It started off ok but got worse as the day went on.  All day fighting with a crappy crappy cobbled together piece of software, getting home and fighting with robocopy and people hassling me about crap equals a grumpy Kazza.

On a lighter note, I did start collecting photos for the RiotACT's bird week, had a yummy dinner of refried leftover pork and potatoes and watched some Monty Python while cycling.

Anyways.

So the end of the break and I actually had a really relaxing day.  Was sort of at peace, so to speak.  Got my desk mostly cleared.  Paid some bills.  Sorted out some finance stuff.  Sorted some receipts.  Played Loops of Zen.  Played Canasta.  Did some kirigami.  Went through some newspapers.  Edged some of the front lawn.  Played with my magnets and made a buckyball.  Played with HDR, Camera+, and Instagram on my iPhone.  Cooked a nice red curry for dinner.  Watched some Star Trek with the sweetie.  Kept the kitchen cleaned up.  Did some washing.  Downloaded photos.

Really good productive day, with lots of fun as well.

I got this 7x7 cube for Christmas.  I haven't been game to muck it up yet!

Bucky ball!

I'm really liking making my own red curries at the moment.

This one has:

A little bit of leftover pork, garlic mince and half an onion fried in peanut oil in a wok

Mushrooms and zucchini added next

Finally some red capsicum and pak choy

Add in three teaspoons of red curry paste and a tin of light coconut cream

Nomm!   (I also added a small handful of cashews on top).  The sweetie went back for seconds :)

So not a bad year all up :)

Let's see.  Where to begin.

The year started with me away from the sweetie - I was visiting old Sydney friends.  First year since we met that we weren't together on New Years, which was a bit sad.

Did a fair bit of other travelling during the year.  

The big trip of course was to Japan and the UK in September.  It wasn't the best holiday I've ever been on.  Japan was 34C for five days in a row, and I didn't have shorts.  And the UK was grey and/or raining for a good chunk of the time we were there, plus we missed out on going to Legoland which was pretty devastating for me.  But on the plus side, everything "worked" in terms of bookings.  We didn't get robbed.  We didn't crash the car.  We didn't miss any planes or trains.  We did see heaps of cool stuff.  So really I can't complain too much heh.

Had quite a few smaller trips as well.  Spent a couple of days in January at the coast with all of Stu's family.  Would have been better if I'd brought stuff to entertain myself with heh.  Went to Mogo Zoo then.  There was a quick trip to Sydney for my parents' 40th wedding anniversary.  Went down the coast to DaveC's house three times in March, August over my birthday and October where we had a great whale sighting.  Went to Melbourne over the Easter weekend to see Cats with Nat&Andrew.  That was a cool weekend, we'd love to go back and do more Melbourney things.  In July we went to Queensland for a long weekend to visit Chay and David.  Decided that July/August is definitely the time to go to Brisbane, so will probably do that again this year.  And another quick visit to Sydney on Boxing Day. 

Had a very busy year at work.  Rolled out new proxies at the beginning of the year, but they were fraught with problems from the start and it was very stressful.  After several patches during the year, they finally settled down, only to have the upstream proxies start playing up.  Blah!   

Semi work-related were a ball in March where I managed to squeeze into a ten year old dress, but only just barely!   I also made a slightly drunken bet that I'd wear a dress to a Melbourne Cup lunch if all the boys wore suits.  Our director unfortunately decided to take it seriously and made all the boys wear suits.  Reluctantly I had to go buy a dress and wear it.  We also ran a trivia night that I think went really well.  And attended work drinks pretty much every week I was in the country ;)

One of the big projects at work took several months and was so stressful I'm sure it led to a high blood pressure reading in July.  I've been working on relaxing at work (and at home) and subsequent readings have been a lot more normal.

Otherwise healthwise I had a great year - just a cold early in the year but nothing else.

Spent a lot of time with Nat and Andrew during the year.  Those guys are always so much fun to be around, we really enjoy their company.  Also did a few Singstar nights with Windy and DaveO and saw Damien and Amanda a few times as well.  JamesC came to visit a few times, and the whole family stayed with us a couple of weeks ago.  The Hokins clan came to visit, as did the parents a couple of times and the little brother a few times.  We've spent a lot more time with DaveC in the second half of this year.  Seems I get on with him a whole lot better now that we're not working together heh.  

Had another heat wave early in the year which meant us putting quite a bit of ice into the four foot tank to try and keep the temperature down.  Seemed to work and we didn't lose any fish from it.  I'd moved the danios downstairs so they wouldn't overheat, and found a couple of months later some baby danios that had been surviving quite happily unattented.  When I later moved the danios back upstairs, there were more babies in the downstairs tank.  Win!  Stu got a colony of duboisis for the four foot, which are great fun, and will follow you around when you go to look at them in hopes that you'll feed them!  Stu's also gotten back into killifish and has been diligent at looking after his fish again.  We're back up to fourteen habitated fish tanks now!

On the opposite end of the weather spectrum, we had a very cold winter.  This year the pool froze over probably a dozen times (it only froze over twice last year).  One of the days the ice was a full 3mm thick in places!  We even had snow in October.  Go figure!

