How was your day dear?: April 2019 Archives

So Monday.  Day four of our break.  But I didn't get anything much done around the house because I spent the morning getting organised to go to the club.  Made some cheese twists for lunch before heading out.  The previous owners of the van left a lot of kitchen stuff and tools behind which is great, but *all* the cupboards were full of stuff, with no free space to put any of our stuff.  Got a bit overwhelmed by it on Monday afternoon.  And it poured with rain.  A lot.  Had some leftovers we'd brought for dinner, and watched the start of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade on tv, but went to bed before it finished.

Tuesday I spent pretty much the whole day cleaning out the cupboards and reorgansing everything so it fitted into the cupboards more logically, and left most of the big cupboard free for our stuff.  Did a couple of loads of washing up to wash stuff in the drawers and some of the cookware.  Felt a lot happier with things by the end.  Although still nowhere good to store food.  D&I fired up the fire in the oasis, so we had a beer with them which was nice.  Tried out the bbq.  It doesn't light with the lighter thingie, but runs ok if you light it.  Cooked some sausages for dinner and we had a nice bottle of 2011 shiraz I got in 2014.

Wednesday morning we came home.  Thanks to Tony though for taking our bins out - they'd been collected by the time we got home, and the recycling bin in particular would have been a disaster if we'd missed the pickup.  Cooked some pizza scrolls for lunch.  In the afternoon cleared/cleaned the middle shelf of the pantry and the two drawers under the oven.  Cooked honey mustard chicken for dinner, watched Homeland and From Russia With Love.

Didn't do much Thursday.  Did some photo filing in the morning, then headed over to Chrissie's for a bbq for lunch.  James was in town, first time I'd seen him in twenty five years, with Anita, and Susannah and Rob were there too.  So it was quite the family gathering for them.  And then they got out all the family photos that survived the bushfire (as an aside, Como Presbyterian Church reopened twenty three years ago on this day as I type this, same day as Port Arthur massacre.. moving on..).  David and Kat came over late in the afternoon and we had lamb roast and started a 2000 piece jigsaw.

Friday Stu went to work.  David pulled apart our bedroom fan light which had died a couple of months ago.  We'd gotten a new bulb but it hadn't worked either.  Turns out the ballast had gone.  Someone let the smoke out.  This fan light had been installed in November 2008.  A "Brilliant" branded fan light we got from Bunnings.  Don't do that people.  We never could get a replacement light for it.  The last one we got was a much smaller T4 bulb because we couldn't find any the right size.  Pretty sure that was in April 2014.  So instead of trying to replace the ballast and not get a bulb that fitted anyway, we decided to get a similar sized LED oyster light and mount that instead.  It looks slightly odd, but works just fine and cheaper than a whole new fan light.  Most awesomest brother ever!

So that was done in the morning and we were like.. now what?  D/K went out for a wander round Canberra and I got stuck into cleaning out the "gardening" corner of the garage.  Too many spiders and other disgustingness for my liking.  D/K gave me a lift into town later where I met up with the sweetie for a drink and dinner for our anniversary (and they went off and did their own thing).  We went to Temporada and had quite a delicious, if very expensive, dinner.

Saturday and David couldn't help himself, he wanted to replace our ancient fluoro kitchen/family room light fittings with LED ones.  So a trip to Bunnings (where it was decided against getting the "Brilliant" branded ones, even though they looked nice because a) Bunnings staff couldn't/wouldn't get the panel of test lights turned on to look at them, and b) they're Brilliant branded, which we've already established seems to be non-standard anyway), and then a trip to Project Lighting.  Got some flat round lights that don't quite cover up the old holes, so we'll need to sand/bog/paint that at some point.

We did one of the lights in the morning, then headed out to the club to show D/K the new van (and get out of Stu's way as he was trying to study).  Had a bbq out there (we really need a new gas cylinder), then came home again, and David replaced the other light.  Had pizza for dinner, watched Goldfinger, and finished the big jigsaw.  Pretty good effort for two days. 

