Sunday.  8th.  John Williams' birthday.  I really must remember that.  Not that he's likely to have many left.. he's fricken 94!!!!  Stu cooked up some chicken with mushroom sauce and some greens which was very yummy. Then we watched the old school Disney version of Peter Pan.

Monday.  Early night. Interrupted by the mother type person calling. Then I was restless. And awake from 5. Hurrah. Some tickets and crap in the morning and spent most of the afternoon writing up more stuff to decommission. Stu cooked some pork and fennel sausages with cabbage for dinner (the sausages were a bit dry unfortunately), then we watched the last episode of season 2 of MacGyver.

Tuesday.  Okish sleep I think. Busy day I think. Stu cooked some yummy creamy lemon chicken for dinner then into season 3 of MacGyver.

Wednesday.  Took ages to get to sleep - epic restless legs.

Super busy day - barely any time for jigsaw breaks! Stu cooked a cauliflower bake and goats cheese stuffed mushrooms which were very yummy.

Thursday.  Woke up around midnight cause my guts were upset for some unknown reason. Then stayed awake for a couple of hours waiting for things to settle. Sigh.

Busy day deleting All The Things.  Good drinks - lots of people.  Pizzas for dinner.  Not quite a repeat of the last two weeks as we were out of mushrooms.  There's pepperoni and feta, olive and capers, and tomato and spring onion.

Then MacGyver then started watching Airport to keep us awake til Kit and Pete got here (they'd come up for a comedy cruise and thought they'd play tourist here for a couple of days).

Friday the 13th.  Slept okish I think. Busy day of decoms and tickets and crap. Chilled out with Kit and Pete after work and got Turkish delivered from Lokma (the same place Mishi did last weekend).

Chatted for a while then watched an episode of Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency which was.. bizarre haha.

Saturday.  Happy Valentine's Day.. remembered various anniversaries of my family that can't really be celebrated anymore. 

Mostly awake from 3 and fully awake from 5 sigh. Zombie morning. Kit and Pete wandered off for much of the day and I did mostly Lego stuff (and some dotz!!!).

Also made up breakfasts for the week.

Trigger warning for Tony!  Found her in the recycling green bin.

Kit and Pete brought home some Luv-a-Duck peking duck for dinner which was awesome.

Later we played a game of Ticket to Ride (Europe) which I won, but it was actually really close and one move either way would have changed the outcome.

Sunday.  Slept slightly better. Did some dotz in the morning. Went with Kit and Pete to the Old Bus Depot Markets which I've never actually been to before! It was very uncrowded, and apparently a shadow of its former self. 

Then dropped into Canberra Glassworks which I've also never been to.

Anyone know what this is?  Google image search suggests either an epic insulator (seems unlikley) or an air raid siren...  Edit:  another search indicates it was in fact an air-raid siren!

Kit and Pete wandered off home and I did some food shopping on the way home. Then tried to get KFC for lunch but the lazy or hard of hearing server mistook "large Pepsi Max" for "large chips" (which I annoyingly didn't pick up on), and then completely ignored me when I asked for a receipt. And the girl getting the chicken dropped a piece onto the floor because she was being careless. Hopeless. Talked to the mother for a while in the afternoon and then my weekend is over. hrmmm.

And Windows is STILL forgetting my photo in tray folder settings. Windows 11 is seriously BAD!!!

Sunday.  1st February.  How'd it get to be February already?  Had an epic roast pork for dinner. The crackling turned out really well and the meat was pretty good too. Then MacGyver.

Monday.  Went to bed fairly early. Didn't get to sleep for hours (restless legs). Woke up for a bit around 4 because of the epic wind. Then woke up again at 5 because that's what I do. Busy day doing tickets and crap. Stu made a tuna mornay for dinner (onion fried in butter, steamed asparagus (I would have skipped the steaming part as it would have cooked later), tinned tuna, cream, mustard powder and cheese, finished in the oven for 20 minutes).. it was delicious! MacGyver.

Tuesday.  Took ages to get to sleep again and then restless. Busy day doing tickets and crap. Stu made cabbage with soft boiled eggs which was nice enough. MacGyver.

Wednesday.  Slept relatively well. In fact I "slept in" which was a bit annoying because I had to leave early to take the car in for service, and waking up a bit earlier would have given me a bit extra time. Gerald Slaven have changed their drop off procedure. You used to be able to just park in the car park and drop the key in at the office. Now you have to queue up in the parking lot. One at a time you go into the garage and they sort you out and take your key, then you can go and then they park the car before taking the next car. Seems pretty inefficient. hrmmm. Busy day doing tickets and crap. And cleaning up messes cause I can't help myself. Leftover pork and salad for dinner.

