How was your day dear?: January 2021 Archives

Sunday.  24th.  Half way through our long weekend.  Watched Your Name in the evening.  Kinda like Freaky Friday meets The Lake House?  Not that I've ever actually seen The Lake House.  Nice enough, although a tad confusing.  

Monday.  We both took a random day off to have a long weekend. 

Baby guppies!!!

Did all the washing in the morning - regular clothes washing, then the curtains from the east side window of the study.  Then headed out for the day.  Dropped in at The Scottish Restaurant for brunch, then onto Ikea.  Stu wanted to get a shelf unit for his study for the inside wall.  So we found that and got a couple of bits and pieces but not too much.  Did our food shopping on the way home. 

I'd just filled his water bowl when Stumpy decided to redecorate the place.

So just for that we gave him a bath.

Stu built his shelves and suddenly the house is a mess again.  Doh. 

It was also very hot.  All weekend.  We had the cooler going pretty much all weekend, but that did make it a bit humid in the house.  Salmon and salad for dinner, but no photo labelling.  Watched Honey, I Shrunk the Kids in the evening.

Tuesday.  Australia Day.  Our two biggest holidays celebrate invading other countries.  David's suggestion was make New Years Eve a public holiday, so all the poor saps that have to work NYE while everyone else parties will at least get paid overtime for it.  Then Australia Day could be January 1.  That was actually the day we became Australia.  Just a thought.  The day was spent avoiding the heat, a bit of housework, labelling photos and a bit of paint by numbers.  Stu wanted to hang up an aerial for his software radio, so I hacked out all the cherry tree suckers, and pruned the geraniums quite brutally (they were bigger than me!).  Didn't take any before photos unfortunately.  

Stu really didn't like being up a ladder

I well and truly filled the green bin, with a pile still left to go.  Taco Tuesday for dinner (I'd bought the shells and was going to have them before David left but we never got a round tuit).  The ten taco shells go really well with three people (four each for the boys and two for me), so we end up with leftovers if there's just the two of us.  Then I was loading the dishwasher after dinner and one of Stu's bowls slipped out of my hand and shattered all over the floor.  I seriously had a meltdown.  I really like those bowls, I use them every day, and it was one of the few complete sets we have of anything.  I don't deserve nice things.  Sigh.  Didn't feel like doing any photo labelling, or even watching a movie, so just watched random crap on YouTube.

Wednesday.  Nothing much.  Bit of photo labelling, but not nearly enough to catch up for the week.

Thursday.  Ok day; work drinks; pizza.  Got sad that I had noone to fight with over the garlic dregs from the garlic bread.  Started watching Sound! Euphonium anime series.  Then I watched Honey I Blew Up the Kid.

Friday.  The rain!  All the rain!  In the afternoon I spent an hour and a half renaming and documenting all the objects someone else in our team had created that didn't match our naming scheme.  Le sigh.  Watched Honey We Shrunk Ourselves in the evening.  I'd never seen this one.  Silly of course, but not too bad.  Then I watched the first half of a 2016 New York production of Hamilton.  I had literally no idea what the show was about, well, other than it was an American period piece.  I have to say I struggled with it.  It's mostly all rap, and I *hate* rap.  I struggled to keep up with the pace of it and what was going on and the exposition.  I also found having African Americans playing white guys pretty distracting.  Also.  Jonathan Groff as King George III.  Completely distracted by his spagging all over the place.  Also I reckon he looks a little bit like Freddie Mercury (front teeth and cheeks), he'd look more like him if he lost a little weight..

Saturday.  Woke up at 3am for nearly two hours.  Hurrah.  Did all the hosueworks in the morning.  Did a bit of paint by numbers and photo labelling of Dad's slides in the afternoon.  I'd relied on the dust and scratch filter for the first half of the scanning of his slides, but as it turns out, the hairs that were all over the roof of the scanner were there from the beginning.  The filter doesn't remove the hairs and the slides look terrible, and I'm going to have to redo *a lot* of the first half.  Sigh.  But probably not until I've scanned more of the filing cabinet.  Had a bit of a play with Gimp to make Lego mosaics using custom palettes.  Had chicken kiev for dinner.  Watched The Garden of Words, which I saw at the movies in 2013.  I reckon they must have videoed rain falling in puddles and traced it frame by frame.  Can't see any other way it'd be *that good*.  Then I watched the second half of Hamilton.  For some reason I enjoyed the second half a lot more.  Maybe because it was a bit slower, and I had a better idea of who everyone was??  I think if I watched it again I'd pick up a helluva lot more and possibly enjoy it more.  Or maybe I could just go read a transcript.  Found out that the dude who played Hamilton actually wrote the whole thing.

