Sunday.  4th.  Cooked an epic keto feast - tuna casserole, cauliflower with blue cheese and cream, broccolini with butter and lemon juice, and capsicum.

Then the finale of The Crown.  Although they still have another twenty years of history to cover, so who knows, there might be another season.  And I picked York Minster!  Win!

Monday.  Slept mostly ok.  Ok day at work, some training and some bits and pieces.  Realised in the evening that at some point OneNote decided it copy itself to OneDrive and make that my active OneNote.  Which means for I dunno at least six months I haven't been backing it up because I've been editing the cloud copy.  After the epic disaster Dave2 just had with The Cloud, I was horrified.  I was also pissed, because it meant I had to go through each and every page and find out if there were any changes made to the cloud copy that needed to brought back on prem.  Hate hate hate hate hate.

Tuesday.  Slept ok.  Ok day - more training and bits and pieces.  Fighting with certificates.  So painful.  Weeding at lunch and after work.

Wednesday.  Took ages and ages to get to sleep but then woke up early.  Sigh.  Built some new proxies at work.  After work went in to meet Aaron.. except he overslept at home and didn't make it.  Sigh.  But the sweetie came and joined me and we had Kinn Thai for dinner which was lovely.

At least it was a nice night to be stood up..

Nam tok wagyu beef - grilled wagyu beef with ground roasted rice, dry chilli, herbs and lime dressing.. this was a little too hot for me but so delicious!

Ka na moo grob - stir fried crispy pork with garlic, chilli and Chinese broccoli

Also remembered Dad who went and carked it ten years ago tonight.

Thursday.  Slept ok.  Did some work on some mail rules for our new notifications db.  Made pizzas for dinner then Death in Paradise 8.4.

Friday.  Slept ok I think.  Bit of training and some work on proxy acls.  

Cooked up some beef from the freezer with cabbage for dinner.

Mash and Orville 2.13.  They do have some creative story lines in The Orville.

Saturday.  Slept ok I think.  Got plenty done although could have gotten more done.  Weekends are too damned short.  Did some house stuff, food shopping, some Turkey photo culling, even did a bit of jigsaw.  Cooked epic cheesy mince for dinner - so fricken delicious (bacon, onion, mince, cream, tasty cheese, cream cheese).  

Then watched The Queen, written by Peter Morgan, so it had very much the same vibe as The Crown.

Sunday.

Slept ok.  Another day of just trying to get All The Things done in such short weekends.  Achieved lots but still So Much to do.  Sigh.  Caught up on blogging and have an epic feast in the oven...

Last weekend we headed down after work Friday to Tumut!  We took Tony, as J was meant to come too but she got covid.. !!

We stayed in the caravan park which I've been wanting to stay at since the first time we went in 2020.

Yep, that's the Tumut River right there!

Gear dumped we headed for TRBC.  They've got rather a nice path the whole way now, no scrambling up and down embankments anymore!

Except as I was telling the story of Tom Scott's last video I nearly stood on a snake (I was literally blind because I was focussed on Tom Scott flying with geese) and Stu grabbed me to stop me but it HURT!!  And I never even saw the snake (it slithered off) because I was trying to figure out why I was suddenly being hurt.. :(  Put me out of sorts all night.  But thanks to the sweetie for saving my life anyway hehe.

Grabbed ourselves some beers (I had Volkslager Märzen and a Rose Gose) and ordered dinner.

We got a maple bacon and blue cheese, and something else but I forget what it was and I can't find it on their menu..

Also a house salad and the amazeballs

After dinner Tony and I went for a short walk to see the swamp

And saw All The Bats

Which look pretty trippy with the phone's long exposure..

Saturday.  Slept like crap.  Sigh.  Tony and I went for a short walk while the sweetie got ready.

Then I cooked breakfast

The view from breakfast!

Some ducks came by hoping for a handout

After breakfast Tony and I went bridgespotting

For lunch we met up with Frank and Karen at the Oriental Hotel.  I had salt and pepper squid.

Then the sweetie and I headed back to the van to chill for a bit.

Around 15:00 we went back and met up with the others to head down to the Tumut River Tap Days.

Unlike Sydney or Canberra festivals this one was pretty relaxed.  Helps not having thousands and thousands of people.  There wasn't a lot of shade left in front of the stage by the time we got there, which was ok because it was a bit loud anyway.  So we went slightly further away and got ourselves setup.  

There were several bands although they mostly played music I didn't know.

And half a dozen or so brewerys (Big Niles, Dalgety, Jindabyne, Squinters, Tuckerbox, Willie the Boatman and of course TRBC).

A couple of places did food (there was Indian, gozleme and TRBC were doing pizzas).  

The only problem.. it was HOT!  Over 30 degrees which wasn't ideal.  But with a few cold beers we all had a lovely relaxed afternoon and evening!

Frank took this of Stu

We actually stayed til the end, which we weren't really expecting to do on account of sleeping so badly and it being so hot

Sunday.  Slept somewhat better.  

Cooked breakfast again.

The ducks came again

And I blew some bubbles

Then just cleaned up and came home.

Stu sent me this recipe forever ago but it was only last weekend I finally got around to making it.

Ignore the veggies on the right, we have 500g mince, an onion, bacon, stock, cream, cheese and taco seasoning.  Didn't have any capsicum and bypassed chilli stuffs.. 

Two eggs, some garlic powder, cheese, cream

Onion, bacon, mince

Mix it all together

Top with cheese

And roast for like half an hour (with lots of veggies)

It was quite nice although the egg did solidify things a lot.  I like runny sloppy mess so this was a bit.. firm..

Still nice, but I packaged up all the leftovers and still haven't managed to get through them all yet...

Sunday.  21st.  Cooked a yummy dinner of lemon butter chicken (chicken thighs, garlic, butter, lemon juice etc) and buttered veggies (mushrooms, zucchini, spring onions, butter, cream etc).  Crown 6.8.

Monday.  Slept ok I think.  

Not a bad day, got some stuffs done.  

Tuesday.  BOM said "no rain".  While it was literally raining.  

Felt flat all day.  Spent too much time stressing about Tassie.  The buttplugs at Cradle Mountain won't let you drive to Dove Lake anymore (and charge you $15 each to take a shuttle bus).  Problem is the shuttles only run from 8am to 6pm but given we want to take our time with the walk there's a very real possibility we could miss the last shuttle.  Could you imagine then having to walk the extra ten kilometres out and back to the car???

Tony said he had a glut of basil, so I asked for some.  This is what he gave me..

!!

So spent like an hour using about two thirds of it to make two tubs of pesto

Is the juice worth the squeeze?  I dunno...

And my kitchen garden is getting a little out of hand..

Cooked a beef roast and a bunch of veggies for dinner.

Wednesday.  Slept mostly ok.  Decided I should soften up the old Scarpas.  Oof they're very tough.  Got a bit of house stuff done and some Lego sorting. 

For dinner I cooked a Mexican inspired dinner - beef mince with onion, bacon, garlic powder, taco seasoning, shredded pizza cheese and some cream cheese (omfg it was so good!!) and a salad of lettuce, cucumber, tomato, tasty cheese and coriander, with a dressing of Greek yoghurt, lime juice, garlic powder, salt, pepper and finely topped coriander) which was also really good. 