Thursday.  Busy day doing tickets and crap. Went to Bar 59 for drinks as Neil was off getting his knees manipulated.

I thought the lens flare on this photo of a cockatoo outside the Labor Club was pretty cool..

Pizzas for dinner then watched Hook, which I haven't seen in probably 25-30 years.

Repeat of last week's pepperoni, olive and capers, and mushroom pizzas

OMFG there was a mouse in the house!!!!! First time we've seen a mouse in here since when we first moved in. Even during the mouse plague of a few years ago we didn't see any.  Don't know what's changed.  Maybe they were desperate to find water after all the weeks of no substantial rain.

Friday.  Meh sleep.

My work desktop wouldn't render on my left screen after my last reboot.  hrmmmm.

Busy day doing tickets and crap.

This was funny..  Yup, we had chokos! Was never really a fan.  We also had corned beef and white sauce (I didn't like it - I thought it was too salty); ham steaks (not actually spam) but floured and fried which I actually liked; devon - not really a fan, even now I'm not a big ham eater; steak and kidney, yeup Mum used to do that, really didn't like it; rissoles, well how could you not!  Fun stuff.

Saturday.  Spent much of the morning sorting Lego. Mid afternoon we headed over to Mishi's for a games afternoon/evening. Best I can tell, this is the first time since 2016 we'd been over!!!!!  I knew we hadn't been since pre-covid but what the hell?!? Chatted for a while in the lounge room, then chatted for a while around the table, then played a game of Ticket to Ride (Asia expansion), which was a bit confusing to begin with but we eventually got the hang of it.  I came second or third (out of five).

There was Turkish delivery for dinner then we played a game of regular Fluxx then a game of Pirate Fluxx. The first game was one of the most complicated games of Fluxx I've ever played, with some rules that made for a lot of confusion (eg inflation).

Sunday.  

It rained overnight!!!!

Out of sorts all day (maybe feeling like I lost a quarter of my weekend, and just generally feeling overwhelmed). Food shopping after lunch.  Stu is cooking some chicken and mushrooms for dinner..

Sunday.  14th.  Backdating this a few days.  Had leftovers for dinner then we watched a documentary "Lost Melbourne" about the loss of a lot of old buildings in Melbourne in the name of progress. Melbourne is still a lot better off than a lot of cities though, even Sydney.

Monday.  Awake from 12 for ages, then again from 5 for ages. Hurray.  Busy day not achieving much.  Went to Four Winds with Tony for our now annual tradition of wine and pizza.  Such a lovely place out there.

Did some Christmas music on the sax in the evening.

The last strawberry of the year!

Tuesday.  Crap sleep. Awake every hour or so feeling hot and needing to cool down. Another day of not achieving much. But we did have a division Christmas party at work which was nice. Came like second in the two lolly guessing competitions. After work we went and picked up the mother type person at Jolimont then went to the Labor Club for dinner.

I may have given those anchovies to the sweetie

Got home and looked at Mum's slide show of Croatia and Greece, then we looked at all of Dad's photos of Tasmania.

Wednesday.  Restless sleep. Fairly chilled morning, did a bit of cleaning.

Eventually D/K/S left Junee so I made apple sauce then a potato bake then another potato bake then the roast pork then a veggie tray bake.

Blue cheese potato bake (with thyme), bacon potato bake, brussels sprouts, sweet potato, spring onion and bacon (with hazelnuts), apple sauce.  Just missing the pork which is in the oven by this point

Just finished doing all that when they arrived - great timing! Kellie brought a heap of noms so we had those and did photos and presents and stuffs while lunch cooked.

The pork turned out fairly well (the crackling worked really well but the meat may have been a little overdone).

There may have been a lot of bubbles

Played a game of Five Crowns although I got super frustrated near the end when several rounds in a row people went out before I'd even had one turn, or maybe had just had one turn. So upsetting. I don't even know who won in the end.  Played a bit of Pictionary but just playing through cards not actually using the board. Put on Flying High in the evening. D/K/S left and Mum and I finished watching the movie ourselves.  All in all a lovely day.

Thursday.  Awake from some time after 2. Hurray. Dropped Mum off at Jolimont then went to work. Did a bit of party prep and DC rules work. At drinks I took up all the leftover cans of drinks from the work family party that I bought off Neil and washed them all (they were all covered in dirt). Pizzas for dinner then Love Actually but it was too late a night :(

Friday.  Awake from 4:53.  Sigh.  Then I started thinking about the day's party and all bets were off.  Hurray.  Party prep in the morning then party all afternoon! 

