  Braindead response from Vodien.

Friday.  Slept ok (surprisingly, after last night's Vodien rage).  Until 4:35 when the sweetie had to get up to fly to Sydney.  Busy morning before work tidying up the house so I wouldn't have to spend time on the weekend tidying up the house.  Relatively quiet day at work, finished the One Thing I wanted to get done from the other day, then basically caught up on a bunch of crap.  House and fish stuff after work.  Lego Masters.  Vodien fixed cagefs and scripts but broke my access to cpanel and I realised with horror that my mysql database had been restored to a point from LAST OCTOBER.  Then watched The Shape of Water .. which was .. interesting.. 

Saturday.  Slept ok.  Made this!  How cool is this :)  Been meaning to make this for ages (found a gif I'd made ages ago while I was cleaning out my in tray).

Bit of house stuff, bit of photo stuff, bit of Lego part wishlisting.  

When the Vodien nonsense started at the beginning of the week I quickly exported my database in case anything happened.  At the time I thought.. funny.. that's significantly smaller than my last backup (taken in May).  But then didn't think much more of it.  On Saturday I realised to my HORROR that the backup I'd made was of the REVERTED database FROM LAST OCTOBER!!  I freaked out.  I couldn't login to cpanel anymore (they broke that on Friday) to do a tar.gz of the site.  I couldn't FTP anything (same login problem).  In the end I just loaded the May/June entries in my browser and manually saved them.  Then if all else failed at least I had the latest content since my May backup.  I also have it in a local RSS feed reader.  Although I do worry about having to ever do a mysql restore.  So much potential for things to go Very Badly with my blog.

The last of my mini capsicums is actually slowly ripening all by itself indoors!

Leftovers for dinner.  Second part of the Mash montage episode.  Then watched The Good Son, which I'd seen once a long time ago.  All I could remember from last time was the Highway Man and the cliffs at the end.

Sunday.  Slept mostly ok although woke up early and started stressing about my database.  Got up to find the cpanel password reset email.  Cool.  But cpanel was full of scary errors, terminal had different errors and NONE OF MY WEBSITES OR EMAIL ACCOUNTS WORKED!!!  Finished getting ready, and thankfully by an hour later everything was working again.  I went to backup my database but phpMyAdmin had this error "mysqli_sql_exception: Access denied".  A quick Google said to just reset my cpanel password again so did that and it all came good.  Backed up the database.  Made a test blog post.  Hoped like hell this would be the end of the drama.  Until next time.

More drama with Rob and some club photos.  Sigh.

Bit of Tassie culling but mostly just Lego parts wishlisting.  Put some lamb into the slow cooker mid morning.  Lunch at Pattysmiths.  The cheesy chicken burger doesn't have actual cheese, just cheese sauce.  Still nice though.

Then food shopping.  I was worried going into Woollies that I wasn't in the right frame of mind for it.  Just about every time I go to Woollies I can go in in a completely happy mood, and be wanting to kill people by the end of it.  So after the terrible week I've had I knew things were going to be bad.  And I was right.  I took a few deep breaths before I went in.  But then I was trying to find the dried fried shallots.  They're usually down the bottom in the Asian section.  But there was this couple and their trolley in the way and while they did move a bit, they still stayed there in front of everything for AGES and I couldn't see the damned shallots and I was getting more and more frustrated and stressed and when that happens I literally go blind and can't SEEEEE and then all these people were trying to get past in either direction and I just about had a panic attack.  I gave up looking and carried on but I obviously looked distraught enough that a staff member actually asked if I was ok and I was like no because I can't FIND anything and he very sweetly went and looked for me (it took him ages to find them too).  What a lovely guy.  Grabbed our last few things then got out of there.  Should go back to shopping at 7am, so much less stressful.  Pity the sweetie is allergic to mornings.  Not much else in the afternoon.  Mostly Lego wishlisting.  Glimmer of hope that good friend may not be lost.  And now to see if I can post this...

