Sunday.  4th.  Managed to get the end of last year's photos posted before a storm came through that was a little too close so I shut down my computer (and it BSODed as I was doing it #grunt). Then had to sit around doing nothing much for an hour because my dotz were packed up, Lego was done, jigsaws were all done. So I did some kitchen stuff. Hurray. Dinner was nachos. We are going to get healthy soon, I promise.. haha. 

Watched the Death in Paradise 2025 Christmas special. Then I went to bed. 20:30 is bed time right? Weird going to bed while it's still light though.

Monday.  Slept fairly well. Back at work full time. Sigh. Went back to some decommissioning tickets that have been banking up for the past few months. Went into work at lunch to drop off most of the Christmas party stuffs, then had lunch with Neil at Kingsley's (the mall is feral over the school holidays). Finished the leftover tuna bake for dinner then watched Beyond Paradise 2.1.

Tuesday.  Went to bed at normal time but then didn't get to sleep for HOURS. Sigh. And awake from well before 6 again. Zombie day. Again. Was putting away more Christmas decorations and couldn't find a string of fairy lights. I remember taking them off the lounge where they were, but now I can't find them to put them away. Sigh. Edit: found them, I was confusing them with another string/box. This is what happens when your brain is zombie tired. Lots more decom prep work today. Even did a bit of playing with Powershell/APIs. Dug out some sausages leftover from the Christmas party to have for dinner with some very old pork jelly and very old sauces. One of them might give us food poisoning, we shall see. Beyond Paradise 2.2.

Wednesday.  Slept okish. Disjointed day at work.

We may have gone to Grease Monkey at lunch.  That's like three times in like a month.. whoops..

More Christmas party sausages for dinner and Beyond Paradise 2.3.

Thursday.  Spent most of the day deleting stuff which was nice, trying to clear out a backlog of decommissions going back til last September. Drinks at the Labor Club, Dominos for dinner then Beyond Paradise 2.4.

The 8th of January is always the day I remember the Como-Jannali bushfires (32 years ago), my blogiversary (23 years this year!!) and David Bowie's birthday (he would have been 79).  This year smoke from the Victorian bushfires made for a very red sunrise and sunset...

Friday.  

Didn't achieve much in the morning but did some more deletions in the afternoon and some certificate replacements as well. It's been stoopidly hot this week (37C today), and yet we still turned the oven on for #kievfridays. Whoops.

Saturday.  Slept okish I think. Spent pretty much the whole day cleaning the house and cooking. hrmm. Had EffanC over for cheese and champagne and dinner. The lasagna ended up being a bit overdone as noone was really ready for dinner when it was ready, so turned the oven down and let it sit for longer. Still fairly good though. A lovely catchup.

I forgot to get a photo before cutting it up

Sunday.  Fairly late night but of course I still woke up at 6:00. Filled the green bin in the morning and did some house stuff and spent entirely way too much time geotagging Dad's photos of Kangaroo Island.

Found this on the weekend too! WTF!?

On 1-November-2025 Thryv who manage White Pages directories, have removed Residential listing from the White Pages website.
To search for a residential listing your options are:
Collect a copy of the White Pages from your local Australia Post Office or order online at www.directoryselect.com.au for a copy to be delivered to your home.
Contact Directory Assistance on phone 1223
Please note that the search functionality for White Pages Business and Government is not changing.

Still not ready for being back at work full time...

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.

Sunday.  31st.  Had tuna casserole and veggies for dinner.

Then Mash and the first episode of Shogun.

Then got all kinds of depressed cause I didn't get invited to Herbert's birthday on Friday night, and noone told me that the tickets for the Canberra Airport Open Day had come up while I was away, and had "sold out".  

Monday.  April Fool.  Yeah that's me.  Took til past midnight to get to sleep because of feeling blah.  Did some weeding and scattered some purple poppy seeds around the garden, but not fully transfunctionating and too brain dead to concentrate on anything much.  I did finish geotagging photos from Tassie though.  Sausages and frozen veggies for dinner.  Watched Mona Lisa Smile which had vibes of Dead Poets Society but for girls.  

Tuesday.  Slept ok.  Nothing much day, leftovers from fridge and freezer for dinner.  Also got an email saying I'd come up on the standby list, so got myself a ticket for the Canberra Airport Open Day.  Messaged David and he was able to get one too.

Wednesday.  Slept mostly ok.  Nothing much day, did a bit of decom work planning.  Met up with Stu and Dennis after work then had Kinn Thai for dinner.