Sadly I didn't catch any birds this year.  Leftovers for dinner then we watched part 1 of a documentary on the Gamestop nonsense. 

Saturday.  Awake from like 3:30. Hurray.  Spent much of the morning sorting out the rubbish and recycling from the party. Super annoyingly, some helpful person tried to clean up, and very helpfully threw out a bunch of the plastic forks. Pissed off about that because those things are irreplaceable!!! I also chipped a tooth on the last of the pork crackling I had at lunch. Sigh.  Storms and epic clouds in the evening.

We were getting hail (only a tiny amount) while this rainbow was out

Then it all disappeared.  That's the end of the storm right there.

And there may have been a Dumpling Inn delivery for dinner..

Did I mention the epic clouds?

Super early night because zombie tired.

Friday. Finished up work a bit early on Friday and left around 17:45.  Had an ok run, although somewhat slow going down the Clyde due to a very slow Canberran not using the slow vehicle pullout bays and causing a very long bankup of cars behind them.  Saw the rocking horses this side of Nelligen in a few different places.  The Nelligen Pub was packed which was pretty cool.  It actually looked really nice with lights over the beer garden.  Bit of a tense drive up the highway once it got dark but made it without hitting anything.  Had a couple of drinks with Kit and Pete and chatted for a while which was nice.  Slightly late night but not too bad.

Saturday.  Slept relatively well.  It is So. Dark. there though.  I'm used to suburban light and our hallway nightlight flooding the house with light. 

Bit of a slow start waiting for everyone to get up and ready. Then had to decide on a plan of attack for the day.  In the end we decided to head up to Ulladulla for brunch.  Went to Ocean Vibes and I had a nice eggs benedict with bacon.

Then back to Kit and Pete's. 

Kit and I went off to the Milton Show, but I'll post that separately.

Got back and did animal stuff.

Kit still has a heap of guinea fowl and chickens, but no ducks or turkeys anymore.

Vicki is stubbornly refusing to die, but is definitely feeling her age.  They've still got Jasper the dachshund, and Biscuit and her two sons Oreo and Mr Floofy.

This is Toby, an old horse of Chloe's.  Kit still has Scout and Ricky as well.

Then had a quick shower and headed up to Mollymook to the Golf Club for dinner with Travis and Temika (no idea how to spell her name haha).

Kit and I shared some duck spring rolls (with barely a skerrick of duck) which were quite nice, and a Hawaiian schnitty which was pretty average.

Stu had some seafood by the sea

Then back to Kit and Pete's for a game of Kismet.  I actually got *two* Kismet's but could only count the first one of 3's, not the second one of 6's :)  Kit won in the end.

Sunday.  Hot and sweaty overnight.  Really need to bring a fan to their place in summer heh.

Biscuit in the middle with her two crumbs - Mr Floofy on the left and Oreo on the right

I waited for a while for everyone else to get up, and found some Lego to play with.  Didn't get time to build all three, just the chicken (or whatever it is), after pulling apart the unicorn. 

Also found there's three missing pieces.

Left around 10:00, via the Scottish Restaurant.

Got a photo of a couple of the Nelligen Rocking Horses

Then we listened to a very depressing talk that Cory Doctorow did recently on Enshittification.  Remember the Good Old Days when Google was actually GOOD??? Now it's been enshittified along with everything else on the internet (and even in the real world) and it makes me just want to be a hermit and get offline.

Also.  All. The. Teslas.  I started to look for them on the way back.  Must have passed literally dozens of the things...

Thursday.  Boxing Day.  Took a while to get to sleep but then slept mostly ok.  Weeding first up then planned out my todo list for the break.  Alternated between house stuff, Lego stuff, dotz and blog reading.  Pizza for dinner (from Dominos - eep!) then Death in Paradise 11.1.

Sole survivor mini capsicum

I did the Plonk beer advent calendar again this year which was a lot of fun.

Friday.  Slept mostly ok, except for the storm around 04:00.  It wasn't very big and it was very quick to pass over, but I did still get up and disconnect the computer.  Alternated between house stuff, Lego stuff, dotz and blog reading.  Leftover Christmas Eve feast for dinner.  Then watched a documentary on AlphaGo - the first computer program to be able to beat top level human players.  

Saturday.  Slept mostly ok.  Weeding before it got hot.  Then got a random Blue Screen of Death which was a bit upsetting.

Alternating All The Things, although didn't get very far through it before we headed out for a big pantry shop.  Brunch/shopping/lunch and three hours of my day just GONE. Sigh.  Luv-a-duck Peking duck for dinner.

Death in Paradise 11.2 then back into Amazing Race celebrity edition (v2).