Then I watched Hannah Gadsby's "Something Special".

Thursday.  Slept mostly ok but woke up at like 4:30 or something.  Mostly Lego sorting day.  Hurray.  Nearly done though.  I keep saying that, but there always seems to be more..  Made pizzas for dinner then Death in Paradise 8.2.

This whole low carb nonsense has been pretty effective.. have lost like three kilos in three weeks..

Friday.  Slept mostly ok but woke up at like 4:45.  OMFG I FINISHED INVENTORYING VIC'S LEGO!!!  Gonna have a break before next stage though.  There's still a loonnnnggggg way to go.  Fried up some beef in jelly and had with salad for dinner.

Mash/Orville 2.12 (lolz with Marina Sirtis and directed by Jonathon Frakes).

Saturday.  Slept mostly ok but woke up pretty early.  With the Lego done it was back to almost a regular weekend day and trying to get All The Things done. 

Booked some Tassie stuff which was good.  Man, how much of a ripoff is Strahan??  $200/night for essentially a caravan park.  Yeesh.  Went over to Chrissie's for dinner which was nice, haven't really seen her much since pre covid.

Sunday.  Slept mostly ok but woke up pretty early.  Back to usual Sunday including feeling blah about having to go back to work tomorrow..

And now to cook All The Food...

Sunday.  14th.  Cooked up an epic feast for dinner/leftovers.  There was a tuna bake, a broccoli/cauliflower bake, capsicum and broccolini with butter/lemon juice (which I stoopidly overcooked).  

Then Mash and The Crown 6.7.

Monday.  Slept relatively well!  All. The. Rain.  !!  Ok day.  Bit of planning for a new database we're hoping to get setup for notifications.  Did an hour of weeding after work and Stu helped cook dinner which was nice.  Then went for a walk up Mt Rogers.

I think I might get moist... (spoiler: I did!)

Then had a look at the Tassie map.  Then it was bed time.  WTF.  Every day I want to do music, weed the garden, keep the house clean/tidy, cook dinners, exercise, process photos, plan holidays.  Except I can only do a couple of those every day because work takes up too much damned time.  And let's not even mention actually having fun and doing my hobbies.  I. Do. Not. Have. Time. To. Go. To. Work.  Sigh.

Tuesday.

Slept mostly ok although woke up at 4:45.  Did housework for a HOUR before work.  And some effing cat sprayed our laundry door.  Buttplug.

Work.  I dunno.  Forty-five minutes of weeding after work.  I rescued some geraniums that had been cut off the plant by accident a couple of weeks ago.  Yeah these stems had been sitting on the ground for a couple of weeks, yet they were still flowering!!  So I stuck em in water.

Stu cooked dinner of cabbage and bacon (and I threw in the last of some leftover turkey).

Tried to finish the jigsaw we started on the weekend, but it's such terrible quality it was pretty much impossible.  It's made of soft plastic and you have to force the pieces together even when they're correct.  Now imagine pieces that are *almost* identical in shape, so you literally have no idea whether they're correct or not.  I got down to four pieces left a couple of times but they just would not go in.  Stoopid.

Wednesday.  Slept mostly ok.  Even got back to sleep after waking up at 4:45.  The other week Tony gave me a container of basil which is growing like weeds in his yard.  But of course I'm a complete slacker and didn't do anything with it.  Well it was getting desperate so before I work I made some pesto.  But first had to contend with a microscopic reanimated spider that's been in hibernation for a couple of weeks..

The pesto turned out quite well.  Even if I did end up having to throw out half the basil.  Sigh.

Ok day I guess.  Managed to find some jeans at kmart.  The only two in my size in the whole store.  As with Target, everything is "skinny".  Well some of us *aren't* skinny.  Hate.  So either *everyone else* wants skinny and that's why they stock so many.  Or *noone* wants skinny which is why that's all there is and hardly anything else.  Also why TF can't women's clothing standardise on sizes??  Last time I bought jeans they were size 8.  This time - 10.  I've had everything from 8 to 12 over the years cause they keep changing.  I really should try on some boys jeans some time.. Or go to a workwear place..

Westfield didn't get the memo about the 12 days of Christmas.. 

Late home, leftover pork (fried in lamb jelly (cause needed to clear freezer space)) and salad for dinner.  Backed up my computer and then it was time to wash my hair and go to bed.  Sigh.

Thursday.  Tidying up and bits and pieces at work.  Showed the newbies some stuffs on one of our firewalls.  Drinks at Lighty then Death in Paradise 8.1.

He's not missing a leg, but he did just leave that poop there

Friday.  Awake for like two hours in the middle of the night.  Sigh.  Climbed Mt Rogers. 

Mt Rogers has *pink* epic dandelions!

Then mostly just housework and getting organised, including bringing up the Lego from downstairs where it had been hiding for a few months due to the Silly Season.  Used the pesto I made yesterday with some chicken I dug out of the freezer, some broccoli and some "fake" pasta (kognac pasta) for a yummy dinner.  Stu went back for thirds, even though he doesn't really like broccoli, so must have been good haha.

Then The Orville 2.11.  I had the kind of day that I would like every day for the rest of my life.  kthxbai.

Saturday.  Slept ok until hurty kept me awake from like 3:45 to 5:45.  Sigh.  After not great sleep the night before either it was definitely zombie day.  Sigh. 

Dude, aren't you a bit far north of the border?

Did a bit of Turkey photo culling but not nearly enough.  Tried to sort out some Lego but my brain was too fuzzy and I'm sure I've stuffed something up. 

The baby capsicums are getting bigger.  That snail is just a shell.  Maybe a bluey got it.. 

Leftovers of the "pulled lamb" (which was still epic spectacular) and cauliflower with cheese sauce for dinner.

Mash and Sex Education 4.3.  Really had to feel for Jean (portrayed as my age even though Gillian Anderson is a fair few years older) and her exhaustion.. omfg there's no way I could have kids.. the sleep deprivation would kill me!!

I rescued those things on the right today too - their stem had broken off, possibly due to lack of water, so grabbed them and brought them inside

Sunday.  Slept fairly well hurray!!  Except I don't really know what I did all day.  I know I renamed all of Mum and Dad's Tasmania photos to get them into chronological order.  I also wrote out their itinerary for their 1971 trip.  They only had two weeks and managed to cram heaps in (including getting perfect days for Mt Amos and Cradle Mountain - totes jelly) and it was cool seeing the order of the photos plotted against the map.  Other than that I'm not even sure.  I didn't managed to do any photo culling.  Barely any dots.  Hardly any Lego inventorying.  There was a walk up Mt Rogers thoguh.  And food shopping.  And getting epic enraged by the pantry which descends into chaos the moment your back is turned.  Sigh.

Look at this trash.  This is what happens when you go low carb.  Everything's damnedwell GREEN haha

Now I just need a quote...

