Results tagged “Photos”

Sunday.  31st.  Leftovers for dinner, MacGyver, then I watched the first episode of Attack on Pearl Harbour: Minute by Minute, which was interesting, but they didn't bother to put any subtitles on the Japanese dude talking, so had to turn on CC to get them.

Also.. Chris found me a six fingered kangaroo!  Compare the pair!

2025 and 2026 dollar coins

Monday.  1st June.  First day of winter.  Slept okish til 3:27 then awake for over an hour. Stu barely got any sleep all night coughing and spluttering. Culled Mum photos all morning. Stu managed to get a few hours sleep after taking some cough suppressant. Then as he was making his breakfast (lunch) he said the hot water had basically run out. Confirmed by the solar app showing no hot water spikes since Saturday night. Sigh. Come to think of it my shower this morning was a little cold for the amount I normally turn the taps on for. I only checked the relief valve on it a few weeks ago. Tried again and warm (not hot) water leaked everywhere. We've powered it off for a bit, you never know a reboot might fix (spoiler: it didn't help). Why is everything so trash these days?? The previous hot water system lasted 25 years. This one lasted 10. Finished the second pass cull, down to 2468. hrmm. Leftovers for dinner then MacGyver. 19:00 is bed time right? Watched the second half of the Attack on Pearl Harbour documentary.

Tuesday.  Slept mostly okish. OMFG yes I have the power to summon clouds!!!  I'd put a thing in to 6 Star Hot Water and Plumbing last night, and luckily someone came in the morning to replace the thermostat and element in the water heater (he reckons it'll be one or the other so they usually replace both, and he replaced the overflow valve as well which was always dodgy and he said they should be replaced every five years (it was ten years old) - hot water yayy!! Did a bit of catching up at work. Felt like maybe I was getting a sore throat. By evening I was definitely feeling like I was getting sick. Sigh. Got 1/5th the way through cropping/enhancing photos for the slide show.

Wednesday.  Awake from like 1:30 to 5:30. At least that's what it felt like, but I think I got maybe an hour of sleep in there somewhere. Definitely a going back to bed and resting kind of a day. In bed much of the day. Not sleeping of course. Well Stu said I did sleep for a few minutes here and there (he's still not really any better either). Watched a documentary on the Oklahoma City bombing. TV dinners and MacGyver (finished season 3).

Thursday.  Took ages to get to sleep then somewhat restless. Felt like trash again so in bed all morning. Gave up around lunch time because my back hurt too much from lying down. Watched 9/11: One Day in America. Crust pizzas for dinner and into season 4 of MacGyver. Plus Disney+ is trash - it keeps logging me out. I think I'm getting sicker. I was counting on a two day cold like I normally get. But no, a full on chesty cough. Sigh.

Friday.  Took some Codral "night" which I think did help me sleep. Still felt pretty blerf today though. Actually managed to get more sleep late morning. Watched a 9/11 documentary (the plane that hit the Pentagon) and The People vs Larry Flynt. Kievs for dinner then MacGyver.

Kievs and gems

Saturday.  Slept somewhat okish. Still feeling blerf. I did finish the work I wanted to do on Mum's slideshow so there's that. Also pulled apart some Lego while listening to the Classic 100. They accidentally posted the winner on Instagram/Facebook which was a crackup. They deleted the post shortly after. Dumpling Inn for dinner (complete with long hair in the shredded beef ewwww) because neither of us felt like cooking up the veggies in the fridge (that I got from Chris earlier in the week), then Dancing with the Birds which was pretty cool. 

Stu got some extra so we could have another two or three nights worth of dinners, on account of we haven't been shopping in forever
Dumpling Inn delivery

Sunday.  Awake for chunks of time in the night coughing. Slept in til 7:40 then lay in bed most of the morning listening to the Classic 100. Bit of Lego dismantling in the afternoon. Also felt enough energy late in the afternoon to put some stuff away from the bookshelf in the lounge room (that needs to get moved so the aircon can get put in soon).  

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

Kievs and gems

Then MacGyver 3.11, preposterous episode.  

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

Chong Co delivery

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

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

Puttanesca pasta

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

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

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

Kievs and gems

Saturday.  Okish sleep.