Sunday.  16th.  Mum not in the country to wish happy birthday to.  Cath's basa bake, cabbage bake and veggies for dinner.  

How funny is this garlic we had for dinner.  The one in the middle is a regular sized clove, but the other four are EPIC!  This was basically the entire head of garlic - five bulbs!

Then watched the last episode of season 1 of Shogun.  It was good and all but I really struggled to keep up with who was who which did affect my enjoyment of it.  Then an early night. 

Monday.  Slept generally ok I guess.  Busy day dealing with all the crap.  Then after work it was just cleaning the kitchen and cooking.  Sigh.  After dinner was photo culling, Lego part listing and USA Lego Masters.

Stu had a top hat arrive this week!

Tuesday.  Slept ok.  Was filing some of my Sydney photos and nearly blatted 54 photos because the Canon and iPhone photos happened to have the same number range on the same date - so there were conflicting file names!  And this was just after me coming across a single conflicting file name from the Canon/iPhone but this time both the date *and* the time were the same (holiday photos get renamed with date and time, but regular photos just have the date).  Of course David will think I'm dumb, because he renames his photos as year-month-day-hour-minute-second-number-<label> so there's never any conflicts, but this is literally the first time this has happened to me!

Wednesday.  Took ages to get to sleep and woke up early but slept ok in between.  Had a moment where I wanted to rage quit my entire job because everything Microsoft does is TRASH.  Every product of theirs EXPECTS you to be directly connected to the internet, as if firewalls and proxies don't exist.  They're utterly delusional and I HATE it.  But I did get to delete lots of stuff which always makes me happy.  Had a beer with Jim after work again which was nice, his idea this time.  Pretty much all I did when I got home was backup my computer and watch an episode of Lego Masters.

And deal with this beer disaster!

Thursday.  Slept ok.  Another day of deleting All The Things which was pretty cool.  And technically not even my job (supposed to be another team's job) but satisfying nonetheless.  Made pizzas again for dinner.  Mash then watched the Lego Masters USA season 1 finale.  They all did amazing builds, and they all deserved to win.  I called it with ***spoiler alert*** Tyler and Amy winning, although I would have liked Mark and Boone to win too!

Oh, and the freezing nights finally caught up with the mini capsicums!

I picked the three biggest, and the next day picked four even smaller ones

Used one of the mini capsicums on pizzas!

Friday.  Awake from like 3 til 5:30.  Sigh.  Updated a bunch of doco for all the crap I deleted.  And just bits and pieces.  Kievs for dinner, then Mash and Death in Paradise 9.7.

Saturday.  Took ages to get to sleep because my feet were cold, then woke up early but slept generally ok in the middle.  Got a bunch of stuff done in the morning.  

I'm convinced that geraniums could survive the apocalypse.  This stem of geranium has been out of the ground since like FEBRUARY.  And yet it lives!  In fact that leaf wasn't even there a month or so ago.  The thing just keeps on growing!

After lunch we headed out to the club.  Lit the fire I'd prepared last time, then the sweetie had a sleep while I went back to Queanbeyan to get my nails done!  There was a lady at work who was looking to do it as a side hustle and wanted people to practise on.  They generally turned out pretty well although she had a bit of trouble with the extensions on the three nails that were broken in the past week or so (this was the first time she'd tried it with this method/materials).  So they're a bit rough but still look good overall.  Except it did take 2.5 hours.. whoops.. heh.

Headed back to the club just in time to get ready for Chris and Ian's anniversary formal night!  The theme was royal blue, top hats and tiaras!  Hence the blue nails.

Rob got a nice photo of me on the couch

There were blue table cloths

And as always an epic feast!

As always a lovely night.