Monday.  8th.  30th anniversary of the Como-Jannali bushfires, my 21st blogiversary, David Bowie would have turned 77.  Slept mostly ok.  Oh The Humidity in the morning though!!  OMFG Con discovered Windoze 11 will FINALLY let you ungroup taskbar icons.  Totally made my day.  Mostly working on decoms.  Chatted to Chris and Glenda after work for an hour about Japan.  Then went for a walk.  Then cooked up some scrambled eggs for breakfasts this week.  And then it was bedtime.  Sigh.

My copy of unlink the rings was in an incomplete state.  I spent ages and ages and ages getting it into a 2x6 configuration that could be recovered with help online.  Then followed a tutorial to solve it.  Cause I was always too dumb to solve these puzzles.

Tuesday.  Low carb regime starts today.  Need to try and lose a few kilos in the next six weeks.  Except I didn't sleep.  Awake from like before 2 to after 4.  Then slept a bit but then awake again.  Zombie day. 

Mostly spent the day working backwards through my todo list finding things to work on.  Couldn't really concentrate on much though - too tired.  Cooked a nice dinner - leftover sausages, with mushrooms cooked in butter and a little cream at the end, and broccoli (from Chris's!  Just microwaved for a couple of minutes) with a sauce of olive oil, lemon juice, salt and pepper.  Looks simple but took 3/4 hour - mostly because I wasn't thinking clearly on account of being a zombie, and the not putting the mushrooms on til later (should have put them on first).

After dinner went for a walk up Mt Rogers.

And then it was bed time, because if you try and cook and exercise it takes up your entire damned evening.  Sigh.

Wednesday.  Was too tired to go to sleep.  Was almost asleep but the sweetie poked me cause I was snoring then it took another hour and a half to get to sleep.  So Wednesday was another zombie day.  When I went to feed the fish in the "angel" tank in the morning noticed the door was scraping the bottom which it wouldn't normally do.  So looked closer and there was water all over the bottom shelf.  !!!!  Looks like one of the filter wools up the top and drifted into the outlet and clogged it up, so it was backed up all over the top, leaking out the edge near the inlets for the powercords for the filter and lights, and flooding everything beneath.  Man they really should make fish tank stands out of real wood instead of chipboard which just swells up when it gets wet.  Yanked the power, got out some towels and dried it all as best I could, then setup a fan to blow on everything to dry it.  (But with Oh The Humidity all week I left that fan running for DAYS and it didn't even fully dry).  Continued looking at my todo list at work and more looking at decoms.  Went clothes shopping at Target at lunch.  It didn't end in tears, but it certainly wasn't successful.  The only jeans they have in stock (pretty much) are stoopid skinny ones.  I took two into try on but only tried the first one and knew the second one would never work.  But look at this.  Look at the pocket!!  Pity there was exactly ONE pair of this Yasmin style in store, nowhere near my size.  Pity, would have been cool.

Then I tried on seven (SEVEN) different bras.  !!  Only three of them even vaguely fitted.  One was a bit too small, one was a bit too big, and the one that was definitely the most comfortable had FOUR clasps instead of the usual three.  Damn my grandmother for giving me ginormous boobs to have to deal with.  In the end bought the one with four clips, but there weren't any more, so the hunt will continue. 

For dinner I fried up some leftover pork and cabbage in whatever jelly I could find in the freezer, which I think was lamb jelly because it was full of rosemary.  Don't eat those dried fried onions in future though, they are definitely not low carb.

Did some Turkey photo culling then went for a walk.  Hot.  Humid.  Sigh.

Got back and had to backup my computer but the external drive was being a poo and either not showing up in windows, or showing up but not being accessible.  Went and washed my hair (it was to damned HOT AND HUMID to deal with) then rebooted it again and was able to backup, but then it didn't finish til like 22:30 (after filling up the disk and I had to delete some crap) which is WAYYY past my bedtime.  Sigh.

Thursday.  Once again I couldn't get to sleep (til after midnight this time).

Oh the humidity!!

Another day of decom work and working through my todo list.  Drinks at Lighty after work (man after work drink prices, pub prices HURT) and KFC for dinner (we won't mention Subway for lunch, definitely not low carb!!).  Mr Miyagi in MASH and Death in Paradise 7.8.

Friday.  After like four nights in a row of not sleeping went into the other room and slept somewhat betterly.  Felt actually somewhat alive in the morning and was able to get through some housework before work.

Deleting Day at work which always makes me happy.  Lunch with the Chrises at the Burns Club.  No not that one, the other one.  There's another one, did you know?  Turns out I'd been there year and a bit ago when it was Magpies.  We won't mention the magpie that brought its kid along and wanted food.  And we're like, nah this salty stuff is no good for you.  Which is the exact same thing with me and unhealthy food.  I KNOW it's unhealthy but damn it tastes good.

Did I mention the humidity?

Fried up some leftover pork in lamb jelly and had it with salad which was very nice.

Saturday.  So the brother type person called on Friday night and offered to come and look at the oven (remember it tripped the power on New Years night) since I'd been too afraid to run it ever since.  So of course overnight I was stressing about the oven.  Because the damned DELONGHI POS is less than FOUR YEARS OLD and has already died TWICE.  And because I stress, I don't sleep.  Hurray for being me.  Got a bit of stuffs done in the morning but not really enough. 

The baby capsicums are still alive..

David arrived mid afternoon.  We turned on the oven.  It didn't trip at least but it didn't heat up.  So he pulled it out and found that sure enough, the rear element had blown (the one we use All The Time).

So we went out to buy a new oven.  Because it's too damned hard to get replacement parts for Delonghi POS we went with a Westinghouse.  And normally we wouldn't get extended warranty but this time we did.  Because they PROMISED that they would replace elements if they blew.  And at least for Westinghouse you CAN get replacement elements. Unlike Delonghi CRAP.  We took our car because it was supposed to rain like Any Second, and it did in fact start to rain while were picking up the oven.

We were too busy installing stuff to pay too much attention to the Epic Storm (which mostly passed south and east of us).  

Yeah doing electrical work during a massive thunderstorm is surely the greatest idea in the world.

But as I mentioned it was pretty sedate at our place.

Did I mention I have the bested brother in the entire universe?

Once it was all going (you have to run it for like half an hour to burn out all the manufacturing grease) we left it on and threw some veggies in it..

This oven probably runs a little hotter than the old one (or morely likely just has better air flow because of a bigger space for the fan to let out its heat..) so the bottom rack heated a lot more than I'm used to..

And of course then there was the lamb which was EPIC AMAZING.  Who knew you could stick a couple of kilos of lamb in a slow cooker all afternoon with garlic and rosemary and you end up with pulled lamb which doesn't even need gravy it's so tender and juicy.  Oh wait, I might have, if I'd actually gotten to taste any of the lamb I did this way back in 2021 for the club Christmas in July (ok, I got like one mouthful back then).  

Then we just chatted while David tried (and failed) to get Google to talk to our lounge room lights.