Sunday.  Today.  Not backdating for a change ;)  Although I am going to need to backdate a whole bunch of This Day in History posts.  Spent the day alternating between housework, computer work (photo labelling) and fun stuff (paint by numbers and jigsaw).  Went out and did a small food shop.  Although with fragments of covid detected in Belconnen sewage, I feel like we should have done a bigger shop in case we end up in lockdown.  Roast lamb for dinner.  Or there will be.  Very shortly :)

Stu had a set of six crystal whiskey tumblers he got from one of his very early jobs.  There were only five when I met him, and there's still five, although one has a chip.

I had a set of four plates/bowls/bread and butter plates from Nana (I think) when I moved out of home.  Two of the bread and butter plates had been broken in transit.  I broke a bowl when I was living in Sydney by knocking it off the bench when I was trying to serve myself some ice cream.  So now there's four plates, three bowls and two bread and butter plates.

Stu had a set of six white wine glasses he got from his last job in Queensland.  I accidentally knocked one off the bench when Marc and Jo were here in 2015.  So now there's five.

I had a set of six small glasses I got from Ikea (for $5!) when I was living in Sydney.  Nat or one of her friends broke one when she had people over while she was housesitting while we were on our honeymoon.  Then just a couple of months ago Stu knocked one in the sink and it broke.  So now there's four.

Stu had a set of six tumblers he got from his last job in Queensland (at the same time as the wine glasses).  One got knocked in the dishwasher while I was loading it a couple of years ago.  So now there's five.

I had four large drinking glasses I got from somewhere when I moved out of home.  One of them broke while I was living in Sydney when I had a bunch of peeps over for a slide night.  Another one broke but I can't remember when.  But then I got two identical ones from Christine S when she moved to Queensland.  So now there's two old ones and two new ones.

Stu had four Chinese style bowls.  One fell out of the fridge while he was trying get something else out.  So now there's three. 

I had four Pyrex bowls with lids that I use for microwaving veggies.  A few years ago while I was getting one out it fell and broke.  So now there's three bowls and four lids.

Stu had a set of four black glass plates/bowls/bread and butter plates.  Tonight one of the bowls slipped while I was loading the dishwasher and it shattered.  Not only itself, but my soul.  For some inexplicable reason, I got really really upset about it.  Probably because it was one of the few complete sets we have of anything, and it's been complete for longer than I've known Stu.  And also because I really like those bowls, I use them all the time.  

I don't deserve nice things.

Two blog entries done tonight, third right now, so not backdating!!

Monday.  18th.  Slept ok on the new mattress I think.  It's quite firm!  I was a bit worried it was going to be *too* firm.  The tencel sheets I bought in the middle of last year are *very* slippery, which is a bit odd.  Had another long day at work being on the phone for most of the day again.  Did my quota of Eurasia photos in the evening.  Also added a couple of things to the year in review post that I'd missed.  Since I was done with labelling, I watched the first episode of Into the Unknown - a documentary on the making of Frozen II.

Tuesday.  Quiet day at work until it all happens at once in the afternoon.  hrmmm.  Filled up the green bin in the evening.  Then the yappy dog started barking again for an hour or more, after a week or so of peace.  Got a cold call from a mob called Sunny Money (seriously WTF, would you do business with a company called that??).  I hate being cold called at the best of times, so I'm like, wait, who are you? how did you get my number?  And when he was like "how long have you owned your home", I was like "a while" and made it all kinds of difficult for him.  So I'm like well fine, I have your details, when we've done a bit of research maybe we'll call you, and he's like but then I won't get my commission.  #grunt.  Hard slog getting through photo labelling.

Wednesday.  Slept ok I think.  Dog was barking again this morning.  In fact I think that was why I was cranky/on edge for most of the break - that damned dog.  Caught up with the backlog from yesterday in the morning.  Then had a day of failure because I'm dumb.  

Thursday.  Ok sleep (woke up 5:30ish).  No progress on all my failures of the previous day.  But there were work drinks which was nice.  Got pizza, and watched some Simpsons and more Laid-Back Camp.

Friday.  Okish day I guess.  Avoided looking at all the things that make me a failure.  Had a bit of a play with Powershell in the afternoon.  Really really need to learn Powershell more bettererly.  