Sunday.  Slept mostly ok.  Hit 15000 in Candy Crush (nearly 3000 levels this year, 5000 in the past 18 months).  I really want to stop because the ad experience is just so trash, but what else am I going to do when I wake up at 5:30am??  Probably should delete photos off my phone.  I have like 60000 photos and the thing is nearly full.  

Maccas at Emu Bank was super quiet in the morning and there were no kids in store.  Parking was easy everywhere around Belco.  Shops were (generally) uncrowded.  I guess everyone must be down the coast.  All The Things.  Leftover Christmas feast for dinner.  Death in Paradise 11.3.

Monday.  Slept ok, but awake 5:30.  Feeling the same Monday morning stress I feel every week.  Yes I didn't have to go to "work" but my todo list is a full time job and my break is too damned short to get it all done.  As of 9:15 I'd been at it two hours and hadn't had any "fun" yet.  Sigh.  All The Things.  I swear my todo list is only getting longer not shorter.  I've barely had any time for "fun" this break.  Having to file all the Lego and do my blog year in review certainly didn't help.  Lost another congo tetra.  Resealed the shower.  Over the past couple of months mould had been growing *behind* the sealant.  We're guessing water is seeping down from the grout further up.   So pulled all that off, exit-moulded it, cleaned/dried it, and resealed a lot further up the wall.  Even managed to use the existing tube of sealant.  Did I mention I've barely had any time for fun this break?  Leftover Christmas feast for dinner.  Death in Paradise 11.3, then the finale of The Amazing Race (celebrity edition v2).

Tuesday.  New Years Eve.  Took ages to get to sleep - restless legs.  Then awake early.

Can you see?

A full on RAT was under the daisies when I went on my daily easter egg hunt to gather lemons.

Morning was mostly housework.  And Oh The Humidity.  And then all the blogging.  Have I mentioned I've barely had time for fun this break?  I did finish filing the Bricklink order though.  We lost another line on the ExtendaLine this morning.  This time it jammed into position part way out.  But it won't let me extend all the way, so can only go half way now.  Won't go in *or* out.  Doesn't bode well for having to wash sheets.  Why is everything so crap these days?  #grunt.

Monday.  2nd.  Not backdating for a change.  But it is running pretty late on a Sunday afternoon when I still have two dinners to prep/cook.  And that's without even doing the Captains Flat post.  hrmmm.  Awake for a while in the middle of the night, but otherwise slept ok.  Tony helped me with a greenwaste run in the morning which was very nice of him.  Then Lego inventorying and jigsaw but not much else.  Apple is so retarded.  I told it to trust my phone the other week.  It still doesn't and I still need to enter the password every time I want to back it up.  Tuna casserole for dinner.

Left is "brown".  Right is "reddish brown".  According to Bricklink, the radar dish doesn't exist in brown, only reddish brown.  I beg to differ.  

Tuesday.  Took ages to get to sleep - hot and restless.  Have I mentioned how hot it's been the past little while?  Ok day.  Procrastinating at looking a new proxy product by catching up on life.  Watched the first episode of Twin Peaks, which I've never seen, although I have known whodunnit for over thirty years.

Wednesday.  Took ages to get to sleep - hot and restless. 

Halloween cupcakes by a-cakes

Went to reply to an email of Mum's in the evening and it wouldn't send.  First up I was getting TLS failures.  I'd already updated a couple of the dlls for Eudora a couple of years ago, but found updated ones from the Hermes project so got past that fairly quickly.

Great. Except now I get:
the SMTP server (mail.internode.on.net) said:
550 mf-505: Sender Policy - Relay Denied

*sigh*  F$*%ing internode have broken their SMTP server (moved it to AWS).  Previously you could always use their SMTP server if you were on their network.  Now.. they're like nope, screw you.  So much for an internet "service" provider.  Got literally nothing else done tonight.  

Thursday.  Took ages to get to sleep.  Cranky with everything and everyone.  Fighting with proxies most of the day.  Busy drinks (old farts drinks).  Pizza for dinner (although not much because too much pigging out on snackages).

Friday.  Fighting with proxies in the morning.  Gave up because the thing won't block an executable file if it's been renamed to .txt.  Did decom work in the arvo, because Fridays.  Ahsoka in the evening.

Saturday.  Awake in the middle of the night for two or three hours.  Sigh.  Had breakfast at The Scottish Restaurant then did food shopping from a couple of places.  Was nearly midday by the time we got home.  Sigh.  Afternoon alternating between cleaning the house and finishing the jigsaw.  Roast beef for dinner and had Chris and Glenda over which was lovely.  Played Battle of the Sexes in the evening.  The questions were fun but the rules were pretty confusing and the gameplay was a bit retarded.

