Results matching “Holidays”

Forty years ago today we started the day in Glen Davis before heading through Gulgong to Dubbo.  Full entry of that day is here.  Sadly we couldn't get to Glen Davis shale works last month because it was closed off for filming a movie.  I might have had a meltdown.

Here's some shots of the mountains instead.

Glen Davis - 1981
David on a horse in Glen Davis

Glen Davis - 2021
Glen Davis

On the way out I was originally planning to go back to Capertee and then north, but David thought this mountain was in a different place, so we ended up on the wrong road north and could only see it from afar.  That's ok I need to go back to Glen Davis anyway...

Crown Mountain - 1981
Crown Mountain in Capertee Valley

Crown Mountain - 2021
Crown Mountain in Capertee Valley

We arrived in Gulgong last month around the same time as we did forty years ago so the photos are very similar.

Gulgong Pioneers' Museum - 1981
Gulgong Pioneer's Museum

Gulgong Pioneers' Museum - 2021
Gulgong Pioneers' Museum

Ten Dollar Town Motel - 1981
Ten Dollar Town Motel at Gulgong

Ten Dollar Town Motel - 2021
Ten Dollar Town Motel at Gulgong

Forty years ago today the family started a family holiday to Dubbo, via Newnes, Glen Davis and Gulgong, and home via Wollar and Sandy Hollow.

So for our wedding anniversary I had the idea to take a couple of days off and reproduce as much of the trip as I could.  Day 2 was a bit of a disaster because Glen Davis had been shut off for filming of a movie, but I did reproduce many of the photos.  Here's some of them!

On this day forty years ago we went to Newnes and walked to the Glow Worm Tunnel.  Full entry of the old trip is here.

Cliffs at Wolgan Valley Lookout - 1981
Cliffs at the Wolgan Valley Lookout on Wolgan Road

Cliffs at Wolgan Valley Lookout - 2021
Wolgan Valley

Old railway platform at Newnes - 1981
Mum, David and me on the old platform at Newnes

Old railway platform at Newnes - 2021
Newnes Platform

Lower entrance of the Glow Worm Tunnel - 1981
Glow Worm Tunnel lower entrance

Lower entrance of the Glow Worm Tunnel - 2021
Glow Worm Tunnel lower entrance

Sheep

Way back in the 90s, the only drawing application we had on our computer was MS Paint.  I used it to create a few drawings that I kept.  

One drawing I did was of sheep grazing on a hillside, with snow capped mountains in the background.  The sheep were a customised paint brush so you could paint the same thing over and over again - for a whole flock.

Last year when we went to Tumut I saw the exact scene in real life!  This inspired me to find that original picture.  

Here it is!

Sheep drawing

And this is the photo I took last year :)

I once drew a picture very similar to this on my computer using Paint

Monday.  12th.  Wow over two weeks ago (backdating).  Took ages to get to sleep because I was *cold* !!  Four of my birds came to see me at lunch.  Powered off a bunch of old hardware from our old network which was pretty cool.  Filled the green bin after work.  Had leftovers for dinner.  Labelled 392 photos so somewhat caught up with last week.

Tuesday.  Took *hours* to get to sleep - freezing cold :(  Thinking I might need an electric blankie.  Did a heap of work cleaning out bits of the old network.  Had an irritated eye which lasted ages :(  Did some photo labelling in the evening.  I really don't have time to go to work - too much life to do.

Wednesday.  This time I woke up hot, and with an irritated nostril (just one, so not sick, and oddly on the other side to my sore eye from yesterday), so I was a bit of a zombie for the day.  And it meant I had a runny nose all day which was super annoying.  Had an ok day I guess, trying to plan the next round of cleaning.  Leftovers for dinner, then labelled a few hundred photos, now up to only a hundred behind..

Thursday.  Slept pretty well for a change.  

Hanging chrysanthemums

Chrysanthemums

Our azaleas are pretty confused - flowering in autumn instead of spring.
Confused azalea

Never go the mall during school holidays.  I had to wait fifteen minutes at Subway :(
Fifteen minute subway wait

More cleaning planning during the day.  Finished Laid Back Camp season 2.  Then watched New York Minute, had to laugh at Danny Tanner peering after the twins.  One of their last movies.  

Friday.  Slept ok. Had lunch with Tony at Herbert's which was nice.  Shared a few different starters.

Can't remember what flavour the skewers were - they were on the specials board, I think maybe Thai curry or something.  And the spring rolls were cheeseburger!  Which were pretty cool.
Herbert's skewers and cheeseburger spring rolls

And corn and zucchini fritters
Herbert's corn and zucchini balls

They were throwing this rose out because it was drooping, so I brought it home and it's been smelling lovely ever since.

Herbert's rose

Did a heap of cleaning in the test network in the afternoon, although didn't finish what I wanted to get done - a couple of big apps just need a bunch more work.  X Files in the evening.

Stumpy

Saturday.  Had brunch with Annie at The District. Good catchup, haven't seen her in months.

The District eggs benedict

Then an afternoon doing All The Things.  Alternating between fun stuff, house work stuff and photo work.  Got caught up with Eurasia photo labelling finally.  Watched High Fidelity in the evening which I didn't remember having seen, but turns out the sweetie and I watched it together in 2006, and some of it did seem vaguely familiar.  Hurrah for dementia.

Cheese platter

Sunday.  Continued All The Things, again alternating between different sorts of tasks.  For dinner I made the oven baked feta pasta doing the rounds.  It wasn't too bad.  Simpsons and X Files in the evening.  I was also set to blog this, had my photos downloaded and processed and everything, but just ran out of time.  So here we are two weeks later backdating...

Twister !?
Chimney clouds

Epic mushroom cluster
Epic mushroom cluster

Monday.  I already covered this in the last post, but here's some pictures of the disgusting looking black goop that is @notquitenigella's Asian Beef Cheeks.  Served with rice and cabbage it's soooo good!