Sunday.  Woke up around 1:44 and didn't get back to sleep til well after 4 and then it wasn't great sleep.  Sigh.  Cooked some bacon and eggs and spinach for breakfast (spinach is a big fat poo - you cook half a bag of the stuff and get like two mouthfuls each).  Then David and I went to the tip to dump some flouros and batteries and course we needed to do a Green Shed run.  Don't tell Stu but I got some more jigsaws.  Then to Vinnies so David could look at DVDs and OMFG I actually bought a pair of jeans!!  ha!  Came back and had some lunch (well David did, I had mine later) and we started a jigsaw.  Which we did for the next several hours.  Whoops.  

Cooked up an epic feast for dinner, hopefully for leftovers for breakfast for the week...

Oh, also, Chrome (and of course edge) are being Big Fat Poos and aren't allowing commenting anymore because OMFG IT'S SO INSECURE.. Search does the same thing but at least you can click proceed anyway.  But posting comments is problematic - it won't save form data because OMFG IT'S SO INSECURE - but even if you click post anyway you get some error from the blog (don't have a copy on me right now).  I was going to hardcode the form posting to https this weekend but, well, life.  Maybe next weekend.  Anyway, thanks Dave2 for the comments (and Mum too), I did try to respond.. 

Monday.  New Years Day.  So New Years Eve we had some beer and watched Rocketman which was quite interesting.  But then had a sad cause we couldn't agree on something else to watch before midnight.  Ended up watching Death in Paradise 7.6.  Watched the Sydney fireworks but made for a late night.  But of course woke up New Years Day 6am.  Because that's what I do.  Bit of a lost day.  Didn't get much done.  After lunch the sweetie suggested going for a drive, and I'm like, the Cotter is spilling.. so off we went.  Turns out there's another lookout you can go up to (have to walk, takes about an hour round trip if you stop and look at flowers and saddle dams and the like).  I haven't been up there since it was still under construction in 2010.  Being New Years Day the place was PACKED.  We were lucky to get a parking spot.

This butterfly photobombed me!!

Some of the flowers

And some from the bottom

Kievs for dinner.  Was right near the end of the cooking and was about to turn off the oven.. only to find it was off.  Dead.  Tripped the power.  Sigh.  Think we need to give the damned thing a bowl of petunias.

Tuesday.  Back to work.  Sigh.  Planned to do nothing other than be the Naughty Email Intervention Layer, and clean up the test servers to get them as close to prod as possible.

Wednesday.  Rinse and repeat.

Thursday.  Rinse and repeat.  Death in Paradise 7.7.

Last look before I started taking things down

Friday.  Finished cleaning up the test policies which made me pretty happy.  Once all was said and done it was like 3pm.  I'd had a pretty intense week of getting this stuff done, surely that means I can knock off right?  The Orville 2.8 and 2.9 in the evening.  And I watched an old Harry Potter special on YouTube.

The capsicums I planted out the front are still alive.  The ones I planted out the back got eaten by snails.

Saturday.  Woke up at like 4am and don't think I got back to sleep at all.  Zombie tired all day :(  Then had a sad about taking the Christmas tree down and everything being too hard.  So the sweetie put on some John Williams which helped :)  Mostly house stuff (physical stuff) because I was too tired to concentrate on anything.  Leftovers for dinner, Mash, Sex Education 4.2.

Thistles are of the Devil.  I mean seriously, what was God's purpose in inventing these abominations??  Normally I'd rip these things out, but it was out of the way so I left it to flower.  Because they do have pretty flowers.  Will cut off the heads before they go to seed.

Six days later and the glow stick from NYE is still going (really only visible in the dark though)

Sunday.  Tried to get an early night on account of being zombie tired all day.  Except I was too tired to go to sleep.  Sigh.  Stoopid restless legs.  So that was all a bit miserable.  Not great sleep either, but still felt somewhat better today.  Walked up Mt Rogers before it got too hot.

Got some stuff done, but wasted entirely too much time on Rubik's puzzles (found in the box when I was looking for my Spirograph).

All our Game and Watches from the 80s

I have like a thousand Buckyballs (collected before the ban on sales).  I should make something epic out of them..

I didn't solve this.  In fact I completely bollocksed it up and needed help to unscramble it before could watch a video to solve it.  The big one I bollocksed up too but haven't fixed it yet.

And suddenly it's the end of the weekend.  Sigh.  

2023. Another lap around the sun. Another busy year.

The big trip for this year was to America with my brother to visit theme parks and do a Caribbean cruise out of Tampa. I still thought it was "too soon" to be travelling to America and cruising, but I had no choice because Bare Necessities is an evil company and I would never EVER travel with them again. And guess what. It was indeed too soon, half the ship got covid, and I probably did too at the end. But I didn't test because what was I going to do. We called it Schrödinger's Covid. Not that Americans care about covid anyway. They flat out refuse to wear a mask when they're sick or use hand sanitiser EVER. So I felt no guilt spreading germs around Disney World, especially when there's no hand sanitiser to be found anywhere in the parks. I kept my mask on which was the best I could do. Luckily I didn't get very sick and had a pretty awesome holiday with David. We had a couple of little trips as well. We went to Berrima for the weekend around our 15th wedding anniversary. It rained the whole time. We went to the coast in May to visit Kit and Pete, and a very last minute trip in October as well. We went to Sydney to catch up with some peeps for my 50th, and again to go to the Powerhouse Museum for possibly the last time ever. I also worked super hard to get the last two overseas trip photos online, and actually managed it, six months after America, and one year after Europe. But did get filled with rage at tripadvisor and booking.com. Both have utterly terrible invoicing and communication. Tripadvisor literally ripped me off for one of our Europe tours. And booking.com charges you randomly for hotels but I couldn't find emails for all the ones they did so had to make guesses on some of them.

At work my job description is still mostly Sadie. Well, when I have time in between people wanting stuff and wanting me to fix problems. Over and over and over again I was reminded that the correct spelling of Microsoft is actually B.S. Everything they do is designed to compromise any sort of security. I hate it so much. Early in the year I decided that we really need to manage our certificate renewals manually. That is, keep them in a diary of sorts so we don't miss renewals. Because over and over again there'd be outages for systems due to certificate expiries, even with management tools, to other teams, and I didn't want that to happen to our team. I helped out with some firewall upgrades in January. Did some apnic training on routing in March. Spent ages with Neil cleaning up mail policies. Cleaned up routing on a bunch of devices. Migrated our DR laptop to a new laptop. Did a week of oncall in September to give Connor a break. Trialled a proxy replacement, but while it did have some nice saas features, it was very week security-wise. Got forced into using Windoze 11. I hate it. So. Much. Got three new people in our team, but our area is already full so everyone's having to shuffle around every day which causes me all sorts of anxiety. And yet further down the floor it's a ghost town and noone sits there. Pisses me off. Socially we had a whisky night in July, and I went to trivia nights in July and September (I missed a later one due to Stu having covid). And I ran my big bbq at the lake for the eleventh year in a row with over fifty people.