There was roast beef and potato bake and other veggies

Glenda brought pavlova!

Sunday.  Awake for a little while in the middle of the night but not as badly as last night.  Spent the ENTIRE MORNING fighting with SMTP. 

Had a go at connecting to Vodien for authenticated SMTP. 

Firstly had to enable "esoteric" features in Eudora so that I could see the ports.  Ended up setting the SMTP port to 587.

Started off with errors like
535 Incorrect authentication data
Can't send to ''. The server gives this reason: '550 SMTP AUTH is required for message submission on port 587'.

I was able to get Thunderbird to authenticate against my kazza.id.au host and send, so then spent ages fiddling with configs in Eudora trying to get it to work.  Eventually after MUCH hacking I got it to work.

But then my SPF record needed to be updated.  Gmail was rejecting with fun errors like
"Messages missing a valid Message-ID header are not accepted"
but even that was inconsistent.  Eventually after much hacking and googling I settled on 
include:_spf.syrahost.com include:all._spf.ds.network
which as it turns out was buried deep in cpanel as well.

Of course the problem is now I can't send emails to Stu's domain, or to David's domain, because I have those in my cpanel account for web hosting, and now it thinks it owns them and delivers the mail to me not them.  Sigh.  

The afternoon was then music, weeding and blogging.  And I haven't even finished catching up on blogging.  Sigh.

I need a weekend to recover from my weekend. 

Sunday.  23rd.  All the blogging!!  Even got caught up.  Stu cooked a vegetable "tagine" in the slow cooker, and we had Jenn over.  We played Carcassonne after dinner and Stu won by a point.  Watched some Crown, and could hear Groovin the Moo all the way from EPIC.  Stayed up way too late waiting for the candles to finish.

Monday.  Slept ok (other than the slightly late night).  Working on more cleaning.  Honey mustard chicken for dinner (desperately trying to use up the like three bottles of mustard we have in the fridge).  Watched the last episode of The Simpsons online.  We're actually caught up!!  Thirty four odd seasons of The Simpsons in a couple of years.  I think we started into Futurama tonight too.  So much for letting me pick the next series.  

Tuesday.  Crap sleep.  Hurray.  A day of All The Things.  There's just not enough TIME!!  And I forgot to cook some Anzac Biscuits.  Roast lamb for dinner.  

Wednesday.  Ok sleep. 

We were going to go to Broaster Chicken at lunch, but even though they were supposed to be open, well, they weren't.  Lame.  So we went to Canberra Cafe and Burgers, so I could get some loaded fries.  On the condition that the others would help me.  Which they did.  Because this stuff is epic!

Deleted a whole heap of stuff with Neil after lunch which is always fun.  

After work went into town.  Had a drink with the sweetie at Dolly's, or whatever they're called now, used to be Shorty's. 

Then we went to Taki for dinner.  We got the Taki Signature Platter ($139) which had four cuts of beef (A5 Japanese wagyu striploin, finger rib, thin karubi and diamond cut inside), as well as pumpkin, onion and two kinds of mushroom.  The beef was *divine*, but the vegetables were a bit meh.  They burn before they cook through, and really really need the dipping sauce because they're too dry otherwise.  But the meat!! OMFG so good!!!

Got home and found a HARD COPY Yellow/White Pages.  How totally bizarre, we haven't had one of those in years.  I wonder if they delivered it to our place by accident.  

Thursday.  Ok sleep.  But then I didn't write down any notes so can't remember what I did all day.  Drinks then Taco Thursday, and more Futurama.

Friday.  Ok sleep.  I think.  Another day with no notes.  Whoops.

Saturday.  Got ready then headed to Berrima!  But I'll save that for another post.  Which I might eventually get around to doing.  After I choose photos from the nearly 500 I took.  In the rain.

Sunday.  After we got home I mailed some cruise photos to someone, then finally finished putting together our tax.  Got most of it printed before the printer started jamming.  Also decided I'm not convinced by the output of movie files from iMazing.  If you use the defaults you get an MP4 which is smaller in dimensions than the original.  If you export without the conversion to MP4 you get a MOV file which is the right dimensions (1920p) and a smaller file size, but it's quite "enhanced" - it's brighter and looks over processed compared to if you just download from windoze.  hmmmmmm.  Did some music and blogging and suddenly it's dinner time.  Sigh.  

Sunday.  17th.  Lamb roast and drinks with Kit.

