Kazza the Blank One

Alice in La La Land

2013-05-19T12:19:58Z

Last night we had our work ball, which was Alice in Wonderland themed. Definitely a lot more people dressed up for this one than the last one.

Seven of our group. There was a lot of red! Doc's Mad Hatter was pretty awesome.

Got to wear the Lego heart necklace Nat got for me a while back

A cheshire cat and another mad hatter

The room and tables looked lovely

For entree I had "wood roasted hot smoked king salmon, cucumber, red radish, dill scented creme fraiche, betroot jelly", which was very nice

For mains I had "prosciutto wrapped corn fed chicken breast, broccolini with almond broad bean and herb risotto, chervil oil" which was also pretty nice

Desert was the same for everyone - "chocolate pecan tart, chocolate fudge, clotted cream". I'm not a fan of pecans so this didn't do it for me.

Stu hid out in one of the side rooms for a while to escape the noise and crowds, and ended up playing a couple of games of chess (which he won).

The band was pretty good and not too loud which made for a nice change - didn't have to yell to hear each other. Only complaint was a tad too much emphasis on seventies music.

Was a great fun night, with good company, food and champagne, singing and dancing.

Today we didn't do much, other than going to visit Noah and Stu and do our food shopping.

Into Darkness

2013-05-17T12:22:22Z

We went and saw Star Trek with Potty tonight.

* loved it * !!

OK so it's all Hollywood blockbuster with big CGI and battles and a pretty simple plot, but hey, it was fun.

And there's plenty of nods to The Original Series.

And of course you can see things coming a mile off.

But I thoroughly enjoyed it.

(and Dave2, the lens flare is there and pretty annoying/distracting, you've been warned!)

Been Busy..

2013-05-15T12:08:14Z

.. with something that was going on thirty years ago this month.

All shall be revealed on the weekend. Hopefully.

Not that anyone except my family will likely care..

And just to keep some colour in the blog, here's some pics..

Some leaves that were in our trolley at Coles the other week. I thought they looked pretty.

iPhone sunset shot

Quietness

2013-05-12T12:10:38Z

Did actually leave the house though. Yesterday to go to Fortune Box for a shared lunch, then do our food shopping. And today to Bunnings to pick up some bits and pieces.

Otherwise, we've been pretty boring.

Finlandia

2013-05-11T13:18:01Z

So after discussing the hottest 100 earlier, and then playing Finlandia by Sibelius on YouTube, I suggested to the sweetie that we should watch Die Hard 2. He said "whatever you like", so I did :) And there was much rejoicing :)

The Classic 100: Music in the Movies

2013-05-11T10:44:01Z

So Stu told me about this a couple of weeks ago. I didn't bother nominating anything because it looked like it was pretty much all covered from a John Williams perspective ;)

Tonight I voted:

Titanic by Horner, James as performed in Titanic
The Hunt for Red October Score by Poledouris, Basil as performed in The Hunt for Red October
The Man from Snowy River Score by Rowland, Bruce as performed in The Man from Snowy River
Back to the Future Film Trilogy Score by Silvestri, Alan as performed in Back to the Future Film Trilogy
Shakespeare in Love Score by Warbeck, Stephen as performed in Shakespeare in Love
Music from Harry Potter Movies by Williams, Doyle, Hooper, and Desplat as performed in Harry Potter
Jaws Score by Williams, John as performed in Jaws
Jurassic Park Score by Williams, John as performed in Jurassic Park
Raiders of the Lost Ark Score by Williams, John as performed in Raiders of the Lost Ark
Gladiator Score by Zimmer/Gerrard as performed in Gladiator

omigosh it was hard! My first cull had over thirty movies in it. Got it down to twenty three. Then cut out music that was not written for the film (which sadly included things like Symphony No. 3 by Camille Saint-Saëns from Babe, Finlandia by Jean Sibelius from Die Hard 2 and everything from Fantasia 2000). Cut a couple more. And eventually decided on the movies above.

These were my runners up:

Batman Score by Elfman, Danny
Inception Score by Zimmer, Hans
James Bond Theme by Norman, Monty
Music from Star Trek Movies by Eidelman/Giacchino/Goldsmith/Horner/McCarthy/Rosenman <-- be good if they'd narrowed this down to Jerry Goldsmith's
Star Wars Score (includes music from all 6 films) by Williams, John <-- I'm hoping this will be popular enough to make it in from other people's votes
Superman Score by Williams, John <-- and this too

Winning Thursday

2013-05-11T10:35:31Z

Thursdays are usually pretty winning days, on account of beer o'clock at 4:30 and all .. but last Thursday had tangible wins. Firstly, drinks were partly paid for by a vendor. So I used a goodly chunk of the saved money to contribute to a charity that was running some events on the night. One event was a $2 raffle with a $100 prize for the winner. Which (after they called it as another Karen, but realised their mistake ten minutes later) was me! Epic win! And then another event was throwing gold coins at a bottle of booze, closest coin wins the bottle. After several goes at three bottles, I got the closest coin to the last bottle! Win! It was a bottle of Greek brandy, which we sampled. It's ok but slightly odd.

April Jigsaws

2013-05-08T10:04:02Z

Jigsaw making has slowed down quite a bit in the past couple of weeks - it's just been too cold downstairs and I stalled on one I was doing upstairs.

From work - Keukenhof Gardens. Dave2's been there and I'm pretty jealous.

One I got from Marylon in Sydney when we used to do jigsaws together on Friday lunches. She didn't want this one, but it's taken this long to get around to doing it.