Unphotogenic black goop

Goopy beef cheeks

Tuesday.  Woke up cranky that I was so far behind in *everything*.  Mainly photo processing and labelling.  And that I had to go to work when I just have so much to *do* at home.  I was so cranky that I didn't even feel like singing along to the Hallelujah Chorus when it came on the radio :(  Had an ok day at work though - planning for a new server build.  Super late home though.  Leftovers for dinner, then blogged two blog entries and labelled a hundred and fifty photos or so, so all is not lost (at least not any further behind than I am already).  

Wednesday.  Ok day.  Jim organised a bunch of us to go to Belco Kebabs.  I split one with XL which ended up with a sane amount of food for the two of us, and they do Monday-Wednesday $10 kebabs at lunch, so it only cost us $5 each!  Amazing value.  

Yarralumla Kebab - split

Home late.  Sorted photos from the past week and selected some for the blog.  Only 57 photos labelled though, now a full week behind.  Finally finished the lemon cheesecake for dessert.

Thursday. School holidays at the mall.  Kill me now.

School holidays at the mall

Drinks was pretty good, got to try some of the wines I missed out on last week because I didn't go in.

Friday.  Still pretty quiet due to peeps not being able to deploy new servers, so time to find things to do.  Played with getting trusted certs installed on an admin interface, and planning a bunch of cleaning.  Three of my birds came to see me at lunch.  Did twenty minutes of periwinkle hacking (ten minutes at lunch and ten after work).  

Our chrysanthemums come out a little early for Mother's Day..

Chrysanthemums

Watched some tv with the sweetie in the evening, then I watched The Color Purple.  Most of it was pretty darned depressing.  Got a bit better at the end.  Found out that Netflix will now give you a few weeks notice if something is planning to be cut.  This was one of them - last day to watch April 30.  Fine, except you'll have to regularly check your Watchlist to keep an eye on things, because it only notifies you about things ending soon.  And I'll be pissed if they pull tv shows we're in the middle of watching before we get a chance to watch through them.

Saturday.  All. The. Things.  !!  Got through a massive long todo list of stuff, mostly houseworky type stuff. 

Making slow but steady progress hacking my way through the periwinkle
Jungle progress

Also lunch out and some food shopping.  In the afternoon I finished watching Challenger: The Final Flight documentary on Netflix.  I still tear up watching that footage.  Go figure.  

In the evening Rob and Fiona came over for epic roast lamb, great conversation and sackbut playing!

Roast ready for cooking

This beer was very interesting - a Belgian beer matured in red wine barrels!
Interesting beer

Lamb roast

You're a sackbut

Sunday.  Today.  Cooked potato and zucchini cheesy hashbrowns for brunch

Cheesy hashbrowns with zucchini

I used two potatoes and an old zucchini that needed using up, which was a heap of food, so didn't actually need any lunch!  I think I had a bit of cheese on a cracker, and a carrot.

Other than that, a pretty quiet day, really not getting much done other than a whole bunch of blogging - some recent entries, as well as some This Day in History posts.  Some of those won't show up in an RSS feed because they're backdated, so when I'm caught up I'll give you a link.  

Stu prepped Japanese hotpot, which promises to be yummy!  (this isn't everything, there's still meat to be prepped)

Hotpot feast

Edit: added more pics of the hotpot later:

Hot pot prepped

Hot pot cooked

At least I'm not backdating for a change ;)

Tumut

Almost six months ago the sweetie and I went away for a long weekend to avoid having to have any big celebrations for his 50th.  We had a very lovely weekend in and around Tumut.  I blogged the text ages ago, but it took me this long to cull down the photos, label them, and insert them into the blog.

You can start here.

And don't forget my entry on Tumut River Brewing Company (TRBC).

Sunday.  24th.  Half way through our long weekend.  Watched Your Name in the evening.  Kinda like Freaky Friday meets The Lake House?  Not that I've ever actually seen The Lake House.  Nice enough, although a tad confusing.  

Monday.  We both took a random day off to have a long weekend. 

Baby guppies!!!

Baby guppies

Did all the washing in the morning - regular clothes washing, then the curtains from the east side window of the study.  Then headed out for the day.  Dropped in at The Scottish Restaurant for brunch, then onto Ikea.  Stu wanted to get a shelf unit for his study for the inside wall.  So we found that and got a couple of bits and pieces but not too much.  Did our food shopping on the way home. 

I'd just filled his water bowl when Stumpy decided to redecorate the place.

WTF Stumpy

So just for that we gave him a bath.

Stumpy in the sink

Stu built his shelves and suddenly the house is a mess again.  Doh. 

Stu building his shelves

Stu's new black shelves

It was also very hot.  All weekend.  We had the cooler going pretty much all weekend, but that did make it a bit humid in the house.  Salmon and salad for dinner, but no photo labelling.  Watched Honey, I Shrunk the Kids in the evening.

Tuesday.  Australia Day.  Our two biggest holidays celebrate invading other countries.  David's suggestion was make New Years Eve a public holiday, so all the poor saps that have to work NYE while everyone else parties will at least get paid overtime for it.  Then Australia Day could be January 1.  That was actually the day we became Australia.  Just a thought.  The day was spent avoiding the heat, a bit of housework, labelling photos and a bit of paint by numbers.  Stu wanted to hang up an aerial for his software radio, so I hacked out all the cherry tree suckers, and pruned the geraniums quite brutally (they were bigger than me!).  Didn't take any before photos unfortunately.  

All the chopping

Stu really didn't like being up a ladder

Stu no likey

I well and truly filled the green bin, with a pile still left to go.  Taco Tuesday for dinner (I'd bought the shells and was going to have them before David left but we never got a round tuit).  The ten taco shells go really well with three people (four each for the boys and two for me), so we end up with leftovers if there's just the two of us.  Then I was loading the dishwasher after dinner and one of Stu's bowls slipped out of my hand and shattered all over the floor.  I seriously had a meltdown.  I really like those bowls, I use them every day, and it was one of the few complete sets we have of anything.  I don't deserve nice things.  Sigh.  Didn't feel like doing any photo labelling, or even watching a movie, so just watched random crap on YouTube.

