As is recent tradition, it being the first of the month, people didn't show up for dinner. In fact none of the offspring or spouses were there, only two of the (little) kids (although not so little - Thomas turned 9 yesterday - truly frightening), and Brad. Which actually was kinda cool, cause Brad works with aeroplanes and always talks about cool stuff.

Last night I trekked out to visit the little brother and my soon-to-be sister in law. We watched a couple of episodes of Knight Rider - it really was a terrible show! Then the South Park movie, which was just plain silly (but then I've never watched any South Park), then the Stepford Wives, which was ok.

In between I shopped, tidied, and sorted lego.

Stolen from Yvonne:

1. What time did you get up this morning? 8am (I know, on a Sunday, shocking!)
2. Diamonds or pearls? Diamonds
3. What was the last film you saw at the cinema? Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
4. What is your favourite TV show? The Mole or The Amazing Race
5. What did you have for breakfast? Beef two minute noodles. I normally have cereal but ran out of milk
6. What is your middle name? The
7. What is your favorite cuisine? Meat! I know that's not a quisine, but anything with meat in it is usually good ;)
8. What foods do you dislike? Blue cheese, anchovies, really spicy food, smooth foods like pumpkin, sweet potato, avacado; onion, brussel sprouts, olives
9. What is your favorite chip flavour? Cheese
10. What is your favourite CD at the moment? Don't really have one
11. What kind of vehicle do you drive? A ford laser
12. Favourite sandwich? Maybe tuna. Don't eat sandwiches anymore - got sick of them in high school. If you count subway as sandwiches, then a pizza sub :)
13. What characteristics do you despise? Rudeness, lack of care
14. Favourite item of clothing? er, my jeans maybe?
15. If you could go anywhere in the world on vacation, where would you go? Europe
16. What colour is your bathroom? Blue paint, white tiles on the walls, red-brown tiles on the floor
17. What colour pants are you wearing? Blue jeans
18. Where would you retire to? Dunno. Probably somewhere in the country if Stu has his way :)
19. Favourite time of the day? Sunset
20. What was your most memorable birthday? I remember my 16th birthday being a thoroughly awful day
21. Where were you born? Sydney Australia
22. What�s the last thing you ate? A sausage for lunch
23. If you were a crayon, what color would you be? Dunno. Red maybe, because they always ran out first.
24. Favorite flower? Sunflowers.. or carnations
25. What fabric detergent do you use? Cold power I think, I just get refills
26. Coke or Pepsi? Vanilla coke
27. Do you wish on stars? No
28. What is your shoe size? Well that all depends. I used to mainly be a 6, but now more often than not it's 7. Except in kids which I bought a pair of 5s the other day but they are too big. Bowling I think I am a 4 and ice skating 5.
29. Do you have any pets? Lots of tropical fish
30. Last person you talked to on the phone? My mummy, organising Christmas stuff
31. What did you want to be when you were little? For a while I thought I could be an artist cause I was good at drawing (pfft), then when I discovered flying I wanted to be an airline stewardess (pfft yeah like that would have been the job for me, but I didn't know you could be a pilot if you were a girl), and a pilot in high school (wanted to join the airforce where they pay you to learn to fly, except I would have been too short and my eyesight was too bad). Thoroughly jealous of Yvonne who was given flying lessons by her mother and actually became a pilot. And then she let it go :(
32. What are you meant to be doing now? Cleaning cockroach crap out of the flat before Stu gets here
33. What do you first notice about someone? Hair/skin/smile
34. Siblings? A little brother
35. What was your favourite toy as a child? Cutie!
36. Summer or winter? Spring! Oh wait, that's not on the list. Um. I like all the extra daylight of summer, but not the heat
37. Hugs or Kisses? Both :) Although hugs are a bit more universal
38. Chocolate or vanilla? Vanilla in most circumstances
39. Who is most likely to respond? Dunno. Richard and Dennis always used to be up for a good meme, but they don't blog much anymore :(
40. Who is least likely to respond? Yvonne, since I got it off her :)
41. Living arrangements? Apartment/flat
42. When was the last time you cried? Friday morning
43. What is under your bed? My old single bed until it ever gets taken away to the parents
44. How many countries have you visited? New Zealand, USA (x3), Canada
45. In how many cities have you lived? Just the one (Sydney)
46. Favourite movie of all time? Always changing, but Labyrinth and Peter Pan were both long time favourites
47. Mountains or beach? Mountains probably, especially if they have snow on them :)
48. The current friend you have known the longest? Luc probably (over ten years now). Maybe Fran although don't see much of her anymore, even though we work in the same faculty.
49. Full names of your potential kids? I'm not having kids. If I do it'll be because God is laughing at me.
50. Usual bedtime? 11pm