I've generally been ok healthwise. There was the probable covid in America in March. I definitely had gut involvement because I'd get hungry but then only be able to eat a small amount before my stomach would be like, nope, I'm done. When I got home I had two bouts in March and April of what the doctor suspected might be diverticulitis (mild case) but I never actually found out the results of the tests. Given it was shortly after covid, it's quite possible it was related to that. I have been avoiding strawberries though, except the ones that grew in our back yard (no problems with those). There were the bouts of insomnia on and off that have been plaguing me for the past few years. Super annoying to just be lying there just awake. After getting back from America and having spent so little time on a screen in a month, I found I was completely blind trying to look at my monitors. So I really needed to get new glasses. I tried a new optometrist in Dickson (the son of the optometrist I used to see when I first moved to Canberra) but the practice is a little unorganised and when I went to pick up the glasses the optometrist wasn't even there to help fit them. Plus when I asked a follow up question later the optometrist wouldn't even talk to me. So not sure I'll go back. But, the glasses are great, I can see my computer now clearly. But it does mean I have to swap them out with my other glasses all the time as they're optimised for screen distance. I did have a bit of a cold in August, but multiple RATs were negative. Stu got a likely case of food poisoning in August, most likely from Disappointing aka Hero Sushi. I think he's only been back like once since then (he used to go all the time). He got covid in November most likely from a work colleague who continued coming into work even though his son was sick with covid. First time for him. He had a week off feeling pretty miserable and worked from home for a while after. I worked from home for a couple of weeks too, but never got it. I guess it helped having my booster just a few weeks earlier. Stu also got another possible bout of food poisoning in December, although it might have been covid related.

I saw quite a bit of various peeps at Herbert's during the year, either with Tony/Frank/Karen etc or The Chrises/Tony/Neil etc. There was a tap takeover by Big Shed in April, but I missed the one in October by TRBC because we went down the coast. Kit came to stay a night in January. We had Jenn over for dinner in April. Caught up with Luc for drinks in June. Went to R&F's in July and November. Had brunch with Katie (Stu's school friend) and Andrew at Little Bird in September. Went to Ben and Sarah's for dinner in September. Had Chris and Glenda over for dinner in October. Went to M&M's for dinner in November. Had Christmas Eve "Herbert's @ Tony's" although Dino and Kristin never made it, but it was still a good night with a bunch of peeps. David came to stay in September. He had a look at the oven and found a blown element (which died when the oven was less than two years old). He also replaced our stovetop (one of the elements had died but the final straw was when I accidentally smashed the whole surface by hitting the preexisting chip at just the right force/angle). I took him out for lunch at the Star Buffet after. Then we walked around Ikea for a couple of hours to walk off lunch. He came back again a couple of weeks later to install the new element I got, only to find the thing didn't actually fit. Sigh. We saw Annie and the family on Christmas day which was the first time we'd seen them all since last Christmas. We're all such slackers. Mum/David/Kellie/Sia came for Boxing Day lunch, and Mum stayed til the 28th before going home.

We didn't spend a whole lot of time out at the club this year. Partly because of Certain People, but also because Life. In March the sweetie and I completely emptied out the office, cleaned it, threw a whole heap of crap out, and put everything else back again. Then it was the Mardis Gras social. We went to the M themed night in May and I went as a minifig. There was Ian and Chris's anniversary formal night in June. I did Christmas in July again for like fifty people. And then another couple of working bees later in the year. We were going to go to the Christmas party but Stu got covid.

I had a few photo projects this year. One of them was getting Dad's slides into chronological order. I'd literally lay rolls and rolls of them out on the table to piece back together their correct order. This worked up until he started printing labels and gluing them all over the slide numbers, and the newest rolls were made of plastic so you couldn't even scrape back the label to see the frame number. I've still yet to finish processing the slides but at least now I'll be able to get them into the "correct" order. Well, except for the few odd ones that seem to be loners and not fit any other rolls at all. I also managed to get *two* overseas holiday photos online within six months and a year of going on the trip. I've gone back to working on Turkey 2014 to get them done in time for the ten year anniversary of the trip. Finally, I filed three years of "Canberra Life", "Friends and Family" and "Homes and Gardens" photos which had been presorted but not actually filed. Will go back to trying to file all my photos every week. There's still a lot of work I want to do in the sorting space. Hardest is when things overlap. Like going out to restaurants or holidays with friends - do they go under restaurants/holidays or under friends. It's a dilema.

Our blue-tongue lizard Stumpy is still puttering along. He (she?) must be about fourteen years old now. I got a bag full of guppies in January to add to the genetic diversity in the tanks. The last cory that I got in 2015 finally died in July. I consolidated all the downstairs tanks until Stu retires and has the brain space for fish again. So now we only have five active tanks. There's my "angel" tank (the 620T) which has guppies. The two foot upstairs has guppies and heaps of java fern - I rarely need to change the water in this tank because it's so well planted. Plus there's always so many babies I'd be worried about sucking them up. The four foot still has fourteen congo tetras and a loach, as well as some guppies (I think all male - no point letting them breed in that tank as the babies would get eaten straight away). The four foot is still plagued with algae problems - needs more plants and guppies I reckon. I still have Chrissie's tiny little tank with the two clown loaches. I've had them for nearly six years now. Downstairs I only have the one two foot tank active. It's got guppies and a sucking catfish and is also a fairly healthy tank. All the other tanks downstairs I either drained or turned the heaters/lights off and only run the filters for an hour or two every day (while the sun is at max on the panels) - to keep the heaters from drying out and the water from going stagnant.

I had a bit of a fun year with Lego this year. Last Christmas I got myself the Titanic, and built it (slowly, to make the build take longer) after my America trip. It's a spectacular model, I love it. I also made an iceberg with some of Vic's huge pile of 1x4 bricks. For my birthday I got The Starry Night (which I've seen in New York!) but it's not just a mosaic, it's a fully 3D version which is pretty cool. I also got Himeji Castle (been there!) which is a really lovely set, and finished it Christmas day. I got back into inventorying Vic's Lego and finished off the loose pieces. Then worked on the non-Star Wars minifigs. Bricklink was down for a week in November because a bunch of accounts got hacked. For Christmas I got a big minifig, although haven't started that yet - I don't have time for fun anymore!

I didn't do as many jigsaws at home this year - I'm just too damned busy - too busy for fun! The problem is if I start one I'll spend too much time on it and not doing the things I need to do. I need to retire so I have time for fun. I still play the clarinet a couple of times a week.

The weather this year has been a bit insane. Apparently 2023 was the hottest year in recorded history. There was a huge lightning storm here in March. Fortunately it didn't do any damage here, but it destroyed heaps of Aquila's electronics including both his heating and cooling systems. There was snow out past Queanbeyan in May. The winter here just *felt* warm. Sure it was cold too but spring sure came early, with stuff flowering a couple of weeks earlier than usual (and Stumpy got *hungry* earlier than usual too). Another storm in December knocked down a sizeable branch off one of our trees. Fortunately no damage here, but there were heaps of trees down around Canberra. And let's not even get into the heatwaves, fires and flooding catastrophes around the world this year.

It was definitely a year of battles with technology this year.

