Sunday.  21st.  I forgot to complain about travel stuff last week.  I messaged Emirates to see about seat selection on their codeshare flight.  But they said it was a Qantas ticket and they couldn't do anything, other than request a window seat.  Then I phoned Qantas (Qantas still lives in the dark ages and doesn't have web chat).  While on hold I realised they'd actually allocated seats for me (the booking had been updated since I last looked).  So that was good.  But I stayed online to get them to confirm and also ask them about our smooshed up names, but they said I had to talk to WebJet about that.  Sigh.  Had roast turkey and veggies for dinner.  Then we watched the second half of Blue Murder.

Monday.  Slept ok.  All the stoopid at work.  Proxy upgrade planning and paperwork.  

Tuesday.  Crap sleep.  Woke up at 3:30 needing to pee.  Then my brain wouldn't shut up.  Then I got an irritated eyelid (which was irritated all day).  Then I got hungry.  Got maybe forty five minutes more sleep.  But I was a zombie all day.  Too tired to do any real holiday planning, although I did have a bit of a look at Europe road rules, and read a bit about the Passion Play.

Wednesday.  Dunno, no notes.  Probably all the planning.  But you know how all the birds have been hanging around?  Well I heard something funny and I was wondering if they were nesting in the eaves or something.  Turns out THEY'VE BEEN EATING THE HOUSE!!!

I kept shooing them away but they kept coming back.  I doused the area with spray and wipe. That made no difference.  So at lunch we wrapped some plastic sheeting around it until we could think of a more permanent solution.  

Speaking of lunch.. epic garlic bread!!  This stuff is SO GOOD!!

Thursday.  Long slow day of bits and pieces.  The birds were like.. heyyyyyy...!!   I wanted to watch Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade to get screenshots of the Venice locations.  It's not on Netflix or Disney+ at the moment.  I swear it used to be.  Oh well, good thing I have it on DVD.

Friday.  Proxy upgrade planning.  And fixing other team's problems for them (person was off and it was a slow news day anyway).  Watched King's Man in the evening.  I actually enjoyed this one more than the first two.  The first two were over the top, this one felt a little more.. real.. and it was kinda cool how they weaved the story into real life events, playing it out as if they were involved.  Kinda like Titanic in a way.  Good fun.  

Saturday.  Proxy upgrade.  Con did it, I supervised.  This was to avoid the curse of proxy upgrades never going well when I do them.  Then we tested, then did a bunch of policy tidyup, then more testing.  Done by 11:20.  Booked the last of our hotels in the afternoon.  Got onto WebJet's line chat (QANTAS PAY ATTENTION - EVERYONE ELSE IS DOING ONLINE CHATS WHY CAN'T YOU????) to ask them about the smooshed up names, and they were like, eh it'll be fine.  Also asked them why Emirates things we're booked onto *two* flights from Singapore to Sydney, and they were like, um, well you're booked on one.  Also asked them about seat allocations, and they were like, all we can do is request a window seat.  IT'S 2022 WHY CAN'T AIRLINES ALLOW YOU TO DO SEAT ALLOCATIONS ON CODE SHARE FLIGHTS?????  F&$*ing HATE.  Sausages and salad for dinner and watched Breaker Morant (based on a true story) which I'd never actually seen before.

Stu's 3D print station and work bench

Sunday.  Woke up at 4:00 and never got back to sleep.  Yet even though I had the same amount of sleep as I had the other night when I woke up early, I was actually ok today.  Fleshing out the holiday planning.  Neglected the fish.  Decided I should use up some of my flex for some long lunches and/or early finishes to try and keep up with everything.  The sweetie wanted to get out of the house this afternoon so we went for a drive.  Couldn't get to the river the way he wanted (all private roads) but it was a nice drive anyway.

Belconnen's Republic tower looks somewhat transparent in this shot

Remind me I need to login early tomorrow to see if I've broken anything...

Sunday.  Backdating a few days because life and birthdays and crap got in the way.  Had all the veggies and some chicken thighs for dinner.  Then watched more of The Crown.

Monday.  Um.  Probably a cleaning day.  Spent the evening looking at distances between places in Europe to see if we'll go over the daily allowance or need to buy unlimited kilometres.  And trying to plan an itinerary.  

Tuesday.  Woke up at 3 to pee, then started stressing about All The Things, then got hungry, then the hissing.  Sigh.  So tired, but still an ok day, mostly cleaning.  

Went to another Surprising Science talk in the Shine Dome.  There was Dr Chris Guppy from UNE talking about sulphur in soil, and Mahdokht Shaibani from RMIT talking about lithium sulphur batteries.  

The previous two photos of the Shine Dome were on my new G5X.  So is this next one.  This is hand held!!  Half a second.  Pretty impressive.

Had dinner at Master Bao but was disappointed they don't actually server bao!!?!?!  wtf!?

No bao at Master Bao!

Spring rolls

Dim sims

Shantung duck

Wednesday.  Ok sleep.  Busy cleaning day.

Thursday.  Okish sleep.  Another busy cleaning day.  Two days cleaning up stuff to get it all consistent and pretty.  And literally noone will care.  But I did fix something else that had been broken for a while (not by me) and did actually impact people so that was a win I guess.  Also got filled with rage at Outlook which by default only adds reminders to meetings created within Outlook, which means I keep missing stuff because I don't get reminders.  Hate Outlook.  HATE.  This was never a problem in Notes.  Just sayin!!