Rosemary flowers

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

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

Flowers outside Damien's

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

A very brown green meal

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

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

Dr Who mosaics under Gungahlin Drive on Belconnen Way
Dr Who mosaics under Gungahlin Drive

Dalek mosaics

Gunman mosaic

Murrumbidgee River at Tharwa Sandwash

Tharwa Sandwash

Murrumbidgee River

Fox south of Tharwa

Turdholes
Illegal fishers in Canberra

Murrumbidgee River

Horehound bugs (aka stink bugs)
Horehound bugs

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

One of these days I'm going to setup a proper blog for this sort of thing.

This is Narooma in April 1960

Narooma in 1960

And this is from (almost) the same spot in November 2025.. sixty-five years later!

Narooma in 2025

Notice the difference in caravans? ;)

Europe 2016

Ten years ago today the mother and I left for a six week trip to Europe.

We did two organised tours - a Reformation Tour of Germany, France and Switzerland with Bruce Ballantine-Jones, and an Insight Vacations tour of Scandanavia; and we had a couple of days in Salzburg in between them.  

It was a pretty great trip and we saw lots of cool things.

Last year I got my photos online finally.  

So here's the trip! Enjoy!

Thursday.  26th.  Got home from our holidays around 17:00ish.  I started the download of photos from the Canon and my phone and also the GPS and blogged the last couple of days of the holiday.  The sweetie ordered pizzas and we watched Professor T 1.2.

Friday.  Awake from 3:40 hurrah. Did some unpacking and house stuff. Went outside to check on my plants and was horrified to discover my chrysanthemum is dead. Sigh. It'd obviously had some issues previously, but when I got to it it was bone dry and all the green leaves (and little flower buds) had dried out.  I chucked it under the awing to get a good soaking and I'm just HOPING that there'll be something left alive in it to send out some new shoots.

Chrysanthemum devastation

Not so problematic..

Not so problematic

Apparently we had a lot of rain...

Pool's a bit green

Everything else was fine though, thanks Tony.  Didn't stop me being zombie tired *and* depressed though.

Got some stuff done but not nearly as much as I wanted to. I did get some pretty amazing support out of Region media though. Their RSS feed stopped working at the end of February (which I didn't notice because we were travelling and I wasn't really keeping up with most of my feeds). Looks like they were blocking automated clients - it still worked in a browser. Anyways I took a punt on their support address and emailed them, and shortly afterwards got a mail back saying they'd fixed it. .. !! .. And sure enough they had! I was impressed :) Kievs for dinner then Professor T 1.3.

Saturday.  So had an earlyish night and thought I got to sleep ok, but then woke up at 4:11 for a couple of hours. Sigh. So an hour late starting my day. Not as zombie tired though so that was useful - was able to process (rotate and rename) all my Canon photos from the holiday and back them up. Also started going through receipts/statements to figure out how much the holiday cost. Hint: it was a lot. We spent over $800 on petrol! Eeep! In the afternoon we went over to Annie's for a while which was nice. And brought home seven tv dinners that Lily had bought by mistake and couldn't eat (and no one else wanted).

Youfoodz

Had said tv dinners for dinner (they were tasty!) and watched Professor T 1.4.

Youfoodz chicken carbonara

Then I watched Elio which was a bit of fun, but really just a fun kids movie. "Your disk is muted" haha.  Also watched a video Dave2 linked to about how Pixar is so fundamentally different now.

Sunday.  Bed normal time, awake for chunks of the night sigh. So I was fairly tired although not completely zombie tired. Ploughed through some of the todo list, and finished sorting holiday finances. 43% went on accommodation, 19% on food and drink, 10% on booze, 9% on petrol, 6% on transport (mostly the ferry to Kangaroo Island), 4% on entrance costs to things, and little bits on donations, tips, fees, laundry, parking and some I counted as gifts (for Tony as well as taking peeps out for dinner/drinks).

Sunday.  22nd.  Cooked up a veggie bake by the look of it (I think it was cabbage).  Then we may have watched The Simpsons, can't remember.

Veggie bake

Monday.  Awake from 2:00 for hours hurray.

