Kazza the Blank One

Sunday.  12th.  Stu cooked a nice cauliflower bake (blue cheese!) and brussels sprouts for dinner. MacGyver and watching crap on the internet.

Monday.  Slept mostly okish. Spent much of the morning testing and capturing traffic to figure out why Microsoft is rejecting some of our mails. Crap in the afternoon. Frozen stuff for dinner - chicken fillets, gems and peas/corn/capsicum (Stu had had a day).

MacGyver, photo labelling, YouTube, then remembered there's a new season of Lego Masters I need to start watching.

Tuesday.  Slept mostly okish. Bit of crap and cleaning and lots of tidying up and fixing dashboards. Damned entropy. Stu cooked up some leftover beef with some cabbage for dinner.

MacGyver, finished labelling the day index photos for our South Coast trip, and watched the second episode of Lego Masters (season 8).

Wednesday.  Slept mostly okish. Tried to get more done fixing dashboards, but it was mostly just crap all day.

Went to BZ Burgers with Neil at lunch - we hadn't been there since 2024.  I had "K-Pop" - House slaw, Fried Chicken coated in our house made Korean BBQ sauce, seasame seeds, Kewpie mayo and Fried Noodles ($20).  The batter was actually a little bland by itself, but as a burger it was quite nice.

As we were finishing up there was a fire evacuation, with fire engines and everything!

Stu cooked a very nice creamy pasta and mushrooms for dinner then I just backed up my computer. Which took all night. hmmm.

Thursday.  Slept mostly okish. Mostly crap all day. Had five out of six of my bosses at drinks which was pretty funny.  Even managed to get a photo with all of them in one shot!  Had a few sausages at drinks for dinner so I only had a small piece of each of Stu's pizzas. Watched another of Kenton Reeder's twitcher videos - in Peru!

Friday.  Awake for a few chunks of the night. Mostly fixing up dashboards for the day. OMFG Microsoft is so trash.  They're rejecting some quite specific emails blaming bad DKIM, but I can't tell what's wrong with them and THEY LITERALLY REFUSE TO TELL US WHY THEY'RE BLOCKING THEM.  I hate Microsoft SO MUCH!!!!  Kievs for dinner, Black Mirror, then I watched Life is Beautiful which I've not seen before. I almost gave up during the first half because it was so silly (and almost impossible to watch the screen because they talk so fast and had to try and keep up with the subtitles), but the second half was somewhat better, if overly sanitised.

Saturday.  Okish sleep but awake fairly early with sore pelvis/spine. I was also wondering (while not sleeping) if the kid in Life is Beautiful was the same kid in Gladiator.  Turns out I was right!  Those black eyes..!!  Went out in the morning to the Watson ponds to do some birdwatching, then did some food shopping in Ainslie.

This Virgin 737-800 Max (VH-8IB) was on its way from Melbourne to Nadi in Fiji

Then just doing house/photo/hobby stuff. Finished all the labelling for our South Coast trip.  Leftovers for dinner then we watched Noah which was utterly preposterous. I'm surprised it got as high as 5.8 on IMDB. Also WTF... IMDB is owned by Amazon? No wonder it's gotten so trash lately (like forcing you to login to read other user reviews, which I certainly won't ever do). Looks like IMDB's days are numbered. How long before it becomes so enshittified it becomes useless?

Sunday.  Breakfast at The Scottish Restaurant (man, whenever I say that I think of Paul.. wonder if he even still reads this.. hi!!) then birdwatching at Mulligans Flat.  Supposed to be a quickish trip.  We were there for three hours (out for four).  Whoops.

Saw this on the way home which was hilarious

Got home then it was a late lunch, filing some Lego and processing photos, and suddenly the weekend is over... hrmmmmmm

Oh also.. this is literally the only time in my life all my nails have been this long at once!!  The ones on my left hand have all been longer together, but not the right.  Right after I took this I had to go cut my left thumbnail which has been cracked below the skinline since Thursday...

On Wednesday Neil and I went to see Disclosure Day.

I knew nothing about it, other than it was about aliens, was directed by Steven Spielberg and had music by John Williams.

Also I had Dendy vouchers we won a trivia night last year that needed using up.

It was ..

interesting..

Not sure what I was expecting.

I mean it was ok and all. 

Emily Blunt's character was most interesting.  And they could have done more with Josh O'Connor's character.

There was no big bold John Williams themes, so most of the music sounded a bit like other things (eg Star Wars).  

So yeah.. interesting.. but possibly a bit long.

Sunday.  5th.  I went through the booze cabinet the other day and identified a few bottles of stuff we really just need to get rid of because they've been up the back for literally years (probably at least since I moved from Sydney).  One was a bottle of sour apple schnapps.  So I made my own cocktail out of it - sour apple schnapps, vodka, topped up with apple juice, and a dash of lemon juice because it was too sweet otherwise.

Rump cap for dinner.  I slow cooked it (2kg, 2 hours at 140C), but even that was too much and it was a bit overcooked.  I also cut it badly so it definitely wasn't as nice as it could have been.  Sigh.

