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Jemma invited us to go to the roller rink with her family. It was the first time I’ve been on rollerblades since I was about 12 years old I think. It was fun! I didn’t fall at all. Myles was so funny on his rollerskates… he is very brave, but doesn’t glide much. Instead he sort of runs, quite fast, in a perpetual state of Almost Falling Down. He did fall down about 9000 times but he just gets right back up and keeps going. He was a sweaty little boy.

Another Birdlife photography outing. This time we went to three different spots in Altona, and Scott came too! It was a good photography day for once. We saw lots of birds, including quite a few new birds, and the lighting conditions were great so I actually got some good pictures. A pleasant day overall.

Black Swans
White-headed Stilts, Common Greenshanks, and some ducks
Black-shouldered Kite
Black-shouldered Kite and some mouse guts.
Golden-headed Cisticola
Little Pied Cormorant

We also saw a big Tiger Snake. Snek.

Melbourne v Hawthorn at the MCG. We won. Fun game. I love getting cheap General Admission tickets and sitting up close around the goals.

We went to see the Cirque du Soleil show Luzia. I really enjoyed it!!! It was just a lot of fun. My favourite part was the contortionist. That guy is so flexible!!!!!!!

We didn’t go anywhere for Easter but it was still an excellent weekend. Cirque du Soleil, many many games of Everdell, a family lunch with all of the nephews, Jen’s birthday gathering. And no traffic!

I finally stopped playing Stardew Valley and got back to work on my Petricor sweater. I just had to finish the second sleeve, so I bundled it up into a ball to make it easier to turn all the time.

We went out for Malaysian food to celebrate Scott finally getting a job. The restaurant was a bit strange but the food was great. We also had pickles and Hainanese chicken and rice. Funny story though, Scott ended up accepting a second job and quitting the first one after six days of work. Awkward but a good result. He is now fully employed and seems to be enjoying the new role. Scotty Two Jobby is now Scotty One Jobby.

Unpictured things:

  • I competed in the VWA Open #1 at Phoenix. I did kind of meh. I snatched 50kg, which is pretty good I guess, but then I only clean and jerked 56kg, which was disappointing. I’ve clean and jerked 60kg in the gym a couple times but have yet to pull it off in a competition. I was feeling strong and ready but didn’t execute. I was so frustrated afterwards.
  • Bis had everyone over on a really hot day to play games. I asked what time he wanted us to come over and he said 10:00AM!!! We played a game of Welcome To (it really is a good game for slightly larger groups, thank you Lesley for the recommendation) and then they were going to play a new game called Approaching Dawn: The Witching Hour, that could only have 6 players so Jen and I elected to just lie on the couches instead. I think we made the right choice because the game sounded painful. It took so long we had to leave after that. Even though I barely played any games and Scott got stuck playing a very long not-really-that-fun game it was still a good day because we could blast the AC in the common room as much as we wanted and I didn’t have to do chores.
  • Our March #SMAJ was a throwing lesson with instructor Scott. Because I don’t know how to throw properly. He did a good job, he had all sorts of drills written down. I didn’t know how to place my feet properly or anything. The next day I was quite sore through the side of my ribs haha. I guess I don’t do very many twisty exercises.

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Hehehe. Melbourne played Collingwood in the first round of the finals at the MCG on a Thursday night. I had to quickly squeeze in a training session at home in the garage after work and then rush into the city to meet Scott. It started POURING pretty much exactly when I had to walk run from the train station to the MCG. I showed up to the MCC (thanks Connor!!) looking like a drowned rat. And tried to take a selfie on the escalator. Melbourne lost. And I forgot my backpack under the seat so Scott (thanks Scott!!) had to run back up to grab it and then we ended up on the train with all the super happy Collingwood people (the worst) instead of with the sad Melbourne people.

Then we had the Ian Laurie Cup on the weekend. I did OK, I guess. I snatched 45 kg and 48 kg, and missed 50 kg. I clean and jerked 55 kg, and 58 kg AGAIN, and the missed the jerk on 60 kg AGAIN. That’s the 4th time I’ve missed 60 in competition!! So annoying. However it was a fun day over all.

