Sunday.  10th.  Cooked a massive tray of brussels sprouts and bacon, cauliflower and broccoli bake, and reheated some brisket in jelly.  So good.  Hardly any leftovers!  Whoops!

Monday.  Slept ok.  Another proxy cleaning/documenting day.  Music after work, and made honey mustard chicken for dinner.  Worked on Victoria photos - flowers and resizing the iphone panorama set - all 258 of them!  Yipe!

Tuesday.  Slept ok I think.  More proxy stuff.  Music, brisket and veggies for dinner.  Victoria photo labelling - flowers and bugs.  Started watching The Silver Brumby.  A kids film, but beautifully filmed.  The cinematography is awesome.  The lead lady character was pretty cool, although that story arc is not in the books at all apparently.

Wednesday.  Slept ok, although had *two* dreams stressing about the trivia night - both dreams I turned up in the room where everyone had already turned up but we had nothing prepared.  The second dream I was telling everyone about the dream I'd literally just had.  Salmon and cabbage for dinner.  Labelled all the Victoria panorama photos.  Then finished The Silver Brumby.  So it was a bit silly in that they had a very well groomed palomino mare playing a "silver" brumby stallion.  And to be honest it was hard to feel any sympathy for the brumbys' story - they really don't belong there anyway.  I was hoping Russell Crowe's character would win .. or at the very least get his own horse back.  

Thursday.  Slept ok I think.  Another proxy day.  So for me it was pretty peaceful.  Stu on the other hand went to the dentist because he'd been in agony for a few days, and came home minus a tooth!!  Nice enough drinks.  Opened an ancient Midori Crush Neil threw out from a Christmas party a few years back.  It was fine :)

The travel insurance people also got back to me - they were happy to simply cancel the old policy and reissue it with the new PDS.  Hurray!

Friday.  Woke up at 01:50 when the sweetie got up in pain.  But then stayed awake til like 04:00.  Sigh.  Had a bit of a cleaning day - mostly cleaning out my inbox(es).  Also playing with proxy settings to prevent uploads of certain files.  Kit arrived late in the afternoon.  Had drinks and pasta/mince for dinner and a lovely catchup.

Saturday.  Kit went out to go shopping and catch up with Katie, so I did a heap of work on my Victoria photos.  And made a lemon cheesecake.  In the evening was Christmas in July at Herbert's.  I might put that in another post.  It was quite fun, if very loud.  

Sunday.  Slept like crap.  Apparently eating and drinking too much will do that to you, who knew.  Kit went out most of the day with her brother and his family.  Finished off Victoria photos, hurray!!  Did some music in the afternoon then All The Cooking.  

Sunday. 26th.  Backdating this on account being out the Sunday evening this was due.

Starting with the epic blue cheese potato bake I made.  I hated blue cheese for the longest time, but having it cooked adds such a wonderful savoury flavour.

Monday.  Went to bed nice and early, but then hurty kept me awake from 3-5 :(  Spent all day documenting proxy policies.  Leftover pork ribs and vegies for dinner.  Labelled 160 Victoria photos.  Then watched Martin Bashir's Diana interview, which in twenty five years I've never actually seen.  

Tuesday.  Took a while to get to sleep - feet were cold.  Didn't achieve anything much useful all day.  Too many problems and people talking to me.  Labelled another 100 or so photos.  Then watched "The Diana Interview: Revenge of a Princess 2021" which was a documentary about the interview mentioned previously.  

Wednesday.  Slept ok.  Did a bunch of test proxy cleaning.  Then dealing with more problems.  Leftovers from the club for dinner (which Stu was decidedly unimpressed with).  I might have had a sad.  Labelled another hundred photos.  Then watched Epstein's Shadow: Ghislaine Maxwell (part of it anyway, finished it later).  After seeing Filthy Rich I'm so glad they went after her too.

Thursday.  Took ages to get to sleep.  Had a good morning doing proxy stuff.  Optus had a Very Bad Day in the afternoon, cutting work off from the world.  I hadn't gone into the office on account of all the covid floating around, so had a couple of drinks with the sweetie in the evening, including my own little whisky tasting, on account of missing the work one.

We watched the first episode of Obi-wan Kenobi which wasn't bad.  Then I watched The Man from Snowy River.  Such a glorious Australian film.  Don't think I've seen it in years though.

Friday.  More proxy work.  Made "special fried rice" for dinner which was qute nice.  Then watched An Affair to Remember.  I've been wanting to see this movie for ages because of its references in Sleepless in Seattle.  I probably should have not wasted a couple of hours of my life on it.  It was pretty silly.  And dumb.  Like Ken is the sweetest guy ever, even standing by her and taking care of her even though she admitted an affair and wanted to leave him.  Why would you give up someone like that to run off with someone who's a playboy and has already proven his willingness to cheat and run off with someone else??  Stoopid.  But what was funny about it was they agreed to meet on July 1st.  Which just so happened to be the night we watched it.  Synchronicity!

