Sunday.  17th.  My usual Sunday routine is to backup phone and download my photos. Two hours later the backup is still going.. hrmmm. Tried out the new DVD player (which we got cause the old Laser one was doing dumb things like putting out the audio but not the video. The new one is doing the same thing. Sigh. Tried turning the TV off and on again which fixed. Why is technology so crap? To watch the Chromecast we have to reboot the amp, to watch DVDs we need to reboot the TV. Probably also the old DVD player isn't actually faulty, it's probably the TV. At least the new one gets the aspect ratio right, without having to adjust the TV settings. Veggies for dinner (no photos because my phone is still backing up) and MacGyver (getting back into it now we have a workingish DVD player). Then watched These Pretzels are Making Me Thirsty. Cause that's my tagline at the moment. These proxies are making me thirsty. Gave up trying to backup phone after like FOUR HOURS of it being connected.

Monday.  Awake for a while here and there, partly stressing about the hottest 100. Not stressing, just my brain was stuck in a loop. The heater worked first go but then died after its second break. Proxy day. Stu heated up some leftover sausages and we had those with leftover for veggies. Watched a video on a birdwatcher who went to a few places we went to in Victoria. The been-there's were pretty cool. But what stunned me is they're allowing duck shooting in the Tower Hill Wildlife Reserve. What the actual F#$^??? A quick Google suggests they may have backtracked on that for the moment.. but seriously.. who the F#$% approved that in the first place???? Utterly outrageous!!!

Tuesday.  Okish sleep. Proxy day. No luck on the heater at all today. But we did get a dude from Voltair around to look at putting in a split system. Still nothing back from Climatrol about the heater though. Cloudloop have cut off cPanel/webmail/FTP due to vulnerabilities which don't have patches.. which is fine.. but they're talking about making that for "the foreseeable future" .. which would be super problematic for me (and I imagine a tonne of other customers) that are on ISPs that change IP addresses all the time.. hmm. ok they got back to me and said it should just be until they patch things (when they get a patch), so that's fine.  The new DVD player is a bit dumb.  Had reboot the tv this time to get it to work. Maybe there was actually nothing wrong with the old one (which was doing the same thing). hrmmmmmmm. At least this one sends the right aspect ratio to the TV, so no fiddling on the tv to make it show 4:3 for these ancient tv shows. Also today David sent me a link to a post by the Canberra Reptile Zoo saying that blue tongue lizards are no longer exempt from needing a licence. So then had to spend ages trying to figure out Access Canberra's website for information (there may have been some in some very long PDFs but nothing clear and simple that I could find about the changes until you actually load up the licence request form). I also don't really have any good photos of the whole enclosure so just sent the best ones I have to get it done.

Wednesday.  Took a while to get to sleep (restless) but then slept mostly ok. 12.4C in the house sigh. Proxy day.  Went to Hungry Cracks with Con and Jim and tried the Korean BBQ fried chicken burger which was pretty decent.  We even sat outside.

TV dinner for dinner.

Thursday.  Took a while to get to sleep (not restless, just awake). 11.1C in the house.  XL got a couple of KFC Hot Rods and gave me one - was pretty good!  Thanks XL!

In the afternoon the desktop guys released the new proxy to a bunch of peeps. Good drinks. Mills&Grills again and MacGyver.

Friday.  Logged onto work early to monitor for any problems from the proxy rollout. A few minor things but nothing too crazy. Well other than Microsoft's Whiteboard getting itself into a login loop. FFS why is Microsoft so BAD at literally everything?? Called Climatrol in the morning.  They never received my web form submission.  Sigh.  They're going to come next week to look at the heater.  Called POETS and we headed out to the club. Got the fire going and had tv dinners for dinner and afterwards Chris and Geoff came over and we just chatted for a while which was nice.