My blog turned 20 this year! For its 20th blogiversary I gave it a bit of a design refresh. I put in a mobile friendly template which does make it a little easier to read on the phone. I also updated the banner. But I had to increase the throttle timeout so searches on my blog would work (no idea why it takes so much longer since the design refresh). I also got frustrated with Chrome which will now try the HTTPS site even when the link you click on is http:// This means the style sheet won't load as it's "mixed content". Unfortunately twenty years ago noone used https so my entire blog is all hardcoded by Movable Type with full urls with http:// I hardcoded the style sheet as https and for later pages it now renders correctly but if you look at older stuff and your dumbhead browser changes the page to https it doesn't render properly.

Vodien broke my blog three times this year. Firstly they broke Perl->MySQL in March and it took me a week of telling them it was in fact their fault before they finally fixed it. Then they broke my cpanel access during an upgrade. Twice. Had to get the password reset. Twice. Then they broke CageFS in October which broke *all* my scripts. When they eventually fixed it a couple of weeks later they left a "how did we do" survey which I couldn't do because the certificate was completely broken on *.vodien.com. Three big outages this year. Maybe I should pay for hosting somewhere else. Although with the state of the world I suspect it'd be just as bad anywhere. There's just no such thing as good service anymore.

I continued to be frustrated with Apple. While my new (now a year old) 14 Pro is great (the low light features are spectacular), it took a bit of getting used to. Firstly, don't ever use the 2x lens, it's just digital magnification. Either get closer or use the 3x lens. Next, if "macro" gets triggered while using 3x for macro, stand back, point it away to reset, and try again. The "macro" on 3x will completely destroy the photos, I have no idea what it does, it possibly uses the "wide angle" lens and then digitally magnifies 3x. When you can get the optical 3x to work on closeups it actually does ok. It pisses me off though that you can't force it to use the lens you choose. I got so fed up with Apple messing with the timestamps on my files when copying to windows that I bought a third party app - iMazing - which will at least copy jpgs/pngs properly. With movie files it copied them in native Apple HDR which makes them look trash. So I'd have to copy them off in windows as well anyway. Well that was until Apple changed something and now they both copy exactly the same. Oh, they also decided later in the year to start presenting HEIC files to windows instead of JPGs, so I *have* to use iMazing. I was enraged to find that Apple just randomly changed timezones while I was travelling in February. Multiple times a day it'd jump back and forth to GMT-4/GMT-5. It took me hours and hours to sort out the mess that was my holiday photos. And even when I got home, and had been home for a day or two on the correct time, it randomly dropped back to Houston time until a reboot. Speaking of reboots, the wallpaper is borked. Everytime you reboot the wallpaper is just a black screen. You have to go in, change to a different wallepaper theme, wait a few minutes, then change it back again. Someone suggested clearing browser cache to fix Redactle early in the year. Not only was it stoopid advice because Redactle itself is usually at fault, but whatever I did cleared *all* of my cache/cookies/whatever, so I lost all my streaks on wordle etc. So I pretty much just stopped playing them altogether on the spot. Finally, I told iTunes/my phone to trust my computer. It still doesn't trust my computer.

I had two separate battles with email. Firstly gmail refused to accept mail from me without an SPF record on my domain. Internode very nicely have a page on their website which tells you exactly what to use (for Eudora on my computer). Optus not so much (for my phone). And Vodien's support pages were misleading because they say to do it via cpanel, which is dumb because the cpanel host doesn't host the DNS. Eventually figured out how to get the record setup on Vodien DNS. Then Internode (aka Epic Bastards) moved their SMTP "service" to AWS, and cut off the ability to use it AS A PAYING CUSTOMER unless you use your internode address as the From address. Which is utterly ridiculous because they're cutting off the ability to even use the internode address for email AND what if you have multiple people in your household trying to send mail, not everyone can use that address!! So then had to spend hours massaging my twenty year old mail client into being able to use my hosting for SMTP. But that also means I can't email Stu/David at their domains because I host the websites for those and so Vodien thinks it owns them. I really wish Stu would get us off Internode. Their service has been pretty trash since they got bought out by iinet then TPG. I complained to Internode about how trash it was, and they were like, "oh we're just trying to stop spam". Nothing about being an internet SERVICE provider. Bastards bastards bastards.

And in other tech crap. On Friday 13th January, Epic Tool (aka Elon Musk) turned off 3rd party Twitter access. So I stopped using it. Simples. Had to fight with Optus in February who in their wisdom split out my accounts and made me stuff up my payments so had to sort that out as well as figure out how to actually even access both my accounts which are now separate. Hopeless. Continued to get frustrated at the sheer absurdity of Windoze 11. Finally got a new battery for the UPS after over a year of them not being able to get stock. Dodgy Dyson struck again - this time it decided the battery needed to be replaced WHEN THERE WAS NOTHING WRONG WITH IT. David's Kogan iPhone cable got more and more flakey before I finally gave up on it in August.

The house caused no end of dramas too this year.

The Solar Edge solar system we got put in last December essentially was DOA. Sometimes it would work and we could see it doing 11kW which was great. Even though we were supposed to be maxed out at 5kW back to the grid sometimes we'd see it pushing more back, no idea how. But most of the time it didn't work at all. After many calls/emails that went unanswered (and I flat out refused to finish paying the sparkies until it was working) we finally left honest feedback (at their request), which finally got some action. They came and had a look in early January but didn't fix it. They rewired things so that the system would support working off grid (it was sold to us on the promise that it would but then the sparkies said oh no it doesn't do that, and later they were like, oh, Solar Edge says we can do that now). And they finally completely replaced the whole inverter in late January. We thought that would be the end of it, but the very first night it drained the battery to 0% even though it's supposed to only drop to 10%. So had to put in another support call for that. The app is great when it works, but oftentimes the system will lose connectivity and it'll be like "updated 4 hours ago". Dumb. And, upsettingly, the system never puts out more than 9kW now. I thought it might have been the angle of the sun so waited until December again (when it did 11kW last year) but alas not. So we'll have to raise *another* support call to find out what gives. On a lighter note, we did finally get a negative electricity bill in November. Separately, we got a new digital meter to replace the original analogue meter. This one has its own back to base internet connection for reporting, so noone needs to come read the meter anymore.

The night the sparkies came in early January I was turning the oven off and the power tripped. I was half wondering if the sparkies did anything. After a couple of times of the power tripping whenever we turned the oven off and on, we took to flipping the switch off at the board before turning the power to the oven on/off. Because the back element was fine, only the top element was broken, but there was no way to turn the oven on/off without going past a mode that activated the top element. I was totally pissed off though because the oven was less than three years old, and when I asked about it at Bing Lee and they said there was only a one year warranty. David eventually came to look at it in September, found the broken element, disconnected it, ordered a new one from TLE in Belco. On the same day we bought and installed a new stove (as mentioned further up). He came back two weeks later to install the element, only to find it didn't fit. I'd never buy a DeLonghi anything again - you can't get replacement parts for something that's only three years old. We still haven't replaced the element. Maynor and Cochran said they can get one, but I need to know that I can return it if it doesn't fit.