After this I tried to cut it in a different direction...

There was also broccolini we roasted with lemon juice, butter and parmesan, and some swedes which Stu fried.

MacGyver aka Indiana Jones (they literally even reference Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade which came out that same year!).  

Monday.  Slept okish. Busy day of doing All The Crap for All The People and not getting anywhere with what I wanted to do. MacGyver and blogging in the evening.

Tuesday.  Slept okish. A nice day of not too many interruptions which was great. Looked at some traffic usage, and did some cleaning out of my personal drive - deleting things going back to 2007 :)

Went out at lunch to try out the new toy...

Lonnnnnnng lens..... (raw pixels)

Leftovers for dinner, MacGyver, and getting filled with rage at a Spectrum store in South Carolina using MY email address for new customer accounts.  I fired off some rage filled emails to their privacy team, haven't heard anything since.

Wednesday.  Slept okish. Busy day of crap and not achieving much. Filled with rage at Google who make it literally impossible to recover a Gmail account if the phone number is no longer in service.  Even a "recovery" email is useless.  People all over the internet rage about it as well.  Stu has actively been trying to get off everything Google.  After today's debacle I'm going to too.  Anything going to Gmail I'm going to get sent to my other emails.  The only big problem is the calendar - I absolutely love that thing.  After work Neil and I went and saw Disclosure Day (with a brief dinner beforehand at Inari Express).

Takoyaki wasn't bad (heated from frozen)

Thursday.  Fallout from crap yesterday left me depressed. Couldn't even enjoy drinks and left early (thanks Chrissie for the lifts!).  Made pizzas for dinner.

Mostly awake from 3:17. Day of crap mostly. Hid in away mode to get a bit of peace and quiet.  Kievs and Black Mirror then watched The Terminator with EB.

Saturday.  

Computer and hobby stuff while Stu was out at the club for a committee meeting. Went and said goodbye to the neighbours who are moving out (they decided to jump before they were pushed, still no word on them selling the place though). Leftovers for dinner then watched The Lost King which was interesting.

Sunday.  Slept okish. More computer and hobby stuff. Weather was too miserable to go out birdwatching. Finished culling my South Coast holiday photos.

Caught this little guy in our bedroom

In a team meeting a while back Con mentioned that he had the "Stove" cake out of the Australian Women's Weekly Childrend's Birthday Cake Book as a kid.  I filed that away and when it came time for his birthday, I made it.

Start with one butter cake, this one baked at 160C for 25 minutes.  I made this on the Wednesday night.

Turned out to cool. 

Next morning was time to assemble and decorate. 

You're meant to cut a 10cm, an 8cm and a 10cm section, but that would have made the proportions all wrong (my pan was like 27cm long not 28cm), so pretty much just eyballed it.  Use a bunch of toothpicks to hold the back piece on.

Looks pretty good.  I could possibly have trimmed that middle bit slightly.

Then I had to make some icing and coat it.  This is where the wheels fell of slightly.  I really shouldn't have agreed to a lift from Chrissie, as she has a set start time and I didn't want to make her late, so I had a deadline, and it was going to be a struggle to meet it.  So it's a rushed job and there's crumbs all through the icing.

You're meant to use green musk sticks, but I couldn't find any.  I also didn't have time to be fussy about trimming them and lining them up nicely.  I couldn't find any string licorice (I'll probably have to buy the stuff online) but I did find some in wheels, which I hastily cut in two to make the hotplates.  The frying pan I made out of cardboard on Tuesday night so had that ready to go (I couldn't find any toy utensils small enough to work).  The oven door is missing a handle and tea towel because I simply didn't have time.

But given how rushed it was I'm amazed that it actually turned out as well as it did!

XL won this for Christmas last year and gave it to me to do.

Unboxed

And the pieces spread out

Finished!

This was originally from RecipeTinEats, I first made it in December 2023.  With a couple of modifications, this is my official version.

So ingredients are a pack of risoni, two punnets of cherry tomatoes, a red onion, 200g block of danish fetta, garlic, a litre of stock (any stock will do, you choose), oregano and oil and pepper.  Skip the salt.  There's enough in the stock and the cheese.

Add the sliced onion, the tomatoes, garlic to taste, oregano and some pepper to a large baking dish

Toss with some olive oil

Roast for like 25 minutes

Then add the risoni, half the cheese (chopped) and the stock (hot).  If you're going to eat all of this at once (eg if you're serving a crowd) you can skip adding a cup of extra hot water.  If you do add it, it will be quite liquid still when serving, but will soak it all up for leftovers.

Mix it all up again

Then roast it for another 20 minutes or so.  At the end add the rest of the cheese and some basil if you have any.

Definitely simplier than Nagi's version!

Sunday.  28th.  Stu cooked a nice pea and ham soup for dinner. MacGyver, earlyish night.