Homemade pizzas for dinner on Stu's low carb bases.  Then watched Careful, He Might Hear You.  I might have seen it once a very very long time ago.  I read the book ten years ago so was good to finally see the movie again.  I was disappointed they didn't have a shot of him on the train going over the Woronora Bridge (or in fact any shots at all of Sydney, I guess too hard with all the modern buildings).  

Friday.  Ok sleep until the hissing.  Had a fairly quiet day catching up on emails and stuff that had been slipping because I'd been busy the last couple of days.  Chicken Kiev for dinner, then watched Broadcast News.

Saturday.  Woke up at 2:22 with mild hurty.  Had a pain killer and some cheese.  An hour later I felt hungry again.  Then the hissing.  So a very slow morning.  I was trying to get things done in the afternoon but then more hurty so slow and painful.  But then that eased up and we had EffanC and Rob and Fiona over for dinner (brisket, blue cheese potato bake and roasted kale (I over cooked the kale :( )) which was lovely.  

Sunday.  Slept ok.  Finally booked a car for the first week of our trip.  Then spent like three and a half hours out and about running errands and doing shopping before we go into self-imposed quarantine.  Stu is not coming on this trip (sadly :( ) but I need him in quarantine as well in case he gets covid and brings it home to me.  I did get KFC for lunch, which is somewhat of a tradition, so that was nice.  Then tried to allocate seats on my flights.  For most of them this worked ok.  But the Sydney to Dubai leg I can't even tell which airline I'll be flying on.  Qantas say it's Emirates, and Emirates say it's Qantas, and neither will let me book seats.  Other than that, panicking over my todo lists.  Also.  Neil has covid.  He started feeling sick Thursday morning.  This was after I'd sat next to him all day Wednesday.  Sigh.  Felt like I was getting a sore throat Sunday.  As with every other time in the past two and a half years I'm sure it's just my imagination.  Suddenly it's 16:20 and it's like wtf happened to my weekend.  Managed to download my photos before giving up for the day and relaxing with the sweetie with some bubbles.

Sunday.  31st.  Leftovers from Saturday night for dinner.  Finished watching Obi-Wan.  I liked that they had James Earl Jones voicing Darth Vader.. only .. they *didn't* ..!! they deep faked him!  And having Ian McDiarmid was pretty cool too.

Monday.  Slept ok-ish but woke up early.  Started panicking over my todo list.  Started trying to get in control by giving the house a bit of a tidy.  But had a meltdown as soon as I logged into work because people were making mess and it was all too much.  Had a cleaning planning day.  Leftover pork for dinner.

Oh, the other week my everyday walking shoes split (I bought these in 2015 and worn them almost every day since) so last week I bought some new ones.  Almost the same, look slightly different.

In the evening I tried to book flights to Europe with Qantas.  Big mistake.  I tried to book the exact same itinerary as I did three years ago (when it failed epically and I spent *hours* trying to sort it out and in the end said "screw you" and went with Emirates).  Well in three years QANTAS STILL HASN'T FIXED THEIR BOOKING SYSTEM!!!!  As with last time, you select a multi city trip (I only had three legs, nothing too complicated), it lets you get all the way through including doing seat allocations, but when you go to pay you get this error:

Sorry, an error seems to have occurred, and this page cannot be displayed (15079, 23951, 420)

Thanks a fricking lot QANTAS.  I can't believe they're still so bad at this crap.  It's like they're actively trying to deter business and alienate customers.  Literally every time I have to deal with Qantas I have to go through the sheer agony of their booking systems (if it wasn't for their AMAZING flight crews I'd probably boycot them completely).  

I used Webjet to hunt around for alternatives.  But THANKS COVID.. NOT.. there's very limited options at the moment.  Etihad had no flights available at all for the legs I wanted, and Emirates for the same legs was going to cost three thousand dollars more.  Yikes.  Lufthansa would have been ok except they had some really crazy connections that totally blew out the travel times.  So I booked the flights through WebJet, which was going to cost $200 more.  And sure enough, their APIs had the same issues with Qantas.  I got this error:

Customer Service Advice
We have been unable to confirm your requested itinerary, but have retained a copy of your requirements under Webjet Booking Reference: <redacted>
We will now process your itinerary manually and confirm your booking within 48 hours.
If you are departing within the next 48 hours we will contact you today. Please do not attempt to make another booking on this site or another, as this may result in a duplicate. Please wait for us to contact you.
Thank you for your co-operation.
Customer Service Centre

So I left it.  At least someone at WebJet will have to deal with Qantas and not fricken ME!!   

The next day I got an email from WebJet that everything was sorted and the flights had been booked.  Hurray.

Tuesday.  Cleaning day and holiday research.  Did a basa bake for dinner which was lovely.

Wednesday.  Rinse and repeat of Tuesday.  I had a whole commentary in my head about how getting older makes you more *fearful*.  I really noticed this a while back riding Kit's horses (I literally had no fear about riding horses when I was younger but now they're so *big* and it's a long damned way down!) and let's not mention The Nerve Test.  So I was stressing about all the ways things could go wrong with our holiday.  Although in the grand scheme of things, mostly all we'd lose is money.  I really need to keep that perspective.  

I did an experiment with the brussels sprouts - would they crisp up better "right way up" or "upside down"?  Turns out, didn't really make a difference!

Thursday.  Lay awake until like midnight stressing over All The Things (mostly holiday stuff).  Then woke up at 1am by the storm for an hour or so.  Then woke up early too.  Sigh.  Zombie day.  Farewell for Alex at lunch.  Quiet drinks.  All The Water!!!