Demolition in Civic

Chicken pad see ew, chili jam crispy pork, roti

Then backing up holiday photos.

Thursday.  Nothing much day.  Gin night at drinks.  Well not really, they had it a month or so ago while I was in Tasmania.  But there were plenty of leftovers so had a half shot of each.  Pizza for dinner then Death in Paradise 8.7.

Friday.  Since I wasn't invited to the evening Herbert's party, I had my own with the Chrises and Neil.  Got to try all six of the beers for the Bearded Bro Brewery tap takeover (altho one was just a sneaky mouthful I took of Aquila's).  Braddles and I shared some lamb balls and honey soy chicken wings.

Then spent the afternoon deleting stuff.  What could go wrong? :)  Kievs for dinner and Orville 3.4

Saturday.  Woke up at around 1 til well after 4.  Sigh.  Zombie tired.  Hurray. David and Kellie picked me up at 8:45 for the Canberra Airport Open Day.  It was pouring with rain and it was windy and the puddles were several centimetres deep and we got drenched.  I really should have taken my hiking boots which are a lot more waterproof.  Whoops.  Kellie went back to the car while we waited to get on the Hercules.  After a quick walk around the emergency vehicles we decided to call it for the first round and come back a bit later, so headed back to the car.  Which was gone.  Kellie had taken it.  Whoops.  David was a bit upset (busting and hangry sure didn't help) but everyone felt better after a pitstop and some food.  We went back to the airport fence to ponder our next move.  David called Adam/Brenda and it was established that lunch would be at the Burns Club.  After I'd just eaten a double cheeseburger.  Whoops.  There were like twelve of us including a few kids.  And Fiona paid before we had a chance to, so all I could do was give her all the cash I had on me ($20).  Whoops.  Saw Adam Peters for the first time in probably 30-35 years.  And met Craig who was one of the drivers who taught my brother how to drive Sydney trains.  Had a much better afternoon at the airport - saw some of the air shows and the sun came out and the people left at the end so got some nice photos. 

Felt a bit blah when we finally got home, so just watched crap on the internet.  Watched Mash and Sex Education 4.7 with the sweetie, then had some cheese and crackers (didn't need dinner - had it at lunch) and went to bed.

Sunday.  Went to bed at 21:15.  Woke up at what I felt like was about 6:30 but it was only 6:00 on the phone, still, it felt like a good nights' sleep.  Played on my phone for a bit then went and had a shower.  Get back and the bedroom clock says 7:54.  WTF?  Yeah, daylight savings ended, so I actually slept in til 7:00.  Felt a lot better after nearly ten hours sleep.  Wasted wayyyyyy too much time on Friday's XKCD.  You have to make a rube goldberg machine with either one, two or three coloured balls.  My first one was super boring, just one coloured ball with a funnel almost straight down.  The second one was three colours but it was still pretty generic.  After looking around at all the creations on the board I made a third one that was a bit more interesting.  But they're not static - if you refresh the page other boards will stay in place but yours resets.  So I never got screenshots of the first two.  This was my third though:

Then did a bit of Turkey photo stuff, house stuff, weeding, Tasmania finances, and food shopping.  Although we didn't buy much food - still getting through everything in the freezer.  Not entirely sure how I'm going to survive a five day week this week.. hmmm..

Sunday.  30th.  Veggies with leftover lamb for dinner, Crown, early night.

Monday.  Slept okish.  Still woke up a few times.  Spent some time trying to find a pub to go to for my Sydney party.  I wanted to go to the Argyle again (had a nice time there last time) but it doesn't open til like 4pm which is way too late.  Sigh.  Busy day.  Again.  Leftover turkey and veggies for dinner.  And spent some more time looking for a pub.  

Tuesday.  Slept okish.  Morning of All The Hassling All At Once.  Did some weeding at lunch.  Then an afternoon of all the BS.  Cranky at everything.  

Wednesday.  Dunno, no notes, but it was another busy day.  

Thursday.

Completely defeated by Microsoft "security".  Cranky and stressed yet again.  After drinks it was all too much and the stress of the week just exploded and I literally had a meltdown all the way home.  Made pizzas for dinner.

Friday.  Had an early night, but then woke up at Dentist Time and never got back to sleep.  Stu on the other hand was sick all night and didn't get *any* sleep.  He was eventually actually sick but that didn't help him feel any better.  Poor thing.  I took an RDO and spent the day cleaning the house.  Hurray.  Well actually the morning was mostly tidying up and weeding etc in the front yard.  The afternoon was mostly tidying inside.  In the middle was a pub lunch at Herbert's with the Chrises, Tony, Frank and Karen.

