Monday.  9th.  Nice and cool overnight.  You'd think I'd be able to sleep.  You'd be wrong.  Took ages to get to sleep.  Busy morning before work doing all the dusting/vacuuming/weeding/cleaning the kitchen, and then time to go to work.  Cert renewal crap and meetings all day.  Kievs for dinner (was too hot and humid over the weekend to think about turning the oven on).  Did some catchup blogging, then bed.

Also waved at the peeps up on the space station.

Tuesday.  Nice and cool overnight.  You'd think I'd be able to sleep.  You'd be wrong.  Took ages to get to sleep.  Busy morning before work doing all the dusting/vacuuming/weeding/cleaning the kitchen, and then time to go to work.

Yeah a rinse and repeat.

Planned out some more decom work for later in the week.  Started looking at Daniel's quality report script.  Brain might have exploded.  Final Journey of Australian Science at the Shine Dome, which was back to hard science again which was pretty cool.  This one was related to the work of Sir John Carew Eccles.  They even had some of his family members there.

They had Prof Stephen Redman and Professor Lucy Palmer talking about their work with neurons and electricity in the brain.

Dinner at Terra afterwards.  We split a 220g beef brisket smoked steak and had charred broccolini and brisket fat chips as sides.  

Beef brisket (smoker) 220g | salsa verde $39

Charred broccolini | burnt miso butter, chili oil, garlic chips $18

Brisket fat chips $12

I enjoyed the sides.  The brisket itself I found a little.. dry..   I'm used to slower cooker brisket which is basically confit brisket.  This was done in a smoker so wasn't quite the same.  It wasn't bad, just wasn't what I'm used to.  It really needed the sauces.

Nice view of the tower on the way back to the car.

Wednesday.  Um.  I think I slept better.

Thursday.  12/12/24 - cool date!  I think I slept ok. 

Oh, I planted some mini capsicums the other week.  Some have sprouted.  At least one has been eaten already.

Got to do some decom work in the afternoon.  Ok drinks, but ate wayyy too much in the way of chips and sausage.  Still made pizzas but Stu ate most of mine.  Watched some more Jamie and Julia.

Friday.  took ages to get to sleep, then woke up at like 4:30.  Sigh.  Party day!!!!  The sweetie very kindly gave me a lift to work (he was working from home).  Picked up All The Sausages ($300 worth!!) and then just getting everything ready.  Went shopping with XL and Jo.  Then partied all afternoon! 

It was super hot though.  A special thanks to Louise and Tony for cooking the chicken and veggie stuff cause noone else wanted to go out in the heat! 

Typical though.. you give the camera to someone else and they cut off the tshirts and get all sky.  Uncropped.

Ho Ho Hold my .. bird.. ?  It's tradition for me to catch birds at these things.  I was never expecting to catch a honeyeater though!!

Finished up maybe like 19:30.  Stu took two loads of crap home.  Bestest sweetie ever!!  Con and Ward kicked on somewhere.  Tony biked it home.  And we gave Doc a lift home.  By the time we'd unpacked enough and organised, it was after nine by the time I got to bed.  Doh.

Saturday.  Slept relatively well.  Spent most of the morning organising the leftovers and party crap.  

For lunch I thought I'd see if any of the leftovers would give me food poisoning...

Mostly Lego filing in the afternoon.  Late in the afternoon I wondered how hard it would be to get a weather pixie on my blog...

Sunday.  Took ages to get to sleep (like 23:00).  Then woke up at 4:30.  Sigh.  Scripting, house stuff (two loads of washing up even! and ran the dishwasher for the second time in two days), Lego filing.  Put on my cd jukebox and listened to random crap all day.  Billy Joel sang about The King and I, and a few songs later Shall We Dance came up..!!  Funny stuff.

Monday.  28th.  Cranky cause I was meant to do a time use survey over the weekend.  Except they mailed me on Thursday.  We went to Queensland on Friday.  I never saw the emails til Monday.  When the survey had closed.  With only a "noreply" email address to reply to.  "noreply" email addresses should totally be outlawed. 

The congo tetra that hadn't been eating had died.  I was also trying to fix the outflow to the 620T tank, and found the stone that I'd previously used to pin down the filter wool from flowing away had gotten stuck there.  Just trying to deal with all the crap and suddenly it's 8:40.  Sigh.  Catching up and dealing with crap all day.  Blogged last week.  Cooked some frozen chicken pieces I had in the freezer with some veggies for dinner (cabbage bake and brussels sprouts).  Watched Mazey Day on Black Mirror.  Another "low tech" one.  Another one where they can't keep the damned camera still.

Tuesday.  Slept mostly ok.  Pissed off at one of my lovely poppy plants being knocked over.  I blame retarded cats.

So I brought the flowers inside.  As you do.

Bits and pieces day, mostly watching security talks. 

Leftovers and random stuff for dinner.  Demon 79 on Black Mirror.  Another "low tech" one.