Friday.  Slept a lot better.  There was even a lovely sunny day after the wild weather all day yesterday.  I needed milk for breakfast so went over to Chris's to get some.  I didn't have enough for the eftpos minimum so thought I'd get a bottle of cab sav.  But he didn't have any singles out of the one I like so he was going to open a box but I said I'd buy the box.  It was on special too, so that was a bonus.  Except carrying it back home the box split and smashed all over the car park.  Lost two bottles of wine right there.  And then I was trying to clean up the mess and pricked myself with a shard of glass and started bleeding.  Sigh.  Another customer came up and I asked her to ask Chris for help.  So he came out and took away all the broken glass and gave me a bag for the other four bottles and the milk.  They say not to cry over spilt milk but you can cry over spilt wine, surely?  Another cleaning day. Chicken kiev for dinner.  Watched Kingsman: The Secret Service which was a bit of silly fun.  

Saturday.  Went food shopping first thing.  Then a bunch of house work.  Then dropped off my backup drive at work, bought some new fish tank lights for the 620T, and accidentally bought myself an early birthday present.

Got home and then it was time to do All The Cooking.  I made a low(ish) carb, vegetarian lasagna.

Slightly over done, whoops..

Had the hills over to enjoy it and Jess had a lot of fun playing Stu's instruments.  Wait, that sounds wrong.  ;)  Specifically, his cornettos.. cornetti?  After dinner Jess and I played a whole bunch of stuff together and she played all the harmonies around me trying to keep up with her awesomeness.  It was so much fun :)

Sunday.  Did a bunch of research on countries that we plan to visit on smartraveller.  Should all be fine.  Then a whole heap of fish tank stuff.  Also some camera side-by-side testing.  The new camera is much on par with my Canon and my iPhone for most things, but it does excel in extremelly low light.  Read: under the house with just vent holes for light.  It's not so great on closeups (but some of that may be me needing to get used to the settings) and it does struggle to focus.  The iPhone probably wins on difficult lighting (with pretty decent HDR), and the Canon wins on speed and focus (except in very low light).

It's almost completely dark under the house, so this shot is actually pretty impressive.

Then it was cooking All The Food.

Sunday.  17th.  Lamb roast and drinks with Kit.

Monday.  A fair bit of inbox tidying and decommission cleaning.  Got travel insurance for the cruise next year, but trying to get an ESTA was a pain in the poo poo hole.  When it came to putting through payment I clicked on the link and got a browser pop up saying it was going to leave the page.  Which I clearly didn't want to do.  So tried again and this time got a popup from the site saying I was going to leave the page.  So went "back" to see if there was something I missed but then it complained I already had an application in process.  So got to the end again and it was all "THE PAYMENT STATUS COULD NOT BE DETERMINED AT THIS TIME. PLEASE CHECK BACK LATER FOR THE PAYMENT STATUS."  and literally no way to pay.  Tried different browsers with no luck.  #grunt.  So that was a waste of a good chunk of the evening.  

Tuesday.  Slept ok.  Reloaded my ESTA application and it came straight up with the option to pay.  So just needed to wait for it to sort itself out.  Fighting with all the stoopid.  Had some mulled wine, and cooked sausages, cauliflower, bacon and these little kale sprouts I got off Tony which were fricken *amazing* - little crunchy leafy balls of goodness.  Also blogged last week.

Lunch: toasted cheese sandwich with pizza blend cheese to take it to next level

This photo cannot possibly capture how awesome those little sprouts of kale were!

Wednesday.  More dealing with all the stoopid, and frustration with people that don't respond to messages and/or disappear for hours at a time.  Also had to finally start using Outlook for the first time, ever.  And my welcome to it was a two hour delay in mails arriving because of "issues".  Seriously whoever thought that cloud would be a good idea for this crap??  Was watching stoopid crap on the internet in the evening and backing up my computer when I found out my desktop no longer existed (I have robocopy scripts that save the output to a folder on my desktop).  And I'm like WTF??  I had actually noticed the other day that everything on my desktop had little OneDrive icons.  Turns out Microsoft had taken upon itself to backup my desktop, documents and downloads directories to OneDrive.  EXCEPT IT HADN'T!!!  Half the files were actually missing.  I even looked online and they simply weren't there.  It had badly synced my files and chunks of them were missing.  So I turned off backup, at least for desktop, and will need to restore my files from last week's backup.  Fricken HATE.  Microsoft is doing an Apple and doing things of its own accord WITHOUT MY PERMISSION.  HATE HATE HATE.  Literally the second time this week my files have been screwed with by others (last time was on Friday when a rogue backup script deleted everything at work).  

Thursday.  Farewell for Casey who's moving to Melbourne, then Christmas in July drinks at work.  There were so many snackages I didn't need dinner, and in fact brought home all the leftovers that were going to be thrown out otherwise.  

Friday.  I dunno.  Mostly trying to get organised.  Declared POETS and we headed down the coast to see Kit and Pete.  The top of Clyde Mountain was pretty foggy, but it cleared up lower down.  I really wanted to get there by dark, but that didn't work out.  Oh well.  Had steak and salad for dinner and had a few drinks and chatted.  

Arthur, King of the Britons

Saturday.  I went to bed relatively early (altho an hour later than usual) but didn't get to sleep til like super super late (like after everyone else went to bed haha).  Had a bit of a sleepin though so wasn't tooo bad.  Watched Kit feed all the animals. 

Al and Kerry Paca

Kit and Pete hand-raised Lolly when she was abandoned.  She's very friendly and so damned cute!

Ricky the tiny horse

Then we had breakfast which was at nearly lunch time. 