I went to another Birdlife photography outing at Banyule Flats. It was a small group this time, which was kind of nice. It was a beautiful day and we saw a decent amount of cool birds. We spent a while tracking a Shining-bronze Cuckoo and a Golden Whistler by their calls and eventually found them, which was neat. I saw them well with my binoculars but didn’t get any good photos.

We saw two Powerful Owls as well. Epic. They are huge.

Tawny Frogmouth pretending to be a stick.

Met up with Donna and fam to go for a walk, and give them the GIANT box of Pokemon cards that Doreen prepared. Always a pleasure to spend time with them.

Scott and I entered our first pickleball tournament. We were in the Mixed Doubles 2.5 or Under category, aka beginners. There were five teams in our category. We won our first two games in the round robin, then lost our next two games. This put us in third position going into the finals but we lost again, so ended up 4th overall. Whatevs, it was fun!! My goals for the tournament were: to not lose every single game (check!), and to get some points from my shots (check!). I can’t wait until we can do another tournament!

Sonika had a bunch of people over on FBTAGF public holiday (Friday Before The AFL Grand Final) for some games and food. It was a nice chill afternoon. I played half a game of Potion Explosion, which was quick to learn and has a fun ball dispenser mechanism.

Check out this super strong momma possum carrying THREE babies on her back!! We could hear something rustling around in the backyard but couldn’t figure out what it was.. turns out one of the babies had fallen off and she was trying to do a dramatic rescue mission. Kinda neat, although possums can be quite the pest.

Best messages to receive from Doreen: “I have fish for you”. We were extra spoiled this time, King George Whiting, already filleted for me! She gave us 7 fillets!! What a treat.

I finished the kids jumper from Vicky. I keep forgetting to bring it when we see the nephews! It was originally supposed to have a roll neck but I didn’t like the look of it so I just did a 1×1 rib instead.

Before
After

This was such a fun project. I saw a video on Knitdiet’s instagram and bought the pattern and yarn immediately. Basically I knitted an enormous bag, then put it in the washing machine for an hour and it came out as a sturdy, normal size bag! So fun!! I’ve been using it to carry my knitting stuff around.

Unpictured stuff:

  • A lot more finals footy, but at home. We weren’t able to get tickets to the next Melbourne finals game (which they lost). And Scott’s team only played in Brisbane (which they won). Scott’s team made it to the Grand Final but it was too hard/expensive to get tickets so we watched it in Boronia with the fam. Brisbane lost.
  • Fathers Day/Myles’ Birthday brunch in Boronia. Scott made cinnamon buns.
  • Scott got laid off. Was a shame because it seemed like it was a good job, until the end.

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I was finally able to make it out to one of the Birdlife photography group outings! They get together once a month and it always seemed to be on a day that I couldn’t go. But this time I could. We went to Lysterfield Lake. I was a bit scared to go, but there were plenty of friendly people, and at least there is an activity… so you don’t have to talk the whole time. It wasn’t the best conditions for birds or photography so I didn’t get any great pictures but it’s still nice to get out and get some birdwatching practice.

Scott got me tickets to Cirque du Soleil Crystal for Christmas last year and it was finally time to go! We liked it, it was neat to see the new stuff they could do with the added ice element… like big long swooping things while hanging from ropes and stuff. And Scott liked the hockey boys doing jumps and flips. I thought the actual circus stuff wasn’t near as precise as a normal Cirque show though. The story was pretty weird too.

We had galettes beforehand at Roule Galette. Scott had beef bourguignon, and I had a potato-y one and a mulled wine. Lovely.

My friend Bis’s birthday dinner wish was for us to go out and everyone had to pick a dish to share. It was great. This was half the food.. I should have waited until everything arrived to take a picture but at that point I was too busy stuffing my face. I picked a soft tofu dish.

Melbourne was playing Hawthorn so we sent a message to Shaun to see if he wanted to go to the game together (he goes for Hawthorn). He said sure, meet us at this park at this time. We arrive at the park and there are like 20 children there and many adults. Turns out it was Shaun’s son Finn’s birthday party and everyone was going to the game together!! Cupcakes were a nice surprise!

So we ended up watching the game with Donna’s family too. A fun day. And Melbourne won.

