How was your day dear?: December 2017 Archives

The End of the Year

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Saturday 23.12.17

Dropped into Chrissie's to pick up keys and instructions for animal feeding, then did our food shopping for the week.  

Sunday 24.12.17 - Christmas Eve

Spent pretty much the entire afternoon cooking.  I cooked up a Christmas caramel slice (flavoured with a little ginger and spice), a cherry/raspberry white chocolate cheesecake that looked like crap, whoops, and then a 2.8kg piece of roast pork, as well as potato bake and roast veggies.  In the evening we had our Christmas Eve feast and watched new episodes of Fuller House, and started watching season four of Rake.

Pork and potato feast

Pork and potato feast

The fridge is choc-a-block full!

Full fridge

Monday 25.12.17 - Christmas Day

Had a relaxing and quiet morning because I didn't need to do any cooking.  I did clean up the kitchen, the bathroom, and the vomit some animal had left on our front patio - gross!!!  The sweetie and I went out and did a little pokegressing, then dropped into Chrissie's to feed the animals.  Came home and did a final bit of house tidying (and found out both families were coming for dessert, not just one).  After lunch (I had leftover pork and potato - yum!) Annie and the kids came over for dessert, and a little while later Scott and the family came over as well.  There was so. much. dessert.  And I'm not even a big dessert person.  My teeth hurt just looking at all the sugar!

Christmas caramel slice

Christmas desserts

By the time everyone left the sweetie and I were completely exhausted from *people*.  I cooked up the section of crackling that had been under the roast and so not crackled, and had that for dinner.  In the evening just Fuller House and Rake.

Tuesday 26.12.17 - Boxing Day

Did a bit of decluttering in the spare room - pulled out a pile of clothes to give/throw away, and started separating some of the stuff in the entrance way of what to Green Shed/Freecycle/eBay.  Cleaned the kitchen and family room window sills and trimmed the thyme which had been going a little crazy and tidied up all the herbs.  Did a bit of jigsawing, and worked on my new Nanoblocks building.  In the evening we went to Kit's as she and Pete were having a barbeque and a bunch of their friends came.  Stayed up probably a little too late, but it was a nice night.

Kit boxing day party

Wednesday 27.12.17

Had a bit of a slow start.  Did a water change in the angel tank.  We'd been planning to meet up with Potty etc to see a movie, but in between deciding which movie/session to see and actually booking it, they sold out.  We met up with them at the mall anyway for lunch (I also needed a few things at the shops so did that first).  Then everyone came back to our place for dessert take 2 (and the kids had a swim as well).  So I had to put away all the stuff that I'd spread out on the lounge room floor back into the spare room, where it's now out of sight out of mind :(  We put on the animated live action The Jungle Book to watch in the afternoon.  I say animated because just about the only thing that was real in the entire movie was the kid.  Still, it wasn't too bad.  I did the edge for the World's Most Difficult Jigsaw while watching.  By the time everyone left the sweetie and I were completely exhausted from *people*.  That and an entire day gone with pretty much nothing to show for it.

Thursday 28.12.17

Alternated between fifteen minutes at a time doing some deep cleaning in the bathroom, and doing the big jigsaw.  In the evening (it was Thursday after all), the sweetie ordered an epic pizza from Dominos.  It was nice enough, but it was sorely lacking in pepperoni, which was pretty disappointing.

Epic pizza

We watched The Space Between Us, which was nice enough, but some of the problems with it annoyed me (spoilers!!) - like being able to have online chats in real time - don't you know there's a three to twenty-four minute delay each way on comms (depending on position in orbits)??  Or what are they going to feed the kid?  I'm sure they didn't send any baby formula on the mission!  And I did call out the father very early on.

