The new year started for us in the Bermuda Triangle! It was 9am Caribbean time, 12am AEDT time. Stu was in bed and I was eating breakfast. And I watched the Sydney fireworks. Live. On an ocean liner. In the middle of the North Atlantic. I love technology :) We actually managed to stay awake til midnight ship time and heard them sound the horn to mark midnight.

So our overseas trip of the year was just the tail end of our North Atlantic crossing and Caribbean cruise. Had four days in New York which is not nearly enough time. Came home via Singapore on the longest commercial flight you can take (for now) - 18 hours!. Early in February I went up to Sydney to visit Mum for a post-Christmas catchup. Went and saw a Lego show, took the River Cat to Parramatta and caught up with Pam, and later with Daniel and Fi. Didn't get to see the Cartans on the Sunday morning which was a shame because Doug Cartan died later in the year. Visited Luc and Lizzi for Ryan's penultimate donut photo and saw Cordeaux Dam on the way home. We went down to see Kit and Pete several times - in March to see their house and go to their engagement party, in July for a visit and to do some wedding planning and go to the zoo, in November to do some wedding planning and meet and ride Kit's new horse Jet, and in December for their wedding. Went and visited David in Junee in June. In August I went up to Sydney for Diana and Graham's funeral, and Chrissie and I geeked out at standing in the spot we met thirty years and a couple of weeks earlier. Came home via Dapto that trip to meet up with Kit who wanted to look at a horse (not Jet), and had a fun drive up Macquarie Pass. In November we went to Melbourne for the weekend to see Harry Potter and the Cursed Child with Hannah and Rita.

Work was pretty decent this year. My life is four things: source, dest, port, protocol. Simple. Except way too many people don't understand basic client-server communication which is pretty frustrating. Whenever I had the time I would clean things. Our section disbanded (or was announced it would be disbanded) around February 14 - exactly one and a half years after I started in that section. I went back to comms but kept sitting in the same place for a while longer until they did a bit of a floor reshuffle. Fortunately I was able to get a seat away from the corridor and things stayed pretty stable which is essential for my mental health. Socially there was a big event at the beginning of the year which included an Escape Room, and dinner at the War Memorial, Laser Tag, and I ran a trivia night for it (using mostly recycled questions). We won a trivia night in April which meant we ran one in September. Had a whiskey night in June and a ball in October. Our drinking buddies dropped like flies though - Lachie, then Doc, then Hannah. Very sad times. Ran our annual Christmas party at the lake again, but it was very smokey and numbers were down - only about 40 this year!

On Valentines Day I had my appendix out! My first ever general anesthetic and first ever hospital stay. Then in April Annie had hers out too - didn't know these things were contagious ;) After surviving the plague ship (don't travel in northern hemisphere winters with old people - everyone gets sick) and not even getting sick when Stu did, I had a very small cold in February, but then survived all winter without getting sick again, only to get one in September then another one in December. The one in December was the worst and I was coughing for a couple of weeks, including being sick at Kit's wedding. Insomnia was a lot better this year but still got bouts of it.

Saw a bit of my family. Saw Mum in Sydney in February. David and Kat came to stay in April. Took them out for a bbq at the new van. Mum came to visit in June and we went down to Junee to visit David. Later blacklisted Kat from ever coming here again - I can't stand the way she treats David and there's no way I could be civil to her if I saw her ever again. David came to visit in October and we took him out for his birthday and then on a tram because he was going to interview for a job driving them. David got the job, and moved in with us in November (had to clean out space in the bedroom, bathroom, pantry and study). Mum came down at Christmas for a couple of days. We saw a little bit of Stu's family too. The other Stu came over for dinner in January. Kerry and the kids came to see the balloons in March and dropped in to visit. Dropped in to see Annie and the kids in April and save Daisy's life (emergency cash supply). Scott and Kerry and the kids dropped in briefly in October. Saw Noah on his 18th birthday. Stu and Annie and the family came over for Christmas lunch. I saw a bit of Chrissie during the year. Went over for a couple of low key dinners in January (hot cross bun ice cream!) and December, saw her the night her aunty and uncle were murdered and we just tried to process, had a few lunches out and about, and a nice BBQ on Anzac Day which also included her Dad, siblings and their partners. Saw quite a lot of EffanC and the N-gang which was great, including a couple of dinners at R&F's, various visits back and forth and dinners out at Pot Belly and Malaysian Chapter with EffanC including an election night event and New Years. We're still missing Kit and Pete and the chickens although did see them a few times during the year. Other than the four times we went down to the coast, they also came to stay for Tarun's wedding in March. Went wedding dress shopping with Kit then had dinner at Old Canberra Inn for Pete and Leisa's birthdays. They came back again in April to see Kit's brother before he went home to Germany. Kit came up again in May for Katie's sister's funeral and her friend Sophie's wedding. I organised Kit's Hen's at the end of November - Laser Tag and dinner at George Harcourt with drinks after at Moby's. And I ended up being a bridesmaid at their wedding after it became too difficult for Audrey. We farewelled Stewie and Cath (again) in February. Fiona came to stay the weekend after I got my appendix out, but was pretty stressed about it because everyone was sick and I couldn't sleep in the spare bed. Jenn came over a week later for a Turkish feast, and we caught up for drinks with her in October. Went to see Doc's new place with a big group of work peoples which was lovely. Had a couple of dinners with Hannah, at Dumpling Inn and Pizza Artigiana so Stu could get to know her before we went away together. Had our annual hanami part with Nat and Andrew, although I was sick the original weekend and the flowers were mostly all gone by the time they did get to come over. And went to @CLBradley's 60th at Ciscos.

