You can't organize clutter; you can only get rid of it! - FlyLady

Well not entirely true. You see I have inherited a good combination of clutter genes from the parents. I have inherited my father's hoarding genes, but also my mother's neat-and-tidyness genes. So I collect a lot of crap, but I'm also pretty good at storing it well.

Which presents me with a problem at the moment.

At the moment the house is fairly tidy. I can see all my floors. There's not too much crap floating around on the other horizontal surfaces. Which means I look around and don't feel cluttered. Except I know it's all there - hidden! All my clutter is stored neatly(ish). Which makes it hard to get rid of, because I think well it has a home, so why bother trying to decide what to do with it. And digging into a draw or a cupboard to clear it out just *makes* mess. And I'm presented with the whole attachment-to-inanimate-objects problem that I have.

I also hate hate hate throwing out things that other people might want to use. So at the moment I'm piling stuff I don't want up in a corner, and whenever I can think of who might want it, I give it away. And things I can't think of someone to give it to, I'm either donating to the parents' church's opp-shop, or saving for a council cleanup so I can put it out on the street and whoever wants it can take it :) Maybe I should put a page up on my blog with stuff I want to give away, and the first person to ask for it can have it. Or join FreeCycle or something....

Drove the longest drive of my life today. Well I've been on drives of equivalent length before, but always as a passenger or co-driver, never by myself. ~970km in 12.5 hours, including a couple of brief stops.

Gosh it was a long day. Started at 8am Brisbane time, which was actually 9am real time (doh). Two and a half tanks of petrol (~$75 worth I guess).

The first half was pretty disgusting. Lots of roadworks, lots of rain (bucketloads), lots of really sllooowwwwww people. Single lane road most of the way with overtaking lanes few and far between. And the road clogged with butthead drivers who would drive 10-30km/hr under the speed limit when you couldn't pass them, but then would speed up to the speed limit at the overtaking lanes so you couldn't get past. It was infurating. One beemer driver was sitting at 90 in a 100 zone, until the overtaking lane where he sped up to 110 so I couldn't get past. Bastard.

After Taree the road was mostly dual carriageway and a lot less traffic, plus the sun was going down, so it was positively pleasant driving conditions.

I also foiled my body's post-lunch slump by only feeding it a salad for lunch. Normally I collapse after the sugar high runs out, but without any sugar there was no such high/low. So it was all good. Meant I didn't really get tired til near the end of the trip.

Fish and plants mostly survived. Had a few fish losses and the tetra tank is very sad, as is the baby krib tank. Might get up early and do some emergency maintenance. But for now it's time to collapse into bed.

The last couple of days have been a bit of a blur.

Yesterday after breakfast Stu said he felt like a kranski. Well that was enough to make me want one too :) We had to get some groceries anyway, so we went to Ascot Provisions for lunch. Their kranskis aren't on the lunch menu, but I asked for one anyway, and got it along with a plate full of vegetables - roasted capsicum stuffed with other vegetables. Was very yummy. And my weeks worth of vegetables right there :)

An afternoon spent pottering and watching Firefly and/or Star Trek. Stu put a coat of varnish on the fish tank stand.

Then to Chay and David's for an utterly delicious (as always) roast chicken and vegetables, followed by music trivia (which I mostly sucked at, but did a lot better in the second round), followed by Sing Star 80s (which I had a lot more fun with than the newer music versions where I don't know half the songs), followed by David and I belting out Queen karaoke songs as only drunk people can :) Got to bed very very late.

Also got up very very late. Late enough for me to feel a bit grumpy about half the day being "wasted" (I tend to feel cheated if I lose daylight hours to sleep :) ). We were going to go for a swim, but decided against it. Instead just watched Star Trek and Firefly for most of the day, did my longstitch, while Stu tidied and varnished.

And now it's now. :)

So after getting back to the motel yesterday, we went and picked up Arian for a grand tour of Armidale. Swung by the uni and walked around all the various buildings that they lived/studied/worked in over the years. Then drove around town seeing various places people had lived. It was pretty darned hot, so we decided to go for a swim, at a place we dubbed Swan Cove. It was lovely, although Stu apparently picked up a bug from the water and was sick for the next 24 hours :(

So after the swim we dropped Arian off, I washed my hair of swan poo, and we watched Mars Attacks while waiting for the hordes to return. Which they eventually did. We got chinese and lots of wine for dinner. Was a pleasant, if somewhat rowdy at times, evening. Except of course for Stu being sick, which he didn't find pleasant at all :( Counted in the new year with Mr Wilkins, and watched the Sydney fireworks (best fireworks in the world :) ). Eventually the hordes left and we crashed out.