I don't deserve to live

Wednesday.  Nothing much.  Bit of photo labelling, but not nearly enough to catch up for the week.

Thursday.  Ok day; work drinks; pizza.  Got sad that I had noone to fight with over the garlic dregs from the garlic bread.  Started watching Sound! Euphonium anime series.  Then I watched Honey I Blew Up the Kid.

Friday.  The rain!  All the rain!  In the afternoon I spent an hour and a half renaming and documenting all the objects someone else in our team had created that didn't match our naming scheme.  Le sigh.  Watched Honey We Shrunk Ourselves in the evening.  I'd never seen this one.  Silly of course, but not too bad.  Then I watched the first half of a 2016 New York production of Hamilton.  I had literally no idea what the show was about, well, other than it was an American period piece.  I have to say I struggled with it.  It's mostly all rap, and I *hate* rap.  I struggled to keep up with the pace of it and what was going on and the exposition.  I also found having African Americans playing white guys pretty distracting.  Also.  Jonathan Groff as King George III.  Completely distracted by his spagging all over the place.  Also I reckon he looks a little bit like Freddie Mercury (front teeth and cheeks), he'd look more like him if he lost a little weight..

Saturday.  Woke up at 3am for nearly two hours.  Hurrah.  Did all the hosueworks in the morning.  Did a bit of paint by numbers and photo labelling of Dad's slides in the afternoon.  I'd relied on the dust and scratch filter for the first half of the scanning of his slides, but as it turns out, the hairs that were all over the roof of the scanner were there from the beginning.  The filter doesn't remove the hairs and the slides look terrible, and I'm going to have to redo *a lot* of the first half.  Sigh.  But probably not until I've scanned more of the filing cabinet.  Had a bit of a play with Gimp to make Lego mosaics using custom palettes.  Had chicken kiev for dinner.  Watched The Garden of Words, which I saw at the movies in 2013.  I reckon they must have videoed rain falling in puddles and traced it frame by frame.  Can't see any other way it'd be *that good*.  Then I watched the second half of Hamilton.  For some reason I enjoyed the second half a lot more.  Maybe because it was a bit slower, and I had a better idea of who everyone was??  I think if I watched it again I'd pick up a helluva lot more and possibly enjoy it more.  Or maybe I could just go read a transcript.  Found out that the dude who played Hamilton actually wrote the whole thing.

Sunday.  Today.  Not backdating for a change ;)  Although I am going to need to backdate a whole bunch of This Day in History posts.  Spent the day alternating between housework, computer work (photo labelling) and fun stuff (paint by numbers and jigsaw).  Went out and did a small food shop.  Although with fragments of covid detected in Belconnen sewage, I feel like we should have done a bigger shop in case we end up in lockdown.  Roast lamb for dinner.  Or there will be.  Very shortly :)

2020.

Oh my.

We started the year at EffanC's, suffocating in bushfire smoke. We didn't go out to the club because I was too nervous about bushfires, and in fact even suburban fires. In 1994 I saw spotfires go a full kilometre from the bush, just a couple of hundred metres from our house. So I wanted to stay close. The bushfire smoke hung around for much of January and the devastation the fires caused was just heartbreaking.

The bushfires ended, then we got a massive hail storm that wrote off thousands of cars. I know *lots* of people that had their cars written off. And then it rained. And rained. And rained. Just a few weeks after the fires finished, much of the landscape was flooded. Which apparently is exactly what the river ecosystems *don't* need. Coastal communities begged Canberrans to come down and spend some money to help them recover. So we did. Although just an overnighter for Pete's 40th.

But then.

The C word.

As it hit, coastal communities begged Canberrans to stay away. When we got back from the coast, we dropped into Coles at Gungahlin to pick up a few supplies, including toilet paper (we were down to our last roll at home). We managed to get one of the last packets of toilet paper on the shelves. It was the last time I was to see toilet paper in Coles for about six or seven weeks. Fortunately I was able to get it at Chris's, otherwise things would have been pretty messy. The panic buying extended to all paper products that could be used in lieu of toilet paper - all the tissues and paper towel was gone for weeks as well. Pasta, pasta sauce, rice and even flour and yeast all disappeared off the shelves. I really didn't understand the flour/yeast thing - bread was still freshly available throughout the whole thing. In the second week even fresh food was mostly gone. Long lasting vegetables such as potatoes were nearly all gone, as was most fresh meat. One day (22 March) we went to the Belconnen markets and all three butchers had closed by lunch time Sunday because they'd simply run out of meat to sell.

On Monday 16 March I had the slightest hint of a sore throat and a cough. So Tuesday 17 March I stayed at home. And there I stayed. For six months. Other than a couple of odd days, and dropping in on a couple of weekends to swap out my backup hard drives, I didn't work in the office in any regular fashion until September. As it turns out I love working from home. Who knew. Previously I didn't really like it, partly because of my monitor setup is a bit backwards, but also because if I didn't go into the office every day I would lose the claim to "my" desk. But with everyone else working from home as well, and in fact they had a sticker on my desk for most of that six months saying don't work here (trying to keep people further apart), it wasn't an issue. And I got somewhat used to the monitors being backwards.

By 22 March, most flights around the world had been cancelled. The government imposed a travel ban. For every country they said "Do not travel". Restaurants, bars, cinemas and anything "non-essential" was shut down. I was quite upset by the impact that would have on low income earners. And then I raged at people whinging about their pay raise getting delayed six months. My holiday to Oberammergau to see the Passion Play got postponed two years. They started doing that play to thank God for saving them from the plague. And this year they had to postpone. Because of a plague. There's got to be some irony there somewhere. Qantas grounded all their 747s - forever. I was super sad about this.

In late March I went out at lunch time on a Monday to do the food shopping, when Jamo was a lot less crowded, and did that a couple of times. Still not much in the way of pasta/rice etc. We did big shops fortnightly to minimise having to go out. And I did the shopping by myself for a while too which was no fun because I like going with the sweetie. Every time I went shopping I swore I was getting a sore throat straight after. It was late April before I saw toilet paper again in Coles. June saw an outbreak in Melbourne, and panic buying started up again. In July I finally got my money back from Emirates for my Europe trip, although not the extra I paid for seat allocations.

