Opened the door of our van at the club on Sunday morning to this!

I was meant to be going up to clean up after dinner last night, but instead spent half an hour wandering around the place taking photos of the snow!

So fricken cool!! :)

Monday.  8th.  Backdating because spent too much time last week blogging the week before.  Took a while to get to sleep Sunday night, woke up a bit early.  Ok day I guess.  Cooked creamy mushroom fettuccini for dinner, but it took over an hour.  Sigh.  Not enough TIME.  Cruise photo culling and Lego Grandmasters.

We caught this in the lounge room on the weekend

There's snow on them thar hills!

Tuesday.  Slept ok.  Started off fresh and getting things done, then the hassling started, one thing after another after another.  I never did get item 2 of my todo list done.  Such a busy day.  Logged off, then five minutes later Con messaged me that work that had originally been planned for the night and had since been cancelled, had been uncancelled but noone bothered to tell me.  Brisket for dinner (the thing was making me hungry all afternoon.  

Wednesday.  Slept ok.  Well other than waking up from a traumatic dream where I couldn't get my Subway lunch.  The dude serving me was speaking jibberish and also couldn't understand me.  I begged for someone else to help.  The manager tried but he made a footlong sub that also had seafood in it.  And I'm like, I'm not paying for a footlong with seafood because it'll be soggy and disgusting by the time I get to the second half later.  So he went to start a new one but then wandered off half way through and I'm getting super upset because I'm hungry and just want my lunch and noone else would help either and I was trying to come around to make it myself.  Silly really.  Another day of people coming to me with problems and not able to get my own work done.  But did have a good documentation session while waiting for the sweetie.  Leftover curry for dinner and photo culling.

This is a fun pic - the count of blog entries I've made per month over the past twenty years.  I used to blog more frequently back in the day, but didn't include photos nearly as much.  It's the downloading and processing of the photos that takes the most time and energy and was always the barrier to posting them more often.  And why I mostly only blog weekly now, so I only have to download and process my photos once a week.

Thursday.  Slept ok.  Woke up to the news that Heather Armstrong of dooce.com had died.  Literally the first thing I saw on Instagram, and somehow I just knew it would be suicide.. the Black Dog finally caught up with her.  I feel bad for Leta, Marlo, Pete and all her family and friends, pretty awful thing for them to go through.  Rest in Peace.  Work/drinks, then mostly reading about Heather and some of the comments on her last post.

Friday.  Slept ok other than waking up a bit early.  I think.  Ok day.  I think.  Sigh.

Saturday.  Did a few things at home before we went out for breakfast and food shopping.

This overpass in Gungahlin wasn't here last time

Coffee Club brekkie burger

I'm a sweet pickle? what?

Of course it was nearly midday by the time we got home.  Then it was mostly cleaning the house all afternoon.  Sigh.  Had Nick and Tab over for butt beef cheeks for dinner which was nice.

Sunday.  Slept ok.  Did a bottle/tip/Green Shed run.  At least it didn't take too long.  But then spent the entire rest of the day sorting out Dad's photos of various Queensland and northern NSW trips.  He'd mixed up like four entirely separate holidays all together into ten boxes of slides.  Oddly he'd also included some from a 1978 trip, but not all, and he'd also put some of the slides from one of the earlier trips into the 1978 trip.  Such a mess.  But think I got it all sorted out in the end.

But by the time I'd done that it was after 15:00 and I hadn't done anything else on the todo list and then I started freaking out how short weekends are and I how much I have to do.  I did some music, then photo downloading and processing.  But it takes like an hour to blog each week and I still hadn't blogged last week.  Sigh.  And I also think I might have accidentally found out the winners of Lego Grandmasters.  hrmm.  Stu cooked some mince for dinner, then Futurama/Crown.

Tuesday.  31st.  Last day of autumn.  Slept ok.  I think.  I forget.  Went to the chemist after work and accidentally got KFC on the way home.  

Wednesday.  1st June.  First day of winter.  And hoooooooh boy it felt like it.  There was snow on the Brindabellas which we saw glimpses of on the way to work, but didn't get any photos.  Stoopidly crazy busy morning and it's just fricken *noisy* in the office and everything was happening at once and my brain couldn't deal.  But some of the noise went away and I went DND for a bit and got some things done and felt better in the afternoon.  It was COLD in the house when we got home!

Thursday.  Still very cold. 

Doing my own thing mostly all day which was nice.  Drinks and body corporate meeting after work.  Had Mills and Grills pickup for dinner which was nice enough, we haven't had them in ages.

Friday.  Woke up a bit early because of hurty.  Went and saw The Queen and Me exhibition after work (which I'll post separately.  One day.).  But here's a pic of my salt and pepper squid at Badger & Co.

Saturday.  Had a sleep in which is pretty unusual for me.  Firewall migration in the morning.  Then mostly Lego all day.  Sausages and cabbage for dinner then watched The Imitation Game.

