Wow, another strange year. Another crazy busy year.

Our year began very quietly with just the two of us. We didn't go out to the club because of Omicron taking the country by storm.

Travel-wise this year has been.. interesting. It started off with us desperatly trying to get out of the cruise we were due to go on. The charter company had postponed it a year, but with Omicron raging, government travel bans still in force, and lack of insurance for covid-related hospitalisations, we just couldn't justify it. The travel bans did get lifted and insurance companies started insuring for covid, but we still didn't think it was worth the risk. In the end, something like two weeks before the departure date, Carnival were like, ok fine, we won't charge the charter company if people don't want to come. Great. So we didn't go. The charter company were still @$$holes and would only provide a cruise credit for next year's cruise not the year after. It's caused me so much stress and angst and I would NEVER deal with them again. So plan B for February was Tasmania. But with Omicron raging and mandatory lockdowns for testing positive, we decided against that too. If we'd gotten sick while in Tasmania we would have nowhere to go and no way to get home. So plan C was regional Victoria. We only booked motels a night in advance, and if we'd gotten sick we could be home from anywhere in Victoria in a day. So that's what we did. And we actually had a lovely time with almost perfect weather (if a tad hot!). We had a very busy first week, cramming in lots of things, but took it a lot easier in the second week. In April there was a day trip to four Sydney dams to see three of them spilling which was super cool. In May was another sneaky trip to Sydney to see Woronora Dam spilling, and Brickman's Lego Jurassic World. I hadn't been planning to go see the Lego, but then was inspired by Lego Masters so went when it only had a few days to go. And then they extended it. Oh well. And then back again to Sydney in June for Mum's birthday where Kellie had organised to see Mary Poppins. Met up with Tony the next day and wandered the city and went out to Cockatoo Island, then met up with Mum again and saw Vivid. Finally a visit to Ansto at Lucus Heights which was very cool. We only made it down the coast once this year, in July, to see Kit and Pete. In September I went overseas for the first time in nearly four years. Mum and I went and saw the Oberammergau Passion Play, which I'd been wanting to see since the late 80s. We then drove through Austria, Liechtenstein and Switzerland (four countries in one day!!) and into Italy, where we ditched the car and toured northern and central Italy by train. We saw *heaps* of stuff, much more, and for much cheaper, than if we'd done it with the tour company like originally planned. I got filled with rage how Qantas and Emirates won't talk to each other to do seat allocations on code share flights. Jet lag hit me in a major way when I got home. It certainly didn't help that I got a cold as soon as I got home and so didn't go outside and see the sun in days. I was awake for hours every night for a week, and a complete zombie for much of it. Finally, we went back to Tumut for the Tumut 3 Power Station Open Day and another TRBC tour.

Work was, well, work. It's not that I don't like it, it's just that it takes up so much time out of my days. I have way too many things on my todo list to have time to go to work every day. Sigh. But at least working from home a few days a week makes it tolerable. I didn't actually go into the office at all until March (with Omicron raging and minimising people contact before we went on holidays). Then when I did eventually have to go back in I found it super loud and stressful and distracting and PEOPLE!! I had to be Neil a few times during the year and did some doco on his stuff (which he won't keep up to date heh). There were a couple of firewall migrations that went quite smoothly. A couple of load testing days in May and June. A few proxy upgrades which introduced more bugs than they fixed. But we did PoC a proxy from another company that actually looked pretty good. Migrated some servers. And All The Cleaning. Just call me Sadie. There was a whiskey night in July (which I actually missed, but was able to try everything the next week), and I ran my Christmas bbq at the lake for the tenth year in a row.

Healthwise I've been pretty good. Had a very slight cold in June and another one when I got home from Europe. Had booster jabs in January and July. The one in January caused a strong immune reaction so had to take a half day off and have a little lie down. Other than that just a sore arm so far is all I've had from the shots. Other than that just the usual bouts of insomnia, waking up with numb hands, and going blind.

We've been pretty slack at keeping up with friends and family this year. Although we have seen some friends a bit. We've seen Tony and Jess a few times for games and music. Damien came over in January, April and June for games. Jenn came over a couple of times in April and December. I had heaps of lunches at Herbert's with various Chrises and Tonys and other peeps as well. David came to stay before the Canberra Airport Open Day. Kit came to stay in July. Mum came to stay in December and we did our family Christmas with Kellie's family at the Burn's Club. We saw Annie and the family a few times - for Annie's 50th, Mila's 21st and Christmas, as well Immy coming over a couple of times to hang out. EffanC and R&F came over they day before my birthday. Had a lovely housewarming for R&F in November (it was cold and wet). Caught up with Aaron in December, probably as long as ten years since I last saw him. Finally saw Chrissie for the first time since covid in December. And met up with James and George and the kids for lunch in December on their way to Melbourne.

We only made it out to the club four times this year. It's been that kind of year. With quarantining and being on holidays for several events, the only times we made it out were for the Mexican night in March, the formal night in June, our Christmas in July and the Christmas party in November. We didn't even make it out in any non-event weekends which we like doing over winter.

I did a bit of work on processing Dad's slides early in the year but that fizzled out. I geotagged all of Mum and Dad's Tasmania photos in case we ended up going there. I also geotagged all our Victoria and South Australia photos from previous holidays to try and reproduce those. I started to scan Mum's Minolta negatives from the beginning (1983) and got some spectacular results, but that ground to a halt when I got up to 1994 and got into a batch of badly discoloured negatives that were unscannable. Not that there's even all that many past 1994 that I'm interested in keeping so no big deal I suppose. I managed to cull and label and get some photos onto the blog for the tenth anniversary of my 2012 Eurasia trip. That was a lot of work for the first few months of the year but it was so good to get it done. I also got 719 Victoria photos (plus bugs/flowers/panoramas) labelled and online in time for the six month anniversary of us leaving on that trip. After that I got really slack in the evenings - with no pressure or deadlines nothing much got done. For this year's Europe trip it took me a good six weeks just to geotag everything, then I got slack again. I was thinking I might be able to get the photos online by Christmas. Yeah right. Instead I used the evenings to start filing by 2022 photos and taking notes for my year in review post.

Stumpy is still doing great. We've had him (her?) nearly five years now! He'd be at least 13 by now. The fish are puttering along. My two main guppy tanks (the two foot upstairs and the two foot downstairs) look amazing - lots of plants (at least upstairs) and hardly any algae. But our guppies are two years old now and getting inbred. We really need to get some new genetics for them. I still have my "angel" 620T tank with a guppy, a platy, and an ancient cory. I still have Chrissie's tank with her two clown loaches and a guppy, but I'm considering moving them and getting rid of the tank. It's got horrible black hair algae which is not fun. I have the two two foots, as well as several small tanks downstairs, all with just guppies. And Stu has his four foot which is still full of algae. Really must move more juvenile guppies in there.