In the evening watched the 2018 version of A Wrinkle in Time.  Disney's problem is trying to do a movie from a book that people cherish so dearly.  If you read the reviews on IMDB, it's literally all one star ratings from people who can't stand how much it deviated from the book.  I'm lucky in that I have dementia.  I read the book as a late teen or early twenties, then again in 2014.  I saw the tv movie in 2003.  So I don't have a lot of memories of any of it.  I do remember enjoying the Dumbledore quotes in the tv movie.  And the brain from the book.  There should have been a brain.  So the new one I didn't think was terrible if you'd never read the book(s), but otherwise yeah it's a bit of a fail.  And it was written by Jennifer Lee - who wrote Frozen!

Saturday.  Typical weekend day just doing all the things.  David took it upon himself to clean the bathroom fan and light fitting.  Have I ever mentioned I have the bestest brother ever?  He also helped us rehang the Lego mosaic in a new spot (out of Stu's study).  This mosaic has been there since 2009.  I *really* need to make up a new picture!!

Stu cooked his gnocchi carbonara again (with actual egg!).  And we finished watching Laid-Back Camp.  I watched a Titanic bluray documentary of David's and then a Netflix documentary on Anne Frank - Parallel Stories, about a series of survivors with similar stories to Anne Frank.  

Sunday.  Today.  !  Got up to fog!  Which is quite surreal at this time of year.  Also meant having the cooling on with water made the 99% humidity even humider, if such a thing were possible ;)

But we did keep the cooler on all day, and it didn't get above 25C in the house all day!  Hurrah!

In the morning David packed up his car with the last of his stuff and left for good.  As staunch introverts we would stress over *anyone* in our space for so long, but having my brother here was still ok.  I probably get on better with him than pretty much anyone else except the sweetie, and I guess for the sweetie it's a bit like having two of me ;)  Plus, as a houseguest he was pretty awesome.  Not only was he respectful of our space, but he was super helpful around the house.  I will miss his generous heart.  

At lunch we tried out using the new rice cooker we got for Christmas from David as a steamer to cook up some steamed pork buns

We watched a few videos from Solar Quotes while we had lunch.  In the afternoon did a bit of cleaning and tidying.  And hunted through Mum and Dad's photos for photos for This Day in History posts, including processing another two hundred of Mum's photos for use in the blog/online.  And blogging.  All the blogging.

And so here we are.  Caught up on the current events blogging.  I still have This Day in History posts to do.. one day ..

See aforementioned note on being a slacker.  Backdating.  

Monday.  11th.  After work I'd labelled my quota of Eurasia 2012 photos by dinner time.  Which was leftovers and salad.  Then continued writing up my year in review post.  Then came the news that David had gotten a train driving job out of Cootamundra and would be leaving.  For some reason that just made me feel a bit sad.  Happy for him of course though!  Couldn't get to sleep til nearly 1am, probably just trying to deal with change.

Tuesday.  Slept a bit late.  In the evening was up to Mum and Dad's photos of Hong Kong for our Eurasia trip.  They travelled separately to me (because I was planning to go via Japan on the way back) and the group had a daytime layover in Hong Kong.  Because I can't help myself, I geotagged all 78 of Dad's and all 59 of Mum's photos of their day there.  It was pretty easy, because I could tell exactly where they'd been on account of having gone to those exact spots a year and a half later.  Just needed a bit of street view assistance for the driving photos.  There was one tricky one of some buildings in Fortress Hill, which was really nowhere near anywhere you'd expect them to be when getting a bus from the airport to Central where they took the Peak Tram.  

Wednesday.  Another night of not getting to sleep til very late.  Had to *go* to work, blerf.  Finished writing up a test plan of sorts for the proxies.  Then started building new mail servers. 

Well and truly past the twelfth day of Christmas..

Stu was meant to meet Damien at the Pot Belly for a drink, only Damien forgot, so I went and had a drink with him instead.  Sausages and salad for dinner.  Backed up my phone, backed up my computer, then labelled all of Mum and Dad's Hong Kong photos, and then it's after 9pm.  Blerf.

Thursday.

Oh hai snail.  Can you please get off the middle of the path so I don't squish you.  You're lucky you didn't end up as Stumpy's lunch!

Had a drink with Neil and Wello at the Labor Club. 

Stu got this set of clickety-clack keys to test different keyboard styles

Then had Dr Oc pizzas for dinner.  Started watching a Japanese anime show called Laid-Back Camp, which I really enjoyed and we ended up watching four twenty-three minute episodes.  It's photo-realistic, and you could actually go to all the places they go to.  

Friday.  Spent most of the day on a call with a vendor helping us with a POC of a firewall product.  So.  Draining.

