Kazza the Blank One

Sunday.  28th.  Cooked up an epic lamb roast ($22/kg from Tathra Place in the markets) and veggies for dinner, then watched The Big Year (which some random dude on our holiday told us about).  It was a bit "serious" for all the comedic actors in it, but kinda cool.

Monday.  Slept relatively ok I think, for a change.  Spent much of the day geotagging holiday photos.  Stu also pulled out all the bedroom furniture to vacuum nearly 18 years worth of dust behind stuff...

Had some of Lily's Youfoodz for dinner.

Watched Professor T 1.5 together then I watched Taxi Driver which I've never actually seen.

Tuesday.  Took ages to get to sleep, epic restless.  Finished geotagging holiday photos.

In the afternoon we went to Palmerville for a walk and to do some birdwatching.  This Bell 206L-1 (VH-OAS) chopper had been buzzing around Canberra all day, Evoenergy checking powerlines.  

I hadn't walked along the new pathway yet

Such a fun shot..

Finished off Lily's Youfoodz dinners and the last of the salad

Then watched Professor T 1.6 together (end of season one) then I watched a doco on the Titanic - Titanic: Digital Resurrection.  Considering the effort they went to to digitise the ship, the computer graphics they also used were pretty cheesy.  Interesting though.

Wednesday.  April Fools!  Slept okish, only awake for an hour or two around 3.  Back to work.  Yeup definitely an April Fool.  Spent most of the day catching up on chats and emails.  

The sweetie cooked up a heap of veggies and I fried up some lamb, then we watched Professor T 2.1.

You can tell the sweetie was cooking - the potatoes are all lined up nicely ;)

Then spent the rest of the evening putting up reviews of all the places we stayed on our holiday in booking.com.

Thursday.  Took ages to get to sleep.  Mostly still catching up on crap at work.  Had a gin night at drinks but hardly anyone else turned up.  Sad times. 

Bus home (trying to save petrol) then made pizzas for dinner and watched Professor T 2.2.

Friday.  Good Friday.  Although not so good for Jesus back in the day.  Slept mostly ok.  Didn't get much done all day sigh.  Pretty much a nothing day.  We did go for another walk in the afternoon to Palmerville to try out Stu's new toy (all the bird pics I'll put in another post one day).

Kievs for dinner then Professor T 2.3.  I then watched "Challenger Disaster: Lost Tapes" from 2015, which was mostly footage around Christa McAuliffe.. (as an aside, I didn't know that her backup, Barbara Morgan, later went on to be a full-blown astronaut in her own right.. cool!).  Eerily, the peeps that are on their way to the moon right now used booster rockets from the shuttle programme.. that wouldn't be freaky .. at. all.   .. !!)

Saturday.  Only awake for an hour or two around midnight.  Spent literally the entire morning doing housework.  Sigh.  Went out with EB to have a look at the new road around the north/east side of the airport which was pretty cool, had a good long drive around the area, then went in to Quangers for lunch at the Royal Hotel (had a very nice caesar salad).

Air traffic control tower at Canberra Airport

Did you know they're closing down the air traffic control tower at Canberra Airport and replacing it with cameras done with remote control..?  What could possibly go wrong?

Swing bridge in Queanbeyan

Caesar salad at the Royal Hotel in Queanbeyan

It's such a shame they haven't setup any sort of dedicated planespotting area with all the new works

Stu cooked a tuna bake and veggies for dinner then we watched Professor T 2.4.  I then watched Lantana which I'd never seen before.  Lots of unlikeable characters behaving badly.  Hurrah.

Easter Sunday.  He is risen!  Slept mostly okish I think.  Woke up 6am!  But 5am in reality. Sigh. Didn't achieve really anything all day.  Stu took Stumpy outside for a walk.

In the afternoon we went over to Annie's for afternoon tea and catchup with the family.  Pebbles wasn't being *quite* the scardey cat...

Leftovers for dinner.  The just-past full moon was rising and it was like, hey there's four peeps in between me and that bright shiny thing!  Pretty cool!  Then watched Molly's Game, which I'd seen on a plane but Stu hadn't seen.  

