Monday.  24th.  Slept well.  Went to go food shopping at 7am but the car wouldn't start.  We've had this happen before, and usually it comes good after a few minutes.  But this time it didn't.  We tried with both keys but no luck.  So gave up on the idea of doing any food shopping.  Later we tried both fobs, locking and unlocking it, opening/closing the boot, taking the keys *away* from the car, even disconnecting the battery for a while, but nothing worked.  Had a good day at work, deleting stuff which is always fun :)   But the more I clean, the more things I find to clean.  It's like a choose-your-own-adventure going off in tangent after tangent.  Oh I forgot to mention in last week's blog post, that the rear element of the oven is in fact working.  I have no idea what happened the other week, but the next time I tried it it worked fine.  Go figure.  Then geotagging my Victoria/South Australia 1994 photos.

Tuesday.  In the morning finished geotagging my Vic/SA photos.  At work was cleaning and writing up of what needs cleaning.  San choy bow for dinner.  Then I started geotagging Dad's Vic/SA 1994 photos.  We also finished season 20 of The Simpsons.

For Mum

Wednesday.  234 years ago some poms got off their ships a few hundred k's away so we get a day off work.  Spent literally all day geotagging photos.  Leftovers for dinner (butter chicken out of the freezer because that's Strayan surely ;) ).  Watched Sleeping With the Enemy, which I'd seen but didn't remember when (and it wasn't on the blog) but Stu remembered watching it with me.  Oh well.  

Thursday.  Random day off.  More geotagging.  Basically finished geotagging all the photos that I wanted to for this round. 

Stu called the service people about the car, they just said get it towed to them (we were going to have it serviced next week anyway).  So I was going to call the NRMA, but then the neighbours went out, and was worried we wouldn't be able to get a tow truck in with their other car in the driveway.  #grunt.  Watched Munich: Edge of War in the evening which was interesting (if fictitious).  

Made arribbiata bake for dinner (sans anchovies cause apparently we'd run out, oh well ;) )

Which do you reckon will be hotter?  The Coles one I bought the other week, or the little ones off our plant?  Hint: even after washing my hands a couple of times with soap, I could still get a burnt tongue from licking my fingers.

Friday.  Another random day off.  Awake for ages in the middle of the night stressing about All The Things.  Got cranky at Gmail cause for a while you haven't been able to search for exact phrases using quotes anymore, and it sux donkey balls.  Tony came over at 9am because he's chainsaw qualified (it's a thing! and everyone fricken should be!!) and I wanted him to chainsaw back the oak tree suckers on our big stump.  But he couldn't help himself and chopped back our hedge as well and took three trailer loads to greenwaste!  Meanwhile I hacked weeds in the front garden.  And hacked and hacked and hacked.  Suddenly it was midday and our front yard looks amazing (thanks Tony!!!!!), and I was *wasted* haha.  I didn't even take any before/after photos - I'm a slacker I know!!  But I did get some photos of him hacking at the stump.

This is one of our roses - which unusually has opened - usually they just die before opening

After lunch I called the NRMA and they sent someone out.  He took one look and said, yup, it's the battery.  And I'm like, but everything lights up like a Christmas tree, and the headlights work and and and.. but it seems this is likely the original battery (Ford branded) so would be seven and a half years old, so decided to just replace it.  And it worked!!  The car started!!  What a relief!  

Saturday.  Got up early and went and did our food shopping.  OMFG the humidity though!!  It was intense!!  Fortunately it didn't get too *hot* and in the afternoon we just ran the cooler on fan only mode.  The sweetie talked me into Chong Co for dinner (he didn't have to try hard!) and then we watched The Laundromat, which is very similar to The Big Short in terms of trying to explain some crazy finance-world events.

Sunday.  Today.  Just a day of trying to get organised really.  Went to the chemist in the arvo (although really should have left it til tomorrow morning cause it was *crowded* #grunt). 

They're taking down the mushroom!

And suddenly my little short break is over.  Sad times.

Sunday.  16th.  Had sausages and cabbage for dinner, and geotagged Mum's Tasmania photos from 1968.

Monday.  Slept ok.  Ok day, busy doing every except the one thing probably should have been doing.  But I did upgrade our master network diagram which is always fun.  Did some weeding in the afternoon (couldn't use "it's too hot" as an excuse).  Music, "filled gnocchi" for dinner.  Finished geotagging what I could of Mum's photos.  Saw a link on Blogography to Wordle so clicked through and played it (I think I might have heard/seen one or two references to it at some point in the past week or two).  This is my first ever attempt, and I got it in three goes!  This is probably not the best starting word, it was just what popped into my head.

Then after I'd done it I saw tweets from my brother *and* Jake who have also been playing it.  Synchronicity!

Tuesday.  Slept ok.  All the rain!!  But I was in a meeting during the worst of it, so forgot about clearing out the drain sump so the garage wouldn't flood.  Oops.  Wasn't too bad in the garage, but the backyard flooded again.  

Just for giggles I thought I'd try Eudora again, and this time it fricken worked and downloaded all my mail.  NFI why it didn't work before, or what made it start working.  In other windoze 11 crapfullness, "printscreen" (or alt-printscreen) no longer works.  I mean WTF??  Closest equivalent I can find is windows-shift-s which loads snippy which I can then capture a bit of the screen.  Windows 11 is a piece of crap.  And I'm still finding it super irritating that I can't drag a file onto an open application on the task bar and have it pop up so I can drag the file into the application.  I have to resize windows and have them out of the way so I can drag the file into the app.  Was super cranky about travel and everything was all too hard.  I give up.  Beer and pizza.  And Tuesday's Wordle was tricky - took all six goes!  (another not great starting word, I've since changed my strategy somewhat and start with more common letters).

Wednesday.  Couldn't get to sleep for ages, still depressed about travel.  My sneakers really started falling apart making it difficult to walk around.  These ones I bought in about 2005-2006 (while Stu was still living in Queensland).  But how am I meant to go shoe shopping without having to be around people?? 

Weeding, slide labelling and the sweetie cooked dinner (of some of the leftover mince, and cabbage and rice).

Thursday.  Couldn't get to sleep for ages again - stressing about the cruise.  Was sitting at my computer first thing in the morning pondering my shoes and decided to go into the mall to get some new ones.  I left a bit early and went to Kmart first to get some undies (I've been needing new ones for ages but haven't been shopping really at all in five months).  Then still had some time so went to Target and got an extra fitted sheet and pillow cases (which always wear out a lot faster than a flat sheet).  Then to Athlete's Foot and walked out in new shoes!  Just for giggles I went to Amcal to ask about RATs, and they had some!  So I bought a two pack (if there's any chance of us going to Tasmania we'll need to get tested before we go).  So a super successful morning, and only an hour late to work.  Had a play with deleting old domains out of our IP management tool which was a bit of fun.  

