Yeup.

This only took like ten hours to do.. almost as long as the trip itself!

The cherry blossoms are about to burst.  I thought it would be cool to have another Hanami party this year - who wants to come? :)

Purple bell things

The rest of the weekend (apart from a trip up Mount Taylor) was spent geotagging photos.  Do you have *any idea* how hard it is to accurately geotag photos taken from trains??

So it was a year ago last night that we took off for the UK.  Our first day was a bit of a waste of a day, flying all night, then arriving in the morning and catching a train to Osaka.  Extremely hot, so didn't do much, just had some lunch before checking in, then a rest, then heading out again for dinner and having a fun time in Nanba, Osaka.  I've updated the blog entry with some pictures here.

410 photos.  And all of this was walked - no trains as we didn't bother with the Tube strike that day.

Had leftover lamb roast for dinner tonight (leftovers from Saturday night - had Kat over for dinner).  Been anxious for the better part of today and this evening.  Stoopid stressful work :(  Need to remember to stay calm, otherwise I'll end up with high blood pressure like last time it was this stressful at work :(

Here's some more pics from July.. photos of Neil's fish

I pulled out my camera to document the biggest corys I've ever seen (the photo doesn't show the scale!)

Just for fun, here's some pool freezage we had on July 30 - the best we've had this winter.  Solid enough to hold up the bird seed container easily.

When I came back an hour or so later, it had refrozen!

Had to smash through the ice on the bucket of water - and the crystals forming underneath the surface were amazing!

The drive was quite pretty - all the wattles along the way are out in bloom at the moment.  Unfortunately I was driving on the way up and it was too dark on the way back, so you'll have to take my word for it ;)

I realised I've probably *never* taken a photo on Como station before...!

In the city, an A380 flew overhead.

And then onto the Opera House for the concert.

Heaps of people came dressed up. There were lots of Jedis and Leias and Supermen (and a Superwoman) and wizards.

The Opera House itself is a pretty funky place for photography.

So the concert.  Fantastic!!!  It was really really cool.  Unfortunately we had pretty crappy seats.  Right near the front, which gave us an awesome view of the first violinists and the harp and a few of the cellists, but other than that - nothing :(  Couldn't see any of the brass or woodwind or percussion *at all* :(:(:(  So that was pretty frustrating and disappointing.  Note to self: don't get seats there again.

Shaun Micallef came out between each piece for a bit of light entertainment which was kinda fun.  Didn't get any photos of him unfortunately, even though we had an awesome view.. you know.. being so close and all!  And near the end, Darth Vader and some stormtroopers came onto the stage.  That's the second concert in recent months I've been to with Stormtroopers.  Pretty cool :)

So yeah.  Thoroughly enjoyed it.  It was far too short too - only two hours.. for once I could have sat still for hours just enjoying it heh.

Anyways.

So hopped on a train home, and D&Y came over and we all went out to the Tradies for dinner.

And they played with Yvonne's polaroid

Sunday morning we had a bit of a sleep in.

I took a photo of the "Pigs and Chickens" bathroom tiles for posterity.

We headed out to Miranda Fair next, so Stu could get a nice cup of tea, and to get my birthday present.  Stu got me a birthday cake too :):)

Then went home, packed up all our stuff and headed out to lunch - met up with James and George and Liz and Luc and all the kids and had Sizzler.  Ate too much as always.  In fact I completely skipped dinner last night and didn't even wake up hungry in the middle of the night heh.

Then home to Canberra.  The end.

And did confirm that my mother does indeed read this blog.  *sigh*  hi mum....  now you won't have to ask questions all the time when you talk to me, cause you get it all here?  m,kay?

It took us fifty minutes to make our way along the queue and into the room they'd setup (which was a bigger room than last time).  There was a lot more Lego there this year, looks like a lot of SydLUG people had brought Lego down as well.

They didn't have the Hogwarts Castle this time, but there was a super awesome Space Lego setup (probably my favourite thing of the day) and an amazing western scene.

Last year when I went my camera was exactly one day old.  This year it was exactly one year old.  !!  To the day!  Since changing the focus mode in Japan last year I've been a lot happier with the results out of the camera, and generally this year's photos were better than last year's.

There were lots and lots of town/city scenes and lots of trains..

Bridges..

Towers..

Cool things from movies..

A delorean and train from Back to the Future





Wall-E and Eve




Lots of Star Wars stuff








The Blacktron vs Classic Space diorama

A big minifig


Snoopy!


A cool mountain scene


Parliament House

Another space type scene

But some of the most fun was in the detail people put into the dioramas.  You really need to look closely to see everything that's going on.  So much fun!

Fishing a skeleton out of the water

Geisha and sailors inside a very large building, that had stuff going on on all the floors

Chickens in the western scene

A bicyclist hit by a car

It snowed pretty much the whole day, which meant for super awesome snow all day, but not great visibility, made worse by goggles that kept steaming up and had heaps of blind spots around the edges.  So a little frustrating and it meant I went a lot slower than my normally slow speed.

Heading up the Interceptor Quad

Another shot from the Interceptor Quad

Snowflakes!!

Heading up the very pretty Ridge Quad.  Unfortunately as I was taking these photos, I dropped a glove :(  This was above Excelerator.  I really didn't want to do Excelerator as it's very steep, but alas I had to retrieve it.  Steve and Alan got there first and got it for me, but it was in a non-groomed bit so it was very icy and I stacked while trying to stop with them.  Got a big bruise on my leg to show for it.

The ice on the trees was pretty cool.  And this isn't even a lot - many other trees had heaps more ice.

From Side Saddle looking across to Blue Cow terminal.  I had my other stack of the day down the bottom nearish the lift.

Looking from Blue Cow terminal across to Summit.  Had lunch of a few snacks and just sat down for half an hour to recover from my morning.

More pretty snow on the trees

Looking down to Perisher resort

I don't think I've ever seen Lake Jindabyne so full!

Yesterday I had a play with the GPS track I took of the day.  It was super cool!  I took 17 lift rides (actually that reminds me, I need to create an account so I can look at the MyRide stats - ski passes are now all RFID and you swipe past them as you get on the lift, so you can see all your stats).  I did 15 green runs (although a decent chunk of those were the very easy Pleasant Valley) and 3 blue runs.  Next time I go I'm going to make much more of an effort to go on different runs and lifts all over the resort to make the GPS track look even better :)