On the Lego front, a whole stack of Toy Story Lego was released so had to get all of that.  And six new Harry Potter sets as well, although really only one of those is "new".  There's a few other cool sets I want to get too.  Went to BrickExpo in August which was very cool, and made me wonder if I should put anything in one of these years.

Other toys included an iPhone for me, a Blackberry for Stu, a video camera for Stu, a Canon 500D for me and a PS3.  

So I've had the 500D for four and a bit months and have already taken 15000 photos on it!  The majority of those in the UK of course ;)  I still haven't sorted my UK photos *at all*.  I did however manage to sort enough of our Japan 2009 and Europe 2008 photos to get the highlights into the blog entries.  One of my next projects will be making photo books of those trips.  I did make a photo book of our wedding as a Christmas present for parents.  Having seen the finished result (which I was stoked with) there's a few little changes I want to make and need to fix up some of the images before we get our copy printed.

Around the house, we bought a whole stack of bookshelves for the downstairs room and set those up.  So that room is quite well setup now.  The garden has gone slightly feral though, especially with all the rain we've had recently.

Shows seen this year:

Movies seen this year:

Books read this year:

And a few other bits and pieces:

Phewf.  Yup, busy year :)  I'm actually amazed I got this thing written *before* the end of the year - that never happens!! :)

Six hours to go.  Have a great 2011 peoples!  Happy New Year!!

I used Gorillacam for the iPhone to do a timelapse series of photos every five seconds (871 photos total!).  The only problem was every few minutes the phone would go to "sleep" and it would stop taking photos.  Had to get up and unlock it just so it would continue.  Quite annoying really.

These were some shots I took of the new lights in the Canberra Centre when I first got my camera.  Again, still in auto mode, so focus was very hard to control (it kept focussing on odd places).

I really like this picture of tapes.  Looks like a city scape canyon..

And some birds flying over Scrivener Dam

Have had a good new years eve so far.  Original thoughts of a Singstar night fell through, so have invited some peoples over for a small party.  Nothing quite like that for motivating you to clean the house!

I went by myself but saw Neil driving up as I was walking to the queue (which was half way up the street) so we went in together (and had a beer afterwards).

My new camera was less than a day old at this point so it was a good chance to try it out.  I didn't have a great deal of success.  On automatic mode, the camera focuses in odd places (usually the foreground) and not the subject of the picture.  So didn't get great pictures (that didn't stop me taking hundreds anyway!).  Also discovered that you can take a heap of photos with the flash in quick succession, but after a certain point it takes *ages* to charge up the flash again.

And it was epic crowded!!  Stu would have hated it.  My patience was tested.  Little kids don't understand that their fat heads get in the way of people trying to take photos.

There was lots of "hey I've got that set!!".  Maybe I should do a table next year with all the Harry Potter or Toy Story Lego (there was lots of Toy Story Lego this year) or all the Classic Space Lego sets. 

The highlight for me was a custom Hogwarts Castle.  The owner of that castle asked me about photographing Lego (cause it can be tricky with flash reflection) so showed him a shot I took and he was impressed.  Someone also asked him about insuring Lego, to which I contributed that it's actually really hard - I asked once!

I started this post like so:

However when I went to compare one of the pics, I realised I never actually posted photos of the flooding on December 9!!  What a fail!!

So.  December 9.  Googong Dam was testing out its new spillway in stylish fashion.  Half of Queanbeyan was under water.  The Molonglo was filling Lake Burley Griffin to overflowing.  They opened four of the gates on Scrivener Dam.  Tonnes and tonnes of dead trees filled the lake and also went over the dam.

It was a pretty epic day.  DC and I and CB 1&2 went down at lunch time to try and get a closer look, but they'd blocked off all the roads to the dam in anticipation of opening all five gates.  Turned out they didn't, which was good, cause I'd have been mad if they had and I couldn't get photos ;)  We all went back after work when they'd opened the roads again (along with most of the rest of Canberra heh).

So here's some pics of Scrivener Dam and the Molonglo on December 9.

Under the Tuggeranong Parkway

Parts of the bike path were under water!

Look how thick the wall of water is!

It was really stinky down here.  The Queanbeyan sewage treatment works had been inundated, and partially treated sewage was flowing through the lake and over the dam.

Look how high the water got!  There's a pic later on showing lower water levels for comparison.

Half of Canberra came to have a look

There are trees in the middle of all that that are completely submerged

So many dead trees (and some live ones) were washed over

The dam with three gates open

So much water!

More trees

And some night shots just for fun

So skip ahead to December 23.

The dam was still very full - water was lapping over the edge!

See that small sign at the base of the nearest vertical bit?  That's where water was up to on December 9 (see pic above)

Even this level looks pretty high.  Will have to go back at the end of February..

Also went to the Dumpling Inn for dinner tonight.  We've been to both our favourite restaurants in the same week!

But in the end I did go out and found somewhere with a clear view of the moon.  

It was pretty cool.

Maybe I should get that L series lens.. although the 24-105 would have this picture a little smaller, but clearer.  Unless I got a super zoom 300mm.. that would give me a much better zoom hehe.