So spent a couple of hours downstairs today looking around at all the stuff and taking lots of photos of it all.  Correction, photos of a fraction of it all.  What I thought was going to be big job is going to be a *huge* job.  And the little brother definitely needs to inspect it all as well before we even consider getting rid of any of it.  That, and waiting to get a more definitive diagnosis about what's happening with dad.

We went and saw Dad again this afternoon, and he was still depressed.

Then went to Ikea, but the thing I wanted to buy was out of stock - doh!!

So I'm going to be back and forth to Sydney for quite a bit in the next little while, Dad's health depending.

Mum wants to start clearing out the garage and workshop but it's quite a daunting task.  There is So. Much. Stuff.  At least Dad is pretty well organised, so at least a lot of the stuff is labelled.  But I'm really going to need the little brother's help as well for a lot of it, but given how little time he has in Sydney, that's going to be tricky.

And we probably can't really do too much in the short term anyway.  Maybe just take a lot of photos of things....

At least Dad has a nice view from his hospital room ..

So after being awake for several hours on Saturday night, I decided that it would be too stressful to take a broken car to Sydney on Sunday.  I thought I'd take it in to get looked at on Monday and maybe go up Monday night.

Got up and went to Pulp Kitchen for breakfast with Daniel and Fi.

Daniel was pretty stoked with his bowl of hot chocolate and breakfast ;)

As I was with my breakfast raclette with a side of Pulp Kitchen bacon ;)

Daniel and Fi then went off to their own thing, while I caught up on things like downloading photos.

By Sunday night my phlegmy throat had turned into a very sore throat and I felt pretty crappy.  Decided that it'd be too draining to go to Sydney for just a couple of days, even if they did fix my car, so decided not to go at all this week.

But I was on call, and they don't pay you overnight if you don't turn up for work, so I went in Monday morning with a still sore throat.  Dumped the car at the mechanic and said please fix.  And gave him a few days since I hadn't booked it in.

Monday afternoon I numbed the pain of the sore throat with a pint of Wig&Pen Two Knuckles Deep and then two half pints of Smokey Olde Spice - which I *loved*.  Such a nice beer.  Reminiscent of smokey whiskeys to some extent.  Daniel and Fi tried a couple of things, then got two "tasting trays" of four different beers each.  So they basically tasted most of the Wig & Pen beers on one night!  I was impressed :)

We also had dinner there.  I had a butter chicken.

Then went home and I had a great night's sleep.

Tuesday at work was ok because I'd had such a good sleep.  But then Tuesday night I couldn't get to sleep til 1am :(  Damned insomnia :(  It's a bit after 9pm now and I thinking about crashing into bed already ..

At least I got my car back today.  It was the alternator, as suspected.  And even though he said it was out of warranty (you only get three months on second-hand parts, and this had been five months), apparently his supplier hadn't charged him, so he didn't charge me for it.  So that was lovely of him.

Last Sunday afternoon I went along with Nat and Andrew to this year's Lego Brick Expo at the Hellenic Club.

Verdict: the Lego was awesome, the venue was a disaster.

They've learnt from previous years, and now you line up outside the venue where they have staff come along and check tickets.  Then when your allocated time slot comes up you can all just go straight in.  So it was much more efficient getting in.  The problem was that inside things were spread out all over the place in different rooms and in corridors, so people were squeezing in to see the Lego while other people were squeezing past, and it was a rabbit warren of rooms so I was worried about missing a room just because I hadn't seen the entrance to it.

Not to mention the crowds and crowds of people.  They sold 12000 tickets for the two days.  !!  So it was jam packed with little kids that seem to know exactly when you are about to take a photo and stick their heads or hands in the photo.  It was amazingly frustrating.  We did get the last session of the day, so at least at about 5:20pm things were thinning out enough to go back and redo some photos with less crowds.

They really need to get a big room at Epic and be done with it.  I think if they do it at the Hellenic Club again next year I might not even go.

Thursday night: Slept til 4am then woke up and couldn't get back to sleep.

Friday night: Went to bed at 9:30pm.  Got up at 9:30am.  Only slept six of those twelve hours.  Spent the other six hours stressing about the party and the fact that I wasn't sleeping.

Saturday: Did a bit of house organising but not really enough.  Was too tired.  Went out for kebabs for lunch, then did party shopping.  And nearly killed people because there was too many of them in once place.  Came home and cleaned the house, but not really enough because we only had an hour and a half and there was just too much to do.  Chris P arrived at 4pm, then Neil, who forgot the salami so Stu went with him to get it.  Then others turned up in dribs and drabs for the next few hours.  After about an hour I finally managed to have a drink.  And finally another.  And finally started to relax.  And then finally to start enjoying myself.  There was *tonnes* of food.  We bought eight packets of frozen food to cook over the course of the night and it all got eaten (and the neighbours came up very late and brought some frozen pizzas and they got eaten too).  I spent so much time trying to make sure I talked to everyone that I didn't really talk to anyone, which was slightly sad.  A slow cooker and a half of mulled wine was drunk, along with a whole recycling tub full of beer and wine.  I think people had a good time?  Certainly the last of them didn't leave til 2am!

Windy took a few photos (thanks Windy!), but this was my favourite - a "Cognac of Chrises" (and a small ring-in whose middle name is Chris).  There'd have been eight if Henrch and the other Chris Bell had been able to make it!

Sunday:  woke up early (apparently that's what happens when you drink) but didn't get up til around nine.  Chris got up before me and cleaned up the entire kitchen and living room!  It was amazing!  She was my little cleaning fairy!  Quiet morning with Chris and Zac (Zac's quite a lovely kid, as kids go) and Potty, and we shared some of Chris L's bread and marmalade for breakfast.  Saw Chris off at lunch time, then tried to get ourselves and the house back into some semblance of sanity.