Actually I saw this meme from Karla, thought I'd do it, noticed there was stuff missing from it, googled it for other versions, found more, and found the Chinese whispers effect that memes undergo. People change little bits to suit themselves. So now I'm merging two together. The other is from here.

10 Favorites.

1. Favorite Color: Aqua
   
2. Favorite Food: Roast Pork
   
3. Favorite Song: hrm tough one. Maybe Pressure by Billy Joel, We Didn't Start the Fire by Billy Joel, Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen, Ray of Light by Madonna.. lots though
   
4. Favorite Movie: Also variable. Labyrinth and Peter Pan were both long time favourites.
   
5. Favorite Sport: er. not really into sports.
   
6. Favorite Season: Spring
   
7. Favorite Day Of the Week: Saturday
   
8. Favorite Ice Cream Flavor: Mint
   
9. Favorite Alcoholic Drink: Baileys
   
10. Favorite Word: Antidisestablishmentarianism. Or Mystical.
    

9 Currents.

1. Current Mood: Light
   
2. Current Taste: Cointreau
   
3. Current Clothes: Jeans and a t-shirt
   
4. Current Desktop Picture: Stu!
   
5. Current Hair Color: blonde
   
6. Current Time: 19:54
   
7. Current Surroundings: my study
   
8. Current Annoyance(s): lazy neighbors that dump rubbish *in front of* the bins
   
9. Current Craving: mmmm stu ;)
   

8 Firsts.

1. First Best Friend: Donna Bonnefin, from Kindy to about year 2. Then she dumped me for Kerry Williams.
   
2. First Kiss: Charles, at the National Science Summer School in Canberra in 1991. I've never seen him since.
   
3. First Screen Name: Kazza
   
4. First Pet: Bluey, a budgie, I got for my 7th birthday
   
5. First Piercing: my ears, in 1988
   
6. First Crush: dunno. Maybe Mr Jirsa my maths teacher in year 7
   
7. First CD: the Labyrinth soundtrack (I didn't actually own a cd player at the time)
   
8. First Car: a brown 1984 Ford Laser. It was kidnapped and murdered in 2001.
   

7 Lasts.

1. Last Cigarette: Never had one :)
   
2. Last alcoholic beverage: Cointreau, just now
   
3. Last Car Ride: well my drive home from work just now. Last time I was in a car and someone else was driving was on the way home the other night and Stu drove my car for a bit.
   
4. Last Kiss: Stu on Tuesday night
   
5. Last Movie Seen: at the movies would have been Serenity
   
6. Last Phone Call: some telemarketer when I got home tonight
   
7. Last CD played: my cd player is on random, but the last cd I put in a player and played all the way through was Symphony No 3 by Camille Saint-Saens
   

6 Have You Evers.

1. Have You Ever Dated One Of Your Best Friends: well no, although the person I've dated has *become* my best friend
   
2. Have You Ever Broken the Law: yes
   
3. Have You Ever Been Arrested: no
   
4. Have You Ever Skinny Dipped: yes
   
5. Have You Ever Been on TV: yes, a few times
   
6. Have You Ever Been in love: yes
   

5 Things.

1. 5 Things You're Wearing: jeans, t-shirt, glasses, underwear, shoes (soon to be removed)
   