Wednesday.  Slept mostly ok (once I finally got to sleep).  Of note is that I finally finished uploading all my Queensland 2014 photos!!  For those of you reading along at home (hi Mum!) you can go back and see food and hotel photos.  Noone else will ever care, I'm sure.  Took an early mark and went with Neil and Tony to Herbert's to finally try the very last TRBC beer - a blood orange sour.

The sweetie decided we had to have pizzas on a Wednesday since I'd be out Thursday night.. 

Thursday.  Slept mostly ok.  Stu thought it was Friday cause I'd been out drinking the night before and we'd had pizza for dinner.. 

The lake is very low at the moment...

Crap all day.  Drinks, trivia night.  Heaps of trash, like a whole round on exec baby/kid photos, and some super specific stuff that if you worked in the right area you *might* know, or crap like when does a full moon next fall on Halloween (and when did it last).  ie, not a whole heap of actual real trivia.  The exec table won.  Yeup.

Friday.  Slept mostly ok although woke up very early.  Crap all day again. 

The poppies that I brought inside.  I didn't think the unopened buds would open but they did!  But with a delicate peach colour rather than the bright orange they'd normally be.

The neighbour's bamboo is making a break for freedom.. hmmmmmmm!!

This can't be good!!

The sweetie ordered Dumpling Inn for dinner nom nom nom.  The National Anthem on Black Mirror (for some reason Netflix started me at season 6, so back to season 1).  Early night.

Saturday.  Slept mostly ok.  A day of All The Things.  Starting with the broken lemon tree..

Yeah .. 112 of them .. !!  I put 20 of them on the letterbox with a sign that said "free".  Only four left by the end of the day.

Changed the nameservers for kazza.id.au over to CloudLoop.  Did some hosting tidying up and clearing stuff out of Vodien.  

Same plant, two colours...

Leftover Dumpling Inn for dinner.  Watched an episode of Donna Hay's Christmas special from 2022.  Found her house in Avalon in a few minutes.  Although I guess it could always be some family/friend's house.  Edit: or probably just hired - there was a thing in the credits about "Katy Young, Contemporary Homes" or something.  Also.  I wish she'd stop saying "perfect".  !!  Fifteen Million Merits on Black Mirror.

Sunday.  Slept ok.  Another day of All The Things.  And still didn't get nearly enough done. 

Put another 10 lemons out on the letter box.  All gone by the end of the day.  Still have like 70 on the family room table...

Finally posted my dramas with Vodien over August/September.

Also this little bastard nearly dropped on my head.  I heard it go *thonk* right next to me as it fell down from the roof!

Hot today.  Like 31.  Gross.

Monday.  15th.  Couldn't get to sleep til past midnight.  Sigh.  But then slept ok.  But still feeling tired and depressed and *dumb*.  All the crap at work.  Leftover beef and veggies for dinner.

This long exposure on the phone makes the clouds in front of the ISS look like an oil painting..

Tuesday.  Couldn't get to sleep for ages on account of cold feet.  Then woke up before 4 and never got back to sleep.  Sigh.  Ok day.  Went into the office and got a flu jab.  Proxy stuff and some migration planning.  More leftover beef for dinner.  Finished culling day 12 of Turkey (which took *forever* on account of having to cull over a thousand photos down to 50.. hmmm!!).  Made a good start on day 13 (the last day) too.  At one point I heard a rather metallic clunk coming from the kitchen as the fridge was turning off.  hmmmm.  Sure enough, the next time the compressor started it made a generally louder noise than normal.  So put a thermometer in the fridge to make sure it was still working properly, and started looking at replacement fridges.  Sigh.

Wednesday.  Ok sleep.  The fridge was still happily sitting on 3C in the morning, so while the compressor is loud, it's still doing its job.  But for how long..?  Did some testing of some reworks to some of our rules to the new version of things not supporting stuff the same way.  Basa bake and veggies for dinner.  Must.  Eat.  Freezer.  And fridge.  At least with fridge stuff we do have the spare downstairs we could use in an emergency.  But the freezer.. that would be a pain.  But I really don't want to go spending two thousand dollars on a new fridge while the old one is still functional.  It could go on like this for years for all we know (ask anyone who's heard our washing machine during its first drain).   

Thursday.  Took forever to get to sleep.  More work on the excludes problem, as well as a task closing party.  Jim did a lovely morning tea so we didn't need lunch, but Neil, XL and I went for a walk at lunch anyway which was nice.

Super quiet drinks (bar tender didn't bring all his friends this week).  Pizza, Mash, and into season 9 of Death in Paradise.  It's a bit of fluff that show but I don't know that many of his solutions would stand up in court.  Half the time it's completely speculation and no real proof, other than a confession (which also wouldn't necessarily stand up).  Early night.

Friday.  Got to sleep ok but then restless legs for ages in the middle of the night and woke up at ~4.  Proxy testing in the morning.  Did a change in the arvo that I don't think broke anything, winning!  Herbert's for happy hour.

Must be Mother's Day soon..