Sunday.  Bit restless sleep and hands kept falling asleep.  But even though it was freezing we were quite comfortable with our down/feather doona.  Went up at 8:00 and helped clean up the shed for an hour before we headed home.  Stopped in at Queanbeyan McDonalds for breakfast (epic queue!).  Decided to try the new chicken/bacon mcmuffin.  So ordered (and paid) for that.  But the retards at McDonalds Queanbeyan forgot to put the bacon on.  And the chicken pattie was a bit dry anyway.  Won't be ordering that one again.  Other than that just a nice quiet day doing some photo stuff and Lego stuff and even got to build a new set!  Next week!  Maybe...!

Monday.  10th.  Epic beef ribs for dinner.  Although they were probably a little undercooked in that didn't easily fall off the bone, took a bit of persuasion.

Perfectly cooked garlic candy.  Stu got a few bits but I devoured the rest!

Mash/Laid Back Camp/Lego Masters.

Tuesday.  Slept ok.  Finished prepping All The Deleting in the morning.  Then All The Deleting in the afternoon.  Shine Dome talk - The journey of Australian science - Dorothy Hill, geology and the Great Barrier Reef with Professor Dorrit Jacob and Associate Professor Zoe Richards, followed by beef cheeks at Badger&Co.

Wednesday.  Slept ok but woke up fairly early.  All The Deleting.  Deleted 1195 objects, including 200 policies - 10.5% of the ruleset!!  Finished just before 17:00 and declared it beer o'clock and even Jim came with me so that was really nice. 

Windoze 11 is so trash.  If you have notepad open in one desktop, and open a text file on another desktop, it'll open the file on the OTHER desktop!?!?!  Like does anyone at Microsoft actually use their own products?  In what world would it be logical to open a file in an entirely different workspace to the one you're in??  Microsoft is utter TRASH.

Thursday.  Caught up on crap from the previous two days I'd been ignoring trying to get stuff deleted.  Because in the afternoon we started a big migration of our entire ruleset from one environment to another.  Fun times.  Busy drinks (lots of directory type peeps in town).  Kit came over after and we made pizzas and chatted.  I finally got to open the Limoncello I got for Christmas!!  It was very nice :)

Friday.  Awake for like three hours in the middle of the night.  Hurray.  Dealing with stoopid firewall problems cause stoopid firewalls is stoopid.  Early finish.  Went down to Herbert's cause it was meant to be Fred's 50th.  Except it was tomorrow.  I *swear* they said the Friday.  Sigh.  So had a beer and a mulled wine and left.

Leftover beef ribs for dinner and early night.

Saturday.  Slept mostly ok I think.  Day of All The Things.  Got lots done which was good.  Back to Herbert's again for take 2 of Fred's party.  Turned out they'd booked out the entire inside area, with bar tab and a steady procession of their bar bites - haloumi fries, garlic chicken balls, spicy mac'n'cheese bites, zucchini fritters and meat balls (that I missed out on cause they ran out but never came back).  I hardly knew anyone, but did know a couple of peeps so talked to them and later others.  Finished up a bit after 19:15, a lovely party.  And they didn't even finish the bar tab.  Whoops.  hehe

Mash/Laid Back Camp and early night.

Sunday.  Awake for like three hours in the middle of the night.  Sigh.  Did get some stuff done but not as much as yesterday.  Did some food shopping in the afternoon.  Talked to John when we got back.  Apparently a massive branch of our lemon tree broke off into their yard (I'm really worried about the tree - branches are rotting all over the place) and they got SIXTY TWO lemons off it!!  How amazing is that!?  I picked a couple for dinner and they were really good lemons too - fairly thin pith, not the usual super thick pith.  

Then it was the usual Sunday night backup phone, cook dinner, blog, and get depressed about having to go back to work tomorrow.. 

This blog entry's title is not a quote, it's the name of one of the episodes of Mash we watched this week :)

15.5.24

4:51 wakeup.  5:30 departure.  Stopped in Sutton Forest Maccas for breakfast and wondered if we'd missed the apocalypse - the car park only had a few cars, and the restaurant itself was completely empty.  Bizzarest thing ever!

This blew my mind because this place is *always* busy.  The staff were quite old too, guess all the kids are in school.