2. 5 Things You Did Yesterday: went to work, blogged, talked to Stu, watched a very cool episode of House, watched some scary medical shows
   
3. 5 Things You Can't Live Without: Stu, the internet, my computer (or *a* computer), food/drink/air, God
   
4. 5 Things You Can Hear Right Now: the tv (Survivor), fish tanks bubbling and powering, the keyboard, my feed reader bleeping, crickets or cicadas outside
   
5. 5 Things You Do When Your bored: Use the internet, play puzzle type games, clean my flat, watch videos, play my recorder(s)
   

4 Places You've Been To.

1. America (3 times)
   
2. Canada
   
3. New Zealand
   
4. lots of places in Australia
   

3 People You Can Tell *Almost* Anything To (in no particular order).

1. Stu
   
2. Luc
   
3. James
   

2 Choices.

1. Black or White: White
   
2. Hot or Cold: Cold
   

1 Wish.

1. That I could fly :)
   

This was in my TopStuff blog, but I'm nuking it, so moving it here.

Just a few of my favourite things :)
This was compiled from stacks of online quizzes, and then sorted into some sort of category order.

1. Renewal:: library book
2. Someone to talk to:: Peter
3. Count:: Dracula
4. Expiration:: dying
5. Upload:: file
6. Publish:: website
7. Holy:: communion
8. Change in the air:: spring
9. Titillating:: boobies
10. Glorious:: day

Stolen shamlessly from SMH, although I'm quite sure they weren't the first to use it..

There is meta-whingeing and there is micro-whingeing, and it seems to me that most of the frustration reported to Heckler falls into the latter category. I would like to complain about the low standard of whingeing and move to the new level where we can complain about the essential nature of life itself.

The key problem with the human condition is that it ends badly - we die. If you're not a believer, there's not that much to look forward to.

What can we do about it? It's obvious, really. Simply reverse the cycle of life and die first. That gets a somewhat risky and uncertain experience out of the way and, as any good Buddhist will tell you, an awareness of the reality of death contributes to objectivity and inner harmony.

A key religious issue is overcome. We can't be sent to hell because we haven't had time to do anything wrong yet. The only downside is that we may have to wear the cost of the funeral.

Now we are old. We live in a retirement village where our every need is supplied. During this time our health improves, as does our temperament. Soon we are kicked out of the retirement village because we are too young; we spend time on a golf course; we are given a gold watch and sent to work where we can actually use it.

Those of us of a certain age know that a prosthesis is never quite as good as the real thing. With the reverse lifecycle model, as the years pass we get the opportunity to thoughtfully dispose of various prosthetic items we no longer need such as dentures, hearing aids and spectacles.

We work for 40 years; growing younger and younger each year and forced to accept less and less responsibility until eventually we become far too immature for gainful employment.

In relationships, we start with a messy divorce but things gradually improve. We soon find ourselves enjoying a large house, three cars, a compliant companion and even, briefly, some passion.

During this time, irritating, expensive teenage offspring become cheaper, better behaved, eventually cute and finally not at all.

Education begins with a degree and a huge debt that progressively reduces, terminating at the end of three years of fun. We party and drink lots of alcohol - an ideal preparation for sexual experimentation. How much better our first sex would be if only we had been more experienced.

Life goes on, and just when it seemed it couldn't get any better than this, we enter our school years, where we spend more and more time playing and less time learning until it's all play and we get to sing silly songs.

Our parents start to dote on us. They lavish more and more attention on us until it is eventually time for us to return to the womb.

Where does it all end? Well after nine blissful months floating, there's a fair chance we could finish our lives in one gigantic orgasm. And at last life makes some kind of sense.