Monday.  Slept mostly okish.  Got a bunch of Europe 2016 photo stuff done, and a heap of jigsaw.  Stu has cooked up a bunch of veggies to have with some leftover lamb for dinner.

So this is where we went last month (this month).  Don't mind that little gap between Renmark and Balranalad, my external battery ran out and took out the GPS with it.  Stu has promised to send me the track from his radio at some point.

Moving on.

Day one was Canberra to Melbourne, just a driving day.  Had the weekend in Melbourne and went out to Cape Schanck.

Then to Warrnambool for a couple of nights.

Then to Mount Gambier for four nights.

Then to Victor Harbour for two nights

Then to Kangaroo Island!!  That little bottleneck of Hog Bay Road we did up and down 12 times! (six each way)

Back to the mainland, we stayed in Goolwa for two nights to explore Lake Alexandrina and surrounds

Then onto Adelaide for a week

This is all of South Australia

On the way out of Adelaide Google Maps had a brain hemorrage and sent us all around Adelaide but not out of it.  We started in Glenelg and *should* have just gone up the Anzac Highway and then north.  But instead it sent us around the airport (ok) but then SOUTH when we wanted to go north.  It was only when we stopped for petrol near Edwardstown that it finally got the hint and realised we wanted to go north.

So this is the route we took (starting in Glenelg)

Let's not even mention how it told us to turn RIGHT (south) here in peak hour.. it took us like five minutes to do this..

Apple Maps would have sent us up the Anzac Highway and then north.  No idea why Google couldn't figure this out..

But we made it.. hurrah!!

Thursday.  26th.  Got home from our holidays around 17:00ish.  I started the download of photos from the Canon and my phone and also the GPS and blogged the last couple of days of the holiday.  The sweetie ordered pizzas and we watched Professor T 1.2.

Friday.  Awake from 3:40 hurrah. Did some unpacking and house stuff. Went outside to check on my plants and was horrified to discover my chrysanthemum is dead. Sigh. It'd obviously had some issues previously, but when I got to it it was bone dry and all the green leaves (and little flower buds) had dried out.  I chucked it under the awing to get a good soaking and I'm just HOPING that there'll be something left alive in it to send out some new shoots.

Not so problematic..

Apparently we had a lot of rain...

Everything else was fine though, thanks Tony.  Didn't stop me being zombie tired *and* depressed though.

Got some stuff done but not nearly as much as I wanted to. I did get some pretty amazing support out of Region media though. Their RSS feed stopped working at the end of February (which I didn't notice because we were travelling and I wasn't really keeping up with most of my feeds). Looks like they were blocking automated clients - it still worked in a browser. Anyways I took a punt on their support address and emailed them, and shortly afterwards got a mail back saying they'd fixed it. .. !! .. And sure enough they had! I was impressed :) Kievs for dinner then Professor T 1.3.

Saturday.  So had an earlyish night and thought I got to sleep ok, but then woke up at 4:11 for a couple of hours. Sigh. So an hour late starting my day. Not as zombie tired though so that was useful - was able to process (rotate and rename) all my Canon photos from the holiday and back them up. Also started going through receipts/statements to figure out how much the holiday cost. Hint: it was a lot. We spent over $800 on petrol! Eeep! In the afternoon we went over to Annie's for a while which was nice. And brought home seven tv dinners that Lily had bought by mistake and couldn't eat (and no one else wanted).

Had said tv dinners for dinner (they were tasty!) and watched Professor T 1.4.

Then I watched Elio which was a bit of fun, but really just a fun kids movie. "Your disk is muted" haha.  Also watched a video Dave2 linked to about how Pixar is so fundamentally different now.

Sunday.  Bed normal time, awake for chunks of the night sigh. So I was fairly tired although not completely zombie tired. Ploughed through some of the todo list, and finished sorting holiday finances. 43% went on accommodation, 19% on food and drink, 10% on booze, 9% on petrol, 6% on transport (mostly the ferry to Kangaroo Island), 4% on entrance costs to things, and little bits on donations, tips, fees, laundry, parking and some I counted as gifts (for Tony as well as taking peeps out for dinner/drinks).