Saturday.  In the morning all around the toilet block and shed were all these big beautiful moths! I tried to save a couple of them from getting squished by people stepping on them in the doorways, but I actually sentenced them to death because a raven was watching me and was like "easy breakfast!!".

Went to the shed to see if they needed any help, but at the time the only thing going on was balloon blowing up. I don't do balloons. Having them overinflate and pop scares me too much, plus I can't even tie up the things, never have been able to. So left and raked leaves for like an hour. Then the sweetie and I went for a walk to look for birds. Saw a white-throated treecreeper which was pretty cool (it found a moth as well!).

Did some tapestry for a while. At 14:00 they had an afternoon tea. There was HEAPS of food, but I didn't eat too much - didn't want to spoil my appetite for dinner.

The shed looked spectacular!!

Just part of the afternoon tea spread

Then really just hang around chatting to peeps before dinner. Dinner was catered which was pretty cool. Quite a bit more expensive than self-catering but they do all the prep *and* all the dishes!!  (they did run out of a few things unfortunately).

I was hanging out for crackling but in the end they couldn't make much, but they were super sweet and gave it to me! I was honoured!

There were a bunch of speeches and cake cutting (three of them!!) and then we just hung out.

I also may have looked a bit like the Queen with my stoopid boofy hair and the "50" tiara that I wore that I got for my 50th.  Several people said so!

Bit of a late night, and we saw a tawny frogmouth outside, feasting on the moths.

Sunday.  Late night, but awake from 5:27. Hurray. Came home and had a pretty quiet day (super tired). Tried a few times to get the heater going but with no success. Stu did a power cycle on it and managed to get it to run for one cycle.  iTunes backed up my phone properly this week.

Sunday.  12th.   Leftovers for dinner then Professor T 3.4.

Monday.  Slept okish I think. Felt all day that work was completely pointless. I keep getting called into meetings for one project that people have to do every couple of years, but instead of reusing previous years' work, they insist on redoing everything from scratch, which feels like the most massivest waste of time and money ever. Then I was waiting for other to people to help me with some stuff. Still waiting. Stu cooked up some goats cheese and caramelised onion ravioli with a creamy mushroom sauce which was very nice. Professor T 3.5.

Tuesday.  Slept okish I think. More pointlessness and waiting for people at work.

Went into town after work for the first Shine Dome talk of the year in the Bright Minds, Bold Voices series.  This time they had Professor Stephen Simpson from the Charles Perkins Centre and Vanessa Hudson the CEO of Qantas to talk about "Reimagining how we fly".  The format was a little different from previous years (although I missed most of last year's due to reasons so not sure what they did then) in that they just had the guest speakers sitting out the front and chatting about stuff rather than having formal talks.  They were talking about the collaboration they're doing between science and Qantas to optimise the long haul experience by the choices of lighting and food service to try and reduce the worst of jetlag.  This was going to be especially relevant for Qantas' Project Sunrise A350 flights which are aiming for 22 hour non-stop flights from east coast Australia to the UK.  Which is great and all, but I was still hung up on how little *space* you get in cattle class. Vanessa addressed this right at the very end with a quick comment about how economy will get 34 inches between seats instead of the usual 31-32.  pfffffft.  Sorry but I need more horizontal space as well so I don't feel like I'm pinned in (which leads to epic restless legs).

Professor Stephen Simpson, Vanessa Hudson, Lish Fejer

We saw this very purple mustang in the car park..

Then Tony and I went for a light dinner at Badger & Co (we split this on account of pigging out at the Shine Dome)

Wednesday.  Slept okish I think. I don't think I achieved anything useful today. I did get a ride to and from work with Chrissie though in her Tesla. OMFG there are so many DUMB things. Like the door handles for a start (to get in you have to press them in then you can pull them out, and to get out you can either find an awkward little handle in the arm rest area, or push a button). You have to change gears using a touchscreen WTF?? (Ray pointed out that how often do you *really* need to change gears in an automatic electric car?).  Yeah so if the touchscreen dies you can't drive your car. Hurray.  And blinkers are a button on the steering wheel. The torque on it is pretty impressive though. Like a rollercoaster.  Stu cooked up a fake satay chicken using some almond paste we wanted to get rid of out of the fridge, with some red curry paste, coconut cream, fish sauce, chilli powder, sugar and some veggies that needed using up out of the freezer. It was very yummy and tasted like satay.  Professor T 3.6 (end of season 3).