Sunday D/K went home and I spent the day coming to terms with the end of my holiday :(  Tidied up a lot of the house, did two loads of linen washing, got some holiday blog entries online, got some kiev balls from the shops and cooked those for dinner, watched Brooklyn 99 and Death in Paradise.

Ten days is not enough time off.  I really need those three month holiday I used to get when I was at uni... *sigh* ....

Monday we got home a bit late which left me a little stressed because I need to do All The Things on Mondays, in addition to a backup I was meant to run on the weekend but never did.  I thought it was going to talk all night because I'd done a heap of moving files around, which means robocopy would then have to delete/recopy everything.  But in the end I moved them around on the disk first so it was pretty quick.  I ran Spacemonger over the disk and it added up 1.3 million files in 51000 folders.  Freaky.  We also started watching Brooklyn 99.  Stu has actually seen it all through before but suggested watching it anyway.  Not a bad show.  A bit silly but a bit of fun.  But.  KEEP THE DAMNED CAMERA STILL!!  It's got the whole Modern Family can't-keep-the-damned-camera-still thing going on which I HATE.  It's even worse than Discovery's damned lens flare.  

Must be mother's day soon..

Tuesday had the club committee meeting here so I half listened in while labelling photos (1/3 way through w00t!).  Also baked a Yum! Delicious! cake which all got eated.

The neighbour's ducks

Hey sucker!

Wednesday I was surprised to find an actual light meal at the Labor Club, so didn't end up stuffing myself silly.  Because for dinner we went to Dumpling Inn with Hannah to talk Harry Potter.

Labor Club caesar salad

Dumpling Inn

Thursday night I swear it actually got warmer as the evening progressed.  We made the most of one of the last mild evenings of the season.  At home, Stu ordered extra large pizzas for dinner hrmmm.  Then afterwards had a drink with Kit and Pete and played a game of Kismet (I won, w00t!).  The fact they are 130km away is irrelevant.

Friday we Marie Kondo-ed our clothes.  We actually pulled everything out and put it all out on the bed.  My pile was somewhat bigger than I thought it would be, but nowhere near as big as some of the piles we saw on the show.  Finished watching the Desolation of Smaug, then watched Thor Ragnarok which is a bit of fluff (reviewers either completely loved or completely hated it).  We'd seen Dr Strange so knew who he was, but not sure if there were other references we didn't get, on account of only seeing a few MCU films (it's creeping up - have seen Guardians of the Galaxy 1&2, Dr Strange, now this).

Saturday just bits and pieces.  Did a Bunnings run (no tubs in the size/style I wanted that weren't crap).  Spent some time Marie Kondo-ing the linen cupboard.  Finally sorted out the wine that's been making a mess under the house - consolidated boxes (down to about 7.5 boxes now) so it's all a bit more organised.  Watched the Battle of the Five Armies.  Just as dumb as I remembered it.

Today spent some time in the garage in the morning, but barely made a dent.  Made some cheese and vegemite scrolls for lunch which were pretty awesome.  Marie Kondo-ed three shelves in the pantry in the afternoon.  Roast chicken for dinner, Discovery (finishing up season 2), and Dr No, which I haven't seen in ages.

I need more of it.  Everything takes longer to do than it should, and there's just not enough hours in the day to get it all done.

Pretty standard week.  Busy in parts, not busy in others.  Fun and games with failed hardware, but did get dual nics working on the mail server in the new environment (well Connor did the hard bit, I fiddled with the server config).

Thursday the return of the vomit pizza!  Well not quite, but it does have a cheesy sauce base.