Friday.  Depressed about cruise.  Then the brother type person called - they've offered a get out of jail free card!  Can transfer credit to next year's cruise.  I'd rather go the year after, so I'll try and negotiate that, but it means we're not going to (at least for now) lose all our money!  But in not so great news, Lily has covid and is not doing well.  Ok morning, although a bit bored in the afternoon waiting for people to do stuff so I could do my stuff.  Chicken kiev for dinner and then watched Six Minutes to Midnight, which was a little far fetched, but the school was actually a real thing.  

Saturday.  Spent all morning at work doing a firewall migration, which went quite smoothly for the most part.  Then seemed to spend the afternoon not getting much done, other than sorting out some of my music.

Sunday.  Really just house bits and pieces.  Weekends are far far far too short.. hrmmm..

This afternoon has been making cheesecake (we have lemons coming out the wazoo) and photos/blogging.  And Stu put on the Hottest 100 from 2001.  I know a few of the higher (lower) numbered songs.  Have cauliflower bake and veggies in the oven to have with some lamb I dug out of the freezer.

See 2020. Rinse and repeat. Another crazy crazy year. Wondering if life will *ever* get back to any sort of normal.

Our year started out at the club with friends. It likely would have finished there too. Except Omicron. So it is going to just be the two of us for a lovely quiet night.

Life for the first seven and a half months in Canberra was actually relatively normal. Then in mid August (two days before my birthday) someone tested postive (thanks Delta) and we got put into a snap seven day lockdown. That lasted a couple of months. For us it meant the bliss of not having to go into the office. Things did start to open up again in October/November/December but case numbers here and in NSW and Victoria are higher than ever right now due to Omicron (the numbers are staggering - 21000 per day in NSW at the past couple of days - twenty times higher than at the peak of Delta.  462 today in Canberra - it's basically been doubling every couple of days, and now also ten times higher than Delta). We got put into lockdown in August for one case, yet now we have hundreds of cases per day but there's basically no restrictions other than having to wear a mask indoors. Craziness. I mean sure, 98.5% of 12+ year olds are fully vaccinated here, but most of us haven't had boosters yet. Stu and I plan to hide from people as much as possible over the coming weeks.

We couldn't go overseas in 2021, so our only travel was within NSW. We went to the coast to Kit and Pete's for Pete's birthday in March. We got to see their new house, went for a drive to the coast, had a ride on Elle, went out for Pete's birthday, went to Myrtle Beach, and saw Old Blotchy on the way home. We also visted them in May for Kit's birthday, going to Mollymook for lunch and having snacks and drinks by the fire in the evening. In April we had a five day long weekend over our anniversary and went to Bathurst, Lithgow, Newnes, Glen Davis, Gulgong and Dubbo. We tempted fate by having Mum come down at Christmas, and went to Junee on Boxing Day to visit David. The tour company we'd booked Oberammergau through was being difficult, so in the end we cut out losses and cancelled our trip with them. I booked tickets for the show itself later next year, and if things work out we'll plan a trip around it closer to the date. We're still desperately trying to get out of a cruise out of Florida early next year, but again, the tour company is being buttheadful and are refusing any sort of refund. Our only hope is that the whole thing is cancelled and we can get our money back. Come on Omicron, you can do this!

At work I did an awful lot of *cleaning*. Tidying things up, documenting, deleting old crap. Helped shut down an old environment and migrated to new firewalls. A floor shuffle in April meant an annoyingly loud team moved in next to us which was all sorts of stressful. But then another floor shuffle in July moved us away. Rereading blog entries for most of the year it was amazing how stressed out I was just having to go into the office. Things were so much nicer from August once in lockdown. In October we had a farewell lunch for someone at the Lighty - which was the first time I'd seen any of my colleagues in person in two and a half months. Went back into the office to work for a day a week in November. I did a whole heap of overtime from October to December doing upgrades and migrations. There was a whiksy night in June, and we had "virtual" drinks a couple of times during lockdown. We tempted fate and had our usual Christmas bbq by the lake (in the rain!).

Healthwise, the main problem for me is still bouts of insomnia every so often. I thought I might have been getting sick in April but fought it off. I got my vaccines in June, with basically no side-effects at all, other than a sore arm, and perhaps a sore neck a couple of weeks later (both times). We both got colds in July, probably from someone at the club the previous weekend. Stu got tested (negative), I didn't bother, I just isolated.

Our biggest change in home life this year was David getting a job driving freight trains out of Cootamundra, so he moved out in January. Mum came down at Easter and Christmas to visit both us, and David in Junee. We saw David for about half an hour in February, and he came and stayed the night before the air show. I finally got to meet Kellie, who I found out about in about August. A lovely, thoughtful person who has a lot of the same thought processes/opionions/life outlook as me - freaky! We saw Stu's family a few times during the year including a couple of visits by Immy to see Stumpy, an afternoon tea at Annie's in October (first human contact we'd had with any of our friends/family in two months), a visit in November, and Christmas afternoon with them. We saw a bit of the N-Gang, although not so much as previous years. There was Rob's 51st in May, dinner at EffanC's in June, a couple of virtual drinks with EffanC during lockdown, and dinner with all those guys at Hachiko in July and Indian Pantry in October. I was feeling like noone liked me in July, but these guys reminded me I do have some pretty great friends. Who needs stinking young people anyway. We had brunch with Kit in June when she was up, and had Kit stay overnight in November - first time she'd been here in probably nearly two years, and the two visits to their place as well. Jenn came over a couple of times in February and July (the latter for an Indian feast that Stu cooked). CRD came over for dinner in February, and we had her at the club a couple of times too.

At our social club we went out for most of the social functions in the first half of the year (except April because we were in Dubbo). There was Robert's Chinese New Year feast in February, Matt & Michelle's Mexican feast in March, Italian night in May, Ian and Chris's anniversary dinner in June, and we did Christmas in July. CRD came out with us in May, and I did some more priming of the cabinetry. I haven't done any more tho because we've just had so little free time. There was a bbq in late October which was the first time we'd been since lockdown, and we went a week later as well for the working bee. Then for Rob and Fiona's Christmas party in late November.