There's actually a bunch of rice under this!

Thursday.  Took forever to get to sleep - super restless. Then another day of not achieving much. Chrissie came to drinks which was kinda fun. Although I think Mike hates me. hrmm. Got Dominos again, but only because they sent us a $23 voucher for a free pizza during the week (something about the delivery taking longer than 24 minutes last time). These pizzas actually went back to almost being full sized. Almost. Yeah, still only 9.5 inches.  The thin and crispy pepperoni we got was just over 10 inches. Still pretty hopeless. Professor T 4.1.

Friday.  Broken sleep from 2am. At work mostly just fixing up logging on the new proxies. Kievs for dinner. Professor T 4.2.

Saturday.  Somewhat restless sleep. Got annoyed (listening to the news in the morning) that I was going to miss the airport open day. I knew it was coming up but they hadn't put tickets online yet before I went away for our holiday, then I forgot to keep an eye on it while we were away. Annoying too because they were going to have an A220 which I haven't seen before. #grunt. Went for a walk again in the morning.

Got back then went out birdwatching with the sweetie. Suddenly the day is half over. Whoops.

.

Quiet afternoon.  I may have done a jigsaw.

Fire out at Googong (hazard reduction)

The sweetie cooked up a heap of veggies for dinner (including a very nice cabbage (cauliflower I think) bake using a pack of goats cheese I got from Chris's that was already past its use-by date when I bought it before we went on holidays... she'll be right!)

Then watched Netflix's 2023 "Civil War" which was a bit.. bleak..

Sunday.  Slept mostly okish I think. Quiet morning, then in the afternoon went with Jo and Mel to see The Sound of Music at the NSFA .. singalong!!!!! OMFG it was so much fun. The sweetie just barely tolerates me singing along in movies, so this was a great opportunity to really have some fun. It was awesome! Thanks Jo for the invite!

Monday.  6th.  Stu cooked up some veggies and I fried up some lamb and then we watched Professor T 2.5, then I just watched crap on the internet.

Tuesday.  Slept okish I think. Spent the day working on getting the last of the vips migrated off the old load balancer. Stuff is mostly ready to go, just need to quadruple check everything and do a heck of a lot of testing. Leftovers for dinner, Professor T 2.6 (end of season two), then labelling Europe panorama photos. The internet died around 21:40. Hurrah.

Wednesday.  Slept mostly ok (although woke up around 5:20). The internet was still dead but came back before I went to work. Continued work on the last vip migration, only to find out someone else is doing another change to the back end of the system I want to work on around the same time. So I'm going to have to wait a couple more weeks. Also got pulled into a couple of blergh meetings which took up a bit chunk of the day.

Turdhead neighbour has parked his massive ute on our land. I left a note asking to please not park on our side. Finished labelling my Europe 2016 panorama photos.

Thursday.  Mostly awake from 3 except for a couple of short patches of dream sleep. Busyish day again, but waiting for people, so moved onto trying to solve a problem on the new proxies. Everything said to do something a certain way for HTTP/2 but it just wouldn't work and I had to raise a support ticket sigh. Not sure how busy drinks was, I don't think very (we were outside). We got Dominos pizzas for dinner. Shockingly, they've shrinkflated their pizzas. When I opened the first one I thought it was a joke, or a "special" pizza that was supposed to be smaller. Nope. They were both like 2/3 the diameter they should be. #grunt.  Will be boycotting Dominos til they fix their $#!+  I should have measured these..