I started a jigsaw and got a chunk done on it before we headed down to Bawley Point.  The river mouth was a bit too deep to cross, so we headed all the way down to Kioloa.  There was a fairly lethargic seal dozing on the rocks, which everyone thought was very unusual.  Walked all the way up the beach and back.  The seal was still there, but some others had already called some experts to get it checked out. 

Had a lamb roast for dinner, with one of Kit and Pete's sheep. 

Then we played a game of Squatter.  Which, like real life with sheep, is basically a case of what Bad Things will happen at every turn.  Kit won.  I think I was doing ok, but it was a bit hard to tell since it was all so random and Bad Things kept happening. 

Slightly earlier night.

Sunday.  Slept a lot better.  Bacon and eggs again for breakfast, then we watched Biscuit herding sheep which was pretty cool. 

Then headed home.  Unpacked and tidied up the house.  Did a bit more on the jigsaw.  Then put on dinner (roasted a bunch of veggies to have with leftover lamb) and did photos and blogging stuffs.  

Monday.  Slept ok but still woke up tired.  Did change paperwork for proxy upgrade in the morning.  Did test in the afternoon.  Test lulled us in a false sense of security that prod will be smooth too.. hrmmm.  We both cooked dinner.  Stu used some mince I cooked and made "chorizo mince", I did a cauliflower/broccoli bake and zucchini and capsicum.

Tuesday.  Ok sleep.  Spent most of the day doing further proxy cleanup and tweaking.  David has now booked his flights and the hotels for our cruise next year.  But on the same day I got an email from the cruise company noting that my credit card has expired.  I literally started feeling queasy and anxious about having to deal with them yet again.  We still need to swap out Stu for David.  I don't think I can deal with the stress of that, might need to delegate that job.

So this is what I mean about the negative discolouration.  The top sheet is from May 1983.  It has a bit of a peach tint to it, so the scans come out a little green.  The bottom sheet is from December 1994.  It's very blue, so the scans come out bright yellow.  Very upsetting.  Means I'm going to need to keep the prints for some of these when Mum carks it, because they are in better condition than the negatives. I wonder if Fuji has fared any better over the years (pretty sure she switched to Fuji at some point).

Also.  Petrol!

Wednesday.  Proxy stuff.  Again.  Brisket with veggies, with some spinach Stu cooked for dinner.  Finished labelling all 719 Victoria photos ready for the blog.  Started culling other bits and pieces, like motels, flowers, bugs and other stuff.  They will have separate new posts other than the daily posts. 

Thursday.  Couldn't get to sleep til way past midnight :(  Another proxy day. 

Oh no, not again.  We need to give Coles a bowl of petunias.

Caught up on the whisky night from last week (Neil still had some of everything!).  Not doing it on the main night meant I also got to get them all at once so I could compare and contrast them (normally there wouldn't be enough glasses to do this).  Only half shots of all these!!

Dinner was no-carb pizza.  An idea I got from Jeff at work.  Basically you just skip the base and have a cheese pizza.  OMFG it was so good!!!

Friday.  Still working on proxies.  Stumpy kept me company for a whole hour in the morning.  My butt was getting sore by the end of it!

Had lunch at Herbert's with a couple of Chrises, a Wello, a Tony and a Glenda.  I had the pot pie this time.

Tv dinner for dinner and then watched Sleepless in Seattle.  Which was a given after seeing An Affair to Remember last week.

Saturday.  Woke up at 4am and didn't really get much sleep after that.  Did a Coles run in the morning.

Then spent most of the rest of the day trying to get organised.  I wanted to see if the travel insurance I got in November last year would cover covid hospitalisation.  According to the PDS it probably doesn't, because I had no choice but to get it because I had a credit that needed using up by December 1.  Turns out literally five days later they changed it to include covid cover.  So then I had to email them to see if I'll be covered.  Because I certainly don't want to have to get a whole new policy.  If I did I certainly wouldn't be giving THEM any more of my money.  But it also meant I couldn't do much else holiday-wise until it's sorted. 

In my scanning during the week there were a couple of frames that scanned with mostly the correct colour balance because they were taken in caves with pure black.  Which meant pure clear on the negative.  So the scanner software kinda got the colour balance right.  So I was able to redo two whole rolls by putting the frames in those three slots.  But it was super tedious.  Salmon and cabbage for dinner, then episode three of Obi-Wan Kenobi.  Then we watched The Constant Gardener.  It was pretty good.  Except for Justin's scenes in his Nairobi house that just had *too* much of a green colour shift.  The colour just looked wrong.  Made it look like he was back in London, when he wasn't.

Sunday.  Breakfast with Tony at Little Oink.  Just me though, the sweetie wasn't feeling it.  

Then a walk up Mount Painter (the sweetie would definitely not have liked that haha).

Government House

Woden and the Arboretum

How ugly is this epic monstrosity of a car park at the Arboretum?  All pay parking too.  I feel like I should avoid the place on principle.

Denman Prospect and Mount Stromlo

Whitlam

Belconnen

Then it was continued trying to keep up with life.  Put some black plastic sheeting the plumbers left behind over the periwinkle next to the lemon tree.  Hoping it'll mostly kill it.  Continued fighting with the scanner and negatives.  Even using the "correct" colour balance settings with the three frames that got it mostly right, the scans were still coming out bright yellow.  Very upsetting.  Also tidying emails and attachments, paying bills etc.  Then cooking All The Food for the next few days.

Sunday. 26th.  Backdating this on account being out the Sunday evening this was due.

