Except I'm not going to blog about that for now, because it really needs its own two or three (or more!) posts!

Sunday.  7th.  Leftover Dumpling Inn for dinner then we watched Turner and Hooch which I probably haven't seen since it came out at he movies or maybe shortly thereafter.

Monday.  Various coughing fits overnight. Lay in bed for a few hours in the morning, then a quiet day. Got some Dotz done which was nice. And we went out to Hall Cemetery so Stu could try and find some birds.

Found one!

I finished watching Pleasantville that I started watching the other night. Sounds like Toy Story in places, thanks Randy Newman. Leftover Dumpling Inn for dinner and Stu put on an episode of a YouTube birder he follows. Then episode three of 3 Body Problem. I'm still coughing, except my belly hurts too much from all the coughing so I can't cough properly.

Tuesday.  Took ages to get to sleep (coughing too much) and also coughing throughout the night. Logged on to work in the hopes of having a quiet day catching up on emails. Sent an email to the desktop guys thanking them for their help with the proxy rollout, and how smoothly it went. Like 30 seconds later (actually about fifteen minutes) people are complaining about the proxies not working. I literally jinxed it. Sigh.  Spent all morning stressed out about that, but Ward and Con helped and we fixed it by lunch time. Then watched a firewall upgrade for a chunk of the afternoon. Called it at 16:00. Leftover Dumpling Inn for dinner then more bird documentaries over dinner.

Wednesday.  Coughing for chunks of the night. Got to do a bit of decom work which was nice. Cooked up a potato bake and some veggies for dinner which was nice too. MacGyver then 3 Body Problem episode 4. Felt like I might *finally* be starting to feel a bit better and coughing a bit less.

Thursday.  Still awake for ages coughing overnight sigh. Nothing much morning but a nice quiet afternoon of prepping decoms which was nice. 

Tested out the external flash on my new camera.  Bizarrely it literally won't let you use the external flash unless you enable "shutter sounds".  Like WTF?  What a bizarre setting to have to enable for it to work.  The shutter sound is an artificial "clunk" like old mirrored cameras would make.  It's kinda nice in a way because without it the camera is utterly silent when it takes a photo.  But I also like being utterly silent when I'm taking photos.

Made a pepperoni, a cheese, and a potato and rosemary pizza for dinner, then MacGyver and 3 Body Problem episode 5.

Friday.  Packed up and headed off to Sydney!  As I said, that'll be another few posts.

Sunday.  24th.  Kievs for dinner (since we'd been out at the club the previous two nights and missed out).

Then MacGyver 3.11, preposterous episode.  

Monday.  Got like 10 hours sleep!! Got onto work early to monitor for proxy problems, but it was pretty good most of the day (which was good because I had THREE separate phone calls with the vendor about crap) until everything happened at once and it was a crazy afternoon, but fixed some things. It was a beer kind of evening. Stu decided it was a takeaway kind of evening, so we got Chong Co (our usual prik pao moo grob, and crispy soft shelled crab makarm). Also, I'm now an officially licenced Stumpy keeper.

Tuesday.  Somewhat restless sleep. Lots of rain!! Had a dude come and service the heater.  He's going to try and source a new main board which might hopefully fix our intermittent errors.  Mostly proxy day. Nothing too dramatic. Doing some doco and troubleshooting. Leftover Chong Co for dinner.

Wednesday.  Awake from 3:51 for ages sigh. Trying to get going on some neglected decom work in between proxy work. Stu cooked a nice rigatoni puttanesca for dinner.

MacGyver and second episode of Three Body Problem (watched the first episode last week).

Thursday.  Somewhat restless sleep. Another distracted day of proxies but also getting ready for another change in the afternoon. Only one other couple at drinks. Mills&Grills for dinner (this time we got a potata and a satay chicken which was quite nice). 20:30 is bed time right?

Friday.  Okish sleep. Spent much of the morning monitoring queues for any issues from the change we made last night. None. Winning! Called POETS and set about my Friday evening. Kievs for dinner then went over to EB's and we watched The Shining which I'd never actually seen before. Weird as hell though WTF?  That's Kubrick for you.

Saturday.  Okish sleep.