Sunday.  22nd.  Cooked up a veggie bake by the look of it (I think it was cabbage).  Then we may have watched The Simpsons, can't remember.

Monday.  Awake from 2:00 for hours hurray.

This could be problematic...

Did the builds and testing for migrating some stuff off the old load balancers. Cooked up a bunch of stuff that needed using up in the fridge for dinner.

Tuesday.  Slept mostly okish.

Spent a bunch of time renaming URL categories to make things a bit easier to visualise and manage. Had Tony over for dinner and him and Stu talked about electronics and radio stuffs. Also watched episode 9 of Inside Central Station.

Wednesday.  Awake from 4:00 hurray. Stoopidly crazy busy day. Realised the act of renaming a URL category on our firewalls will in fact cause a brief outage as it takes off the old one and then puts on the new one.  Lame AF.  Kievs and potato and fries for dinner.

Stu put on a new series - Professor T, which was like Ben Miller playing almost the same character as from Death in Paradise but in Cambridge. Frantic evening trying to get photos sorted and onto my phone. The problem is because I have 65000 photos on my phone, whenever you add or remove an album it then takes five minutes to refresh the view. So in the end I lumped stuff together in big albums, which makes it much much harder to find photos later. Going to have to rely on map view. Which will be hard in Adelaide when I already have photos there.

Thursday.  Awake from like 2 til at least 4:30. Hurray. Stoopidly crazy busy day. Super busy drinks which was good. They advertised a free sausage sizzle and had some training and out-of-towners in town so it all went really well. I even managed to convince some of our team to come up (my "farewell" drinks haha). Pizzas for dinner then Simpsons then tried to do a bit of organising and packing but I was just too zombie tired to really get much done efficiently.

Friday.  Slept relatively well considering I'd had a couple of drinks and it was a travel day. Must be all those nights of insomnia catching up with me. Didn't even pee! It did mean I put on nearly a kilo overnight though sigh.  Finished packing and we headed off on a month long holiday!!!  (under my Australian Holidays link if you want to read the text, pics will be a long time coming).

Sunday.  15th.  Leftover Peking duck for dinner (Stu had the last of the Turkish) then MacGyver. I tried to watch the end of Airport on my computer but my computer wouldn't read the disc.. probably stoopid Macrovision trash. What's the point of trash like that if it PREVENTS LEGITIMATE USERS WATCHING YOUR MEDIA!?!?!? Edit: a quick Google suggests Windows 11 removed the ability to play Macrovision DVDs.. yet another reason why Windows 11 is a piece of trash. Although I'm not convinced that's the full story - the player won't even recognise the disc and kind of just "clicks of death" with it. Sigh. Anyway so had to finish watching it on the DVD player (which very nicely remembered where we were up to even though it had been turned on and off a couple of time and had MacGyver DVDs in there in between).

Monday.  Awake from 4am til like 5:30am then had some convoluted dream about catching buses around Jannali with a heap of crap and running late for work. Another thing that pisses me off about Windows 11.. if I have too many windows open and the tray fills up, it'll hide some tray items. But not just the ones off the end, an entire application's worth. So my task bar is literally 2/5ths blank. How is this in any way useful for people??? Felt like I didn't achieve much all day, just lots of fluff and waiting for people to answer my questions. Leftovers for dinner then MacGyver and achieved pretty much nothing with my evening. Although I did watch Dad's funeral slide show (which was 12 years ago yesterday) and tried to get the timing working properly in LibreOffice.

Tuesday.  Slept mostly okish. Spent much of the day working on the last of the migrations to new load balancers. We cooked a slow cooker pork neck and a bunch of veggies for dinner. Delicious!