I lost heart in trying to complete any more of Vic's Lego sets, so decided to inventory what was left (I'm going to need to do that at some point anyway before selling it). I found a website called Basebrick which integrates with Bricklink which is super useful. Did heaps but ran out of time to finish it before I went overseas and haven't been back to it. For my birthday I got 10497 Galaxy Explorer and 75329 Death Star Trench Run Diorama which are pretty cool. I decided to sell the box of "MISB" Harry Potter Lego I got from 2003-2006. There were ten sets and they sold for quite a lot (I probably made the buy it now too small), but ebay makes it so you have to jump through all their hoops otherwise you can get totally screwed over buy the buyers. As it was I got totally screwed over by ebay who not only take 12.5% of the sale, but also 12.5% of the *postage* which I think is a complete scam. Not to mention the stress. If things go well it's actually quite simple, but if anything complicated happens (like people pay for everything and *then* want combined postage, or come to pick up from your house but don't mark online that they've done so, or the value is over the $100 Australia Post will cover you for) then it's a nightmare. I calculated how much profit I made, taking into account the cost of interest for not having the money in my mortgage all these years and all the fees, and I figure I made a total net profit of about $50. But, I'm sure I made a lot of people very happy they could get their hands on 15-20 year old brand new Lego sets. For Christmas I was going to get myself the Lego Titanic. But after not getting a Black Friday special on it, I decided to sit down and buy it on the Saturday. By which time it was out of stock. Sigh. But I did get a different Lego set for Christmas - in a manner of speaking. Neil lent me his Saturn V rocket that he bought a few years ago but had never done. So I've been having fun with that. Then will pull it all apart and give it back to him :)

I finally finished the Disney 40320 piece behemoth this year - finishing up with the Bambi section. I still haven't assembled the whole thing yet because I lost access to the really useful skybridge so don't know where I'm going to assemble it. Maybe Damien's driveway. Other than that, the usual jigsaws at home and work, although feeling like I really don't have time to do them.

They said La Niña would finish by the end of summer. It didn't. There was a massive storm in January which caused a lot of chaos in northwest Canberra. There were power outages all around Belconnen and Coles lost all their fridge and freezer stock. Chris kept power to his store, but his house had no power for days. We were lucky and just had a couple of small outages while they were fixing things. And the water. All The Water. In spring half of NSW was flooded. Insanity. And there was so much water there was no lettuce in Australia for a while. Craziness.

I've had a whole stack of problems with Windows 11 on my new computer. I hate it (windoze 11) so much. Like the fact you can't ungroup task manager icons which makes it so damned slow to switch between windows now. Before you could just click on the icon. Now you have to click or just hold and *wait* for the popup before you can switch windows. I took to making whole new desktops for the browser and explorer windows I need for different hobbies (such as music or lego) but even that has its bugs - like not displaying the wallpaper at the right size at random and then fixing it and then breaking it again all without me changing anything. Or that after a reboot only two of the desktops will display the right wallpaper at all, and if I switch between the working and non working one it'll put the wall paper from the working desktop onto the non working desktop I've just switched to. And after a few days it'll come good. Utter trash. Then there's the fact my GPS won't work at all (and there's no replacement drivers for it), my scanner won't work (even though it originally did), Eudora wouldn't work to begin with, then came good. My SD card reader only works intermittently. The front USB ports take at least thirty seconds to recognise there's anything plugged into them. My second monitor wouldn't work so had to buy a new one. It's great but the resolution is so high it's difficult to see. Windows 11 *still* only ever puts the screensaver on the left-most monitor, even if that is not the primary monitor. Excel 2003 dates wouldn't work, so had to put on Libre Office instead. You can't drag a file onto the application on the task bar, have said application pop up, and open the file in that application. That just doesn't work at all anymore. Similarly I can't drag anything into Eudora to attach it, I have to go to a menu and manually attach files. Printscreen didn't work to begin with, then started working. Hate hate hate hate hate. I've been playing a lot of Wordle style games, although cut back on those while overseas and only play a few of them now. I like Symble because you have to think more about it. Redactle is challenging. Wheretaken is a new favourite. Also Worldle, Waffle and Framed. In February Google changed one of their apis to enforce https, so had to hack Geosetter to get it to work again. Then in December Google finally killed the IE api, killing Geosetter completely. A few weeks later they released a new version of Geosetter which still has some issues, but at least will display the map again. Our printer is having a tonne of issues with jamming and poor quality printouts. It might just need a clean. Or a new printer. hmmm. Had to setup an app password in June for Eudora so it can backup my gmail. In July OneDrive took it upon itself to backup/sync all my desktop, documents and downloads directories to OneDrive. But all it succedded in doing was making a complete mess of things, bringing back files from my old computer that had long since been filed. Turned off backups everywhere and I minimise use of those directories completely. IOS 15.3.1 (or thereabouts) went back to putting photos into files by year/month (which I actually prefer). But Apple is STILL messing with the timestamps on my files. I got myself a 14 Pro for Christmas (it arrived instore literally the Friday night before Christmas, I was thinking I'd have to wait until January). Its camera has.. issues.. I lot of the first photos I got off it were utter crap. Primarily because I was using the 2x lens a lot to compare with my old phone. Firstly. Don't. The 2x "lens" is a digital interpolation of the 1x optics. So it's crap. The macro setting will work (if the stars align) but while it's good for getting actual closeups, it's crap at taking photos of flowers where you want the background all out of focus. Use the 3x lens as before just be far enough away for it to focus. Optus charged me 50c for an international SMS I didn't make in July. I got onto their online chat and they gave me a credit, but firstly said they couldn't find out the exact date/time and number, which was a total lie, because when I pressed them for it they could, and then I figure out what it was (it was a reply to a string of text, not a number, so it got translated to an international number). I bought myself new sandshoes in January, for the first time in like fifteen years. And new black shoes in August for the first time in seven years. I bought a G5X before our overseas trip. And got a brand-new-second hand wok on freecycle (to replace ours whose non-stick surface was coming off).

Around the house. I needed to move all the ornaments off the top of my desk to setup my new computer and rearrange monitors and crap. I moved them all into the shevles I bought for David in the spare room. I can see everything there a lot better, so I'm enjoying having them all there. The top of the desk has remained clear all year, although I do currently have my birthday presents up there at the moment. Tony came over in January to chainsaw off the oak tree sprouts and the front hedge. And then in December to attack the photinia. In between is all the weeding. Never. Ending. Weeding. Except in winter cause it's too damned cold heh. When the big storm went through in January water was coming out of places that water should not be coming out of. Like bricks next our bins, and bricks on one of the back steps at the back of the house. So got the plumbers to come out and do all the eeling. The sewage pipes were the easiest because we know the deal with them. The front courtyard was easy when we realised it's not a proper drainage pipe, just a 50mm pipe that goes just across the courtyard and drains off to the side. Looks to have been an afterthought. Then the stormwater. They went in via the sump next to the garage and it was like thirty metres down before they found the blockage. So they cleared that. Like the sewage, we'll just need to do that every couple of years. Finally they looked at the drainpipe near the bins. Under the concrete the pipe had come adrift and was full of roots, so the drain from the roof was just pooling under the stairs, and then going through the bricks next to the bins. So they dug up the front stairs, dug a wholly new trench, resealed, relaid the pipes, filled it all in, and got someone to put in some new stairs. Fifteen thousand dollars later. Ouch. Mice were scritching around the roof in March, which caused some sleepless nights. But then they went away. Which was good because I practically had a panic attack trying to figure out how I was going to get across to the far side of the roof without falling through it and getting covered in disgustingness. I tried to cut back the ivy in May. It's now covering more of the side wall than ever. Our largest stove element died. But we still haven't replaced the element or the whole stove. Found out in early spring that a pair of crimson rosellas had been chewing through the beams holding up our roof. Tried plastic sheeting, tinsel, scaring them, and scat. Nothing much seemed to work very well. They've found more interesting things to eat for now but I suspect they'll be back again next winter. We moved a shelf out of the dungeon because Stu wanted to put in a proper shelf there. Underneath was a massive growth of dark brown mold. We don't know if it's current or historical. hrmmm. The Dyson I got for my birthday two years ago stopped working. Don't know if it just needs a clean, or if the battery is dying, or if the Dyson is just a dud. My money is on the latter. Brought home the Electrolux from the club where we'd had it to use until I can get around to cleaning the Dyson. Got lots of strawberries from plants around the back yard. Including some from our paver weeds. The snails clearly didn't get the memo, so we got the strawberries instead of them. We had solar panels and a battery installed in December. They still don't work.