Tony joined me on a walk up Mt Rogers which was nice

Finished the first pass cull of photos for Mum's 80th slide show. Down to like 3000 photos wheeee!! Went for a very short walk with the sweetie in the afternoon so he could get out of the house for a few minutes.

Picked up some veggies from Chris's for dinner.  This is actually a half green meal! Honest!  There's lots of brussels sprouts on the left, as well as a veggie bake of two zucchinis and a head of broccoli on the right (and a packet of goats cheese that was best before January.  She'll be right!).

Then continued the weird wtf movie series with Mad Max. Which I've never actually seen. It's rated R and Tony said it's really violent.. but.. well.. it's not. Not compared to so much else that's out there these days. It was actually quite tame. But it's just.. fricken.. weird..!

Sunday.  Okish sleep. Awake from 5 for a while but got back to sleep and slept in til 7:36! Ploughing through photo stuff when Stu suggested we go for a drive. He's been getting a bit of cabin fever being holed up at home being sick all week. So we went out to Tharwa Sandwash. Saw a bunch of birds. And a fox. And a HEAP of blackberry and other weeds. And some turds going fishing when it literally says "no fishing" right there. So that took a few hours out of the afternoon.. hours that I really don't have to spare.. hrmmm.

Dr Who mosaics under Gungahlin Drive on Belconnen Way

Murrumbidgee River at Tharwa Sandwash

Turdholes

Horehound bugs (aka stink bugs)

The heater has been running better since the service on Tuesday.  It did have Err 50 Hi a couple of times but reset got it going.  It's actually been running ok the past few days, but they were able to source a new main board so we'll still get that installed soon.

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.

Coles has heart-shaped tins for $8 at the moment, and since I was going to need one for the birthday cake book, I got one the other day.

For the cake it's just a single butter cake mix. 

I put it on 160C fan forced. At half an hour it was still a bit uncooked in the middle so gave it another ten minutes.

Then I made up some pink icing sugar to top it. I used one drop.

!!

It got very pink for one drop. Also the icing sugar was a little runny (just cause I'm lazy and it makes it easier to spread).  But I didn't care too much because this was just testing things.

The proper cake recipe calls for meringue hearts and whipped cream but I decided to skip that for this test.

Sunday.  10th.  Chicken sausages and a bunch of roast veggies for dinner.

Watched the Lighthouses 2.3. Then I watched part 1 of a documentary on Hurricane Katrina.

Monday.  Awake around midnight for a while, then a somewhat delirious sleep stressing over the proxies. Day of trying to get things done, waiting for people etc. Leftovers for dinner, Lighthouses 3.1 on Beachy Head, photo stuff, then watched the next two episodes of the Hurricane Katrina documentary.

Tuesday.  Took ages to get to sleep and felt like I was awake half the night. On and off day.. filling in time for part of it, crazy busy for other parts. Stu cooked up a very nice Asian-style dinner with some leftover pork and veggies, and we watched the Lighthouses 3.2 on Muckle Flugga.  Did some photo stuff, and watched more of the Hurricane Katrina documentary.

Wednesday.  Took ages to get to sleep and somewhat restless night. Busy day of trying to deal with stoopid proxy problems. Our old one could deal with Mutual TLS, why can't the new one?? Lame. Leftovers of last night's dinner for dinner, then the last episode (3.3) of The Secret Life of Lighthouses, on the Boston Lighthouse.  Did some photo stuff and finished the National Geographic doco on Hurricane Katrina: Race Against Time. What an utter debacle. It's so sad looking at Google Earth/Street View and all the vacant blocks because so many people didn't have the resources to rebuild.

Thursday.  Took ages to get to sleep and somewhat restless night. Yeah after like four nights in a row of crap sleep I was a zombie today. Sure made it hard to concentrate on various proxy problems. Good drinks, a few other tables. Mills and Grills again for dinner. Death in Paradise 15.8 (end of season 15).

Friday.  Went to bed early and went to sleep early, but woke up around like 3 for a couple of hours. Tried to turn the heater on. It didn't even seem to want to turn on. Went back later with a light and was seeing "Busy 10 hi" and "Busy 46 hi" errors. Sigh. They errored out all day and we never did manage to get it going. Organised with Voltair for them to come and quote on installing a split system. Not quite as busy a day at work. Called it at 16:00. Kievs for dinner then we watched Rental Family which was.. touching. We both enjoyed it.