Starting with the epic blue cheese potato bake I made.  I hated blue cheese for the longest time, but having it cooked adds such a wonderful savoury flavour.

Monday.  Went to bed nice and early, but then hurty kept me awake from 3-5 :(  Spent all day documenting proxy policies.  Leftover pork ribs and vegies for dinner.  Labelled 160 Victoria photos.  Then watched Martin Bashir's Diana interview, which in twenty five years I've never actually seen.  

Tuesday.  Took a while to get to sleep - feet were cold.  Didn't achieve anything much useful all day.  Too many problems and people talking to me.  Labelled another 100 or so photos.  Then watched "The Diana Interview: Revenge of a Princess 2021" which was a documentary about the interview mentioned previously.  

Wednesday.  Slept ok.  Did a bunch of test proxy cleaning.  Then dealing with more problems.  Leftovers from the club for dinner (which Stu was decidedly unimpressed with).  I might have had a sad.  Labelled another hundred photos.  Then watched Epstein's Shadow: Ghislaine Maxwell (part of it anyway, finished it later).  After seeing Filthy Rich I'm so glad they went after her too.

Thursday.  Took ages to get to sleep.  Had a good morning doing proxy stuff.  Optus had a Very Bad Day in the afternoon, cutting work off from the world.  I hadn't gone into the office on account of all the covid floating around, so had a couple of drinks with the sweetie in the evening, including my own little whisky tasting, on account of missing the work one.

We watched the first episode of Obi-wan Kenobi which wasn't bad.  Then I watched The Man from Snowy River.  Such a glorious Australian film.  Don't think I've seen it in years though.

Friday.  More proxy work.  Made "special fried rice" for dinner which was qute nice.  Then watched An Affair to Remember.  I've been wanting to see this movie for ages because of its references in Sleepless in Seattle.  I probably should have not wasted a couple of hours of my life on it.  It was pretty silly.  And dumb.  Like Ken is the sweetest guy ever, even standing by her and taking care of her even though she admitted an affair and wanted to leave him.  Why would you give up someone like that to run off with someone who's a playboy and has already proven his willingness to cheat and run off with someone else??  Stoopid.  But what was funny about it was they agreed to meet on July 1st.  Which just so happened to be the night we watched it.  Synchronicity!

Saturday.  Tried to tidy the pantry in the morning because we keep losing stuff in there.  Then did some food shopping at the markets and chemist.

Yikes!

Stu was sad the markets fish is in pieces (I think this thing was in the Sydney 2000 Olympics opening ceremony).  They might still be planning to put it back.

Then spent most of the rest of the day cooking.  hrmm.  Put on a brisket first, then made up a breakfast lasagna for the sweetie, and also cooked up a bunch of chicken.  And all the veggies.  

These things are so good - just cream cheese and fried bacon bits rolled in chives.  So simple but so tasty!  Had to hide them so the sweetie wouldn't eat them all ;)

Breakfast lasagna I made for the sweetie

Brisket and veggies for dinner.  I might have served myself way too much meat.  Whoops.

Watched A Clockwork Orange in the evening.  Strange strange movie.  Although not as disturbing as the book apparently.

Sunday.  A bit of fish stuff, but mostly Lego counting and scanning.  Scanning is being problematic now.  I'm getting through more rolls because I'm not scanning everything in them.  But it does mean it's more hands on which I don't have the time for during the day (when doing a whole roll you stick two sheets in at a time and come back half an hour later to swap them out.  But I don't really have time to sit and choose which ones to scan and swap them out more often).  The other problem is that the negatives from 1994 have started to go very blue.  Which means they scan bright yellow.  hrmmm.

Finally got to try out drinks at The Howling Moon, a lovely rooftop bar with great views at sunset.

Oh yes, there were noms - olives (unfortunately not pitted) and arancini balls

Tried for dinner at Bentspoke but it was *packed* - don't come the first night of school holidays!!

So ended up at Mr Shabu Shabu

Couldn't be stuffed blogging when I got home, and then the week kicks in and it's all too hard... 

Thursday.  16th.  Fairly uneventful drive up to Sydney.  Stopped at Weemeeraa Lookout to see Lake George full of water.  Also at Sutton Forest for a loo break and some morning tea.

Got to Mum's just after 12:00.  Had some lunch (bubble and squeak), then setup her new printer (which didn't come with a USB cable, so had to use her old one), and had a bit of a look at our itinerary for Italy.

Later in the afternoon we took a train into Central.  OMFG I HATE people!  The train was full of noisy Caringbah high school kids not wearing masks (they all got off at Hurstville then it was quieter).  

Then took a tram up to Star City.  Again with people not wearing masks.  #grunt.  The tram took *forever*.  I swear it would have been quicker to walk from Town Hall.  We arrived pretty early, so found the restaurant then wandered down to the harbourfront.

I wanted to go to one of the bars and have a drink (to be more relaxed meeting a whole bunch of strangers) but nothing opened til 17:00.  Sigh.  So had to meet people sober which was pretty stressful.  Dinner was at Cucina Porto.  I had crumbed veal which was quite nice.

The lemon sgroppino was also very nice

It was nice to meet Kellie's family, although mostly ended up talking to her Mum's friend Annette.