Our favourite restaurant this year was still Chong Co - we got deliveries from them in January, twice in April, twice in August, and October. Herberts is also popular for work Friday lunches (and their Christmas in July was a lot of fun). I didn't get to have any workday Kingsleys lunches because the building opposite blew up from a gas leak and they've never gone back, or been allowed to, not sure which. I did finally have some Kingsleys from Kippax a few weeks ago. We had Sichuan Chinese pickup from Belco a couple of times and were pretty impressed with them. We had brunch a few times at Market St Eats. Some others we went back to after long breaks included Mills and Grills (Stu went low carb so hardly any Dominos this year either), Chez Kimchi and Bella Vista. Tried out SpudBAR and 1919 Langzhou Beef Noodle which opened in the mall. Other one-offs included Co Dung (fried chicken wings were awesome), Lazy Su, Turqoise Turkish, Edgar's, Flavours of Jiangnan, Teddy Picker's, Badger & Co, Little Steamer, The Howling Moon, Mr Shabu Shabu, Little Oink, Master Bao (which had no bao), Magpies (for Jim's farewell), Pattysmiths, and Chinese Inn (from Kippax, just as bad as last time).

As always I end up doing quite a bit of cooking and trying new recipes, as well as doing old ones a few times. One new favourite is stuffed baby capsicums - fill with whatever mince you like and lots of cheese and roast. Yum yum. I made a few lemon cheesecakes, as well as a lime one and a cherry one. One of Stu's favourite meals is Cath's basa bake we've done that a few times. We did san choy bow a couple of times. We really like the potato, onion, blue cheese and bacon bake from my Gratins and Bakes book, but with Stu going low carb we only did it like once all year. The slow cooker gets a workout over winter. Favourite recipes for that are Alan's beef stew, brisket, and even pulled pork. And we tried slow cooking pork ribs (nice but lots of little fiddly bony bits). Beef cheeks are slow cooked on the stove. After doing turkey rolls that actually turned out this time at the club Christmas in July (on account of doing them in the oven instead of on the bbq), we tried one ourselves in August and also November (and likely New Years Eve as well). They turn out really nicely and we'll probably always keep one in the freezer to do when we feel like it. From Not Quite Nigella I tried a chicken marbella but wouldn't bother again, from the Gratins and Bakes book I tried potatoes with lemon and tomato but wouldn't bother again with that either, and from my Slow Cooker Kitchen book I tried honey rosemary chicken which was too salty. Completely evil meals included uunifetapasta, cheese nachos, and no-carb pizza (made with no base at all, just cheese). Slow cooked mini tomatoes are amazing, really must do them more often. Tried pork crackling by itself but I do prefer it done on the meat. A favourite lunch is grilled cheese sandwiches - but with shredded pizza cheese on the outside as well. Favourite veggies (well other than my favourite which is potato bake) include brussels sprouts with bacon. Over winter we discovered kalettes which when roasted for 35-40 minutes turn into little bliss bombs. Almost as good is kale chips, but it's a bit too easy to overcook those and have them go bitter. I made pesto with the last of the summer basil, and tried cheese biscuits in June (but need to find a better recipe). And made a coconut cake (Yum! Delicious!) in June and October.

Theatre/Shows/Exhibitions
* Australian Wind Symphony in May at the B (next to the Q)
* Lego Jurassic World in Sydney
* The Queen and Me exhibition at the National Capital Exhibition
* Mary Poppins in Sydney
* Canberra Lego Brick Show at Thoroughbred Park
* Australian Wind Symphony in November at St Andrews

Movies (at the movies)
* Top Gun: Maverick

Movies (TV)
* The Courier
* The Young Black Stallion
* The Grand Budapest Hotel
* Six Minutes to Midnight
* Sleeping With the Enemy
* Munich: Edge of War
* The Laundromat
* 1917
* The Mauritanian
* Zero Hour (twice) / Flying High
* Dr Strangelove
* No Time to Die
* Operation Finale
* Logan's Run
* 6 Underground
* The King's Speech
* Encanto / Luca
* The Death of Stalin
* The Royal Tenenbaums
* Gladiator
* Knives Out
* Edward Scissorhands
* The Monuments Men
* Pride and Prejudice (the Keira Knightley version)
* Mary Poppins / Saving Mr Banks
* The Little Mermaid II / Ariel's Beginning
* The Man from Snowy River
* An Affair to Remember / Sleepless in Seattle
* A Clockwork Orange
* The Constant Gardener
* Top Gun
* The Silver Brumby
* Kingsman: The Secret Service / Kingsman: The Golden Circle / King's Man
* Careful, He Might Hear You
* Moulin Rouge!
* Shine
* Blue Murder
* Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (twice - before and after Italy)
* Breaker Morant
* Matrix Resurrections
* Romeo+Juliet
* The Butterfly Effect
* Die Hard 1/2 / Love Actually
* Enola Holmes 2
* Operation Mincemeat
* Herbie Goes Bananas

TV
* Sex Education (season 3)
* The Simpsons (seasons 20 to half way through 31)
* The Girl on the Train in the Rear Window, or whatever it's called
* Mentour Pilot (about 3/4 of the air crash investigations episodes)
* Gunther's Autopsy
* Lie to Me (end of season 2 and season 3)
* Black Books
* Gunther's Anatomy
* The Crown (season 1 and most of season 2)
* Lego Masters (season 4)
* Martin Bashir's Diana interview
* The Diana Interview: Revenge of a Princess 2021
* Epstein's Shadow: Ghislaine Maxwell
* Obi-wan Kenobi
* Super Cub
* Andor (season 1)
* Lego Masters Bricksmas special (last year's and this year's)
* Survivor Canberra (fan produced)
* Picard (season 2, haven't finished)

Books
* Read the first four books of the New Testament, but got behind in February when we travelled and never really caught up. Will try again next year for the rest of the New Testament.

Other stuff
* Tried to catch up on This Day in History posts, but there's still too much work to be done with Mum's photos to do it properly, so that stalled
* Car wouldn't start in January. Turns out it was the battery, which was probably original, so it would have been nearly eight years old
* Petrol got insanely expensive
* Balloon Fiesta in March
* Canberra Airport Open Day in April
* Dam Busters trip to Sydney in April
* Climbed Mt Rogers a couple of times
* Saw the planet/moon alignment in April
* Jupiter and Venus were having a sneaky early morning kiss in April
* Sneaky trip to Sydney in May to see Lego Jurassic World (and Woronora Dam)
* Got a democracy sausage in May
* Climbed Mt Ainslie in May (hadn't been planning to it just happened)
* Whiskey Live in May
* Queen Elizabeth II 70th Jubilee in Canberra - all the purple lights on buildings around Canberra
* ABC's Classic 100: Music for the Screen in June
* Inspected my flat, went to Cockatoo Island, saw Vivid and visited Ansto in June (after seeing Mary Poppins for Mum's birthday)
* Surprising Science at the Shine Dome in June, August, and December
* Walked up Mt Painter
* Stu cracked a tooth and needed it taken out
* Fought with Qantas' booking system again. I hate Qantas. So. Much.
* Had a hair cut in August
* Stu got a 3D printer which he's been using to make little models for his wargamming
* Total lunar eclipse in November
* Took a drive out the back of Dunlop/Holt to see the West Belconnen Pond
* Got a beer advent calendar from Plonk
* Went to the Green Shed a couple of times, dropped off a few things, came home with more jigsaws
* Continued to practise the clarinet

Have a very happy and safe new year!!