Saturday.  Had an early night and slept somewhat better.  Spent the entire day cleaning the house.  Hurray.  Hardly any culling which was on the todo list though. 

Dinner at Badger&Co (literally the same thing I ordered last time I was there a year ago).

Then saw "Jeremy Laser" at the ANU Women's Revue.  They also played recorder (!!  Titanic  !!) and trombone.

After twenty minutes of just them getting setup and the band playing, just before the show started a group of five people walked in (twenty minutes late!!!!) and then demanded that people move around to accommodate their group of FIVE.  Tossers.

I had just about the perfect seat, but alas they asked us not to take any photos, so just got a sneaky one at the end.

Highlights from my crap memory (I was desperate to take some notes but didn't want to get out my phone)

* We Didn't Start the Movement (to the tune of We Didn't Start the Fire)
* Never Gonna Give them Up (Rickrolled!!!  regarding returning museum artefacts)
* cute little in-between-skit music including the Wii home screen music, ABBA's SOS, and Jess playing Titanic music on recorder
* Fixer Upper (from Frozen)
* three lines from Do you Wanna Build a Snowman, except I can't actually remember the question.. go away Anna, ok bye.. must ask Jess what they asked
* a parking skit where they complained about campus parking, which I had to laugh at because when *I* was at uni there was no such thing as student parking on campus
* Jess singing I'm Too Sexy
* Let's hear it for Canberra
* ANU / Xanadu

Scotland forever!!

So yeah quite a bit of fun, but it did make for a very late night :(

Sunday.  Spent All Morning FINALLY putting some sealant over the cracked grout around the loose tiles in the shower.  $20 solution to a $20000 problem.  Hopefully.  Remains to be seen if it works.  But OMFG caulking guns are hard work.  My forearms are going to ACHE tomorrow.

Then did some more cleaning.  Even managed some music.  But didn't finish my goal of culling Verona and Venice photos this weekend.  Sigh.  And the poor sweetie is still sick.  His entire gut is on strike and he felt miserable all weekend.  He's eaten like four pieces of toast in three days.  Eeep!

Some random things I've learnt lately..
* the fact that the sun is made up of hydrogen and helium was first discovered by a woman - Cecilia Payne - but of course because she was a woman she never really got the credit
* a Camera Lucida is a super cool optical device which allows an artist to superimpose a real life scene onto paper so they can trace it out.  I want one!! haha

Sunday.  16th.  Not backdating for a change :)  Pic of the kale chips I made as part of dinner.  This was 15 minutes, some bits were a little overdone.

Monday.  17th.  Woke up around dentist time for like an hour and a half.  On the weekend I got back into collecting some extra data from Dad's slides, to help organise them better.  Because he would mix up rolls to put things together by subject.  Which is fair enough, but some slides don't have dates (I still need to find out if he ever digitised his slide labels from the books he had which have been lost) but do have processing dates sometimes, or can be linked together by the type of slide etc.  He also mixed like three trips up north into one collection, and bushwalks to the same area together.  I want to be able to get them back into chronological order for filing.  So more of that before work.  Tried to do one thing, which took all day because of everything else I had to deal with.  I tried to talk to the optometrist about whether the strain for distance is good strain (help reverse the myopia) or bad strain (make it worse).  But the receptionist called me back, not the optometrist, and said the optometrist said just not to do it.  And I'm like that doesn't answer the question, but of course she didn't have the answer, and wouldn't find out because he'd just said Don't.  Fricken sigh.  Hate.  Cranky all afternoon.  And I was cold and hungry ALL DAY (well except for briefly after lunch of nice warm noodles and a walk in the sun).  Leftovers for dinner.  Tried emailing some peeps to confirm their email addresses before I emailed photos, but Gmail intermittently wouldn't accept mail from Internode:

Diagnostic-Code: smtp; 5.3.0 - Other mail system problem 550-' This mail is unauthenticated, which poses a security risk to the sender and Gmail users, and has been blocked. The sender must authenticate with at least one of SPF or DKIM. For this message, DKIM checks did not pass and SPF check for [kazza.id.au] did not pass with ip: [--]. The sender should visit https://support.google.com/mail/answer/81126#authentication for instructions on setting up authentication.

