I've got a whole stack of photos of new food and fooderies around the place, but somehow never got them online.

This was just after Chong Co Express opened in the mall.  I've been wanting a place that does nice lunchtime chicken red curries since I left Sydney.  This wasn't quite it.  It was a tad too spicy for me, and a little pricey too (around $10 from memory).  Haven't been back.

This was Adana at the back of the mall.  The chicken dish (top I think) was really good, the meatballs ok, and cutlets pretty good also.

Beef nachos from Cafe on Benjamin.  The beef was ok (I got chicken the next time I went) - strips of beef rather than ground beef.  But the chips were awesome - super crispy and yummy

In Sydney I'm on a quest to find good takoyaki.  These were ok - from Kura in Chinatown.  They were burn-your-mouth hot (as they should be) but didn't have much octopus in them.

These were from Lord of the Fries on George Street.  I went there because they did a "Canadian" style topping - supposedly a poutine, but I suspect probably just a cheese sauce.  But they didn't have any of that so I got their Italian sauce.  But they were pretty average so don't know that I'll bother going back.

This was crispy duck from Asian Noodle House shortly after it opened.  Not too bad, altho not so crispy under all that salad.

And a dosai from Spice India in the mall.  Weird because they didn't put the filling in the dosai.  And it was ok, but not super awesome, not like Ruchi's.

I somehow ended up with quite a few photos of various Christmas trees over November/December

At the club

In the QVB

Also in the QVB

Martin Place, still under construction

Mum's - by day

Mum's - by night

Our Christmas tree

One at work

Belconnen Mall

Here's some photos I took in 2012 (!) that still haven't been blogged - bucky shapes!  Made when I was stockpiling bucky balls before they were finally banned for sale in Australia.

Christmas Eve was a nice morning tea at work, followed by an early mark.  Went to Potty's to do a water change and bring home some lego.  Had lunch at KFC then came home and had a small siesta.

In the evening we got the Dominos wagyu three ways pizza and watched carols (or half watched really, I was playing on my phone).

Christmas morning I finished off some last-minute cleaning of the house, then prepped lunch.  Annie and family came over and we sat around and nibbled and chatted while the Stus played Diablo.  Then had a roast pork and potato (and other things) feast.  Sadly the crackling wasn't as good as last time I did a roast pork.  Oh well.  Several food comas were had by people during Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, and we also watched the beginning of Monty Python and the Holy Grail (keeping with the theme).  The others went home and we finished watching it.  It was a lovely afternoon, pretty much stress free which was good.  Hurrah! :)

Didn't get any photos of all the food except for these cheese and bacon balls - cheese, bacon, more cheese, more cheese, sweet chili sauce and chives.  They could have done with more bacon.. next time.. :)

In the evening we watched the 7pm Project, and then Shrek the Third.

Today, Boxing Day, I got stuck into some holiday projects I'd been hanging out to do.  Tidied the shelves in the spare room cupboard, got half way through dismantling the Millennium Falcon, downloaded some bank statements and organised things there a bit, downloaded all the photos off all my cameras, started preparing my year in review post, built my nanoblock Schloss Neuschwanstein, and watched Storm Boy in the evening (I haven't seen that movie in probably thirty years).

So since I last blogged I've been to four parties.

Last Friday was our division party.  It was at the Novotel, so it was a little pricey, but most of the food was really good.  Had some silly but fun activities afterwards, then kicked onto the Wig & Pen.  Went to Zierholz as well after that, but didn't stay long there.

My Christmas cracker joke

We didn't get this.  Turns out "penguins" are like Freddo Frogs - chocolates with individual wrappings

Space Invaders school!

Saturday I did house organising type stuff in the morning then went out to the club.  Had a swim and after dinner we played some cards (Fluxx and Uno) with A&J.

Sunday morning I headed up to Sydney.  

Signs burnt by the bushfires in October

Fog on Appin Road - really weird considering how hot it was

Went to the home to take dad out for chips, but we got a retarded wheel chair and had an extremelly frustrating time trying to get him to the shops.

In the evening we went to mum's church for a sausage sizzle and carols which was quite nice.

The last time I saw Ruth she was about six years old.. now she's 22!

Monday night I went over to Luc and Lizzi's for dinner.  Lizzi cooked us scotch fillet steaks - yum yum :) Was great to catch up with them.