Things eased up a lot in the second half of the year with no community transmission in Canberra since March. Restaurants opened and stayed open. We were able to start seeing our friends again. It hit Melbourne pretty hard in the middle of the year.  By December it looked like Australia was getting on top of things again. But then a driver of international flight crews got it in December and started spreading it around Sydney. Sydney went into lockdown of sorts and Mum couldn't come visit us after Christmas.

So a pretty wild year on that front.

Very little travel this year, for obvious reasons. I flew up to Sydney in February for Ryan's 21st birthday. But with all the delays it would have been quicker to take the coach. And that turned out to be my only flight for the year. I stayed with Mum and went to the 21st, where I put up a video of all the photos I'd taken of Ryan every week/fortnight/month/year since he was born. Caught the coach back the next morning. In March we went down the coast to stay with Kit and Pete for a surprise party for Pete's 40th. That was a bit of fun. Came home the next day. Did a quick trip to Sydney in late June to inspect my flat after the previous tenants decided to move out. We also dropped in to visit Luc and Lizzi, and on the way back I saw Nepean Dam. My flat ended up being empty for a month, and I had to drop the rent *a lot* which was pretty sad. In late August we wandered around the Snowy Mountains to Tumut, visited several dams and had a lovely afternoon at the Tumut River Brewing Company for Stu's 50th. In November Stu's brother convinced us to go up to Port Macquarie and South West Rocks to visit him and his father.

In lieu of actual travel, I did a *lot* of work on my travel photos. Throughout last year I'd gotten our Hong Kong/Singapore 2016 trip labelled, and had the blog ready for the fourth anniversary since we went. I geotagged my USA 2000 trip, fixed up all the labels, and got photos into the blog. I started geotagging my USA 2004 photos in February, but ran out of steam with that after about a week's worth, because it's *really* hard to geotag photos taken out of a moving car in the middle of outback USA. Next I labelled all twelve and a half thousand UK 2010 photos, finishing in December. I registered a Geonames account, and a Google Cloud account so I could use the Google Maps API in Geosetter.

Work was work. Still doing mostly internetty type stuff like firewalls and proxies. As mentioned previously, it turns out introverts like me like working from home. It's just so much more flexible and it *feels* like I'm home, even though I'm working. It means I can pop something in the slow cooker at lunch time, or something in the oven a bit earlier than I would if I got home at nearly 6pm. Or if it's a quiet Friday afternoon I can flex off for a bit without having to wait for the sweetie to go home or catch a bus. I got a bunch of our gear finally converted over to SNMP v3. I shut off access to an entire old environment. I fought with a particular firewall for months, including spending three hours on the phone to support one weekend trying to fix it. Still no resolution in sight on that one, but Wardie, bestest guy ever, has basically taken over, because he's awesome. Did a bit of training here and there, mostly free stuff. Got a new service desk tool in December, and had a lot of fun making shiny dashboards for it, which a bunch of other sections copied for themselves!  Socially, we had a gin night in early March, just before the lockdown. I actually missed the last work drinks before shutdown because of the slight sore throat I had. In August the guys started going to the Pot Belly for drinks, which we did for a little while before actual work drinks started up again. And I got to run my Christmas barbeque at the lake for over forty people. It was a lovely cool day, which made nice change from so many years where it's been crazy hot or shrouded in bushfire smoke.

Healthwise I was generally pretty good. Bouts of insomnia came and went a few times. Completely frustrating and debilitating. From mid March I felt like I had a permanently sore throat and slight cough for like a month or two. It was likely all in my head though. Got a flu vaccination in April. David came home with a cold in late August. He went home but it was too late - Stu caught it about a week later, and I caught it about five days after that. I was sick for a weekend. Stu was sick for a month. At least. I decided to go on short walks around the neighbourhood every day at lunch to get a little bit of exercise and vitamin D. I passed a lot of magpies, and decided to bribe them to not swoop me in spring by feeding them little bits of roast meat. All through winter they would see me coming and fly over. So cool! But come spring time they lost interest - there was obviously plenty of their own food around which they were more interested in. I also never got swooped :) Went up Mt Rogers once with David. Got some new reading glasses in December (should NOT have gone to Specsavers).

On the friends front, really things only went quiet for about two months from mid March to May. Other than that it was actually pretty much business as usual. We saw our fair share of EffanC at ours or theirs, including drinks over Zoom. We caught up with Kit and Pete when they came up in January to avoid the fires, and in February when they came up again, as well as Pete's 40th at their place in March. Had a few games of Kismet with them as well. We went to Rob and Lynne's with a bunch of peeps in January and again in December, and had them over in May. Went to a bbq at Brett and Sharon's in January, and the middle of the year we saw quite a bit of the A/M/C group, including some dinners, parties and walks. Got to see Rob and Fiona a couple of times too which was nice, as they really went into hibernation during the lockdown. Unfortunately didn't see much of Scott. Also didn't see much of Chrissie. Saw her on her birthday in January and I think that was it. Doesn't help that they are all always either crazy busy or sick. We didn't end up having a hanami lunch with Nat and Andrew.  I invited them but never heard back.  I would have chased them up but Stu was too busy and stressed with a uni assignment.  Had a lovely time at Aquila's 60th in January. Had Nelson and Susan over in August for vegan lasagna and games. Had drinks with Damien in September, I think that was the only time I saw him all year. We were supposed to go to Ben and Sarah's wedding in Queensland in October. Yeah that didn't happen. But Ben was able to have a nice 40th at Gungahlin Lakes on the day. We also had them over for dinner in December. And Doc organised drinks at the George for a bunch of work peeps between Christmas and New Year which was nice.

