Kazza the Blank One

I borrowed this from the common area, and I actually dismantled it so I knew it was complete.  And guess what.  They lost pieces from it.  Probably down the gap between the bench and the wall.  Pretty grunty about it actually.

A Green Shed one of Toronto we did at work.

We did this one earlier in the year, and we spent ages colouring it in.  I want to have another go at doing it with colour.

Lord of the Rings jigsaw I borrowed from the common area.  I actually did another copy of this ten years ago.

S brought in these next two, assuring us there were probably pieces missing.  

The first one of St Thomas (been there!!) had three missing pieces.

The 3D tiger only had one missing piece, which she was pretty impressed with.

Before I went to Tasmania I pulled this out for the guys to do while I was going to be literally right there.  It was a Green Shed jigsaw but I'm pretty sure it was actually new (I seem to remember opening the packet for it).  So I was a bit grunty that they lost a piece.

This is my photo taken in the same spot

A few of Rosina's

And one of New York by night that we did at work, also a Green Shed one I think.

Man I miss the Green Shed.  Will have to see what the Goodies Junction crap is like.

Back in the early days of blogging there all sorts of widgets you could post on your blog.

My favourite was the Weather Pixie.  I didn't think her clothing choices were all that practical, as she was wearing pretty skimpy outfits when it was quite cold.

Here were some examples that were on my blog.

Because I'm a weirdly obsessive person, for a while I was compiling a spreadsheet showing which outfit she was in for a given combination of temperature and humidity.  I found it recently while filing crap in my in tray.  It was mostly in Sydney but in Canberra for a while as well.

(humidity x axis and temperature y axis)

I miss the Weather Pixie.  Maybe I should learn how to code pngs and read weather apis and make my own...  yeah.. in my copious free time..

28.9.24

Probably my third visit, the first being 30.12.2002, and the second bing 13.2.2016.

Stuart Devlin's plaster casts of our coins

1c and 2c pieces were made into bronze medals for the Sydney 2000 Olympics

Gold medal for the Sydney 2000 Olympics

Proof room

Circulation coin room

Coin press machines

Titan

1930 penny

17.5.24

I think I visited the Mint when I was in school, but I hadn't been since, so dragged the mother type person along to go see it.

There's not really all that much there, so it's nice that it's free entry.

16.5.24

When I saw the Freshwater class ferries were running again in Sydney I had to go on one!

So dragged the mother type person along with me :)

Sydney and Circular Quay

Carnival Splendor

Sydney Opera House

Sydney from the ferry

HMAS Brisbane (DDG 41)

HMAS Canberra (L02)

I wandered around the ferry to photograph it

Western Channel Pile Light

South Head

North Head Quarantine Station

Queenscliff at Manly

St Matthews, Manly

Obligatory walk along The Corso

bwhahaha budgy smugglers!

Manly Beach

The Steyne - beer o'clock!!

Before we left the ferry wharf when we arrived in Manly I looked at the timetable, so we could time our trip back to catch a Freshwater class ferry back.  And it was the Freshwater!

Fort Denison.  I've still never been there!

Opera House and Queenscliff

Quite a lovely afternoon!

18.5.24

Back in May was Rachel and Hayden's wedding.  Not really sure why we were invited, we've barely seen them in the past 17 years.  Rachel was just a little kid when I left Sydney and I've really only seen them a few times since then.  But we were, so off we went.

It was scheduled for 11:00.  So we got there at 10:30, so we'd have plenty of time to find parking.  We ended up all the way down the street.

They were late.  So the cermony started at 12:00.

!!

It was a lovely service.

After the service was morning tea.  Even though it was 13:00 by now.  And it was raining.  And I was stressing about so many people.  And it was a dry wedding.  I did end up going and talking to a couple of my old friends.  But felt pretty uncomfortable.  And the sweetie just avoided everyone heh.

They tried to get a photo of everyone outside.  In the rain.  Yeah that didn't work.

And there was lunch.  Talked to more of my friends.  Did I mention it was a dry wedding?

There were various family/friends photo shots throughout the afternoon.

And there were speeches.

With bubbles.

Of cider.

Alan wrote a limerick!

And there was cake cutting

Photo shoots carried on

When we finally had a chance to leave Marylon said we should sign the guest book, but you were meant to do a photo booth thing and keep a copy and stick the other one in the book.  But there were lots of people and we didn't know what to do with the machine and it was all very stressful.

And then of course I couldn't think of anything useful to say in the book.  Oh well.

We finally left at nearly 16:30.  Six hours after we got there.  On the way out we saw the MASSIVE car park under the church.  Yeah that would have been nice to know about in advance.

It was a lovely day, but we were both utterly exhausted by the end of it, with a 3.5 hour drive ahead of us to get home.  I spent the next day or so *cringing* over the crap I said because I was so anxious.  This is why I don't socialise sober, people!!  But I think Rachel and Hayden had a wonderful day, so that's really all that matters!

Sunday.  22nd.  Finished Wonka.  Cool been-there's of St Paul's and Oxford.  

Monday.  Slept ok I guess.  Busy day.  On the phone from 16:00 to 18:00 blah.  Cooked a red curry with some of the leftover beef.  And spent the evening writing up my dramas with Vodien.