Spent a bit of time at our social club. There was a Finnish night in March, with a wallaroo joey. Not to eat - that's Australian, not Finnish ;) In April we bought a well-established van off another member to give us some space to move (our old van was just barely big enough to sleep in, and even then not really). Sold the old one for a lot less that we paid for it because it had a leak that we never fixed and wasn't in great condition. Spent a bit of time cleaning and decluttering the new one, but there's still a long way to go. Had Chris and Ian's anniversary there, it's been a shame that I've had to miss two of them over the years. We did Christmas in July again for a huge crowd. Had a couple of nights there in August, including the AGM on Stu's birthday (doh!), and another night in September. September was a Chilean night, which was great, but some people really need to learn to better estimate catering. I mean a bit of overcatering is fine, you don't want to run out, but you also don't want an entire fridge full of leftover food - both cooked and uncooked! Went for Oktoberfest in October. We missed the Christmas party because we were down the coast at Kit and Pete's wedding. We were going to go out at New Years, but I was too nervous about the weather and potential for fires.

Pretty quiet fish year. I discovered my angel is a girl - she laid a couple of batches of eggs! At the end of the year I had four active tanks. The angel tank, with the angel, a cory, and a sucking catfish. The two foot, with three black neon tetras and a sucking catfish. Chrissie's little tank, with two clown loaches and a sucking catfish. And the downstairs two foot, with one large danio. Stu has his four foot which is always covered in algae because the lights are too good and there's not enough algae eaters, a tiny tank on his desk with a white cloud, and a little tank downstairs with a white cloud. There's also four empty tanks that were for killifish but they all died. I want to restock my tanks, but needed to prove I can take care of them first (ie, making sure at least one of them gets a water change every weekend, so no more than four weeks between water changes for each tank).

Nothing much on the Lego front either. I'm still working on sorting out Vic's Lego. It's extremelly slow going. It takes a good chunk of the weekend to do pick parts for six sets, so if there's anything on on a weekend nothing would happen. Really need to get back into it, as I really want my tubs and floor space back.

Not so many jigsaws this year either. I feel like there's too many other important things to do to "waste time" doing jigsaws :( Similarly with any of my other hobbies.

The weather was *hot* when we got back from overseas in January. We had the cooler running for three weeks straight. There were a lot of thunderstorms at the beginning of the year too. Had a duststorm in February. Then drought with a dry winter and super dry November and December, and the shroud of bushfire smoke for most of December.

Around the house.. I took a few days off at Easter to have a ten day break, and we Marie Kondo'd the house - well, clothes, linen cupboard, under the house a bit, some of the garage, and the pantry. David came during that break and replaced the light in the fan light, and also the kitchen lights, with LEDs. Had the sewer pipes eeled in May and he cleared a blockage at the same spot twelve metres in as last time. For Christmas I treated us to new towels - the first time in my life I've ever had matching bathroom linen - loving it!

Considering it feels like we don't eat out all that often, it seems like we ate out a lot. I tried Master Hin Dumplings at the mall. Very average dumplings. I'm surprised they're actually still there. Went to Chong Co on Australia Day and had their delivery a couple of times. Went to Gus's with the sweetie in February. Malaysian Chapter and Pot Belly a couple of times with EffanC, and for a work farewell lunch. Indian Pantry with Cath. Had Pho Hub with Neil. A couple of work lunches at Chompy's. Had Yat Bun Tong at least once with the sweetie. Possibly only made it to Dumpling Inn once this year - to meet up with Hannah so she and Stu could meet and we could discuss Harry Potter. The sweetie took me out to Temporada on our anniversary which was expensive but excellent. A group of us went to Rashays for their $5 lunches in May. We haven't been back since. Tried Tasting China and Akiba which were both pretty good. Went to Chez Kimchi a few times. They're ok but their menu is just a mess. Had Disappointing Sushi (aka Hero Sushi in Canberra Centre) a couple of times. It always meets expectations - it's always disappointing. We had Pizza Artigiana a couple of times. The first in July to meet Hannah's flatmate Rita who we were going to see Harry Potter with, and again with Stu in August. Tried lunch at 54 Benjamin a couple of times. Nice, but a bit expensive to do too often for lunches. Had Alice's in July, the Lake George Hotel in Bungendore in August with EffanC, Bella Vista on my birthday, Happy's in December. Tried out Yarralumla Kebabs' new store in Belco. Pro tip - take a knife and cut one in two and split it with someone - otherwise you'll feel to stuffed at the end (even Stu finds them too big!!). And went to Bharat International with some work guys. And there were several treks to Kingsley's ;)

It seems I wasn't terribly creative in the kitchen this year. Or maybe I just didn't document things. We ate one of Kit's little roosters and made a couple of lasagnas with her tomatoes. I had a lot of fun with puff pastry - making cheese and vegemite scrolls, pizza scrolls and cheese twists. Made tacos a couple of times. A large kit works a lot better with three people than two ;) Made a gnocchi carbonara bake a couple of times. Also made cheesy hash browns which are always pretty awesome. And made a huge batch of gingerbread biscuits for Christmas.

The only theatre/shows/exhibitions I saw were two Lego things (Lego Cities by Ryan McNaught in Sydney, and a private Lego Christmas Show in Ngunnawal), and Harry Potter and the Cursed Child in Melbourne.

The only movie I saw in theatres was the Lego Movie 2 - the Second Part.

Saw a lot more movies on TV. As well as invididual movies which I won't list, we (or I) also carried on watching movies in series. Including:

• Kung Fu Panda 1 and 2
• Sherlock Holmes 1 and 2 (Robert Downey Junior version)
• The Hobbit 1, 2 and 3
• James Bond movies, starting in April, still haven't quite finished
• Paddington 1 and 2
• Bridget Jones 1 and 2
• Molly Ringwald teen movies (except Breakfast Club cause that's kinda boring)
• A few Tom Hanks movies
• Twilight saga
• Die Hard 1, 2 and 3 (haven't had a chance to see the rest yet)

Watched a surprising amount of TV too!