On the family side, well my family has been here the whole time! David has been living with us for a little over a year. While it can be challenging sometimes (mainly menu planning and trying to remember to vacuum around a shiftworker) it's generally been pretty good. And he fixes things! While he was here he replaced the light fitting in our ceiling fan (I think that might have been before he moved here), fixed the leaky ensuite toilet, installed new taps in the bathroom, installed LEDs everywhere, including some smartlights in the loungeroom that are pretty cool, installed a new extentible clothes line, installed a new oven, fixed the display on Stu's CD player, fixed the frequency on our digital radios, fixed up the bedroom curtain string which had come off the rails, fixed our back fence which had been pushed out by vines and photinia and finally broken in strong winds, phoned up and ordered and picked up a new fix tank lid for me, installed a bracket for the clothes line so we can extend it half way instead of the whole way, helped Stu build his new shelves, rewired the LEDs in Stu's four foot tank so it'd work with a standard transformer, installed a couple of new smoke detectors, fixed my scanner (cable had come loose, and I would have eventually figured this out because I would have moved it to test it on another computer). And he mowed the lawns. Seriously, most awesomest brother ever!!! And super handy having a qualified electrician in the family! About the best we could do to thank him was cook lots of roasts. Including roast lamb on his birthday, and he had a few friends over to help celebrate. I stayed with Mum in Sydney a couple of times - when I went up for Ryan's 21st, and when I inspected my flat in June. We saw a bit of Stu's family as well. Went and visited a few times in August, October and Christmas.  And we saw Scott and Kerry and the family and Jeff and Ruth in November.

Our social club events had to be curtailed somewhat, and I missed out on doing Christmas in July which I've done for a few years in a row now, but at least I got to do Christmas for something like fifty people (a whole bunch had to stay outside due to capacity restrictions). We had a few weekends out there while Stu was on the committee, including in January where I did some cleaning out of the "tool shed", a night in June, our first since February, where we really appreciated the little wood fireplace, and in July where I stared priming the cabinetry. Also had some time in early October. We went out for the last event before lockdown - an epic Mexican feast in February. One of the raffle prizes that night was a six pack of Corona beer with an attached N95 mask. There was a working bee in July where I scraped concrete off a glass door. That night would have been the Christmas in July night, and the alternative was going to be a bonfire, but it rained, so we cooked marshmallows in the wood heater in the shed. The first event post lockdown was a halloween party where I got to be Lego 80s Classic Space guy again. And then my Christmas party. And we finished the year there with a few friends and a lot of bubbles.

Another fairly quiet year with the fish. I bought ten zebra danios in April and put a few in my three tanks. Half of them died, some fairly quickly. I lost the angel in my 620T tank in September, and Chrissie's catfish was looking super depressed. I stuck my hand in to see if it was still alive, and the water was COLD. The heater had died, taking my angel with it. Pretty upset about that. I took a random day off in September, thinking I'd do some fish stuff in the morning and other things in the afternoon. But I ended up doing fish stuff *all day*. And I managed to break the lid of the upstairs two foot while I was trying to clean it. Stu got some little sucking catfish and some guppies at the end of the year. So Stu's four foot has ten congo tetras, one loach, one siamensis and four tiny sucking catfish. My 620T has Chrissie's huge sucking catfish, a huge old cory and two female danios. My upstairs two foot has two male danios, one who has been sick since shortly after I got him, but refuses to die. Little trooper. It also has a sucking catfish, and six of the guppies Stu got at the end of the year. My downstairs two foot has four of the male guppies and two sucking catfish from Stu's purchase. Also downstairs are five little tanks, all with two or three guppies in them to cycle the tanks.  No change with Stumpy.  He's just as much a gumby as ever.

Not much going on with the Lego. I'm still sporadically sorting Vic's Lego but it's just so painful. If sets were complete it would be a joy, but none of them are, so it's just depressing. I think the only sets I built all year were the set of Shanghai Stu got me for Christmas, and Neil's International Space Station.

The year started slowly with jigsaws - most of the first quarter was taken up with a three thousand piece jigsaw of The Bombing of Algiers. I did two sections of the forty two thousand piece Disney behemoth - Peter Pan and The Little Mermaid. Very few at work thanks to the lockdown, and not too many at home because I'm just too damned busy all the time.

I continued working on labelling and sorting photos. As mentioned above I geotagged and labelled thousands of photos. I also did a lot of filing of photos, but there's still sooo much to be done in that space. In March I started scanning Dad's slides. I started out doing a box a week, and at that rate it was going to take me four or five years. But working from home during lockdown gave me an extra half hour in the mornings that I used to scan a box a day. I managed to get all his slides scanned by Christmas, although I still had a bit of work to rescan slides that had dust on them on the first pass. Didn't quite complete that by the end of the year. In December I had a bit of a play with a gallery generator. The only reason I'm labelling all my holiday photos is because I want to get the majority of them online. I did consider Flickr, but I just have this feeling they're not going to last. Too many buyouts and changes of conditions. Most likely I'll just use S3 and pay the few cents a month it'll likely cost.

I continued to rage at Apple and the crappy things it does. It still messes with the timestamps on my files. I can't download movies first go, or second or third or fourth in a lot of cases. And can't download timelapse videos *at all* to my PC, I have to save them to Google Drive first and then if I'm lucky the encoding/dimensions will be right for me to play them on my PC. Calendar and contacts refuse to sync to Google like they used to (I don't think it's worked since I got my new phone two years ago and I've tried *everything*). The contacts don't even sync to Apple Cloud. I'm about ready to give up on Apple.