Professor T 3.1. Bed.

Friday.  Restless night, weird dreams. Woke up cranky with the world. Also the neighbours still have one of their trucks parked on our side - it's been there for *days*. #grunt. The note I left the other night was gone. Talked to J in the morning who said he'd told T not to park there. At work I'm still angry they took away my Visio licence while I was on leave and refuse to give it back. Pissed off with the world. Busy day not achieving much including more meetings and having to deal with vendor support. Kievs for dinner then Professor T 3.2.

I was so excited Chris had potato gems!!!  Haven't had them in ages

Saturday.  Took ages to get to sleep - stressing over the neighbours. Then restless sleep. I was gonna go yell at turd neighbour to move his ute, but he'd already left for work. So I put some bins in the spot so hopefully he'll get the hint. Went for a walk, finished htmlifying Europe 2016 panoramas, watched the Artemis II splashdown.

Look how green everything is at the moment!

Food shopping in the afternoon, don't know what else I did. Neighbour came home and parked on his side. Hurray! Stu cooked a Japanese curry for dinner. Professor T 3.3.

Sunday.  Early night. Slept mostly ok. Went for a walk again. Got jumped on by TWO dogs. Seriously people if you have a dog that's likely to jump on people KEEP IT ON A LEASH!!! It's not that hard!! Busy day getting lots of stuff done around the house including washing, weeding, mowing, and even some music.

I'm so excited my chrysanthemum has got some life on it!!!

We also went out to West Belconnen Pond to go birdwatching but it was super windy - feels like 6C whoops.

Windoze didn't remember my iPhone in tray settings, but it did remember the date order sorting on my blog posting directory.

Yeah it's been a week...

For my birthday in 2015 the sweetie got me a 1000 piece jigsaw which was a gradient of all different colours.  Loved it!!  It was a lot of fun, I really enjoyed it.

So for Christmas 2015 I asked for the 5000 piece version of the same picture.

I spread all the pieces out and arranged by colour.

There was a lot of green!!

And finished!

This wasn't grid cut, it was random cut, which made it quite tricky

The problem was.. 

IT WAS UTTER TRASH!!!  Absolutely crap.  Terrible quality.  Clemens Habicht 5000 Colours Jigsaw Puzzle by Lamington Drive Editions was a TERRIBLE jigsaw.

Here's why.

The printing was crap.  LIke this is not a nice gradient.  It's like they printed the different sections of the jigsaw separately.

It was not even applied to the cardboard very well

The printing was bad enough.  The cutting was SHOCKING.

Pieces weren't cut through properly

Or they were damaged

And that wasn't even the worst part of the poor cutting.

Look at this trash.  They didn't bother to line up the sections after the first cut so things don't align

And another side effect of the poor alignment was that pieces were actually broken!!!

And even completely missing parts!

And the final insult.  There was a piece actually missing!!! (sorry about the out of focus photo I never got a closeup)

Now if this had been a regular jigsaw I might have given this company the benefit of the doubt and assumed I had lost it *somehow* .. even when you look at the space I was working on it.. there's nowhere it could have disappeared to..

But due to all the other problems with this terrible quality jigsaw, I guarantee it was never there.

I was so upset by this jigsaw I couldn't blog about it.  For nearly ten years.  If I had bought it myself I absolutely would have demanded a refund for it.  But the sweetie bought it, and he's allergic to confrontation.  So I have $150 worth of rubbish sitting on a shelf downstairs.  I doubt I could even sell it.  Maybe will just have to donate it to Vinnies or something.  With a warning how bad it is. 

Do not buy Clemens Habicht 5000 Colours Jigsaw Puzzle by Lamington Drive Editions.

Sunday.  14th.  Stu cooked a very yummy cream cheese, chicken and leek casserole for dinner.  He may have also gotten me a kilo of garlic :)  Not that I ate much of it.  Sigh.