I did get this funny photo of Stumpy planking at lunch

After being on the phone all day I just wanted TV dinners for dinner.  So got a couple of veal cordon bleus from Chris's.  Then watched some more Laid-Back Camp.

Saturday.  Slept ok.  Did all the morning things, then helped David load up his car to take the first load of things home.  I really didn't think he had all that much here, but we completely filled the car and there's still a lot to go.  

We might have had our new mattress arrive!

Went out to do our food shopping.  Also to pick up pills from Chemist Warehouse.  I was going to use the app to order my pills so I could just go and pick them up.  Except the app said they didn't have any in stock.  So I went to the counter when we got there to ask, and I could literally see them on the shelf behind her.  She got them down and was like, oh yes they *are* in stock.  So I was going to grab them and go, except she's like, but you can't, there's a queue.  And I'm like, THEY'RE RIGHT THERE.  FFS.  Apparently it takes chemists literally fifteen minutes to stick a name tag sticker on a box of pills.  WTF else do they do????  Pathetic.  Continued on with the year in review post in the afternoon. 

Stu cooked dinner - sukuyaki hotpot!!  Inspired by Laid-Back Camp.  With real (and very expensive) wagyu beef that the butcher kindly sliced thinly for us.

Then we watched The Professor and the Madman which was pretty good, altho apparently Mel Gibson had a hissy fit that they couldn't film in Oxford and refused to promote the film.  Stu had the book at one point, but we couldn't find it - even if he didn't give it away in our recent purge, if it was still there it would have been behind all the Lego boxes.  

Sunday.  Took ages to get to sleep - tired and restless.  So a bit of a nothing day.  Put on beef brisket in the slow cooker at lunch.  In the afternoon we pulled apart the old bed, and setup the new mattress and linen.  I had a look at the bed frame we were looking at at Ikea, but I'm glad I read the reviews, because otherwise I wouldn't have found out that the frame is actually too small for a king size mattress, and we would have been stuck.  Finally finally posted my 2020 year in review post.  Go to the archives if you're one of those silly people that doesn't use an RSS reader.

January 24.  That's today.  You'd think with the new year I'd be more organised about blogging.  Except I'm worse than ever.  Really must work on that.  So backdating this.

Thursday.  7th.  The sweetie got a migraine after lunch and wasn't feeling the best, so I took him home and worked from home in the afternoon.  No work drinks anyway, so just had a few quiet ones myself. 

I got these at Ikea the other day.  They were smelling out the whole study so I had to burn one to see what it was like :)   Looks and smells like raspberry syrup.

Started watching Soul in the evening.  Pixar animation of *stuff* is astounding.  The people are still more like caricatures.  I literally had no idea what the movie was going to be about (other than seeing a picture of the dude at the start), so when it veered off from what it started out as it was a bit surprising.  Totally got the Interstellar reference there.  It reminded me of Inside Out meets Coco meets Freaky Friday.  One gripe: how did he pay the taxi?  I loved how they used real locations.  I actually went on street view to have a look.  Like the intersection where they meet the crazy guy.  There's a chemist just like that one there.  And instead of Chase Bank, they've animated it as Pace Bank :)  Couldn't find the spot where they're walking under the elevated railway, but I suppose I didn't look too hard.  Then watched the making of Mandalorian Season 2 documentary.

Friday.  Ok day.  I updated a stack of mail flow diagram in the afternoon.  In the evening watched When Marnie was There.  Hands up who else thought Marnie was *creepy*..

Saturday.  Slept in by like an hour!  Yikes!  Finally finished fixing up scanning of Dad's slides, as best I could.  Any feelings of accomplishment at that task were destroyed by the non stop yapping dog.  Apparently it's a staffy, and it clearly has separation anxiety.  Can you report that as animal cruelty?  

This is the Tupperware bowl that broke.  I guess it was about fifty years old, and has been in constant use for most of that time, so I guess it had a good run!

Did our food shopping.  Did a practise Citizenship Test online.  I got 95%.  No idea which one I got wrong.  Spent the afternoon cleaning off my desk.  I put away and moved a lot of stuff, and actually cleaned behind the monitors and the monitors.  I also took all the crap off the side of the filing cabinet and the whiteboard, and cleared a lot of crap off the sides of the fridge as well.  So the surfaces in here just seem a lot cleaner and less cluttered.

Stu cooked dinner - spinach/ricotta gnocchi with cream and mushrooms, yum!  (it really is there under all that parmesan! ;) )

Into season 6 of The Simpsons.  And watched the finale of season 3 of Discovery.  Then chatted to Kit and Pete for a bit and got a tour of their new house.

