With a flying visit to Sydney and Newcastle and probably eleven or twelve hours driving.  eep!

So set off mid morning yesterday and went straight to my Nana's 80th birthday celebrations.  It was.. .er... well it was interesting.. hrmm... kinda...
heh
Nah it was good to see some of my aunties and uncles and cousins that I don't see very often.  But remind me never to get old.. :(


My dad looked liked he actually belonged in the nursing home.. whatchathink? ;)

First cousin with first cousin once removed :)

So then we toddled off to George's brother's place for a good old-fashioned bonfire!  Was fantastic!








Underneath some of the logs were *glowing*!

And then back to J&G's where we did a slide show of 750 hastily assembled photos of our honeymoon (as in choosing only began around 10pm Friday night, and selections were made from thumbnails, so some were forgotten and a few not-so-good ones were included .. oh well...)

This morning we headed north, getting to Newcastle around lunch time.  Jan came over and we had lunch, and then did the slide show, take two. 


So a bit after three we headed for home.

What a very long weekend.. hrmm...

2007. Interesting year. A year of upheaval.

The biggest thing to happen this year was quitting my job of ten years, moving to Canberra and starting a new job. Quitting my old job was tough, and I'd been putting it off for two years since I met Stu as I knew it was going to be difficult. I'd had it in my head that I'd stay for the full ten years and then move. Well last year they announced that there were likely to be mass redundancies, so I thought it would be a good time to leave, as I could also score a large payout. Except the redundancies never came, and in fact a couple of weeks ago they announced the plan to outsource had been scrapped. But I'd decided to leave anyway as I'd been offered a job in Canberra. Anyway, after six weeks at my new job I'm still not entirely sure what I'm meant to be doing. The whole place is very overwhelming and their server infrastructure is huge. In my first week I told someone to ask me again in a month how I was liking it. I should probably extend that for another couple of months.

On a lighter note, living in Canberra is nice. The traffic is infinitely better. Although I'm actually catching the bus to work so that I can read - something I've not done in over ten years. Is letting me actually get some books read, as I don't read at any other time. The main annoying thing with Canberra is major services and shops are only in a few select locations, which are quite spread out. And petrol stations are few and far between.

As far as wedding plans are going.. after being engaged for a full year now, all we've managed to organise is a wedding dress for me (found on eBay in February) and set a date and book a church. Reception, honeymoon and other important details have yet to be organised. Four months is plenty of time.. right..? ;)

I'm writing this in Queensland at our friends Chay and David's place. It's actually the third time we've been to visit them this year, driving up over Easter and then flying up in July. Traditionally we drink a lot, eat a lot and generally be merry, usually in the form of a lot of singing of Sing Star songs. This trip has been no exception, although we did bring a couple of board games to play this time. It'll be nice to spend New Years Eve with them, so long as I can watch fireworks at midnight :)

During our Easter trip we also got to stay with my fifth cousin twice removed Diana, and see lots of places close to Stu's heart.

The other major travel we did this year (other than the every other weekend trips between Canberra and Sydney) was five days on Lord Howe Island. It was as good as I remembered it twenty years ago, but with a lot more cars :) Stu loved it too, and we're sure to be returning to it one day.

In preparation for the move, I culled boxes and boxes of high school and university notes. I gave away and sold lots of toys and other bits and pieces from my childhood. I also freecycled a lounge chair, a table and a desk. My little brother replaced all the taps in my house, a Sydney Water plumber installed a water saving shower head and washers, and a tiler regrouted my shower. I was kicking myself that I didn't get the shower fixed a long time ago, it would have made it sooo much nicer. As it was, my shower was pretty disgusting for most of the six years I was there, until the very last week. Oh well. I still had a tonne of stuff to move though. What I couldn't tetris into Stu's place got put into storage. We have a twenty cubic metre storage unit that is very full. We hope to start looking for our own place after the wedding/honeymoon. Then we'll reevaluate everything we have.