I got a massive amount done on my photos this year. Early in the year I thought I was done doing fixup scans of Dad's slides, but as I started processing them I realised how bad a lot of them still were. So I spent the rest of the year (well, from March to October) redoing them *again*. Even then, a lot of the early ones still have lots of fluff on them, but I'm kinda over it now, and they can stay as they are now. I did come up with CLI commands (in Excel) to add a whole heap of exif data into his slides. If he went to the trouble of recording the aperture, shutter and F stop, then why not add it into the data files! I also have commands to add the date (if known) and captions for them. I've started (well restarted for some of them) processing them with aforementioned scripts and cropping/colour correcting, but it's still a lot of work to try and sort out the mess he's made combining things that probably shouldn't have been combined, not to mention geotagging them as I go ;) I'm basically happy with 18 boxes so far, which is about 10% of the way through them all. If I'm lucky I'll be finally finished mid next year. Just in time to start scanning Mum's negatives which started in 1983 :) I won't be scanning all of Mum's negatives that's for sure - just the ones I care about, such as holidays and family photos. A lot of the early prints are pretty crap and discoloured. In the first week of January I started labelling my Eurasia 2012 photos. At five hundred per week it was going to take most of the year. But I did it! Twenty four and a half thousand photos in eleven months. In fact I actually finished one day early :) I had a play with some gallery generating apps, and even got my USA 2000 photos online with it. The main blocker for getting more online (other than time) is deciding where to host it (likey it'll just stay on my current host), but also how to integrate it with the blog. Seems silly to have two different sites that are very similar yet one has just highlights and the other has almost everything. Because it also means the gallery doesn't have the blog detail. It's a bit of a dilema. I finished filing all my club photos into directories by event/category. One of these days they might go into some sort of club archive, but need to get permission from people first. I spent months on and off tagging people in work photos with Picasa. Still not sure how to get that data into a useful format, but at least the data is there. Still need to get Wello and Ray over to help me tag people I don't know. I also realised only last week that I hadn't been backing up the Picasa DB directories, so if my C: drive had died I would have lost all that work - yikes!

Fish. So many baby fish! I got five platies in January - first time I'd ever had platies. They had some babies, of which two survived to adulthood, but all five original ones died, so I currently just have the two babies left. Stu's tank is still overgrown with algae, but I have a solution to that - guppies!! The two foot I have upstairs (and now the one downstairs as well) is basically algae free, which I put down to having so many guppies in those tanks. So as babies (so many babies!) get big enough, I'm transferring them to other tanks, including the big one, to work on the algae.
Inventory:
Angel tank (the 620T): 1 ancient cory, 2 platies that were born in that tank (the twins!), 1 zebra danio, 2 guppies
Two foot: guppies! - a bunch of adults that we mostly got a year ago, and a tonne of babies. Some of the juveniles have been moved to other tanks
Four foot: 14 congo tetras, about half a dozen guppies I moved in fairly recently, some suckers (we think), a loach (sadly his siamensis friend died recently)
Chrissie tank: 2 clown loaches and a sucker (really need to move that medium sized sucker into the angel tank and bring one of the little ones up from downstairs, because Chrissie's big sucker in the angel tank died)
Downstairs two foot: four adult males, two adult females, and a tonne of babies, and two small suckers
Nursery tank: a few babies and juveniles, including a couple of very pretty spotted ones I'm hoping will be female
Other one foot tanks: more guppies
Stumpy is still doing well. I do think he got hungry earlier this year though. And now at the height of summer he's barely coming out at all. Silly lizard :)

No Lego building this year. We (David) moved the four-baseplate mosaic into the hallway so Stu could have the wall back for his things. I had a play with Gimp for making Lego mosaics (you feed it the colours you have in stock into a pallette file, then apply that pallette to your photo - voila! Mosaic pattern!), but haven't actually made one yet. I wanted to make one this break. Maybe I still will. If I can think of a picture that would work. I had some fun playing with Lego Digital Designer to continue working on the Lego model of our house. I got pretty much all the main floor done, but got stuck when it came to doing the roof design. The slope of the roof matches approximately a 1:4 slope brick, which you can get, but you can't get corner pieces, so doing corners would be messy. Might have to look into making the roof slops with plates/tiles. I still really haven't done any more work sorting out Vic's Lego. It just got too time consuming and depressing (because so much of it was missing). I did spend a bit of time sorting/constructing minifigs (so we can get the dungeon room back) but that was short-lived too. I might spend another couple of weekends trying to finalise another few sets, then just give up and start buying Lego to replace what's missing. Because after that is the really fun part - actually building sets.

This year was a year for *big* jigsaws. I did three sections of the Disney Behemoth - Dumbo, Snow White and Fantasia. Only one section to go now. I could have gotten it done by Christmas but it's very distracting and I had a tonne of other things that needed doing. Did a bunch of jigsaws at work too, although a lot slower on account of not being there as much (or at all). David and I made a 3D jigsaw model of the Titanic at Easter. I'm totally drooling over the Lego Titanic. I reckon I could do it, wait for it to not be on sale anymore, then sell it, and probably make a profit. Maybe I'll keep an eye out for sales ;) Very slow progress on the paint by numbers I got last Christmas. The main blocker there is the difficulty just *seeing* it - even with reading glasses I still need a magifying glass to see the tiny numbers. I took the plunge and bought myself a clarinet in September. I've been practising most days, but I still really struggle with bridging the register and the upper register notes. And reading music. I'm ok with the notes but not the tempo, so really struggle with playing music I don't know the tune to already.

Tech. Our NAS power supply died in March (someone let the smoke out). Stu bought a new one and replaced it himself. At some point we should probably get something more modern (with a higher version of SMB). The E: drive died in my computer, and since it was nine years old decided to get a new one. Haven't used it much but it seems pretty snappy. Continued frustration with Apple. Apple decided after one update this year to arrange all photos on the phone by month. This was great! But in the next update they reverted to a thousand photos per folder. And it's *still* messing with the datestamps on my photos. Hate Apple. Hate. Other purchases. Had to get new jeans. Eventually found some that are mediocre. Hating the fact that they don't make girls jeans with decent pockets. We also got a frame made (online) for my last paint by numbers, but the mounting bracket was mounted off-centre. Sigh.