A rare shot of Dino without his hat (I wasn't even trying, I was trying to get the beer lineup and he jumped in the way haha)

Saturday.  Awake for a while in the middle of the night but not too bad.  Had a super busy day doing All The Things and got heaps done - pretty much everything I had on my todo list for the day.  So that was pretty cool.

So cool!

Waiting impatiently for these things to ripen before the first frost...  

Into season 5 of Mash, then Orville 3.6 which was pretty emotional and had a bit of a Back to the Future vibe to it.

Sunday.  Took ages to get to sleep but then slept ok.  Spent most of the day Lego part picking for Vic's Lego.  Very slow going due to basically having to go find one piece at a time then mark it off as deleted from the loose part inventory.  Think like a minute or so for each and every piece.  hmmmm.  There was also the dog barking for like an hour (probably from the same d$*#head neighbours that have always had barking dogs).  I felt so stressed.  Sigh.  Also did a bit of food shopping in the afternoon.

Today's blog entry quote is from Autism From the Inside's channel.  Watched a couple of his videos yesterday.  

Another roast beef in the oven.  I generally try to avoid buying big chunks of beef (chicken and pork and even lamb are generally better for the planet than beef) but Stu likes it so there's that.. 

Thought I'd try out the new camera on a nice ISS pass.  I didn't really have time to experiment.  In the end I just used Manual mode and edited the shutter/aperture myself.

Southern Cross and pointers first

It was still pretty light and dinner was nearly ready, so didn't spend any more time doing star shots.  Another time!

So this isn't actually mine - it's Neil's.  But he said I could do it first, so I took it home before Christmas, it went under the tree, and I did it after Christmas.  It's very cool!

He said I could do his Saturn V rocket next ;)

So never managed to blog last weekend.

So two Mondays ago there was Good Place, photo labelling, downloading and processing photos, and suddenly it's 21:45.  #grunties

Tuesday.  Twelve years on the job.  Phone is a year old.  Boycotted the Melbourne Cup lunch and went had our own with Dave5 and Connor.

At some point I saw an ad for the Amazing Race, so went home and watched the first three episodes.  10 Play has really lifted their game, and the ad experience is 100 times better than it used to be.  Different ads during each break, and much fewer repeats in the same hour.

Later that evening the ISS flew over.

Nothing much of note for the rest of the week, just a trip to Melbourne ;)

Monday just catching up on All The Things - both at home and at work.  More fighting with Apple to get the timelapse video off my phone.  I still haven't been able to get it to play.  Microsoft will happily charge $1.45 for a codec download.  hrmmmm.

Tuesday filled the green bin and watched another Amazing Race.  Continued battling with Apple.  Literally spent the entire Amazing Race episode trying, and then *still* not getting the file.  No more photo labelling either.

Wednesday I tried Google Drive to get the file off my phone.  Was able to get it, but still has the same codec error.  I did catch up up photo labelling, but nothing else.  Noted after @kapgar was talking about pillows that my pillow is probably forty to fifty years old, depending on when Mum got it.

Thursday evening did food shopping.  Aquila suggested VLC to play the timelapse file.  It was a jerky disaster.  Had a bit of a talk to Kit, who is super stressed about All The Things, with the wedding only three weeks away.

We got these for the Christmas Punch when we went shopping.  They look suspiciously the same, and the only difference in the ingredients is that one contains pectin (!?)

Friday had been hurty overnight so very tired Friday.  Picked up the sweetie and watched Tomorrow Never Dies.

Saturday I made a delicious cheesy beef casserole for breakfasts based on this recipe but with no pasta and only half the tomato puree.

Then got stuck into All. The. Things.  Had a super busy day getting the house cleaned and ready for the little brother to move in.  

Installed this new towel rail

Stu chopped back the periwinkle

I cleaned out a drawer and shelf in the bathroom, and hangy cupboard and a shelf in the spare bedroom, and cleaned off the computer desk in the spare room.  It was storage for a *lot* of stuff!

Collapsed late in the afternoon with more Amazing Race.

Then we picked up Neil and went to Cisco's for @CLBradley's 60th.  Was a nice night, but we both ate wayyy too much (we shoulda just done our own thing, not the banquet.. oh well..)

Today I went mountain climbing, then we ran some errands in the morning.

I spent the entire afternoon processing and geotagging photos from the past week.  Yeeeeshh.  

Thursday night I got an alert for a three star passing of the space station, so went out with Lachie, followed by Jim and Connor.  They were all suitably excited to see it fly over :)

Friday night the sweetie had an eye appointment after work so we had dinner at Happy's.  Headed to the swim night after that, followed by nibbles and soup at EffanC's.

Saturday was Junee.

Sunday I tried to get through some of my todo list but didn't make very good progress.  Went to EffanC's for leftover nibbles and soup and we watched Fight Club, which I hadn't seen for a very very long time.

The ISS was due to jettison its Dragon module tonight (around now in fact), so with a -2.2 magnitude flyover I decided to record it from here..  and got a lovely shot of it flying between the Southern Cross and the pointers.

In other news, Dad came through his operation ok, but we won't know for a few days what the prognosis is...