But a mere fraction..

DS9 7.4 (bit silly).

Monday.  Still feeling blerf. I can't see either. Maybe cause of spending too much time on my phone in bed. Plus an irritated eyelid making seeing even harder. Sigh. Felt like trash all day, even worse than yesterday, go figure. Leftovers for dinner. DS9 7.5.

Tuesday.  Felt a whole lot better, although mouth pretty icky. Mostly decom work at work. Leftovers for dinner. DS9 7.6. Something got confused in YouTube and I've been watching Anti-Chef for days with no ads. But my browser must have kicked itself or something because ads are back with a vengeance. It's like it's been making up for lost time and getting multiple sets of ads in like a 10 minute video. Sigh.

Wednesday.  1 Corinthians 15:32 If the dead are not raised, "Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die." .. yeah little point to life without an afterlife I guess.

Awake for ages in the middle of the night - probably because my nose was a bit blocked up so couldn't breathe easily. Continued with decom work mostly at work.

We cooked roast beef and a big cauliflower bake for dinner.

Finished htmlifying my Europe 2016 photos! Now for food, hotels and panoramas.

Thursday.  Slept somewhat better. Decom work and DNS audit.

Pizzas for dinner.

Mum photo picking and doing bits for tax. I went to download my super statements for the year. OF COURSE it's offline for maintenance right when I want to do it.

Friday.  Bits and pieces and decom work.  TV dinner for dinner (the sweetie went out to the club).  No Freakier Friday though, it's listed in Disney+ but when you go to watch it it's just a trailer.  Disney+ dumbness.  So watched Terms of Endearment, which I've never actually seen.  As a slice of life some of it felt.. kinda.. "real".. except none of the characters are actually likeable, like, at all (except maybe John Lithgow's character).  I was reminded of the Billy Joel song which has a line "they started to fight when the money got tight and they just didn't count on the tears".

Saturday.  Slept mostly okish. Except for when the storm rolled through and I disconnected some things. Busy day of All The Things. Kievs for dinner. DS9 7.9.

Must be Friday .. wait.. what?

Sunday.  Slept ok. Another busy day of All The Things. Including doing Dotz while the sweetie read a book on the lounge and the radio was on (Last Night at the Proms).   My ideal retirement life. If I live that long. But hearing Bohemian Rhapsody on Classic FM was pretty funny (need to watch the video at some point).  Of course Windoze and Chrome reset all my folder settings again.  Just when I was getting used to it remembering them.

Had a beer.  First in a couple of weeks.  Sigh.

Oh... found this on the Canon that I'd taken back in July but hadn't downloaded.. Love it..

I slept relatively well on the inflatable mattress.

In the morning Mum and David and I played a few rounds of "Pub Trivia" game he had which was a bit of fun.  Kellie came over, then we headed down to Wagga Wagga.

Our first stop was the Bidgee Strawberries and Cream strawberry farm.

I'd never been fruit picking so I had no idea what to expect.  Kellie said you can buy punnets to fill your own, and eat as many strawberries as you like as you went.  It was $3 each entry, and $5 for a small punnet.  We had to meet up with a staff member who took us down to the strawberries and answered questions and got us to try a couple of different varieties they have growing there, then let us go.

The strawberries are elevated which keeps the snails off, and are hydroponically grown.

So we were all having a bit of fun enjoying the strawberries (they were delicious!) when this lady hobbled down and told us off for eating the strawberries..!!  and we were all like.. WTF..??  She said we were only meant to have a couple, and we're like, um, noone told us this.  The guy who first showed us around *knew* this was our first time there, and he never mentioned it.  So we all felt like criminals.  It certainly put a dampener on our visit, and there's no way I'd ever go back.  As value for money it kinda sux too - essentially you're paying $8 for a punnet, which is a lot more than supermarkets.  I mean sure they're nicer, but they also haven't had to have anyone pick them or transport them or store them or sell them.  In the end I was glad I ate the extra few dollars worth of strawberries, otherwise I'd have felt pretty ripped off.