1. What did you do in 2004 that you'd never done before?
   Met someone whose blog I read
2. Did you keep your new year's resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
   This year I made up a Bible reading plan that I managed to stick to, for the first time ever. I read the entire New Testament and a third of the Old Testament. For next year I'll be continuing my effort to be more relaxed and happy
3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
   Yep, Jodi at work
4. Did anyone close to you die?
   No
5. What countries did you visit?
   USA and Canada
6. What would you like to have in 2005 that you lacked in 2004?
   A boyfriend
7. What date(s) from 2004 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
   Probably the 16th May, which was when we left for the USA (the day is also the anniversary of when I settled this place, and my friends got married, and I hooked up with Vic, and my brother moved into his place).
8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
   Probably switching over to w2k3/active directory
9. What was your biggest failure?
   File server disaster, with a corrupted file system and hours of down time
10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
    I got sick twice, once probably from some old cheese, not sure about the other time. No flus which was awesome. Only real injury was a snowboarder wiping me out at the snow
11. What was the best thing you bought?
    My Sony DSC-F828 camera
12. Whose behaviour merited celebration?
    um..
13. Whose behaviour made you appalled and depressed?
    Probably my father's
14. Where did most of your money go?
    On the trip to the USA
15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
    Probably the trip to the USA :)
16. What song will always remind you of 2004?
    Double Trouble
17. Compared to this time last year, are you:
    Happier or Sadder? - happier I think
    Thinner or Fatter? - much the same, maybe slightly fatter
    Richer or Poorer? - much the same, the trip to the USA kept me fairly even
    
18. What do you wish you'd done more of?
    Sleeping
19. What do you wish you'd done less of?
    Complaining
20. How will you be spending Christmas?
    This year or next year? Silly question to ask for an end of year quiz
21. Who deleted question 21?
    It wasn't me I didn't do it
22. Did you fall in love in 2004?
    If you count crushes on Jason Isaacs and Dave.. otherwise no
23. How many one-night stands?
    None
24. What was your favorite TV program?
    Survivor or ER
25. Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year?
    No
26. What was the best book you read?
    Probably Prisoner of Azkaban, although I'd read that twice before
27. What was your greatest musical discovery?
    Yvonne's keyboard
28. What did you want and get?
    A new camera
29. What did you want and not get?
    A dvd recorder
30. What was your favorite film of this year?
    Peter Pan
31. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
    Went down to me little brother's place for lunch, then went to a dance party in town. I turned 31
32. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
    A boyfriend
33. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2004?
    Jeans and a tshirt
34. What kept you sane?
    dvds
35. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
    Jason Isaacs
36. What political issue stirred you the most?
    The US election.. even more than our own federal election, go figure :)
37. Who did you miss?
    Dennis and JC, they don't post nearly as often as they used to :(
38. Who was the best new person you met?
    Dave!
39. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2004.
    um..
40. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year.
    "Something gotta go wrong cause I'm feeling way too damn good" - story of my life - whenever I'm feeling happy something will come along to make me feel grumpy

So another year over. Another year older. I spent far too long rereading this years blog entries to get highlights and lowlights of the year. Strangely there were more highlights than lowlights. The lowlights tended to be just ordinary day-to-day rants. The only big disasters I had this year were the file server disaster, where we lost files and had daytime downtime for hours; and Faiele in Italy stole a big chunk of my money on ebay, and ebay refused to help.

At work, we upgraded our domain to windows 2003 with active directory, which we managed to acheive without too many dramas. I setup quite a few servers during the year, but my favourite was later in the year when I migrated our main production notes web server to new hardware in a total of an hour and a half from pulling out of the box to being live. We also got audited while I was overseas, and felt very happy that I'd done detailed documentation for all the servers before I left, which probably saved my boss. Lunches with Jim and John became the norm this year, as it was a lot easier to coordinate four people with Luc in our office than when he was elsewhere.

My cia work mostly dried up, after they hired Nhat to take care of Gamera. He had his trial by fire shortly after he started, having to rebuild the machine in the middle of the night when there was a multiple disk failure in the raid array. The relief of me not having to stress about the box anymore was enourmous.