• The Good Place Season 3
• Tidying Up with Marie Kondo
• Discovery Season 2
• Fuller House Season 4
• MacGyver Season 1, start of Season 2
• Homeland Season 7
• Brooklyn 99 - up to season 5
• Death in Paradise Season 3
• Lego Masters
• Veronica Mars Season 4
• The Good Place Season 4
• The Amazing Race
• Fuller House Season 5

I'm not a big reader but did get through some books:

• Heaven is for Real - Todd Burpo
• The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and six more - Roald Dahl
• Silicon Snake Oil - Clifford Stoll
• Little Brother - Cory Doctorow
• The Cult of LEGO - John Baichtal and Joe Meno
• You Always Remember the First Time - edited by B.S. Johnson
• The Reader - Bernhard Schlink
• On the Road - Jack Kerouac (never finished)

And as always, I finish off with a big list of other bits and pieces..

• Started blogging weekly on Sunday nights, as that seems to happen more consistently, and get my photos online in a more timely manner
• Still raging that Apple sees fit to modify the timestamps on my photos and screenshots - on the phone!!
• Posted my Canberra 1986-2016 blog to Reddit and got a lot of nice comments
• Android (at least the last two Stu's had) has a SUPER annoying bug where the forward facing camera has no date taken exif data saved. Makes it harder to geotag the photos.
• Finally filled up my 2T drives with backups, had to split them out. Also bought a 4T drive to have room for everything. Took nearly a week to copy everything
• Found "Tent Go Bye Byes" on the internet so Mum could finally see what all the fuss was about in 1983
• Finished scanning all of Mum's photo prints
• Saw the Balloon Fiesta
• Took a stack of Tupperware to the Green Shed
• Read all of Julie Powell's "Julie and Julia" blog (started and got a good chunk of the way through in February after I had my appendix out, finished in September)
• Collected all the Coles Stikeez. And Little Shop 2
• The neighbours got ducks, although they didn't keep them for too long
• Got asked to be a bridesmaid at Kit's wedding. Got the shoes for the girls
• Finished scanning all of Mum's analogue photos. Started on her slides.
• Got our democracy sausage in May
• Finished labelling all 10000-odd photos from our last trip
• Created an S3 bucket for holiday photos. Still haven't gotten around to doing anything with it.
• Filled with rage at Qantas' website and general customer service, booked my next trip with Emirates instead
• Three cats we know - Pookie, Celeste and George - all had to be put down
• Processed and labelled all our Hong Kong and Singapore 2016 photos and got them into the blog
• NBN screwed us over - disconnected us during upgrades and never bothered to reconnect us. Had to get a tech to come out and fix it. Found out a while later they'd downgraded our speed from about 25mb to 12mbit. Bastards. (Edit: they broke the connector, hence only half the speed, later we got it fixed)
• Microsoft FINALLY enabled control-backspace in Notepad!!
• STILL raging at Apple and the inability to copy timelapse (and even regular video) files to my computer
• Bought a toasted sandwich maker - loving that
• David bought me a new frying pan (and another one at Christmas)
• Had my hair trimmed. Trimmed is an understatement.
• Got my North Atlantic trip fully labelled and blogged
• Didn't see blue sky in Canberra from before Kit's wedding til the end of the year
• Saddened by the bushfires that raged through south-eastern Australia
• Played some escape games on my phone which are a lot of fun
• Watched both Christmas Carols events. Carols in the Domain are pretty tacky but Melbourne's Carols by Candlelight is still ok.
• Spent the last couple of days of the year tidying and organising the house, and catching up on blogging

We finished out the year at EffanC's for a quiet evening with great friends.

Gosh what a busy week.

So Sunday a week ago was the Lego show at Ngunnawal.  Earlier in the day, which I didn't note last time, we went to Aldi and saw that they've changed their coin locks so my tool will no longer work with them.  Bastards.  I wouldn't mind using a coin if shopping centres could get off their asses and have a decent trolley return system, but they don't, which is why I'll continue to use my tool until it no longer works.

Monday morning I woke up at 4:15.  Hurrah.  And couldn't get back to sleep.  At least the day at work was relatively peaceful.  I cleaned out my locker and did a bit of inbox tidying.  After work we did some food shopping for Christmas.  But I was acting as a go-between for a couple of guys at work for a crisis that was going on, and so trying to rapidly type messages to both of them.  But OMFG iPhone autocorrect is infuriating sometimes.  It kept changing words that I'd typed correctly into different, incorrect, words, and so I'd have to keep retyping everything and sending correction message after correction message.  I swear I nearly smashed the damned phone onto the ground.  And I managed to screw up the steaks I cooked for dinner.  Yay.

Tuesday morning I woke up at 5:10.  Hurrah.  None of us were wanting to touch anything at work, because who wants to risk breaking anything so close to the break.  But as it turned out, the crisis the day before (still continuing Tuesday) was caused by someone changing something on Monday, and not telling their own damned team what they'd done.  So the others in the team had no idea that the problem was caused by one of their own.  Our team was dumbfounded.  I did however delete a bunch of Dev firewall rules for servers that no longer existed.  I figured if I broke anything in an environment that was being shut down anyway noone would care :)  Had a couple of sneaky drinks that we had leftover from the party before going home.  Had a super relaxing afternoon.  I even managed to finish scanning Mum's 1960s negatives and finish labelling our Hong Kong/Singapore photos, both of which I'd wanted to get done before Christmas, and I did!  In the evening we watched the Carols by Candlelight, which is so much better than the Sydney one.  It's more traditional and more mature and just not as *tacky* as Sydney.  