This morning Stu was even sicker, which really wasn't much fun for him. Although he did feel up to travelling, so we dropped by Arian's for a cup of tea before making a dash for Brissy. Got here about 5:30, NSW time. Got myself all confused about what the time actually is. But for the purposes of this week, I don't think it's going to matter :)

Sadly, many of Stu's fish didn't survive the week. Papa guppy, the corys and the rasboras except one were all decomposing and the tanks smelt awful. Was really really sad. We think it was the heat. The water was over 31C. They're down to 28C now. On a lighter note, his mama guppy had her second lot of babies, and two of them were still alive - they're so *tiny*! And the nine guppy babies I brought from work not only survived a week in a plastic bag, but survived two days in the car travelling. And next to the other babies they are *huge* :) We're currently slowly mixing the water, as the pH was a full point different, and just chucking them in would have killed them.

So then tonight we went and got an Al Funghi pizza from Pizza Capers, and watched Encounter at Farpoint on DVD. And watched the lights turn green twice :)

Now, the computer clock says 10pm. I guess that's 11pm in real time. No wonder I'm so tired..! :)

I'd done this the two other New Years I've had this blog, but last New Years I was away from home and my computer, and it was too hard. But I did spend quite a bit of time reading through my blog and picking out highlights, and it seems a shame to let all that effort go to waste. That and I've spent some time today reading the icq log with Stu from June last year - that momentous June where I fell in love with him. It was certainly a roller coaster year.

I'm going to back-date this, so probably only people that get this via a news feed will see it (Stu and Dave I guess heh).

Some highlights:

* By far the biggest highlight was meeting Stu. I knew very early on that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with him
* Dave & Yvonne engaged (well technically they got engaged in 2004)
* Jumped out of a perfectly good aeroplane (with parachute attached). It was great, but too expensive to do regularly. That and the risk of dying and leaving Stu is perhaps a little high
* Had a great night in January where I had about 15 people over to watch a "slide night" on a data projector of my USA photos
* Installed apache on my photo server conspiracy so I could put in referer rules and stop people bandwidth-stealing my pics
* Went rock climbing with Campbell
* Saw Peter Jackson in person talking about the Lord of the Rings and King Kong
* Went snorkling a couple of times with Campbell
* Went to quite a few BookCrossing meetups, mostly to see Yvonne and me brother
* Lost many many hours of my life staring at the world from space with Google Maps and Google Earth
* Had a second lot of krib babies in May (six of which are still alive - would have been more if I'd taken better care of them)
* Watched all six star wars movies in order in one night. Probably a once in a lifetime but a must for any Star Wars geeks
* Got a blackberry and used it primarily for communicating with Stu
* Read Harry Potter 6 in a day
* Went live with a new website/cms at work after half a year of work
* Lots of trips to Queensland, one to Noosa, one to Yass to meet Stu's family
* Took up guppy breeding
* Saw Fiddler on the Roof and Topol live
* Took ~1500 photos of the renovation process of Luc's place

Some lowlights:
* Grandma Coates died in January, which was expected but still really sad
* Wasn't invited to George's birthday, came very close to never seeing her or her family again
* Expensive fire-safetyifying of the building
* Three days sick off work from two different flus, the most sick I've been since 1999
* Had a server get compromised from a week-old exploit in Backup Exec. Found within half an hour and rebuilt it that night
* Regular video nights pretty much stopped, as Striker was working over the weekends

In the fish tank department, got a brand-new-second-hand tank off a neighbour, and all its fish. Lost the biggest (4cm) tetra (which was 2 1/2 years old - old for a neon tetra!), a black angel, and the parent kribs. Took a tank to work for the krib babies and added guppys to it later. Somehow got ich in the big tank.

Was commenting to Stu today on what a mad year the past year has been. Certainly meeting him has been one of the highlights of my entire life.

I was going to elaborate but I couldn't be stuffed. Going to bed instead.

<snip>

Had a decent shopping day today. Went to one shopping centre at lunchtime and got some new bras (yayyyyy - I *loathe* buying bras, haven't done it in years, and the situation was getting desperate). Also found a couple of presents for people (which I won't mention, since some of them read this :) ). Then this afternoon went shopping again. Found some sandally-thongy type things in Payless Shoes - in the kids section :) Then did some grocery shopping, but also picked up another couple of presents. So making progress on the Christmas present situation, but still a long way to go.

I saw Harry Potter and James Bond Scene It today. Drooled over the Harry one, although the people I could play it with would be fairly limited I imagine :) Maybe Kirk and Ric. The James Bond one might be fun for dad (Dave are you interested? heh :) )

And if anyone is wondering what they could get me, some ideas include the new Harry Potter lego, Butterscotch Schnapps and/or Baileys, double bed sheets (summer, preferably blue or white).. :)

Day at work upgrading domino from 6.54 to 7. Seemed to go mostly ok except for the fatal errors which weren't entirely fatal :)

Then frustrated with people for not giving me ideas for Christmas presents, since I am totally crap at thinking up Christmas presents and if people don't give me ideas they might end up with crap.

Then a night out with much fizzling and come home still fizzling away quite happily.

Can I go home now? (very fizzly - better not lie down just yet - horizontal would be bad for the brain...)

Honestly there was... but really it's all just crap