Around the house. Had a lot of frustration at the beginning of the year with bathroom sealer companies not getting back to me. Eventually got a shower sealing company to come have a look. They confirmed loose tiles/cracked grout, but wouldn't replace them because there's asbestos in the walls. We bought a new mattress and then a new frame. King size which is great, but ultimately disappointed with it all. We watched a bunch of videos from Solar Quotes, but a year later we still haven't done anything about solar. Before winter I was doing a little bit of weeding, and got back into it when it warmed up. I make piles and piles, but everything grows back faster than I can get rid of it. I'm really really looking forward to getting green and organic waste pickups every week. It'll be easier to stay on top of garden waste, and our regular bin might go out like once every six months instead of every month or so like it does now.

Didn't eat out much this year. We did go to Ramen O a few times, and Koku Super Kare a couple of times, but would be good for both of those to have a cheaper, smaller lunchtime option. I went to Herbert's a few times, mostly with Tony and/or the Chrises and Neil. The sweetie and I tried KorBQ in the mall for our last work lunch together. We went to Pizza Artigiana once, and Dumpling Inn seems to be closed permanently which is sad. Had brunch with Annie at The District in April. We had Chong Co in May, and delivery from them a couple of times. Had brunch with Kit at Stellas by the Lake in June (it's no longer Black Pepper). Went with EffanC and R&F to Hachiko in July and Indian Pantry in October (which was our first outing post lockdown). Had Charnie's Noodle and Dumplings delivery in November, which was somewhat underwhelming, and Sichuan Chinese takeaway a couple of times in December, which is expensive but nice. Subway did a "cheesy garlic bread" (garlic butter, plus extra cheese) for a while which was awesome.

Cooking-wise, tried a few new things and some old favourites. There was zucchini spaghetti early in the year from some epic zucchinis we got from Con. I tried oven baked feta pasta (Uunifetapasta) from Tik Tok which wasn't too bad (but all that feta is way too salty for my blood pressure). I had a go at replicating Dominos puff pastry pepperoni and feta pizza. It was almost identical to the Dominos version - so amazing. But did someone say something about salt and blood pressure? We had Cath's crumbed basa a couple of times. I tried Ray's method of reheating pizza - frying it in a little oil with the lid on. OMFG this was so good - even better than it eating it fresh. Had that 80s deep pan vibe about it. Sooo good. I had a go at san choy bow in September which worked pretty well (Chris only has iceberg lettuce, so thought I'd have a go at doing something with that since I hadn't been to Coles in forever). I made meat jelly rice a few times - to use up meat jelly that you can't think of a better use for, mix with water and rice to make quite a flavourful rice. I experimented with slow cooker lamb roast (which I tried at the club for Christmas in July but only managed a mouthful of it because the rest of it got snapped up by everyone - I *think* it was really good?? :) ), and also slow cooker turkey (the first time it was fairly dry; it was better the second go but really works better with fattier meat). I made three new things from my Women's Weekly Gratins and Bakes book - Seafood Mornay Lasagna (expensive and fiddly and, well, seafoody), Spaghetti Rosa Bake (nice, but spaghetti is messy), Penne Arribbiata Bake (good, even with anchovies, and easy enough that I've done it a few times). We got a few nice strawberries off our strawberry plants, and there's chillis coming. I made a couple of different lemon cheesecakes in February and March, and combined them to come up with a definitive, easy to make recipe (that I tried before Christmas) that I'll probably use moving forward. I made a rocky road in February. I made Not Quite Nigella's mint slice in August, which was pretty good so made it again for Christmas.

And now for the lists!

Theatre/Shows/Exhibitions
* Hamilton (on Disney+ so you may not want to count it ;) )

Movies (at the Movies)
* Penguin Bloom

Movies (TV - not all movies, but I've included series)
* Studio Ghibli movies
* Honey I Shrunk the Kids series
* A whole heap of true stories and spy movies, which is what Stu tends to pick when it's his turn
* The Poseidon Adventure (saw the remake at some point earlier, the original is way better)
* Some old Australian movies - Playing Beatie Bow, Gallipoli, The Shiralee
* Fantasia 2000 a few times, and Fantasia
* Nanny McPhee 1 and 2
* The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel 1 and 2
* Snow White original and remake
* Dan Brown series
* Some Bette Midler movies
* Some Tom Hanks movies
* The Matrix trilogy
* Die Hard 1 and 2 and Love Actually in December

TV
* Discovery (finished season 3)
* The Simpsons (started off in season 5, ended up nearly finished season 19)
* The X-Files (seasons 1, 2 and a bit of 3)
* Laid Back Camp (seasons 1 and 2)
* Hibike! Euphonium (seasons 1 and 2)
* Encore!
* Amazing Race Australia
* Lego Masters
* A Place Further than the Universe
* The Surgeon's Cut
* Aircrash Confidential
* Alfred Hitchcock Presents (a bit of it)
* Human: The World Within
* Pandemic
* Diagnosis
* Brides of Christ
* The Movies that Made Us
* Air Crash Investigations (some recent seasons I hadn't seen)
* Love on the Spectrum
* Connected
* How the Mind Works
* Lie to Me (season 1 and most of season 2)
* You Can't Ask That (seasons 1 to 6)
* Sex Education (seasons 1 and 2)

Books
* Heartache and Birdsong by Sam Bloom, Cameron Bloom and Bradley Trevor Greive
* To Catch a King by Harry Patterson
* Seizure by Kathy Reichs
* Doctor No by Ian Fleming

Other stuff
* neighbourhood dog barked nonstop for hours on end for months. It make me super cranky all last summer break and well into the new year
* scanned a whole heap of stuff in the filing cabing
* Disney+ launched "Star" with a whole heap of new content it could take me a lifetime to watch
* saw the RAAF 100th Anniversary airshow which was pretty amazing
* went down to Lake Burley Griffin for a wander round with the sweetie on Easter Monday
* saw my magpies throughout the year
* voted for and listened to ABC Classic FM's top 100 "Music You Can't Live Without"
* had to start wearing masks indoors for two weeks in June - my first time was in July for seeing my dentist. I continued wearing a mask in the mall even though I didn't have to, because you can't trust people to stay home when they're sick.
* snap 7 day lockdown in August that lasted three months
* had a lovely quiet birthday at home with nice food and hobbies and had Chong Co delivered
* we were in an exposure site the Wednesday before the lockdown, but didn't find out until Wednesday a week later. Had to get tested but it meant only a week of full lockdown at home. It was a good thing I'd done a big food shop that morning. The Saturday after that we got an sms from Canberra health that we'd been in an exposure site - literally a week and a half after we'd been there. Fricken hopeless.
* I missed the earthquake! (in September)
* in September I found out the super annoying yappy staffies down the road killed each other. No more annoying barking!!!!
* the first of October was an epic news day. 52 covid cases recorded - highest ever in Canberra for one day. ScoMo announced opening of international borders a lot sooner than we first thought. Gladys resigned.
* saw the remains of Floriade in Belconnen, but missed out on seeing it sans-crowds in Commonwealth Park
* would often go three weeks between Coles shops during the lockdown, getting essentials at Chris's
* went to the online funeral for Win Cartan. Still annoyed I didn't get to see them when I was at church in early 2019. Oh well, will see them in heaven soon enough.
* planted sunflowers across the road. One sprouted and is still going (last I looked)
* petrol prices hit an all time high in November
* mask mandate reintroduced just before Christmas (I reckon it should have been weeks earlier)

So there we have it. Another epic year. And for once I have this review done *before* the end of the year! It took *hours* :) Have a happy and safe new year. Get your booster. Eat less. Drink less. Sing. Floss. Stretch. Dance. Wear sunscreen.