Monday.  Slept mostly okish?? Tried to get stuck into proxy doco, but too many problems, mostly with the proxies. Did get a bit done in the afternoon though. Stu didn't feel like cooking anything, so he had leftover soup and I had a tv dinner. MacGyver then email sorting and catchup blog posting.

Tuesday.  Slept mostly okish?? Had a pretty good day of getting lots of proxy doco done without too much other crap to deal with, so that was nice. Stu cooked up a tuna bake and brussels sprouts which was nice. MacGyver and photo stuff.

Wednesday.  1st of July.  Half way through the year. Hrmmm. Awake for chunks of the night. Busy day not achieving much. Neil and I tried out the gems at Spud Bar.  They were ok, but a bit tough and not as crispy and awesome as I do them.  Very filling though!

Classic gems with chipotle aioli

Baked a cake .. !!

Thursday.  Awake for chunks of the night. Decorated a cake .. !! Before work .. !!  Busy day not achieving much. Presented said cake to Connor for his birthday. They had a long service award thing at work where they recognised Neil's 50 years!!  Relatively busy drinks which was good. Mills&Grills prosciutto and chorizo pizzas for dinner.

Chorizo - olives, parsley, chorizo sausage, fresh tomato and mozzarella, and Prosciutto - prosciutto, cherry tomato, mozzarella and parmesan cheese.  Both yumm!

Friday.  Awake for chunks of the night. Mostly finished the proxy doco I wanted to get done. Still some bits and pieces to do. Kievs for dinner then started rewatching Black Mirror, with the sweetie this time around. Then watched Twins which I haven't seen in like 30 years at least.

My gems are better than Spud Bar's!

Saturday.  Okish sleep maybe. Day of house stuff and hobbies. Rearranged the study a bit.

I moved the purple "comfy" chair over to the left so Stu can read by natural light and see the fish and not be distracted by my screen.  Moved the spare computer desk over to the other side and the little music cube towards this end.  We won't mention the fact that the first thing he did there was start listening to peeps talking over ham radio which didn't grate on my nerves At All.. !!

Also.  As Mr Spock would say (via Aristotle).. Nature abhors a vacuum.  Didn't take long for these shelves to get filled up (after I moved them so we could get the aircon installed).

We tried to find Jo's bower bird but no sign of him.  Then went for a walk around the water tank to find some birds.

Started Neil's Space Shuttle/747 Lego. Cooked RecipeTinEats' creamy risoni, or my variation thereof.

Watched another episode of a birder Stu follows, and then Enola Holmes 3 which was a bit silly but a bit of fun.

Sunday.  Took a while to get to sleep, woke up early. Got some more stuff done. Went out around lunch time. Picked up some prescriptions, got some Ali Baba (they very rudely charge $1.50 for extras, even though on their pricing boards it's only $1), then headed to Diddams Close to eat it. Then wandered all around the peninsula and saw some new birds.

Then back home and it was pretty much just time to change Stumpy's bark, prep dinner, download and process photos and blog.

So I got this error a few weeks back on my MyWay+ card:

Expired QR
No Signal or Service
Please check your mobile or Internet connection.

WTF?  I definitely had internet. I asked the driver, he had no idea (most of them are utterly allergic to even engaging with any MyWay+ issues, there's so many), he just said get on.

Nothing on the internet about the error.

It only occurred to me later that I might be out of credit.  Turns out that was it.  You'll get some BS error not anything actually meaningful.  The app will literally not tell you anywhere how much credit you have, you have to go sign into the portal to find out.

MyWay+ is an utter abomination.  They need to fix their $#!+ !!!

Most of these were Jo's.  I smashed many of them out at home so I could get them done and so I could then get them out of the house.  Well the first part of the plan worked, not so much the second.. need to do a Lifeline run some time...

Stu complained that the container number was the same on each of the containers

This one I took in to work so the guys could do it while we were in South Australia.  They only did like a quarter of it though haha

These two Harry Potter ones were "3D" so had hard plastic on one side, but that meant they were really tricky to pull apart without damaging the pieces.

This was another one I took in to work because the guys might have had fun with it, but they never got up to doing it.  So we did it when I got back.  I'd done this one last year.

I'd done this one before a long time ago.

And then we have a few that weren't Jo's.

Another one by Trevor Dickinson.

A bit of rainbow fun

Hidden Cows!!!  The guys probably did more of this than I did when I was off sick for two weeks.

Yeah I'm a little behind...

This was a Christmas present, a print of Trevor Dickinson's

We did this at work, not sure where it came from, it had been sitting in our pile for ages

This one Kellie gave to Mum, but it was too difficult for her so she gave it to me to do.  It was a little tricky because it was all so soft, but wasn't too hard to do in the end.

We did this at work.  I think this might have been one of Jo's but not sure.

This might have been one of Jo's too, can't remember.  But I did smash it out in two evenings, it was really easy.

One of Jo's we did at work

And another (I think!)

And another!

I think this was Jo's as well, but I did this one at home.  It was a bit of fun because the image wasn't *quite* what was on the box, it was a little different in the foreground.