A little 300 piece puzzle from work. This was slightly unusual in that all the pieces were the "odd" shapes. But the pieces were pretty badly cut so kept making mistakes even on something so simple.

Another in the series of the 4x4 (16 total) repeating pattern of pieces.

A1500 piece jigsaw from work that they couldn't do because they don't have the space for it. They hadn't even opened it! It was a bit hard because of all the purple and brown.

Black Mountain

2013-05-07T09:41:31Z

Last Saturday we went up Black Mountain Tower (I don't call it by its official name, no free advertising for that company on this blog thankyouverymuch).

Spent half an hour outside taking photos. As you do.

15000

2013-05-06T09:51:43Z

Ever wonder what approximately $15000 in cash looks like? Wonder no more!

Luc had withdrawn it for some reason or another I can't remember (it was while I was still in Sydney). I remember feeling super nervous carrying a couple of thousand dollars of shop takings to the bank when I was young, but this was just insane :)

Found the photo during a lot of work I've been doing recently sorting out photos into something more meaningful than by month.

P0ker

2013-05-05T12:26:14Z

Well that was interesting. While posting the last entry, I tried to post the word p0ker (spelt correctly obviously). But I got an "access denied" error from my web hosting server. Didn't seem to be a Movable Type error, just a plain server error.

So it seems my web hosting company will not allow me to post the word p0ker on my blog.

Paranoid security, much?

Let's see if this entry posts .. nope... not until I change p0ker to something else.

Socialising

2013-05-05T12:00:36Z

Friday night saw us heading to North Cooma (aka as far south in Canberra as you can go) to have dinner at Andrew and Jen's. Richard and Tracey came too so it was quite the party.

And how cool is this - Andrew's building a 747 flight simulator, complete with physical controls and switches and computerised flight systems that plug into Microsoft Flight Simulater. Extremelly cool!

And there was quite the feast of food, including a rather tasty dish of chicken, prawns and bacon .. sounds strange but it was very nice :)

After dinner we played p0ker until Tracey's chips ran out (and they had to get kids home to bed). Then we played Cranium which is a mashup of Pictionary, Charades, Trivial Pursuit and Rapidough. The game play was a bit confusing and odd, but that might have been because we just hadn't read the instructions thoroughly. It was fun anyway.

Saturday night we went to Josh and Ally's for a lovely evening of chatting and a very yummy middle eastern fish dish.

Saying Goodbye

2013-05-05T10:30:28Z

Thursday morning I headed up to Sydney. Stopped in at Picton and watched David feed all the snakes.

Then we headed to the parent's place for lunch with Aunty Rhonda.

And then across to Rookwood for Nana's funeral.

The whole family was there which was really nice. The funeral itself was lovely. My mum and uncles read a beautiful eulogy and Ken had put together a wonderful slide show of Nana's life.

Lots of people hung around for the wake in the Reflections cafe.

But the shocker of the day for me was finding out I have another cousin.

!!!

Mum was reading the names of all the grandkids during the eulogy, and it included a name I'd never heard of. Later I asked mum about it. Turns out my uncle had had him after he'd separated from his first wife but it was all a bit awkward so he doesn't get talked about in the family. But how did I not know about this at all?? Sheesh! Apparently he was at the funeral too. So that was all very bizarre.

So then we battled peak hour traffic and went with Diana and Graham to the Tradies for dinner. Every time I've been there in the past few years it's been different. Seems they've completed their renovations now, and there's a huge front entrance now. The roast of the day was pork, so five of us except David had it :)

Then back to my parents' to pick up stuff, then back to Picton to pick up my car, and then home. I was super tired, but made it safely, with Harry to keep me company. Got home a bit after midnight.

Car Costs

2013-05-05T06:11:27Z

My brother and I had quite a lot of time to chat last week, and one of the things we talked about was car costs.

Now thanks to my genetics, I inherited my parent's obsessivness, and so ever since I've had a car I've kept a log book of petrol costs, as well a spreadsheet listing rego, servicing, and insurance costs. I updated the last two year's worth of petrol costs this afternoon, and so here's a breakdown of how much this car has cost me since I got it in February 2001.

Running Report
Costs:	Petrol only:	$10,400.28
	Insurance, Servicing, Rego etc:	$24,021.76
	Total Post-Purchase Expenses:	$34,422.04
	Car Purchase Cost:	$4,300.00
	Grand Total of everything:	$38,722.04

Mileage Stats
Mileage:	Current mileage (started at 122334 in 2001)	232842
Litres:	Total petrol put into car (L)	9541.3
c/km:	Petrol only:	9.40
	Total - car cost:	31.14
	Total:	35.04
m/gal:		32.74
L/100km:		8.63
km/L:		11.59

So this car has so far cost me $39000 in twelve years. 9.4c/km for petrol only or 35.04c/km for total cost (which would be less if I drove it more).

Some of the stats are affected by how I've driven it over the years. From 2001 to 2006 I was commuting to work in Sydney. From 2006 to 2007 I was going to Canberra once a month. From the end of 2007 I stopped driving to work, so usage dropped off dramatically.

And just for fun, here's petrol prices for the past twelve years. Noting that in recent years, Canberra prices are typically 10-15c/L higher than Sydney, as you can see by the little dips on those last two Sydney purchases in the past month!

Cross stitch

2013-05-01T12:10:38Z

For Christmas in 1992 I received a small counted cross stitch kit.

I finished it last weekend.

(sorry about the dodgy photo)