Sunday.  Began work on scanning the filing cabinet.  The majority of what's in there I don't need to keep, so I'm scanning and recycling it.  The idea being to only keep what I really need to, and have some space for Stu's stuff as well.  Stu wanted to get some more fish, so we went out to get some, and he got me some platies as well.  In eighteen years of fish keeping, I've never actually had them, so thought I'd give them a go in the "angel" tank.  I started writing up my 2020 year in review post.  We had an orange and five spice marinated pork for dinner which was very nice.  And the sweetie and I even went for a walk after dinner.

Six months ago my domain turned eighteen.  Today my blog turned eighteen.  

As always, I remember my blogiversary, David Bowie's birthday, and the Como bushfires.

Friday.  New Years Day.  Had a pretty slow morning out at the club.  Then came home via the Scottish Restaurant for brunch.  Had a nice quiet day.  Had salad and roast veggies for dinner. 

Also took this cool photo using the crystal ball David got for Christmas.  On my phone.

Watched Discovery and finished Heartache and Birdsong, which I'd been reading since Christmas (took four nights to read).  

Saturday.  Second day of the year.  Did a fair bit on the todo list, but not really enough.  Took down the Christmas decorations and put them all away.  Watched Discovery.  Also watched "Death to 2020".  We had no idea what it was about when it popped up on Netflix, we thought maybe some year in review type show.  Which it kind of was.  Only it was hilarious.  Well except the middle bit which was pretty depressing.  It was very well done, although really only looked at American news with a bit of British news in it as well, but nothing much for the rest of the world.  I think my favourite quote was "The one good thing about Trump refusing to concede was that we got to watch him lose over and over".

Sunday.  Third day of the year.  Slept ok I think.  Did a few house type bits, but mostly going through my transactions for the year and making sure they lined up with receipts.  There were a few very strange ones, like "SpencerGulf Restaurant" which presumably owns KFC in Garema Place, and "MISS MICHELIN" which might have been Subway in the mall.  We did our food shopping, but all the butchers at the markets were closed and we didn't feel like going to Coles, so just made do with some frozen chicken kiev but that meant no leftover meat to do stirfry with.  Watched The Tale of the Princess Kaguya.  I enjoyed it for the most part, although the whole movie really echos her thoughts of "what's the point of my being here".  She starts off happy, has to go be a princess which she hates, can't go back home because everyone is gone (or is that a dream?), wants to go "home" to be miserable, rinse and repeat, and at the end you're like, if you're so miserable, why do you want to stay anyway?  I think I prefer the original story, although I only got a synopsis on Wikipedia, would have to read a translation of the whole thing.

David took Dad's old slide projector and screen home.  I figured after I scanned all Dad's slides I was *never* going to use a slide projector to project them.  So he can have it or give it to Peter Neve or whatever.   Edit: he took it home but forgot to take it out of his car, so it came back and it went home again on 16/1.

Monday.  Fourth day of the year.  We took this day off so we could ease back into work with a four day work week.  Plus we could go to Ikea on a weekday instead of a weekend.  Headed out around 10:30, and didn't get back home til 3pm.  hrmm.  First up we dropped a package off to be posted.  Then had Maccas fries for morning tea because I'd forgotten to eat before we left and I knew I'd need the energy.  First up shopping-wise we went to Ikea.  Stu wanted a rug for his study and a small lamp, and I also got some candles and a pot to plant a plant for Noah.  We also saw a bed frame that we thought would be acceptable. 

Then we headed for Canberra Outlet Centre.  We did a lap of the place, looking in all the places that sold beds.  We saw a couple of maybes.  But we did end up buying a mattress at Freedom. 

Had a late lunch at Mamak Lunch but it was actually after 2pm by now and we had no idea the serving sizes would be *enormous*.  So we got a doggy bag to bring some home in. 

Was feeling pretty blah after having been out all day, so asked the sweetie to cook dinner.  So he ordered pizza.  hrmmmm.  But we did go for a walk together after dinner.

Tuesday.  Fifth day of the year.  Back to work.  Although at home which helped ease back into things.  Did a roast lamb for dinner and tried out Dave 2's parmesan potatoes, but they didn't turn out as awesomely as I thought they would.

I also freaked out at how much food was in the fridge to be eaten.  I made up some meals and froze a few things and tried to sort it all out.  I also started labelling Eurasia 2012 photos.  This one is going to take *all year* to do...!

I have no notes for Wednesday, but will backdate this entry to then.