After Maccas the car lost connection to the ipad.  I finally started having a play with it around Pheasants Nest.  Of course I happened to be looking down as the Picton Road turnoff came up and we missed it (I looked up just as we were passing the air field).  Sigh.  So had to deal with M5 traffic all the way to Heathcote Road.  But haven't been down there in like thirty years though so that was nice.

Got to Mum's right on 9.  Dumped my crap then train to Sydenham.  Had a very slow walk to Westconnex (it takes ages when you stop every two seconds to take photos of stuff).

Talk/tour was quite interesting.

Then walked back to St Peters.

Took a train to Museum (via Circular Quay and was super super excited to see the old Freshwater class Manly ferries running again!).  Got to the museum a bit after 14:00, checked in bags, then saw the Ramses exhibition.

Afterwards did a bit of a wander of the museum.

My favourite thing in the museum - the Bone Ranger!

Gymea lily in bloom

Needed a drink after all that, so walked down to Hotel Sweeney for a couple of beers and dinner.

Then train back to Mum's and collapsed.

16.5.24

Slept fairly well.  Woke up at 5 for a bit then til 6:30.  Had a look at all Mum's Japan photos which was pretty cool.

Then went and played tourist for the day.

Train back to Mum's.  Had a shower then Luc and Cynthia came over (I was gonna go meet them at theirs but they very nicely came over to Mum's).  We went to Moim Japanese Kitchen for dinner which was very nice.

We also went and got some ice cream for dessert.  A lovely meal and catchup.

17.5.24

Early start.  Took the train to go inspect my flat.  The tenant talked for an hour about her baby coming soon and their life there.  The real estate agent didn't seem to mind, I guess it saved him from doing other work heh.

Took another train to Martin Place and walked down to the Mint.  I think I went there when I was in school but haven't been in at least thirty years so went there.  There's not a huge amount to see there so were done by lunch time.

I thought I'd look to see if there was a Tim Ho Wan in Sydney and got very excited when it showed one in Westfield.  But when we got there we couldn't find it.  Had another look and on closer inspection it was "Permanently Closed".  Yeah thanks Apple Maps.  Oh well, had Din Tai Fung instead.  

And Krispy Kreme from the station ;)

Back at Mum's I had a look at her backups.  Syncback doesn't seem to have been working since her computer was rebuilt last year.  When I loaded Syncback it complained about not having any profiles.  So I made two that matched the arguments in the windoze scheduled tasks.  I set them up to "backup" rather than "sync" - which is a better option for retrieving accidentally deleted files, not so good for a disaster recovery scenario.  Dunno what had been used previously.  I also tried to backup more of her recent photos to my disk, but ran out of time.  

Then took two trains All The Way to the other side of the world (Brooklyn).  Took like two hours.  But nicely I could change trains at Town Hall so didn't have to cart my bag all the way up to the other platforms at Central.

At Brooklyn I walked up and checked into the motel.  Ok room, but a little dated.  And no soundproofing so I could cearly hear the pub across the road.

Went across to aforementioned Angler's Rest for a couple of beers and some salt and pepper squid.  It said it came with salad, so that was a lot more meat and a lot less salad than I was expecting!

Trent Crawford was there doing live music, old pub rock, so that was pretty cool.  

Then I went back to the motel and had some wine and did my nails while listening to Trent Crawford and waiting for the sweetie.

18.5.24

Slept fairly well.  Had a leisurely start.  Picked up some pastries at the cafe for breakfast.

Then suddenly it was 9:30 and we still weren't ready so it was a bit of a rush to get out by 10:00.  Just made it though. 

Drove down to the marina to see how close you can get to the bridges.  Turns out not anywhere near them at all.  Sigh.

Then up to Rachel and Hayden's wedding.

Didn't escape til like 16:30.

Got home a bit before 20:00.  Had wine and chippies and ice cream for dinner then collapsed.