Count rocks they said.  It'll be fun they said.

Sunday.  Today.  Food shopping in the morning.  Then tried to catch up on house stuff and photo stuff and blog stuff.  Mostly failed.  On account of spending too much time doing Lego and most of the afternoon cooking.  Oh well.

Tuesday got the shock news that Aunty Di and Uncle Graham had been murdered, apparently by their son.  I went over to Chrissie's Tuesday night and we shared some wine and just tried to process.

Wednesday night I got off the bus where Tony gets off and we walked up the hill.  I finally had a look inside the little library, which turns out to be in an old dishwasher!  Picked up three James Bond books.  Cooked tacos for dinner, which turned out quite well, but we ended up eating too much.

Thursday and Friday I had training which was pretty intense.

Thursday I was sick of pizza (we had it on Tuesday night at Chrissie's).  We ended up having leftovers.  Hurrah.  I watched You've Got Mail.

Friday had pizza (hey, it was a different sort) at Pizza Artigiana, and did some food shopping.

Saturday morning it snowed.

!!

Then we headed out to the club.  I did jigsaw while the meeting was on, then we had lunch with EffanC at the Lake George Hotel.  We didn't tempt fate (they wouldn't let me) to see if they could get the crackling on the pork belly right this time.  Instead we got a meal each, but could have easily done just two meals and shared.  The servings were huge.  Most of us conceded defeat and I took all the leftovers away in containers.

In the afternoon I measured all the windows for curtains, and did a little photo culling.  Had the fire going which made the cabin all nice and toasty warm.  Talked to the mother type person and the brother type person in the evening and had leftovers from lunch for dinner.

Anyone care to guess what this is?

There was more snow overnight, still visible this morning.

The house was cold when we got home and my feet never warmed up.  At all.  All day.  They are still cold.

Started going through a book Doc gave me a while ago, gathering questions for our next trivia night.  Other than doing some washing, that's all I managed to achieve all day.  Watched The Terminal in the afteroon/evening.  Stu cooked a dal for dinner and we watched a Veronica Mars.

Bit of a crazy intense week.  

When I went out to the kitchen yesterday morning this is what I saw:

Snow!  I didn't think it was cold enough for snow, but there was a big dumping on the hills above Googong.

The morning was spent cleaning, tidying, organising.

Then went on several missions:

• dump three boxes of books at Lifeline: success
• dump a bag of junk at the Green Shed: success
• exchange or get a refund on the DODGY Aqua One LED lights: fail*
• get 10c refund on some drinks bottles: success, maybe**
• food shopping: success***

* Remember I had to replace a dodgy Aqua One LED back in January?  Well that light we bought last October died a month or so ago.  And then another light we bought in March died a couple of weeks ago.  So that's ALL THREE DODGY lights from Aqua One have failed - one after just four months!!  In January Jem Aquatics replaced the light on the spot without any drama.  But this time they weren't playing ball.  They took the two lights and the receipts and said they'd talk to the Aqua One rep and get back to me.  Well they haven't yet.  Not only that, but that light that was replaced in January?  IT WAS DEAD THIS MORNING!!  THAT'S ALL FOUR DODGY AQUA ONE LIGHTS HAVE FAILED!!!!!  I am completely pissed.  If I pay twice as much for a light, I want it to last twice as long, not HALF as long!!  I really want to get my money back on them and go back to flouros.  And NOT Aqua One.  They completely suck.  Dodgy cheap made in China crap.  I've always hated Aqua One.  The whole episode left me feeling a bit stabby.

** So the ACT has started doing 10c refunds on bottles.  There's a collection point at Vinnies in Belco, so we took a box of bottles there.  I was expecting a machine that would scan the barcodes of the bottles and provide cash on the spot.  You know, like EVERYWHERE ELSE.  But no, there's a computer screen and a human.  You have to REGISTER to return your f@%$ing bottles!!  How f$@*ed is that??  They want name, address, phone number and even a freakin security question such as mother's maiden name.  Are you freaking kidding me???  All for a dollar or two at a time's worth of bottles.  And I didn't even get any money back - they just bag everything up and tell you "you'll get your money some time".  Yeah right.  As we were leaving they were packing up, so you can't even go at a convenient time.  Return-IT you SUCK!  I really should have just told them to screw themselves and just dump everything in our recycling bin.

*** I was pretty upset from the lack of outcome with Jem Aquatics and terrible experience from Return-It, so food shopping wasn't much fun.  We got a turkey roast and other stuff.  Got home and was on my feet for the next couple of hours preparing dinner and making a caramel slice.  Collapsed in front of an Anthony Bourdain and Frozen.

It snowed in Canberra last week.  I woke up (a zombie due to lack of sleep) and walked out into the kitchen and thought it was a super heavy frost before realising it was snow.  That woke me up somewhat!

Then last night we had the warmest overnight July night temperature in recorded history.  Craziness.