Did someone say Tumut 3 Power Station Open Day?!?

Friday

Left work a little early and headed down the Hume.  We stopped at the lookout at the north end of Gundagai to see All The Water.

Then took a drive down to the flood plain to see All The Water.

Middleton Drive across the Murrumbidgee was closed to traffic.  Because All The Water.

Also had a look from the south end of town.

Straight after arriving in Tumut we headed up to TRBC for a couple of beers and noms.

We had a potato and rosemary pizza which was lovely and the Amazeballs were actually totes amazeballs! 

Saturday

Bacon and egg rolls for brekky then off we headed to Talbingo.

We got the second shuttle from town, in time for the second power station tour at 9:10.

They had a bunch of staff doing the tours.  These guys were not normally tour guides!  We had an electrical fitter? engineer? (can't remember) and another tradie as well.  We had to wear a hard hat and highvis, and also safety glasses which were pretty pointless because they didn't fit over my glasses (and the "tour guide" wasn't wearing them anyway).  They also said "no photos" but then "you'll be told where you can take photos" and our guide was like, um what places would they be? heh.  Part of it they were worried about people dropping things down some very big holes, but also apparently they were a bit secretive of the electronics at the top of the turbines.  The rest of it is all pretty much common knowledge anyway.  We walked down and past the busbar room and onto the generator hall floor.  I did ask if we could take photos of the old control room which is no longer in use (they remote control everything from Cooma these days and just have a skeleton crew on site, plus whatever projects are going on).  

After we got out I said we should take the earliest penstock tour we could do to beat the crowds.  We walked straight onto a coach and it wasn't full - winning!

We went up past the dam wall, and across the top.  People could have gotten out at the far end, but it would have meant waiting for the next coach in half an hour to come back, so noone did (plus I had better photos from last time when we had glorious weather).  

Then onto the top of the penstocks.  They gave us ten minutes there and it was super cool!

Then back down.  The queues were already getting long now.  I totally called it.

The signs said no climbing on the pipes.  Nothing about standing under them to show how damned big they are!

The last time we were here I had a sad that this wasn't open to go in and have a look.  So I was pretty excited that we could this time.

The turbine hall is super cool.  Six turbines.  Three of them only generate, and the other three can either generate or pump water back up the penstocks when power is cheaper.  The generators were upgraded from 2006-2012 to 300 megawatts, so the whole power station can generate 1800 megawatts.

Looking across to the old control room.

One of the inlet pipes

They also have a super cool working model of one of the turbines.

And a model of the area around the dam and power station

I'd love for this thing to be on the internet - it's a graphic of all the different powerstations on the Snowy Hydro system and which ones are in use.  Only like three were in the whole system - lots of solar and wind around or something.  

Finally we took a shuttle back to Talbingo.  The guy organising the queues for the buses (one for the penstocks and the other for the town shuttle) clearly wasn't used to doing this sort of thing and was completely overwhelmed by the crowds.  Luckily most people seemed to be queueing for the penstocks, so we walked straight onto a shuttle back.

Stopped by Jounama.  It was flowing pretty hard, and Blowering was full right back up to this dam.

Last time we were here Blowering was a *lot* lower.  Blowering was actually over full.

We tried to get a good view of the spillway which was spilling *hard* but as I discovered last time there's not really any good views of it.  And sadly the road to the top was closed off, so couldn't even walk across the top to see it (we saw people up there so no idea how they got there).

We did find this suspension bridge over the Tumut River.

The Tumut River was flowing hard with All The Water.

Found somewhat of a view of the spillway on the way back.

Had a pie back in Tumut for lunch, then headed out to Adelong.  It had been flooded just last week.  Water was up to the level of that bridge.

This house had water midway up the shed, and the yard was full of damaged gyprock from the house.  The owner's story is here.

This is that bridge from before showing all the damage from debris.

The sculpture walk was closed, but we did see this rabbit sculpture which reminded me of Donnie Darko.

The mine area was closed off too, so just got a view from the viewing point.

We tried to get out to the truss bridge over the Tumut River east of town but All The Water was over the road from both directions.  It *probably* would have been fine, but we decided not to risk it.

Back in Tumut we walked down to the Old Bridge park.  Last time we were here the water was a lot lower!  The bridge itself had a big gate across it as well.

The walkway either side of the bridge was flooded in various places.  This is on the south side with the bridge over Mcfarlane's Creek.

The park was also filled with All The Water.

Had some bubbles back at the motel before heading over to Mendrinas at Brooklyn for dinner.  The steak was just a teensy bit over done but the lamb was quite overdone which was a bit sad.  The salad was pretty amazing though.

Sunday

Went for a bit of a wander around town to fill in some time.

The Tumut River with All The Water from Wee Jasper Road.

At 11:00 it was time for our tour at TRBC.  Unfortunately we didn't get Tim this time (apparently he has to have time off *sometimes* hehe) although we did see him in the bar and chatted for a while.  So the story wasn't as rich this time.  They do have more brewing tanks now, and they've recently got their own canning run, so they can can their beer as needed and not have to wait for the canners to come in.  They're still getting used to it.

The tour isn't nearly as good value for money either now.  Last time the four tasters were larger and included lunch.  Now the tasters are smaller and lunch is not included.  Oh well.

For lunch we had maple bacon and blue cheese pizza and a salad with smoked trout.

Bought a mixed case of beer, then headed home.

Sunday.  16th.  Had crumbed basa bake for dinner which was very nice.  Third episode of Andor an early night.

Monday.  Slept ok.  Trying to do All The Things before work.  Still didn't have time for them all.  I DON'T HAVE TIME TO GO TO WORK!!  All afternoon everything was out of focus.  I can't SEE!!  Which is incredibly frustrating.  Maybe because I'm tired.  Or maybe I'm tired because everything is out of focus.  I certainly wasn't up to concentrating on anything on the computer.  7pm is bed time right?  So I just watched crap on the internet.  Of course then I was depressed that I still hadn't achieved anything useful all night.  Life is too short to go to work.  I'll be dead before I've done everything I want to.

Tuesday.  Started geotagging Europe photos in the morning.  Another afternoon of not be able to SEE.  Did some weeding but struggled to see music.  Kept missing notes because the lines were all blurry and I couldn't tell where the notes were.  Stu cooked mince for dinner.  Bit more geotagging, but hard work trying to accurately geotag photos in Munich's Residence because the thing is so huge.  I had to fudge things a bit.  

Wednesday.  Slept okish.  All the work.  At least I could see when I got home, but it was late(ish) so no weeding or music.  Stu was exhausted as well from a very draining day, so we ended up having beer and pizza.  hmmm.  Finished geotagging til end of day 5.

