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I did not take many pictures in August. But it was a pretty good month!

Of course I got to go on my Solo Trip, which I already blogged about.

I also got to have a half price spa treatment at Endota, which included a massage, a facial, and a pedicure. It was extremely relaxing and nice.

We finally stopped procrastinating and got someone to replace the door on the back of our garage that was disintegrating. Now we have a proper exterior door. I painted it, I think it turned out pretty good.

Scott got covid, which is obviously not the best… but I thought I had mild covid… Scott’s covid was even more mild. He didn’t even cough! So that’s pretty good.

He had to isolate at home for seven days but felt fine enough to work from home, and I was still allowed to do my normal stuff as long as I rapid tested every morning before work.

I went for a spicy Indonesian meal with Sophie to get me out of the plague house. She’s fun to eat out with because she always suggests ordering something very random and weird and sometimes they turn out great.

The last AFL game of the season was my team vs Scott’s team. In Brisbane, so we didn’t go, but we watched on TV. The Dees crushed the Lions so badly that it actually bumped us up into second position on the ladder going into the finals (which should have been a great advantage but today as I am writing this post I know that we wasted it, lol).

We went to Belgrave for Myles’ 4th birthday. He really loves those Bakugan ball thingies.

On the way home we bought some horse poo to tumble into compost for the garden. Scott was not very happy tipping the bag into the composter because it was definitely still very poo-y. Hopefully it pays off.

Sophie and I went to Sally’s for dinner, and to convince her to come back to the gym (post babby). We got Indian takeaway and it was nice. The baby is cute too.

My work colleague had a “Sensible Weeknight Birthday Potluck”. I brought seven layer dip. I also got to have lasagna, butter chicken, tuna bake, roasted vegetables, miso soup, ice cream sandwiches, and lots more. I LOVE POTLUCKS. And then I went home at a responsible 9:30pm. Delightful.

I made Alvin’s Drunken Chicken. It uses a lot of bottles of liquid. It did turn out nice though. The chicken was very nice and soft. Mild flavour, but I was able to save the poaching liquid and extra chicken to make chicken and corn soup later which came out really tasty. The bruised salad with the drunken chicken was easy and good though, I’ll make that again soon.

Knitted sweater progress. If I quit now I could have a knitted race bib for skeleton. :P Only 9000 more rows to go (to fit my extra long torso), and the sleeves. I’m hoping the sleeves don’t feel quite so boring as they should work up a lot quicker than the body.

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This will be a short one.

We got back from Canada, had a few days extra holiday at home, and then I ended up going back to work on Monday instead of Thursday because everyone at work had covid and they were desperate for help.

We went to Dean and Vanessa’s wedding celebration in Mornington. I rented a dress that was like a blanket and it was actually great. Lunch was very very nice, and we got to catch up with some friends that we haven’t seen in a while. It was a very nice afternoon.

The Tuesday after the wedding I started to get a sore throat at work. I get sore throats from hayfever all the time, and we still wear n95 masks at work, so I still finished my shift. When I got home I did a rapid test and it was negative.

Wednesday is my day off. I still only had a sore throat so I still went to the gym (it’s not busy in the mornings), but I cancelled my dentist appointment.

Thursday I was coughing a bit in the morning while getting ready for work so I did another rapid test and it went positive immediately!! Isolation begins.

Friday – Sunday I didn’t do much. Although I didn’t feel tooooo bad, just sore throat and cough. Energy was fine. The sore throat was relieved by eating things so I just snacked all day.

Monday – Wednesday I actually felt fine, and if it was just regular sickness I probably would have gone back to work. Instead I just hung out at home and did some chores and finished up some projects.

Scott managed to stay healthy! He was allowed to keep doing whatever he wanted as long as he did a rapid test every day and wore a mask while out of the house. The first few days he worked from home as we just assumed he was going to test positive soon, but by the end of it we figured he might as well go back to work. He’s feeling pretty invincible now.

At the moment I feel fine. Not coughing much. I think I had very mild covid. We’ve been very cautious with my return to weightlifting and it seems to be going well, slowly coming back to normal levels.

I finished my scarf! My first knitting project. Many people had to help me with it. I’m working on a basket-weave circle thingy at the moment, and have ordered yarn to make a sweater next. How hard can it be?? :)

Unpictured stuff:

  • I voted for the first time in Australia! Voting here is very different than Canada. It’s mandatory, and also preferential voting, so you have to rank every single candidate. Which meant I had to do quite a lot of research to figure out which parties are actually secret racists/crazy people. We had 8 candidates on our ballot, and then the senate one was the length of about 4 pieces of paper and probably had 100 people on it? That one you just had to pick your top 12. Anyway it was a pretty successful election, in my opinion. The good guys won.
  • Scott’s aunt Kathy had a bbq, which was supposed to be at a park, but then the bbq wasn’t working so we impromptu moved it to Scott’s parents house. So many children running around. Maybe one of them gave me covid.