Sunday.  12th.  Backdating because life got in the way, and then some.  BBQ leftovers for dinner.  Into season 2 of Sex Education.  Got my RSS feed down to 1.  1!!  (the pic I posted the other day).  I'd gotten heaps of stuff done around the house, but I was feeling super anxious about all the computer stuff I didn't get done over the weekend.

Look at all the lemon marmalade Stu made!

Monday.  Woke up at like 5:20 #grunt.  Ok day I guess.  I renewed Stu's domain name, booked a covid booster and bought a new computer.  Although nothing on the regular todo list - this was just catching up from stuff I should have done on the weekend.

Tuesday.  Dunno, I don't have any notes.  But here's a photo of Stumpy doing pushups.

Wednesday.  Spent all morning explaining to people how email works.  Le sigh.  Spent all afternoon doing all the doco for all the rules I deleted recently (and not many interruptions which was nice).  Then weeding, music, leftovers, work photo labelling and year in review reading.

Thursday.  At work, blerf.  We had a morning tea which sufficed for lunch, so I worked through lunch on the jigsaw in a push to get it finished just in case it was the last time I was in for the year.  And I did finish it!  Had a nice last drinks of the year, then pizza and tv.  Dominos was hit by a ram raid, which I thought was totally bizarre, I mean who even pays in cash anymore.  Still, it's one of the busiest Dominos stores in Australia, so if there was the one to get with even a small percentage of cash payments that'd be it.

Friday.  Helped with some prep for some Saturday work.  Die Hard 2 in the evening.  

Saturday.  A day of All The Things, and even some overtime.  Had quite a productive day, including making a lemon cheesecake, although my todo list is still years too long.  Matrix Revolutions in the evening.

Sunday.  Too stressed about everything to sleep.  And the storm certainly didn't help.  Woke up at 6:05 so decided to get up and go do some food shopping.  I was a bit slow getting everything put away, and then suddently it's mid morning.  hrmm.  I did get a litt bit of stuff done in the morning, and finished season 6 of You Can't Ask that at lunch.  Then in the afternoon I went down to Herbert's to join Tony and a bunch of his friends for an early birthday celebration for him.  The walk down was in the rain, but that didn't stop me from taking lots of photos of flowers.  There was some nice jazz music going at Herbert's, and a few of us went back to Tony's after for another drink (including a very green blackberry sour).

No notes for the evening, but I certainly didn't feel up to fighting with my phone and blogging.

Monday.  6th.  Not backdating!  Day of doing doco mainly.  Did lots of gardening after work (like for an hour).  The beef cheeks I'd prepared yesterday I chucked on the stove in the afternoon to have for dinner.  Yum yum yum (clearly people aren't as interested in summer - they were due to expire that day, usually they have a couple of weeks on them).  Finished season 18 of The Simpsons.  Got stuck into year in review reading, as well as work photo labelling.

Tuesday.  Team lunch, so bussed in mid morning (to avoid the peak hour crowds).  

Wednesday.  Did a heap of cleaning in the afternoon - all the deleting!  Blog reading in the evening - man, I was *sooo* stressed about having to go into the office the first half of the year.  Since lockdown in August it's been so much nicer.  Pity it won't last forever.

Thursday.  Ok day, nothing too exciting.  Drinks, pizza, tv.  Backed up my phone and computer (well, except for the E: drive).

Friday.  Woke up at dentist time, til about 5am.  Thinking about all the things.  Mostly about the party.  hrmm.  But.  Party!  In the rain!  Didn't seem to deter anyone, only two no-shows, and one of those was a no-show last year too.  So nearly forty people, I think most people enjoyed themselves.  

I think she was hissing at me

Oh hai

Mine!

Ugly ducklings? :)

The sun came out at the end

Literally the bestest sweetie in the world.  He did about a hundred trips to the car and two trips home to take everything home afterwards.

Saturday.  Awake for a couple of hours again.  hrmm.  Such a busy day doing All The Things.  Mostly house organising and cleaning and tidying. A bit of computer work as well.  Roasted a whole heap of veggies for dinner (with leftover sausages from the bbq). Finished season 1 of Sex Education then Matrix Reloaded (which I haven't seen since I saw it at the movies in 2003.. it wasn't as bad as I remember it heh).  Edit: I lied, I also saw it at Striker's in 2004.

Sunday.  Today (for a change ;) ).  Slept ok.  Annoyed in the morning because I lost a brand new hair tie *somewhere* in the house.  Maybe it'll turn up.  But another day of All The Things.  Barely any time on the computer at all, just slogging my way through everything that needs doing.  Except I didn't do much of the computer stuff that needs doing, like advertising our cruise to see if someone else will take it, booking a vaccine booster, labelling Dubbo photos, reading blog entries or labelling work photos.  hmmmmm. 

Tonight I managed to download and process photos from the past two weeks, as well as blog last week *and* this week.  Party leftovers will be for dinner.  I need a vacation.

Sunday.  31st.  Backdating this because Kit was here and I ran out of time in the afternoon on the 7th.  Leftover lamb and all the veggies for dinner (I left those bits of sweet potato in the oven for a few days, we ate them a few days after that, we didn't die).  Lie to Me and You Can't Ask That.  

Monday.  1st.  Couldn't get to sleep til like midnight.  Then woke up at 5:30 although got a tiny bit more sleep.  Didn't have many slides to fix up, although one I did like eight times before I eventually gave up because it was too hard and I was too tired.  I was feeling stressed that I was going to have to work both days next weekend, which made me double booked with a club working bee and Kit was coming to stay Sunday as well.  And my desk was a mess and the kitchen looked like a bomb had hit it in just a day since I last cleaned it, then I was hanging the washing out and I missed a phone call.  I mean who calls at 8:24am?? I might have had a bit of a meltdown because it was all too hard.  I did have an interesting day at work though, learning about timeouts on firewalls.  Popped into the mall at lunch because I needed to get my glasses fixed (the screw fell out of one of the arms on the weekend).  Also went to the post office to drop off a package for the sweetie, had some lunch and did a bit of food shopping.  Had to do some overtime in the evening, so no labelling.

