Kazza the Blank One

For my 50th birthday, Ian and Chris gave me a Surrender gift card for endota.  I didn't even realise they had a store in Belconnen, I thought it was only the city.  So that made it Too Hard for a while.  Then last year, well, the C-Word.  But recently I decided I really needed to use the voucher before it expired.  

I tried to book online, but their website refused to show any open time slots.  So one day after lunch recently I just went into the store and booked a session for a month or so out.

So Thursday I was booked for 13:45.  But they called me up in the morning to say one of their therapists was sick and they'd rearranged all their appointments and could I do 15:30? Sure ok. Edit: so after reading Google reviews it seems like this place does this A LOT!

Anyways, I turn up around 15:15 (they say to come in 15 minutes early to "relax" and fill out their forms).

The waiting room is lovely!  And the receptionist was lovely as well.

They want to know some basic medical history.  They also take a bunch of photos at all different wavelengths to assess your skin.

Then a lovely TINY lady took me back to one of their rooms so I could undress.

Then she came back to start the session (maybe 15:45?  dunno). She did ask if there was anything that she should focus on.  I said maybe my lower back, but otherwise I was content to mostly see what they'd do by default.

First up was a whole body massage.  Well mostly whole body.  She did my legs and feet first, then back and shoulders and upper arms, but strangely not my lower arms and hands.

When that was done I had to flip over and she did the facial.  Which was just applying lots of product (oils, creams, who knows) and rubbing some of them off, but leaving others on.  Annoyingly I got restless legs during this and it felt like it went for *ages*.  

I was all done at 17:00.

So the verdict?

Well I did enjoy the massage.  I'd probably get them to focus on my back/hands/feet if I was to go again.  I probably wouldn't do a facial again - I don't really like my eyes being touched.  

Oddly it left me feeling super *heavy*.  I had a shower before I went to bed, because I felt like I was covered in oil/product (I was!).  You'd think I would have slept well, and I did for some of the night, but I was also awake for like an hour and a half at one point.

So yeah.. it was an *experience* !!  Which I generally enjoyed!

Sunday.  21st.  We had leftovers from the club night for dinner.  Watched MacGyver then I watched the first half of Crazy, Stupid, Love.

Monday.  Slept okish maybe?? Tried to work through some of my todo list at work, as well as tried to do some decommissioning work, and I even managed to cobble together another report script. Stu cooked some yummy rissoles for dinner.

MacGyver then email/bill sorting, Lego stuff, etc. And I finished watching Crazy, Stupid, Love which a bit silly really.

Tuesday.  Slept okish maybe?? Another busy day, finishing off the script I started yesterday, and a lot of decom work. Did some of Vic's Lego stuff after work and suddenly it's 18:45 wtf?? Leftovers for dinner, MacGyver, more Lego stuff and generally feeling overwhelmed with life.

Wednesday.  Slept relatively well. Even convinced my body/brain to go back to sleep and not get up and pee at one point. Busy day. Stu cooked a nice cauliflower bake and brussels sprouts for dinner. Blogged some more blog entries in the evening.

Thursday.  Slept relatively well although I did relent and go pee at one point.  So much for training my body/brain. Distracted day at work. My work laptop caused me issues all morning so barely got any work done. Went and got a massage in the afternoon! oof!  Then back to work for drinks, and there may have been Mills & Grills for dinner.  

Friday.  Felt heavy all night.  Went to bed super early.  Should have been relaxed.  But awake for an hour and a half at one point.  Slept in a little though.  At work it was decommission day!  Deleting All The Things.  Also, dudes from Voltair came and installed a split system in the lounge room.  Took them most of the day with one or both of them working.

Kievs and gems for dinner and MacGyver.

Disney+ is trash.  Even though I was only using it this week, it logged me off, and whenever I tried to log in it'd just bounce me back out to the login page.  Hopeless.  So watched some AntiChef instead.

Saturday.  Okish sleep maybe??   Stu was SICK around midnight, no idea why. I slept in past 6:30. Busy morning of house stuff. Was doing some photo stuff when Stu decided to go out the back of Cotter Dam to look for a grebe. I thought I'd go too. Five hours later. Whoops. Got home and collapsed. Leftovers for dinner then we watched Train Dreams which was.. mostly sad. It was meant to cover like fifty years of time but they didn't do a great job of showing the passage of time, with only a couple of mentions about what year it was.  Nice movie though, and Stu enjoyed it.

Sunday.  Went to bed early, slept late. Awake for a while with upset bowels. Another day of house and photo stuff, with some food shopping thrown in as well.  Stu has put on some pea and ham soup for dinner, and I'm watching the ABC Classic Greatest of All Time concert recorded in Melbourne a week ago.

Oh the other annoying thing from the past week or so is that Actew are SLASHING our feedin rates.  It's dropping from 10c/kwh for the first 8kw per day down to 6c/kwh.  "Get solar" they said.  "It'll save you money" they said.  pffft.  It's all just a scam.  Next thing they'll actually be CHARGING to put electricity back into the grid.  How can that even be legal??? Stu said we should get another battery.  Except we haven't paid off the first one yet.  Plus on days like today not even one of them will charge...