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Kind of old news at this point but for posterity…

Hoofing it to the train station.
Full flight but thumbs up we’re on our way.

I think I was still a bit dopey from the flight…

Had to wake up though because Rosemarie and Lauren picked us up from the airport in Vancouver and we went directly to Liz’s house in North Van to host a party. Rosemarie prepared lots of Canadian treats for us like perogies, Smartfood popcorn, Canada Dry, party mix and lots of our Vancouver friends showed up! Thanks Liz for letting us stay there!

The next morning we headed back to the airport (via Duffins Donuts ofc) to fly to Ottawa. This is the last picture with Lauren for a while because we had all sorts of problems.

First our flight out of Vancouver was delayed. The lovely Westjet agent tried to help fix up our flights for us but since we had booked on three different tickets he was only able to get Scott on I on a new route via Calgary before that flight filled up, and had to keep Rosemarie and Lauren on the original flight to Toronto that might not make the connection to Ottawa. He offered to switch us back so that we could at least stay together but Rosemarie told us to go ahead and we’d just cross our fingers. Amazing Race style.

The way the flights were staggered we wouldn’t find out if they made it until much later. Poor MEP and Paul had to stay up all night waiting for us and didn’t even know how many of us they would be picking up from the airport.

Scott and I got to Calgary no problemo. But then we saw messages from Rosemarie saying that they didn’t let Lauren on the plane in Vancouver because his ID was expired and that he had to go home. Team member down! And that her connection in Toronto was looking TIGHT.

Scott and I got to Ottawa late but relatively successfully. But then we found out that Rosemarie didn’t make her connection, had to stand in line for hours to get her free hotel, and had to wake up very early to get her new flight the next morning. Which also ended up being delayed because they couldn’t close the luggage compartment door. Poor Rosemarie. Her team definitely lost Amazing Race.

Anyway eventually we all (well… three of us) made it to Mary Ellen’s and dad came over and of course we played some games. Yay.

That night we went to the Haberl’s for a good old fashioned sleepover. It was great. We played lots of games and ate lots of food and laughed a lot. A very lovely time.

3/4 Ace Gang Reunion. Unfortunately Cassia didn’t make it because of Spanish bureaucracy. We got lucky even seeing Helenka… she ended up having her twins very early, a few days after this brunch!!

Scott trying to catch some maple sap to see if it tasted like maple syrup (it does!).

Things relaxed (a bit) after the first few days of the trip. We spent some time hanging out at MEP and Paul’s.

Sweaty after doing a HIIT class.

I managed to keep up my training while away. My coach made me a commercial gym friendly leg strength program that was basically max squats all the time. Sometimes Rosemarie and Scott came with me, and sometimes they did other random classes or played pickleball. I am glad they get along so well.

Jill had another memorial party for Joe that just happened to fall when we were in Ottawa. It was nice to see a lot of people I hadn’t seen in ages. And the canapes and cookie favours were delicious!

We started to go through some of the stuff at the house. I think Cassia made me that poster when I was about to leave for university. D’awww.

Same pictures that I already posted on Facebook/Instagram:

Party at Liz’s.
Brunch at the Haberl’s.
Diane’s big chair.
Death by squats.
Camel Up was a hit, as usual.
Canada Geese.
So flattering.
Fam,
Joe’s memorial party at the Nature Museum.
House tour.

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We started March off with a double wedding weekend. One on Saturday in Ballarat with work friends, and one on Sunday in the Yarra Valley with board game friends. Big weekend of driving and canapes. Both fun. Took me three more days to recover.

Home invader.

We went to the opening game of the AFL season: Melbourne Demons vs Western Bulldogs. A Grand Final rematch. The first time that us Melbourne Dees fans got to see them play since they won everything last year while we were stuck at home in severe lockdown.

The first quarter was so good it brought a tear to my eye. Then the second quarter was very bad. Then in the exact same way as the grand final last year, the Dees pulled ahead in the last half of the game and got the win. It was great.

(Belated) January #SMAJ was a meal at The Boiling Crab. It was… OK. Partly because I don’t think boiling in a bag is necessarily the tastiest way to cook seafood, and partly because we really do not know how to break down crab. So much work with so little pay off. Also food gets cold quite quickly when it’s just poured onto the table.

I went out to do trivia with my pals at a new place in Ringwood. We won three out of four $20 vouchers and none of us were drinking so we decided to order the “Celebration Brownie Tower” because why not. When the staff brought it out it had sparklers on it and they all started singing Happy Birthday and everyone playing trivia joined in and the host asked us whose birthday it was and we were like “umm… no one…”. It was pretty funny. We also won second place overall which had a prize of six take home cocktails. Very good haul.

I went out for noodles and bingsu with internet friends. Yum.

OK apparently all we did lately is EAT. (Belated) February #SMAJ was a dinner out at a Japanese BBQ restaurant. We splurged and got a set meal that came with delicious fancy beef and a bunch of other stuff. It was very very delicious.

