So today after eventually getting out of bed and getting ready, we went over to Damien's for lunch. Mishi and L came, and Jo, a friend of Damien's came. It was all very civilised. Some nice wine and lots of food and a generally nice time.

And now it's 5pm and I feel somewhat drained. Must be all the socialising we've been doing all weekend .. :)

Our todo list for the next time I'm down includes planting fresia bulbs, planting some foxglove seeds, going to the farmer's markets, getting some photos of us (cause we don't really have any good ones), probably some fish stuff (I got some lights for my 620T tank today - they're hard to get so I'm rather pleased about that). And generally just have a much quieter weekend than this one :)

I also had a productive weekend. Although after a few wines I can't really tell you with what... er... :) I moved the telly into the other room, cleaned and vacuumed both rooms, did washing and put it away, cleaned the bathroom, watched some videos, built some Harry Potter Lego, stopped reading a blog, went to church, went to Alan and Marylon's for dinner before they disappear for over a month, caught up on some blogs, played Carcassonne, fixed an old computer that wouldn't boot by fiddling with the ram in it, .. er ok so I could list a few things... hehe :) and on that note I'm off to go talk to the boy on the phone :):)

How is this for utterly tragic:

Jim dropped his BlackBerry on the weekend and cracked its screen :( It was only a few weeks old too :(

Got lots of crap done this weekend. Which was useful. Didn't go for a walk like I wanted to. But got lots of housey stuff done.

Found a dried neon tetra on the desk next to the tank today. Think it might have flopped out of the open lids of the tank sometime last night. Don't really know how else it could have gotten out.. I mean I was doing some work on the tank yesterday, but not pulling stuff out. Poor little guy :(

Spent a decent chunk of today reading icq logs and reminiscing about meeting Stu. Got quite nostalgic me did .. :)

Dinner at Alan & Marylon's tonight, which was lovely as usual. Eyes bigger than my stomach (as usual) heh.

Thinking about wandering off to bed.

Feeling a bit overwhelmed at the moment. So much work to do at work and don't know where to start. Haven't done dishes since the weekend, and things are starting to smell. Videos all filled up that I haven't watched. Fish tanks to be water changed. Blogs to be read. Stu with no internet, no blackberry and currently no landline (well limited access anyway), and no instant messaging at work. So at the moment we're reduced to emails during the day and smses at other times. The cost of smses alone are going to make a blackberry worthwhile heh. Either that or he needs a much better plan. Feeling somewhat out of control and missing Stu at the moment :(

Gosh what a crazy two days.

Let's see. Friday morning after we logged off, we caught and packed up all the fishies and put them into baggies. All good. And carried on cleaning what we could. Then the removalist showed up. Yes, one removalist. Actually he was just a packer, not a remover. So this dude, by himself, spent about four hours just packing stuff. So much for a team of packers to come through and blitz the place. There was an hour or two when we couldn't really do anything, because the surfaces we needed to clean were inaccessible behind boxes of stuff. We were also getting stressed because the carpet cleaners were due to arrive and there was no visible carpet to clean :( When he did turn up though, he kindly arranged to get the key off the estate agent and come back next week to do it. Anyway the removalists finally arrived and three blokes in their blue singlets blitzed the emptying of the house. I ran around after them with the vacuum cleaner to get the excess of dust off the floor so they could take the vacuum cleaner with them as that last thing heh. We also ran around with spray and wipe and chux cleaning surfaces as they became available. It was about 7:30pm by the time we'd tetrised the car and returned the key and said goodbye to a lovely flat.

The way the removalists worked was different to what I expected. Rather than filling up a truck and driving that truck down to Canberra and unloading at the other end, they instead filled up a shipping container. Then the container is taken either by road or rail down to Canberra, and another team will unload it. Which was pretty nifty. Although of course it does mean that we don't actually know yet when the container will be arriving. Hopefully next weekend would be useful. So I'm not going down today, but perhaps next weekend, or maybe the one after.

Next it was over to Chay and David's for a wonderful lasagna dinner, a few drinks, and a game or two of the new Buzz (general knowledge, which I did a lot better at than with the music trivia version). And a place to crash for the night. Thanks guys!