Saturday.  Tried to tidy the pantry in the morning because we keep losing stuff in there.  Then did some food shopping at the markets and chemist.

Yikes!

Stu was sad the markets fish is in pieces (I think this thing was in the Sydney 2000 Olympics opening ceremony).  They might still be planning to put it back.

Then spent most of the rest of the day cooking.  hrmm.  Put on a brisket first, then made up a breakfast lasagna for the sweetie, and also cooked up a bunch of chicken.  And all the veggies.  

These things are so good - just cream cheese and fried bacon bits rolled in chives.  So simple but so tasty!  Had to hide them so the sweetie wouldn't eat them all ;)

Breakfast lasagna I made for the sweetie

Brisket and veggies for dinner.  I might have served myself way too much meat.  Whoops.

Watched A Clockwork Orange in the evening.  Strange strange movie.  Although not as disturbing as the book apparently.

Sunday.  A bit of fish stuff, but mostly Lego counting and scanning.  Scanning is being problematic now.  I'm getting through more rolls because I'm not scanning everything in them.  But it does mean it's more hands on which I don't have the time for during the day (when doing a whole roll you stick two sheets in at a time and come back half an hour later to swap them out.  But I don't really have time to sit and choose which ones to scan and swap them out more often).  The other problem is that the negatives from 1994 have started to go very blue.  Which means they scan bright yellow.  hrmmm.

Finally got to try out drinks at The Howling Moon, a lovely rooftop bar with great views at sunset.

Oh yes, there were noms - olives (unfortunately not pitted) and arancini balls

Tried for dinner at Bentspoke but it was *packed* - don't come the first night of school holidays!!

So ended up at Mr Shabu Shabu

Couldn't be stuffed blogging when I got home, and then the week kicks in and it's all too hard... 

Sunday.  19th.  Stu cooked dinner using some mince I'd cooked previously, and some cauliflower in a white sauce which was very nice.

Got filled with rage trying to open a Coles liquid soap bottle.  It said turn anticlockwise to open, but twisting just turned the knob around and nothing happened.  A similar thing happened to my brother with a Woolworths soap bottle and he ended up breaking it trying to get it open.  I just undid the main cap and used it as a fefill bottle instead.  I think I'll stick with Palmolive.  Why TF do they make things so hard???

Monday.  Slept okish.  Frustated with waking up every hour or so with numb hands.  At work I was sick of the stoopid by like 9am.  Music practise in the evening, although very raspy, no idea why.  It's a fairly new reed too.  hrmm.  Leftover chicken drumsticks for dinner.  Did some photo culling and blogging and felt like it was the first "normal" weeknight in weeks.  Good to get some things done.

Tuesday.  Spent some time finding photos for my Ansto blog post (haven't finished yet).  More stoopid at work.  Scanner was in a bad mood in the afternoon, kept stuffing up the exposures.  Maybe it gets tired being on all day.  Leftover beef cheeks for dinner.  Watched a cool episode of the Simpsons - where Homer finds himself in a Lego world (Brick Like Me).  So much fun!!  Watched something online which had "may the mass times acceleration be with you" in it, but can't remember what it was, whoops.

Wednesday.  Took ages to get to sleep because my feet were cold.  Had a good cleaning day.  

So here's where our new drainpipe goes down.  It goes all the way to the ground level then round the corner to in front of the garage.  They've got render and sealer and a layer of plastic on the walls.  Then they have a fabric sheath (which you can see) around a big pile of blue metal.  The idea is to let the drainage flow around to the front where there's another pipe to allow drainage in addition to the actual drainpipe.

The concreter came in the morning to do the front steps.  He spent all morning doing up the formwork.

At lunch time the concrete truck came

And they filled up the stairs and path with concrete

This is the finished product (taken Thursday morning).  They're sooo much nicer than the old stairs!

Leftover pork ribs for dinner.  Finished culling Victoria photos down for the blog!  And then finished watching through Lie to Me.  Quite enjoyed that series (we'd seen about half of it twelve years ago, but have been watching through the whole thing).  

Thursday.  Helped de-rack a bunch of comms gear.  Kinda fun to be doing something physical (I'm normally strictly layer 3 and above ;) ). 

Due to the lettuce crisis at the moment I had to have spinach instead of lettuce at Subway.  You'd think a lot of rain would be a good thing for Australia.  Yeah notsomuch apparently.  Got Sichuan Chinese for dinner.  Had the lovely pork and also the dry fried chicken with epic chilli. I avoided most of the chilli and it wasn't too bad but Stu ate a bunch and nearly died.  He got the hiccoughs and even had to rescue his mouth with some milk!  So delicious though ;)

Finished season 25 of The Simpsons.  Then I felt like watching something a bit fluffy, so watched The Little Mermaid II, which was okish.  They got most of the original voice actor cast which was nice, but the graphics were *very* cheap compared to the original.

Friday.  Not great sleep.  Ok morning, then lunch with the Chrises and a Neil and a Tony at Herberts.  Braddles and Tony and I shared all the noms - chorizo, chicken skewers and jalapeno poppers and chips.  Yum yum. 