Also, as it turns out, I never posted a photo of the original vomit pizza.  This was taken in August 2017.  OMFG it looks disgusting but it was sooo good ;)

Saw this Friday morning which made us lol

Friday came home a little early.  Started watching He's Just Not That Into You which was a bit of fluff, kinda reminded me of Love Actually where everyone is connected to everyone else.  When the sweetie got home we had leftovers and started watching The Desolation of Smaug.  Way too long a movie and we ditched it with still a little over an hour to go and went to bed.

Saturday morning catching up on house stuff.  Then headed out to the club.  Where we accidentally bought a new van.  Which is about five times the size of our last van (actually probably even bigger).

Then back home, and straight out again, to EffanC's for drinks and cheese on one of the last warm days of the season.  Had dinner of one of C's amazing salads.  So all very nice.  Except the drama.  Don't like drama.  Dropped in to see Annie and the kids and Daisy for a bit as well.

Saturday night/Sunday morning woke up around midnight and didn't get back to sleep til after 4am :(  So was a bit of a zombie today.  I thought I'd do a little Lego picking (finish picking the six sets I started this week) til maybe lunch time, then tackle the todo list.  Except I was still going strong on the picking by dinner time and I'd done like ZERO things on my todo list :(  Well other than finish watching He's Just Not That Into You.  And I did pull out some periwinkle and load the green bin.  Kit called just before dinner asking if I'd be a bridesmaid, which is very exciting (Audrey was going to find it too difficult, living in another country and all).  Roasted some potatoes and had those with leftover chicken and watched Discovery.

How do you stop windoze 10 just forcing a patching reboot whenever it damned well feels like it???  HATE Microsoft.  More time taken out of my evening trying to get back into everything it shut down.

Now just need to find some time to breathe....

Tuesday Neil and I had dinner at Pho Hub.  I had flaming chicken with hoisin sauce.  And it really was flaming!  Neil had his usual.

Then we went and saw The Lego Movie 2.

Wednesday night was a trivia night.  We won.  Again.  The organisers could have done with a little more practise, or at least have someone like Doc vet it all to save arguments with the crowd hehe.  The first three rounds were pretty tough, but the second three rounds were somewhat easier.  We did well with our Joker (double points) round, but annoyingly, not all rounds were worth the same.  Some were out of 10, others up to 12.5.  hrmmmm.

Thursday a bunch of us went to Chompy's for lunch.  I had the Iron Mikee.

In the evening we saw the episode of Fuller House where the kids go to the prom.  So then I watched the episode from 1993 where DJ and Steve go to their prom.  Silly really.

Friday Annie had her appendix out.  Must be contagious!  In the evening we watched The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey.  After enjoying it at the movies because my expectations had been lowered, this time I felt a lot more like the reviewers that said it was way too long.  It's kinda tedious watching movies that are just massive cgi-fests.

Saturday morning was just house stuff.  At lunch we went out and got a new light for the bedroom fan light.  Had lunch at Yat Bun Tong, but couldn't face shopping at Coles in the mall so went off to Jamo to do food shopping.  When we finally got home it was pretty much time to make dinner.  The other week I'd made up a tomato sauce with a big batch of Kit's tomatoes.  So made a bechamel sauce and made up a big lasagna (from Lana's recipe).  It turned out quite well (looks a little overdone, prolly should have covered with foil for some of the cooking).

A little while later Kit and Pete came over.  They'd come up to see her brother and family before they went back to Germany, and came back to our place to stay the night.  They had some of the lasagna which seemed kind of appropriate, and we chatted and watched Monty Python and the Holy Grail and went to bed a whole lot later than I wanted to.  But I did manage to sleep in til 8am old time, 7am new time, so that was fine.

Spent way way way too long picking parts for five Lego sets today.  This whole process is going to take *forever* :(

Kit and Pete eventually went home.  Was feeling a little lost this arvo.  Cooked a nice roast dinner though, and we watched Fuller House (bringing us to the end of season 4) and Discovery.  

Also, that light we bought:  didn't work.  So don't know if it's the light or the fitting or a seemingly non-existent starter.  Very upsetting.