This bit of geranium has been out of the ground since January.  !!!

Tuesday.  Slept ok I guess.  Not quite as crazy busy day.  Biggest set of migrations done, with cutover later in the week.  Smaller batches to go.  All evening battling mail on CloudLoop.

Wednesday.  Um.  Planning migrations I think.  Drinks after work with Neil and some other peeps.  Watched some Amazing Race, talked to Kit for a bit.

Thursday.  Awake from like 2 to 4 or something.  Setup johnson.id.au on CloudLoop and changed the nameservers over.  Cutover of some management stuff.  Broke a proxy.  Good drinks.  Pizzas for dinner.  Early night.

Friday.  Awake from maybe like 2 or 2:30 and never got back to sleep.  Sigh.  Dealing with the failed proxy.  Wardie restarted it last night which fixed it.  Seems the cutover we did confused it.  Sadness.  Went to Herbert's at lunch with the Chrises which was nice.  Kiev balls!  Back at work, contractor broke stuff.  I'm getting a reputation for failed changes.  Sigh.  Proper chicken kievs for dinner.  Bed 19:30.

I totally need to get the recipe for these things!!

Four of these 17 kegs are TRBC beers.  They're planning a tribute night soon with them.

Saturday.  Early night but woke up at 3:40 and never got back to sleep.  Sigh.  Breakfast at Beess & Co.  Had a very nice eggs benedict (although salty AF, I was *thirsty* later).

Wandered around Yarralumla while waiting for the mint to open, then went in there.

Stopped at Scrivener Dam on the way home.

This looked like a roomba lawn mower..

Wrote up a todo list for the day.  I think it'll take a couple of weeks to get through.  I had to fix up all the Canon photos I'd taken this year - they were all still on summer time :(  I got some stuff at Chris's the other day to make up a lasagna to use up the white sauce that's been in the fridge for months.  Turns out it really didn't freeze very well and was quite disgusting once it was defrosted.  Sigh.  So I had to make my own white sauce (using Lana's recipe).  But the flour I used was from a container I'd dug up that needed using from forever ago.. I think it may have come from Mum's.. and I think it was a little.. off..  So I was worried it'd be a disaster.  But it wasn't!!  Hurray!!  It was a little dry, which I attribute to not adding enough liquid to offset the dry sheets I got from Chris's.  Lana summed it up perfectly:

"Fresh lasagne sheets. I really can't recommend using anything other than these. If you do feel the need to use dry sheets, then slap yourself make sure you add extra liquid to the meat sauce, as they will suck it up. Nothing worse than dry lasagne."

In the evening we watched Grave of the Fireflies.  Yeah it was pretty sad. 

Sunday.  Slept mostly ok for a change.  Another busy day of doing all the things.  Finally uploaded my Tassie hotel photos.  Also did some food shopping.  

Sunday.  15th.  Actually blogging on time for a change.  Overdone roast beef for dinner.

Monday.  16th.  Slept okish I think. More migrations at work. Working on blog after dinner.

Tuesday.  Slept okish. Rinse and repeat really. Mash had Patrick Swayze! Updating holiday blogs with new styles and fixing everything.

Wednesday.  I dunno.  Much the same really.  Work and fixing my blog.

First purple poppy!!!

Thursday.  Rinse and repeat really.   Decent drinks (thought it was going to be just us but another group came up as well).  Watched the first episode of Amazing Race Season ..? 6..? I dunno but it's another "Celebrity Edition" race, with mostly peeps I've never heard of.

Friday.  Woke up at 4am never got back to sleep hurrah. Another busy day.  Fake kievs for dinner (still Inghams, but not the proper sort, Coles didn't have them).  Into season 10 of Mash.  Pretty sure I watched a movie but can't remember what.  Maybe it'll come back to me.

Saturday. Logged onto work to start a big batch of migrations, that will likely take all weekend. Finished fixing up my Australian Holiday blogs. Then it was onto my main blog.  I asked the sweetie if he'd cook dinner.  So we had Dumpling Inn delivered.  Then watched South Solitary.  Been there!  Well, to Cape Otway Lighthouse where they filmed the interiors anyway.

Sunday. Bit of a restless nights' sleep but mostly ok. Did some tidying up on my blog, but have some other things I want to tidy up too. Read through all of John Heald's Smoke on the Water series on the Carnival Splendor fire. Really just procrastinating doing the hard work of blogging the past month.  Notepad in Windoze 11 is trash. I'll be editing a large file, go to another window, come back to notepad, and it dumps me right at the bottom of the file, not where i had the cursor.  Stoopid.  Then most of the afternoon after food shopping doing catchup blogging.  Including having to redo last week's because I accidentally hit control-v instead of control-c while it was publishing.  Watched Wonka (2023).  It had hints of music from the 70s movie.  With Rowan Atkinson (one scene) and Hugh Grant (haven't seen him yet).  Slugworth, Fickelgruber and Prodnose.  Sounds like something out of Fantastic Mr Fox.  Anyone would think it was by the same author or something heh.  OMFG Hugh Grant as the Oompa Loompa.  And he sings a variant of the song!! hahahaha.  That'll do for now.