Some went through but others bounced.  So then I had to fight with Vodien to get an SPF record setup.  Internode is super helpful (https://www.internode.on.net/support/guides/email/spf_records/) providing the text to use for their mail servers.  But Vodien support was like, do it through cpanel, which is dumb because the cpanel host doesn't "own" the domain per se.  Of course that didn't work.  Then the actual Vodien DNS manager kept complaining about an invalid name.  They actually want you to put a name which is daft because TXT records don't have them.  I hate EVERYTHING.  Too cranky and depressed to do any Titanic.

Tuesday.  Slept okish I guess.  Well, after I finally got to sleep, which took like two hours because my feet were cold and wouldn't warm up.  Mail policy staring day.  Weeding at lunch.  Music, cheese kransky and cabbage for dinner (finally finished the cabbage that's been in the fridge since probably January - that stuff just never goes off!!).

Blogged the week before last, which took up most of the evening.  Then finally finished watching Avatar.  Only took like two weeks hehe.

Wednesday.  Took a while to get to sleep again because my feet were cold.  Lots of work with Neil.  We're probably going to end up deleting half the ruleset on one server because of things either no longer in use or things can be combined.  

Saw these at the chicken place and drooled.. but didn't buy any.. this time..

Herbert's for dinner for a tap takeover by Big Shed.

I tried all six beers on tap (half pints each of four of them which were good, not much more than a taste of the Brown (too dark for me), and most of a pint of the hard lemonade which tasted like Solo - yum! dangerous!).  

This was the rep and their Golden Stout Time - which smelt exactly like Golden Gaytime - but didn't taste really like it at all.  Weird.  

Thursday.  Slept ok.  Had breakfast with the sweetie at 54.

Had a look at a routing alert from last night.  Learnt a bunch of stuff and actually got to see some OSPF which we don't have much of.  Also started thinking about some more cleanup work. 

Managed to get a photo of the eclipse.  Not helped by the iPhone not actually using the lens you tell it to.  I wanted to use the 3x lens, which works until you put something in front of it, and it's like, oh you wanted to do macro did you, and changes the lens.  So retarded.  But fought with it and managed to get a couple of pics.  It certainly wasn't very exciting from Canberra!

Quiet drinks, pizza, and finished season 1 of The Book of Boba Fett.  We didn't see who was in the tank at the end, so asked Siri, Hey Siri, who was in the tank at the end of the Book of Boba Fett?" - and she actually answered correctly!  Pretty incredible really.  

Friday.  Slept ok.  Laid out all of Dad's 1969 Grampians and Great Ocean Road photos.  There's two rolls that cover that part of the trip, and you could tell from the processing date printing which were which.  You can mostly see the frame numbers (Dad wrote all over them obscuring parts of them). 

Looking at cleaning stuff.  TV dinners for dinner and Rocky Horror Picture Show (because it's fifty years since the show was first performed on stage).  Also found a bunch of Disney Singalong movies.. that could be a lot of fun hehe.

Next generation of turdburgers that will probably eat the house again over winter

Saturday.  Slept ok.  Continued sorting of the Grampians/Great Ocean Road photos.  I think I managed to get them all into the correct order.  It helped having a bit of local knowledge (from having done the exact same trip ourselves last year).  There's a few slides where the dates are clearly wrong, but not entirely sure what the correct date is.  They could have been taken late on the first day, or early on the second.  Got some house stuff done as well and got some holiday blog entries online.  Gmail is still intermittently blocking my emails.  Went out for lunch, got the loaded fries at Pattysmiths.  Their fries are actually really good, don't even need the bacon and cheese sauce

Then went to the chemist/pet store and did our food shopping and suddenly it's two and a half hours since we left home.  #grunt.  Some getting organised, music and Titanic and suddenly it's 17:00.  Sigh.  Sausages and wombok for dinner.  Then into season 3 of The Mandalorian, and some Death in Paradise.  

Sunday.  Woke up some time before 3 and stayed awake for at least two hours, then restless sleep.  Sigh.  Zombie day.  Hurray.  Did mostly house cleaning stuff, bit of Titanic, and lots of blogging.  Also finally fixed my SPF record - you need to put the domain name (kazza.id.au) as the "name".  So dumb.  Also dumb: if you open a html file (that loads in Chrome), or a text file (that loads in notepad) it won't open in the desktop you're in, no no no, it opens in the default deskop, or whichever desktop you were using those apps in last (not sure which).  Windoze is so hopeless.  Is it beer o'clcok yet?

Sunday.  27th.  Backdating this, because, life.  Basa bake for dinner which was very nice.  Then watched the last episode of Andor.  Which didn't wrap anything up, just left it all there for season 2.  Then I finished watching last year's Lego Masters Bricksmas Special.