MacGyver then spent entirely too much time geotagging Mum's photos of South Australia in 1969.  I didn't find the location of the Beachport YHA that Mum and Marita stayed at, but a couple of days later I found it literally right there in my Google image search - it's the former Harbour Master's house and is now an AirBnB.

Wednesday.  Slept mostly okish. Disjointed morning but got stuck into some new proxy crap in the afternoon.

Carnage...

Causer of said carnage...

The sweetie cooked up some creamy mushroom chicken for dinner which was very nice. MacGyver then achieved very little.

Thursday.  Lights out 22:00. Sleep maybe 01:00 or 02:00. Sigh. Zombie day. Went through a URL block list to see what still needed to be blocked. Pretty good drinks. Someone else tried to take over our table but we pushed back haha. Made pizzas for dinner (pepperoni and feta, tomato and blue cheese, and mushroom, olive and capers).

Then tried to watch MacGyver but my old $50 DVD/BluRay player decided it didn't want to play. The first time it came up with audio but no video. Then it wouldn't power off. Then no audio or video at all. So now we have nothing in the house that will play blurays. Watched some Simpsons instead.

Friday.  I shouldn't look at things. When I look at things I find problems that I want to fix. So I spent much of the day checking doco on a bunch of URL categories and coming up with a plan to tidy them up. Went and had drinks with T/J which was nice.  Definitely a lovely way to spend a Friday evening after work. Kievs for dinner then I watched Freakier Friday set 22 years after the previous one. That was a bit of fun but more confusing because four of them swapped around making it harder to remember who was who.

Saturday.  Awake from 3:00 hurray.

I caught this little guy Friday night and evicted it Saturday morning.  So fricken cute!

Day of housework and Lego filing but did also do some music practise. Stu was out at the club most of the day so he was exhausted when he got home and it was a Dumpling Inn delivery kind of a night.

Then we watched Saving Mr Banks which I'd seen in 2022 but Stu hadn't seen.

Sunday.  Awake from 4:00 hurray. Lenovo wants to install a bios update. Windoze wants to spend 20 minutes to an hour doing a "bigger than normal" update. hrmmmm. I let Windows do the update later in the morning, it took maybe 3/4 hour. Otherwise just lots of getting organised with life. Even did some Europe 2016 panoramas.  This week both Windoze *and* Chrome have forgotten my folder settings.  Sigh.

Sunday.  8th.  John Williams' birthday.  I really must remember that.  Not that he's likely to have many left.. he's fricken 94!!!!  Stu cooked up some chicken with mushroom sauce and some greens which was very yummy. Then we watched the old school Disney version of Peter Pan.

Monday.  Early night. Interrupted by the mother type person calling. Then I was restless. And awake from 5. Hurrah. Some tickets and crap in the morning and spent most of the afternoon writing up more stuff to decommission. Stu cooked some pork and fennel sausages with cabbage for dinner (the sausages were a bit dry unfortunately), then we watched the last episode of season 2 of MacGyver.

Tuesday.  Okish sleep I think. Busy day I think. Stu cooked some yummy creamy lemon chicken for dinner then into season 3 of MacGyver.

Wednesday.  Took ages to get to sleep - epic restless legs.

Super busy day - barely any time for jigsaw breaks! Stu cooked a cauliflower bake and goats cheese stuffed mushrooms which were very yummy.

Thursday.  Woke up around midnight cause my guts were upset for some unknown reason. Then stayed awake for a couple of hours waiting for things to settle. Sigh.

Busy day deleting All The Things.  Good drinks - lots of people.  Pizzas for dinner.  Not quite a repeat of the last two weeks as we were out of mushrooms.  There's pepperoni and feta, olive and capers, and tomato and spring onion.

Then MacGyver then started watching Airport to keep us awake til Kit and Pete got here (they'd come up for a comedy cruise and thought they'd play tourist here for a couple of days).

Friday the 13th.  Slept okish I think. Busy day of decoms and tickets and crap. Chilled out with Kit and Pete after work and got Turkish delivered from Lokma (the same place Mishi did last weekend).

Chatted for a while then watched an episode of Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency which was.. bizarre haha.