Over the Queen's sorry King's Birthday long weekend ABC did their Classic 100 "Greatest of All Time".  Pretty much I just brought up previous year's votes and looked for which ones still on the list. eg "Music you can't live without" and "Feel Good".  Then just whittled it down to 10.

These were my "must haves" and their position.  Eight got up, the other two were in the "top 200" 

100 - Indiana Jones by John Williams #robbed!!
97 - Harry Potter by John Williams #robbed!!
72 - Jurassic Park (Original Film Soundtracks) by John Williams
46 - Finlandia, Op. 26 by Jean Sibelius
36 - Symphony No. 3 in C minor, Op. 78 'Organ' by Saint-Saëns
7 - Rhapsody in Blue by Gershwin, George
5 - Messiah (includes "Hallelujah Chorus") by Handel
1 - Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125 'Choral' (includes "Ode to Joy") by Beethoven

? - E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (Original Film Soundtrack) by John Williams
151 - Pomp & Circumstance Marches, Op. 39 by Edward Elgar

And these were my runner ups.  Quite a lot of them got up too.

79 - Fanfare for the Common Man by Aaron Copland
48 - Zadok the Priest by Handel
44 - Peer Gynt by Edvard Grieg
29 - 1812 Overture, Op. 49 by Tchaikovsky
28 - Symphony No. 5 in C minor, Op. 67 by Beethoven
27 - It's a Big Ad (Carmina Burana (includes "O Fortuna") by Carl Orff)
26 - Boléro by Maurice Ravel
24 - The Nutcracker, Op. 71 by Tchaikovsky
22 - Toccata and Fugue in D minor, by Bach
12 - Star Wars series (Original Film Soundtracks) by John Williams - they played both the Main Titles and the Imperial March!  I don't vote for this anymore because everyone else does and it gives me an extra vote for something else
3 - The Planets Op. 32 by Gustav Holst .. Mars totally sounds like Star Wars

Of the other four, one was in the top 200, the other three didn't place.

123 - Babe | Babe: Pig in the City (Original Film Soundtracks) by Nigel Westlake
Lyric Pieces, Op. 65 (includes "Wedding Day at Troldhaugen") by Edvard Grieg
Prince Of Denmark's March (Trumpet Voluntary) by Jeremiah Clarke
Star Trek (Original Film & Series Soundtracks), by Courage, Alexander & Various

And these were other things that were interesting

98 - West Side Story
74 - Chariots of Fire
71 - Blue Danube (didn't even think of this)
55 - Ring Cycle by Wagner (Ride of the Valkyries)
50 - Schindler's List by John Williams
42 - Pachelbel's Greatest Hit
13 - The Mission (Gabriel's Oboe)

200 - Picnic at Hanging Rock
163 - Brandenberg Concertos
162 - Dambusters
? - Hungarian Dances by Brahms
152 - Zorba the Greek
125 - The Lion King

I still think it was a crackup that someone posted the winner on their Instagram on the Saturday night.  Not that it was any surprise to anyone what the winning piece would be!

On our wedding anniversary (yeah two months ago.. whoops..) the sweetie took me to brunch at Café Luzon in Lyneham.

I had Eggs Benedikto - 2 poached eggs on pandesal, calamansi chives hollandaise, wilted spinach, crispy kale ($20).  With a hashbrown ($3).  This definitely had some south-east Asian vibes to it. Very nice although spinach always leaves a tacky feeling in my mouth a long time after.

The sweetie had Turon French Toast - grilled bread pudding, caramelised banana, langka mascarpone, salted butterscotch sauce, vanilla ice cream ($23).

And we were joined by our friend!

So I didn't go in to work for months last year (stoopid C word) so Neil saved up all the beer-of-the-weeks for me.  By the time I did go back to work I had like 16 or 18 beers or so stacked up.  So I collected the rest of the beers until the end of the year and it added up very nicely to 25 beers.  Which I proceeded to enjoy through December up until Christmas.  There's 26 there.  Shh.

For Christmas Annie gave me a pack of ten beers, so these tided me over into the new year.

And just for good measure.  @aquila and Glenda picked up this "Cheery Beers" pack from Bridge Road Brewers on their way home from Tassie last year.  So enjoyed that through January.

Fun times!!

I still have our SMWS whiskey advent calendar bottles from 2023 as well.  They're too cute to throw out!  Anyone want them?

14.6.26

We went to Avon Dam to see if Stu could find a rock warbler.  We didn't.

We did find some brown thornbills

And some grebes (very distant)

And this eastern yellow robin which was very cooperative for photos

The red-browed finches not so much

And definitely not this mistletoe bird

The white-throated tree creeper was only marginally better

So a couple of new birds which was cool for me.

For the longest time Avon Dam was closed due to work on the bridge over the spillway.  But it's been reopened and the sweetie wanted to stop there on the way home from Sydney to see if he could see a rock warbler. 

And I finally got to see the dam!

