Thursday was Neil's birthday, and we got invited over to Chris B's.  Picked up some sausages and headed over.  Trampolined with Margaret which was fun.  Lots of food, lots of booze, a pretty good night :)

Friday, pub lunch at the Lighty.  I had quite a nice calamari salad.  Then shared a bottle of bubbly with Neil and Doc after work.

Saturday did some video dubbing to DVD.  Then out to vote and do some shopping.  Gave away some things on Freecycle.  Did some bits and pieces around the house and more dubbing.  Went over to Potty's for pizza and Jake's birthday party.  Lots of peoples there.

Sunday morning I spent an hour and a half in the back garden hacking a path to the back gate (I should have taken a "before and after" photo to show the difference!).  And gave away the Hills Hoist that we've been wanting to give away since we moved in four years ago.  Yayyyyyy!!  Cooked some okonamiyaki for lunch in an attempt to get through our veggie box.  Watched The Last Samurai with the sweetie.  Responded to a wanted on Freecycle from someone wanting computers for "homework" heh.  Hopefully he'll take the three working computers and any other bits and pieces that he might find useful.  So spent the evening sorting all the computer crap into piles to give away and piles to keep, and wiping hard drives.

The back yard is a disaster.  We have this very vigorous plantage at the side fence that is taking over.  Even if we chop it back, we'll have piles and piles of vegetation to get rid of.  Not entirely sure how to go about doing that.  Heck even with a green waste bin it'd be a challenge.  Might have to revisit the idea of a gardener...

I had thoughts that I'd get photos up for the six months ago type photos .. but alas that was not to be..

Saturday - rainy - the parents went into town and went to the National Portrait Gallery and New and Old Parliament Houses, while we stayed indoors and I did a jigsaw.  Cooked a nice tuna pasta bake for dinner and then we watched the slideshow of our UK 2010 trip (all the photos that are now on the blog).

Sunday - nice day - the parents went to church, and then for a walk along the lake, while we stayed indoors and did not much.  Then they went home, but I was still feeling unsettled and blah.  Watched the Julian Assange story on telly.  Stu suggested a scotch after dinner, but a phone call from work left me wondering if I'd have to go in, so couldn't relax.

Monday - still feeling blah.  Did some house organising but that was about it.

Even though I had a lot of time at home this weekend, I spent most of it on UK photos and playing Flow.  All the panoramas for the UK trip are done, as well as photos for the rest of the trip.  Check it out.  

636 steps on the pedometer today.  Disaster.

Really not wanting to go to work tomorrow.  I just have to keep reminding myself that if I have a bad day and screw up, noone will die...

Well it's like this you see.  I have dementia.  I don't remember stuff.  Unless there's photographic evidence to remind me, things drip straight out of my brain straight away.

Case in point.  A couple of years ago we went to see an exhibition in the Tate Modern which had no photography permitted.  Apart from one piece that I wrote about, I don't remember a single other thing from that exhibition.  So what's the fricken point of me having gone???

Two years ago today we finally left the UK and headed home, stopping in Japan for a thirteen hour layover.  The good thing about that layover is that it forced us to get over our jetlag that day, so we were pretty right when we got home.

Work was pretty blah, but not quite as bad as yesterday.  At least a couple of things went right today..

Yep.

Two years ago today we had a relatively quiet day in Cornwall, doing washing, having lunch at a Rick Stein cafe, and going out to Land's End.

Saturday, after documenting daffodils and cherry blossoms, we headed out to Hardly Normal to check out the new version of our couch.  We decided we'd take it.  

The sweetie likes the new couch

Did our food shopping before heading home.

Our plans for having people over on Saturday night fell through, so we drank the beer and did the roast chicken anyway.  After seeing a Hollywood apocalypse video on Neatorama, I thought we should watch a disaster movie, so settled on Armageddon, given that it was also a Michael Clarke Duncan movie, who sadly died this week.

Today we had Damien over.  We (they) chatted for a while before they went downstairs for a war game. 

I finished this jigsaw in the meantime.  Someone had done some research and labelled it "La Compania de Jesus Church, Cusco, Peru" .. a google image search of that found some stuff that didn't look like it, but a reverse image search found this site, so looks like it's actually Iglesia de la Compañía, Quito, Equador

And so ends another weekend.