Saturday.  Happy Valentine's Day.. remembered various anniversaries of my family that can't really be celebrated anymore. 

Mostly awake from 3 and fully awake from 5 sigh. Zombie morning. Kit and Pete wandered off for much of the day and I did mostly Lego stuff (and some dotz!!!).

Also made up breakfasts for the week.

Trigger warning for Tony!  Found her in the recycling green bin.

Kit and Pete brought home some Luv-a-Duck peking duck for dinner which was awesome.

Later we played a game of Ticket to Ride (Europe) which I won, but it was actually really close and one move either way would have changed the outcome.

Sunday.  Slept slightly better. Did some dotz in the morning. Went with Kit and Pete to the Old Bus Depot Markets which I've never actually been to before! It was very uncrowded, and apparently a shadow of its former self. 

Then dropped into Canberra Glassworks which I've also never been to.

Anyone know what this is?  Google image search suggests either an epic insulator (seems unlikley) or an air raid siren...  Edit:  another search indicates it was in fact an air-raid siren!

Kit and Pete wandered off home and I did some food shopping on the way home. Then tried to get KFC for lunch but the lazy or hard of hearing server mistook "large Pepsi Max" for "large chips" (which I annoyingly didn't pick up on), and then completely ignored me when I asked for a receipt. And the girl getting the chicken dropped a piece onto the floor because she was being careless. Hopeless. Talked to the mother for a while in the afternoon and then my weekend is over. hrmmm.

And Windows is STILL forgetting my photo in tray folder settings. Windows 11 is seriously BAD!!!

Sunday.  1st February.  How'd it get to be February already?  Had an epic roast pork for dinner. The crackling turned out really well and the meat was pretty good too. Then MacGyver.

Monday.  Went to bed fairly early. Didn't get to sleep for hours (restless legs). Woke up for a bit around 4 because of the epic wind. Then woke up again at 5 because that's what I do. Busy day doing tickets and crap. Stu made a tuna mornay for dinner (onion fried in butter, steamed asparagus (I would have skipped the steaming part as it would have cooked later), tinned tuna, cream, mustard powder and cheese, finished in the oven for 20 minutes).. it was delicious! MacGyver.

Tuesday.  Took ages to get to sleep again and then restless. Busy day doing tickets and crap. Stu made cabbage with soft boiled eggs which was nice enough. MacGyver.

Wednesday.  Slept relatively well. In fact I "slept in" which was a bit annoying because I had to leave early to take the car in for service, and waking up a bit earlier would have given me a bit extra time. Gerald Slaven have changed their drop off procedure. You used to be able to just park in the car park and drop the key in at the office. Now you have to queue up in the parking lot. One at a time you go into the garage and they sort you out and take your key, then you can go and then they park the car before taking the next car. Seems pretty inefficient. hrmmm. Busy day doing tickets and crap. And cleaning up messes cause I can't help myself. Leftover pork and salad for dinner.

Thursday.  Busy day doing tickets and crap. Went to Bar 59 for drinks as Neil was off getting his knees manipulated.

I thought the lens flare on this photo of a cockatoo outside the Labor Club was pretty cool..

Pizzas for dinner then watched Hook, which I haven't seen in probably 25-30 years.

Repeat of last week's pepperoni, olive and capers, and mushroom pizzas

OMFG there was a mouse in the house!!!!! First time we've seen a mouse in here since when we first moved in. Even during the mouse plague of a few years ago we didn't see any.  Don't know what's changed.  Maybe they were desperate to find water after all the weeks of no substantial rain.

Friday.  Meh sleep.

My work desktop wouldn't render on my left screen after my last reboot.  hrmmmm.

Busy day doing tickets and crap.

This was funny..  Yup, we had chokos! Was never really a fan.  We also had corned beef and white sauce (I didn't like it - I thought it was too salty); ham steaks (not actually spam) but floured and fried which I actually liked; devon - not really a fan, even now I'm not a big ham eater; steak and kidney, yeup Mum used to do that, really didn't like it; rissoles, well how could you not!  Fun stuff.