Tuesday.  Slept a lot better - hurrah.  Brain was functioning a hundred times better than Monday.  I set a reminder to watch a few horses run around an oval, but was busy and missed the alert, and hence the horses.  Oh well.  Only managed to label 118 photos, so getting further behind :(  Also my wrist hurts.  Finished day 48, up to Hokkaido.

Wednesday.  Slept okish.  I *finally* finished fixup scans of all 181 boxes of Dad's slides.  I really wish I'd put more effort in the first round through, it would have saved most of a year's worth of effort to redo them this year.  Although it probably would have taken longer to do the first pass.  Will spend the "scanning time" for the rest of the year processing the slides (dating/labelling/renaming/processing/filing).  Managed to label 215 photos (used music practise time to do some - having a short break to give my wrist a rest).  Only 200 behind now.

Thursday.  Slept ok.  Ok day.  Very busy.  Rain!!

Friday.  Ok day - been there 14 years!  

Did some cleaning in the afternoon which made me happy.  That was done by 3pm and I'm like, I'm done for the week now right? hehe.  Had to hang around til late though to find out if Saturday work was going to go ahead or not, but in the end it got cancelled.  So I quickly gathered up a few things and headed out to the club with the sweetie.  It was cool enough to run the fire!  CRD came over to chat for a while too which was nice.

Saturday.  Slept okish.  Spent most of the morning de-nailing fence palings.  I got a message from Annie in the middle of it asking if I was in the queue for the Lego store opening, and I'm like, has she even *met* me?  hrmmm.  Did a few bits and pieces after lunch but it was getting hot and we were tired, so we just came home.  We basically collapsed when we got home.  Watched You Can't Ask That - on gamblers - I reckon the gamblers were more messed up than the ice users..  Pizza and X Files (finished season 2).

And how cool is this mask Tab made!?

Sunday.  Watched one of the guys doing some upgrades for a couple of hours in the morning.  Learnt some stuff which was good.  Then I finally got to have my weekend.  Spent the afternoon tidying up the house and doing all the weekend things.  Then Kit came over we chatted and had slow cooker turkey and potato bake and veggies for dinner.  The turkey was a little dry, will need to refine the recipe (I literally just chucked the thing in the slow cooker), and I should have had some gravy with it.

Sunday.  10th.  Not backdating ;)  Leftover roast pork with a whole bunch of freshly roasted veggies for dinner.  Watched The Pursuit of Happyness which wasn't bad.  It did remind me of sometimes when we were kids getting home late from something, and we'd pretend to be asleep in the car so Mum and Dad would carry us upstairs and put us to bed :)

Monday.  Slept fairly well.  Day went pretty quickly - busy fixing up proxy profiles.  Saw all the birds at lunch.  Leftover chicken wings from a club night with rice and cabbage for dinner.  Finally hit 20000 photos labelled!!  197 done all up, only 15 behind (into Legoland Billund).

Tuesday.  Took *forever* to get to sleep - stressing about All The Things, holidays, health, having to go to the chemist etc etc etc.  Then I woke up at 3am hungry and needing to pee, so did that, then saw an email from the cruise company with bad news about our trip next year (I'm trying to get out of it because too many retarded Americans won't get vaccinated) so then it took *forever* to get back to sleep.  Zombie tired all day, didn't really get much done all day.  Was too tired and depressed to feel like weeding or music practise or labelling, so instead had a couple of beers, watched an episode of Connected (Clouds), and had an early night.  I really need to keep reminding myself that even if we lose all the thousands of dollars we've spent on our holidays we might not be able to go on, we're still a helluva a lot better off than so many other people this pandemic.  We still have jobs, food, a roof over our heads, and haven't gotten sick from covid (so far).

Wednesday.  After the early night actually slept quite well for a change.  Busy day, although didn't get to do the *one thing* I wanted to do because of interruptions and people wanting stuff.  Did some weeding and music practise, but had a tv dinner for dinner.  208 photos labelled all up, now 115 behind.

Sometimes I get down about fish keeping, because tanks get manky and fish die.  Then I get a tank like this which i super healthy and all the plants are growing like crazy and no algae and the little fishies are breeding like rabbits.  Such a joy this tank.

Thursday.  Somewhat broken sleep, not helped by a couple of storms rolling through.  Headed out early to get blood tests done for a checkup.  Got to see a bit of floriade in Belco.

Ok day.  Got rained on seeing the birds, but they were pretty eager.  No virtual drinks this week.  Started watching 50 Shades of Grey, but only made it about half an hour in.  Really didn't like the guy at all.  Watched Lie to Me instead.  

Friday.  Awake from 3-5am so zombie morning (although somewhat better afternoon).  Did manage to achieve some stuff too which was useful.  Watched Inferno in the evening which we hadn't seen before.  Pretty much just like the other two, and fun distractions with the been-theres in Turkey :)

Saturday.  Up at stoopid o'clock and then spent the entire day doing upgrades, first with HBZ then with Con.  A few hiccoughs along the way, but I think we got there in the end.  See what happens Monday I guess.  Did some weeding and music and talked to the mother type person.  She ended up cancelling our Oberammergau trip because the tour company were being pooheads.  I would certainly never travel with them again.  Mainly because they were *hideously* expensive for what you got.  Basically all it included was hotels, a coach and a tour guide - no lunches, very few dinners, and not much in the way of attraction entries either - it was all "free time in the town".  If I'm paying that much, I want them to take me to as many places as possible, not just dump us in a town and tell us to fend for ourselves.  If I wanted to do that I could take a train.  So we're actually considering doing that - taking trains around northern Italy, and maybe hire a car for a few days to see some harder to get to places in the mountains.  And even after all the money we lost, the trip will probably still be cheaper to do it ourselves.  The sweetie got Chong Co for dinner, and we watched Tora! Tora! Tora! (on Disney, even though I inherted Dad's DVD of it - shoulda watched the DVD though - Disney's subtitles were a bit hit and miss in places - like only flashing for a fraction of a second and not giving you enough time to read them).  

