Work. Meh.
Not helped by being quite depressed about sending my boy home last night.

Tonight while Stu was playing removalist for Aurelius, I kept myself busy catching up on blogs, doing the weekend's washing up, and giggling over entries on this funny page Yvonne sent me. The label in French on the laptop bag is pretty funny. This self-referential story is kinda cool, and I giggled all the way through this experiment with USPS.

And the damned llama song has been in my head all weekend. Damned flipping!! arghh!!

Here's a llama, there's a llama,
And another little llama.
Fuzzy llama, funny llama,
Llama llama DUCK!

Llama llama, cheesecake llama,
Tablet brick, potato llama,
Llama llama, mushroom llama,
Llama llama DUCK!

I was once a treehouse, I lived in a cake,
But I never saw the way the orange slayed the rake.
I was only three years dead, but it told a tale,
And now listen, little child, to the safety rail.

Did you ever see a llama,
Kiss a llama on the llama?
Llama's llama tastes of llama,
Llama llama DUCK!

Half a llama, twice a llama,
Not a llama, farmer, llama,
Llama in a car, alarm a
Llama, Llama DUCK!

Is that how it's told now, Is it all so old?
Is it made of lemon juice? Doorknob ankle cold.
Now my song is getting thin, I've run out of luck.
Time for me to retire now, and become a DUCK!

Another lovely day today. Took Stu to church with me, and as predicted, the first thing people asked was "where do you live" and "what do you do". Honestly, can't people think of more original questions than that?? Oh sure they're just being friendly and all that (even if a little in your face as in the case of Mike), but it gets old really quickly.

Came home and had some lunch and a generally relaxing afternoon, before wandering out to a luggage store to look for backpacks, and then I took Stu to work to show him my office and our servers. Wandered back home again and just hung out some more while I did a small lamb roast (which turned out quite well for a first time effort).

And then it was time to take Stu to the airport. Feeling quite flat now. My house feels quite empty without him :( Dreading the thought of going back to work tomorrow. Don't have the energy or inclination to clean up after dinner, the cockroaches can have a feast if they want :/

<puts the llama song on while getting ready for bed> (had that damned song in my head all weekend.. thanks arian .. not .. ;P )

So. Friday. What happened today? Nothing of any particular note, except my boy is here!!!! Somehow blogging feels so redundant at the moment.. funny that.. Sleepie time now methinks, don't expect to see much of me this weekend heh

So I turned 100000 today. Bit of a milestone from 11111.

Arian sent me the *best* present - 80 pictures of Stu, only a few of which I'd seen before. That was last night. Went to bed in a ridiculously happy mood. Woke with a similarly inflated mood (although subdued a little by an alarm waking me up in the middle of a brilliant dream about Stu).

The day was just gorgeous and my happy mood carried me through the entire day.

Ate far too much. A roast pork with crackling and apple sauce for lunch with the parents and Dave & Yvonne, followed by roast chicken at Alan & Marylons. Two birthday cakes, mmmmm. The big lunch meant all the wine I drank at dinner didn't really go to my head too much, but feeling suitably relaxed and happy anyway.

Even got some quality time in with my boy this weekend which made me very happy.. and all the pictures were really icing on the cake (both of them ;) )

I had a great long list of things I wanted to do this weekend.

But I bludged in front of the computer most of the day (it wasn't my fault, Stu and Arian were online!)

I did manage to wash some sheets and towels.

And top up fish tank five.

And wash my hair.

But I still need to do a thorough gravel vacuum in tank 5, even if I have to filter the water and put it back in again. Not sure when though, tomorrow is going to be busy.

Last time Jupiter was this close to the moon I was kicking myself for not taking a picture of it. So when I saw it again on Wednesday night I took a couple of snaps of it. 1/200th second, f2.8, handheld out the front of George's place.

I don't do a whole lot of thinking. I try and avoid thinking as a general rule. Some would see this as strange I guess. My mind is always full of *noise*, often from the tv, or reading blogs, or chatting. I don't stop. This could also be why it takes me at least half an hour to get to sleep, because it's just so noisy in my head. And not with anything useful, just clutter.

The only time I do any sort of thinking is usually when I'm driving. It's the place where I get the least mental input and can actually ponder over things, or more usually stress about stuff. It's where I usually get great ideas for blogging, and I sit there and think about how I should word it. The problem is, you can't blog legally in the car, and by the time I've gotten home, had dinner, chatted, watched tv, read emails, read blogs, it's far too late and I have no energy to write. Although strangely, this entry was going to be a quick entry saying how I didn't feel like articulating all of this, and yet here it is.. go figure. Must be Friday. Fridays rock.