All my fish survived the move. It did take a good half a dozen trips to get them all down though :) My major addition before moving was another white angel fish, this one a boy, to go with my girl angel. She laid eggs a couple of times after he arrived, but while he had successfully bred before and knew what to do, she had been single for so long, that she kept telling him to piss off away from her eggs, and then ate them all herself. Silly fish :) We currently have fourteen tanks with fish in them, and four that don't. Stu sold some of his juvenile Julidochromis transcriptus fish for $7 each. We're going to have to take good care of the other fry we have, as they seem to be little money-spinners :)

At the beginning of the year, I saw comet McNaught, after not thinking that I'd get to. We also saw the total lunar eclipse. And we had two astronomy nights in Spence in Canberra at someone who has a telescope mounted permanently in his backyard.

Our Christmas involved lunch at my parent's place the Sunday before Christmas (actually we were up for Jake's wedding reception on the Saturday and bundled the two). Then it was back to Canberra for Christmas day at Stu's.

Other things I did this year:
* decided to cut down the amount of orange juice I drank per day and lost two kilos
* went on lovely cruise on Lake Burley Griffin as an engagement present from Damien
* went to Cancon
* more poker nights at cia and work, with mixed success (success at work ones, failure at cia ones)
* saw the Queen Mary 2 and QE 2 in Sydney
* went up Sydney Tower with Mum and Stu
* discovered Google Sketchup
* walked across Sydney Harbour Bridge on the main deck, on the weekend of its 75th birthday
* dragged Stu up Black Mountain Tower to take photos
* participated in Earth Hour to save turning the timers on my fish tanks back an hour ;)
* saw the Amazing Human Body exhibition at the show ground
* saw the very last flight of Qantas' very first 707 jet
* saw the Kitty Hawk in Sydney
* read Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows the day (and day after) it came out
* dragged Stu to the Blue Mountains, down the Giant Staircase and up the Scenic Railway
* did a day trip to the snow to go skiing
* babysat Josh and Rachel at Questacon all day
* got the hiccoughs for the first time in a *very* long time
* shut down my eleven year old photo server conspiracy, after moving all the photos to a virtual host
* had a farewell at work that not too many people came to (probably about a quarter of the people that were invited)
* got a new computer
* decided very quickly that Vista sux
* met another blogger (Lil Lioness)
* got the latest Hogwarts Castle Lego set
* got the Millenium Falcon in Lego
* had about five different work end of year parties, but felt left out because I couldn't go to my old work one
* got my own Blackberry, switched to Optus only to find they are just as crap as Vodafone

Things I miss about Sydney (in no particular order):
* my job
* walking with George on Thursday nights
* lunches with Luc/cards in the office
* dinners at Alan and Marylon's
* living right next to a big airport
* my flat
* easy access to petrol stations (especially my regular one and the dude there)
* family and other friends

Things I don't miss about Sydney:
* the traffic
* my bumhead neighbours (we just have bogan neighbours here)
* Freecycle Sydney Central moderators

Have a safe 2008 :) Happy new year!!

So the boy made it back safely today. For which I am very thankful. He sat across the aisle from Ray Martin who was flying down for the election coverage tonight. But he did lose the key to my padlock, which was sad cause I'd had that padlock since I was a kid and it was a bit sentimental. Ended up having to go down to our storage unit to make use of the owner's boltcutters to get it off.

I ordered these off Deals Direct the other day.. cool huh? :)

Long day for me, long night for Stu. Had a bbq for work in the rain today. I suppose it was slightly better than being fried to a crisp in the sun, especially as I'd forgotten to take sunscreen heh.

Afterwards stopped for afternoon tea at the Hyatt, then wandered over to Scotty and Kerry's for pizza and a movie. We watched Blades of Glory. Just about one of the silliest movies I've ever seen. But some silly fun.

And now I'm home.. and Stu is flying all night...

So the boy is flying off to another country tomorrow. A country where they blow people up. Where they arrest people for drug trafficking and if you're "lucky" you only get a life sentance and not the death penalty. That's assuming your plane actually lands in one piece and doesn't run off the end of the runway.

Can you tell I'm a little bit worried about him? :(

So after brekky we headed down to Humpty Mick's for a coffee and to try and decide what to do today. Which was somewhere between wanting to *do* something and wanting to *sit*. Which proved to be frustrating for both of us. We ended up doing more sitting than doing.