I saw this meal on an Instagram reel. It was delicious!

Bendigo Woollen Mills sock yarn socks are done! I’m quite pleased with them. Socks are a great travel project because they’re so compact.

I learned how to do two-colour knitting by making a vaguely Melbourne-themed hat. I tried making a pom pom for it but I tied it wrong and it exploded everywhere. I didn’t really like how it looked anyway. I would like to get a navy faux fur pom pom but haven’t found where to buy that yet.

My next project was to finish up a kids jumper that Vicky started about ten years ago for Beau. He’s about six feet tall now but luckily there are two other small kids that it can fit now. It was a fun challenge for me to figure out where she was up to in the pattern and finish it up.

Unpictured stuff:

  • I went to a nuc med day conference down on the peninsula with a couple coworkers. We saw a guy with a motorized golf bag!!
  • Used the movie tickets I won from getting a written compliment at work to see the Barbie movie. I liked the movie but I was annoyed that most of the punchlines had been spoiled already on the internet/TV/radio/literally everywhere.
  • My weightlifting friend came back from Canberra/USA and it has been so nice having her at training again. We even got the old Phoenix ladies out for dinner one night too, which was lovely.
  • We’ve been playing pickleball pretty much every Sunday. Scott and I did a lot of practice together to prepare for an upcoming tournament.
  • I actually got called in to work on the weekend. Quite rare. It was a tricky case too. Thankfully my boss is very nice and volunteered to come in with me and press the buttons on the computer for me so I didn’t have to get gowned and ungowned a bazillion times.
  • Apparently we went out for dinner for a #SMAJ event but we didn’t take any pictures and I can’t remember what it was.
  • Japanese brunch. Trivia. Knitting club. Weightlifting training.

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We caught up on three #SMAJ activities this month.

Our April #SMAJ was go karting at Le Mans. I have been suggesting this for ages!! We each invited a few friends and it was very fun. Actually way more extreme than I expected.. the karts went very fast and I was skidding and screeching around the corners. Afterwards my hands were shaking so bad I couldn’t even check the results on my phone. I felt like I could clean and jerk 150kg. SO MUCH ADRENALINE.

Nosebleed section.

May #SMAJ was the Kings Birthday footy game. Melbourne v Collingwood with 80k+ spectators. I expected Melbourne to lose, but we didn’t! And Scott brought hotdogs in a thermos so we had a hot snack.

And June #SMAJ was a steak dinner. I had eye fillet and Scott had beef ribs. A good fueling comp week meal.

I competed at the Alby Dutton comp. It had been a long time since I last competed and I have gotten a bit stronger since then so I was feeling pretty confident. It started off really well, I snatched 46, 49 and 51kg. I’ve never even tried 51kg in training so that was a fun surprise! A 3kg comp PB. Then I clean and jerked 56, and attempted 60kg twice but didn’t make the jerks. Overall it was a good day, but I do with I made another clean and jerk because that would have been a very very good day. It’s hard to put it all together at the same time though I guess.

I took everything out of my craft station, reorganised it, and put it all back nice and tidy. A satisfying project.

More footy! Scott got given a few tickets to the Brisbane v St Kilda game at Marvel so we took Charlie. I brought my knitting. The seats had cushions and we were very close to the St Kilda coaches box, which Charlie enjoyed.

We finished painting the bedrooms and the kitchen cupboard. The house was a real disaster area for a couple weekends. It wasn’t very fun… those two rooms felt like equal as much work as the whole rest of the house. It was very cold so the paint didn’t dry quickly and the closets have soooo many different surfaces. However it is all done now and I even managed to sell some of the extra Aquanamel on marketplace. Everything is back in place now and we have no plans to touch anything else in this house for a long time. Hopefully.

Unpictured stuff:

  • Again lots of pickleball and knitting club.
  • I sold my broken down e-bike and bought a new secondhand e-bike off marketplace. The lady who was selling it was delightful. She used to do comedy in Melbourne, Scott recognized her from TV! Now she makes sourdough and she gave us three delicious loaves of bread with the bike, haha. Having an e-bike has really helped us get away with only having one car for so long.
  • Jess came for a visit and we went to see Spiderman with Brett as well. That movie seemed like it was really fun to make. Made me want to draw.