Thursday.  Ok day, pretty busy.  Ok drinks.  Since we had pizza last night I wanted KFC (first time in months).  Except we had to wait 15 minutes in the drivethrough :( Watched Romeo+Juliet, because, we'd just been in Fair Verona.  

Friday.  Woke up at ~4am and never got back to sleep.  Super super busy day (have been doing three people's jobs all week.. well two really since I didn't have time to do any of my own work).  

Saturday.  Did all my morning stuff then we did food shopping, then I cooked dinner, then had lunch and by then it's 13:20.  Sigh.  Got some more stuff done in the afternoon, including moving a set of shelves because Stu wants to get more substantial ones for all his wargaming stuff.  I'm not if we've fixed the rising damp issues by fixing the drainage, but this sure isn't great... 

It didn't feel wet, so possibly it's ok now.. we really don't know.  I doused the area with vanilla fridge wipe to sterilise it..

Alan's beef stew (aka runny poo) with a heap of roasted veggies for dinner which was very nice.  Watched episodes 4 and 5 of Andor.

Sunday.  Just a day of All The Things.  House stuff, a couple of days of geotagging, a bit of Lego.  I also dropped the sweetie at the airport (he had to go to Melbourne for work) and dropped by Scrivener Dam on the way back.  It was flowing nicely, but not nearly as intense as 2010 or 2012.

Monday.  3rd.  Not backdating for a change ;)  Did the usual morning stuff, then Damien came over.  The boys had a coffee and a chat, then Damien saw my Queen Mary 2 in New York photo and was asking about it, and we ended up subjecting him to the slideshow of that trip ;)  I put out a bunch of nibblies (we've not really done much entertaining this break so we still had lots of junk food in the house) and the boys played Glory Recalled, which went all afternoon until Damien had to go home (I think Damien was winning). 

Meanwhile I did a few months worth of This Day in History posts.  Then.  STORM!!  We basically only got the side of it, but there was hail and so much rain and it was SO LOUD!!  Had to close all the windows on the south side of the house because rain was pouring in.  The backyard actually flooded at the lowest part.  And I put out two buckets to collect some free rainwater, and they both filled in just a few minutes.  

We didn't lose power during the storm itself, but we did have power fluctuations which confused a few things - the garage door thought it lost power and the cooler needed a full hard reboot to start working again, but the computer was ok (which I didn't shut down cause it needed updates and that'd take too long). 

We did lose power just before bed time but only for a few minutes.  The ESA website was just madness!

Ended up getting pizza for dinner.  

Tuesday.  Slept relatively well.  A day of All The Things.  Power went out again in the afternoon for like an hour or so.  Did some paint by numbers for a bit, and separated the plants that were going into each other by the front door.  Do you think I maybe should have pruned this plant a bit earlier? :)

I was blogging more This Day in History posts and realised I'd missed a *whole heap* of my own photos from 2020/2021 that need to be processed and added in.  I was hoping to get 2021 finished this break, but that put me in a bad mood about it all and I haven't been back since.  

Wednesday.  Went early to do our food shopping at Coles.  They lost power Monday night all night, and so lost all their fridge and freezer stock!! OMFG such a waste!!  So sad.  I was lucky I was able to mostly get the fresh/frozen stuff that I wanted.  I was hoping to pickup any leftover eggnog, but if there was any left it would have been lost.  Then home to tetris it all into the fridge (I primarily went for pantry stuff as there was a bunch of things we'd run out of, but I picked up some fresh stuff as well, because I was there, but we still have a lot of leftovers, so it was tricky to fit it all in).  By the time I'd gone through my weekly morning routine it was nearly lunch time.  Hmmmmmm.  Then spent most of the afternoon pulling out the computer desk and cleaning it all up and setting everything up again.  I bought a dvi to display port adapter in the morning at Officeworks, but it turns out the old HP second monitor I have (an old one of Stu's) doesn't work with Windows 11, so that was a waste of money.  But then I'd also pulled everything off my computer desk and made an epic mess of the study, so will probably spend the rest of the break trying to tidy up the mess I just made.. hrmmm.  And no weeding or music either.  

Thursday.  Slept ok I think.  Hating on Windows 11 - you can't ungroup taskbar windows anymore, and you can't have additional toolbars - two things I really need/want/use.  I find I can't *see* what I'm doing because Microsoft in its wisdom thinks it knows best, and wants you to look at a clutter-free taskbar.  They're trying to be like Apple or something.  Hate hate hate.  Eudora won't work in Windows 11 either - it loads ok, but can't connect to the servers.  Probably some sort of trust issue, but I don't know how to solve it (I tried turning off AV, compatibility mode and running as administrator).  Ended up cranky that I'd spent all day fighting with technology.  But we did have a nice stir fry with some leftover pork for dinner.

My Christmas present from Annie - the 12 beers of Christmas? :)

As part of the desk cleanup, I figured it was probably time to eat this wedding candy from Andy and Crystal's wedding in 2012.  On account of they're broken up now anyway.  hrmm.

And I should probably give these birds away too .. I mean they're super cute and all, but don't really mean anything to me..

As a "temporary" measure I moved all the ornaments and knick-knacks that were on top of my computer desk into the cubes in the spare room.  Yeah right.  Temporary.  haha.

The pork stir fry

Friday.  Woke up early hungry and needing to pee.  Tried do more tidying up in the study, but then ended up making more of a mess of the spare room too.  Sigh.  1246 covid cases in Canberra today.  That's ~25 times the peak of Delta.  We finished season 3 of Sex Education.  I actually had a dream a couple of nights ago that Jean had died, and so when we got to the end of episode 7 I was like *I NEED to know what happened* so we watched the final episode that night as well.  

Saturday.  Woke up early again.  But Stu hadn't slept pretty much all night!! Poor thing!  I reverted my monitor setup (I'd had a go at putting the secondary monitor on the right side, but ended up not liking it).  Windows 11 *still* only ever puts the screensaver on the left-most monitor, even that is not the primary monitor.  So fricken DUMB.  Just a day of more tidying - both on the computer and off.  Had an idea to see how many words are on my blog, and found this site which admittedly did timeout, but not until after it had counted all the monthly archives, which I could easily add up in Excel.  As of this week there's 935200 words on my blog!  Insanity!  Had salmon and salad for dinner and watched The Courier in the evening (it was the sweetie's turn to choose a movie so he chose a spy movie and/or true story movie .. in this case "and" :) )

Sunday.  Today!  Ok sleep (although not for Stu again :( ).  Today was fighting with Excel.  I don't know if it's just Windows 11 or one of the updates I did, but dates don't work in Excel anymore.  Yeah yeah I know, Office 2003 isn't supported anymore, but that's the version I own.  I tried Office 2013 that Stu got in Technet at one point, but I think he'd used up the licences, and it just crashed as soon as you tried to agree to the terms and conditions.  Tried reinstalling 2003 just in case, but no luck.  So I installed LibreOffice, which works just fine thankyouverymuch.  But in other news, I could copy a time-lapse video off my phone without explorer crashing, so that's a win, I guess.  But in a case of you win some, you lose some, you can't drag an icon onto an app on the task bar and have it pop up the app and open the file.  So lame.  Why do they have to *break* everything??

Stuffed capsicums for dinner, which will be in next week's post.  Covid cases are down today as well - "only" 30000 in NSW and 1000 in ACT (down from like 35000 for a couple of days in NSW and ~1200 in the ACT).  