This could be problematic...
This could be problematic..

Did the builds and testing for migrating some stuff off the old load balancers. Cooked up a bunch of stuff that needed using up in the fridge for dinner.

Creamy veggies

Tuesday.  Slept mostly okish.

Geraniums

Spent a bunch of time renaming URL categories to make things a bit easier to visualise and manage. Had Tony over for dinner and him and Stu talked about electronics and radio stuffs. Also watched episode 9 of Inside Central Station.

Wednesday.  Awake from 4:00 hurray. Stoopidly crazy busy day. Realised the act of renaming a URL category on our firewalls will in fact cause a brief outage as it takes off the old one and then puts on the new one.  Lame AF.  Kievs and potato and fries for dinner.

Kievs and veggies

Stu put on a new series - Professor T, which was like Ben Miller playing almost the same character as from Death in Paradise but in Cambridge. Frantic evening trying to get photos sorted and onto my phone. The problem is because I have 65000 photos on my phone, whenever you add or remove an album it then takes five minutes to refresh the view. So in the end I lumped stuff together in big albums, which makes it much much harder to find photos later. Going to have to rely on map view. Which will be hard in Adelaide when I already have photos there.

Thursday.  Awake from like 2 til at least 4:30. Hurray. Stoopidly crazy busy day. Super busy drinks which was good. They advertised a free sausage sizzle and had some training and out-of-towners in town so it all went really well. I even managed to convince some of our team to come up (my "farewell" drinks haha). Pizzas for dinner then Simpsons then tried to do a bit of organising and packing but I was just too zombie tired to really get much done efficiently.

Pizzas

Friday.  Slept relatively well considering I'd had a couple of drinks and it was a travel day. Must be all those nights of insomnia catching up with me. Didn't even pee! It did mean I put on nearly a kilo overnight though sigh.  Finished packing and we headed off on a month long holiday!!!  (under my Australian Holidays link if you want to read the text, pics will be a long time coming).

Sunday.  15th.  Leftover Peking duck for dinner (Stu had the last of the Turkish) then MacGyver. I tried to watch the end of Airport on my computer but my computer wouldn't read the disc.. probably stoopid Macrovision trash. What's the point of trash like that if it PREVENTS LEGITIMATE USERS WATCHING YOUR MEDIA!?!?!? Edit: a quick Google suggests Windows 11 removed the ability to play Macrovision DVDs.. yet another reason why Windows 11 is a piece of trash. Although I'm not convinced that's the full story - the player won't even recognise the disc and kind of just "clicks of death" with it. Sigh. Anyway so had to finish watching it on the DVD player (which very nicely remembered where we were up to even though it had been turned on and off a couple of time and had MacGyver DVDs in there in between).

Monday.  Awake from 4am til like 5:30am then had some convoluted dream about catching buses around Jannali with a heap of crap and running late for work. Another thing that pisses me off about Windows 11.. if I have too many windows open and the tray fills up, it'll hide some tray items. But not just the ones off the end, an entire application's worth. So my task bar is literally 2/5ths blank. How is this in any way useful for people??? Felt like I didn't achieve much all day, just lots of fluff and waiting for people to answer my questions. Leftovers for dinner then MacGyver and achieved pretty much nothing with my evening. Although I did watch Dad's funeral slide show (which was 12 years ago yesterday) and tried to get the timing working properly in LibreOffice.

Tuesday.  Slept mostly okish. Spent much of the day working on the last of the migrations to new load balancers. We cooked a slow cooker pork neck and a bunch of veggies for dinner. Delicious!

Pulled pork neck

Green veggies

MacGyver then spent entirely too much time geotagging Mum's photos of South Australia in 1969.  I didn't find the location of the Beachport YHA that Mum and Marita stayed at, but a couple of days later I found it literally right there in my Google image search - it's the former Harbour Master's house and is now an AirBnB.

Wednesday.  Slept mostly okish. Disjointed morning but got stuck into some new proxy crap in the afternoon.

Carnage...
Carnage

Causer of said carnage...
Carnage causer

The sweetie cooked up some creamy mushroom chicken for dinner which was very nice. MacGyver then achieved very little.