Monday.  A fair bit of inbox tidying and decommission cleaning.  Got travel insurance for the cruise next year, but trying to get an ESTA was a pain in the poo poo hole.  When it came to putting through payment I clicked on the link and got a browser pop up saying it was going to leave the page.  Which I clearly didn't want to do.  So tried again and this time got a popup from the site saying I was going to leave the page.  So went "back" to see if there was something I missed but then it complained I already had an application in process.  So got to the end again and it was all "THE PAYMENT STATUS COULD NOT BE DETERMINED AT THIS TIME. PLEASE CHECK BACK LATER FOR THE PAYMENT STATUS."  and literally no way to pay.  Tried different browsers with no luck.  #grunt.  So that was a waste of a good chunk of the evening.  

Tuesday.  Slept ok.  Reloaded my ESTA application and it came straight up with the option to pay.  So just needed to wait for it to sort itself out.  Fighting with all the stoopid.  Had some mulled wine, and cooked sausages, cauliflower, bacon and these little kale sprouts I got off Tony which were fricken *amazing* - little crunchy leafy balls of goodness.  Also blogged last week.

Lunch: toasted cheese sandwich with pizza blend cheese to take it to next level

This photo cannot possibly capture how awesome those little sprouts of kale were!

Wednesday.  More dealing with all the stoopid, and frustration with people that don't respond to messages and/or disappear for hours at a time.  Also had to finally start using Outlook for the first time, ever.  And my welcome to it was a two hour delay in mails arriving because of "issues".  Seriously whoever thought that cloud would be a good idea for this crap??  Was watching stoopid crap on the internet in the evening and backing up my computer when I found out my desktop no longer existed (I have robocopy scripts that save the output to a folder on my desktop).  And I'm like WTF??  I had actually noticed the other day that everything on my desktop had little OneDrive icons.  Turns out Microsoft had taken upon itself to backup my desktop, documents and downloads directories to OneDrive.  EXCEPT IT HADN'T!!!  Half the files were actually missing.  I even looked online and they simply weren't there.  It had badly synced my files and chunks of them were missing.  So I turned off backup, at least for desktop, and will need to restore my files from last week's backup.  Fricken HATE.  Microsoft is doing an Apple and doing things of its own accord WITHOUT MY PERMISSION.  HATE HATE HATE.  Literally the second time this week my files have been screwed with by others (last time was on Friday when a rogue backup script deleted everything at work).  

Thursday.  Farewell for Casey who's moving to Melbourne, then Christmas in July drinks at work.  There were so many snackages I didn't need dinner, and in fact brought home all the leftovers that were going to be thrown out otherwise.  

Friday.  I dunno.  Mostly trying to get organised.  Declared POETS and we headed down the coast to see Kit and Pete.  The top of Clyde Mountain was pretty foggy, but it cleared up lower down.  I really wanted to get there by dark, but that didn't work out.  Oh well.  Had steak and salad for dinner and had a few drinks and chatted.  

Arthur, King of the Britons

Saturday.  I went to bed relatively early (altho an hour later than usual) but didn't get to sleep til like super super late (like after everyone else went to bed haha).  Had a bit of a sleepin though so wasn't tooo bad.  Watched Kit feed all the animals. 

Al and Kerry Paca

Kit and Pete hand-raised Lolly when she was abandoned.  She's very friendly and so damned cute!

Ricky the tiny horse

Then we had breakfast which was at nearly lunch time. 

I started a jigsaw and got a chunk done on it before we headed down to Bawley Point.  The river mouth was a bit too deep to cross, so we headed all the way down to Kioloa.  There was a fairly lethargic seal dozing on the rocks, which everyone thought was very unusual.  Walked all the way up the beach and back.  The seal was still there, but some others had already called some experts to get it checked out. 

Had a lamb roast for dinner, with one of Kit and Pete's sheep. 

Then we played a game of Squatter.  Which, like real life with sheep, is basically a case of what Bad Things will happen at every turn.  Kit won.  I think I was doing ok, but it was a bit hard to tell since it was all so random and Bad Things kept happening. 

Slightly earlier night.

Sunday.  Slept a lot better.  Bacon and eggs again for breakfast, then we watched Biscuit herding sheep which was pretty cool. 

Then headed home.  Unpacked and tidied up the house.  Did a bit more on the jigsaw.  Then put on dinner (roasted a bunch of veggies to have with leftover lamb) and did photos and blogging stuffs.  

Sunday.  19th.  Stu cooked dinner using some mince I'd cooked previously, and some cauliflower in a white sauce which was very nice.

Got filled with rage trying to open a Coles liquid soap bottle.  It said turn anticlockwise to open, but twisting just turned the knob around and nothing happened.  A similar thing happened to my brother with a Woolworths soap bottle and he ended up breaking it trying to get it open.  I just undid the main cap and used it as a fefill bottle instead.  I think I'll stick with Palmolive.  Why TF do they make things so hard???