Most of the stuff around the house was done by David. Because he's awesome. Our oven element died in March. I cleaned the oven while he investigated getting a new element, but in the end we got a whole new oven. While I was on a work break. With no sleep. Yeah really not the best mental state to be buying home appliances. In April we went out to buy half turn taps. Again, while on a work break, from a situation at work I probably should not have left. The anxiety of that day was terrible!! But the new taps are amazing, I love them! Unfortunately the dripping shower was still there. Guess it's not the taps that are leaking. We had a plumber come look at it, and he did a whole heap of tests, and decided the membrane was gone (duh) and most likely just leaking through the grout. I could have saved myself four hundred dollars if I'd just done the "cover the drain and splash water on the walls" trick which I did just after and proved the same thing. We got a resealer to come have a look and give us a quote. But he was confused about why there would be so much leaking through the grout, promised to send a quote for a complete retile/reseal, but never did. Even when I mailed them again and asked. In March we cleaned out the dumping ground room so that Stu could have his own office. He'd been wanting to do that for ages. The timing was great, as it meant he had a private office during lockdown. He got new shelves later in the year and a whole heap of toys, and he really loves his little space. I spent a weekend tidying up the dungeon and under the house and rearranging everything to keep it clear of the drip. We had to get the Chinese pistachio tree removed in August because the trunks were sagging apart and it was in danger of falling down (onto Kit's garage). I was super sad about that because it was such a beautiful tree, and the birds absolutely love it, and as it turns out it was a great shade for the eastern side of the house, so our house is a lot hotter in the mornings now. We also got the tree guys to be brutal on our photinia which was getting out of control. Again. We had a roof restoration done in October and the roof looks very shiny now. Next up: solar. The garden continued to stay out of control. Although we did get a few strawberry plants off Michelle and got some very nice strawberries off them in October (the ones the slugs didn't get at).

We still managed to eat out a little bit this year. We took Kit and Pete out for dinner in January to Bella Vista. Went to Kinn Thai in January, February and March (which was our last eating out before lockdown). It's always fast service and the food really good. Had some very nice pizzas at Grease Monkey in January. Went to Grill'd with Neil in January to avoid the food court during school holidays. Tried Malatang Hotpot in January too. The one I had was fairly bland, and the one Neil had was super epic spicy, even for him. Need to try something in the middle, but then there was lockdown, and they're still not allowing you to handle the tongs to choose your own food. Tried Wild Panda in Civic when I got back from Sydney, but I don't remember it being anything special. Had lunch with the sweetie at Gus's in May - first eating out post lockdown. Had brunch at Rocksalt in June. Had some nice pork belly with crackling at the Lake George hotel a week before my birthday. It was going to be my birthday meal, but we ended up going to Chong Co on my birthday. And KFC for lunch of course. Went to Happy's a couple of times with the sweetie in September and October. Met up with a bunch of N-Gang people for dinner at Indian Pantry in October for a feast. Tried out Herbert's in November, and went there a couple of times in November and a couple in December with Tony and/or the Chrises. Had drinks a few times with the sweetie at the Beirut Bunker Bar. Had Disappointing Sushi, aka Hero Sushi in Civic in December. It lived up to expectations. It's literally a running joke with us now. You can be guaranteed that the hot food will be cold and everything has avocado in it.

As always, I do quite a bit of interesting cooking. I don't quite know how I manage that, since I'm not really a very good cook. Actually I'm basically a lazy cook. I like cooking things that don't require a lot of fiddly preparation or a lot of cleaning up. I cooked two pavlovas in January. I think this was the first time I'd ever made a full pavlova. I thought I'd have another go at Christmas and failed miserably. Twice. We had cheese and bacon sausages we got from Coles a few times. They're great to have in the fridge because they last ages, so we can use them when we've run out of other food. Made curried sausages in March to try and use up some of the many tins of curry powder we have in the house. We tried out Dominos "deep pan" pizzas a couple of times. They were pretty disappointing. Nothing like the crispy doughy deep fried goodness of pizzas in the eighties. Tried a slow cooked marinated beef in March to try and use up some of the mustard powder we have in the house. It turned out pretty well. Made nachos in late March, probably the first time I've ever made nachos myself. Several of our lunches during lockdown consisted of various types of puff pastry scrolls - cheese and vegemite and pizza scrolls being favourites. Did a coq au vin in April. Cooked a couple of "Yum! Delicious!" cakes and a cashew slice with Mum's peanut slice recipe. I also did Anzac Biscuits on Anzac Day which has become somewhat of a tradition in recent years. I did a few tomato based stews as we went into winter, and we think all the extra tomato set off David's gout, so we had to cut those right back. There was Sizzler cheesy toast a couple of times, and taco Tuesday multiple times - soooo bad but soooo good!! Did an epic lasagna in May. Tried a pulled pork in May. It was pretty amazing, but such a waste of crackling ;) David obliged me with a Country Cheese and cheese sauce craving and had quite a bit of that over winter. Whenever a packet is open it evaporates very quickly. Tried a couple of non-tomato based bakes from my gratins and bakes book - a broccoli and cheese penne with garlic and lemon crumbs, and a potato, bacon and blue cheese bake, both were very nice but also quite similar to my regular veggie bakes. Made an Irish stew in July - Stu was going to make it but life got in the way so I did it.  It was nice enough. Tried slow cooking beef brisket in July and fell in love with it, and did it several times. As well as some slow cooked pulled beef and NQN's beef cheeks as well. Slow cookers are amazing for hearty winter cooking! David reminded me of our youth and Dinner Winner, and we had Coles' One Pan Dinner a couple of times, and even had authentic Dinner Winner once. There may have been a rocky road in there at some point, and a fairly nice gingerbread cheese cake I made at Christmas. There were several weekends where I spent several hours cooking up meals for a week or more, to save cooking during the week (which is really no fun at all when you don't heat up the kitchen to save money on heating costs).