Some of us might have stayed all afternoon.  Whoops.  Watched a very sweet story on Stuart Harris and his discovery of a new species of maratus peacock spider.  Such a cute little spider!!  It was before the 19-20 fires though, so no idea how they have fared.  

Saturday.  Damien came over for a war game with Stu.  I went through Victoria photos for the blog and did some house stuff.  I might have also baked a coconut cake (Yum! Delicious!)

Game setup

End game

Nun with a gun!

Stairs are drying out

After Damien left we headed out to the club for Ian and Chris's anniversary formal night.  Any excuse to get out a little black dress and look a bit pretty :)

Stayed up a bit too late.  Not helped by losing an earring and then spending ages looking for it (found it!).

Sunday.  Couldn't get to sleep for *hours* because I was COLD.  We really need a better doona out there.  And need to put the electric blanket on the bed too.  In the end I used the sweetie as a hot water bottle to finally get to sleep (after having to deal with mild hurty as well).  Came home pretty early and tried (and failed) to get more sleep, so the morning was a complete writeoff.  Did some Lego stuff in the afternoon, then All The Cooking (a blue cheese potato bake and a brussels sprouts tray with salmon for dinner, and a bunch of mince to have with whatever over the next couple of weeks).  Started season twenty six of The Simpsons and season two of The Crown. 

20:00 is bed time right? :)

Monday.  13th.  Blogged.  Like All Day.  And then still nowhere near catching up.  In the evening I watched Mary Poppins, which I hadn't seen in a very very long time.  That was quite a bit of fun.  

Tuesday.  Plumbers came and put a sealant on top of the render.

The tower looked pretty at sunset.

In the evening went with the hills to Surprising Science at the Shine Dome.  I've never actually even been inside that building!!

The talks were by Dr Indrani Mukherjee, who was looking at the historical availability of trace elements and their correlation with the evolution of eukaryotic cells; and Dr Zoë Doubleday, who was establishing chemical fingerprints in marine animal bones to track where they come from (it has a bit to do with temperature so doesn't work in mammals or tuna), and finding there was a fairly good correlation of latitude in southern hemisphere, but not so good for northern hemisphere.

Then we all went for dinner at Little Steamer.

Honey Golden Potato ($9.50) - a bit like salt and vinegar chips, only sweeter and not as sour

Master Cut Baby Eggplant ($12.80) - this was really good

Steamed Prawn Dumpling ($13.80 - got 6 not 4 pieces - bonus!)

Duck Fried Noodles ($14.80)

Wednesday.  Slept like crap (awake for hours in middle of night).  Had a cleaning day which was nice.  Watched Saving Mr Banks while trying to get ready to go to Sydney and going over to Annie's for birthday cake.  I must have paused the movie about fifty times which really isn't the way to watch a movie but I really had no choice if I was going to see it before I left.  The cake was pretty epic :)

Thursday.  Had a full on melt down because the recycling truck came and our bin wasn't out.  They changed our day, but in my mind bin night is Tuesday night, so when they said Thursday I thought it meant Thursday night.  Sigh.  Then I went to Sydney.

The plumbers laid new drain pipes on Friday, but hid them all so I couldn't get a good photo.  Maybe tomorrow I'll get something.

Saturday.  Got home from Sydney completely exhausted.  Two nights in a row of midnight bed times and 6:30 wakeups.  

Had chicken kiev for dinner, watched Simpsons/Crown and went to bed at 8pm.

Sunday.  Today.  Had nearly ten hours sleep which was awesome.  Total catchup day - house/washing/computer/fish stuff all day, and no time for Lego.  Immy came over for a couple of hours in the afternoon.  OMFG I could never be a teenager again, it's just so much DRAMA.  But then it was super late and I still had blogging to do.. hmmmm!  The sweetie is cooking dinner while I try and catch up on photo/blogging stuff.

Sunday.  5th.  Leftover photos from last week..

Slow roasted a couple of punnets of tomatoes.  So awesome!  (just a bit of olive oil, salt, pepper, and maybe mixed herbs, can't remember)

Dinner was beef cheeks and a heap of roasted veggies

Monday.  6th.  Slept ok.  Ok day, thinking about more cleaning and upgrading.

Tuesday.  Got up to find I'd left a big pillar candle burning all night 😱  The monitors were still in standby too (not off) so obviously I'd been planning to go back.. just never actually did.  Scary!! 

Then the fun began.  The plumbers came in the morning to dig up the front foot path to get at the blocked pipe beneath it.  

So the horizontal pipe was completely full of roots.  But below this is concrete pipe which is in a poorly state.  And the bottom of it is filled with grout from tilers washing their buckets out probably thirty years ago.  Or maybe more.  Possibly from when the house was built (because how would they do it otherwise when it was all sealed up??).

Otherwise a cleaning planning day.  Stumpy was playing peekaboo.  Leftover beef cheeks for dinner.