I did a weightlifting competition in Geelong. The timing of the comp worked well to squeeze in one last max out before our Canada trip. I really wanted to snatch 50kg and clean and jerk 60kg for a while now and have been sooo close to getting to do it. It was a bit of a drive to get to Geelong but my coach actually lives there so at least that part was convenient.

However I missed my second snatch attempt at 48kg so I didn’t get to try 50kg on my third attempt as planned. :( Extra annoying considering I snatched 48kg really nicely on my third attempt. Clean and jerks were better, at least I got to try 60kg on my third attempt but unfortunately I didn’t catch the bounce well and didn’t stand up the clean.

I snatched 45/48x/48, and CJ 54/57/60x for a 105kg total. No PBs. Next time.

When I signed up for the comp I assumed that I would be in the first session like usual and have to weigh in quite early in the morning, so I booked us an Airbnb in Ocean Grove to make a weekend of it. Turned out I lifted in the last session and I probably should have just cancelled the Airbnb booking so I could have slept in my normal not-extremely-squeaky bed and eaten my normal food but that didn’t occur to me until it was too late to cancel.

So we ended up with a lot of time to kill and the weather wasn’t great. We went to a CHEESE TRAIN, like a sushi train but with plates of cheese. We drove around Queenscliffe. We tried to find things to take a picture of with my new telephoto lens. We ate burgers. (Much nutrition, maybe this is why I didn’t lift the best.) We watched two games of footy at the same time. We met up with Scott’s school friend for coffee. We went to the Geelong Art Gallery and were amazed by this lino print art piece that went around a whole room. We went to the library and read our Kindles.

Unpictured stuff:

  • I did a lot of on call and extra shifts because of people having covid. This meant I reached my budget target for a telephoto lens much earlier than predicted! Pretty exciting. I haven’t really gotten to use it much yet.
  • We saw the new Batman movie with Jemma. It was very dark, literally. Apparently if you are rich you never turn the lights on. Also I giggled every time thinking about how he would have to put his eye makeup on super fast every time he had to get dressed up.
  • We had a family dinner! On a Sunday with everyone there like the olden days!
  • Scott went to Ballarat to see his school friend who is visiting from Scotland.
  • We were supposed to go to another wedding this weekend, but it has been postponed because they have covid. Oops.

I actually haven’t been doing that much lately besides work and gym because we leave for Canada this week and I am paranoid about getting covid and ruining all our plans. Only a couple more days to go!!!

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Rosemarie’s time in Australia continues. We went to Wilsons Prom and Fraser Island in February as well but I’ll save those for their own posts.

We decided to make mu shu pork for Rosemarie’s birthday/Chinese New Year. It turned out ok but not as good as we remembered from the last time making it together, approximately 12 years ago when we all first moved to Vancouver.
They don’t really sell Chinese eggplant here so we tried to grow our own. It kind of worked!
We went out for dumplings (Shandong Mama) and drinks (Eau De Vie) and ice cream (Nitro Lab). Rosemarie’s drink came in a HORN. Mine was spicy. Fun night out.
Typical Melbs.
Lune croissants. We got ham and cheese, spanakopita, black sesame miso cruffin, lemon curd cruffin, pineapple upside down. Spend with reckless abandon!!

I have this amazing friend at the gym named Doreen. Every once and a while she randomly gives me fresh fish. We were already going to have a nice dinner of mom’s hot & sour soup and fried rice, and then she gave me two snapper! We steamed them, covered them with garlic, ginger, green onion, soy sauce, and then poured hot oil over it. It was delicious, this was an epic dinner.

Chilling pre-competition.

Phoenix Open weightlifting comp. I didn’t have the best preparation, I had a week of crippling back pain, which really made me consider withdrawing from the comp. Thankfully that resolved itself after I was finally able to get some physio treatment. But then we also went on two holidays right before the comp too. Anyway my coach helped me through all of that and planned a conservative comp for me where the goal was to get 6 out of 6 lifts. Which I did, although the judges were far too generous with my last snatch and probably shouldn’t have actually given it to me. I snatched 43/46/48(1 kg PB, sorta), and clean and jerked 53/56/58(equal PB, but much more solid than the first time I did it), for a total of 106kg, which was a 1kg PB too. I liked having Rosemarie there to load my warm ups for me and fan me and stuff. :)

Rosemarie went to watch Scott play hockey (I was at a hens party). He looks pro!!

Unpictured:

  • Sophie came over for dinner and games. We made homemade gnocchi and played Azul.
  • Lots of Winter Olympic watching.
  • Trivia with Scott’s work friends. We won.
  • Gina’s hens party dinner.
  • An epic last dinner out at Deeds Brewing. Many delicious share plates. Definitely want to go back.
  • Rosemarie leaving. :( Unpictured because she had to leave really early in the morning and I stayed in bed while Scott drove her to the airport.