So that was all nice enough, but we had to wait for Kim and Laila (Kim couldn't get off work til late) and by the time they'd ordered and then had to reorder (because their first pizza was undercooked) and then everyone (not me! ha) got dessert it was getting really damned close to 19:00 and I was getting epic stressed because theatres often don't let you in if you're even a minute late and I had visions of us missing a chunk of the show.  Everyone had to rush through their dessert so we could race across the way to the theatre and we sat down literally at 19:00.  I was not happy.  Just sayin.  But it all worked out in the end, and the show started a few minutes late anyway, and it was actually pretty awesome!  It was somewhat different to the Disney movie, but it seems it was probably more similar to the first couple of books.  They had a bit of a singalong of Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious which was a lot of fun, and I maintain that Mum was singing louder than me during the other bits ;)  (Mum wasn't *quite* surprised, on account of her friends guessed for her what the surprise might be)

After the show a bunch of the group wandered off to find a convenience store and I NEEDED to get home to sleep, so decided we should walk to Town Hall rather than waiting fifteen minutes for the next light rail.  They did all come back just as we were about to leave so did get to say goodbye.  

'

We walked right onto a Waterfall train at Town Hall, and definitely got home earlier than if we'd taken the light rail.  But bed time was nearly midnight.

Friday.  17th.  Slept ok but still woke up at 6:30.  Because that's what I do.  We decided we'd drive to go see my flat, because a few years ago the RETARDS at Transport NSW decided that you can't get a direct train to Kogarah anymore (NFI why) so it was going to take an hour by public transport or less than half an hour by car (even in peak hour traffic).  We ended up getting there pretty early so went for a walk around the block.  Then we waited for the real estate agent to turn up.  When she hadn't by 9:05 I called them and hassled them and then had to wait while they tracked her down.  Meanwhile the tenant is waiting for us so she could go into work.  Eventually (like twenty minutes late) the real estate agent turned up, spent most of the time on her phone, I think said "apologies" once, and we got to go in.  The tenant is quite lovely and the flat is fine.  But pissed that we were so late because of the agent. 

Took Mum home then hopped on a train into the city.  Found a sign that says that masks are in fact still required on public transport, but Transport NSW is doing NOTHING to enforce it.  The train trip was horrendous - again people not wearing masks, and some guy making an absolute racket on his phone.  I hate people SO MUCH!!!!

Met up with Tony at Central.  

Had a light lunch at the Great Southern Hotel

Took a tram from Central to Circular Quay.  Had my mind BLOWN that all of George Street is now trams-only and no cars!!  Such a bizarre thing to see!!  (and I didn't even get any photos!)

We got to Circular Quay thinking we might go to Cockatoo Island, but OMFG Transport NSW information is ABYSMAL.  Other than an electronic "which wharf?" sign there was no details whatsover at the wharf about timing of ferries to Cockatoo Island. 

Transport NSW information is so bad, they literally have laminated A4 printouts telling you to go find a human to talk to

So (after waiting to see if the next Manly Ferry that came in was a Freshwater class ferry (they're retiring them but I thought a couple might still be running)) we abandoned that idea and headed for the Harbour Bridge Pylon. 

Anti-vehical barricades - looks nasty if you try to drive over them!

Chips on a Stick truck!!  I wanted to get one of these, but they weren't open in the afternoon and later I was way too exhausted and wanted to go home.

So on the way to the pylon we looked up their website and they close at 14:00.  WTF??  It was about 13:20 at that point and wouldn't be worth the $19 to get just a quick view and no time in the museum so abandoned that idea and went back to Circular Quay.  

Talked to a human at Circular Quay and got a bit of info and caught a ferry to Cockatoo Island (which I'll save for another post).  

Got back to Circular Quay and took a train to Central.  Had some drinks at the Covent Garden Hotel, then met up with Mum at Super Bowl for Peking Duck!  I haven't been there since the last time I was there with @StuartCRyan at the end of 2014, but nothing had changed and the Peking Duck was amazing (and Mum enjoyed it too - she'd never had it before!! *gasp*).

After dinner we did Vivid, which I'll save for another post.  Another night of getting to bed after midnight.   *sigh*.

Saturday.  18th.  Slept ok but still woke up 6:30.  Because that's what I do.  Picked up Tony at Sutherland and headed out to Ansto.  I'll save that for another post too.

Got lunch at Maccas drive through at Menai, then came home, via a quick stop at Sublime Point and Lake George.

I think this is the fire at Bluescope Steel

LAKE George!

It was *so awesome* to get home to the sweetie, we sooo just want a quiet life.  Chicken Kiev for dinner and then a super early night.

Sunday.  5th.  Leftover photos from last week..

Slow roasted a couple of punnets of tomatoes.  So awesome!  (just a bit of olive oil, salt, pepper, and maybe mixed herbs, can't remember)

Dinner was beef cheeks and a heap of roasted veggies

Monday.  6th.  Slept ok.  Ok day, thinking about more cleaning and upgrading.

Tuesday.  Got up to find I'd left a big pillar candle burning all night 😱  The monitors were still in standby too (not off) so obviously I'd been planning to go back.. just never actually did.  Scary!! 

Then the fun began.  The plumbers came in the morning to dig up the front foot path to get at the blocked pipe beneath it.  

So the horizontal pipe was completely full of roots.  But below this is concrete pipe which is in a poorly state.  And the bottom of it is filled with grout from tilers washing their buckets out probably thirty years ago.  Or maybe more.  Possibly from when the house was built (because how would they do it otherwise when it was all sealed up??).

Otherwise a cleaning planning day.  Stumpy was playing peekaboo.  Leftover beef cheeks for dinner.

Wednesday.  The plumbers came back and declared war on the stair case so they could completely re-lay the pipe.  They stopped when the concrete saw died.