Saturday.  Took ages to get to sleep and awake a bit early but slept mostly ok in the middle. Turned the heater on and today it worked first go. Go figure. Definitely going to try and get it serviced/fixed soon though. We've lost one of Chrissie's clown loaches. It had been looking unwell for a couple of weeks with two large welts on either side of it. Now I need to decide what to do with the other one. I also need to decide what to do with the AR-620T. Both its lights have gone and they're getting hard to replace. Gem Aquatics still sell them but only the white ones, not the pink ones. Tony refitted his with a compact fluorescent fitting but I'm wondering if I should bother or just downsize our fish tanks. Climbed Mt Rogers, then went out birdwatching with the sweetie out the back of Weetangera.

Mt Rogers Trig Station

Airbus A380 VH-OQG flying over Canberra (QF93 MEL to LAX)

We may have stopped at The Scottish Restaurant for lunch.  They've got creme brulee pies at the moment (deep fried!) which are quite nice.

Finished the leftover pork for dinner then watched Catch Me if You Can, which I hadn't seen since 2003 (we tried to watch it a few years back but had to stop after like fifteen minutes and neither of us could remember why).

Sunday.  Actually slept relatively well for a change! The heater worked first go, but then died after its first break.  Reset it and gave it a rest and tried again later and it ran for a while before the house warmed up enough it didn't need to run again.  Quiet day of photo and house stuff. Even made a cake! 

Sunday.  3rd.  Epic roast pork for dinner!   The crackling and meat both turned out quite well (2.4kg deboned shoulder).

Then we watched the first episode on a documentary on lighthouses (The Secret Life of the Lighthouse) - this one on the Eddystone lighthouse of Plymouth. A bit of fun and quite interesting.  Then I watched Matilda the Musical which was a bit of fun. Emma Thompson is unrecognisable as Trunchbull and the kid who played Matilda sounded exactly like Emma Watson as a young Hermione. 

Monday.  Star Wars Day.  Took a while to get to sleep and awake early for ages. Frustrating day of waiting for people and feeling like I actually went backwards with the proxies. For lunch I made toast pizzas which were yummy.

And the raindrops on the climbing rose in front of the cherry tree which is turning yellow looked pretty cool

Stu cooked up a bunch of veggies for dinner including a nice goats cheese cauliflower bake (the cheese was a couple of months past its use-by date (I bought it past its use-by date from Chris's before we went on holidays).. she'll be right!!).

Then the second episode of the Secret Life of the Lighthouse (on Bell Rock).

Tuesday.  Slept okish. Another frustrating day of waiting for people, then a super busy afternoon with various meetings/calls. Oof. Leftover pork and veggies for dinner then episode 3 of The Secret Life of the Lighthouse (on Fastnet Rock). Neither Lego set that I put up/relisted last week sold. And buying the last remaining missing pieces off Bricklink is also frustrating because the places that have a lot of the pieces I need charge exorbitant prices for them, and the places that charge reasonable prices don't have many pieces, so the postage gets prohibitive. Blerf.

In other fun crap today. We tried to turn the heater on after quite a few days of not needing it. But it kept dying. This afternoon Stu replaced the brand-new-second-hand controller we bought last year. This one the temperature dial works properly and so does the display, and now we can see the new error it's giving - Err 50 HI (and Err 10 HI). Google AI from Facebook says:

A Brivis ducted heater "Err 50 Hi" (or Error 50) indicates an ignition lockout, meaning the heater failed to light after four attempts. Common causes include no gas supply, a faulty igniter, or a faulty gas valve. Reset the unit using the reset button on the controller to try clearing it.

On the old controller the reset button just caused the whole controller to crash out. At least the new one can get it to work eventually. We'll have to see if a service will fix it. Leftovers for dinner and the Lighthouses series 1.3 on Fastnet Rock.

Wednesday.  Awake from 3:00 for hours sigh. Another stoopidly busy day dealing with problems with the proxies. Stu cooked some vege ravioli in creamy mushroom sauce which was nice then the Secret Life of the Lighthouse 2.1 on Wolf Rock.