We left work just after lunch on Thursday, as our flight was 4pm.  Two flights for the day - Canberra to Sydney, then Sydney to Brisbane.  So weren't scheduled to arrive in Brisbane til after 7pm.  Then our flight from Sydney to Brisbane was delayed for half an hour due to heavy traffic in Brisbane.  We did three big loops around the coast off Ballina/Tweed Heads.  But to keep us entertained, they announced that Cate Campbell and Emily Seebohm were on the plane, and they wandered down the aisle showing off their medals!  It was amazingly cool!  Got to touch Emily Seebohm's silver and gold medals!  They were very heavy!  But not as shiny as I thought they'd be! heh.  Finally arrived in Brisbane, picked up our hire car then headed out to Chay and David's.  Fairly quiet night.  Only stayed up til 12:30 drinking and chatting :)  But did get to meet their new bird - Ichy - an Indian Ringneck, who is amazingly cool :)

Have I ever mentioned how much I love flying? :)

Pretty clouds over NSW

Sydney shining

Look mum, I can see your house from here!

This dude is taking this plane for a walk

I was quite surprised by the *glass* bottles!

Cate Campbell and her gold medal

Emily Seebohm and her two silver and one gold medal

Cate Campbell and Emily Seebohm on our plane!

The girls had some cool "Australia" luggage

Brisbane Airport

Mine!

After a fairly slow morning, we headed out to Ipswich for lunch and went to the Hog's Breath Cafe for lunch.  I didn't feel like anything too heavy, so had a "side" of caesar salad, and a "side" of curly fries.  Because if you go to the Hog's Breath Cafe you *have* to do curly fries :)   Stu had a pretty awesome "finger food" platter.  On the way back, we stopped in at Dan's to pick up supplies for the rest of the weekend.  Dinner was lots of Eagle Boys pizza.  There was drinking.  There was Buzz.  There was Singstar.  And it was very good.

Finger food platter

Caesar salad and curly fries

Supplies for the weekend

Stu and Ichy

Ichy!

Ichy!

Saturday after a bit of a sleepin (and the sweetie had headed out to meet a friend), C&D and I headed over to the markets next to Orion.  But they were pretty boring, not much there.  So headed into town to wander around South Bank and the markets there.  Was a very lovely wander.  Dinner that night was some roast chicken that we picked up from Chay's mum, along with the kids who were quite sick with the flu.  (David did his "best potatoes in the known universe" which were pretty decent :) ).  Their friend Storm came over after dinner too which was pretty cool.  There were mojitos.  There was drinking.  There was Buzz.  There was Singstar.  And it was very good.

Near Orion

Southbank

Brisbane from Southbank

Southbank

Southbank (taking after Japan, much?)

Bored lifesaver. The water looked lovely.  I'd have liked to have gone for a swim.  But I didn't have any swimmers.  And I think they'd have arrested me if I went skinny dipping!

Brisbane from Southbank

Lizard at Southbank

Nepalese pagoda at Southbank

Chookens!

Mojitos!

After a bit of a sleepin, we packed a picnic lunch and headed out to Wivenhoe Dam.  We'd thought of this too late last year which was a bit sad as we would have seen it spilling over.  As it was this year, they'd closed off the viewing area so you couldn't even see the front of the dam.  But I did walk over most of it while the others took photos of me heh.  Dinner was roast pork, along with a stack of pork skin.  But after dinner I started feeling a bit off-colour.  Thought I was coming down with the flu the kids had.  But also felt quite queasy.  Didn't even feel like drinking!  Tragic I know!!  Storm came over again and we played a card game called "Frustration" which I think I'd like to play some more.  There was no Buzz.  There was no Singstar.  There was no more drinking.  And it was very sad.

Wivenhoe Dam

Extra spillway at Wivenhoe Dam

Blue-faced honeyeater

Isn't he a cutie? :)

Wivenhoe Dam

Wivenhoe Dam

Wivenhoe Dam

Wivenhoe Dam

Wivenhoe Dam

Wivenhoe Dam

er..

We'd bought a big bag of purple carrots.  If you boil them, their water turns bright indigo!

The last day is always a quiet day.  Didn't really do anything before heading off with ten baby plecos and three baby guppies in tow at 11:30am.  Pretty uneventful trip home (two flights - Brisbane-Sydney then Sydney-Canberra, and Lake George looks very full!).  After a long weekend of entirely t-shirt weather it was a bit sad to get home to the freezing cold.  

Jaffas at the Brisbane Qantas club

Citrus lemon shortbread on the plane

Northern beaches of Sydney

Drinks with Libby Trickett at the Qantas Club in Sydney

A-380 taking off

Been to a couple of parties down there

Sunset over Botany Bay

I've never seen Lake George completely full!

Home!!

I dumped all the fish into the two-foot tank.  The next morning (Tuesday) I couldn't see any of the new fish at all - alive or dead.  Wednesday morning I saw one of the plecos swimming around.  So who knows if any others have survived.

Also fought the infection for a couple of days, but I think I have beaten it and not really gotten sick.

As always, same time next year guys, it was fun :):):)