Wednesday.  The plumbers came back and declared war on the stair case so they could completely re-lay the pipe.  They stopped when the concrete saw died.

Stu cooked tomato-mince-gnocchi for dinner which wasn't as tasty as the one he did the other week, but was still nice because I didn't have to cook :)  

Also, our front left stove element has died (it died while I was cooking on the weekend, and confirmed dead tonight).  Sad times.  Not sure how hard it will be to find/replace the element, vs buying a whole new stove.  Hmmmm.  Victoria photo culling in the evening.  

Thursday.  Plumbers finished ripping out the stairs and dug dug dug a massive trench by the side of the house.

Worked from home in the morning, but went into the office (via crowdedest Chemist Warehouse visit ever) in the afternoon.  Pizza for dinner.

Friday.  Azure training all day.  The plumbers rendered the wall (since the concrete in the bricks had disintegrated to the point of allowing all the blocked up water to flow right into the bin area). 

Slow cooked honey rosemary chicken for dinner (which will be in a separate post.  One day.).  Then we had to watch Top Gun.  For reasons which will become apparent eventually.

Saturday.  In at work in the morning for load testing.  Then Lego inventorying all afternoon.  Later in the afternoon I felt like I might be getting sick - slight sore throat and cough.  Stu had had an immune reaction on Monday but then had been ok for a couple of days, but Thursday/Friday he was a little congested in the evenings, and moreso on Saturday afternoon.  hmmm.  Leftover beef cheeks for dinner, then we watched The Monuments Men which was actually quite a bit of fun.  Very fictionalised but still pretty cool what they did.

Sunday.  I actually felt better but the sweetie felt worse.  So he took a RAT - which was very clearly negative - which was a relief.  Pretty much just Lego all day again.  Cooked slow cooked pork ribs and roast veggies for dinner (for which I used my brisket wet/dry rubs with the addition of a bit of apple cider vinegar and garlic powder).

The sweetie went back to his uni work (to finish his last essay, maybe for his last uni subject forever.. maybe..) so I watched Pride and Prejudice (the Keira Knightley version) which wasn't too bad.  One of these days I might read the book.

Monday.  Today.  Did a few house things in the morning.  Setup an app password so Eudora can backup my Gmail.  Then spent the entire rest of the day culling photos and blogging.  I only managed three blog entries out of all of that.  What an exhausting day.  

Sunday.  8th.  Cooked a lovely basa bake, and a gorgonzola bake which I'll post separately (one day!)

Then watched more of The Crown.

Monday.  Kept waking up with numb hands, and even legs!!  Mostly my arm median nerve but even radial and ulnar nerves.  So frustrating!!  At least it's just numbness not pain.  Fighting with all the stoopid during the day, mostly microsoft crap.  Also had some of the cheesecake I made Sunday (wherein I forgot the gelatine, but it still set well enough because of the cheese).

 It was definitely a wine and candle kind of an evening after all the nonsense at work.  Had pesto pasta for dinner.  Did some photo culling and watched Lego Masters.

Tuesday.  Slept somewhat better.  Fighting with certificates on one of our devices, but all the fighting was because of our assumptions that another team had done work that in fact hadn't been done.  But we did learn some stuff so that was useful.  Ended up finishing late.  So late that I just felt like a tv dinner for dinner.  Lego Masters and photo culling.

Wednesday.  Took an RDO on account of having to work last weekend and this weekend.  OMFG it was amazing.  I had such a productive day.  I made a list of all the crap I really needed to do but just don't feel motivated to do on weekends.  And the proceeded to do it!  There was a whole heap of cleaning and tidying and also photo stuff and weeding and even some Lego part picking.  I setup the scanner on my old computer since Microsoft is a big fat poo and Windoze 11 sux donkey balls and is refusing to allow the scanner to work in windoze 11 (EVEN THOUGH IT USED TO WORK!!!).  Got back into scanning of Mum's negatives.  It was a pretty awesome day.  Cooked creamy mushroom chicken pasta for dinner (with chicken I dug out of the freezer).

Thursday.  Woke up at 3am (from hurty) but then never got back to sleep.  So zombie day. Fairly busy drinks.  Let the sweetie get pizza. 

Dude what? It's autumn and cold! Why are you eating my mail??

Friday.  Woke up at 2:45am (from hurty).  Did get more sleep but it was fairly broken and restless.  Spent the morning planning routing cleanups and writing up change paperwork.  Did some reports for another team on some of our devices.  Then doing All The Rulez for another team.  Chicken Kiev for dinner.  But then we had an epic crisis and couldn't decide what to watch.  We didn't feeling like watching anything the other wanted to.  So I spat the dummy and put on Gladiator.  But it's such a good movie that the sweetie hung around and watched it anyway :)

Saturday.  Slept ok.  Woke up early and went and did a big food shop.  Then mostly Lego part picking.  Logged in to do a prod change.  Change itself worked perfectly (four ping drops) but the preparing and testing took up most of an hour.  Had a play with basebrick (I tried to register the other week but my hosting is dumb and sometimes never delivers mail for reasons unknown, so I signed up with my gmail).  Salmon and cabbage for dinner.  Then Simpsons/Black Books/The Crown.  Then the dead drive in my old computer started squeaking which was super annoying so had to turn it off.  