Creamy chicken and mushrooms

Geraniums

Thursday.  Lights out 22:00. Sleep maybe 01:00 or 02:00. Sigh. Zombie day. Went through a URL block list to see what still needed to be blocked. Pretty good drinks. Someone else tried to take over our table but we pushed back haha. Made pizzas for dinner (pepperoni and feta, tomato and blue cheese, and mushroom, olive and capers).

Pizzas

Then tried to watch MacGyver but my old $50 DVD/BluRay player decided it didn't want to play. The first time it came up with audio but no video. Then it wouldn't power off. Then no audio or video at all. So now we have nothing in the house that will play blurays. Watched some Simpsons instead.

Friday.  I shouldn't look at things. When I look at things I find problems that I want to fix. So I spent much of the day checking doco on a bunch of URL categories and coming up with a plan to tidy them up. Went and had drinks with T/J which was nice.  Definitely a lovely way to spend a Friday evening after work. Kievs for dinner then I watched Freakier Friday set 22 years after the previous one. That was a bit of fun but more confusing because four of them swapped around making it harder to remember who was who.

Kievs and cauliflower

Saturday.  Awake from 3:00 hurray.

I caught this little guy Friday night and evicted it Saturday morning.  So fricken cute!
Gecko

Geraniums

Day of housework and Lego filing but did also do some music practise. Stu was out at the club most of the day so he was exhausted when he got home and it was a Dumpling Inn delivery kind of a night.

Dumpling Inn delivery

Then we watched Saving Mr Banks which I'd seen in 2022 but Stu hadn't seen.

Sunday.  Awake from 4:00 hurray. Lenovo wants to install a bios update. Windoze wants to spend 20 minutes to an hour doing a "bigger than normal" update. hrmmmm. I let Windows do the update later in the morning, it took maybe 3/4 hour. Otherwise just lots of getting organised with life. Even did some Europe 2016 panoramas.  This week both Windoze *and* Chrome have forgotten my folder settings.  Sigh.

Sunday.  11th.  Leftover lasagna for dinner, and Stu cooked one of the zucchinis Cath brought over to have with it. Then Beyond Paradise 2.6 (last episode of season 2). Then geotagged Mum's Kangaroo Island and Adelaide photos.

Monday.  Slept okish, but awake early. Achieved a few bits and pieces at work. Leftover Christmas party sausages and salad for dinner, then watched the Beyond Paradise end of 2024 Christmas special.

Tuesday.  Awake from 3:30 for ages hurrah. Made some progress on the proxies but came across more issues, one of which I thought I solved last year but the behaviour has changed.. hrmm. Leftover lasagna and salad for dinner then Beyond Paradise 3.1.

Wednesday.  Slept mostly ok until about 5:20. Spent all day working on a rework of a bunch of rules for Dave5. Stu cooked a very yummy miso mackerel and Japanese cucumber salad for dinner.

Miso mackeral and Japanese cucumber salad

Beyond Paradise 3.2. Didn't turn my computer on at all in the evening because of all the storms rolling through.

Thursday.  Slept mostly ok until about 5:20. Lots of AD comms work planning, thinking about load balancer stuffs and talking to Wardie about All The Things (but mostly how much Microsoft sux). Sneaky drinks in our usual spot with a good turnout and even some randoms! Made pizzas for dinner and then Beyond Paradise 3.3.

Pizzas and garlic bread

Friday.  Slept mostly ok until some time after 5, although may have gotten a little more sleep. Did some change paperwork in the morning and was all set to setup a heap of firewall rules when the interruptions started. In the end that got completely abandoned and I did the load balancing stuff. Stu sliced some of Cath's zucchini and I made up a lasagna out of the leftover sauces from last weekend. Beyond Paradise 3.4.

Zucchini lasagna

Saturday.  Slept okish I think.

In the morning I heard a large plane fly over and went to flight trackers to find out what it was.  It was an A330 from Ho Chi Minh City to Sydney, but it had done a big diversion down south.  Then I went and looked at a few other planes.  Then a few more.  It was chaos!!  A whole heap of flights to Sydney were in holding patterns waiting for clearance to land.  Turns out there was a shortage of Air Traffic Controllers on Friday and Saturday and it was a mess!! (yes I have over 66 thousand photos and screen shots on my phone).  