Monday.  Slept okish.  Frustated with waking up every hour or so with numb hands.  At work I was sick of the stoopid by like 9am.  Music practise in the evening, although very raspy, no idea why.  It's a fairly new reed too.  hrmm.  Leftover chicken drumsticks for dinner.  Did some photo culling and blogging and felt like it was the first "normal" weeknight in weeks.  Good to get some things done.

Tuesday.  Spent some time finding photos for my Ansto blog post (haven't finished yet).  More stoopid at work.  Scanner was in a bad mood in the afternoon, kept stuffing up the exposures.  Maybe it gets tired being on all day.  Leftover beef cheeks for dinner.  Watched a cool episode of the Simpsons - where Homer finds himself in a Lego world (Brick Like Me).  So much fun!!  Watched something online which had "may the mass times acceleration be with you" in it, but can't remember what it was, whoops.

Wednesday.  Took ages to get to sleep because my feet were cold.  Had a good cleaning day.  

So here's where our new drainpipe goes down.  It goes all the way to the ground level then round the corner to in front of the garage.  They've got render and sealer and a layer of plastic on the walls.  Then they have a fabric sheath (which you can see) around a big pile of blue metal.  The idea is to let the drainage flow around to the front where there's another pipe to allow drainage in addition to the actual drainpipe.

The concreter came in the morning to do the front steps.  He spent all morning doing up the formwork.

At lunch time the concrete truck came

And they filled up the stairs and path with concrete

This is the finished product (taken Thursday morning).  They're sooo much nicer than the old stairs!

Leftover pork ribs for dinner.  Finished culling Victoria photos down for the blog!  And then finished watching through Lie to Me.  Quite enjoyed that series (we'd seen about half of it twelve years ago, but have been watching through the whole thing).  

Thursday.  Helped de-rack a bunch of comms gear.  Kinda fun to be doing something physical (I'm normally strictly layer 3 and above ;) ). 

Due to the lettuce crisis at the moment I had to have spinach instead of lettuce at Subway.  You'd think a lot of rain would be a good thing for Australia.  Yeah notsomuch apparently.  Got Sichuan Chinese for dinner.  Had the lovely pork and also the dry fried chicken with epic chilli. I avoided most of the chilli and it wasn't too bad but Stu ate a bunch and nearly died.  He got the hiccoughs and even had to rescue his mouth with some milk!  So delicious though ;)

Finished season 25 of The Simpsons.  Then I felt like watching something a bit fluffy, so watched The Little Mermaid II, which was okish.  They got most of the original voice actor cast which was nice, but the graphics were *very* cheap compared to the original.

Friday.  Not great sleep.  Ok morning, then lunch with the Chrises and a Neil and a Tony at Herberts.  Braddles and Tony and I shared all the noms - chorizo, chicken skewers and jalapeno poppers and chips.  Yum yum. 

Some of us might have stayed all afternoon.  Whoops.  Watched a very sweet story on Stuart Harris and his discovery of a new species of maratus peacock spider.  Such a cute little spider!!  It was before the 19-20 fires though, so no idea how they have fared.  

Saturday.  Damien came over for a war game with Stu.  I went through Victoria photos for the blog and did some house stuff.  I might have also baked a coconut cake (Yum! Delicious!)

Game setup

End game

Nun with a gun!

Stairs are drying out

After Damien left we headed out to the club for Ian and Chris's anniversary formal night.  Any excuse to get out a little black dress and look a bit pretty :)

Stayed up a bit too late.  Not helped by losing an earring and then spending ages looking for it (found it!).

Sunday.  Couldn't get to sleep for *hours* because I was COLD.  We really need a better doona out there.  And need to put the electric blanket on the bed too.  In the end I used the sweetie as a hot water bottle to finally get to sleep (after having to deal with mild hurty as well).  Came home pretty early and tried (and failed) to get more sleep, so the morning was a complete writeoff.  Did some Lego stuff in the afternoon, then All The Cooking (a blue cheese potato bake and a brussels sprouts tray with salmon for dinner, and a bunch of mince to have with whatever over the next couple of weeks).  Started season twenty six of The Simpsons and season two of The Crown. 