We did stop for shakes/ice cream.  Again, the ice cream was very very nice, but it was $5 for a *tiny* tub.

Moving on.

Headed into Wagga Wagga for lunch.  We went to G.Thai for the lunch specials.  I had the cashew nuts and chili jam (number 10) with beef which was quite nice, and great value at $11.

Then David drove us past Wagga Beach

And then back to Junee

Mum and I packed up all our stuff and headed home.  Came back the way we went down, stopping in Bethungra for petrol (151.9c/L).  Idiots on the Hume became apparent immediately, including the Victorian driver who insisted staying in the right lane, even when not overtaking.  And the Barton wasn't much better, in fact a lot more crowded.  We had leftover turkey and potato bake and veggies for dinner, then watched Wag the Dog (I let Mum choose which movie she wanted to sleep through ;) ).

Monday.  20th.  Backdating (last Sunday afternoon I managed to blog the week before but not this week).  Epic insomnia overnight.  And there was a dog barking for ages as well :(  (different to the usual annoying ones, further west of us).  Ok day I guess.  Dark and rainy most of the day.  Lit the last candle of the season (finished off a pack of Sinlig vanilla candles).  Had san choy bow for dinner (I made the mince on Sunday).  Managed 55 photos before dinner, 210 all up (Brussels tonight).  Also good progress on the jigsaw.

Tuesday.  Slept somewhat better.  Had a two and a quarter hour meeting in the morning which was pretty exhausting.  Then all the stoopid.  Leftover chicken with veggies all fried up for dinner.  Managed 50 photos before dinner and 141 all up (into day 38 Amsterdam).  

Wednesday.  Upgrading stuff, failing, learning stuff along the way.  I missed the earthquake!  The guys that felt it here were in high rise apartments.  Sausages and salad for dinner.  45 photos before dinner, 168 all up - actually on schedule for a change.  And I finished Snow White!

Thursday.  Continuation of yesterday really, but on the phone most of the day which is never fun.  

Bit of a ringin here!

Friday.  Working on proxy block pages which was a bit of fun.  Cooked some rice in brisket jelly for lunch which was quite nice.  Leftover roast pork for dinner.  Watched Suffragette in the evening which was interesting.  Bit funny watching all these people we've seen in other movies recently (Carey Mulligan in Never Let Me Go, Helena Bonham Carter in Enola Holmes, Brendan Gleeson in In the Heart of the Sea).  

Oh, I also found out today that the super annoying yappy staffies down the road actually killed each other ..  !!

Saturday.  A day of All The Things.  Usual Saturday really.  Put on Snow White in the afternoon so I could photograph it behind the jigsaw.  

Scene sorta kinda matches

What's up with this manic squirrel though?

Had a bit of a whoopsie transferring it to paper for stacking.  Took 17 minutes to fix up.

The sweetie might have convinced me to have Chong Co for dinner.  Ok it didn't take much convincing ;)

Watched The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel in the evening.  Stu missed it when I saw it with EffanC in 2015, and he enjoyed it.

Sunday.  Another day of All The Things.  Started the next section of the Disney behemoth.  Guess which section.. Roast veggies with leftover pork for dinner.  Watched Cocktail in the evening, which I don't think I've seen since I first saw it, probably at the movies, over thirty years ago.  Kokomo was one of my favourite songs for years.  I also didn't realise Don't Worry Be Happy was in it, another one of my favourite songs.  

Didn't blog cause I'd run out of energy heh.

Monday.  12th.  Wow over two weeks ago (backdating).  Took ages to get to sleep because I was *cold* !!  Four of my birds came to see me at lunch.  Powered off a bunch of old hardware from our old network which was pretty cool.  Filled the green bin after work.  Had leftovers for dinner.  Labelled 392 photos so somewhat caught up with last week.