Sydney Airport chaos

Fairly quiet day, just a bit of house stuff and photo stuff and Lego stuff and a fairly painless food shop. Kievs for dinner (missed out last night!) then watched a making-of special of Stranger Things season 5.

Also the last two days have been EPIC windy.  Really crazy.

Kievs and fries

Sunday.  Slept okish. Another quiet day.

Yellow-rumped thornbill

Yellow-rumped thornbill

At 12:22 my computer BSOD!!! Although event logs said it crashed at 12:08. Hrmmm. Then raged at Windoze because I went over to another desktop, clicked to open Explorer (it's pinned to my task bar).. and it opened ON MY ORIGINAL DESKTOP. TWICE!!! How is it that windoze 11 is so unbelievably BAD???  And this week's random explorer behaviour - windows forgot settings on one of my folders, and Chrome stopped sorting by reverse date order and defaulted back to alphabetical.  I hate windows So. Much.

Sunday.  21st.  Got home from Sydney, had a little bit of leftovers for second dinner.  Then watched part 2 of the GameStop documentary.

Monday.  Slept somewhat better. Back to work though. After two loads of washing and tidying the kitchen of course. Sigh. Did up the finances from the Christmas Party. Ended up with ~$14 leftover to carry forward to next year. Not too bad. Fixed up the rest of our tickets and reports dashboards in the afternoon. Stu cooked up some yellow curry vegetables for dinner which were quite nice. Finished the GameStop documentary. Stressed at how little time I have for everything. The todo list I started in September for the end of the year is only like 1/2-3/4 done. Still heaps of photo stuff I never got anywhere near completing. And now I have a whole heap more photo stuff to do. And I have to spend all my days at work. Sigh.

Tuesday.  Revelation 5:12 "Worthy is the Lamb, who was slain,
to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength
and honor and glory and praise!"
Awake from 4ish. Did some music before work. Instead of any housework or weeding. Tried to get a pac file working at work. Made one change that worked but couldn't get another change working, so that was pretty frustrating. Then looked at another cleanup job I want to do. Leftover pork for dinner then watched part 2 on the pirates - Grace O'Malley (we watched part 1 on Francis Drake the other night but don't remember which night). Did some processing of my Canon photos and did some writing up of the past few days.

Blue star light

Wednesday.  Christmas Eve.  Okish sleep. Fixed a couple of scripts that were broken at the last upgrade - they changed Display_Name to DisplayName. Thanks. Not. Probably need to check a few of my other scripts as well. Other than that mostly just tidying up. Made a peppermint slice after work. Possibly added a bit too much water to the icing as it didn't really set. Or maybe I was just too impatient. Probably that. 

Peppermint slice

Did some Christmas music on the sax. I can get through them without too many mistakes now. Leftover pork and potato bake for dinner. Then we watched Die Hard 2 and the Carols by Candlelight. The Melbourne carols are degenerating a bit these days into the silliness that the Sydney carols have. I haven't watched the Sydney carols in years because it's just too cheesy. And of course all the good songs that you could sing along to get played during the ad breaks.  Played Carols bingo..

Denis Walter..

Carols bingo

Tim Campbell and Paulini..

Carols bingo

Hallelujah chorus..

Carols bingo

Carols bingo

Casey Donovan..

Carols bingo

Silvie Paladino..

Carols bingo

Marina Prior singing Angels We Have Heard on High..

Carols bingo

David Hobson singing The Holy City.. apparently his 13th time..

Carols bingo

Uncle Doug Heywood..

Carols bingo

Fun times!! We missed Ode to Joy and All I Want for Christmas is You at the beginning though.

Thursday.  Christmas Day. 
Revelation 11:15 "The kingdom of the world has become
the kingdom of our Lord and of his Messiah,
and he will reign for ever and ever."
The timing of reading that was pretty funny..!
Slept like crap. Spent most of the morning prepping and cooking lunch (even though I did a bunch of prep yesterday afternoon). We had an epic feast of roast turkey, blue cheese potato bake, brussels sprouts with bacon and hazelnuts, sweet potato, sage and onion stuffing, gravy and cranberry sauce and garlic bread (not shown).