Friday 29.12.17

Just a few bits and pieces in the morning, including testing the dead LED fish tank light in the fitting downstairs.  I bought the LED light in April, but it died a week or so ago.  I'm pretty pissed off about that because the light was twice the price of a regular fluoro light, but it only lasted half as long.  I'm also pretty pissed that we don't have a receipt, because the sweetie doesn't tend to keep receipts.  Going to have to make a point of always getting him to give me receipts when we go shopping.  I know exactly when we bought it, and it should be in the sweetie's credit card statements, so going to try our luck getting a refund or replacement.  Moral of the story:  AquaOne is evil, and their products are crappy (always have been).  We bought another LED light in October that's still working, but we don't have a receipt for it either, so can guarantee it's going to die shortly too :(

Went into Belco to get our pool water tested.  Good news is our sunscreen levels are now down to the correct levels after last summer's dramas.  Bad news is there's no buffering (total alkalinity), which means it's all a bit unstable.  And even though our test kits say there's plenty of chlorine, the pool shop testing says there's none.  *sigh*

Went into the city for doctor stuff and lunch.  We went to Hero Sushi which is usually crowded and pretty good, but it was half empty and all the hot food was cold which wasn't much fun. Mostly just sorted pairs of pieces in the little jigsaw in the afternoon.  Had a swim then added a bunch of pool chemicals.

Saturday 30.12.17

Finished The World's Most Difficult jigsaw (it's not) fairly quickly in the morning, then finished the Nanoblocks Empire State Building.

Nanoblocks Empire State Building

Worked on the big jigsaw for a while in the afternoon so could finish it by the end of the year.  Serena came over after seeing Kit, and had a quick swim.  We watched Coyote Ugly in the evening which I first saw on the plane to the USA in 2000.  I didn't realise I'd seen it again back in 2003.  

Sunday 31.12.17 - New Years Eve

Was awake from dentist time to about 5:30am, then only managed about another two hours sleep after that.  So pretty tired and a very slow morning.  Watched Cinderella while finishing off that section of the jigsaw.  It's a pretty lame movie actually.  I don't think I've seen it since I was a kid.  There's a whole heap of just slapstick, and the "love" story is pathetic.  How do you fall in love with someone without them even saying a word??  Sure you can get a bit of a crush, but that's not really enough to live "happily ever after". 

Went out for lunch at the markets and to do our food shopping.  We didn't do much shopping as none of the butchers were open, I was super tired so couldn't even think about vegetables (and Tom's was very depleted on stock anyway).  We did pick up a huge pile of fish for $19/kg though, gave some to Kit, froze some, and will have it as a couple of meals in the next few days. 

This afternoon has just been catching up on this blog, and I've still got to finish my year in review post.  I started off well this year, taking notes for most of the year at the beginning of December.  But then everything just went crazy before Christmas and I kept putting it off.  It's probably half done so need to do that if there's nothing else I do before tonight.  We have no plans yet for New Years.  I'll be lucky to stay awake!

Jingle All The Way

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Wednesday was my ex-section Christmas party, which is actually more like a floor party, which I run every year (for the past five years anyway).  This year I put the price up a little because I could barely get enough of everything last year, and last year I also got quite a few bags of free ice.  So this year for $715 I put on a barbeque for nearly forty people.  A good chunk of that money went on beer but I also got a lot more chili sausages from Bonzer Bangers which were very much appreciated.  So pretty much everything I took got eaten except a couple of bags of lettuce leaves, a loaf or so of bread, some beer and softdrink and quite a bit of water (it wasn't a hot day - in fact in rained a fair bit, but it only rained heavily while we were all eating lunch).  Everyone seemed to have a good time which was good :)

Duck

Friday night I made the sweetie watch Love Actually, because, Christmas.

Yesterday was pretty quiet, just doing bit of house work and jigsaw.  In the evening I was going to watch Carols in the Domain, which are always on the last Saturday before Christmas.  Except this year they did them a week ago.  Sad times.  So then tried to find a Christmas movie to watch.  A couple of weeks ago at work we were discussing best Christmas movies.  General consensus was Die Hard, but ChrisT and I both said Love Actually as well.  Connor's contributions were Jingle All the Way, and The Santa Clause (neither of which I'd seen).  So Netflix had Jingle All the Way, so we watched that last night.  OMFG one of the stoopidest movies ever!  Oh dear!

Another Tuesday

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Where were we?

Tuesday we went over to wish Noah a happy birthday.  Really don't see enough of those guys.

Noah's 16th birthday cake

Thursday night we got invited over to EffanC's for dinner.  This time Kate P was there which was quite nice.

