Kazza the Blank One

Phone and Shoes

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

Here was mine :)

Crust

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

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

Friday night the little brother came to stay for the night before running a train to Sydney on Saturday. We watched the last episode of Sherlock (and he stayed up and watched All the President's Men).

Saturday morning Potty and the family came by to see all the Lego. I think they were impressed. They stayed for quite a while, so as soon as they left we got ready and headed out to the club. I finally took a few photos of Stonehenge off Macs Reef Road.

At the club we had a bit of a swim then chillaxed for a while before heading up for dinner. C&G did meat pies for Australia Day, and there was even some haggis for Robbie Burns' night.

For dessert we decorated four pavlovas

In the morning I finished dismantling the Lego I'd brought along, and did some work on a jigsaw in the club house before coming home in the afternoon.

A little later we headed out again to Mishi's for a games night (which is really just an excuse to sit around and eat and chat). We did actually play a game - the Logo Game I'd borrowed off DC. It was good, but the game play was a little confusing and we weren't quite sure how far we could go around the table each round. Mishi won that game.

Today was a super quiet day. The little brother came back on his train and dropped in for some lunch and a snooze before he went home (and he fixed the broken fan switch in our bathroom and wired up our aerial system a bit better, but sadly one of the light switches in the caravan is playing up again). I just played with Lego for the afternoon. Tonight we watched The Hunger Games: Catching Fire.

And all too soon the weekend is over..

It was cooler down the coast

So we were planning to go down the coast Friday night, but I was too worried about the fish. So we stayed home, cooled the house a little, iced up the tanks, and then went down Saturday morning.

We made a lot of little stops along the way - brunch, lunch and a stack of Ingress portal hacking. So it took us four hours to get there. Whoops.

There was a lot of smoke around Nelligen

Clyde River Bridge at Batemans Bay

Seagull

Dolphin portal

Pelicans on the Clyde

I love how the pelicans sit on the light posts in Batemans Bay

Whatchu looking at?

Bird poop anyone?

Batemans Bay

I settled in with a jigsaw while the sweetie gathered himself, then we went up to Myrtle Beach. It was a bit too crowded on the main beach for our liking, so we went further down to the next beach. There was a lot of seaweed there which was a bit annoying, but it was a lovely swim.

Grasshopper .. taken with my iPhone!

I love the walk to/from Myrtle Beach

Came back and did some jigsaw, then got pizza for dinner. Watched an episode of Buffy, then went in the spa.

Medium meatlovers, small puttanesca, small ham and pineapple

Yellow moon (handheld dodgy shot)

Had a pretty good nights' sleep. Best all week in fact. Being a heap cooler will do that.

This morning I finished the jigsaw, cooked us some bacon and eggs for breakfast, then we packed up and came home (via a few more portals).

Railcar at Bungendore station

So a fairly short trip this time, but very nice nonetheless. Sadly we didn't get to meet the mythical Alice. Maybe next time.

Also thanks heaps to Doc for taking care of the fish on Saturday for us.

This afternoon I sorted some photos (and a side note: challenge accepted), debugged the pool, had dinner and watched some Sherlock.

Duck Duck Duck

Had lunch with @StuartCRyan today. We did the usual. That is, we went to Super Bowl and had Peking Duck. And argued over whose fault it was that we were having Peking Duck yet again :)

Tonight we just scanned more photos. We're up to 2006, although a lot of holiday photos haven't been gone through yet. Pretty soon we'll be in digital land so won't need to scan anymore anyway.

Twenty years on

We were scanning more photos of Dad tonight and came across this photo of him taken outside our church as it burnt down on January 8, 1994. I believe this photo appeared in the Leader in 1994. Well last week the same photo appeared in the Leader again for the twentieth anniversary of the fires.

Here we go again ..

Came up to Sydney today. Saw Dad. Got grumpy. Because he has that affect on people. *sigh*

We threw out a whole lot of monitor and tv service manuals today. Dating back to the seventies. And all mum's meat orders from 1982 to 2010. Because she kept those all in a file. But she didn't think she'd ever need them again. Did you know a 1.5kg leg of lamb cost $7 in 1985? And 500g of mince was $1.55.

We kept a bunch of cutouts from electronics magazines dating back to the seventies. They contained projects that a hobbyist *might* be interested in (I'm not holding out much hope). Dad had copied them all from magazines he'd bought and ordered them neatly in folders, with a typed up description on the front of the folder with what was in it.

Tonight we scanned a whole stack of photos of Dad. We're only up to about 1987..