In the afternoon I went to Brick Expo, but I'll save that for another post.

Sunday night had a nightcap before bed, then slept very well from about 9:30pm til 6:30am.  I needed it!

Monday: Spent all morning dealing with fallout from the weekend's work.  

And it looks like life might get super complicated in the next little while...

The head of this little guy is what I use for my avatar all over the place. While I was sorting photos a little while back I found the original photo.  Here he is!

A couple of Fridays back @CLBradley and I went to the Lighty for lunch.  Which was very pleasant in the sun.  Going back to face the problems at work afterwards sucked a bit.  But I did get plenty of cool photos of the birds.

My Dad turned 70 on Sunday.

So we trundled up to Sydney.

And I figured if I was going to be in Sydney, I'd try and catch up with some of my Sydney friends for part one of my birthday bash.

Stu wanted to fly (to get points so he can get Virgin lounge access).  So we spent obscene amounts of money on flights and a hotel.

But let me backtrack a minute.

I'd decided that we should go to the Löwenbräu Keller, as it was central for everyone, it had pork, and it had beer.  I thought that we could have a lunch, and people could stop in for a drink afterwards if they weren't able to make it to the lunch.  Except when I made the tentative booking they said that they were a restaurant and everyone had to be dining.  This they underlined.  Well actually they said that everyone who made a reservation had to be dining.  And they wanted a $20 deposit for everyone.  And we had to order off one of the very restrictive set menus.  So that was my drama last week.  Anyways.  I got my RSVPs and made the final booking and paid the deposit, and fortunately on the day everyone showed up who said they would, and no surprises.  But more on lunch later.

So Saturday morning we got up and got ready and headed to the airport.  And after complaining a couple of weeks ago about Stu getting to fly in one of Virgin Australia's ATR 72-600s, I got to go in one :)

Took off to the north, with a view of Canberra and the new Majura Parkway, but a lot of fog around still (delays all over the place because of heavy fog in the morning, and was a bit stressed that our plane would be late or cancelled).

Actually to say was a bit stressed was putting it very mildly.  I was totally stressed out all morning - about the lunch, who would/wouldn't turn up, the restaurant being bumheads, getting to the airport on time, the plane being on time and on and on.  Was feeling quite queasy until we got to the airport and our plane was going to be on time .. 

But carrying on ..

Because it's such a little plane, they don't have the full food service where they sell food/drinks.  Instead they have complimentary drinks and snackages for everyone!  So that was pretty nice of them.

Flew almost right over the top of River Island (it was on the other side of the plane)

Then up over Campbelltown and in from the south-west.

M7-M5 junction

Holsworthy

Look Mum I can see your house from here.. and mine (under the clouds).  Looking into the sun, so not much more in the way of good shots for the rest of the flight.

Bate Bay looking very blue

So off the plane and onto the Airport Train.  I've never actually taken this train before.  Reason being: it's a complete rip off!  $31 for the two of us to get to the city.  Absolutely ridiculous.  And of course, there was trackwork, so we had to change trains at Central.  At least there *was* a train to Circular Quay - when Stu went a couple of weeks ago, there were no trains at all in the CBD.

Carnival Spirit

Walked up to our hotel, and were able to check in.  Fairly basic hotel room, but very nice and a pretty decent view.

Then we wandered down to the Lowenbrau, and even though we were fifteen minutes early, we were only *just* the first ones there heh.

No good photos of Marc/Ryan and none at all of Emma/Charlotte.. doh!

So everyone arrived and they brought out meat.  So. Much. Meat.  This times four!

We got the "Schmankerlplatter" which was $39.50 and the cheapest of the options we were forced into having by the Lowenbrau.  I was really annoyed by this, as it meant people couldn't go for a lighter lunch if they wanted to.  One thing's for sure - I'll *never* be booking to go to the Lowenbrau again.  If opportunity arose I'd still go there, but I'd never organise an event there again.

*Fortunately* they were happy to package up all the leftovers, and Stuart R and my brother took them home.  So at least a quarter of all that food didn't end up going to waste.

And the pork was pretty damned good.  And there was other meat too.  For those that wanted it ;)

So after lunch, since the Lowenbrau were being buttheads about not wanting people to drop by casually, we headed up to the Argyle for drinks.  Fiona, Stu, Chris, Daniel&Fi and me and the sweetie went, and were joined by Fran, Jake, Ric, David and Yvonne.  Where we stayed til early evening :)

The Argyle's unisex bathroom.  The funky pods at the far end are the urinals!

So all in all it was actually a wonderful afternoon.  I hadn't seen Chris in twenty years, and I'd never even met Stuart R (except online, and he had actually thought I was a boy which gave everyone a good laugh ;) ).  And all sorts of lengths of friendships in between.  The only sad part was not having enough time to catch up with everyone for as long as I'd have liked.  Oh well.. will have to make more effort on future trips!  And convince people to come visit ;)

Stumbled back to the hotel.

Picked up some snackages on the way back to the hotel, thinking we might get hungry later on.  But we never did.  Too much meat!

However the hotel had put out a little bit of cake and a macaron for my birthday - how sweet of them :) (when they asked at checkin if I was up for a special occasion I said I was :) )

Enjoyed the view briefly before collapsing into (a very soft) bed.

• Being stressed about having your blood taken makes your veins tense up and makes it that much harder to have your blood taken (three holes later .. )
• There's a Chilean flag flying outside our building
• There was a Mars Rover in the mall
• Took a couple of hundred photos of colleagues playing touch footy.  Clocked my camera in the process
• Had a lovely bbq at @CLBradley's tonight