Look how low the lake is at the moment!  A good six inches down on its normal height.

I may have iced and sprinkled some of the gingerbread cookies.

This is the cast of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.  I got a better view of them on TV than I did in the theatre.

Wednesday.  Christmas Day.  Had a fairly relaxed morning.  Well other than having to take three quarters of an hour out of it to go feed Chrissie's animals, and clean up the cat poop one of the cats had done in the bath tub.  Hurrah.  The last hour before lunch was pretty busy, but the sweetie helped me with stuff so that was nice.  Annie and the family came over and we started snacking.  Then Mum arrived and we had Christmas lunch of prawns, ham, salad, bread, dips.  Then Stu put on stoopid YouTube videos so I went and did my own thing.  

We got the house some new towels for Christmas.

Mum brought this down from the cleanout at Diana and Grahams.  I can't believe noone else in their family snaffled this up.  And the wedding favours on top were from *our* wedding!

After everyone had left, Mum went off to go catch a tram, because they were free.  I went to put on a Christmas movie I had saved in my Netflix list, only to find that Netflix had deleted them all.  Bastards.  Moral of the story:  if you see something you want to watch on Netflix, watch it as soon as you can, because it won't be around for long.  Not the first time we've been caught.  I ended up watching The Movies that Made Us: Home Alone.  We watched Love Actually in the evening.  Well Mum and I did.  Stu ran away.

Thursday woke up early.  Hurrah.  Went to Bunnings in the morning with Mum.  Tried to have a sleep when we got back.  Failed.  Spent ages going through Mum's photos with her and updating labels with extra infos.  At one point we came across photos of the new Youth Hostel in Canberra that she was at the opening for in 1968.  So we went for a drive to try and find it.  We found it but the view is covered by trees, and even the building has had a lot of work done around it.  Had pizza for dinner and watched some BBT and into season 5 of Fuller House.  Played a couple of rounds of the basic game of Itchy Feet, a game I got for Christmas.  It was a little boring as the basic game, but may be better with the expansions, but I was too tired and cranky to feel like trying them.

Mum ate all the leftover prawns for us ;)

Friday woke up at 2am, didn't get back to sleep til after 3:30.  Then woke up around 6:30 with an aching spine.  Hurrah.  Mum went off to Chrissie's for the morning, which gave me peace and quiet to tidy the house and prepare lunch.  David arrived just before lunch, and we had roast pork with a lot of crackling and it was all very yummy.  Although not convinced by the stuffing (most of which oozed out and then burnt).  After lunch Mum left to go visit friends on her way home, David went to work and Stu went to the club, leaving me home alone.  I had a bit of a look at my todo list for the rest of the break but didn't actually do much.  Had some crackers and dip for dinner and a piece of crackling.  Healthy dinner, yay.  Watched 28 Days in the evening which I enjoyed.

This is what we call Five O'Clock Charlie - the smoke blowing in from the east.  It's usually more like 7pm though.  These photos were taken just four minutes apart.

Saturday woke up at 5:30 with an aching spine.  Hurrah.  With no car and no sweetie we couldn't do any shopping.  So grabbed the little brother to go storage tub shopping.  Basically there's a bunch of stuff in the dungeon and the spare room that's just all over the ground because there's no cupboard space, and I don't want to put any of it in the garage because of all the bugs.  But you can't even walk in those rooms because they're so choked up, so we can't even start with the decluttering of them.  So the idea is to use tubs as temporary storage to clear the rooms enough to be able to work in them again.  Once things are clearer, those tubs will be for more permanent storage of things that are in cardboard boxes right now - not good because, silverfish.  Spent the afternoon rearranging and filling tubs and getting rid of stuff.  Tidied the linen cupboard, the garage, the dungeon room, the hobby room.  So that was pretty good.  In the evening I watched Phar Lap, which I *might* have seen once more since seeing it at the movies in about 1983, but may not have.  Lots of been-there's heh.  Started watching Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, but then David pointed out that The Sound of Music was on, so may have accidentally watched the rest of that.  Even though I have it on DVD with no ads.  Whoops.

As I was cleaning out the linen cupboard, I found that my roller blades had completely disintegrated!! :(

When I was in the garage working, I heard a scratching on the door outside.  When I went to look, there was an itty bitty little blue tongue lizard.  He was pretty energetic too because he was so warm but I still managed to catch him for a photo.

Sunday was lots more tidying and organising.  Also a bunch of computer work.  Finished watching Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, which was silly but a bit of fun.  I totally want a food machine ;)

Monday not a lot of physical stuff, mostly computer stuff, including catching up on blogging.  Went out for lunch and did a bit of shopping.  Picked up a heap of lemons off the ground, and made a lemon meringue pie with five of them.  Managed to piss everyone off after dinner, and so instead of watching Die Hard 4 we all got grumpy with each other and did our own thing.  I watched Sliding Doors which I first saw a few years ago.  

Blue sky!  Haven't seen blue sky in weeks!  It's gone again now though.

Today I've pretty much been doing computer stuff all day - downloading and processing photos and blogging.  The weather is making me extremelly tense.  Canberra new year festivities have been cancelled.  We were thinking about going to the club but don't think we're going to now.  I certainly couldn't concentrate on writing up my year in review post so that will have to wait.  Have a happy new year and stay safe everyone!

At the end of June I was so filled with rage at the hypocrisy of our change management team that I took a slightly long lunch and went jigsaw shopping at Vinnies.  This 400 piece one wasn't priced though, so they had to make up a price at the register.  The 1000 piece one I got was $5, so you'd think this would be $2.  No, they charged me $4.  #grunt.  Did it in early July on the window sil.  Complete too, surprisingly.