Christmas day feast

There may have been a little bit of leftovers..

Christmas day leftovers

Note to self: don't follow the instructions on the box and put a frozen turkey in a baking dish in a hot oven...

Got crack

Pretty annoyed about that, we use that baking dish all the time.  #grunt.

Stumpy and a raspberry

Did some Christmas music on the sax and did some dotz. Stu went over to Annie's (I didn't go because Lily was sick and I didn't want to then get sick for my only week off I get at home all year). I didn't even eat that much lunch but I felt full all afternoon and didn't feel like dinner. Dinner was a couple of beers and the last of the mulled wine. Watched Enola Holmes to see Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown).

Friday.  Slept okish. Went to Coles hoping to get some eggnog but sadly they'd sold out. Did pick up a few other things we needed though. Christmas stuff is not on special yet though.  It was super quiet both on the roads and at Jamo, so that was nice. Came home and tidied the house. Did some rescanning of Mum's slides. In the afternoon was Dotz and Lego, and watched David sailaway.

Carnival Splendor in Sydney

Leftovers for dinner I think, then Stranger Things 5.5. Tried for an early night. Failed.  Didn't help that I was getting ready for bed when I remembered to go look at some Christmas lights down the road.

Neighbourhood Christmas lights

Neighbourhood Christmas lights

Neighbourhood Christmas lights

Satruday.  Repeat of my ideal retirement day - getting house stuff and fish stuff and some photo stuff done in the morning, Lego and dotz in the afternoon. With going out for lunch for Tony's birthday in the middle.

I got the cheeseburger - w/ house pickles, American mustard, ketchup and diced spanish onion with salad ($23), only the photo I took never saved so you'll have to take my word for it.  Here's the sweetie instead with his fish and chips with apple slaw.

The sweetie at Tony's birthday lunch

Neither of us were hungry after lunch so we just had a bit of garlic bread for dinner. Stranger Things 5.6. Managed a slightly early night.

Sunday.  Slept relatively well. Repeat of my ideal retirement day - getting house stuff and fish stuff and some photo stuff done in the morning, Lego and dotz in the afternoon. Also some music.

Teeny praying mantis

Teeny praying mantis

In the last couple of weeks windoze has changed its definition of sort by date.  It used to sort my in tray of photos to blog by the date taken in combination with the date modified timestamp, so I could view the folder in real chronological order.  Now it sorts by date modified.  Which is super annoying because now I can't view them as I want to blog them.  Funnily enough Chrome still does it the good way, which is dumb that it's different, but also good because otherwise it'd be a pain trying to figure out the correct order to post photos.

Also annoyingly the turd neighbours that had the staffies that killed each other have gotten themselves another barky dog.. it was barking for ages again last night and today although has been quiet most of the afternoon.  Damien's wife three doors down yells at it sometimes to some effect.  But I was getting stressed today that this would be my new normal.  

Watched bits and pieces of the carols again on YouTube while posting this so that was a bit of fun!

Sunday.  7th.  The sweetie cooked up a bunch of veggies for dinner, unfortunately there wasn't much in the way of leftovers! Stranger Things 5.1, set 18 months after the last season but filmed three years later.

Monday.  Slept okish I think (awake a few times hot).

This little spider ran across a chopping board, stopped just long enough for me to take a photo of it, then ran off, never to be seen again.  Googled that crap, apparently it's a scuttling spider of Cycloctenidae (although one Redditor is trying to get it nicknamed mittens spider).  It sure is cute!

Mittens spider

More work on the domain controller rules. Managed to break something doing a cutover though. Sigh. I remember being confused by the mess the other week, and looks like I never went back to sorting out the mess, so that app got left out when I was adding the new rules.  Did some email sorting and filing after work. Stu cooked up some veggies for dinner which were quite nice.

Sweet potato rissoles

Stranger Things 5.2. Did a bit of Christmas music on the recorder because the sax is all too hard. Photo filing in the evening.