Sunday.  Slept fairly well.  Turned the old computer on with a vision of disabling the broken drive in bios.  But it started squeaking straight away.  So turned it off again.  Will need to physically disconnect it.  Poop.  Mostly Lego inventorying all day. Then music and All The Cooking.

Monday.  18th.  (Not backdating).  Yay for catchup days.  Pretty good sleep.  Went into battle with my computer trying to get the scanner and GPS to work.  Neither do in windows 11.  The GPS won't work in windows 11 because it complains the driver is no good.  Transystem hasn't put out any new software/drivers in years which is pretty upsetting.  So had to get the dam trip GPS off on my laptop.  Now dreading what will happen if something happens to the laptop and I have to replace it.  I'll have to find an alternative to my little PhotoMate 887 which is one of the best inventions in history.  Was also fighting with the scanner which fricken USED TO WORK in windoze 11, but just stopped one day.  I've yet to reconnect it up to my old computer to test it.  Hate Microsoft.  Hate hate hate.  Did some weeding, and a magpie came right up to where I was working to see if I'd disturbed any bug noms for it.  Very cool.  Potted some geranium cuttings.  In the afternoon we tidied up the shelves in our bedroom cupboard that had been getting messier and messier.  Did a water change in the upstairs two foot for the first time in forever (there's always babies in that tank I'm worried about sucking up).  Then got frustrated yet again with Apple because it dropped out while downloading my photos and refused to show up in windows afterwards.  Was thinking I was going to have to reboot my computer.  It certainlly meant I couldn't blog the previous week.  Hate Apple.  Hate hate hate.  Then cooked all the food.  I prepped a chicken marbella from Not Quite Nigella, cooked some mince/bacon/onion/garlic, and we had salmon and cabbage for Monday night's dinner.  Then we watched the first episode of The Crown which was pretty good.  Got pretty stressed out about having to go back to work.  Even four day weekends are just not enough time to get everything *done*.  Eventually managed to reconnect to the phone and was able to download photos, but bed time so no blogging.

Was digging under the old pool and found all this steel reinforcing.  Maybe to stop slippage of the pool???

Tuesday.  Slept ok until hurty kept me awake half the night.  Ok day trying to catch up on stuff.  Then demoing stuff to peeps and trying to deal with all the stoopid.  It was a wine and candle kind of a night.  Also made the chicken marbella which was nice enough but a little watery.  

Wednesday.  Woke up for a while a couple of times.  Was sick of the stoopid by 8:40.  Fairly busy day prepping a firewall migration and prepping rules for a big project.  Did some music, then did a red curry with mushrooms, asian greens and leftover sausages.  Did some work on Eurasia panoramas but still no blogging.  

Thursday.  Another busy day, and a tonne of interruptions and meetings.  Did a firewall migration after lunch which took all of ten minutes (including testing) and was one of the most anticlimactic changes I've ever done.  Pretty quiet drinks.  Tried McCains frozen pizzas which weren't really any better than Spar.  Need to stick with Dominos or Dr Oetker (Doc Oc/Dr Octopus).

Friday.  Finished prepping a big ruleset, and even managed to deploy them the same afternoon which was good.  Had a craving for mac and cheese for lunch.  Lazy Su pickup for dinner and watched third episode of Gunther's Anatomy.

Saturday.  Basically got ready then Damien came over.  We chatted for ages, had frozen spring rolls and chips for lunch, then played Jaws in the afternoon.  After playing for a little while we put the movie on in the background (because I don't seem to have the soundtrack).  Stu has never actually seen it?!?!  Will have to watch it properly with him some time.  Damien and I played Brody/Hooper/Quint, and Stu played Jaws.  Stu got a really good start, pretty much totally evading us and getting lots of points for act 2.  But somehow we managed to survive and Quint finished him off with the machete.  Just as the movie was finished, amazing timing.  As soon as Damien left we both collapsed in a heap - seven hours of socialising is super super draining, who knew.  Had sausages and cabbage for dinner, then Simpsons, Black Books and second episode of The Crown.

I actually spent cash that day too - to get the shiny on the right here.  And in the same change got all four head designs of the Queen.

Sunday.  Went and climbed Mt Rogers, did some music practise, did some cleaning, and filled the green bin.  And suddenly the morning was gone.  Went to the markets after lunch to get some fresh veggies, came home and cooked some Anzac biscuits and prepped dinner.  And suddenly the afternoon was gone.  Sigh.  Jenn came over for dinner (a cheese and spinach burek we found at the markets) and then we played Carcassonne which I won.  Was going to have an early night, but then Stu tried to print something.  It did a whole lot quite happily, then went back to jamming in the same place at every damned page.  So got super cranky about the whole thing.