This was the other jigsaw I got that day.  The California coast line.  At 1000 pieces it's a bit of a struggle to fit on the window sil, and took a lot longer to do.  Also complete.

It was very badly cut though - it'd gotten misaligned in the machine, so the cuts were too close and pieces were broken.

This one was in the break out area.  After a morning tea it was still there with most of the sky and water to be done.  So I finished it.  Whoops.

Had to dig into my supply of completed jigsaws for another small one to do at work.  Did it without the box, because the box has five jigsaws in it.  I did have photo from last time though. 

I was with Neil when he bought this.  I might have strongly encouraged him to do so, so that I could do it as well ;)  He never ended up doing it (he started at Christmas with his family but didn't finish it, and hadn't cleared space to do it at home).  So I borrowed it and did it in a weekend.  So much fun.

It has visual puns/clues for one hundred different movies.  I think I got about 3/5ths to begin with.  Then I looked at the location guide which lists the movies in alphabetical order.  From that I was able to guess some more movies, and realise some of my guesses were wrong because they were out of order.  From that I ended up with about 3/4 of the movies.

Spoilers ahead now. 

The problem with the jigsaw was the lack of resolution on some of the pictures.  Like this one.  It looks a bit like a black Admiral Ackbar, but is in fact Iron Lady.  Which maybe I would have had half a chance of getting if I could have seen her face.

Same with this one.  Looks like Airplane! to me, but was in fact Snakes on a Plane.  How am I meant to even see that?

Or this.  Some little kid sitting on a building.  How the heck are you meant to see that's Young Frankenstein?  You can *just* see it once you know.

This I thought was Super Eight until I saw the order was wrong.  Turns out it was The Angry Eight.

Some of them were a lot of fun to guess (like this one, guesses?).

Others even with the answer I was like.. how..?  This one took me *ages* to get even once I knew the answer.

Anyone see it?

And some were a bit of a stretch, like Reservoir Dogs

Definitely a lot of fun though.

And this other small one from the same pack as the tigers.

This week wasn't as crazy epic busy as the last two weeks which was kinda nice.  I *almost* had time to go back and do some cleaning!

Monday I got home and turned the heater on and nothing happened - it was already warm enough in the house!  Monday's BBT featured the first rock paper scissors lizard spock which was pretty cool :)  I also worked on the trivia night and finished Neil's jigsaw.

It's happy flower season!!

Tuesday morning I was scanning Mum's slides and found one of her in a bikini on a beach in South Australia.  I sent it to Mum and said I was finding fodder for her funeral slide show ;)  She had a laugh as well and said she wants to see the slide show before she dies :)   Not that she's dying or anything but after the sudden loss of Diana and Graham I kinda felt like it's best to be prepared, just in case and all.  Chrissie's family couldn't do a proper slide show because they didn't have access to the house to even get the photos, so they ended up using quite a lot of Mum's photos at the funeral.  Wow that got dark pretty quick.

Anneke helped us complete our Little Shop!

Also on Tuesday we tried out Yarralumla Kebab's new store.  I'd never been to their original store but had heard good things about it.  I went with the guys who knew the procedure which was good, because as a newcomer it was very confusing.  Turns out you have to know that you have to "fill out a form" on the kebab wrapper to tell them what you want.  But it was a complete shemozzle and we watched people coming in and standing in the queue from either end because it was so confusing.  We even saw people leave.  They need to have instructions or they will lose business.  Meanwhile the kebab I had was as big as my head, and I didn't have any dinner that night!

Got home and the house was 20C so there was no point turning the heater on.  Finished the first draft of the trivia night and sent it to Doc for vetting.  BBT had the first mention of coitus.

Wednesday I went over to Chrissie's for dinner and we had wine and toasted Aunty Di with some merlot and had a lovely evening.  Got home and Stu hadn't bothered to turn on the heater because it was so warm.

Thursday was tv dinners instead of pizza (man-sized chicken kiev's, but not super exciting).  Again, no heater.  Watched the first half of Twilight, which I last saw on the plane to Japan in 2009.

Friday was hurty overnight so zombie day due to lack of sleep.  Met up with EffanC (who had to put down dear little Celeste due to old age) and R&F for beer and pizza.  A few tears were shed over the sweet little cat, and then a very pleasant evening.  

Saturday I spent all freakin day on the trivia night - doing a whole lot of reworks and edits after Doc's vetting.  Didn't even set foot out of the house all day.  Finished the second draft by dinner time, had pizza (we were thinking of going out for dinner but it was cold and the sweetie just wanted pizza (let's not even go into how much pizza we've had in our "no pizza week" week - pizza last Thursday, leftovers Friday, club on Saturday, leftovers Sunday, Tuesday with C, Friday at potbelly, then Saturday with leftovers on Sunday.  That's pizza eight days out of the last eleven.  hrmmmmm!) ).  Watched Brooklyn 99 and Octopussy (seriously what insane father calls their daughter "Octopussy" as a nickname??  Thanks Ian Fleming for that weirdness).

This morning I went mountain climbing then spent all day doing the slideshow and table rounds for the trivia night.

And there might have been pizza scrolls for lunch.

After getting the first pass of the slide show done and the filler rounds done, we went to Crace for food shopping, then came home and I spent the next hour or so prepping a lasagna with the last of Kit's frozen tomatoes.  It turned out pretty well though.

With Brooklyn 99 and Veronica Mars.

Then blogging.

Is it bed time now?

Monday was crazy stoopid busy again.  I thought I'd repeat my effort of last Monday and get some work done between 5pm and 6pm but that plan failed because I *still* got interrupted :(  In the evening planned out my todo list for the next couple of weeks, and worked on the trivia night, pretty much finishing the music round and deciding on filler rounds.

Tuesday was Big Bang Theory and trivia night.