There was a whole heap of hail in this storm

Monday.  Slept ok.  Although feeling panicky about my todo list.  Did some washing and washing up and dusting and vacuuming before work.  We'd brought home the Electrolux cordless from the club where we'd had it for the past year or so.  After spending ages trying to vacuum up christmas tree needles, I then emptied it and it wouldn't start again.  hrmmm.  Weeding in the evening and went and picked up a wok from someone on Freecycle (to replace our one where the non-stick surface is coming off).  Stuffed capsicums for dinner.

Tuesday.  Vacuum cleaner worked again after a charge.  Had a cleaning planning day mostly at work.  Weeding after work and tried out the wok to do a pork stirfry.  It's definitely not as "fast" as the old one - keeps turning off even with the heat up fairly high.  May need to max it out.

Before and after

Old and new

Wednesday.  More cleaning planning mostly.  Some music in the evening.  Have pretty much given up on the idea of getting my Europe photos online before Christmas.  Maybe all I'll be able to manage is filing my photos for the year and getting a year in review post done on time.  Watched the second episode of this year's Bricksmas special.  With eggnog!!  So that was a lot of fun.

Thursday.  First of the work Christmas parties in the afternoon which was quite pleasant.  I may have gotten a beer advent calendar from Plonk!

Friday.  Spent the afternoon cleaning up a whole heap of firewall rules.  Hope I don't break too much ;)  Chicken kiev for dinner then Die Hard 2.  The more I watch it the more plot holes I find :)  Still fun though.

Saturday.  Got lots done during the day.  Leftovers for dinner.  Watched Enola Holmes 2 in the evening, which was silly but a bit of fun.

This thing is probably at least fifteen years old.  Whoops.

Sunday.  Did a recycling and green shed run in the morning.  And only brought home five jigsaws.  Don't tell Stu ;)  Then went and did food shopping.  Had Kingsleys for lunch for the first time all year.  But then it's already after 13:00.  Sigh.  Did up some hotel reviews of Europe hotels, and read more for my year in review post.  Then some music.  And then it's dinner time.  Sigh.  Had leftover roast pork for dinner with some potatoes and a whole heap of kale chips.  Simpsons then first episode of the second season of Picard.

Crazy busy boring week.  Three photos to blog, no movies to quote, and a few days where I didn't even get any useful notes.

Monday.  14th.  Awake from about 1 til about 4.  Hurray.  I was stressing about ebay to start with (ebay have made things a lot nicer for buyers but much much much much more stressful for sellers), then I got hungry and restless.  Sigh.  Started prepping our next proxy upgrade (maybe it'll fix problems they introduced with the last upgrade).  Geotagging holiday photos and filing this year's photos in the evening.  I also spent the afternoon charging up a bunch of rechargable batteries to put in Yvonne's keyboard so I could have a play on it.  Haven't played any keyboards in years.  Weeding and leftover buttbeef cheeks I dug out of the freezer.  

Tuesday.  Somewhat better sleep.  All the stoopid.  Weeding, music, leftover turkey for dinner, geotagging, photo filing, Mentour Pilot.

Canberra is overgrown with grass at the moment - they can't keep up with the mowing.. doesn't bode well for summer grass fires around the place..

Wednesday/Thursday/Friday.  Super busy days at work (although not as much on Friday).  Mostly slept ok.  I accidentally gave myself a reputation of being knowledgeable and helpful to some users by fixing some longstanding problems for them (all I needed was an error message to fix a problem that had been kicking around other teams for weeks).  Whoops.  Had chicken kiev for dinner on Friday and watched episode 11 of Andor.

Saturday.  Got some stuff done in the morning but not nearly enough.  Food shopping, where I got stressed out by being in the aisle and people pushing past and STRESS and trying to get the trolley back and Kippax sure doesn't make it easy (all the trolley bays are on the Other Side of the car park so you either have to All The Way Around, or squeeze between cars or go up and over kerbs between cars.  Sigh).  So was in an odd mood the rest of the day.  But I did finish geotagging our holiday photos!!  In the evening was the Lego Brick Show at Thoroughbred Park but I'll leave that for another post.  One day.

Sunday.  Slept ok but woke up at ~5:20 hungry (I really didn't eat enough last night).  Depressed about how much stuff I have to dooooo but seemingly not enough time to do it.  I had to drag out the old vacuum cleaner to vacuum the house because the stoopid Dyson is playing up (it's pulsing and keeps turning off.. could be something needs cleaning or could be the battery is on its way out or something stoopid).  The thing is only two years old!!  I maintain that Dyson, like Herman Miller, is simply over priced and not actually GOOD.  Change my mind!  Not to mention the stoopid SD card reader on my computer only works intermittently.  I still haven't been able to download all my photos from last night.  #grunt.  But did do some weeding and music and cooked a lovely roast pork for dinner and watched some tv with the sweetie. 