On an unrelated tangent, Stu gave me one of his treble recorders to play with, and I've found O For a Thousand Tongues works quite well on it (the little descant recorder goes into "screech" notes making it quite difficult to play). Sadly I found only three other hymns that I know in the hymn book that don't go down too low to play on it (it only goes down to F, and most stuff goes down lower than that, so I'd have to rearrange the octaves - far too complicated!

I have a busy weekend ahead, and hoping to get more than a ten minute stretch of time to talk to my boy.

So here I am in sunny Brisbane. Two glorious days in a row of wearing just t-shirts, and wondering why on earth I brought my warm winter jacket.

It's been a busy weekend, over far too quickly. Really not looking forward to going home tomorrow :(

So yesterday began at five am, after about four hours of sleep. Luc very kindly picked me up and dropped me off at the airport, where I secured a window seat on the left side of the plane. Reminded myself again never to book such an early flight - the sun hadn't even risen when we took off, making it too dark for any decent photos. But I did get a pretty cool movie of the takeoff. Even though much of the scenery was quite boring (lots of gentle hills and farmland), at least being on the left side of the plane meant I could see it all. On the right hand side all you could see was the glaring sun and nothing else. I also managed to get a row of three seats to myself which wasn't bad.

Stu picked me up from the airport, and we went back to his place and caught up for a while. It was pretty damned good to see him again, I'll tell you that. And funny to see all the places that I'd only seen on his webcam when I had a virtual tour of the flat with it. Late morning we headed into Fortitude Valley ("The Valley") for a late breakfast, and then wandered through the Brunswick St markets and around The Valley and New Farm for a tour of places-that-mean-things-to-Stu. We did a fair bit of walking, which helped burn off the big breakfast!

In the afternoon we vegged out in front of a dvd (Spirited Away) before heading to Chay and David's for dinner. Dinner was roast pork (I wondered if someone had been reading my blog recently heh) and afterwards we played SingStar on the playstation where Chay and David beat Stu and I rather soundly. 11 points to 3 on two different versions. Oops :)

This morning we mostly just vegged out. I played a bit of recorder and Stu read the paper. Then we went out for lunch, and ate too much again :) Followed by hunting around pet stores to look at fish. Then it was back here for a bit of an afternoon siesta and are now just waiting for Aurelius to arrive for dinner.

At least my flight home tomorrow is at a much more civilised hour, and hopefully should provide some better photo opportunities. But really don't want to go. *sigh*

A very sad day here. I had to euthanase one of my black angels :(:(
Since the weekend she'd been totally flipped out, swimming at odd angles and bashing into the glass, and her fins were quite damaged, possibly from the krib biting her whenever she got anywhere near him on the bottom of the tank. When I came home tonight she was face down in the gravel and looking pitiful. I couldn't bear to see her suffer, so put her in a small amount of water in the freezer.

She was two and a half years old.

Sorry. Rant over.
Back to the cricket. Or not apparently, at least not at 7:30pm.

Oh, where was I?
Oh yes, the weekend.

Friday night: Drambuie and Vodka/vanilla coke. Chatting to Arian and Aurelius.

Saturday: Working bee at Luc's place. Many hands, although not so light work :) Evening chatting with Stu and Arian.

Sunday: Church, UnderCoverWear party, dinner at Alan and Marylon's.

And then the weekend is over. Blink. I must have missed it somewhere there. And I still haven't done the Friday Qs. Talk about a slacker!

As Karla said recently, Dave is my ranting hero. Unfortunately I'm not nearly so eloquent as he is, so this is nothing like as good as any of his rants.

I've just had quite a good weekend, but my server patching has been put off accordingly and I've only just sat down to have a go at it.

And I'm completely pissed. Well I'm slightly drunk too, but I'm completely *pissed off* at Microsoft and it's *CRAP* new windows update software.

IT DOESN'T WORK!!!!!

On one of my servers, the new windows update wouldn't even install.

On three of my other servers (yes, THREE), the windows update has hung in the middle of installing a particular patch it's just downloaded. Now if it were just one server, then perhaps I could write it off as a glitch. But THREE??!?!?!?

There is something seriously wrong with windows update that I haven't been told about and I am *NOT HAPPY JAN*

Sad really, cause I've had such a good weekend otherwise...