Sunday.  Today.  Up at stoopid o'clock to finally go do food shopping at Coles (first time since 8 September!!).  Then came home and finally got to have my weekend.  Spent all morning doing all the usual weekend stuff I need to get done, then weeding, lunch, music, photo processing and blogging.  And now's just after 3pm and I'm about to go spend a few hours cooking all the food so I don't have to do much in the next week or two.  

Sunday.  5th.  Backdating.  Sorry. ;)  Cooked all the food - some mince to have however, as well as roast veggies and a cauliflower bake.  Into season 15 of The Simpsons.

Monday.  Ok day.  Spent the day trying to do *one thing* but not getting anywhere because of interruptions and people wanting stuff.  Sausages and leftover veggies for dinner.  113 photos labelled before dinner, 213 all up, up to my first day in Paris.  Then Air Crash Investigations.

Tuesday.  Slept relatively well.  Stressful day because I was in meetings for hours and hours and hours, but still had heaps of work to get done as well.  Ended up working a bit late and only managed to label 54 photos.

Wednesday.  Slept ok.  Got up a bit early, and this time I checked the Covid exposure sites *before* I went out to do some food shopping.  First time doing a proper shop in three weeks - our pantry list was getting super long from things that had run out or were running out.  Oddly, there were no bags of any kind for bagging up veggies, so I ended up using a shopping bag to get mushrooms.  Once again, Coles was depleted of different odd things, like almost no eggs (didn't need any this week), and mint ice cream.  But they did have bacon and cheese rolls out early this time.  I bought one pack thinking it would last me a couple of days, but the sweetie had other ideas and they lasted a day.  I shoulda bought two ;)  There was plenty of toilet paper, but I didn't need any this week either (been getting it from Chris's).  Ok day, busy afternoon, again in meetings but also trying to get work done.  Salmon and salad for dinner - hurrah for fresh food!  Managed to label 155 photos, only 52 behind now, should be easy to catch up.

Thursday.  Slept ok.  Horrible day - spent over half of it on the phone :(  So sucky and draining.

Friday.  Awake for a while in the middle of the night but not too bad.  Another day of trying to stay on top of things and fighting with peeps over all the stoopid.  Did some cleaning in the afternoon though which was good.  Knocked off a little early and tidied the house a bit, then tried to wrangle my insanely huge todo list.  Honey mustard chicken for dinner.  Then we watched Never Let Me Go which was kinda interesting and depressing.

Saturday.  All. The. Things.  Just a day of getting things done around the house.  Bolognase and salad for dinner, then we watched Gandhi, which I'd never actually seen before. 

Sunday.  Busy doing stuff, although no idea what, the todo list I ticked off didn't have much on it.  

Roast chicken for dinner, then watched Nanny McPhee which I'd seen a while ago.  Actually quite a sweet movie.  Although a bit like watching Love Actually.  Or Harry Potter.  Or Bridge Jones' Diary.  So much cast overlap :)

Sunday.  15th.  Backdating this, but only by a day :)  Cooked All The Food for dinner (lots of veggies, that went with some pulled pork I dug out of the freezer). 

Simpsons/X Files, then watched some commentry on John Williams' music.  Seriously the guy is a genius.  Check out Listening In's commentry on Jurassic Park, Prisoner of Azkaban, Star Wars and ET.

Monday.  Woke up at ~1am for a couple of hours.  Sigh.  Ok day. 

Even if we don't get to go to Floriade this year, I'll have my little neighbourhood patch of it.

Sausages and leftover veggies for dinner.  Managed 49 photos before dinner.  Had to do a fixup of geodata on some too.  Managed 192 all up, and an episode of Air Crash Investigations.

Tuesday.  Slept well for a change.  Not a bad day, looking at more cleaning to be done.  63 photos labelled before dinner - finished Day 29 Canon photos.  Still a long way behind :(  Managed 177 all up and an episode of Air Crash.

Wednesday.  Decided yesterday I'd do a mid week food shop, and go early to minimise exposure to potentially infectious people.  Worked pretty well, and the carpark was deserted.

Took me longer than I thought it would because I had to keep stopping to go back and push my own trolley (normally Stu drives).  There was plenty of toilet paper (I didn't get any cause we still had over half a pack left).  But there were a couple of fresh things I couldn't get (like cabbage and basil).  So did all that, as well as getting a bag of fresh veggies, milk and eggs for EffanC.  They'd been down the coast when lockdown was declared in both the ACT and NSW, so they had to come home and were still waiting on a Coles delivery.  

Was just getting ready for work when Stu said our nearby IGA was a covid exposure site.  And guess who was there during one of the specified close contact times last week?  Yeup.  All because Stu wanted ice cream we can't get at Chris's ;)  OMFG I was a nervous wreck all day.  We'd have to go get tested, although couldn't go during the day because Stu was busy doing interviews for work, and we weren't sure if we'd even get in after work, with the EPIC testing site having been closed at like 4pm on the Tuesday due to high demand.  We were worried we'd have to wait around all night and still not get tested and have to go back, or even get turned away completely.  Plus if we did test positive, then Coles would be an exposure site and I'd have put EffanC at risk too.  Yeah I was a mess all day.  Although my stress did turn to anger.  We should have been notified *immediately* once the IGA was listed.  We both checked in with the CheckinCBR app, so they would have known we were there at the specified time.  Was pretty pissed off about that actually.  Anyway, as soon as Stu was finished up with interviews we headed out.  Stu wanted to try Kambah first.  One website said it closed at 5pm, another 4pm.  So we weren't sure when it would close.  Turns out it closes at 4pm and it had already closed by the time we got there.  (as it turns out, the 5pm closing time was from last year but I'd missed that when I was looking because I was so stressed).  So headed to Brindabella.  I was expecting traffic to be banked back around the airport, but we got all the way to Brindabella and were wondering where all the cars were.  Turns out it simply wasn't crowded (even though half an hour before we left home they'd tweeted it would be a three hour wait).  We took a whole stack of food.  We didn't need it.  We got to the first triage tent at 17:07 then joined the queue.  It took til about 18:00 to get to the big tent, then about twenty five minutes to get to the front of the line to get our tests.  It was unpleasant, but not as bad as I thought it would be.  So an hour twenty and we were out of there.  Got home, had some salad for dinner (hurrah for fresh food), then had a Zoom drink with EffanC.  Needed it.  Collapsed into bed for an early night.

Thursday.  Woke up at ~1am til past 3am.  Sigh.  Busy day, mostly dealing with interruptions.  Beer, pizza, Simpsons, X Files and an early night.