Tonight I only geotagged some of day 24's photos, and didn't do any fish tank rescues, but did attack the piles of crap next to my desk.  Still a long way to go.

This time I really did!  But more on that later.

So it all started at drinks on Thursday night.  Steve and Simon asked if I wanted to go to the snow on the weekend.  I said sure, so long as my planned upgrade on Friday arvo went ok.

Well Friday arvo came along and my upgrade went badly.  Really badly.  Beg for help from *real* comms guys to help fix badly.  But the worst part was knowing that Steve was waiting for me.  I tried and tried and tried to get them to go without me, but they wouldn't so I just got more and more stressed.  It was an awful awful night.  Then I was so flustered I forgot the cable for my GPS, and I thought I'd left the Android at work, when turns out I'd actually left it at home.  So I pretty much lost it.  Fortunately the sweetie found the Android and was able to hack portals to keep my Sojourner badge going.  Phew.  But the GPS not being chargable really sucked.  It did the whole first day and til about 10:30 the second.  Sadmaking.

I was so stressed I couldn't eat anything on the way down Friday night, so I didn't actually have any dinner.  I think I would have thrown it up if I'd tried.  (and a very meat-heavy lunch certainly didn't help).  Woke up about 1am hungry, but got through it.

We stayed at a guy from work's place.  $30/night for an apartment in Jindabyne.  Pretty awesome value.  And I woke up naturally both mornings - much better than being woken up at 4am and being a zombie most of the morning.

So onto the snow.

It was very warm, and the snow was quite slushy in the morning, and even worse in the afternoon.

Day one we started at Front Valley, headed over to Mount P for a couple of runs, then I left the boys and did Pleasant Valley, then Guthega, then back to Blue Cow for lunch.  After lunch we did Roller Coaster, up Ridge, Excelerator, then by myself again Summit, back across to Pleasant Valley, Copperhead Road, Pretty Valley, Interceptor, then back to Telemark and done for the day.

Olympic from Mount P

Riding the Mount P triple

Main ranges from near the top of Mount P

Pleasant Valley

Riding the Pleasant Valley quad

Main ranges from Guthega

Guthega Pondage

Milk and pie.  Don't even talk to me about how much sodium is in that thing.

Obligatory selfie

Day two we started at Smiggins, headed across via Interceptor to Roller Coaster, then I left the boys and went down to Guthega, back to Blue Cow, Pleasant Valley (the GPS conked out at this point), over to Mount P, back up and down the Quad Express.  At this point I thought I'd aim for the top of Telemark to go down that way back to Smiggins (from Mid station), but I must have taken a wrong turn somehow I got stuck somewhere I really didn't want to be - possibly in Wine Glass.  I got part way down and there was pretty much nowhere to go.  I had to take my skis off to get down.  Which really mucked around with my confidence.  I trudged back to Smiggins and collapsed in the cafe for lunch.  After three quarters of an hour I felt better again so did some runs in Smiggins while waiting for the boys to get back.  Was there for well over an hour an a half waiting and doing the same few runs.  Whoops.  

Ridge quad

I told you several times this view never gets old for me

Happy Valley from Mount P

A bit after three I found a nice spot under a tree to sit and watch the world go by.  And I built a snowman.  Only a little one.  But kinda cute.

Taking a photo on my phone and the battery gave out and it turned off.  hrmm no way to contact the boys.  So cleared some space on random camera (it was full) and got some photos on it.  Then headed down to see if I could find electricity, or at least wait at the bar.  Turns out the boys had just gotten there, so that was good timing.

Went back to the apartment to tidy up and pack up, then came home.

Took ages to sort out the GPS tracks.  I did fifty runs according to the Perisher dashboard.  Day one I covered fifty five kilometres up and down.  Day two nineteen kilometres before the battery died.

Fun times.  But my everything hurts.

On Horse Park Drive, snow on the Brindabellas

Yesterday we went out to the club for a Christmas in July lunch.  As usual there was a feast of food thanks to R&T and A&J.

Lunch included, but was not limited to, lots of potatoes, turkey rolls, corn, salad

Dessert included, but was not limited to, rum balls, chocolate mud cake, trifles

And then.. it snowed!!

That was pretty exciting :)

Afterwards we debated staying the night, but the sweetie had some work to do for uni, so we came home, as he thought it'd be easier to do at home.  That, and it was *freezing* out there.*

This morning there was still snow on the mountains out past Queanbeyan.

There probably would have been snow on the Brindabellas too, but we didn't leave the house all day, so we didn't see.

Bit of house tidying today, and then my tax man came to sort out my tax.

And so endeth the weekend.

* Freezing in the both literal (snow) and figurative (feels like) senses of the word, for people that want to complain.

So I look out the window this morning and what I first thought to be clouds was actually snow!  It was *freezing* here last night, and rained quite heavily, but at higher altitudes it snowed!  These are the hills out past Queanbeyan, and it's quite rare for them to get snow, especially lasting snow.