Stu cooked tomato-mince-gnocchi for dinner which wasn't as tasty as the one he did the other week, but was still nice because I didn't have to cook :)  

Also, our front left stove element has died (it died while I was cooking on the weekend, and confirmed dead tonight).  Sad times.  Not sure how hard it will be to find/replace the element, vs buying a whole new stove.  Hmmmm.  Victoria photo culling in the evening.  

Thursday.  Plumbers finished ripping out the stairs and dug dug dug a massive trench by the side of the house.

Worked from home in the morning, but went into the office (via crowdedest Chemist Warehouse visit ever) in the afternoon.  Pizza for dinner.

Friday.  Azure training all day.  The plumbers rendered the wall (since the concrete in the bricks had disintegrated to the point of allowing all the blocked up water to flow right into the bin area). 

Slow cooked honey rosemary chicken for dinner (which will be in a separate post.  One day.).  Then we had to watch Top Gun.  For reasons which will become apparent eventually.

Saturday.  In at work in the morning for load testing.  Then Lego inventorying all afternoon.  Later in the afternoon I felt like I might be getting sick - slight sore throat and cough.  Stu had had an immune reaction on Monday but then had been ok for a couple of days, but Thursday/Friday he was a little congested in the evenings, and moreso on Saturday afternoon.  hmmm.  Leftover beef cheeks for dinner, then we watched The Monuments Men which was actually quite a bit of fun.  Very fictionalised but still pretty cool what they did.

Sunday.  I actually felt better but the sweetie felt worse.  So he took a RAT - which was very clearly negative - which was a relief.  Pretty much just Lego all day again.  Cooked slow cooked pork ribs and roast veggies for dinner (for which I used my brisket wet/dry rubs with the addition of a bit of apple cider vinegar and garlic powder).

The sweetie went back to his uni work (to finish his last essay, maybe for his last uni subject forever.. maybe..) so I watched Pride and Prejudice (the Keira Knightley version) which wasn't too bad.  One of these days I might read the book.

Monday.  Today.  Did a few house things in the morning.  Setup an app password so Eudora can backup my Gmail.  Then spent the entire rest of the day culling photos and blogging.  I only managed three blog entries out of all of that.  What an exhausting day.  

Monday.  25th. Spent all morning trying to catch up with life and blogging.  Feeling completely overwhelmed at life (even had a bit of a meltdown after blogging (which finished way after lunch) because it was all too hard).  Worked on Eurasia panoramas and got some online.  Cooked a lamb roast with veggies for dinner.  We opened a *very* nice bottle of wine we got at the end of 2012 for our anniversary.  Then Simpsons/Black Books/The Crown.  Also started into the fourth season of Lego Masters.  Had to LOL at the Andrew and Crystal couple (names of my cousin and wife who have since split up).  

We had tardigrades for dinner!!

Tuesday.  Woke up to stress over cruise (the one we put off).  They want us to use the credit so got plunged into the stress of it again.  Ok day.  Nothing special for our anniversary because Stu had uni til quite late.  

Wednesday.  Stress over cruise.  They refused to allow us to use the credit for 2024, forcing us to use it for 2023.  *sigh*.  Ok day.  At the office.  Felt like a Thursday.  Stu cooked pork larb for dinner with some limes from Tim and chilli from Tony.  Continued to stress over cruise.

Thursday.  Ok day.  Pretty quiet drinks.  Picked up some CCs on the way home and had cheesy nachos for dinner.  OMFG the most unhealthiest dinner in the history of the universe but *so good*.  Finished season 23 of The SImpsons.

Friday.  Playing with logs all day.  Was actually kinda fun.  Leftover lamb and veggies for dinner.  Watched Encanto in the evening which was pretty decent.  Nice story and the graphics are spectacular.  

Saturday.  House stuff in the morning.  Stressed over the cruise to the point of depression.  To get a balcony like we had last time would cost us another $1500 USD, which I'm simply not prepared to give them.  I would NEVER EVER EVER EVER deal with this company again.  I was almost at the point of saying F#$% you and walking away from what we've already paid.  The best I can afford with our credit is a window (not a balcony) with an obstructed view.  After tidying up the house and study I thought I'd start inventorying what was left of Vic's Lego.  I had a poke around to see what was available, and one that looked really good was Basebrick.  Except they said they'd send an email to verify the account.  Except that email never arrived.  *sigh*.  So more "everything is awful".  So I started inventorying in excel in the interim.  Sichuan Chinese for dinner then watched The Death of Stalin .. which was.. intersesting.. heh

Sichuan Chinese - Kung pow chicken (lots of chilli so lots of pow), sliced pork twice cooked in green pepper (yummm), stir fry mixed vegetables, with sichuan special fried rice

Sunday.  Woke up early (between 5:30-6:00 is normal now).  Remembered the planets and went and had a look.  This morning Jupiter and Venus were having a sneaky early morning kiss.  I couldn't be stuffed finding the tripod and going outside in the cold, so just did some hand-held photos.  This is off the phone.  Haven't downloaded the camera yet.

Went out fairly early and had breakfast at Market St eats.  I had "Potato Fritters" - potato and cheese fritters, poached eggs, maple glazed bacon, hollandaise, chorizo, pickled cucumber & onion salsa.  Which was really really good.  The poached eggs were perfect, the fritter was delicious.  It was just like eggs benedict but with a croquette instead of bread.  Although the salsa was basically just some chopped red onion.  Kept me going til dinner time ;)

Then we did food shopping and had to wait for Chemist Warehouse being buttheads.  We both put our orders in early while still at home before their opening time.  They open at 9:00.  I got my SMS at 9.39.  We went and picked mine up at 10:30.  They said Stu's order was still in the queue and would be another "ten minutes".  We waited and waited and eventually he went in and was able to pick his up at 10:55.  He got his sms at 11:15.  Absolutely ridiculous that it takes ALL MORNING for them to be organised enough to do an online order.  If it wasn't for the fact that they're *significantly* cheaper than anywhere else we certainly wouldn't bother with them.  