Eventually we headed off to the island museum which was very interesting.

They had an internet kiosk there for $2 for twenty minutes which wasn't too bad, but it was very slow, especially for cia mail. We had lunch at the Coral Cafe.

Came back here and did some more nothing. Well Stu did. I went down to Ned's beach to photograph the Sooty Terns which were nesting. Well nesting is exaggerating it a bit. They just lay their eggs on the ground. And chirp agitatedly at you when you come near. Very cool. Took an awful lot of photos of them.

Next we wandered down to the lagoon and dodged some raindrops to go out snorkelling. Completely spectacular. The coral was a little dull in the bit of the lagoon we went to, but we saw plenty of amazing fish.
We stayed out for nearly two hours and only came in when my fingers started to go numb from the cold. I'd like to go out on one of the cruises that go out to the outer reef where the coral is more spectacular.

Then had another go at getting my card-reading cd burner working. It's an Apacer Steno, and is a great idea in principle - a stand-alone cd burner with inbuilt 6-in-1 card reader. Except that it doesn't read two out of the three brands of memory cards I have. Not particularly useful. Maybe that was why it was returned to Ted's and why I ended up with it second-hand. blah. stoopid thing.

So off to dinner - this time at the bowling club for their fish night. We sat with Sue and Keith, who we kept seeing - first on the plane, then outside Thompson's Store, then at dinner last night. So that was quite pleasant.

And so ends another day .. must be about bed time :)

Funny how that whenever corys swim into open water it looks as if they're flying. Don't know what it is about them. Maybe I'm just always used to seeing them at ground level...

My mission for today was to sort out fish stuff. All of it. There were piles. And more piles.

So dragged everything out of the various rooms they'd been scattered in and sorted everything into categories. At which point I ran out of steam :)

Stu was up to travelling, so we went to the Hub for lunch and then to Magnetmart to find some storage containers. We got four smallish containers that held a decent chunk of the stuff, just not the bulkier stuff. Will have to deal with that another day.

Tonight Stu cooked a chicken curry which was a tad warm but not too bad, and we watched Funny Videos and some more Veronica Mars.

I think sometimes I just need to complain loudly enough. After lamenting last week that I'd probably never get to see it, I dragged Stu out of bed at 7 am and we went down to the airport to see the last ever flight of Qantas' first 707. Along with several other plane-spotters, we saw it take off quite noisily for the last time on a very grey and wet Sydney morning. It was faster and noisier than I thought it would be, and within a few seconds it was just a small dot in front of a long dark exhaust trail.

ok so I'm completely jealous of Stu. *I'm* the planespotter in the family, and yet Stu's the one that gets to see the cool stuff.

First we have Qantas' first 707, which is destined to fly once more EVER this Sunday, making the chances of actually seeing it flying next to zero.

Then there's the A380 which I've seen on the ground, but not flying. And not likely to see it flying any time soon, since they're not due to fly to Australia until well after I'm living in Canberra. And won't see it in Airbus livery either.

*I'm* the one that lives right next to an airport, and I still miss out on this stuff. It's totally not fair. Been pissed off/grumpy all afternoon :(

Driving down at sunset now..

Friday night drank lots of beer (five for me - which is a lot, but not an insane amount, over course of evening but somehow it hit me hard and the motion sickness when we went to bed made me chuck .. doh!) and made Stu watch Moulin Rouge! which he enjoyed.

Saturday we wandered into town to where Stu's rellies were staying, and had morning tea there. Very nice place they had..

Then wandered out to Gungahlin to the park so the kids could play and Scotty could do bogan impersonations

Biggest (heaviest) kid - so heavy kept hitting the ground on the way down

Saturday night had leftover mushroom soup (from Friday night) and watched Bring it On.

On Sunday headed out to Yass for a roast dinner with various members of the extended family.

Princess Lily

Kids and Scotty

A rare nice one of the kids

They have chickies! Stu WANTS chickies!!!!

Sunday night had leftover crackers and watched some Star Trek.

Today I telecommuted, and it was good. Made pizzas for dinner, and they were very good.