Sunday.  8th.  Cooked a lovely basa bake, and a gorgonzola bake which I'll post separately (one day!)

Then watched more of The Crown.

Monday.  Kept waking up with numb hands, and even legs!!  Mostly my arm median nerve but even radial and ulnar nerves.  So frustrating!!  At least it's just numbness not pain.  Fighting with all the stoopid during the day, mostly microsoft crap.  Also had some of the cheesecake I made Sunday (wherein I forgot the gelatine, but it still set well enough because of the cheese).

 It was definitely a wine and candle kind of an evening after all the nonsense at work.  Had pesto pasta for dinner.  Did some photo culling and watched Lego Masters.

Tuesday.  Slept somewhat better.  Fighting with certificates on one of our devices, but all the fighting was because of our assumptions that another team had done work that in fact hadn't been done.  But we did learn some stuff so that was useful.  Ended up finishing late.  So late that I just felt like a tv dinner for dinner.  Lego Masters and photo culling.

Wednesday.  Took an RDO on account of having to work last weekend and this weekend.  OMFG it was amazing.  I had such a productive day.  I made a list of all the crap I really needed to do but just don't feel motivated to do on weekends.  And the proceeded to do it!  There was a whole heap of cleaning and tidying and also photo stuff and weeding and even some Lego part picking.  I setup the scanner on my old computer since Microsoft is a big fat poo and Windoze 11 sux donkey balls and is refusing to allow the scanner to work in windoze 11 (EVEN THOUGH IT USED TO WORK!!!).  Got back into scanning of Mum's negatives.  It was a pretty awesome day.  Cooked creamy mushroom chicken pasta for dinner (with chicken I dug out of the freezer).

Thursday.  Woke up at 3am (from hurty) but then never got back to sleep.  So zombie day. Fairly busy drinks.  Let the sweetie get pizza. 

Dude what? It's autumn and cold! Why are you eating my mail??

Friday.  Woke up at 2:45am (from hurty).  Did get more sleep but it was fairly broken and restless.  Spent the morning planning routing cleanups and writing up change paperwork.  Did some reports for another team on some of our devices.  Then doing All The Rulez for another team.  Chicken Kiev for dinner.  But then we had an epic crisis and couldn't decide what to watch.  We didn't feeling like watching anything the other wanted to.  So I spat the dummy and put on Gladiator.  But it's such a good movie that the sweetie hung around and watched it anyway :)

Saturday.  Slept ok.  Woke up early and went and did a big food shop.  Then mostly Lego part picking.  Logged in to do a prod change.  Change itself worked perfectly (four ping drops) but the preparing and testing took up most of an hour.  Had a play with basebrick (I tried to register the other week but my hosting is dumb and sometimes never delivers mail for reasons unknown, so I signed up with my gmail).  Salmon and cabbage for dinner.  Then Simpsons/Black Books/The Crown.  Then the dead drive in my old computer started squeaking which was super annoying so had to turn it off.  

Sunday.  Slept fairly well.  Turned the old computer on with a vision of disabling the broken drive in bios.  But it started squeaking straight away.  So turned it off again.  Will need to physically disconnect it.  Poop.  Mostly Lego inventorying all day. Then music and All The Cooking.

Monday.  8th.  Woke up at 4am-ish for a while.  A day of cleaning and creating a bunch of new objects on various firewalls, fixing up all the problems I found along the way. 

I tried the cheesecake for morning tea.  It turned out quite well!  The base is 250g pack Nice biscuits and 125g butter.  The filling is 2x 250g packets cream cheese, vanilla essence, 1/2 cup caster sugar, 300mL thickened cream (whipped), gelatine, and the juice (~200mL) and zest of four lemons.  I was going to use the bigger tray but I was using that for roasting some veggies.  So the whole thing is quite *thick*.  It was also quite soft.  I have another recipe I want to try before I publish the final results.

Sausages and salad for dinner.  Got pretty much caught up with Eurasia photo labelling.  By 20:30!  So watched another episode of Encore.  Had to put a blankie around me because it was so cold!  Although I did forget to do the dusting/vacuuming and my washing in the morning.