Saturday.  Spent much of the morning sorting Lego. Mid afternoon we headed over to Mishi's for a games afternoon/evening. Best I can tell, this is the first time since 2016 we'd been over!!!!!  I knew we hadn't been since pre-covid but what the hell?!? Chatted for a while in the lounge room, then chatted for a while around the table, then played a game of Ticket to Ride (Asia expansion), which was a bit confusing to begin with but we eventually got the hang of it.  I came second or third (out of five).

There was Turkish delivery for dinner then we played a game of regular Fluxx then a game of Pirate Fluxx. The first game was one of the most complicated games of Fluxx I've ever played, with some rules that made for a lot of confusion (eg inflation).

Sunday.  

It rained overnight!!!!

Out of sorts all day (maybe feeling like I lost a quarter of my weekend, and just generally feeling overwhelmed). Food shopping after lunch.  Stu is cooking some chicken and mushrooms for dinner..

Sunday.  25th.  Stoopidly hot day.  I should have taken some screenshots when it got even hotter later in the week..

So we turned the oven on and cooked a cauliflower bake and other veggies. As you do. Then watched Kangaroo Island (2024 movie).

Monday.  Nice quiet day. With an epic lunch at the Burns Club Star Buffet with David and Kellie (they'd come up for the drone show). Whoops.  

I started to feel full about half way through this

And by this point I was feeling like Mr Creosote but still had dessert to get through..  They totally should have After-Dinner-Mints because that would just be funny.

No dinner required so Stu got himself a pizza. Then we watched Inside Job, a documentary on the 2008 GFC.  Made in 2010 yet we still hadn't seen it.

Tuesday.  Went to bed nice and early (while the first drone show was on that I missed out on on account of it was all too hard and I wanted to go to sleep), but awake from 4:11. Mostly finished up the AD rules I've been working on for months, then started in earnest on a cleanup of some desktop objects. My headset dropped out right in the middle of a meeting which was annoying.  Stu cooked some little school whiting with Japanese cucumber salad for dinner, then we put on some MacGyver, which we haven't watched since 2019.

Wednesday.  Slept okish. More work on the desktop and ldap rules. Stoopidly hot - like 42. And the building aircon didn't work half the morning. #grunt. 

Had lunch at Rashays for the first time since their $5 lunch specials in 2019. 

Rashay's Schnitty and Chips weekday lunch special with creamy mushroom sauce $16.95

Nearly killed Neil giving him a lift home.. eep!!!!! Mince and salad for dinner then MacGyver.  My headset seems to have a dicky connection - if you hold the mute/volume button cables in the middle just right you can get audio, otherwise nothing.  Annoying.

Thursday.  Took hours to get to sleep and restless half the night. Sigh. Probably the weather - way too hot even with the cooler going. LDAP rules and testing for a change. Good drinks. Made three pizzas for dinner - a pepperoni and feta, an olive and capers and a mushroom.  Then MacGyver.

Stu got out his epic mouse mat in the last week or so and put out some of his ships..

Friday.  Slept okish til about 5:15. Spent pretty much all day doing a huge cleanup of objects for our desktops. It was crazy. Five different firewalls and dozens of objects on each. Mental. Stu lent/gave me another headset but it's very heavy. Kievs for dinner then MacGyver.

Saturday.  Hot and restless. So not great sleep. Fairly quiet day. Did go out to drop off a baking dish to Annie and do our food shopping. Like mad dogs or Englishmen.

And with all that new fresh food in the house we got Chong Co for dinner. hrmmm.

Then watched The Boy and the Heron which was.. weird.. even for Ghibli standards. It was stoopid hot today, even with the cooler going hard it's still hot in the house. Well ok 24.4, but that's hot for me!!

Sunday.  Slept relatively well considering the heat. Another quiet day of fish and photo stuff and not having time for music because I spent most of the afternoon cooking keto breakfasts for the next week. hrmm.  Oh, that's the first use of a Coles baking dish I got for free a few years ago, but pressed into service after I cracked our last baking dish putting a frozen turkey roll into a hot oven..