Wednesday was a bit of trivia night but ended up down the rabbit hole of Sporcle.  Whoops.

The roommate agreement came up on BBT this week - part way into season 2.

Friday I finally got my random day off, and Stu took leave as well.  Couldn't sleep in though could I?  Spent the morning doing houseworky bits, finished off some Lego picking, started Neil's jigsaw, and did some work on the trivia night.

Stumpy found a warm spot!

Then got ready to head out to the club.

Anyone know what's going on on the hill at Barton Highway and Gundaroo Drive?

Did some shopping in Gungahlin then headed out to the club.

Got the fire going which was nice.

Had a couple of beers at happy hour, then had leftovers for dinner.  Stu talked to his dad for a while, then we went to bed.

Saturday I cooked bacon and eggs for breakfast, then I made three fires - one in our van, one in the shed, and the pizza oven.  Lunch was sausage sizzle, then the AGM.  Hung around for a while, and had pizza for dinner (which sadly wasn't cooked quite enough, so was pretty doughy).  Didn't have too late a night.

Today had leftover sausages for breakfast in the sunroom, then cleaned up and came home.

Did a bit of work on the trivia night, and some of Neil's jigsaw.

Then Annie and the whole family came over with a pretty spectacular birthday cake for afternoon tea.  Only problem was I got such a huge piece I felt full for hours.  

Haven't done any food shopping, so just roasted some potatoes, and a zucchini and a capsicum that were in the fridge for dinner.  There may have been mayo ;)

Dinner was too late to watch Veronica Mars this week, so just Brooklyn 99.

So when I left you on Sunday night I was frustrated at the whole experience I'd had with Qantas that afternoon.  In the end my booking hadn't gone through properly because of a problem with my credit card (I never use it, in fact I don't think I'd used this one since activating it, so wasn't really surprised).  On Monday I tested the credit card worked (it did) so in the afternoon I called Qantas.  Where I got in a queue that said I would be on hold for THREE HOURS.

!!!!!!!

Are you freaking kidding me?  Most companies have different queues for sales and support.  Sales *want* your business and so put on more staff to handle the calls.  Not so Qantas.  So I complained on twitter.  As you do.  There was a bit of back and forth during the afternoon, and they said they'd call to try again with the credit card.  Which they did - while I was in the other room having dinner and watching Brooklyn 99, so didn't hear the phone.  

While I was waiting again, I got onto Emirates' site. I put through the same itinerary, which 1) actually seemed to let me do (I got all the way up to the payment page), 2) had a much better connection to Singapore, giving us a few extra hours there, and 3) was THREE HUNDRED DOLLARS CHEAPER.  I asked Qantas if we could please cancel.  I was too upset/stressed from the whole thing to concentrate on anything much, so I went and cleaned the kitchen.  Of course as soon as I left the room Qantas called again.  Sigh.  But confirmed my wish to cancel the booking and eventually they did.

On Tuesday I put the whole booking through Emirates.  I still had issues with the credit card (the two-factor code wouldn't come through to my phone), so I just used a different card.  And that was that.  Done.  

Although Emirates do price gouge with seat selection - $20-$30 for regular seats, $120 for the little pair of two at the back of the plain, who even knows how much for exit row seats.  There goes that saving...

So Qantas had three lost opportunities to get my money.  If their multi city flights were actually usable I would have booked on the spot, using whichever credit card had worked.  If their booking management system had actually made a provision to "pay now" and let me pay online, I would have.  If they didn't make me wait THREE HOURS in a phone queue I would have done it over the phone.

Qantas really need to lift their game if they want to stay competitive in 2019.

Sigh.

Monday morning I cleared a massive backlogs of tickets due to me being away on Friday for the funeral.  Started to panic at the sheer volume of work facing me for the week.  And I couldn't get anything done on Monday afternoon due to nonstop interruptions.  Every one of them tore my concentration away so the *one thing* I was trying to do I couldn't get done.  In the end I managed to get it done between 5pm and 6pm when everyone else had gone away.

Tuesday not *quite* so busy, but did get stuff done.

Wednesday I was in race condition mode.  That is, too many high priority tasks competing, which meant I actually didn't get anything meaningful done at all in the morning.  Sigh.  So did some stuff for Henrch, and then Shane saved me by pushing back on the people that haven't done their docos :)

Also on Wednesday I had just stood up and was looking out the window and saw a Tarago back into a car in the car park, bumping it so I saw it move.. and then it drove away.  I grabbed my camera and took some pics.  And then went and left a note :)  I did get a call from the police asking for the photos, but no word of thanks or even acknowledgement from the owner of the car that was hit.

Aldi proved themselves once again to be a bunch of scammers.  Neil saw an ad for some scotch that he thought he'd get for the bar.  So we had a look at lunch.  But not only was there none of that scotch to be seen, but there wasn't even an empty spot on the shelf for it.  There was no price tag at all for that scotch.  Which clearly meant they never had it for sale at all.  SCAMMERS!

And then on Friday Dan's tried to charge me $14.99 for a bottle of Henkell.  I knew when I saw the price tag there was going to be trouble, so I took a photo of it, and got it for the cheaper price ;)  

When we got home on Thursday night I was in the family room doing up my hair and talking to the sweetie when I heard something and saw something move out of the corner of my eye.  One of Chrissie's clown loaches was flopping on the top of the book case next to the tank.  It must have been startled when we got home, but it had somehow managed to get out between the loosish lid and the tank wall (might have to weight it down heh).  Grabbed the fish and plonked it back in, and it's been fine ever since.  It was lucky I saw it too, I don't normally linger at that spot for very long, it would have been just as likely for me not to even have noticed til the next day.