Tuesday.  Had a very early start because Stu needed to be at work early.  So no scanning although I did manage the dusting and vacuuming.  And I bought a bed.  More cleaning work in the morning.  Went jeans shopping again at Target at lunch but that was an epic fail.  Either too skinny or too much room in the crotch.  And something popped in my knee which hurt a bit, but nothing too crazy.  I did manage to find some more sheets for our bed though.  Leftover lamb and greek salad for dinner.  Had all my photo labelling done by 20:10 so watched the first episode of the new season of The Amazing Race.  I actually tried to watch this on the weekend, but Channel 10 stuffed up, and the episode they'd labelled as episode 1 was episode 3.  Buttheads.  But they'd fixed it by Tuesday.  This season was filmed last year, but because of covid they stayed in Australia.  But it still must have been a logistical nightmare with various state border closures.  

Wednesday.  Couldn't get to sleep til after midnight, then woke up before 6am.  hrmm.  Finished prep work on some tidy up work, awaiting feedback so I don't break anything.  Tried again jeans shopping, this time at Best & Less.  I did find one pair that at least fitted without even needing to be taken up.  But of course the pockets are way too small - even smaller than what I have now.  I'm going to have to invite Sarah over for dinner and ask her to make me a bigger pocket!  They also have a button up fly which is a big poo.  But they only had one pair in stock, so I still need to keep going.  Sigh.  Just before 5pm our bed arrived.  They said three to five business days.  That was next day.  I'll save that for another post though.  Saw the second episode of The Amazing Race.  

Thursday.  Took ages to get to sleep again, then woke up at 4am with hurty.  Sigh.  When I was getting some painkillers I thought I heard a plop.  Kept getting stuff out of the fridge but I thought I heard another plop.  So I turned the lights on and looked behind the digital radio, and there was a fish.  Not in its tank.  Stoopid fish.  I must have freaked it out moving around in the near darkness and it zoomed out of the tank and onto the bench.  Lucky I heard it otherwise there'd have been a dried out fish by morning :(  Drinks, Dr Oc pizzas, Hibike Euphonium and Encore.

Friday.  Hurty again.  In the evening we had C over for dinner.  She tries to be gluten free, but we didn't have any gluten free pasta and Chris doesn't sell it either.  So my solution was to use an epic zucchini Connor brought in on Thursday.  I used the mandolin to slice it up thin and mixed in with bolognase sauce.  It actually turned out really well!  Except I forgot to take an after photo.  Whoops.

Saturday. 

A day of All The Things.  I tried to have a bit of fun, but mostly just tidied the house.  And we made the bed.  Jenn came over for dinner (Stu had Turkish feast delivered).  Then we played Carcassonne, which I just won.

Sunday.  Valetines Day.  I'd have wished the mother and the brother happy anniversaries, but, well .. Went for a walk in the morning.  Tried to count the species of birds I saw.  Magpies, currawongs, cockatoos, galahs, crested pigeons, rosellas, wattle birds, an lbb.. heard a raven and peewees but didn't see those.  They've also blocked the direct route up to try and restore the slope from erosion, and diverted the path a bit to the side.

We finished season one of Hibike Euphonium at lunch.  In the afternoon I did quite a bit of work organising the filing cabinet and pulling out stuff to be scanned and tossed.  Downloaded and processed phone photos but only managed to get half way through blogging last week before dinner was ready (roast pork with epic crackling!!).  Simpsons and into season two of Hibike Euphonium.  Finished last week's blog entry at 9pm.  

Monday.  Today!  Ok sleep I think.  Spent ages in the morning looking at a problem that was never going to be ours but how do you prove that.  After Ward and I couldn't find anything obvious we passed it to another team who actually quite quickly figured out the problem.  Felt like I'd wasted too much of my time though hrmm.  But I did managed to cut over to the new piece of poo firewall in test in the afternoon, which was super epic awsome, on account of it's taken nearly a year to get there.  Leftover sausages and veggies for dinner, labelled over two hundred photos, and did this blog entry.  Time to collapse...

No movies this week!  Gasp!  What am I going to do for a blog title.. 

Sunday.  24th.  Half way through our long weekend.  Watched Your Name in the evening.  Kinda like Freaky Friday meets The Lake House?  Not that I've ever actually seen The Lake House.  Nice enough, although a tad confusing.  

Monday.  We both took a random day off to have a long weekend. 

Baby guppies!!!

Did all the washing in the morning - regular clothes washing, then the curtains from the east side window of the study.  Then headed out for the day.  Dropped in at The Scottish Restaurant for brunch, then onto Ikea.  Stu wanted to get a shelf unit for his study for the inside wall.  So we found that and got a couple of bits and pieces but not too much.  Did our food shopping on the way home. 