Before I start, this is the lemon cheese cake I made last weekend.  Similar to the previous one, except using light evaporated milk instead of cream, and made in a much bigger container to thin the base out a bit.  I also tried to melt some cooking chocolate (not baking bits), but it just wouldn't melt.  I then had flash back memories to have a similar problem with cooking chocolate when I was living in Sydney.  Note to self: never buy that again (I don't think I even bought it, I can't remember where it came from).

Monday.  22nd.  Got two boxes of Dad's slides fixed up before work (had some extra time, and not as many needed fixing up).  Being at home is sooo much better for my mental health, especially in the evenings.  I feel so much more relaxed and can get so much more done.  Even though it's only an hour and a half or so extra it makes such a difference.  Watched last night's Amazing Race.  The top three teams all really annoy me.  The girls are full of themselves and take every opportunity to tell everyone how awesome they are.  The sikhs I liked to begin with but they're just as mean to people they don't like as anyone else, and while they claim to have helping people ingrained in their culture, they really only help people they like.  The cowboys are ok, but were still out to get Chris and Aleisha.  No idea why those two are so unpopular with everyone.  Did get 346 photos labelled today, although 63 of them before work.  It'll certainly take the pressure off the rest of the week.

Tuesday.  All the stoopid.  Had dinner out with the sweetie which was nice.  Dumpling Inn was closed (have they even reopened since Covid?) so we went to Pizza Artigiana. 

Quattro Formaggi - SANDRA $22 - mozzarella, provolone, gorgonzola and shaved pecorino.  Yum yum.

Diavola - RINO $22 - tomato, ricotta, Nduja hot salami, and marinated red peppers.  Ok, spicy but not insane, just a bit meh.

Then we did our food shopping.  Watched last night's Amazing Race and was sad to see Chris and Aleisha go.

Wednesday.  Blerf day.  Had a stoopid meeting in the afternoon where they put me on the spot *on the phone* arggh.  But then Skype had a spack which saved me so I could troubleshoot offline.  Seriously DO NOT ask me to troubleshoot something over the phone, especially in a whole group situation.  Hate hate hate.  But we did managed to shut down a good chunk of the old network which was pretty awesome.  Didn't do a whole heap of work past four pm, chatting to peoples about all the things.  Super late home.  Salmon and salad for dinner which was very nice.  I stepped on one of those little bastard millipedes though while I was cooking and it popped and left a smudge on the floor.  So gross.  Labelled photos while watching Amazing Race.  Eyes felt very tired.

Thursday.  Despite being tired it took forever to get to sleep.  Sigh.  Good drinks, lots of peeps came.  Had Kingsley's for dinner (since we'd already had pizza this week), Simpsons, Laid Back Camp, Encore.  

Friday.  Awake in the middle of the night for hours.  Sigh.  So even more of a zombie than yesterday.  Which was a pity because I was having a random day off.  So I couldn't concentrate on anything that required brainpower.  But still, I had a super productive day getting things done around the house. 

This jungle has to go.  Ten minutes at a time.

Another last chance summer flower seen on my walk

Our next door neighbour when I was growing up had one of these bushes.  So many little red berries!!

Watched more X Files in the evening, and started watching Becoming.  

Saturday.  Slept well!  Hurrah!  Except I spent the entire morning finding where photos on our Dubbo trip in 1981 were taken.  Some were easy, but others super tricky.  Like exactly whereabouts is the old platform at Newnes?  And did we drive along the new railway line being constructed between Sandy Hollow and Gulgong?  (since some of the places look a little tricky to get to by car).  After lunch we headed out to the club.  I wanted to do some painting, but Stu wanted a sleep, so no painting for me. 

I don't know which way up this flower goes...

Instead I worked on a tapestry by the fire. 

Matt and Michelle put on an awesome Mexican feast, we all had a lovely evening.

Sunday.  Today.  Slept okish, then we came home.  Spent entirely too much time trying to sort out Dad's slides (for anything that doesn't have a date on it - when were they taken?  What else was on that roll?  hrmm).  Michelle (a different one) came over for a while, and then we all went for a walk, but the magpies weren't around. 

Had slow cooked beef stroganoff for dinner with a packet mix from before 2000, was actually quite nice. 

Blogged while watching the Amazing Race finale (both took nearly two hours all up).  Just finished blogging as the race finished.  Pretty happy with the outcome actually.

No movies so no movie quotes.. 

Where were we?  Epic lamb roast.  31st Jan.  Backdated.

Watched more Hibike Euphonium.  

Monday.  Spent all morning renaming firewall objects to fit our naming scheme.  And documenting a whole stack of rules that had been done that I was going to need to duplicate.  Spent the entire afternoon doing all the rules - twice - on two different firewalls.  

In the evening a storm rolled through.  I was trying to run a script to copy "recent" files to One Drive (files modified since last backup), but the thing made my computer have a sad, so I ended up just shutting it down and disconnecting it from power and network.  There might have been just a bit of rain.

So it was a bit of a scramble to move the few things in cardboard out of the way and empty a few boxes.  Desperately need to declutter.

Had lamb red curry for dinner and finished season 6 of The Simpsons (Who shot Mr Burns?).  I never watched The Simpsons, but I do remember when the episode came out at the end of 1995 in Australia.  People were talking about it and I went and use this new fandangled thing called the internet to find out who did it (because the start of season 7 had already aired in the US).  Fun stuff.  So I knew who did it twenty five years ago.  Although not having seen the episode I didn't know how/why.  

After dinner fired everything up again from shutting it down for the storm.  Except the UPS decided to be a big stinky poo.  When I turned it on it had a fast beep and "reset battery" alarm.  If I held the on button down it would reset, but then it claimed it was in overload.  Which was silly because literally nothing was trying to use it (I even disconnected everything to prove it).  And then it got into such a state that I had to turn it off at the wall.  So now my computer is on mains power which is a big poo.  So by 8pm I'd only labelled fifty photos out of the three hundred I really needed to do to catch up.  At least the sweetie did the washing up yayyy.  Had another fight with windows, which has gone back to mapping by IP address rather than dns/netbios name.

Tuesday.  Remember that stoopid firewall that was being a big poo last year?  Well Wardie upgraded it the other weekend, which fixed it.  Go fricken figure.  So did up the bunch of rules I needed to do on it.  Only took like seven months to get to that point.  Hrmm.  Sausages and salad for dinner.  Did some photo labelling but ran out of steam and started looking at bed frames online.  Found one that looked promising, and found it at two different fly-by-night retailers (Eliving Furniture and MyDeal) which both got pretty scathing reviews on review sites.  

Wednesday.  I'd just gotten to sleep on Tuesday night when right on midnight there was this super loud BEEP BEEP BEEP times four.  I sat right up and saw an orange light down the hall.  But as I was sitting up I caught the cable of my phone which knocked it onto the floor which broke my brain.  By the time I looked up again the light was off.  This of course freaked me out.  Was someone in the house and they had a light on but turned it off?  I had to work hard to get the sweetie to get out of bed to come investigate with me.  We searched the whole house but didn't find anyone.  We weren't even entirely sure what made the noise and light.  But we're pretty sure it was the new smoke detector.  This is one of those ten year battery smoke detectors that you can't take the battery out of (disabling it disables it *forever*).  So we're going to be pretty pissed if it keeps generating false alarms.  There was a daddy long legs in the vicinity so we caught it, and I've been dusting around the area quite regularly in case it was simply a spider that set it off.