Before everything kicked off on Saturday morning they did a bit of a warmup, and we got two pieces of John Williams - the 1984 Olympics theme, and some stuff from Return of the Jedi. And then off it went.

Eight of my votes got up:
86 - Babe (yet they still only played the Saint-Saëns bits, not his original stuff)
77 - Harry Potter
76 - Jurassic Park
67 - Indiana Jones
64 - The Man From Snowy River
26 - Saint-Saëns Symphony #3 (Organ Symphony)
9 - Messiah / Hallelujah Chorus
1 - Beethoven's 9th. I picked this is as the winner even before it started.

My two votes that didn't:
ET - disappointing because this is magical music. They did play this though as the first "runner up" literally straight after everything finished so that was pretty cool.
Superman - I probably should have gone with something else like Finlandia instead, but there you go.

Actually, annoyingly, they didn't have Titanic by James Horner even as an option to vote for, if they had maybe Superman would have gone to that.

Other stuff that I thought was cool:

95 - Beethoven's 5th (bit more angry than feel good but whatevs)
92 - The Sound of Music (I didn't even think to vote musicals)
61 - Pomp and Circumstance
60 - Gladiator
57 - Bolero
54 - Fanfare for the Common Man
46 - Zorba the Greek
45 - Finlandia
43 - 1812 Overture
39 - Peer Gynt the Hall of the Mountain King
35 - Beethoven's 7th
28 - It's a Big Ad
22 - Star Wars
18 - The Nutcracker
13 - Zadok the Priest
5 - Rhapsody in Blue
2 - The Planets

Other runner up stuff I thought was cool:
William Tell Overture
The Princess Bride

A good fun weekend of all the feels :)

Monday.  27th.  Cooked an epic Mexican feast for dinner with three different recipes from RecipeTin Eats Dinner book.  Everything was amazing.  There was slow cooker shredded beef, taco slaw, red rice and corn.  Yummo!!

I went to check on the battery level after having the stove running for quite a while, only to find that it never fricken charged!!  And not only that, but THREE days out of the past week it didn't charge.  WTF??  Don't get Solar Edge people, it's just drama.  Mash and Shogun 1.8.

Tuesday.  Slept mostly ok although did wake up sweating at one point.  Sigh, not that crap again.  Wrote up some stuff for more decom work.  Leftover Mexican for dinner.  Mash with a very young James Cromwell!

Wednesday.  Took forever to get to sleep.  No notes for the day.  Hurray.  Was backing up my computer in the evening and noticed it copying a new 2GB file created Sunday when I last backed up my phone.  WTF Apple??  I didn't have any new big movies or messages.  Only thing I can think of is an update to Happy Colour that I did last week.  Or maybe some new IOS update.

Thursday.  Took forever to get to sleep.  Again.  Had to evict this little skink I caught in our bedroom last night..

I'm gonna need some lemon recipes soon..

Stressful afternoon (dealing with vendors is sure to cause me all sorts of anxiety).  But good drinks - heaps of people cause of exec event.  Pizza/Mash/Death in Paradise 9.5 (new DI).

Friday.  Slept ok (just a bit restless).  After getting more vendor crap out of the way and in between meetings spent the day deleting things which always makes me happy.

Mash/Orville 3.9 (penultimate episode).

Saturday.  Slept ok.  A day of doing All The Things.  So a nice quiet day.  Even did some Lego.  Pasta for dinner (had to use up half a tub of tomato paste from the Mexican red rice, plus finish off the basil that's about to give up the ghost).  Threw in some shredded beef and olives just for fun.

Laid Back Camp then we finally got around to watching the Mash movie.

Sunday.  Slept ok.  Woke up thinking it was Monday morning.  Pleasantly surprised to realise I did in fact have another day of weekend.  Another nice quiet day of doing All The Things.  Finished the other big minifig, house stuff, weeding, music, Tassie photo stuff, other photo stuff etc.

Monday.  15th.  Couldn't get to sleep til past midnight.  Sigh.  But then slept ok.  But still feeling tired and depressed and *dumb*.  All the crap at work.  Leftover beef and veggies for dinner.