Sunday.  18th.  Stu spent all afternoon prepping veggies for a spectacular tagine.

Only problem is our tagine is quite small so nothing fitted and he ended up having to resort to saucepans. We had Jenn over for dinner and we all enjoyed it.

Monday.  Slept okish. Paperwork for changes and changes. Stu cooked up the mince I cooked on Sunday with some tomatoey goodness and we had that with salad. Beyond Paradise 3.5.

Tuesday.  Slept okish.

We tried out Oishii Go at lunch.  It was *ok* but the takoyaki didn't have much octopus and both of them were cold, which is really not the way to eat takoyaki or tempura.

Cleaning and changes. They think I broke something, but I'm not so sure, and in the middle of it other stuff broke that I was worried would be me but it wasn't. Stressful afternoon so may have had a beer after work. Stu cooked up some leftover Christmas party sausages, with salad for me and sauerkraut for him. Beyond Paradise 3.6 - end of season 3.

There was supposed to be auroras.

There wasn't.

Not that me or my camera could see anyway.

I did get a hand-held shot of the Southern Cross though

Wednesday.  Slightly late night aurora hunting but then woke up early. Plodding my way through DC rules. Leftovers for dinner then watched part 1 of the Last Night at the Proms from 1984.

Thursday.  Um. Busy day not achieving much. Went to Yat Bun Tong with Neil and XL - first time since 2019!

Dry fried chilli beef $21.80

Steamed combination buns $17.80 and Pan fried pork dumpling $15.80

Nice drinks. Made a pepperoni pizza and a cheeseburger pizza for dinner. Watched the 2025 Beyond Paradise Christmas special.

Our usual pepperoni and feta pizza above, and a cheeseburger pizza below - tomatoey mince, pickles, and special sauce at the end

Friday.  Another busy day not achieving much.

Tried the crispy chicken El Maco at lunch which was quite tasty but a little messy

Got lots done at work between 4 and 6 though when the interruptions stopped. Stu cooked up some couscous and leftover tagine for dinner and we watched Ready Player One.

Saturday.  Headed out to the club fairly early for the committee meeting.

I did some cabinetry priming (pretty much done now), a bit of tidying and vacuuming, some tapestry, and just tried to not feel too miserable in the heat.  Oh and listened to ABC Classic FM's 50th birthday celebrations all day which was a bit of fun because they mostly played "popular" music.. ie.. crap I'd actually heard of.. so that was good.

At happy hour we went up and got in the pool for a couple of hours which was lovely. Dinner was pretty spectacular and then Chris's trivia which was actually quite reasonable this time.

Had another swim before bed (which was a bit late).

Orion as seen from the club (handheld on the Canon - 24mm, f/4, 0.8 sec, ISO 25600)

Sunday.  Woke up at 6:00. Because that's what I do.

Stu rescued this enormous longhorn beetle from the bathroom

Went up to the shed and did some washing up and tidying then we came home. Fairly quiet day doing some holiday thinking and photo stuff.

Last week Neil and I went to try out Zhang Liang Malatang hotpot.  I haven't been to the other malatang place in the food court since before covid.  But this was new so we thought we'd give it a go.  

Much like the food court malatang, this has a big fridge full of all sorts of goodies.  There's instructions above the fridge as to what to do.

The big difference between this and the food court is the choice of sauces.  The food court has four choices.  This has ten!!  Much better range.

Here's my bowl.  I did grab a few different "balls" of things and that sausage, but next time I'd probably just stick to the sliced meats.  It weighed 354g all up.  At $4.20 per hundred grams that added up to $14.87.  

I went with the sichuan pepper dry mix (one chilli), and added a great gob of garlic and sesame sauce. 

It was delicious!  The sichuan pepper doesn't start off seeming very spicy but it sure does build up over the course of the meal and my mouth was very warm by the end of it!

I'd definitely go there again during school holidays.