I'd just filled his water bowl when Stumpy decided to redecorate the place.

So just for that we gave him a bath.

Stu built his shelves and suddenly the house is a mess again.  Doh. 

It was also very hot.  All weekend.  We had the cooler going pretty much all weekend, but that did make it a bit humid in the house.  Salmon and salad for dinner, but no photo labelling.  Watched Honey, I Shrunk the Kids in the evening.

Tuesday.  Australia Day.  Our two biggest holidays celebrate invading other countries.  David's suggestion was make New Years Eve a public holiday, so all the poor saps that have to work NYE while everyone else parties will at least get paid overtime for it.  Then Australia Day could be January 1.  That was actually the day we became Australia.  Just a thought.  The day was spent avoiding the heat, a bit of housework, labelling photos and a bit of paint by numbers.  Stu wanted to hang up an aerial for his software radio, so I hacked out all the cherry tree suckers, and pruned the geraniums quite brutally (they were bigger than me!).  Didn't take any before photos unfortunately.  

Stu really didn't like being up a ladder

I well and truly filled the green bin, with a pile still left to go.  Taco Tuesday for dinner (I'd bought the shells and was going to have them before David left but we never got a round tuit).  The ten taco shells go really well with three people (four each for the boys and two for me), so we end up with leftovers if there's just the two of us.  Then I was loading the dishwasher after dinner and one of Stu's bowls slipped out of my hand and shattered all over the floor.  I seriously had a meltdown.  I really like those bowls, I use them every day, and it was one of the few complete sets we have of anything.  I don't deserve nice things.  Sigh.  Didn't feel like doing any photo labelling, or even watching a movie, so just watched random crap on YouTube.

Wednesday.  Nothing much.  Bit of photo labelling, but not nearly enough to catch up for the week.

Thursday.  Ok day; work drinks; pizza.  Got sad that I had noone to fight with over the garlic dregs from the garlic bread.  Started watching Sound! Euphonium anime series.  Then I watched Honey I Blew Up the Kid.

Friday.  The rain!  All the rain!  In the afternoon I spent an hour and a half renaming and documenting all the objects someone else in our team had created that didn't match our naming scheme.  Le sigh.  Watched Honey We Shrunk Ourselves in the evening.  I'd never seen this one.  Silly of course, but not too bad.  Then I watched the first half of a 2016 New York production of Hamilton.  I had literally no idea what the show was about, well, other than it was an American period piece.  I have to say I struggled with it.  It's mostly all rap, and I *hate* rap.  I struggled to keep up with the pace of it and what was going on and the exposition.  I also found having African Americans playing white guys pretty distracting.  Also.  Jonathan Groff as King George III.  Completely distracted by his spagging all over the place.  Also I reckon he looks a little bit like Freddie Mercury (front teeth and cheeks), he'd look more like him if he lost a little weight..

Saturday.  Woke up at 3am for nearly two hours.  Hurrah.  Did all the hosueworks in the morning.  Did a bit of paint by numbers and photo labelling of Dad's slides in the afternoon.  I'd relied on the dust and scratch filter for the first half of the scanning of his slides, but as it turns out, the hairs that were all over the roof of the scanner were there from the beginning.  The filter doesn't remove the hairs and the slides look terrible, and I'm going to have to redo *a lot* of the first half.  Sigh.  But probably not until I've scanned more of the filing cabinet.  Had a bit of a play with Gimp to make Lego mosaics using custom palettes.  Had chicken kiev for dinner.  Watched The Garden of Words, which I saw at the movies in 2013.  I reckon they must have videoed rain falling in puddles and traced it frame by frame.  Can't see any other way it'd be *that good*.  Then I watched the second half of Hamilton.  For some reason I enjoyed the second half a lot more.  Maybe because it was a bit slower, and I had a better idea of who everyone was??  I think if I watched it again I'd pick up a helluva lot more and possibly enjoy it more.  Or maybe I could just go read a transcript.  Found out that the dude who played Hamilton actually wrote the whole thing.

Sunday.  Today.  Not backdating for a change ;)  Although I am going to need to backdate a whole bunch of This Day in History posts.  Spent the day alternating between housework, computer work (photo labelling) and fun stuff (paint by numbers and jigsaw).  Went out and did a small food shop.  Although with fragments of covid detected in Belconnen sewage, I feel like we should have done a bigger shop in case we end up in lockdown.  Roast lamb for dinner.  Or there will be.  Very shortly :)