I really wanted to have a random day off on Friday but there was just too much work all week.  I think I closed something like 30 tickets which is *huge*.  I did manage to leave at 4pm tho.  Started watching Friends with Benefits until the sweetie got home, then we watched For Your Eyes Only.  I haven't seen most of the early James Bonds in probably twenty years or more - when Dad used to put them on while I was still living at home.  But with the early ones I could still remember bits and pieces and even the odd lines of script and one-liners.  But I have no memories at all of For Your Eyes Only, except for dropping the dude down the chimney at the beginning. 

Saturday morning was the usual house work type stuff.  Not too much in the afternoon.  Finished watching Friends with Benefits.  Silly and predictable, but hey, New York.  Watched Jackie with the sweetie.  It wasn't bad, but had a very disjointed filming style.

Today was Lego picking, trivia night planning, photo culling, lunch out and food shopping, more of the same in the afternoon.  Watched Parenthood before dinner and finished after. Roasted a stack of veggies for dinner and watched some Veronica Mars.

And blogged.

I first met Aunty Di and Uncle Graham when our family started going to St Clements thirty years ago in 1989.  Although at the time they were just plain Diana and Graham.  It was only when Chrissie came back from New Zealand in the middle of 1989 that they became known as Aunty and Uncle.

They became good friends of the family.  My parents would often play cards/games with them, and they went on multitudes of church bushwalks and weekends away together.  

In recent years I saw them at various parental type birthdays, and several times when they came down to visit Chrissie.

Graham and Diana on their 25th Wedding Anniversary

Diana, Dad and Graham about to walk across the new Woronora Bridge

Graham and Diana with Dad and Mum at Sydney Aquarium

Bushwalking group walk to Nellies Glen in Blue Mountains.  Graham and Diana, Dad, Jeff Anderson, Garry Le Clerc

Diana and Graham celebrating Mum's birthday at Sizzler

Diana and Graham celebrating Dad's birthday at Tradies

Graham and Diana celebrating Mum's birthday at Tradies

Diana and Graham at our wedding

Graham and Diana celebrating Mum's birthday at Tradies

So we were all in utter shock and disbelief yesterday.

See you in heaven guys...

So Monday.  Day four of our break.  But I didn't get anything much done around the house because I spent the morning getting organised to go to the club.  Made some cheese twists for lunch before heading out.  The previous owners of the van left a lot of kitchen stuff and tools behind which is great, but *all* the cupboards were full of stuff, with no free space to put any of our stuff.  Got a bit overwhelmed by it on Monday afternoon.  And it poured with rain.  A lot.  Had some leftovers we'd brought for dinner, and watched the start of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade on tv, but went to bed before it finished.

Tuesday I spent pretty much the whole day cleaning out the cupboards and reorgansing everything so it fitted into the cupboards more logically, and left most of the big cupboard free for our stuff.  Did a couple of loads of washing up to wash stuff in the drawers and some of the cookware.  Felt a lot happier with things by the end.  Although still nowhere good to store food.  D&I fired up the fire in the oasis, so we had a beer with them which was nice.  Tried out the bbq.  It doesn't light with the lighter thingie, but runs ok if you light it.  Cooked some sausages for dinner and we had a nice bottle of 2011 shiraz I got in 2014.

Wednesday morning we came home.  Thanks to Tony though for taking our bins out - they'd been collected by the time we got home, and the recycling bin in particular would have been a disaster if we'd missed the pickup.  Cooked some pizza scrolls for lunch.  In the afternoon cleared/cleaned the middle shelf of the pantry and the two drawers under the oven.  Cooked honey mustard chicken for dinner, watched Homeland and From Russia With Love.

Didn't do much Thursday.  Did some photo filing in the morning, then headed over to Chrissie's for a bbq for lunch.  James was in town, first time I'd seen him in twenty five years, with Anita, and Susannah and Rob were there too.  So it was quite the family gathering for them.  And then they got out all the family photos that survived the bushfire (as an aside, Como Presbyterian Church reopened twenty three years ago on this day as I type this, same day as Port Arthur massacre.. moving on..).  David and Kat came over late in the afternoon and we had lamb roast and started a 2000 piece jigsaw.

Friday Stu went to work.  David pulled apart our bedroom fan light which had died a couple of months ago.  We'd gotten a new bulb but it hadn't worked either.  Turns out the ballast had gone.  Someone let the smoke out.  This fan light had been installed in November 2008.  A "Brilliant" branded fan light we got from Bunnings.  Don't do that people.  We never could get a replacement light for it.  The last one we got was a much smaller T4 bulb because we couldn't find any the right size.  Pretty sure that was in April 2014.  So instead of trying to replace the ballast and not get a bulb that fitted anyway, we decided to get a similar sized LED oyster light and mount that instead.  It looks slightly odd, but works just fine and cheaper than a whole new fan light.  Most awesomest brother ever!

So that was done in the morning and we were like.. now what?  D/K went out for a wander round Canberra and I got stuck into cleaning out the "gardening" corner of the garage.  Too many spiders and other disgustingness for my liking.  D/K gave me a lift into town later where I met up with the sweetie for a drink and dinner for our anniversary (and they went off and did their own thing).  We went to Temporada and had quite a delicious, if very expensive, dinner.

Saturday and David couldn't help himself, he wanted to replace our ancient fluoro kitchen/family room light fittings with LED ones.  So a trip to Bunnings (where it was decided against getting the "Brilliant" branded ones, even though they looked nice because a) Bunnings staff couldn't/wouldn't get the panel of test lights turned on to look at them, and b) they're Brilliant branded, which we've already established seems to be non-standard anyway), and then a trip to Project Lighting.  Got some flat round lights that don't quite cover up the old holes, so we'll need to sand/bog/paint that at some point.