Two Months of Photos

November and December were a bit of a disaster for this little blog. I don't think I managed to get *any* photos online in a whole two month period. I made up for that over the break, getting online over a hundred and fifty photos. So if you care (I doubt any more than about three of you would), you might want to check out my November/December (and even January) archive entries.

I also finished my 2013 year in review post, which is at the end of the December archive page.

2013 Year in Review

So 2013. Busy year!

We saw in 2013 with a small pool party at our place with Nat and Andrew and also Steve for a while.

We did a bit of travelling this year.

In January we went up the coast to South West Rocks to a school reunion of sorts for Stu and to visit Stu's dad. We drove up and down the coast, swam, visited Trial Bay Gaol, and caught up with Fiona and Margie on the way home.

We only managed to get to the coast once this year, in May. It was somewhat of a disaster with the spa being too cold on Friday night and too hot on Saturday night and a few other things that made it all a bit unpleasant (except for during the day on Saturday which was pretty good). Almost went again later in the year but had to go to Sydney and otherwise we've just been too busy.

We went to Queensland in July for a lovely long weekend to visit Chay and David.

At the end of July we flew up to Sydney for my Dad's 70th and one of my 40th parties (see below).

In October we decided at the last minute to go to Hong Kong for a week at the end of October. It was a great week, even if a little too humid. It's the most spontaneous holiday I've ever taken. I didn't do too much planning for it, because the more I researched, the more things I found of interest to see. So I stopped researching altogether and we took it as it came.

At work I had a mostly good year. I started off the year cleaning and pretty much cleaned all year. I started with the knowledge base articles for our team, then moved onto the log transfer system, then the load balancers. I also rehashed an old domino database for documentation which brought back a lot of memories of my last job. For the rest of the time it mostly felt like I was the "goto" person for any and all problems that came along. We were partly restructured, but the powers that be didn't really have a clear idea of what they wanted, so things didn't change as much as we originally thought they would. I made Stu drag out his tuxedo again for the work ball which was a lot of fun.

Healthwise I felt like I was sick the whole first half of the year - with colds in January, March, April, May and June. So that was pretty horrible. Not flus though, just annoying colds. Got another one the night before we went to Hong Kong too - yay :( But have been ok otherwise.

We had a super busy social year this year. In fact it was so busy that we went from May to September without having a free Saturday night. As a consequence our Buffy and Angel watching was almost non-existent. There were plenty of visits to/from Annie and Potty and the families. Various people came over for dinner and/or swims at the beginning of the year. Nat and Andrew came over a few times, as well as Andrew by himself when Nat was travelling. There were various after works drinks with my colleagues and Stu's and family and friends. Various Singstar/Mario Kart nights were had. Several BBQs at @CLBradley's. Several games nights at Mishi's. Had a video night at our place with work people. We visited people for lunches/dinners such as Matt and Helen, Andrew and Jen, Chris and Geoff, Josh and Ally, Windy and Nanette etc. We saw Daniel and Fi a few times when they came down. Several people came to stay including David and Yvonne, Ken and Jeanine, Fiona a couple of times and Stu's old school friend Tom. I met up with @StuartCRyan a few times in Sydney (we met in real life for the first time at my birthday). I also went to visit David in Junee.

Speaking of birthdays, I turned forty this year. To celebrate I had *three* great parties - one in Sydney, a big one at home the Saturday before my birthday, then a big lunch at work on my birthday followed by a nice dinner and seeing Phantom of the Opera. I was certainly in a different place mentally for my fortieth. During the whole run-up to my thirtieth I was very depressed, and my actual birthday was pretty meh. Such a different story this year though.

In sadder news, my Nana died of old age earlier in the year. And then I found out at the funeral that I have another cousin that I'd never heard about before!

Also in sad news, my father got diagnosed with a brain tumour in March. He had surgery immediately (and they had to cancel a holiday to New Zealand), followed by chemo and radiotherapy. Unfortunately it didn't really help, and he was hospitalised in July because he kept falling over and wasn't able to walk properly. He's been getting progressively worse and has been in a nursing home since September. In August I started going up to Sydney fairly regularly to see Dad and help Mum with the mammoth task of clearing out the garage and workshop. We've mostly been sorting things so far as I don't want to get rid of things until Dad goes. Fortunately I've been able to work out of the Sydney office so not having to take leave at the moment.