I nearly rage quit at one point because the pantry is so full of crap I can't get at anything without everything all falling over

Unfortunately these were a bit dry

Burek and veggies dinner

Monday.  Got a reminder to go look at planets.  Because I was awake, I did.  It was actually worth getting up for, with the moon, Saturn, Mars, Venus and Jupiter very obvious (although not so much in the resized photo).  I'll take peoples' word for it for Neptune and Pluto.

Then it was all morning trying to catch up on photos and blogging.  Yet again, even with a long weekend I'm struggling to keep up with life.  Stop the world I want to get off.

Sunday.  27th, not backdating although late.  Where were we.  I left off with hints of pork crackling and tomatoes.  Well the tomatoes were epic awesome!  It was all I could do to not just scoff them all in one sitting.

The pork crackling was ok, but not as thin and crispy as doing it on the meat

Monday.  Slept ok.  Did my quota of photo culling before work, which gives me hope I'll actually get this done.  Last day of being Neil hurrah!  I fixed a mail problem in the afternoon that had been there since December, so that was good.  Did nine minutes of weeding at lunch.  Better than nothing I guess.  Music after work and Stu made a nice salad of lettuce, cucumber, spring onion, some of the slow roasted tomatoes, minced fresh garlic, olive oil, lemon juice, salt, pepper and bacon bits I cooked on the weekend, to go with salmon I cooked.  

I was trying to do photo culling, but the sweetie was trying to print stuff for uni, but the printer was being a big fat poo.  It was flashing all its lights and once so we had to battle trying to get around than, but then it was continually getting jammed, so it was super annoying because I couldn't concentrate on photos because I had to stop every two seconds to unjam the printer.  So I got cranky and Stu got cranky.  We just want a quiet life and AND WHY THE F@#% WON'T THINGS JUST WORK!?!?!?  I gave up on photo culling after a while.  Then I was wondering why I don't seem to have any photos of the Walkie Talkie building in London.  Turns out it wasn't even built until after the last time I was there.. (which was ten years ago!)  I think I've got photos of its lift core under construction.  For some reason I thought it was built in the 70s!  I really need to get back to London some time..

Tuesday.  Took forever to get to sleep (nearly midnight) but then slept ok.  More photo culling in the morning, now only three days of final culls to go (Leavesden Studios, Brussells and Legoland Billund).  Ok day, not being Neil yayy.  Approvals came much too late to get much cleaning done.  Did an hours weeding after work but no music oh well.  Chicken caesar salad for dinner.  After dinner I finished photo culling!!!  I was worried I wasn't going to get it done, but I did.  Now just need to process the photos and get them on the blog.

Wednesday.  Slept fairly well.  Did some tweaking of dashboards for our workflow.  Salmon and salad for dinner again (probably should have bought two pack not a four pack).  Blogged the Balloon Fiesta. Into the third (final) season of Lie to Me.

Thursday.  Slept ok.  Ok day.  Started thinking about another firewall migration.  Finally finished the salmon heh.  Watched random stuff on YouTube including Robin Williams on Don Lane in 1979.  There was a quote from him along the lines of (this is a direct quote but it's a bit rambly) "to keep performing live .. it keeps me alive.. and just.. it just.. keeps contact with people is very important, cause if not you get just get dead you don't take chances anymore, and for me that's very important."  Kinda sad really.

Friday.  Slept ok.  I wonder how much of my insomnia is dietary.  I've been *trying* to eat better.  Not sure it's helping or not.  Probably salmon and veggies is going to sit better than pizza or kfc...  Ok day, cleaning in the afternoon (always takes a lot longer than you think).  David arrived and we had beef cheeks for dinner.  It doesn't photograph well but it's oh so delicious.

Watched Zero Hour! with David in the evening.  It was kinda law that he had to see it :)  We also saw a bunch of his holiday photos/videos (before I called it cause I was exhausted and needed sleep).

Saturday.  Slept ok, although lately every time I wake up I have numb hands which is super annoying.  Did a chemist/groceries run in the morning and did some jigsaw, as well as finishing watching David's holiday photos/videos.  Made a lemon cheesecake in the afternoon, and did a pork roast for dinner (felt like I was on my feet most of the day).  Watched 6 Underground in the evening.  Eh, Michael Bay, and very violent.

Sunday.  Slept ok.  Canberra Airport Open Day.  Will save that for another post.  Came home utterly exhausted.  The sweetie ordered Chong Co for dinner and I had a super early night.

My phone has better eyesight that me.  Spot the mistake :)  This is our country's $50 note.  Silly really.

David helped with the village on Saturday.

Duck salad and pork belly - our favourites

Monday.  Today.  Slept ok but awake pretty early.  Got two loads of washing done before work.  More firewall migration planning in between all the things.  After work brought in all the washing and did some weeding and then did music while Stu cooked dinner - a pasta bolognase which was very nice.  Treehouse of Horror XXII in The Simpsons - we're into season 23 now.  Then phone/camera downloading and blogging.  I still haven't made the bed or put away the washing though.  Trying to cram an entire weekend into before and after work.  Doesn't work.  Too stressed.  Too much to do to have time for work.  Sigh.