I am vowing to make the second half of the year more exciting. We’re off to Canada in a few days, which will be great. And now that we’re done all the house stuff we should be able to do more fun stuff again when we get back. Looking forward to it.

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Went to the footy twice. Melbourne lost twice.

September was all about footy finals. Melbourne and Brisbane both made it. Melbourne went into the finals in good position, but lost two weeks in a row. Brisbane went into the finals in worse position, but won two times in a row, but then unfortunately lost the preliminary final. Bummer. At least we didn’t have to spend thousands of dollars on Grand Final tickets.

Instead we watched the Grand Final in Boronia with the family. It was a nice chill day.

Much concentration.

I went in to the Ian Laurie Cup feeling pretty good. I hadn’t competed in many months so I thought PBs would be inevitable. However they were… evitable. I did quite terrible. I only made my opening snatch and my opening clean and jerk. Yikes.

I am blaming it on my bodyweight, haha. I had unintentionally lost a bit of weight a couple weeks before the comp so decided to go down to the 64kg bodyweight category. I was thinking that if I made the same total as last time but at a lower bodyweight I would go up a grade (to J, LOL). However instead I actually did much much worse, like two years regression. So now I’ve just decided to eat everything in sight and fully embrace the 71kg category.

My next competition will be right before Christmas.

New game! Viticulture.

A rare 6 player game. We’ve only played it with Scott and I. First impressions are good but need to play more.

Wingspan with new friends.

We had a fun Queens Death Day (it’s what she would have wanted). We went to Bis’s place to play Wingspan with some of my Discord friends, and then went in to the city for dumps. It’s always great getting dumplings with big groups because you get to try so many different things.

Sweater progress.
Scott’s footy themed tourtiere.

Scott made the pastry and I mostly followed this recipe for the innards, but I added small cubes of potatoes before baking to bulk it up. I was worried the pastry wouldn’t cook properly because it didn’t say you had to blind bake it, but it worked perfectly. No soggy bottoms.

Unpictured stuff:

  • I went to a potluck at Bis’s place. It was epic, we had so much food. The highlight for me was Sally’s shawarma… she even found those pickled purple turnips that I miss so so much.
  • We got the garden ready for summer. It started off well, but then literally everything got destroyed by snails. So we had to start again, with better defences. We’re still struggling with the battle against the snails. Over the past three days we have stomped about 600 of them, not even exaggerating.
  • The designer came over to look at our house to help start our renovation process. (We want to re-do the bathroom and laundry room, and a small addition to the kitchen.) I told her my ideas, she pointed out lots of problems that we hadn’t thought of. We had to wait until she finished her masters degree so we haven’t gotten anything back yet, but it should be ramping up in the next few weeks. I am excited to see what she comes up with.
  • We went to a 1st birthday party that had 200 people invited. INSANE. We barely saw the kid hahahah. The food was great.
  • Scott’s lawn bowls season has started so he’s back to doing stuff every day. Bowls, hockey, running, garage gym, and sometimes filling in on people’s soccer teams. Busy boy.
  • Oh after about a year of waiting I finally got to see the allergy doctor to find out about solving my hayfever problems. However after a lot of testing I seem to only be allergic to birch pollen (which I already knew), olive tree pollen, and a few other random things that I wouldn’t actually be exposed to. And interestingly, not grass. There are not a lot of birch trees here so it’s a bit weird that I get so many symptoms. The doctor asked if I wanted to try grass allergy shots anyway even though I didn’t react to grass on the skin or blood tests but I decided not to because I felt like I’d spent enough money already. Not entirely sure what to do tbh. For now I’ll continue with my daily Telfast and nasal spray.
  • Scott is extremely behind in #SMAJ activities. We did do one, I don’t know which month it represented… a delicious feast of a Vietnamese meal at St Cloud after my weightlifting comp. We got the Feed Me banquet because we couldn’t make any decisions and it came with so much food we had two full lunch servings leftover for the next day.
  • Got the trivia ladies back together for a trivia night. Was a nice evening. Another establishment that has decided to not bother with dishes and serves everything in cardboard though. My enchiladas got served in a cardboard trough.