Friday was the second big work party which was all very pleasant, although I wasn't game enough to ask for leftovers this time haha.  In the evening David came up and we went out to Ikea so he could get some bookshelves.  Hint: going to Ikea on a Friday night is *much* more civilised than going on the weekend!  Went to Shane and Jessica's new place in Queanbeyan afterwards and had pizza for dinner.

Saturday Serena and Ben and Sarah came over for a Christmas pool party.  Which was good but all morning was doing food prep and all afternoon was in the pool and all evening was pool and watching Life of Brian.  So it was a nice day but did take up half the weekend.

Sunday morning David went home fairly early to get home in time for a thing in Wagga Wagga.  We had a bit of a lazy morning, went out for lunch and to do some food shopping.  Then Chris, Mike and Zac came over for a while.  And suddenly it was dinner time and my entire weekend was gone.

Last two days have been winding down somewhat at work which is kinda nice, except for when you find yourself with nothing much interesting to do and resort to clearing out your inbox...

So another week drifts by.  Had awful insomnia last Monday night - couldn't get to sleep forever then woke up really early.  Dunno if I was too hot or too cold or what.  Rest of the week was pretty uneventful.

Thursday night I made a mint-leaf rocky road which was pretty awesome.

Mint rocky road

Mint rocky road

Friday night we had Scott and EffanC over for lots of cheese and finger food, and gave Scott a bit of a whiskey tasting since he'll be missing out in January.

Nibbles

Saturday morning was fairly productive Getting Things Done.  Mostly just jigsaw in the afternoon.  Later in the afternoon Zac came over to stay.  We watched both Die Hards.  As you do.

Sunday wasn't super productive.  After dinner (the sweetie needed pizza) we found the internet pretty much unusable thanks to a cut in the Perth to Singapore fibre which meant it pretty late before we were going to put on a movie.  So decided not to.  I went down to do the jigsaw then the little brother called me to tell me to watch the Lego Brickumentary on SBS.  So ended up staying up just as late anyway.  Whoops.

Yesterday was the first of the work Christmas parties, which was actually pretty chillaxed and we had a pretty good time.  I even came home with a bunch of leftovers! W00t!  Just watched some The Good Place in the evening.  It's all a bit silly but a bit of fun.

Freezing

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Ok not literally.  But I did need to put a jumper on today.  And I feel like I may need an extra doona tonight.  Yipe.

Where were we?

Wednesday James was in town for work so we caught up at Bella Vista for dinner.

James at Bella Vista

Bella Vista pork

Bella Vista cheesecake

Bella Vista Profiteroles

Friday night we watched a bit of tv, then I put up our Christmas tree.

Christmas tree 2017

Christmas tree 2017 - marble

Saturday was pretty much all just house stuff and food shopping.  Didn't have time to do any of my jigsaw but did fully dismantle the Life jigsaw back into baggies (we only dismantled it enough to get into bags on assembly day). 

Life jigsaw in baggies

In the evening Anita came over and she talked all night.  Did a super yummy pork belly for dinner and got plenty of leftovers.  (I did burn the top slightly when grilling it at the end).

Pork belly

Oh did I mention I had insomnia *again* on Friday night?  This time I woke up at 3:30am and never got back to sleep.  After getting up a couple of times to eat something because I was hungry, I finally gave up around 6am.  So I had a relatively early night Saturday night because I was exhausted.

Sunday was a bit of house stuff and a fair bit of jigsaw.  I also went cherry picking.  This is the biggest crop of cherries I've ever gotten off our tree.  They don't taste super great, and the dark purple juice will stain your whole mouth purple, but hey, phytochemicals!

Cherry picking

In the evening we went over to EffanC's for cheese for dinner (yumm ;) ) and to watch The Room.  Yes, that one.  Ok I'd never heard of it, but everyone said it was supposed to be like one of the worst films ever made.  They certainly weren't wrong.  It was terrible.  It was so terrible it was *hilarious*.  Fun times :)

Kazza's "Boring Life Of a Geek" aka BLOG

IT geek, originally from Sydney, moved to Canberra in 2007. Married to "the sweetie", aka Stu. Prolific photographer, Lego junkie and tropical fish keeper.

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