On Tuesday it was the nursing home's Christmas party.  David and Yvonne and Uncle Ian came along too, and we had our own table too.  A friend of Ian's was the entertainment - she sang lots of Christmas songs.  So was a pretty good afternoon.  Did a bit of workshop tidying afterwards.

Yvonne being a goofball

Uncle Ian being a goofball

Possibly our last ever family photo

Christmas selfie

Wednesday mum did a great roast pork before I came home.

The car behaved itself too.  The water seems to have gone down a *little* bit but not too much.

Friday was our section party at the lake.  It was super hot and Neil and I were suckers and walked the whole way there.  Dranks lots of beer and bubbly, but also lots of water so had an early night and was totally fine the next day :)

Henrch won the race to the top of the rope pyramid

I would love to have joined the boys in a dip in the lake :)

Yesterday the sweetie and I went out for brunch at As Nature Intended, then did our food shopping.  It was miserably hot and I barely achieved anything all afternoon.

In the evening I went over to Kit's for another party so she could christen her new bbq.  Around 10pm I snuck into the lounge room to watch the end of Carols in the Domain.  Even the anti-carols people ended up watching with me :)  *and* they played the Hallelujah chorus which the Sydney one never does, so that was super awesome :)

This morning the house was ten degrees cooler so got stuck into tidying up the house.  Was at it most of the day.  But of course it got hotter and hotter and by later in the afternoon I was pretty much spent.  Had a swim, then went to Potty's to feed the fish.

And so I'm finally caught up.  Well sort of.  There's still more house tidying to be done.  And photos from the last two months to upload to the blog.  But might get it done by the end of the year.  Maybe  ....

I've been really slack with blogging this year, especially the second half.  Lots of trips to Sydney mucking up my routine and cutting deeply into my "home" time is certainly not helping.  And the lack of comments is also not helping either, I feel like noone's really out there anymore.  Since my birthday in August I've had a whole *two* comments from regular readers.  Not that I do this for you, I do it for me, which is why I'm a bit annoyed I'm not keeping up - as this provides a valuable record for me of my life.

Anyways.

Thursday night after drinks we went to the Lighty for dinner, and then onto Karaoke.  I've never done karaoke like this before.  And found it a lot more difficult than Singstar.  With Singstar the lead vocals are at full volume compared to the music, and the timings are on screen.  With karaoke the lead vocals are basically non existent, which means you're pretty much on your own getting the timing right.  And when people are singing very loudly and very badly, it's very hard to try and get it right.  In the end with a lot of songs I blocked an ear and closed my eyes and was able to keep the timing a lot better.  And the videos are crap - at least with Singstar you mostly get the original video clips.  But it was a great fun night - we stayed for two hour-long rounds.

Friday night I made the sweetie watch Love Actually with me.  Because, you know, Christmas.

Saturday morning I was up at normal time to go help out with the big work Christmas party.  Neil and Henrch and Windy had spent a couple of hours on Friday afternoon moving things up onto the loading dock, so in the end it only took half an hour to load the truck.  We had the whole place setup by about 10:30, and then just needed to wait for the booze to turn up and then we were done.  Quickest setup *ever*.  After everything was done, I went on a couple of rides and took a lot of photos, then had my lunch and came home.

Saturday afternoon we headed over to Mishi's for a games evening.  We read a stack of Geek Battle questions which turned out to be great conversation starters.  Then we played a couple of games of Fluxx - Geoffrey won one game and I won another.  Then we watched Inception because Mishi had never seen it, and the sweetie and I hadn't seen it since we saw it at the movies.  Quite enjoyed it the second time around.

Sunday we went to Potty's for a big family BBQ.  Essentially it was the family Christmas gathering, as everyone was there, and won't be for Christmas itself.

And then back to work.  I have *sooo* much to do it's not funny.  And yet I got so many interruptions and problems to deal with that yesterday I barely got *any* of it done.  So much for a nice wind-down to Christmas ...

So where we?

Last time I blogged it was Sunday night and I was saying I really should download my photos.  Yeah I got around to doing that today.

Monday to Wednesday was a training course.  Which was relatively easy.

Friday night we had Nat and Andrew over for dinner - pasta bake!  We played a game of Geek Battle, but had more fun afterwards just reading the questions to each other.  Then we played all 32 races of Mario Kart, which kept us going til nearly midnight, but the sweetie actually stayed up for the whole thing which was nice.

This, kids, is why you should not drink and drive - normally I would come third, this result was pitiful!