I saw exactly one movie/theatre/show/exhibition this year -
* Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker

As usual for recent years I/we worked my/our way through a lot of movie series. This may have been aided *a lot* by Disney+ !
* finished up watching through all the James Bond movies
* watched Star Wars episodes VII and VIII before seeing IX at the movies
* finished up the Pixar series with Coco and Toy Story 4
* watched a *lot* of original/remakes of Disney movies - Aladdin, Dumbo, Lady and the Tramp, Freaky Friday, The Lion King, The Parent Trap (just 1 and 2 they don't have 3 yet), 101 Dalmatians and Mulan
* saw a few "Australian classic" movies - My Brilliant Career, which I really didn't like, and Ned Kelly, which I thought was better
* in March was the 30th anniversary of seeing Labyrinth for the first time, so we watched it on David's Bluray
* we had to watch some pandemic disaster movies, so watched World War Z first up because Contagion had been pulled from Netflix, but David had Contagion on DVD so we all watched that later too
* Frozen II
* Airport series
* Naked Gun series
* Star Wars - I think we saw all nine this year
* almost all the Ghibli movies, except Grave of the Fireflies which wasn't on Netflix. Some of them are amazing. Some of them are crap.
* a few of the Herbie movies (still a couple to go, it's a bit of a struggle since they're very silly)
* Die Hard 1 and 2 and Love Actually at Christmas. David dissed Love Actually on Facebook, but he had the choice to leave but didn't and he seemed to be enjoying himself. Just sayin ;)

And again, somehow we managed to watch our way through a lot of TV. I always feel like I don't have time to watch tv/movies, and yet somehow we see a lot. Mostly from Thursday to Sunday, as Monday to Wednesday is "work" nights.
* first episode of Who is America
* Star Trek: Picard
* The Mandalorian (season 1)
* Big Bang Theory - finished mid year, took a little over year to watch all 12 seasons
* Brooklyn 99 until it ran out of episodes (up to season 6?)
* Fuller House (last seasons)
* Lego Masters (second Australian season)
* Unorthodox
* Filthy Rich
* The Dismissal
* The Miraculous Mellops
* The Simpsons (most of the way through season 5)
* High Score (documentary)
* Against the Wind
* Discovery (season 3)
* The IT Crowd (all of it)
* The Mandalorian (season 2)
* The Queen's Gambit

Not a lot of reading this year. I don't catch the bus much and I mostly feel too tired to read when I go to bed.
* Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, by J.K. Rowling
* Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy (all five books in the trilogy), by Douglas Adams
* Penguin Bloom, by Cam Bloom and Bradley Trevor Greive (I also started Heartache and Birdsong)

Other stuff!
* Started "This day in history" posts
* Got Disney+ and watched a *lot* of Disney
* Got some cute "living stones" - succulent plants that grow extremelly slowly
* Played with Picasa for Ryan's 21st "morph" series
* Got our NBN fixed in January - because last time they did work they broke one of our connectors so we were only getting half the speed we should. David organised that because he's awesome.
* Used Picasa to tag people in a lot of work photos, still a long way to go on that
* Collected the next batch of Stikeez - got all but one of the specials
* Our rose bush and rhododendron out the front put out just a couple of flowers right at the end of summer when it finally rained
* Had cheese and nibbles with bubbly, and Chong Co delivered for our anniversary
* Went bed shopping in June but didn't find anything we really liked
* Went to Ikea and bought storage cubes for David and drawers for stu
* My domain - kazza.id.au turned 18
* Had a big outage of my web hosting in late June. Went looking for a new host and found VentraIP, but they didn't support Perl DBD::mysql so had to cancel it all again. But it did force me to do an upgrade of a dll in Eudora which allows secure downloads without ssl errors, so that's a win
* Had issues with the vacuum cleaner - it kept getting jammed - with my hair :(
* Got so much rain in August all creeks and rivers around Canberra flooded a bit
* The boys bought me a Dyson cordless for my birthday
* Couldn't get on the Qantas 747 joy ride flight out of Canberra, because Qantas' website sux donkey balls. So I watched it fly over central Canberra from Mt Ainslie instead (arguably better for photos anyway!)
* Listened to some podcasts with the sweetie - The Eleventh, Winds of Change, Thirteen Minutes to the Moon
* Got super sad at all the 747s around the world being retired
* A neighbourhood yappy dog pissed me off by barking non stop for literally hours at a time
* The winter was so warm our potatoes survived the whole winter without freezing
* Enjoyed Floriade in the suburbs!
* Went for a drive with the sweetie around Denman Prospect and out to Cotter
* Had a Bunnings sausage in October for first time since lockdown
* Voted in the ACT elections early so I didn't get a Democracy Sausage (most places I don't think were doing them anyway)
* Had a free run to the tip because what we took was mostly all metal
* Had to fight with windoze to maintain access to our NAS - its ancient version of SMB is making windoze super sad
* Tidied up all the packing materials in garage, with the idea to use it all to sell stuff
* Vodien moved my blog to a new host, but didn't tell me. Well, apparently they did tell me - to an email address that doesn't actually work anymore.
* Failed at jeans shopping
* Tried out Return-It's bulk facility which is only marginally better than their drop off system
* Saw the moon and Saturn and Jupiter near each other, but not at their closest point

Our year was finished off at the club. We headed out there on New Years Eve eve and stayed two nights, and had a fairly relaxed New Years.

2020 sure was one crazy year. Here's hoping 2021 settles down quickly into the "new normal".

Happy new year!! 

Backdating, because you wouldn't expect anything less!!

Monday.  Slept okish I think.  After the weekend this counted as the first day of our holidays.  I had the idea that I would "work" until Christmas - finish scanning Dad's slides and fixing them all up, get the house cleaned, get photos sorted out, get my year in review done, that sort of thing, and then after Christmas would be "holiday" time to do fun things.  So I spent All. Fricken. Morning. trying to fix up two boxes of slides.  Some slides I had to scan up to *seven* times to get them without fluff somewhere in the scan.  So was pretty cranky to start with.  Then stressed about having to cook all the time and deal with everyone's dietary issues.  I pulled everything out of the freezer and did an audit on it.  Pulled out a few things to defrost and eat before we're allowed to go shopping next.  It took all day to fix up seven boxes of slides.  Felt super annoyed that my first day of holidays was just doing this and nothing useful.  Watched Die Hard 2 in the evening.

Santa Stumpy

Tuesday.  Got morning stuff done then we headed out.  I dropped off the last of the tubs we'd used for the bbq back at work.  Took a drive through the Parliamentary Triangle and I got Stu to stop so I could take a photo of George - because I'd never taken a photo before!

George V Statue, Parliament House

Parliament House

Then continued on.  Went all the way to Kambah to a brewing supply store so Stu could pick up a CO2 cylinder for his fish tank.  Then back into the city so Stu could buy some pens and I could have a look for jeans in Big W (epic fail there as well).