This long exposure on the phone makes the clouds in front of the ISS look like an oil painting..

Tuesday.  Couldn't get to sleep for ages on account of cold feet.  Then woke up before 4 and never got back to sleep.  Sigh.  Ok day.  Went into the office and got a flu jab.  Proxy stuff and some migration planning.  More leftover beef for dinner.  Finished culling day 12 of Turkey (which took *forever* on account of having to cull over a thousand photos down to 50.. hmmm!!).  Made a good start on day 13 (the last day) too.  At one point I heard a rather metallic clunk coming from the kitchen as the fridge was turning off.  hmmmm.  Sure enough, the next time the compressor started it made a generally louder noise than normal.  So put a thermometer in the fridge to make sure it was still working properly, and started looking at replacement fridges.  Sigh.

Wednesday.  Ok sleep.  The fridge was still happily sitting on 3C in the morning, so while the compressor is loud, it's still doing its job.  But for how long..?  Did some testing of some reworks to some of our rules to the new version of things not supporting stuff the same way.  Basa bake and veggies for dinner.  Must.  Eat.  Freezer.  And fridge.  At least with fridge stuff we do have the spare downstairs we could use in an emergency.  But the freezer.. that would be a pain.  But I really don't want to go spending two thousand dollars on a new fridge while the old one is still functional.  It could go on like this for years for all we know (ask anyone who's heard our washing machine during its first drain).   

Thursday.  Took forever to get to sleep.  More work on the excludes problem, as well as a task closing party.  Jim did a lovely morning tea so we didn't need lunch, but Neil, XL and I went for a walk at lunch anyway which was nice.

Super quiet drinks (bar tender didn't bring all his friends this week).  Pizza, Mash, and into season 9 of Death in Paradise.  It's a bit of fluff that show but I don't know that many of his solutions would stand up in court.  Half the time it's completely speculation and no real proof, other than a confession (which also wouldn't necessarily stand up).  Early night.

Friday.  Got to sleep ok but then restless legs for ages in the middle of the night and woke up at ~4.  Proxy testing in the morning.  Did a change in the arvo that I don't think broke anything, winning!  Herbert's for happy hour.

Must be Mother's Day soon..

A rare shot of Dino without his hat (I wasn't even trying, I was trying to get the beer lineup and he jumped in the way haha)

Saturday.  Awake for a while in the middle of the night but not too bad.  Had a super busy day doing All The Things and got heaps done - pretty much everything I had on my todo list for the day.  So that was pretty cool.

So cool!

Waiting impatiently for these things to ripen before the first frost...  

Into season 5 of Mash, then Orville 3.6 which was pretty emotional and had a bit of a Back to the Future vibe to it.

Sunday.  Took ages to get to sleep but then slept ok.  Spent most of the day Lego part picking for Vic's Lego.  Very slow going due to basically having to go find one piece at a time then mark it off as deleted from the loose part inventory.  Think like a minute or so for each and every piece.  hmmmm.  There was also the dog barking for like an hour (probably from the same d$*#head neighbours that have always had barking dogs).  I felt so stressed.  Sigh.  Also did a bit of food shopping in the afternoon.

Today's blog entry quote is from Autism From the Inside's channel.  Watched a couple of his videos yesterday.  

Another roast beef in the oven.  I generally try to avoid buying big chunks of beef (chicken and pork and even lamb are generally better for the planet than beef) but Stu likes it so there's that.. 

Sunday.  31st.  Had tuna casserole and veggies for dinner.

Then Mash and the first episode of Shogun.

Then got all kinds of depressed cause I didn't get invited to Herbert's birthday on Friday night, and noone told me that the tickets for the Canberra Airport Open Day had come up while I was away, and had "sold out".  