Had an ok morning.  Did an audit of a complicated ruleset, to make sure all our firewalls are in sync.  Missed our team meeting to go to a specialist appointment.  Had to wait for ages in the waiting room, the longest I've ever waited there.  While I was there I had to a listen to a woman rabbit on about how the covid vaccine is made from aborted babies, how the news is manipulative (well duh), how Victoria shouldn't have needed to go into lockdown last year, and how is that *noone* in Victoria is accountable for the security guard hotel quarantine contract - clearly it *must* have been Daniel Andrews that authorised it, how the government in Victoria mismanaged the whole thing, because NSW was so much better at dealing with it all, how America is overreporting their covid deaths because the hospitals get paid $15000 for every covid death and so they're reporting deaths as covid deaths even if they died of something else but still tested positive for covid.... omfg I was like *get me out of here* ..!! Seriously you can't make this stuff up.  Eventually I was called up, and I was there so long because he "didn't think I'd arrived yet".  Fricken hopeless.  I was literally right on time.  I did have lunch with the sweetie afterwards so that was nice.  Did some work with Neil on our mail servers which was good.  Had Kingsley's for dinner because the sweetie wanted comfort food after his crazy busy day, and I was up for that too for the same reasons.  Simpsons and Hibike Euphonium and struggling to keep up with Eurasia photo labelling.

Thursday.  So apparently two pieces of Kingsley's southern fried chicken is actually not a lot of food, and I woke up at 3:12 hungry.  Had some cheese etc but couldn't get to back to sleep for at least an hour.  I was pretty tired in the morning with "dropsy".. including probably $15 worth of fish food pellets all over the floor :(  Should definitely not be operating heaving machinery today.  I scooped up a goodly amount of the fish food, because $15.

Had a Lighty lunch that Jim organised.  Connor and I shared the "special" pizza which was very nice.

Watched several episodes of Euphonium in the evening and then I watched the first episode of Encore by Kristin Bell.  It was Annie, and I enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I would.

Friday.  Apparently two pieces of pizza and a garlic scroll is actually not a lot of food and I woke up a bit after 4am hungry.  Sigh.  Fairly busy day again. 

In the morning Aquila messaged me to see if I wanted to have lunch at Herbert's.   Of course!!

This time I tried the pot pie which was very nice.  I asked for a small serving of fries so I wouldn't stuff myself silly..

In the afternoon we tested the rules on the new firewall with real (testing) traffic which was pretty cool.  Didn't get the paperwork written up for it though.  In the evening went and saw Penguin Bloom with EffanC.

Saturday.  As noted in my movie review, I asked Sam Bloom whether she became friends with Bron again or not, so I was pretty stoked when she answered.  Pretty quiet day.  Didn't do too much house stuff (trying to actually enjoy weekends).  Had a bit of a play with Gimp to do Lego mosaics.  Watched Encore (The Sound of Music).  Stu cooked dinner - sausages and cabbage.  Then Simpsons, Hibike Euphonium, and Star Trek VI in memorium of Christopher Plumber (I wanted to watch The Sound of Music, but accepted Star Trek VI instead).

Sunday.  7th. 

This is why should always carry a camera on your person.  This flutterby landed near me when I was collecting lemons.  I barely had time to snap a photo before it flew away again.

Wrote out a very long todo list for the day, although forgot to add Eurasia photo labelling to it.  So I did a reasonable amount but nowhere near enough. 

I might have done some decluttering of my bedside table drawers.  Some of these soaps I've had since I was a kid.  I think it's time to use them up.

I never made it through the list as far as photo processing and blogging, so it never happened.  In fact I was still part way through the list when someone came to collect Stu's old bed.  While we were loading the trailer suddenly the lights went out.  I looked up and saw this.

Then it was time to make dinner (lots of roast veggies with leftover lamb), and I even made a cheese cake to use up some of our epic supply of lemons.  I wasn't sure if it was going to work or not, having added so much lemon juice (200mL!!).

Simpsons - You don't win friends with salad!! Euphonium and Encore.

Thirty years ago today we went to Uncle Geoff and Aunty Rhonda's for the Australia Day long weekend.  At least I assume we left that day.  Mum's got photos dated 26/1 and 28/1, and David had photos labelled 26/1.  But Mum also said we went swimming in Lyn's pool at night, but that wouldn't make sense since David had photos at Umina on 26/1.  Shrug.  Point is it was around that weekend.

We stopped at Ourimbah to visit Mum's friend Lyn (her father featured in a previous post with us on his horse Dolly).

It poured with rain at Umina, and David took these photos of the flash flooding.

Mum also took this photo of Aunty Rhonda and Uncle Geoff on the 28th, I assume just before we left.

Backdating.. cause I'm a slacker!!

Monday.  Definitely not enough hours in the day.  Had the tree people out.  The pistachio is slowly splitting at the base and one part of it is leaning on the fence to Kit's place.  The dude was like, this has to go sooner rather than later.  Took more time off work when David got home to help him sort out the fence.  We cut away more vines and weeds, and he was able to get the panel pulled back up and held in place with string until we could get some screws.  Cooked (not) Dinner Winner (Coles don't sell Dinner Winner) for dinner.  Was quite nice, although I could probably do something pretty similar myself.  

In the evening passed half way in my UK 2010 photo labelling.  Still on track to have everything done by the end of the year.  Next year I want to label my Eurasia 2012 photos.  Twenty three and a half thousand photos.  At five hundred photos per week that'll take forty eight weeks to do!!  Craziness.  But the idea is to have all the work on in complete by the time it's ten years since we went in 2022.

Tuesday.  Had the ACT Government tree inspector out (I put a form in on the weekend).  He also took one look at the tree and said it had to go sooner rather than later.  Got verbal approval to remove it straight away.  So talked to the tree peeps and they rearranged some customers so they could come out the next day.  Later, David and I went round to the neighbour's side to pull away more vines and weeds, and he was able to strap up the fence to pull it back into position to be screwed.  Poor neighbours, we keep hassling them!  But did I mention I have the bestest brother ever? :)  Cooked beef cheeks for dinner.  Not as dark this time for some reason.  David really liked this version.

Wednesday.  Tree guys came first thing.  Such a shame to see such a beautiful tree taken down, but the thing was in danger of falling down so had to go :(  Kit was sad as well, although I think she'd have been sadder if it had fallen on her garage!

They came back later in the afternoon to grind out the stump.

Had our pizza night a night early, then played Kismet with Kit and Pete.  I got not one but *two* kismets - the first with 1s, the second with 6s.  I ended up winning.

Thursday morning.  Emirates refunded our Europe flights (although not the extra we paid for seat allocations hmmm).  Still, can't complain too much, we're lucky to have gotten anything back at all.  Packed up to go out to the club.  Lit the fire and collected more firewood before the predicted rain.  

Hey look!  I saw a 747 in flight!

This is what we came out for so early - to seal this sawdust board MDF

They'd put this cabinetry in but hadn't sealed it, so a single drop of water would make the whole thing swell up.  Which is really great right next to the kitchen sink.

I sanded and sanded it, but it didn't get smooth, just all fluffy.

Had drinks and leftover roast pork by the fire.  Listened to a podcast on the possible CIA origins of Winds of Change (part 1 of 8).  