Annoyingly four guys in two Audis followed us most of the way along the road, and then followed us right to this carpark.  Like we're in the middle of fricken nowhere but there's still PEOPLE in our space.  We were not impressed.

Right after I took the photos above it start raining! wtf!

When it stopped we went to the other side of the dam.  Didn't find any rock warblers though.

Then we headed up to the upper car park.  The sweetie went looking for birds.  I went to see the spillway.

Via flowers.

So this is the bridge.

Super annoyingly they've fenced the bridge so you can't get a good view of the spillway because of the 1-inch-holed fence.

So I had to try and get photos on the phone

Back up the top.  Apparently this is a water tank.  

It threatened to rain again..

We saw some birds.  And mushrooms.

And more flowers.

Eventually we headed for home.

Just for fun... here's some photos Dad took of Avon Dam in 1963!!

The cool rock strata was a lot cleaner!

Mind. Blown.  Look at that beautiful smooth dam wall!  Apparently they shoved a bunch of extra rock in front of it in 1971.

No fancy breaking of the water flow back in 1963

And look at that bridge - so easy to get photos from it back in the day!!

After Mum's party the other weekend we headed into the city to see Vivid.

Except not quite.

A month or so ago David asked if we'd be interested on going on a harbour cruise on the night of Mum's party.  At the time it sounded like a great idea so I said yes.  For some reason I thought it was going to be on the Friday night, so was a little worried when I realised it would be the Saturday that we'd all be too tired to feel like going out afterwards, but he'd already asked Mum if she'd be interested in going out, and she was, so ok.  Then Stu got sick.  Then I got sick.  But we still had weeks to go, we should be fine, right.  Hint: we weren't.  So neither of us really felt like a long day and night.  But the other catch was, it was going to be a surprise for Mum and Kellie that we were going to take the cruise.  They thought we'd just be going to see Vivid.

So early evening D/K/S took Stu with them by car into the city so they could check into their hotel.  Mum and I took the train.  The roads were epic chaos.  The train was crowded and noisy.  So that was fun for all involved.  Took about the same amount of time to get to our meeting spot.

Then we wandered down to Darling Harbour.  Through the crowds.

Had a very slow wander north.

The walk to King Street Wharf was agonisingly slow.  Did I mention the crowds?  They said to be at the wharf by 19:10.  We made it by about 19:15.  It was only at this point that Mum and Kellie realised what was up.  Except we then had to stand there for like 25 minutes because they were running late. 

They were meant to leave at 19:30 but it was more like 19:45.  Any excuse for fifteen minutes less serving drinks I guess.  Yeah it was "all you can drink" (to RSA).  Except.  They crammed the boat full of people, and while there were bars on every level, it was still like a fifteen minute wait to get drinks.  I waited right at the beginning and luckily they gave me two because it would have been pretty annoying otherwise.  Noone else bothered. 

The sweetie wanted a seat.  David wanted an outdoor spot.  So we found an outdoor spot in the corner.  I went and queued for my drinks.  Stu tried to find somewhere to sit.  He eventually found somewhere but he said it smelt of vomit.  Hurrah.  While I was queuing for drinks we departed, and they cranked the music.  Luckily I carry around ear plugs with me whereever I go now (after the Dark Matter in the Pub debacle) so I survived.  Sculled my two small wines and then set about taking photos (I did go back for another drink later, it was more like a ten minute wait, but they would only give me one that time).

So the view was great, but it really wasn't what any of us were expecting.  I was expecting the boat to be more like what it was when it was a Captain Cook Cruises boat.. like this..

(John Wilson, shipspotting.com)

I thought we'd just get to sit around up top.  Yeah nah.

We probably would have been better off just taking a regular ferry (like we did last time).  

Still, after a couple of wines and using earplugs, I had a bit of fun. 

So then headed for home, having not really seen much of Vivid itself.  Oh well.

Last weekend was Mum's 80th birthday party.  I got there a bit early but so did other people which made things stressful beause we had a lot to do (mainly I wanted to get some nice portrait photos of Mum, but that didn't really work very well, because, stressed).  Oh well.

The village setup the room really nicely.  

We had a slideshow going on that TV.  There was over 2000 photos on shuffle so that was a bit of fun.

Pretty flowers

I thought it might be nice to get photos of people as they arrived because that would probably make for better photos than at the tables with more clutter in the background.

Lunch was roast lamb and veggies

With profiteroles for dessert

I had hot chocolate which was quite nice

Next up we had a "trivia" round with twenty questions about Mum which Ken's table won with 19 out of 20.

Then it was time to cut the cake!

Someone gave Mum an orchid which was very pretty.

All in all the day went really well and Mum had a wonderful time.

Since Quest Cronulla Beach was so hot, I didn't sleep very well, which meant I was up in time to go watch the sunrise.

I was expecting a few joggers/dog walkers to be out and about.  But no, at 7:00 the place was PACKED.  It was really crowded!  

It was a pretty nice sunrise though.

Then around 7:40 the clouds rolled in, going from glorious sunshine to eerie clouds!