Sunday.  Not backdating!  Lamb roast for dinner.  Except it was two small roasts not one larger one, so the cooking time was very much reduced.  Which meant the garlic didn't cook fully.  So I stuck it back in the oven.  This has to be among the tastiest things on earth ;)

Monday.  Even though I was zombie tired from not sleeping well Saturday night, I still took *ages* to get to sleep, but at least finally slept ok.  It was so *windy* today.  I put my washing out on the line, it was probably dry in about three minutes.  Scanned a roll of negatives.  Had an ok day, doing cleaning and deleting old production stuff :)  Did music but no weeding.  Sausages and salad for dinner.  Into season 22 of The Simpsons.  Did a "first pass" cull of three days of Eurasia 2012 trip.

Tuesday.  Slept ok.  The questions started as soon as I logged in and didn't let up for nearly an hour.  Found it super frustrating in the afternoon because everything was blurry and I couldn't SEEEEE.  I don't know if I was tired which made it worse, or if not being able to see made me tired.  Did some photo culling before dinner.

Wednesday.  Could see the screen in the morning, although it got worse during the day.  Clearly I'm too old to be sitting at work all day staring at a computer screen.  More cleaning with HBZ's help.  And finally sat down to plan cleaning of another set of firewalls (that a previous cloud admin completely botched up and made an epic mess of).  Uunifetapasta for dinner.

Thursday.  Had to *go* to work.  Blerf.  There's still way too much covid around for me to be feel comfortable doing that.  And the office is *noisy*.  People yapping away everywhere, super annoying.  I went to talk to Neil at one point and found myself on TWO people's cameras in two different meetings.  So I went and sat back down until they were off their calls.  Hate being on camera hate hate hate.  Still, the bar was open so that was nice, first time in three months.

Friday.  Ok day.  Grilled the last of some bread I got the other day in the toasted sandwich maker with some parmesan cheese each side (and leftover KFC). Epic good.  Late getting off work because Neil was stressing about upgrades, although turns out what he thought was a problem wasn't a problem after all.  Doc Oc pizzas for dinner, then finally watched Zero Hour! (which Tony took it upon himself to reencode for us, and this time it worked perfectly, even streaming straight off OneDrive and casting from my computer browser). OMFG it was HILARIOUS.  Not because it was actually funny, but because Flying High is pretty much identical to this movie.  I mean I already know there were chunks of it the same, but I had no idea almost the entire movie, from plot to character names to the dialogue was pretty much verbatim.  I mean I could even quote this movie in a lot of places because it was all the same.  My brother would probably appreciate this, you should have a watch :)

Saturday.  Urgh couldn't get to sleep for *ages*.  Maybe even non-Dominos pizza will cause me insomnia.  I still got up to go see the balloons though.  Except I really didn't like the new location (Patrick White Lawns, in front of the library).  It was all very cramped and there was no *view* - no landmarks (other than the library if you could make your way through the crowds to get to the north side) and surround on all sides by trees.  So went somewhere else instead, which worked out a whole lot better.  Pics in a separate post.  Went and said hi to Neil afterwards.  The day was just house/photo/jigsaw stuff.  At lunch we did a Bunnings run (to get vermin poisoning stuffs), as well as Asian Supa for some bits and pieces and Officeworks (to get a decent reem of paper - to try instead of the Coles paper we have which keeps getting jammed - not sure if it's the paper or the printer).  Mostly just jigasw in the afternoon.  

Just a few weeks it was 181.9.  Just the other day it was 199.9.  Saturday 209.9.  omfg, madness.  See we should all be working from home to save petrol given the current crisis.

How cute is this teeny little cow that Stu painted? :)

Stu cooked dinner - a vegetarian Japanese curry which was very nice.

Watched Operation Finale in the evening.

Sunday.  Slept well for a change.  Forgot to have breakfast (routine was out of whack), so ended up having bacon and eggs (Pialligo bacon yummm) which was quite nice.

The day was house/photo/jigsaw stuff.. doing All The Things.

Sunday.  27th.  Jigsaw sorting in the afternoon.  

Stu cooked dinner!  Pantry dinner basically, but it was very nice.

Monday.  Slept really well, hurrah!!  Scanned the second roll of Mum's negatives (found the missing sheet, it was just out of order).  It took All Morning.  Literally.  With each batch of eight taking three quarters of an hour or so, I could just set them going and then just spend a couple of minutes every hour swapping them out.  Back to work though.  Sigh.  Spent most of the day trying to get through emails (didn't finish), in between talking to all the people wanting all the things.  Had a look at the dashboard for the new system we put in just before I went on leave, only to find people haven't been doing things properly and making a mess of things.  Doh.  Got some music practise in, but no weeding before dinner.  Of pizza.  Because we still hadn't been shopping and there wasn't much food in the house (well nothing fresh anyway).  And the sweetie had had an insomnia-zombie day (we take it in turns).  Then I went food shopping.  By myself.  I don't think we've actually done a full Coles shop together in two years.  So the fridge is nice and full again!  Hurrah!  But then it was 20:30 and too late to feel like starting any photo stuff, so just watched an episode of Mentour Pilot.