Friday morning.  Got stuck into the first coat of primer.  Things were going well until the fumes made Stu sick :(  So stopped after an hour and a half and washed out the brush.  In the afternoon did some tidying and organising of the "tool shed" in the van.  Also did some work on the tapestry.  Stu had some pretty chilled out music going so it was a nice pleasant afternoon just chillin.  I also sanded the cabinetry again.  This time got things somewhat smoother.  Cooked curried sausages for dinner.  I don't think I'd really want to cook much from scratch out there in future.  I mean I can, but there's no range hood, so steam from cooking just goes everywhere.  Think we'll just stick to leftovers, or bbq.  Listened to another episode of Winds of Change and had an early night.

Saturday.  Stoopid fricken insomnia.  Lit the fire again, had a bit of a sleepin.  Did another coat of primer while Stu was at the committee meeting.  I think another sanding and another coat of primer (just on the horizontal surfaces that had been damaged) and it'll be as smooth as I can get it. 

We were meant to meet up with EffanC after for lunch, but we went to the wrong hotel, 20km away.  This is what happens when you use the PHONE, people, instead of MESSAGING!!!  If I'd seen it in writing would have been less likely to get it so wrong.  #grunt !  Anyway, Stu and I had a nice enough lunch at the Lake George Hotel.

This time they got the pork belly right - with crackling!  

Finished watching the end of Herbie the Love Bug in the evening.

Sunday was housework all fricken morning.  After lunch went and visited Annie, but we were running a bit early, so Stu drove me around to look at the flooded Ginninderra Creek.

So seeing Annie and Immy, and later Noah and Stu, was nice.  Haven't seen them in forever.  Did our shopping at Casey Supabarn, I think for the first time since 2017 when they ripped us off.  This time they wouldn't do any bagging, which is a massive pain when you're trying to wrangle a large trolley load full of shopping at either end.  At least I had Stu's help this time, it would not have worked *at all* if I'd been by myself.  I swear if they try and do that sort of crap again I would send one bag and what I wanted to go in it through, go to the other end and load it, before coming back to pass the next bagful of stuff through.  Got home and cooked for hours.  Roast chicken and veggies, chicken to make up some honey mustard chicken during the week, and mince for tacos.  Dinner and BBT.  I went to go clean up after dinner and Stu put YouTube videos of various BBT stuff.  While I'm fricken working and everyone is just sitting around watching videos without me.  Might have had a meltdown.  There is no way I could be a mother, I'd lose my $#!+ every fricken day.

So contrary what the date on this entry says, I didn't blog that night, in fact like three weeks behind in blogging by that point.  *sigh*

Thirty years ago today Mum took this photo of me sitting on their bed.  They'd had the bedspread and lamps since they moved into the house in 1972, so what, eighteen years.  They donated them to the Nyngan flood relief cause.  

So the lamps and bedspread went to that.  The print above the bed they kept for another seventeen years.  I gave it away on Freecycle for them in February 2007.  The bed head Mum still has, although to give herself a bit of extra space in her bedroom, she got a single bed and got the bed head cut down to work with a single bed.  The funky looking phone was an old rotary dial phone we had for years.  I probably used it the most, talking to my first boyfriend in 1991/1992.  Mum may still have that jumper.

Last Tuesday morning I started scanning Dad's slides. There's about 7000 of them. I'm aiming for one box of 36 a week (more if I'm not too busy), which should mean I could get it all done in about four years. If I don't die of Covid-19 first. I had a play with the dust and scratch filter and it pretty much works like magic. I should have used it on Mum's slides. Oh well. I'm still impressed how well my 14 year old scanner works (Christmas present from the sweetie in 2005). Tuesday evening was washing, blogging, Lego sorting, geotagging (some of Day 3 of USA 2004 trip). I also started to try and figure out the catalog numbers for the hundreds of Vic's minifigs, and what sets they go in. He sure has a lot that don't belong to any particular set he had, so he must have gotten large quantities of loose Lego not in sets.

Wednesday evening the sweetie took me out to dinner because he's the best sweetie ever.  Went to Kinn Thai and had softshelled crab again, and orange duck.  Yumm.  Then more Lego and minifig sorting and finished geotagging day 3.

It rained during the week.  A lot.  Looky at this - the new Belconnen swimming pool they dug out the past couple of weeks!

Thursday was Gin night. Four of them tasted like, well, gin. One was a bit more interesting. And there were two flavoured ones - shiraz, and earl grey. They looked, smelt and tasted of those respective drinks. Cool stuff. Well the shiraz one was, the Earl Grey tasted like tea. We had F over for pizza and tv after.

Friday evening I had to work. My work was only about a minutes' worth, but I stuck around in case they needed my help with anything (or if I'd missed a firewall rule somewhere). Bailed at 11pm.

Saturday I checked in at work and everything seemed to be going ok. So midmorning we headed down the coast (via Belco to pick up a present for Pete). The blackened bush started at Nerriga (most of the town was saved) and stayed black the entire way to the coast. Absolutely heartbreaking. It was actually amazing to see just how much property had been saved though. In places it was completely burnt bush all around, and in the middle there would be a house intact. Amazing job done by all involved, especially the firies.

And because it's Australia, you have bushfires one week, raging floods the next.

We headed straight for Huskisson and went to the beach briefly because, coast.

Then had some lunch, picked up some supplies, then headed for Kit's. Their place was basically completely surrounded by fires, but their street was saved.  At Bewong it looked like the firies stood on the highway and said "you shall not pass" .. 

We setup the house then waited for Pete to get home. It wasn't a complete surprise because his mum spilled the beans, but he was expecting just his sister and maybe a couple of his local mates, but instead he got a small crowd so that was pretty cool :) So yeah nice party, and only one tantrum haha.

We had dessert first.  Because that's what adulting is all about.

Akubra party!

The itty bitty bbq gas bottle ran out, so they hooked up the house one to it.

I was up at normal time the next morning, but then had to wait hours for everyone else. Eventually Kit got up and I could copy all the wedding videos for them. Had some brunch, then we headed home.

Was too tired to do much Sunday arvo/evening so just had a quiet one and an early night.

Monday it was full steam ahead rearranging the house. Stu had been wanting some study space for quite a while. He tried setting up a space downstairs last year but he never really liked it. So we emptied out the dumping ground room, brought up the couch and swapped the tables around. It took all day. And now everything from the room is spread all around the house. Which is stressful in itself. hrmmm.

We also went out at lunch to do our food shopping.  We hadn't been in three weeks so we were pretty bare.  Of course the empty shelves were something to behold.  No toilet paper, almost no tissues or paper towel (people thinking they could use that instead of toilet paper??).  Very little rice, pasta and long life milk, no flour.  Just madness.  

Cooked curried sausages for dinner (to use up some of the curry powder that's been sitting in the spice cupboard for ten years or more).  They were pretty good.  I'll put the recipe separately, because I have this feeling I'll be using it again heh.

Tuesday woke up at 1:30 with hurty and never got back to sleep :( So zombie day Tuesday. It took about 14 goes of disconnecting and reconnecting my phone on Tuesday night to download the seven videos I'd taken at the party. Fricken HATE Apple.

Wednesday we finished season 6 of Big Bang Theory - half way through!

Tonight I've been watching the 1970 Ned Kelly which I've never actually seen.  There's not much on IMDB about it, but it does note it was filmed in Braidwood, and look at that!  So it was!  Fifty years later and all the buildings are still there (screenshots from the movie and Google Street View).  Enjoyed it more than My Brilliant Career.

I brought some glow sticks home from the party.  Six days later and they're still actually glowing.  !!   Although very faint now.  The first couple of nights the phone could still take pretty decent photos of them.