Thursday.  Awake from like 3:30 for ages sigh. Another stoopidly busy day dealing with problems with the proxies. Good drinks - several other tables of peoples. Picked up Mills and Grills pizzas for dinner.

See Dominos.. THIS is how pizza is done!

Potata $21.90 - cheese, bacon, potato, aioli, garlic - yum!

Don Pepperoni $15.90

Death in Paradise 15.7. I think the entire solution was speculation with barely any evidence.  How would they ever get this to trial?

Friday.  Slept in til like 5! Another stoopidly busy day dealing with problems with the proxies. Kievs for dinner, Lighthouses 2.2 on The Smalls.

Then I watched The Little Mermaid "real life" remake from 2023. It's like two hours fifteen minutes though WTF??  Caribbean setting, but filmed in Italy. They kept most of the original songs, and even added a few.  And Jodi Benson was in it which was pretty cool.  And Melissa McCarthy was pretty good as Ursula.   I mean it wasn't *bad*.. just not the same...

Saturday.  Awake for ages from like 1:30 blerf. Quiet day of house and photo stuff. Leftover pork and veggies for dinner. Then we watched Remarkably Bright Creatures which was funny and sweet and I found quite emotional. Lovely!

Also this strawberry didn't get the memo that it's autumn not spring..

Sunday.  Awake for a while around midnight, and I was awake just before midnight when someone let off a whole heap of fireworks down the back which were quite pretty! Went for a walk (called the mother type person on the way), then popped out to pick up some Lego off a Bricklink seller, which ended up being two hours of that, Green Shed sorry Vinnies sorry Goodies Junction to drop off a pile of jigsaws (and not pick up any more!), and food shopping.

Happy Mother's Day!

On Friday we all headed to Braddon to go to Bentspoke to celebrate Neil working 50 years!

The booking was super stressful.  They force you to give you a credit card so they can charge you $40pp if you cancel within 24 hours of the booking.  So that was a bit offputting.  But it all worked out.  I booked for 18 in the end and I think we had 16 for the main part of lunch, but another four people came over the course of the afternoon.  

I tried a bunch of beers with a couple of these taster paddles

For lunch I had the Southern Fried Chicken Burger ($25) with Americano mayo, American cheese and iceberg served with chips & choice of sauce.  I asked for regular mayo but they talked me into the chilli mayo which they said wasn't very hot.  Yeah it was hot.  Took me ages to get through it and didn't each much of the sauce.  Otherwise it was very nice.  Their chips are pretty good.

Very nicely the kitchen doesn't close between lunch and dinner, so we were able to get more food over the course of the afternoon to stop us getting too silly.

A lovely afternoon.

A few weeks back Gianni's in Belconnen finally opened (they'd been under construction for ages).  On Wednesday Neil and I decided to go try it out.  We didn't bother with a booking.  It was maybe a third full?  

We started with garlic bread ($9) which was beautifully crunchy and oily and garlicky we both really liked this

We both decided to get the $25 lunch express (a pasta or salad or small pizza and a glass of wine).  

I got rigatoni marasala - with mushrooms and garlic cream sauce.  This was lovely and tasty.

Neil got penne diavola - chilli, garlic, creamy tomato sauce.  This was also very nice, although it wasn't very spicy - Neil said it could have been hotter heh

We decided it'd be a great spot for a team lunch.  There's not a huge variety of options for the lunch time special but we wouldn't be going all that often I guess.  We both quite enjoyed it.

Sunday.  19th April.  Leftover curry for dinner then Professor T 4.3. Then I continued watching a Disney series The 90s Greatest, which has been a bit lame but a bit of memories. What was freaky is the second last episode looked at the Waco seige and the Oklahoma City bombing.. both 19th April.. woah!!!

Monday.  Slept okish I think. Was looking at ways to download the URL categories for our new proxies.  They literally don't have a way to do it.  They just say, oh use this third party python script that someone has written to call the APIs yourself.  Lame.  Then I found they'd upgraded our version of Postman to a cloud version which forces you to create an account on their cloud and sign in to use most features.  Except we block that because it's a massive security risk to, you know, save your passwords in clear text on remote servers.  Not to mention that by upgrading they blatted all my collections which filled me with all kinds of rage.  Then I got home and found the Chinese ebayer I bought a lens cap with a string off, sold a plain cap with no string.  Like how hard is it??   Filled with rage at that too.  Later she partially refunded me (it was only like $5 to start with) since it didn't match the photo.  It does seem to be a genuine Canon lens cap too, although can you believe "Made in Japan" printed on it if it came from China?  Stu cooked up some broccolini in a nice sauce and we had that leftover sausages from the Christmas party, which was very nice.  Then Professor T 4.4.