The garden is a neverending drama. I pulled back some of the ivy in February. It's grown back. And then some. Problem is our ladder is not long enough to reach it properly. We had a permaculture mob come out to talk to us about our yard. I was hoping they'd be able to talk to us and exchange ideas (that's what I assumed we paid them a couple of hundred dollars for). Instead she just said, oh well we'll need to do a cleanup first. That'll be 48 hours work just for the front yard. I'm like, WTF, there is NOT 48 hours of work in the front yard for professionals. So I did it myself. In a lot less than 48 hours. But because I focussed so long on the front yard, the back yard got out of control again. Sigh. I did manage to get all the bluestone moved to EffanC's though - thanks Tony and F!!

In other house crap. We got a new toilet seat in April as the old one was getting very yellowed and degraded. Went to Ikea in July and found a bin solution that would work. Bought all the bins but the shelves were out of stock. Turned out they were actually discontinued. Bought another shelf which wasn't exactly what we wanted. It looks sort of ok but is very flimsy. Finally ran some lines of sealant over the loose tiles in the shower in August. The leaking has finally stopped, although my future self will hate me as that's what the previous owners of my place in Sydney did and the sealent got all mouldy and discoloured over time. We got a couple of bottlebrushes planted out the front by the government. I took a chip out of the microwave platter in September. The cooler wouldn't turn the water on the first time we used it in November. But let it rest and it worked the next time. After I got past all the errors.

Our favourite restaurant of the year would still be Chong Co, with delivery from them four times over the year. Kinn Thai is another favourite, we went there a few times. Herbert's is a great local and had many lunches and some dinners there. We would often get Pattysmiths for lunch on shopping days. Their fries are awesome and the burgers pretty good too. Had dinner in March with EffanC at Hachiko which was expensive (got the banquet) but very nice. Went to Taki on our anniversary and had some delicious steaks. Dinners and takeaway from Raijin (average), 10 Yards (nice), Tiger Lane (meh), CBD Dumpling House (yummy and quick), BONE (stoopid name), Disappointing Sushi (gave us free KFC because the sweetie is a regular, although he mostly stopped going after he probably got food poisoning probably from there), Badger&Co (repeat of last time), Symposium (nice), Betty's Burgers (not bad), Happy's (sad cause of all the single guys hiding out there for dinner). Brunches at 54 Benjamin a couple of times, U&Co a couple of times, Cup of Joy, Deakin and Me, Coffee Club Gungahlin, Bunny Beans. Random lunches at Flavours of Jiangnan, Canberra Cafe and Burgers, Ramen O and Four Winds. You can now get potato on a stick in the mall, meaning I can get my two favourite street foods there (that and takoyaki). The problem is you have to wait for both of them, which is difficult if you're eating with people and don't want to make them wait.

On the cooking front, there was a few new things and a lot of old favourites. Stu really likes Cath's basa bake recipe so we make that semi regularly. Also tuna casserole and the 1kg frozen turkey roasts. In winter, favourites are Alan's beef stew, butt, er, beef cheeks and brisket. I also made a pea and ham soup in July which Stu likes but I'm meh about. We've had Luv-a-Duck Peking duck a couple of times which is pretty awesome. Kale "chips" are also great, but sadly we never saw kalettes for sale this year. We still often got pizza on Thursday, but sometimes made our own, and Fridays sometimes we'd have Ingham's chicken kievs. And I do like doing Sunday night roasts. I decided that roasting chicken "upside down" is much better than cooking it breast side up. Stu made a Japanese Golden Curry in March, and I made one later in the year. He also cooked "Coronation Oden" twice. I called it this because we first had it the night we watched the coronation of King Charles III. I made a really nice yellow curry out of a Coles magazine and liked it so much I've modified it slightly for my "official" recipe. Made a fairly nice apricot chicken to use up some old dried apricots, but would need to use a boneless cut of chicken I think. For my 50th, R&F gave me Nagi Maehashi's RecipeTin Eats Dinner book and I've so far made eight recipes out of it. They always take a lot longer to follow the recipe precisely, but they've all been very good, and I'd make them again even if just to streamline things a little. I've made several lemon cheesecakes, and also tried Milo cookies at Christmas.

Theatre/Shows/Exhibitions
* AWS at the Hellenic Club with Emma Pask and Ed Wilson
* Lego Brick Show in Wagga, caught up with David as well
* Jess and Uncle Doss at Herbert's
* Come From Away
* Australian War Memorial's Big Things in Store
* ANU Women's Revue with Jess aka Jeremy Laser

Movies (at the movies)
* Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny
* Oppenheimer

Movies (TV)
* Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade on NYE
* Laid Back Camp
* A Christmas Karen
* The Social Network
* Onward
* When Harry Met Sally / The Shop Around the Corner
* Avatar
* Glass Onion
* You've Got Mail
* Everything Everywhere All At Once
* 127 Hours
* Rocky Horror Picture Show
* Chernobyl 1986
* Amadeus
* First Man
* Raiders of the Lost Ark
* Dragonheart
* Innerspace
* Paterson
* Romancing the Stone
* Jewel of the Nile
* The War of the Roses
* Turning Red
* Pretty Woman
* Malcolm
* The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar / The Swan / The Rat Catcher / Poison / Fantastic Mr Fox
* Dumb Money
* Die Hard / Die Hard 2 / Love Actually
* Home Alone 2

TV
* Picard (finished season 2)
* You Can't Ask That (season 7)
* a series of Canberra Survivor on YouTube
* Origins of Us
* Bocchi the Rock
* The Crown finished (seasons 2-5)
* Death in Paradise (seasons 4-6)
* First two episodes of A Spy Among Friends. Stu was going to watch the rest himself but never did
* The Simpsons (seasons 32-34)
* The Book of Boba Fett
* Mandalorian (season 3)
* Futurama (all of it)
* Lego Grandmasters (season 5)
* Amazing Race Australia (seasons 3-4)
* War on Waste (seasons 2-3)
* Ahsoka
* The Orville (seasons 1-2)

Books
* The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar (well, I started it)

Other stuff
* tried to see the balloons but the wind was blowing towards the airport so they didn't lift off. Tried again the next day and saw them. Jet lag and being awake stoopidly early helped.
* saw a double rainbow in March
* went with Tony to RFS tour of the helibase at Hume in March
* Pialligo Estate went broke - no more streaky bacon!! Disaster!!
* Looking Back, Moving Forward nights at the Shine Dome
* Cotter Pumping Station Tour
* saw a partial solar eclipse in April
* Parliament House in May to see the Lego Parliament House and wander round. Probably the first time I'd been in there since 1990.
* saddened over the death of Heather Armstrong (dooce.com) by suicide in May
* magpies came to see me over winter after six months of not
* Whisky Live in May
* Hardly Normal started work at beginning of June, but didn't open til November
* ABC Classic 100 - your favourite instrument - all of mine made it into the top 100
* got to level 10000 in Candy Crush in June. Got to 12186 by the end of the year by completely changing the way I play it.
* found some papers from my Dad's family and how they'd found the family home of some my ancestors!
* gave blood for first time in about 32 years in July
* bookings247 got hacked - they had my name and last four digits of my credit card. I know it was them because the email they used was the one I used on their website, once, in 2019. I contacted them but they ignored me.
* my 50th!! Had a party the Saturday before; day of was pretty quiet, just KFC for lunch and Chong Co delivered for dinner; Sydney the Saturday after; another run for club peeps in early September
* made a new candle with old candle wax, but need to make it thinner next time
* evil neighbours that refused to train their dogs got another one that barks a lot from time to time, but at least not *all* the time
* our car clocked 100000km in August
* went for a drive in September to the Air Disaster Memorial, Molonglo Observatory Synthesis Telescope (MOST), and Canberra's weather radar outside Captains Flat
* Herbert's for Sunday jazz in October
* saw a cool double rainbow in November
* got a heap of strawberries off our strawberry plants in November

And that wraps up another year.  Have a happy and safe New Year!!