Tuesday.  Didn't get to sleep til midnight, then awake from 2 (Stu still hadn't slept).  Had some cheese and went to loo, but itchy and uncomfortable and restless and my hands go numb if I leave them still for more than a few minutes and didn't get back to sleep til about 4:30.  Then woke up at 6:30.  Of course.  Zombie day.  Stu was double zombie so went back to bed and slept most of the day.  I went to work.  Scanned roll 3 of Mum's negatives.  Fairly quiet day, haven't looked at my todo list yet.  Weeding after work.  Salmon and salad for dinner - it's so nice having fresh food in the house.  Photo culling in the evening.

These passionfruit across the road look lovely when they flower, but their fruit are infertile.

Wednesday.  Slept well, hurrah!  The plumbers arrived first thing to attack all our pipes.  First up they had a go at the drain in the courtyard under the bedroom windows.  The hole was full of dirt and there was a 50mm pipe outlet pipe they didn't want to put the eel through, so they stuck a high pressure hose down it. And then tried to figure out where it went.  Turns out it goes off to the side of the property and then just drains into the side passageway. ?!?!  Probably it was put in as an afterthought.  Shouldn't be too much effort to keep that one clear.  Next they attacked the drain in front of the garage which blocks up during heavy rain.  They went in about thirty metres before finally finding a blockage.  !!!  So now all the stormwater drains properly which is pretty awesome.  Next was the sewer pipes, actually the easy one, the one I need doing every couple of years.  And finally they had a look at the NE downpipe.  We think it's supposed to flow into the drain in front of the garage.  But when they stuck a hose down the drainpipe, water started pouring out of the bricks behind the bins, and only a very little bit into the drain.  hmmm.  So they're coming back tomorrow with a camera to have a look at that one.  Ok day, cleaning and documenting the proxies.  Music practise, pork larb for dinner, photo culling.

It was cold and dark and miserable enough to light a candle

Thursday.  Ok day.  Plumber came back with camera.  He made a hole in the downpipe and had a look and couldn't get the camera down any further because the downpipe was actually separated from the other bit of the downpipe and there were roots everywhere and the whole thing is an epic disaster.  He spent ages poking around deciding what the best way forward would be.  Small Pot Belly session after work and KFC.

At Aquila's suggestion, Glenda brought these over!! :)

Friday.  Insomnia.  Spent some of that awake time stressing about the EMP apocalypse.  hmmm, what a useful way to spend my time.  Thought I'd do *one thing* at work, but never finished it because of interruptions and breaking things (well trying to fix something I broke in January - I did learn a whole heap about one of our products in the process though).  We tried watching Zero Hour! on archive.org, but it had issues buffering and synching audio/video so that was disappointing (I really wanted to see it).  The sweetie put on Dr Stangelove instead.  

Saturday.  Slept ok.  There was a pretty red sky in the morning that I didn't document.  Instead of doing anything useful, or anything I should be doing, I spent most of the morning tidying files on my computer.  hrmm.  And most of the afternoon on the jigsaw, so barely any photo culling.  Didn't help that the quote to fix the downpipe/drain was nearly $10000, plus another extra up to $2500 if they have to redo the concrete next to the bins if they can't blast through the half filled with concrete pipe that's there.  Sigh.  

I was feeling uninspired at dinner time, so the sweetie decided to make a very nice teriyaki sauce which we had with chicken/rice/cabbage. 

I was on a bleh mood so couldn't decide what to watch, so the sweetie put on No Time to Die.  Like longest Bond movie in history.  Went til way past my bed time.  Not that it mattered, I was still awake past 1am, when mice decided to start scritching around above our heads.  I couldn't sleep through that (omfg the anxiety), so moved into the spare room.  Where I still couldn't get to sleep til about 3am.  Sigh.  Woke up at 7am.  Of course.  Hurrah zombie day today.  

Had a look in the roof this morning.  The mice are way over there in the corner somewhere....

I was going to check on the situation and put down a mouse trap, but I only got that far before it all got too hard and I wasn't sure which beams were safe to walk on and it was dirty and spidery and I had to hold the torch in one hand and try and move around and I hadn't had enough sleep anyway and it was all too much and I freaked out and had a meltdown on that spot.  So no idea what we're going to do.  Probably we'll just get some Ratsak granules and literally just throw them at the corner and hope for the best.  I can't think of any other way to get across there.  Either that or just pay a professional to do it.  I'm totally not qualifed for home ownership :(:(:( 

So the rest of the day was basically a zombie waste.  I did make pretty good progress on the jigsaw though so I guess it wasn't a complete waste of a day??

The sweetie somehow managed to make this epic bubble while washing up

I fillled in a bunch more on Thumper after taking this photo

I think I'll be going to bed straight after dinner...