We did one of the lights in the morning, then headed out to the club to show D/K the new van (and get out of Stu's way as he was trying to study).  Had a bbq out there (we really need a new gas cylinder), then came home again, and David replaced the other light.  Had pizza for dinner, watched Goldfinger, and finished the big jigsaw.  Pretty good effort for two days. 

Sunday D/K went home and I spent the day coming to terms with the end of my holiday :(  Tidied up a lot of the house, did two loads of linen washing, got some holiday blog entries online, got some kiev balls from the shops and cooked those for dinner, watched Brooklyn 99 and Death in Paradise.

Ten days is not enough time off.  I really need those three month holiday I used to get when I was at uni... *sigh* ....

Monday we got home a bit late which left me a little stressed because I need to do All The Things on Mondays, in addition to a backup I was meant to run on the weekend but never did.  I thought it was going to talk all night because I'd done a heap of moving files around, which means robocopy would then have to delete/recopy everything.  But in the end I moved them around on the disk first so it was pretty quick.  I ran Spacemonger over the disk and it added up 1.3 million files in 51000 folders.  Freaky.  We also started watching Brooklyn 99.  Stu has actually seen it all through before but suggested watching it anyway.  Not a bad show.  A bit silly but a bit of fun.  But.  KEEP THE DAMNED CAMERA STILL!!  It's got the whole Modern Family can't-keep-the-damned-camera-still thing going on which I HATE.  It's even worse than Discovery's damned lens flare.  

Must be mother's day soon..

Tuesday had the club committee meeting here so I half listened in while labelling photos (1/3 way through w00t!).  Also baked a Yum! Delicious! cake which all got eated.

The neighbour's ducks

Hey sucker!

Wednesday I was surprised to find an actual light meal at the Labor Club, so didn't end up stuffing myself silly.  Because for dinner we went to Dumpling Inn with Hannah to talk Harry Potter.

Labor Club caesar salad

Dumpling Inn

Thursday night I swear it actually got warmer as the evening progressed.  We made the most of one of the last mild evenings of the season.  At home, Stu ordered extra large pizzas for dinner hrmmm.  Then afterwards had a drink with Kit and Pete and played a game of Kismet (I won, w00t!).  The fact they are 130km away is irrelevant.

Friday we Marie Kondo-ed our clothes.  We actually pulled everything out and put it all out on the bed.  My pile was somewhat bigger than I thought it would be, but nowhere near as big as some of the piles we saw on the show.  Finished watching the Desolation of Smaug, then watched Thor Ragnarok which is a bit of fluff (reviewers either completely loved or completely hated it).  We'd seen Dr Strange so knew who he was, but not sure if there were other references we didn't get, on account of only seeing a few MCU films (it's creeping up - have seen Guardians of the Galaxy 1&2, Dr Strange, now this).

Saturday just bits and pieces.  Did a Bunnings run (no tubs in the size/style I wanted that weren't crap).  Spent some time Marie Kondo-ing the linen cupboard.  Finally sorted out the wine that's been making a mess under the house - consolidated boxes (down to about 7.5 boxes now) so it's all a bit more organised.  Watched the Battle of the Five Armies.  Just as dumb as I remembered it.

Today spent some time in the garage in the morning, but barely made a dent.  Made some cheese and vegemite scrolls for lunch which were pretty awesome.  Marie Kondo-ed three shelves in the pantry in the afternoon.  Roast chicken for dinner, Discovery (finishing up season 2), and Dr No, which I haven't seen in ages.

Tuesday Neil and I had dinner at Pho Hub.  I had flaming chicken with hoisin sauce.  And it really was flaming!  Neil had his usual.

Then we went and saw The Lego Movie 2.

Wednesday night was a trivia night.  We won.  Again.  The organisers could have done with a little more practise, or at least have someone like Doc vet it all to save arguments with the crowd hehe.  The first three rounds were pretty tough, but the second three rounds were somewhat easier.  We did well with our Joker (double points) round, but annoyingly, not all rounds were worth the same.  Some were out of 10, others up to 12.5.  hrmmmm.

Thursday a bunch of us went to Chompy's for lunch.  I had the Iron Mikee.

In the evening we saw the episode of Fuller House where the kids go to the prom.  So then I watched the episode from 1993 where DJ and Steve go to their prom.  Silly really.

Friday Annie had her appendix out.  Must be contagious!  In the evening we watched The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey.  After enjoying it at the movies because my expectations had been lowered, this time I felt a lot more like the reviewers that said it was way too long.  It's kinda tedious watching movies that are just massive cgi-fests.

Saturday morning was just house stuff.  At lunch we went out and got a new light for the bedroom fan light.  Had lunch at Yat Bun Tong, but couldn't face shopping at Coles in the mall so went off to Jamo to do food shopping.  When we finally got home it was pretty much time to make dinner.  The other week I'd made up a tomato sauce with a big batch of Kit's tomatoes.  So made a bechamel sauce and made up a big lasagna (from Lana's recipe).  It turned out quite well (looks a little overdone, prolly should have covered with foil for some of the cooking).

A little while later Kit and Pete came over.  They'd come up to see her brother and family before they went back to Germany, and came back to our place to stay the night.  They had some of the lasagna which seemed kind of appropriate, and we chatted and watched Monty Python and the Holy Grail and went to bed a whole lot later than I wanted to.  But I did manage to sleep in til 8am old time, 7am new time, so that was fine.

Spent way way way too long picking parts for five Lego sets today.  This whole process is going to take *forever* :(

Kit and Pete eventually went home.  Was feeling a little lost this arvo.  Cooked a nice roast dinner though, and we watched Fuller House (bringing us to the end of season 4) and Discovery.  

Also, that light we bought:  didn't work.  So don't know if it's the light or the fitting or a seemingly non-existent starter.  Very upsetting.