Sunday.  17th.  Backdating, because, life.  Made a golden curry for dinner with some leftover sausages.  Leslie Neilsen was in Mash!  Then watched The Crown 6.4.  Really need to watch The Queen again, which Stu has never seen (I saw it on a plane once).  Funnily enough also written by Peter Morgan.

Monday.  Slept ok I think.  Frantic morning before work trying to get the house back in order.  Had a task closing party at work.  Leftover sausages and salads for dinner.  Ronny Howard was in Mash!

These are mini capsicum seedlings that sprouted after I planted some from our dinner the other week - just for fun

Really tempting fate here with leftover sausages and salads from my bbq

Tuesday.  Went to bed at normal time but didn't get to sleep til midnight.  Sigh.  Mostly a decom day at work.  At lunch time was Col's funeral.  Place was packed and heaps of club people came.

Mash had Hawkeye do the nudie walk through camp.  Funnily enough I remembered quite a bit from this episode, even some of the lines.  We *might* have seen this episode a few years back when we started watching Dad's DVDs, but I mainly remember it from seeing it as a kid.

Wednesday.  Took ages to get to sleep then woke up early.  Sigh.  We had cake for Duncan's 60th.

Then to the Bavarian for lunch.  Someone said pork knuckle.  I asked for a doggy bag before I ordered :)

Did some food shopping after lunch but forgot the damned shopping list.  Again.  (this was after forgetting it on the weekend too, but this time I thought it was in the shopping bag but it was back at work).

Thursday.  Took a while to get to sleep, woke up fairly early.  Documentation day.  Two hour lunch dealing with bank queues and Coles.  This time I remembered to take the shopping list, but this time left it *at* Coles.  Sigh.  At least I had everything off it by now.  Bit of an early mark.  Pizza for dinner then The Orville 2.4.  Watched a new Mark Rober video (glitter bomb 6.0).

Friday.  Just tidying up at work.  Went out in the morning for a quick post office run for the sweetie.  Had a final lunch at Herbert's with Tony/Braddles/Neil.  Felt a bit off later in the arvo, maybe those two big sour beers.  Hrmm.  Mash and Death in Paradise 7.3.

Saturday.  Awake from ~3:30 til like 5.  Sigh.  Did some washing first thing because they promised rain and maybe a storm.  But no rain to be seen anywhere all day.  BOM is getting so bad lately.  Went out to pick up some booze and stuff for Annie's family (Stu was meant to get stuff during the week but was feeling off so never actually went).  The new markets are open, but the place was packed even at 8:30.  Did a bottle and Green Shed run.  Made some cookies.  Other than that just house stuff and All The Things.  Made a pizza for dinner with the last wrap in the fridge.  Mash and The Orville 2.5

Sunday.  Christmas Eve.  I think I spent more time awake than asleep.  Sigh.  Spent like an hour weeding and cleaning out some of the tubs we borrowed for my bbq.  But then a relatively chilled morning quietly getting things done. 

Whoops, time to drain/clean these!

How cute are potato flowers?

Later in the afternoon was Herbert's @ Tony's, but sadly Dino and Kristin ended up not making it.  And of course neither could Stu cause his belly was still upset.  Fun evening anyway.

Came home in time to watch most of the carols.

It's not carols until Marina Prior sings Angels we have Heard on High

Or they do the Hallelujah chorus

Very late night though :(

Sunday.  10th.  Barramundi bake for dinner (supposedly more responsible than basa, but it wasn't quite the same)

Then Crown 6.3.

Monday.  Ok sleep.  Ok day.  I felt like I could maybe have a nice wind down to Christmas at right.  Yeah right.  All The People wanting All The Things.  

In the evening started pulling apart Neil's Saturn V.  Then I came to this.  Turns out I'd put this row of cylinder pieces in the wrong way.  But I blame Lego because look at this crap.  You build it all up one way..

So you'd expect it to slot in as is.  But nooooo.. you have to flip it round!

I missed that and put it in the wrong way around.  Pissed off because I certainly wasn't going to remake it all to rephotograph it.  But I'm never going to unsee it.

Tuesday.  Took ages to get to sleep - too hot with covers on, too cold without.  In the morning finished reading through my blog entries (so far) for my year in review post.  Probably the earliest that has ever happened, pays to start these things early.  In October.  Can probably start writing things up now, just adding a few things here and there as needed.  Another nothing much day - too many distractions and interruptions to really concentrate on anything.  In the evening organised Christmas with my family.  I was hoping we could do something in January so as not to cut into the break, but alas that was not to be.  Still, it was all organised with not too much stress from me, I just told Mum and David to sort it out amongst themselves :)

Wednesday.  Slept mostly ok.  Another day of too many distractions and interruptions to really concentrate on anything.  Had the division Christmas party at lunch which was actually pretty chilled.  There was a heap of leftover sausages in the fridge which I yoinked for our party.  This cool thing arrived just in time to start!

Thursday.  Not too much in the morning.  In the afternoon had a super intense decommissioning session.  Was at it for three hours straight but still didn't finish it.  Last drinks.  It was pretty quiet and I ended up running the bar while Neil went to a committee meeting.  

Friday.  Woke up for like an hour and a half during the night.  Not much in the morning then it was off to do the shoppying for my Christmas bbq at the lake!  Had close to 60 people come this year, one of the biggest in a long time.  Sadly no ducks came by to be molested.

Saturday.  Woke up for like two hours during the night.  So pretty tired.  Spent ages sorting out all the recycling and leftovers from the party.  These aren't all from the party, some are mine from the past few months.

Also weeding and All The Things.  Although not nearly as much as I needed to get done.

I also cooked up all the chicken sausages that we didn't end up using at our party.  While they'd been put in the fridge straight away on Wednesday, and kept in an esky all Friday afternoon, the esky wasn't super cold.  So I cooked the heck out of them, had one, then froze the rest.  If I don't get food poisoning (over a day later, so far so good) then they'll be fine.

Finished off several containers of old leftovers to clear space in the fridge then watched Love Actually.

Sunday.  Slept relatively well.  More weeding in the morning, then brunch then food shopping and suddenly it's lunch time.  Hmmmm.  Felt blah about everything I needed to do, so barely got any of it done.  Cooked up the beef sausages and had one, same deal as the chicken ones yesterday.  

And just like that the weekend is over and I still have barely scratched my todo list..