Friday.  Hurty for a bit in the night.  Woke up in the morning to find we'd been smsed our test results - negative.  Phew.  Ok day.  Had another Zoom drink/catchup with EffanC.  Salmon and salad for dinner, then Simpsons and Moneyball.  An odd choice for the sweetie I thought, but based on a true story and not a bad movie, for a sports movie ;)

Saturday.  Slept ok for a change.  Although that didn't stop my clumsiness trying to put out our pills/vitamins for the week, spilling things *three fricken times*.  Very upsetting.  Alternated between house stuff, photo labelling (still trying to catch up from a crazy couple of weeks), and jigsaw.  Made Dominos pepperoni and feta on puff pastry pizza for lunch.  

In the afternoon we got SMSes from ACT Health - "Check In CBR has identifed that you may have attended a COVID-19 exposure location".  Yeah no kidding guys, this was the message I should have gotten THREE AND A HALF DAYS AGO!!!!!  Fricken hopeless.  Chicken kiev and roast veggies for dinner.  Then watched Wall Street, which I'd never actually seen before.

Sunday.  Slep ok.  Another day of house stuff, photo stuff, and jigsaw.  My ideal weekend really.  And literally no different to a non-lockdown weekend (well other than not having to do food shopping, and not being able to go see my birds, on account of being in strict lockdown). 

Got a call from WA Health in the afternoon - taking some of the load off ACT Health and calling people in exposure sites - making sure we'd been tested and were quarantining.. yes and yes.  We'll have to get tested again this week, hopefully won't have to wait as long this time. 

Another afternoon of cooking all the food (mince to have with whatever at some point, and an arribbiata bake sans basil). 

Downloaded my phone photos.  Apple has gone back to arranging photos into a thousand per folder.  I mean why change to arranging them by month (a change for the better I thought) if you were just going to revert it a couple of months later??  Far out I hate Apple.  Watched The Movies that Made Us episode on Forrest Gump, and then the first half of Forrest Gump.  And blogged this Monday, ssh don't tell anyone!

Monday.  26th.  Backdating.  Frustration and grumpiness at work *all day*.  Finished up day 25 labelling (which I should have done on the weekend).  In the end labelled 261 photos in the evening, so mostly caught up to where I wanted to be.

Tuesday.  Not much better day than Monday.  Ended up worse, and feeling depressed cause I suck and noone likes me.  Had leftover pasta bake for dinner (and got a yuk taste of anchovies).  Backed up my computer but didn't do any photo labelling.  Did jigsaw and played 2048 for the first time in a couple of years.  Even got up to 4096.

Wednesday.  Woke up at 3:23 and never got back to sleep.  So it was a zombie day.  Couldn't really concentrate on anything, not helped by people interrupting every five seconds.  Doc Oc pizzas and wine for dinner.  Started watching Queen: Days of Our Lives (2011).

Thursday.  Slept quite a bit better (went to bed at 20:30), other than being awake for an hour or two in the middle of the night cause of hurty.  In what world is a monthly cycle 21 days???  FFS.  Ok day.  Mulled wine at drinks for a Christmas in July night.

Then met up with EffanC and R&F at Hachiko for dinner which was lovely.

It was a lovely night and a great reminder that I do have some pretty great friends.

Friday.  Ok day.  Knocked off work a little early but then spent the evening prepping for tomorrow - for the club Christmas in July.  Struggled to get onto the butcher to order the pork - firstly couldn't find a phone number online, ended up having to resort to Yellow Pages.  But then they wouldn't answer the phone :(  Then I started stressing about fitting CRD into the car with all the foods and gear.  Sigh.  Finished the first episode of Queen: Days of Our Lives, and started episode two.  

My little patch of floriade is sprouting!

Saturday.  Headed out early and did the shopping for dinner.  Finished the Coles shop quite quickly, then headed back to the butcher.  Turns out their phone handset was broken which is why they weren't answering.  Luckily was able to get enough pork.  Then picked up CRD and headed out to the club.  Set everything up and took a photo of all the food.

First up was getting the lamb ready and into the slow cooker.  I'd never done lamb like this in the slow cooker so had no idea how it would turn out.  It actually turned out really well - lovely and moist.  

I had to wash pretty much everything before I started.  All the cooking gear was covered in white dust.  And I literally had to leave the kitchen a couple of times while other people wandered in and started fussing around and washing things up.  I actually can't concentrate with people buzzing about, super stressful.

Then I prepped all the pork - just oil and salt.

Then made a couple of epic potato bakes.

I also made up a sweet potato salad, and some lactose-free roast potatoes

The oven is the slowest oven in the world, so I probably should have left the foil off a lot longer on the potatoes

I delegated making the roast turkeys in the bbq.  So we had a bain-marie full of pork, the slow cooker full of lamb, and another bain-marie with the turkey.  The pork and lamb turned out beautifully, but the crackling didn't work so well (slowest oven in the world) and the turkey was over done on the bottom (really need a better way to do it than on the barbeque).

I also made a big batch of gravy, and a pot of apple sauce

There was also a big pot of peas/corn/carrots.

Had a couple of helpers to serve it all up.  It was quite well received .. phew!!

Chris brought these great little puddings

And Tab brought puddings and pavlovas and fruit and ice cream.

Then there were some very noisy games so I went and hid because it was all too loud.  Later went out and had some whiskey and rum in the sun room.  This whiskey smelt like peanut butter and tasted like butterscotch schnapps.  Yum!  And the Master Mary rum tasted like Christmas.

Then loud people came out, so I went to bed.

Sadly after really concentrating on the food all afternoon and evening, I really didn't feel like I caught up properly with anyone.  I actually only sat down at the table for a few minutes to scoff my dinner.

Sunday.  Slept relatively well.  Went up to finish cleaning up and packing up.  Found out the cause of all the white powder around the kitchen - mice had been getting into the corn flour and tracking it all around.  I even saw a couple of mice running around the shelves.  I threw out anything that had mouse holes, which was all the corn flour and some of the regular flour.  Anything open but with no evidence of mouse activity I brought home to reassess.  And anything unopened and still sealed with no holes I put into a sealable plastic container. 

They pulled the pergola down while I was cooking on Saturday 

Then came home after dropping off CRD.  But it was still nearly lunch time by the time we got home, and I was my usual Sunday-after-a-club-event-depressed because of the lack of time at home on the weekend.  I did manage to clean out a shelf in the pantry and water change all the downstairs fish tanks and download photos, but not blog.  Used up some of the mince I cooked last weekend with some One Pan Dinner.