Canberra Centre Christmas Tree

Had "Disappointing Sushi" at Hero Sushi.  It lived up to expectations - the first takoyaki plate I got was *cold*.  And everything has avocado in it.  Why can't you put cucumber in some of it??  Some of us don't like avocado!  #grunt.  By the time we got home it was mid afternoon.  Spent an hour fighting with slides and managed to fix one roll.  The sad story is there's dust and tiny hairs *under* the glass, so even though I wipe down the glass and practically scrub the slides before each scan, there's always dust in a few set positions.  But there's now so much fluff there I can't even flip the slides 180 degrees because there's fluff in all the corners, which means there's *always* fluff in the sky no matter which way I orient the slide.  So an hour and a half to fix two boxes.  Had leftovers for dinner.  Watched more of the Mandalorian documentary.  But basically I was cranky all day due to simply not enough hours in the day to get through the ever growing todo lists, not enough days in a holiday (still miss my uni three month holidays), being out most of the day, slide scanning being so painful etc.  I didn't even bother to try and go see Jupiter and Saturn on their second closest night.

Wednesday.  Finally finished scanning all Dad's slides (at least a first pass).  Took two hours to do one box.  Day was spent fixing slides, blogging, processing photos.  In the afternoon we met up with Tony and later Keira at Herbert's for a couple of beers and dinner.  I had the porcetta burger this time (which has crackling!!) and managed to mostly get through it.  Earlyish night.

Herbert's porcetta burger

Thursday.  Christmas Eve.  4:30 wake up - itchy and restless legs.  Just a day of all the things, although not as much as previous days.  Put on a video of Beethoven's 9th while wrapping presents and blogging.  In the afternoon watched the end of Jingle Jangle: A Christmas Journey, which I'd started the other night.  I'd watched the first half one night when I was feeling cranky, and as such didn't really enjoy it.  But enjoyed the second half a bit more.  It sure is pretty to look at, but basically a bit meh.  The kid who played Journey is pretty cool tho.  Pizza for dinner (Thursday!), then watched Love Actually (Stu endures it because he has no choice, David had a choice, and although he dissed it, he actually stayed and seemed to be enjoying it ;) ), and then the Melbourne Carols by Candlelight.  Such a strange thing to watch with no audience due to Covid, and most of the choir for the Hallelujah Chorus singing remotely.  

Anything that turned up at the house in December went under the tree.  Seemed little point rewrapping any of it, so that's how they stayed til Christmas morning ;)
Presents

Backdating a few days.. ;)

Monday.  Slept ok.  Got driven quite insane by the neighbour's dog barking for three and a half hours straight - from 7:25-11am.  I can't concentrate on anything while it's yapping.  It's like a car alarm going off.  It'll bark bark bark, have a brief stop, then start up again.  So upsetting.  At work, someone wanted me to look at something right at the end of the day so didn't finish up til 17:30.  In the evening freaked out at all the fresh food we have in the house.  Froze some of the uncooked meat, and some of the meals as well.  So the freezer is now very full.  Made up some meals out of the various bits and pieces (David's happy to pick up a meal of leftovers if he just needs to heat it up, rather than assembling all the bits and pieces first).  Had to laugh at the Simpsons (1993) with people using tapes in cars.  Tapes!

Tuesday.  We were going to have a team lunch at one of the Indian places in Belco, but neither Taj Agra or Indian Bay could be stuffed picking up their phones, even at ten to twelve, so we thought screw em, and went to the Labor club. 

I was feeling mixed up all week.  Tuesday firstly felt like a Wednesday because I was in the office, but then it felt like a Friday because we'd been out for a team lunch.  Weird.

The dog was quiet in the evening.. maybe the rain discouraged it?

Wednesday.  My computer rebooted itself overnight.  And I'm like what??  I'd literally rebooted it on Tuesday evening.  I'd had to reboot it after the last patching to reenable SMB 1.0 in order to connect to our ancient NAS.  So why did it need another reboot? hrmmm!!  Hate Windows, hate.  Oddly, Edge, Chrome, Notepad and OneNote had all come back and reopened where they left off, but Excel didn't.  Weird.  In the evening got extremelly pissed off that the flatbreads we'd bought on the weekend were covered in mould (I'd been planning to use them on Thursday to make pizzas).  If I'd known they were going to mouldy so quickly I'd have frozen them straight away.  Such a waste of food #grunt!!

Thursday.  Drinks, pizza, the usual.  David and I went and looked at Jupiter and Saturn near the moon (see the other post on this).

Friday.  Woke up at 4am.  Gruntfullness.  Had a bit of a wind down day at work tidying and finishing things up.  Had lunch with the Chrises, Neil and Raja at Herbert's.  I had the mac and cheese balls again, but didn't feel so stuffed full this time.  

Herbert's selfie

Herbert's Mac and Cheese Balls

I'd almost ordered the vegetarian loaded fries, but I was glad I didn't - Raja got them and they were enormous!!  He asked for a doggy bag even before he started!

Herbert's epic vegetarian loaded fries

I also had to laugh at their keg storage (their storage space is at a premium).

Herbert's beer keg storage

Finished up work, yay on holidays!!  Had leftovers for dinner and watched Die Hard in the evening.

Saturday.  Woke up at 3am for a couple of hours.  #grunt.  Had a little bit of a sleep in.  Then got stuck into All The Things.  So actually a fairly productive day.  Watched the second episode of The Queen's Gambit, and the final episode of the second season of The Mandalorian.

Sunday.  Slept ok I think.  Spent the morning doing All The Things, mostly scanning and fixing scanning.  No promised rain though.  For lunch we went over to Rob and Lynne's with some other peeps for a lovely lunch/bbq.  As always Lynne fed us too much ;)

Rob and Lynne bbq

We also found out that Canberra has now asking anyone coming from Sydney to quarantine/self isolate for fourteen days.  Which means it's likely Mum won't be able to come down to visit after Christmas.  Waiting a few days to see if anything changes, but it's unlikely to.

Don't think we had any dinner at all Sunday night, but watched another episode of Discovery.