Tuesday.  Took *hours* to get to sleep - freezing cold :(  Thinking I might need an electric blankie.  Did a heap of work cleaning out bits of the old network.  Had an irritated eye which lasted ages :(  Did some photo labelling in the evening.  I really don't have time to go to work - too much life to do.

Wednesday.  This time I woke up hot, and with an irritated nostril (just one, so not sick, and oddly on the other side to my sore eye from yesterday), so I was a bit of a zombie for the day.  And it meant I had a runny nose all day which was super annoying.  Had an ok day I guess, trying to plan the next round of cleaning.  Leftovers for dinner, then labelled a few hundred photos, now up to only a hundred behind..

Thursday.  Slept pretty well for a change.  

Our azaleas are pretty confused - flowering in autumn instead of spring.

Never go the mall during school holidays.  I had to wait fifteen minutes at Subway :(

More cleaning planning during the day.  Finished Laid Back Camp season 2.  Then watched New York Minute, had to laugh at Danny Tanner peering after the twins.  One of their last movies.  

Friday.  Slept ok. Had lunch with Tony at Herbert's which was nice.  Shared a few different starters.

Can't remember what flavour the skewers were - they were on the specials board, I think maybe Thai curry or something.  And the spring rolls were cheeseburger!  Which were pretty cool.

And corn and zucchini fritters

They were throwing this rose out because it was drooping, so I brought it home and it's been smelling lovely ever since.

Did a heap of cleaning in the test network in the afternoon, although didn't finish what I wanted to get done - a couple of big apps just need a bunch more work.  X Files in the evening.

Saturday.  Had brunch with Annie at The District. Good catchup, haven't seen her in months.

Then an afternoon doing All The Things.  Alternating between fun stuff, house work stuff and photo work.  Got caught up with Eurasia photo labelling finally.  Watched High Fidelity in the evening which I didn't remember having seen, but turns out the sweetie and I watched it together in 2006, and some of it did seem vaguely familiar.  Hurrah for dementia.

Sunday.  Continued All The Things, again alternating between different sorts of tasks.  For dinner I made the oven baked feta pasta doing the rounds.  It wasn't too bad.  Simpsons and X Files in the evening.  I was also set to blog this, had my photos downloaded and processed and everything, but just ran out of time.  So here we are two weeks later backdating...

Twister !?

Epic mushroom cluster

See aforementioned note on being a slacker.  Backdating.  

Monday.  11th.  After work I'd labelled my quota of Eurasia 2012 photos by dinner time.  Which was leftovers and salad.  Then continued writing up my year in review post.  Then came the news that David had gotten a train driving job out of Cootamundra and would be leaving.  For some reason that just made me feel a bit sad.  Happy for him of course though!  Couldn't get to sleep til nearly 1am, probably just trying to deal with change.

Tuesday.  Slept a bit late.  In the evening was up to Mum and Dad's photos of Hong Kong for our Eurasia trip.  They travelled separately to me (because I was planning to go via Japan on the way back) and the group had a daytime layover in Hong Kong.  Because I can't help myself, I geotagged all 78 of Dad's and all 59 of Mum's photos of their day there.  It was pretty easy, because I could tell exactly where they'd been on account of having gone to those exact spots a year and a half later.  Just needed a bit of street view assistance for the driving photos.  There was one tricky one of some buildings in Fortress Hill, which was really nowhere near anywhere you'd expect them to be when getting a bus from the airport to Central where they took the Peak Tram.  

Wednesday.  Another night of not getting to sleep til very late.  Had to *go* to work, blerf.  Finished writing up a test plan of sorts for the proxies.  Then started building new mail servers. 

Well and truly past the twelfth day of Christmas..

Stu was meant to meet Damien at the Pot Belly for a drink, only Damien forgot, so I went and had a drink with him instead.  Sausages and salad for dinner.  Backed up my phone, backed up my computer, then labelled all of Mum and Dad's Hong Kong photos, and then it's after 9pm.  Blerf.