20:00 is bed time right? :)

Monday.  18th.  (Not backdating).  Yay for catchup days.  Pretty good sleep.  Went into battle with my computer trying to get the scanner and GPS to work.  Neither do in windows 11.  The GPS won't work in windows 11 because it complains the driver is no good.  Transystem hasn't put out any new software/drivers in years which is pretty upsetting.  So had to get the dam trip GPS off on my laptop.  Now dreading what will happen if something happens to the laptop and I have to replace it.  I'll have to find an alternative to my little PhotoMate 887 which is one of the best inventions in history.  Was also fighting with the scanner which fricken USED TO WORK in windoze 11, but just stopped one day.  I've yet to reconnect it up to my old computer to test it.  Hate Microsoft.  Hate hate hate.  Did some weeding, and a magpie came right up to where I was working to see if I'd disturbed any bug noms for it.  Very cool.  Potted some geranium cuttings.  In the afternoon we tidied up the shelves in our bedroom cupboard that had been getting messier and messier.  Did a water change in the upstairs two foot for the first time in forever (there's always babies in that tank I'm worried about sucking up).  Then got frustrated yet again with Apple because it dropped out while downloading my photos and refused to show up in windows afterwards.  Was thinking I was going to have to reboot my computer.  It certainlly meant I couldn't blog the previous week.  Hate Apple.  Hate hate hate.  Then cooked all the food.  I prepped a chicken marbella from Not Quite Nigella, cooked some mince/bacon/onion/garlic, and we had salmon and cabbage for Monday night's dinner.  Then we watched the first episode of The Crown which was pretty good.  Got pretty stressed out about having to go back to work.  Even four day weekends are just not enough time to get everything *done*.  Eventually managed to reconnect to the phone and was able to download photos, but bed time so no blogging.

Was digging under the old pool and found all this steel reinforcing.  Maybe to stop slippage of the pool???

Tuesday.  Slept ok until hurty kept me awake half the night.  Ok day trying to catch up on stuff.  Then demoing stuff to peeps and trying to deal with all the stoopid.  It was a wine and candle kind of a night.  Also made the chicken marbella which was nice enough but a little watery.  

Wednesday.  Woke up for a while a couple of times.  Was sick of the stoopid by 8:40.  Fairly busy day prepping a firewall migration and prepping rules for a big project.  Did some music, then did a red curry with mushrooms, asian greens and leftover sausages.  Did some work on Eurasia panoramas but still no blogging.  

Thursday.  Another busy day, and a tonne of interruptions and meetings.  Did a firewall migration after lunch which took all of ten minutes (including testing) and was one of the most anticlimactic changes I've ever done.  Pretty quiet drinks.  Tried McCains frozen pizzas which weren't really any better than Spar.  Need to stick with Dominos or Dr Oetker (Doc Oc/Dr Octopus).

Friday.  Finished prepping a big ruleset, and even managed to deploy them the same afternoon which was good.  Had a craving for mac and cheese for lunch.  Lazy Su pickup for dinner and watched third episode of Gunther's Anatomy.

Saturday.  Basically got ready then Damien came over.  We chatted for ages, had frozen spring rolls and chips for lunch, then played Jaws in the afternoon.  After playing for a little while we put the movie on in the background (because I don't seem to have the soundtrack).  Stu has never actually seen it?!?!  Will have to watch it properly with him some time.  Damien and I played Brody/Hooper/Quint, and Stu played Jaws.  Stu got a really good start, pretty much totally evading us and getting lots of points for act 2.  But somehow we managed to survive and Quint finished him off with the machete.  Just as the movie was finished, amazing timing.  As soon as Damien left we both collapsed in a heap - seven hours of socialising is super super draining, who knew.  Had sausages and cabbage for dinner, then Simpsons, Black Books and second episode of The Crown.

I actually spent cash that day too - to get the shiny on the right here.  And in the same change got all four head designs of the Queen.

Sunday.  Went and climbed Mt Rogers, did some music practise, did some cleaning, and filled the green bin.  And suddenly the morning was gone.  Went to the markets after lunch to get some fresh veggies, came home and cooked some Anzac biscuits and prepped dinner.  And suddenly the afternoon was gone.  Sigh.  Jenn came over for dinner (a cheese and spinach burek we found at the markets) and then we played Carcassonne which I won.  Was going to have an early night, but then Stu tried to print something.  It did a whole lot quite happily, then went back to jamming in the same place at every damned page.  So got super cranky about the whole thing.

I nearly rage quit at one point because the pantry is so full of crap I can't get at anything without everything all falling over

Unfortunately these were a bit dry

Burek and veggies dinner

Monday.  Got a reminder to go look at planets.  Because I was awake, I did.  It was actually worth getting up for, with the moon, Saturn, Mars, Venus and Jupiter very obvious (although not so much in the resized photo).  I'll take peoples' word for it for Neptune and Pluto.

Then it was all morning trying to catch up on photos and blogging.  Yet again, even with a long weekend I'm struggling to keep up with life.  Stop the world I want to get off.