Well I can categorically say when our wedding *won't* be. July 21.

Other than that I have no idea. Truly.

Ok, well I suppose I have *some* idea. No, scratch that, I don't really, I've just had a few thoughts, but no real ideas.

Date
Later this year. Dunno when. Depends on my job situation.

Honeymoon
Was hoping to get to Europe this year, perhaps as a "pre" honeymoon, and then just go away locally for a weekend or week after the wedding.

Location
Dunno. My church doesn't meet in a church building, which makes that difficult. I kinda like the idea of Yass at Annie's church, or that cute little church between Canberra and Murrumbateman. I kinda liked the idea of a late August wedding when all the cherry blossoms are out for some nice photos, but don't know Canberra well enough to know whereabouts to go.

Bridesmaids and Groomsmen
We'll probably pass on that. We want as low fuss as possible, and trying to organise other people for that sort of thing is so tweenies.

Dress
This is one thing I don't want to pass on. I really want a nice dress. Have started looking online for things I might like.

Hair and makeup
Something with cascading curls I think. Makeup I dunno. I'm crap at makeup. Might have to find some professional to do it for me.

Flowers
That's starting to get a bit hard. Maybe just something for me to hold.

Reception
Dunno. We kinda like the idea of something informal. Maybe a catered afternoon tea or something. Dunno where.

Guests
I'm thinking small. Like 50 *tops*. Was 42 at D&Y's and that seemed like an ok number. Stu wants small too.

I suppose someone should give this to my mother to shut her up for a while... or maybe she'd just ask more questions ..

So after helping move, we wandered back to Stu's where we rested for a bit, then went and hunt and gathered some food for dinner (kangaroo and some fried veggies, very yum). Then we went for a walk to the top of a hill, with the intention of looking at the comet again. While we waited I took photos of crap.

But it just so happened that we were also in time for the Australia Day fireworks. Which we watched and I attempted to take photos, playing with exposure settings, being too distant to get anything worthwhile. But then the scheduled F-111 "dump and burn" happened. I snapped the shutter without having time to change my last setting - a 10 second exposure - oops! But it did make for a fairly spectacular photo..

After the fireworks, there was a mass exodus of people off Mt Ainslie. Which in itself was amusing..

And then I went back to taking pics of comets and Southern Crosses and the like..

On Saturday morning (gosh it feels like forever ago), we met up with Damien for brunch at Carlo's in Watson. There were so many yummy things on the menu I didn't know what to pic heh. Then we headed over to Cancon. Well the boys had fun. I played solitaire.. ;)

Stu cooked a yummy stir fry for dinner, then Scotty came over and we watched "Mallrats". Talk about a waste of space movie.. lol

Today we wandered over to Annie & Stu's for lunch, then back here for a scrumptious lamb roast for dinner.

And now my weekend is over :(

*sigh*

Well this was a bit before the weekend. Jake got this way-cool helicopter off ebay and was flying it around the office.

Drove down to Canberra on Wednesday night. Whereapon a little too much wine and champagne was consumed. Oops.

Slept in a bit Thursday morning, then wandered into town. Dropped into Stu's work and met a few of his colleagues, and visited Damien and got this very cute pic of him..

Then we meandered over to the Wig and Pen for beer and lunch with Scotty. Scotty couldn't resist being silly for this pic of the very different beers we ordered.

Had a little rest at Stu's house after that, then wandered back into town, via kangaroos at Weston Park ..

.. to where our cruise boat was waiting..

Damien gave us tickets for this as an engagement present. The whole night was fantabulous. It was such a pleasant atmosphere and the food was great. We even got to see the comet, which I think I was more excited than Stu was hehe. I spotted it first, and everyone else out on deck saw it too.

After we got back to Stu's, Orion was in such a good position I couldn't resist getting out my tripod and taking pics of it. Sorry to Northern Hemisphere readers, it's not my fault he looks this way to us :)

This morning we got up at the crack of dawn to go help Scotty move a fridge, but we could have had another hours sleep by they time they all got organised.

We took photos of bugs while we waited...

And then it was off to help Annie and Stu move house. Except that most stuff had been done when we got there, there was just a few bits and pieces, and all the big furniture stuff, which all the boys did. I mostly just supervised :)

I think this is a good location for their tiger, whatchareckon? :)

So. The weekend. Had the boy here which was lovely as always.

Saturday was a very quiet one, we just went for a little walk to the shops to get some food and the paper, but otherwise didn't do anything much.

Sunday was also fairly quiet, going to Bunnings to try and find some new taps. Got one set, but they didn't have any more, and failed at our attempts to install them because we couldn't get the plastic thingie off the metal thingie. WD-40 *may* help, but I don't have any. So that was a bit of a failure. Sunday night we went to Alan and Marylon's for some fizzling and Alan's famous beef stew. Also some lovely cake that George made (for our engagement) and some divine cheesecake that Angela made (for her birthday). Had a breakdown when I got home cause my mouse wouldn't work and it was dark and I couldn't make it work and eventually had to reboot. Sigh.

Monday Arian and the girls came over for an early lunch (platter of cheeses, salami sticks and veggies with dressing-dip - yummo!) and then we went off the Nasho Park for a swim. It was exceedingly pleasant - so much so that we stayed a lot longer than we planned, and as a consequence all got sunburnt. Well except Arian who applied so much sunscreen she looked like she'd been painted white hehe :) As we got home so late, Stu decided not to drive home tonight, so I have him for another night yayyyy :) Well another couple of hours really. We had an instant roast pork dinner I scraped together from various leftovers, and even had some crackling.

And now time for an early night in preparation for a *very* early morning tomorrow...