Tuesday.  2 Peter 3:10 But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything done in it will be laid bare.  Be kinda cool if he returned in our lifetime.

Okish sleep. Busy day of not achieving much. Did finish going through the domain controller flows. Leftover pesto pasta and some salad for dinner. Stranger Things 5.3. Finished geotagging holiday photos from the phone (just checking them and fixing them up). Then talked to David for a bit about web hosting. I'm so out of the loop with modern DNS and hosting options these days.

Wednesday.  1 John 1:9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.

Restless sleep. Went to see nuking doctor, although only saw her briefly and spent most of the time with a registrar. NEIL briefly in the morning then spent the rest of the day fighting with our new DR laptop. How many IT professionals does it take to copy a file? Too (many). And a lot of angst. Still fighting with all the restrictions they put on these things. Stu cooked a delicious tuna bake and brussels sprouts for dinner.

Tuna bake and veggies

Stranger Things 5.4. Now we need to wait til Christmas for more episodes to drop.

Thursday.  Restless sleep.  Meh day, didn't achieve much. 

Snoopy

Busy drinks which was good.  Someone (or something) has been cutting off the heads of my epic dandelion plant under the lemon tree.  I thought it was the neighbours but that doesn't really make sense.  Why would they come over and cut off flowers that haven't even popped yet?  Maybe it's possums.  The sweetie and I got grumpy at each other over differing expectations about life so that made for an unfun evening.  We did have pizzas and garlic bread.  I started watching Birdman.  Is this like art imitating life or what?  Batman? Birdman?  I knew literally nothing about the moving going into it other than it had Michael Keaton in it.  I had such a thing for him when he was Batman.  I noticed the "one take" shooting pretty early on and looked out for the transitions.

Friday.  1 John 3:16 This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. 

Okish sleep.  Spent much of the morning reworking our ticket dashboard to fix it up for the new version.  They've removed at least one useful thing (being able to colour code filter titles) but at least now you can choose the columns you want in the dashboard and not have your settings for that table be there.  First work Christmas party at lunch and all afternoon.  There was an epic roast lunch and all the food.  I ate lots so didn't get too silly. 

Christmas party pics

Christmas party pics

Christmas party pics

Christmas party pics

Christmas party pics

The sweetie was going to pick us up but a little before he had to leave he had epic dizziness and nausea and actually was sick (three times!!) - he *never* gets sick (almost never).  So Neil/Wello/me caught buses home.  Finished Birdman.  Yeup.  Weird.  

Saturday.  Pretty crap sleep funnily enough.  I think I was awake pretty much the whole time from about 2.  Stu was sick again overnight and nauseus all day.  I had a day of All The Things, mostly getting the house organised. 

I was so excited this week to find a 2011 10c coin!  I've never seen one before!

2011 10c coin

I may have taken over 50 photos of the cockatoos demolishing our self-seeded plum tree..

Cockatoos in the plum tree

Cockatoos in the plum tree

Cockatoos in the plum tree

Cockatoos in the plum tree

Cockatoos in the plum tree

Kievs and wedgies for dinner. 

Kievs and wedgies

I also made a strawberry "sauce" from all the strawberries Tony picked and froze for us while we were away.  They all turned to mush after being frozen, so I smooshed them through a sieve and added a little sugar.  It worked really well with vanilla ice cream!

Strawberry sauce

Strawberry sauce

Then we watched The Neverending Story.  I don't think I've seen that movie since I was a teenager.  The DVD cost me like a dollar from Vinnies (it was still shrinkwrapped!) but I don't think I'll keep it - it was pretty cheesy!!

Christmas lights

Sunday.  Okish sleep. Another day of All The Things. Although I put aside my regular todo list and just focussed on Christmas stuff.

And juicing lemons.

Lemons

Lemon juice

And taking photos of Stumpy.  Look how tanned he is with the combo heat/uv light!

Stumpy

Got enough done that I felt relaxed enough to make up some gingerbread biscuits after lunch!!  Then some music (I found a heap of good Christmas music for the saxophone yesterday so played those all through again today.  They're all a lot higher than your regular C major which is nearly impossible to play for me at the moment (I struggle with E and D, and C and B are right out).