Monday.  April Fool.  Yeah that's me.  Took til past midnight to get to sleep because of feeling blah.  Did some weeding and scattered some purple poppy seeds around the garden, but not fully transfunctionating and too brain dead to concentrate on anything much.  I did finish geotagging photos from Tassie though.  Sausages and frozen veggies for dinner.  Watched Mona Lisa Smile which had vibes of Dead Poets Society but for girls.  

Tuesday.  Slept ok.  Nothing much day, leftovers from fridge and freezer for dinner.  Also got an email saying I'd come up on the standby list, so got myself a ticket for the Canberra Airport Open Day.  Messaged David and he was able to get one too.

Wednesday.  Slept mostly ok.  Nothing much day, did a bit of decom work planning.  Met up with Stu and Dennis after work then had Kinn Thai for dinner.

Demolition in Civic

Chicken pad see ew, chili jam crispy pork, roti

Then backing up holiday photos.

Thursday.  Nothing much day.  Gin night at drinks.  Well not really, they had it a month or so ago while I was in Tasmania.  But there were plenty of leftovers so had a half shot of each.  Pizza for dinner then Death in Paradise 8.7.

Friday.  Since I wasn't invited to the evening Herbert's party, I had my own with the Chrises and Neil.  Got to try all six of the beers for the Bearded Bro Brewery tap takeover (altho one was just a sneaky mouthful I took of Aquila's).  Braddles and I shared some lamb balls and honey soy chicken wings.

Then spent the afternoon deleting stuff.  What could go wrong? :)  Kievs for dinner and Orville 3.4

Saturday.  Woke up at around 1 til well after 4.  Sigh.  Zombie tired.  Hurray. David and Kellie picked me up at 8:45 for the Canberra Airport Open Day.  It was pouring with rain and it was windy and the puddles were several centimetres deep and we got drenched.  I really should have taken my hiking boots which are a lot more waterproof.  Whoops.  Kellie went back to the car while we waited to get on the Hercules.  After a quick walk around the emergency vehicles we decided to call it for the first round and come back a bit later, so headed back to the car.  Which was gone.  Kellie had taken it.  Whoops.  David was a bit upset (busting and hangry sure didn't help) but everyone felt better after a pitstop and some food.  We went back to the airport fence to ponder our next move.  David called Adam/Brenda and it was established that lunch would be at the Burns Club.  After I'd just eaten a double cheeseburger.  Whoops.  There were like twelve of us including a few kids.  And Fiona paid before we had a chance to, so all I could do was give her all the cash I had on me ($20).  Whoops.  Saw Adam Peters for the first time in probably 30-35 years.  And met Craig who was one of the drivers who taught my brother how to drive Sydney trains.  Had a much better afternoon at the airport - saw some of the air shows and the sun came out and the people left at the end so got some nice photos. 

Felt a bit blah when we finally got home, so just watched crap on the internet.  Watched Mash and Sex Education 4.7 with the sweetie, then had some cheese and crackers (didn't need dinner - had it at lunch) and went to bed.

Sunday.  Went to bed at 21:15.  Woke up at what I felt like was about 6:30 but it was only 6:00 on the phone, still, it felt like a good nights' sleep.  Played on my phone for a bit then went and had a shower.  Get back and the bedroom clock says 7:54.  WTF?  Yeah, daylight savings ended, so I actually slept in til 7:00.  Felt a lot better after nearly ten hours sleep.  Wasted wayyyyyy too much time on Friday's XKCD.  You have to make a rube goldberg machine with either one, two or three coloured balls.  My first one was super boring, just one coloured ball with a funnel almost straight down.  The second one was three colours but it was still pretty generic.  After looking around at all the creations on the board I made a third one that was a bit more interesting.  But they're not static - if you refresh the page other boards will stay in place but yours resets.  So I never got screenshots of the first two.  This was my third though:

Then did a bit of Turkey photo stuff, house stuff, weeding, Tasmania finances, and food shopping.  Although we didn't buy much food - still getting through everything in the freezer.  Not entirely sure how I'm going to survive a five day week this week.. hmmm..