We've been enjoying a lot of visits to our little social club. We camped there over the Australia day long weekend, and the new tent survived a storm and massive downpour fairly well. But then a caravan came up for sale, so we bought it! We went to most of the club nights during the year, and plenty of other times as well. It's Stu's little get-away-from-the-world place and he thoroughly enjoys it.

With work people or the sweetie, tried out a few new restaurants. Continued going to Black Pepper for brunches and also Pulp Kitchen a few times. Went to Dumpling Inn a few times and Bella Vista as well. Didn't try too many desserts this year, although did make a Mars Bar slice and a peppermint rocky road, as well as an apple crumble and caramel slice that we tried at the club.

We bought another four baby angels for the angel tank. One died but the other three survived, so now have four angels and about seven danios in that tank. We got a lovely little betta for the macquarium, but he never thrived and died in six weeks. So thinking I'll probably give the macquarium away. The four foot still has a school of duboisis, two multies, a lelupi and a J.transcriptus. There's three multis downstairs, but after breeding once, the single baby I saw disappeared and haven't seen any since. There's still three or four quite old kribs downstairs as well.

Not much Lego action this year. I did get a cute little plane from Fiona, and a small City set from Ric for my birthday. I went with Nat and Andrew to Brick Expo, but was very frustrated with the crowds. I dismantled the Millennium Falcon which had been out for four years! Also over the Christmas break got to sort out and build all of Jake's lego which has been fun.

I did a lot of jigsaws this year. Mostly downstairs until downstairs got too cold. Mostly little ones, but also another section of the huge "Life" puzzle. Gave up on the skies of two jigsaws because their quality was just too poor.

I celebrated my tenth blogiversary this year. To mark the occasion I upgraded to Movable Type 5. But got very frustrated with the fact that I now cannot SSH to my host. Also with Movable Type which is *very* buggy. Next year my domain is up for renewal and I'm thinking about moving my domain to a new host with a new blogging platform. But the whole idea is pretty scary, so we'll see about that...

Shows

The only show I saw this year was The Phantom of the Opera on my birthday.

Movies
Not many movies this year either...

The Hobbit - An Unexpected Journey
Star Trek - Into Darkness
Garden of Words and Ghost in the Shell: Arise

Books

Time Enough for Love by Robert Heinlein
Polgara the Sorceress by David and Leigh Eddings
Careful, he might hear you, by Sumner Locke Elliott
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
DéjÃ Dead by Kathy Reichs
A Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute
I Hate You - Don't Leave Me by Jerold Kreisman and Hal Straus
The Naked Husband by Mark D'Arbanville
Death du Jour by Kathy Reichs
Airport by Arthur Hailey
Body of Evidence by Patricia Cornwall

Other stuff

Had a full day at the War Memorial with Ken and Jeanine
Had a jigsaw race with Nat
Found my first geocache with Nat and Andrew
Saw a Roller Derby bout
Mum got her first mobile phone
Had a random day off work to tidy up all the fish tank stuff in the garage
Went for some walks around Palmerville with the sweetie
Spotted the ISS a few times and waved to @Cmdr_Hadfield. Wasn't quite the same when he came back to earth.
Went to the balloon fiesta on Canberra Day
Watched the last couple of episodes and finale of House, which considering the timing with dad was pretty sad
Took Stu's car for a drive up Mount Ainslie and got covered in lady bugs
Our PS3 stopped playing DVD disks. Bluray is still ok though. We considered getting a PS4 but the device isn't backwards compatible with old games.
Went out to Captain's Flat on our fifth wedding anniversary
Finished a cross stitch I got for Christmas in 1992
Went up Black Mountain Tower
Voted in ABC Classic FM's top 100 music in the movies, and most of my votes were in the top two hundred
Did a blog for our trip to America in 1983
Gave up reading Boing Boing, Life Hacker and Neatorama, Dooce and Dilbert
Got extremely pissed off when Google Reader shut down. Destroyed my faith in Google.
Looked at Comma Feed, Feedly and The Old Reader. Stuck with The Old Reader. The Old Reader subsequently crashed from all the extra load of departing Google users, but was able to get funding to run on better hosting and has been fine ever since.
Got more of my photos onto the RiotACT
Cancelled Aussie Farmers Direct orders
Had a look around Wintercon at EPIC
Stu had a few car dramas that Melba Motors didn't fix
I had a LOT of car dramas that Melba Motors didn't fix
Saw the Skywhale
Played through Diablo with the sweetie. On easy mode. Sue me.
Did proper karaoke for the first time ever (and I've been to Japan four times!)
Went to a Christmas Carols service at Como