Yesterday the long long drive. Got away at 9:13. Got here about 12:45 :( We had a coffee stop in Warwick, a lunch stop in Tenterfield (we had to try the honeycomb cheesecake at the Coachman's Cafe :) ), a tea/coke stop in Tamworth, and a nice break at Arian's parent's place (where Arian had been all week so caught up with her here instead of Armidale :) ). Traffic was fairly light which was good. The fish in the baggies seem to be ok so far. My fish at home seem ok. And a lovely sleep in this morning :)

Had a good Good Friday.

Actually managed to achieve quite a lot.

Got the last four hours of Looney Tunes recorded to dvd. Did two loads of washing including my sheets and towels. Water changed the krib tank and watered my plants. Read a fifth or so of the Half Blood Prince. Upgraded our file server (switched to new hardware). Watched (or half watched rather) the Passion of the Christ.

The file server upgrade still isn't finished, still have a todo list left of things I need to fix up. And the whole process took an awfully long time. Worried that the new server feels slower than the old one. Just getting properties on a directory and having it count up bytes takes longer on the new server :( Will watch it over the weekend and see how we go.

Half watching the Passion of the Christ was probably a good thing. Actually for the last half of it I didn't even have the volume up which further detaches you from it. I imagine it'd have felt a lot more brutal if your whole attention was dedicated to it. And while I'm here, can anyone explain to me why non-Christians celebrate Easter at all..? Christmas I can understand in a way, but not Easter.

Ich is back in the big tank. The last remaining catfish looks a bit sad :( Will try and treat the tank or just him this weekend.

The baby kribs at work all got eaten within a few days. I should probably try and separate them next time..

Expecting big mama guppy at work to pop again in a few days.

Got a funky blue bubble light for the Macquarium, but it doesn't like the tank enough and bubbles violently which would be stressful for a betta in such a small tank. So will rethink the whole thing - perhaps put the blue light in the krib/guppy tank and get something else for the macquarium. One idea might be a rope light running all over the back of the tank which I saw done on one site. Someone else had made up an led "lid" which illuminated the tank really well with no external attachments.

Bit sad about the catfish still.

Current inventory of fish:

Tank 1
* two three-year old angels
* one three-year old glass catfish

Tank 2
* three pretty big corys
* four neon tetras

Baby Krib Tank
* six juvenile kribs

Tank "5"
* one yellow cichlid - probably Metriaclima barlowi ("Fred")
* one huge catfish ("George")

Work Tank
* twenty one (at last count a while back) kribs, some at breeding age
* two parent guppys
* ten four-month old juvenile guppys from original parents
* nine one-month old baby guppys from original parents

Work Bowl
* two of the four-month old guppys I think might be almost ready to breed
* five three month old blonde guppys I got off Stu in January

Life changing day today - Stu got offered a job in Canberra! It's all very exciting and scary, although more scary for Stu I think!

We were talking about this the other night and Stu said how much his life had changed because of me, and the impact of it hit me like a tonne of bricks. It was like, up until this point if anything happened to our relationship we could just go back to our lives and really things wouldn't be any different (glossing over any pain involved of course). But Stu changing his job, his house, his city, his *life* and moving to be closer to me still spins me out. It's like, there's this committment from him to our relationship, and it's now up to me not to screw up my end of things. I feel like we're now committed for life, and I'm pretty happy/excited/a little scared about that :)

Of course there's still a long way to go before we even have a chance of living together, but at least we'll be able to see each other every other weekend, which will be very nice indeed :):)

Well I don't know about anyone else but I've had a thoroughly wonderful weekend.

We were going to go the beach today, but we both had unrelated abdominal issues so decided to just potter around at home. We watched some more Star Trek (getting quite a way through the first season now). Had a nice healthy salad for lunch. Watched some more Star Trek and Stu read to me. Then we went for a little drive - via Smith's aquarium and onto Sandgate, where we took our shoes off and walked across the sand flats to Moreton Bay. The water was beautiful and warm and the breeze blowing in off the water was the perfect temperature - not too hot and not too cold. It was really really nice. Stu cooked a pot-luck dinner of stuff he'd had in his freezer for a very long time (2004 for the pork :) ) and we watched some more Star Trek and Stu read to me some more.

Feeling quite happy and relaxed, although really not looking forward to going home. Not unless I can take Stu with me and keep him as my pet...