Took ages to get to sleep, woke up early, and Stu was SICK in the middle of the night! He never gets sick (almost never). He was feeling slightly nauseous before dinner. No idea what set him off. Fighting with the new proxies all day. Trying to get my head around their dumbness. Although did find one super useful feature in their URL categories (which is utterly needed to do the daftness of how their URL categories actually work) - it lets you find other places that has a wildcard (because you need to add an explicit URL to the wildcard category, otherwise it won't be included in the wildcard.  Don't even get me started on that trash). Cooked up some brussels sprouts, capsicum and potato gems for dinner.

Professor T 4.5. OMFG I hate ebay so much. I've been needing to sell some of Vic's Lego, but ebay make it as painful as they possibly can. They don't *do* letters, so even though I can fit stuff in a large letter box (<2 cm thick) if you try and choose that it blanks out what the local postage will be and only shows you international (at $13-$30). So you choose regular package which is like $7-$9 which isn't toooo bad considering it has tracking, but they don't give you any provision to charge for packaging (the box cost me like ~$1). And then they will charge like 13% FEE on POSTAGE, which is money they literally steal out of your profit. But if you don't jump through eBay's hoops (and include tracking) then you're at the mercy of the buyer whether they'll just lie and say the package didn't turn up, and ebay will literally take your money back off you. Then you have to go to Australia Post and argue with them to try and get a refund which they'll only do up to $100 unless you buy insurance. It's the most stressful thing ever. I hate it. I really really wish there was a better alternative to ebay. And don't even get me started on Windoze 11. If I'm on another desktop and click to open windows explorer, it takes me to ANOTHER DESKTOP ENTIRELY!!! Same with Notepad. Double click on a text file on one desktop, and it opens notepad ON ANOTHER DESKTOP!! How is it that windows is STILL SO BAD???

Wednesday.  Slept mostly okish I think. Didn't get much done all morning - too many meetings. Tried out Gianni's with Neil at lunch and had their lunch special. Managed to get something working on the new proxies that I'd been fighting with. Turns out someone else just hadn't done their job properly and my stuff worked once it was fixed. Sigh. Leftover Japanese curry for dinner (we're almost through it!), then Professor T 4.6 (end of season 4).

Thursday.  Took a while to get to sleep but okish sleep after that. Lots of doing doco today and testing the new proxies. Quiet drinks, only one other table. Made pizzas and garlic bread for dinner and watched Death in Paradise 15.1 since Professor T season 5 isn't on Prime yet.

Friday.  Restless sleep. Distracted morning. For lunch we went to Bentspoke to celebrate Neil having worked there 50 years!! It was actually last year that the anniversary came around, but he was recovering from knee surgery so it got put off. Lovely afternoon and around twenty people came.

Saturday.  Anzac Day.  Went to bed as soon as I got home last night, okish sleep, considering. Nice quiet day just doing house stuff and photo stuff.

I may have made some Anzac biscuits.  These were a lot drier than last time (I measured everything properly for a change) so they held their shape a lot better (the last ones melted everywhere). 

Kievs and gems for dinner (since we missed out last night) and then watched Amelia which was somewhat interesting.

Sunday.  Mostly ok sleep but awake super early (half an hour earlier than normal) to go out to Mulligan's Flat for a bird walk of sorts. I've never actually been out there. Didn't see a huge number of birds (we were really just scoping out the place and went for a walk round the dam) but there was a little flock of red-rumped parrots having a bath which was pretty cool. Then we went to Cafè Luzon, a Filipino inspired cafe for brunch. I had the eggs benedikto which was quite nice although the spinach left that weird spinach feeling in my mouth long after. Then just a quiet day, and did some dotz and some music.

Our friend at Cafè Luzon...

We may or may not have Chong Co coming for dinner... :)

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.

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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!