Today I cleaned the house.  As you do.  Did a bit of photo sorting.  But the afternoon was spent in waiting for a call to go into work to do some testing.  Except they had a problem with a storage system, so I still don't know what's happening .. The sweetie and I played Diablo for hours.  I didn't even get to watch Airport, as I figured I'd more than likely get interrupted.

Very sleepie..

So the house has been a disaster this week.   Got back from Hong Kong then turned around and headed back to Sydney.  Got home Wednesday night and collapsed.

Thursday and Friday nights, rather than face the mess, I played Diablo with the sweetie.

So Saturday was full steam head cleaning the house and geotagging photos - I alternated between the two.

In fact I was planning on not going anywhere or do anything else all weekend.  But after getting pretty much the whole house tidied up and some of the cleaning done, and a lot of geotagging done, I decided to meet the sweetie out at the club.  There were quite a few ex members there for a pizza night - they'd all left en masse due to conflicts with another committee member.  They were a nice group of people, hopefully they might come back one day.

This morning we came home again via breakfast at the Scottish Restaurant.  Spent the afternoon geotagging (all the photos from the Canon and Random Camera are done now) and playing Candy Crush and also did the dusting and vacuuming.  

Tonight we played some more Diablo before Elementary.

Still haven't downloaded any photos from the past week.. should really do that..

Had one night at home which gave me a chance to do two loads of washing.  

Then headed out to the club on Friday after work.  Stayed two nights, which is actually the first time I've ever done that.  On Saturday afternoon I pulled all the utensils, crockery and glassware tubs out, cleaned them, sorted their contents and made labels for it all.  Took pretty much all afternoon.  Yipe.  Sunday morning I finished the job by doing all the cutlery drawers.

Left for Sydney from there a bit before midday.

Feed me!!

Went and visited Dad (he's much the same).  Took him some hot chips.  Also read him the $#!+ My Dad Says list that I've been working on - sayings and stuff that are distinctly him.  He laughed at a few of them which was cool.

Mum did a lamb roast for dinner which was yummy, then we continued on with the workshop.  Made pretty good progress on one of the work benches in the workshop.  Pretty much cleared a whole surface.

OMG a work bench!!!

Tonight (after a dinner of scotch fillet steak) we continued on and around the corner.  Found papers dating back to 1976 - gardening and orchid stuff he was into years ago.  And a lot of disgusting stuff hidden up the back which probably hasn't seen the light of day in twenty five years.  And a piece of HO scale railway track.  And unopened tools.  And lots of duplicates of tools.  We think he would lose things and then go and buy another one because the old one was buried.  Silly really.  Setup some boxes - one for screw drivers, one for pliers and cutters, and another for "small" tools.  And another one for multimeters - at least four of the things.

Dad installed this intercom so that mum could call dad when he was downstairs in the workshop.  Except after a while the voice bit of it died, and only the call buzzer really worked.  So for the latter years of its life mum would press the button three times, which meant dinner's ready.

A few trips ago I forgot pyjamas.  This trip I forgot my phone charger and house keys.  Fortunately someone at work has one, so didn't have to go out and buy a new one today.

Will get some photos into this post later in the week.

OMG I HATE iTunes SO MUCH.

The latest drama: trying to unlock my phone from Optus.  Apple in their infinite wisdom dictated that the only way to unlock your phone from your provider is to do a backup and then a restore of the phone.  How retarded is that on every level?  The last time I tried to do it it wiped an app off my phone and I lost all my UK 2010 GPS tracks.  I was devastated.  

Tonight I was having another go at it on my new phone.  I dutifully backed up the phone, then hit the restore button.  Except I got an error:

"iTunes could not restore the iPhone "Kazza the Blank One" because not enough free space is available on the iPhone".

Except there was over a gig free.

So I *BATTLED* clearing things off it.  Photos are easy enough through Windows Explorer, but podcasts, music and audiobooks play hard to get, and it's not intuitive how to do it.  Had to fight and fight with it to remove the files.

Got to nearly 3.5 Gb free.  But do you think the phone will restore? NO!  I renamed the backup file directory and did a whole new backup.  Both directories were only 6Gb in size.  Still it wouldn't restore.

So now I'm going on yet another trip where my phone won't onlock and I'll be forced to use Global Roaming if I want to use my phone at all.

Apple, you SUCK!!!!

Edit.  I deleted another couple of gigs of photos to get it to more than 6Gb free, which was the size of the backup directory.  Now it seems to be restoring.....  Let's see if Apple screws me over in some other way next ...