My lego obsession kicked into high gear this year, with the completion of the classic space lego collection, all the Harry Potter sets, tonnes of plain bricks for making mosaics (of which I made four instructed ones and four of my own design), and later in the year getting Yoda and the Imperial Star Destroyer.

I had several fish losses during the year, but didn't really replace any. I did however get a tankful of baby kribs which was very exciting.

I saw David Bowie in concert which was phenomenal. Been waiting fourteen years for the chance, and it was very moving for me. Also saw the Lion King stage show which was fantastic. Quidam was good but not as good as Alegria.

Crushes included a massive one on Jason Isaacs, a little one on Dave, and the ongoing one on Jim. No prospects of any boyfriends tho.

Three decent trips this year - a short one at Easter to my uncle's wedding in Queensland, a six week adventure to the USA and Canada, and a three day skiing trip in September. The USA trip was amazing, probably the biggest highlight of my year. I took 3800 photos and movies on my wonderful new Sony camera, which I still haven't finished sorting out!!

The weather this year went Summer, Autumn, Autumn, skipped winter, went straight onto Summer, and now Spring.

And now I have to get ready for tonight's general partying. Happy new year to everyone!! :):)

Was feeling thoroughly depressed last night and this morning over Mr Italian twat, until I was getting ready for work and looking over Diane Taurins' Jason Isaacs page, and was immensly cheered up. Go figure. Didn't dare check my webmail though in case nasty person wrote back and deflated me again. Checked when he got home and he hadn't after all. So now a night dedicated to cleaning up the flat and organising stuff for having people over tomorrow night.

Had a Christmas party today with a bunch of people that I haven't been together with in probably at least 3 years. It was this core of people that mostly used to live locally and go to the same church. Since then it's diverged somewhat, and 10 (!) offspring have been added. The reason I haven't seen several of them much in the past few years was because of something that happened when I was going through some pretty deep depression a few years ago, and two of them rejected me at the time and made me feel even lower, if that were possible. As I've said in previous entries, I have trouble with forgiveness. But I decided I would at least try, and so went along to this Christmas party, which is the first time I've been in the same place with the two of them since that time. So it was all good, I was civil, and even friendly, and basically relaxed (and a beer or two certainly didn't hurt either). Then towards the end of the party one of the girls says to me "I'd like to compliment you - you are happy and friendly blah blah blah". To which I said, well what are you comparing it to, we haven't seen each other more than twice in three years. And she's going well yes you're more happy. Ok so everything I've been trying to forget all comes back to me, and it's like, well if I wasn't happy in your presence before, it was *because* of you and the hurt you caused me. But of course I couldn't say any of that cause I'm too chicken. So I ended up grumpy and pensive after all. *sigh* I should definately have said something.

The night finished off with some of the boys playing xbox, which I was invited to play, but I had absolutely no idea about the game so gave up and left; and then to top off the night the flipping eway toll tag thingie didn't bleep cause the sticky tape died in the heat today and it fell off and I just had the thing on the dashboard. So now I have to chase that up on Monday. Just what I really didn't need.

Wow it's been 10 years (and a day) since the announcement of the winner of the bid to host the 2000 Olympics. That brings back a flood of memories. I can't believe it's been 10 years. I was at uni, and actually did a general studies project on the media coverage of the announcement. I taped a whole stack of the footage, and still have a bunch of it somewhere. The classic image of John Fahey jumping out of his seat is the first image that springs to mind.

Then there was Tanya Blencowe with her "My name is Tanya Blencowe. You may be wondering why an 11 year old girl is speaking to you to today. Well the reason is, I have a very important message for all of you, from the children of Sydney and Australia". Yikes I still remember the opening of that speech - they played it so often in the weeks afterwards. It was very sad a year later when she lost the whole top half of her house in a bushfire and lost most of her Olympics memorabilia.

ah what a classic. Must watch some of the footage again sometime.