Thursday.

Oh hai snail.  Can you please get off the middle of the path so I don't squish you.  You're lucky you didn't end up as Stumpy's lunch!

Had a drink with Neil and Wello at the Labor Club. 

Stu got this set of clickety-clack keys to test different keyboard styles

Then had Dr Oc pizzas for dinner.  Started watching a Japanese anime show called Laid-Back Camp, which I really enjoyed and we ended up watching four twenty-three minute episodes.  It's photo-realistic, and you could actually go to all the places they go to.  

Friday.  Spent most of the day on a call with a vendor helping us with a POC of a firewall product.  So.  Draining.

I did get this funny photo of Stumpy planking at lunch

After being on the phone all day I just wanted TV dinners for dinner.  So got a couple of veal cordon bleus from Chris's.  Then watched some more Laid-Back Camp.

Saturday.  Slept ok.  Did all the morning things, then helped David load up his car to take the first load of things home.  I really didn't think he had all that much here, but we completely filled the car and there's still a lot to go.  

We might have had our new mattress arrive!

Went out to do our food shopping.  Also to pick up pills from Chemist Warehouse.  I was going to use the app to order my pills so I could just go and pick them up.  Except the app said they didn't have any in stock.  So I went to the counter when we got there to ask, and I could literally see them on the shelf behind her.  She got them down and was like, oh yes they *are* in stock.  So I was going to grab them and go, except she's like, but you can't, there's a queue.  And I'm like, THEY'RE RIGHT THERE.  FFS.  Apparently it takes chemists literally fifteen minutes to stick a name tag sticker on a box of pills.  WTF else do they do????  Pathetic.  Continued on with the year in review post in the afternoon. 

Stu cooked dinner - sukuyaki hotpot!!  Inspired by Laid-Back Camp.  With real (and very expensive) wagyu beef that the butcher kindly sliced thinly for us.

Then we watched The Professor and the Madman which was pretty good, altho apparently Mel Gibson had a hissy fit that they couldn't film in Oxford and refused to promote the film.  Stu had the book at one point, but we couldn't find it - even if he didn't give it away in our recent purge, if it was still there it would have been behind all the Lego boxes.  

Sunday.  Took ages to get to sleep - tired and restless.  So a bit of a nothing day.  Put on beef brisket in the slow cooker at lunch.  In the afternoon we pulled apart the old bed, and setup the new mattress and linen.  I had a look at the bed frame we were looking at at Ikea, but I'm glad I read the reviews, because otherwise I wouldn't have found out that the frame is actually too small for a king size mattress, and we would have been stuck.  Finally finally posted my 2020 year in review post.  Go to the archives if you're one of those silly people that doesn't use an RSS reader.

I've been cranky for no good reason for much of this break, and this holiday has been too damned short anyway.  

So here's some crap to avoid.. name and shame and all that..

First off there's Platinum Seal.  I asked them for a quote online at the end of August.  They got back to me once and said they'd come out on a day in early September.  But we were away in Tumut so I was a day late seeing the mail, tried to confirm, but never heard back from them.  I filled in their form again but never got a response.  Bottom line is:  they have no interest in my business.

Then there's Mega Sealed.  I asked them for a quote, and a dude came out and had a look at the shower.  Said he'd send me a quote within 24 hours.  Never did.  I filled in their online form again to follow up, and never got a response.  Bottom line is:  they have no interest in my business.

Then there's this retard who says to dump all the sugar into the egg whites at once when making a pavlova.  No.  Just no.  No no no no no.  Fricken idiot.

Dog was barking non stop for two and three quarter hours this morning before we went out.

And Stu meant to buy a synthetic rug (so the moths wouldn't eat it) and after we took the labels off it, we found out it was wool.  Hurrah.