Stolen from Neil

1. Egg Nog or Hot Chocolate? mmm egg nog. Only ever had it twice, but I remember it being quite yummy, and somewhat potent :)
2. Does Santa wrap presents or just sit them under the tree? I often just sit presents under the tree for a while because they look more interesting before they're wrapped. Then at some point the inbound ones get put away and the outbound ones get wrapped.
3. Coloured lights or white on tree/house? Coloured. I'm a firm believer in the addage "you can never have too many fairy lights"
4. Do you hang mistletoe? No
5. When do you put your decorations up? The fairy lights in my study I often put up early November and they stay up til about February. The tree goes up at the beginning of December, usually the first weekend
6. What is your favorite holiday dish (excluding dessert)? Roast pork with gravy, apple sauce and *crackling*
7. Favourite holiday memory as a child? Favourite? Dunno.. Probably putting up the tree and lights each year
8. When and how did you learn the truth about Santa? Don't rememeber
9. Do you open a gift on Christmas Eve? No
10. How do you decorate your Christmas Tree? Lots of bright shiny coloured things :)
11. Snow, love it or dread it? I love snow. But then I've never had to live with it. And white Christmases here? I think they had one in Hobart one year .. :)
12. Do you know how to ice skate? Yup, it's fun. Never gone skating on a real lake though
13. Do you remember your favourite gift? Sheesh, hard questions ;) Our bikes one year were pretty cool. And getting my own double tape deck/radio when I was about 16 was cool too.
14. What�s the most important thing about the holidays for you? Being with family I suppose. Christmas is for family, New Years is for friends. I got pretty depressed for several years when I had no friends to celebrate New Years with
15. What is your favorite holiday dessert? I like baked fruit pies - things like apricot or blueberry danishes and the like
16. What is your favourite holiday tradition? Dunno about favourite, but one I've enjoyed over many years, is watching the Carols by Candlelight on Christmas eve. The most memorable of those was the year I'd been swimming for a week straight with plaited hair and no brushing it in between. We watched the carols for *hours* while my parents painstakingly removed all the knots out of my hair
17. What tops your tree? A 15-fairy light electric star - way cool :)
18. Which do you prefer giving or receiving? Well I'm pretty crap at both. I'm crap at thinking up what to get people, and I'm impossible to buy for too.
19. Favourite Christmas Song? Probably Hark the Herald Angels Sing. Or Angels we have Heard on High (the tune - I don't even know the words!). Or Handel's Hallelujah chorus.
20. Favourite flavour of Candy Canes? Mint. Anything else seems wrong somehow.

Across the road from our apartment was a fair setting up, but it wasn't due to open til the next weekend. Which didn't stop us enjoying it really. In fact it was kinda nice to wander around without any people or noise :) And Jake didn't really care that the things weren't moving :)

I rather like this photo of Stu gazing out into Batemans Bay

Mogo Zoo ..

hehe not really. Today I was fine. So fine in fact that I woke up feeling perfectly normal, and got annoyed that I'd have to go to work heh. I felt rather ripped off that half my weekend had been wasted on sickness.

The good thing about essentially not eating all weekend and being sick, is that today my appetite was significantly reduced. So I had a salad for lunch and a small amount of meat and salad for dinner (prolly half what I would normally eat).

I put up my Christmas tree tonight, and caught up on a little bit of cleaning. Also got some more inspiration for Christmas presents for people.. getting there!

Another Friday, another Christmas party :)

This time I truly came out in front.

Starting with some online game competition, where I won the first one much to my surprise (I *never* do any good at those sorts of games!) I got 91 which apparently was the highest score. Then Monique dropped out of the doubles Fussball, so I took her spot with George, and we won that too! Awesome!! :)

Dinner was at Surgit's Indian. Lots of food. Not bad either, for Indian, heh :) And then at the end of the night a nearly full bottle of white was leftover, so I volunteered to give it a home ;)

Time for bed. Much more alcohol and food to be consumed this weekend... I think I'm gonna die.... hehe

Found while filing 4000 photos, unfiled since March..

A panorama of sunrise over Lake George one July morning..

I missed this all the other times I looked at this photo..

And this taken on the weekend..

Gosh, I go away for a couple of days and all sorts of stuff happens. Like I get home tonight and start trying to catch up on my blog news feeds and find this, and I'm like *egads* heheh. I went to find my own first commenter, and found I'd missed a few comments over the weekend (cause they normally get emailed to me, but the webserver was having a spac over the weekend and I didn't get the emails, so only just discovered those comments!) Some of the very original blogs I started reading are actually still around which is way cool. JC, CC, and Dennis I started reading in the first few days of my life in the blogosphere and they're still going. I'm pretty sure JC was my first ever commenter, and he was probably the first person I ever commented on too :)

So anyway. Four days of my life not blogged .. does anyone care? Probably not, but hey, this is for my own benefit, not anyone else's :)

Friday was easy day at work. Couple of lazy hours work in the morning followed by our Christmas party, which we had early cause one of the guys is going overseas this week. Ah crap, that reminds me, I'm gonna have to be the one changing tapes for December.. hrmmmmmm. Anyway, party was very pleasant, and then I hopped in my car and trekked down to Canberra.

Saturday was a trek to Belconnen for some shopping, with the evening at Scott and Kerry's with some nice Pakistani food and Monsters Inc.

Sunday was local shopping, and then out to Yass for Stu's birthday cake (the Other Stu :) )

This morning when my alarm went off at 6 I basically burst into tears and it was all I could do to actually get out of bed and go to work. Was positively dreading it. It turned out to be not so bad, I did actually get a couple of things done and kept all the crap-heapers at bay. The dreaded meetings database is still hanging over my head though, but I can avoid that another day, with a meeting with Luc on Wednesday to have another look at it. Tomorrow we upgrade the mail server to 7.0.2.. which has the potential to be messy heh :)