Came home and did Lego inventorying, then music then weeding then fish stuff and suddenly it's 4pm and I need to do All The Cooking.  Which I'll save for later posts and sign off for now.

Monday.  18th.  (Not backdating).  Yay for catchup days.  Pretty good sleep.  Went into battle with my computer trying to get the scanner and GPS to work.  Neither do in windows 11.  The GPS won't work in windows 11 because it complains the driver is no good.  Transystem hasn't put out any new software/drivers in years which is pretty upsetting.  So had to get the dam trip GPS off on my laptop.  Now dreading what will happen if something happens to the laptop and I have to replace it.  I'll have to find an alternative to my little PhotoMate 887 which is one of the best inventions in history.  Was also fighting with the scanner which fricken USED TO WORK in windoze 11, but just stopped one day.  I've yet to reconnect it up to my old computer to test it.  Hate Microsoft.  Hate hate hate.  Did some weeding, and a magpie came right up to where I was working to see if I'd disturbed any bug noms for it.  Very cool.  Potted some geranium cuttings.  In the afternoon we tidied up the shelves in our bedroom cupboard that had been getting messier and messier.  Did a water change in the upstairs two foot for the first time in forever (there's always babies in that tank I'm worried about sucking up).  Then got frustrated yet again with Apple because it dropped out while downloading my photos and refused to show up in windows afterwards.  Was thinking I was going to have to reboot my computer.  It certainlly meant I couldn't blog the previous week.  Hate Apple.  Hate hate hate.  Then cooked all the food.  I prepped a chicken marbella from Not Quite Nigella, cooked some mince/bacon/onion/garlic, and we had salmon and cabbage for Monday night's dinner.  Then we watched the first episode of The Crown which was pretty good.  Got pretty stressed out about having to go back to work.  Even four day weekends are just not enough time to get everything *done*.  Eventually managed to reconnect to the phone and was able to download photos, but bed time so no blogging.

Was digging under the old pool and found all this steel reinforcing.  Maybe to stop slippage of the pool???

Tuesday.  Slept ok until hurty kept me awake half the night.  Ok day trying to catch up on stuff.  Then demoing stuff to peeps and trying to deal with all the stoopid.  It was a wine and candle kind of a night.  Also made the chicken marbella which was nice enough but a little watery.  

Wednesday.  Woke up for a while a couple of times.  Was sick of the stoopid by 8:40.  Fairly busy day prepping a firewall migration and prepping rules for a big project.  Did some music, then did a red curry with mushrooms, asian greens and leftover sausages.  Did some work on Eurasia panoramas but still no blogging.  

Thursday.  Another busy day, and a tonne of interruptions and meetings.  Did a firewall migration after lunch which took all of ten minutes (including testing) and was one of the most anticlimactic changes I've ever done.  Pretty quiet drinks.  Tried McCains frozen pizzas which weren't really any better than Spar.  Need to stick with Dominos or Dr Oetker (Doc Oc/Dr Octopus).

Friday.  Finished prepping a big ruleset, and even managed to deploy them the same afternoon which was good.  Had a craving for mac and cheese for lunch.  Lazy Su pickup for dinner and watched third episode of Gunther's Anatomy.

Saturday.  Basically got ready then Damien came over.  We chatted for ages, had frozen spring rolls and chips for lunch, then played Jaws in the afternoon.  After playing for a little while we put the movie on in the background (because I don't seem to have the soundtrack).  Stu has never actually seen it?!?!  Will have to watch it properly with him some time.  Damien and I played Brody/Hooper/Quint, and Stu played Jaws.  Stu got a really good start, pretty much totally evading us and getting lots of points for act 2.  But somehow we managed to survive and Quint finished him off with the machete.  Just as the movie was finished, amazing timing.  As soon as Damien left we both collapsed in a heap - seven hours of socialising is super super draining, who knew.  Had sausages and cabbage for dinner, then Simpsons, Black Books and second episode of The Crown.

I actually spent cash that day too - to get the shiny on the right here.  And in the same change got all four head designs of the Queen.

Sunday.  Went and climbed Mt Rogers, did some music practise, did some cleaning, and filled the green bin.  And suddenly the morning was gone.  Went to the markets after lunch to get some fresh veggies, came home and cooked some Anzac biscuits and prepped dinner.  And suddenly the afternoon was gone.  Sigh.  Jenn came over for dinner (a cheese and spinach burek we found at the markets) and then we played Carcassonne which I won.  Was going to have an early night, but then Stu tried to print something.  It did a whole lot quite happily, then went back to jamming in the same place at every damned page.  So got super cranky about the whole thing.

I nearly rage quit at one point because the pantry is so full of crap I can't get at anything without everything all falling over

Unfortunately these were a bit dry

Burek and veggies dinner

Monday.  Got a reminder to go look at planets.  Because I was awake, I did.  It was actually worth getting up for, with the moon, Saturn, Mars, Venus and Jupiter very obvious (although not so much in the resized photo).  I'll take peoples' word for it for Neptune and Pluto.

Then it was all morning trying to catch up on photos and blogging.  Yet again, even with a long weekend I'm struggling to keep up with life.  Stop the world I want to get off.