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And it’s almost March… oops… life has been hectic lately.

As is now becoming tradition, we went to Walkerville for a night to hang out with the Marcus families. It was really lovely this year, the weather was amazing and the beach was in much nicer condition than last year. We always like spending some time with Bird Boy.

Happy New Year! There were some fireworks at the beach. I was hoping to try photographing the Aurora Australis, since we were pointing South and it had been going bonkers the couple nights before that, but unfortunately not that night. Aurora hunting is super tricky… it’s pretty random when it can happen and you don’t get any notice. Plus you need no clouds, darkness, be awake, and in the right spot with a Southern view.

Possibly our most pleasant “Polar Bear” Dip ever. The old limestone kiln at Walkerville South Beach makes it feel like you’re in Tulum or something! It was lovely.

Our Christmas presents to most of the nieces and nephews was a Splatball outing this year. I think everyone had a good time except April.. she found in a bit scary. We all got very sweaty and messy.

Our January #SMAJ activity was going to the Rone exhibit at Flinders Street Station. So apparently all the rooms above the train station had been sitting empty for ages. Rone decided to fix them up into a big immersive art exhibit. It was interesting.. lots of little bits of old things to look at. I think it would be a fun place to bring your grandma or something.

I went to Phillip Island for a weekend with a big group of friends. One of their families has an Airbnb that we got to use, for free! It was a really fun weekend, we played games, went to farmers market, went to the beach, cooked and ate all sorts of fun food, knitted, hung out. I had a really nice time.

Again I was keeping an eye on the aurora forecast, as we were pointing South, but it wasn’t active. Also the milky way is not as good in Australia in the summer so that was about the best picture that I got, just off the deck. I’ll try to be more organised this winter with the moon cycle.

The big thing that’s happening at the moment, and a big part of the reason why this blog post is so late, is that our renovations have started! There are some Before shots which we’ll use for comparison later. We’re getting the whole bathroom, toilet, and laundry room done, and a minor adjustment in the kitchen. Very exciting!

My delivery man, Pat. (Scott’s dad.) He helped me pick up a big load of stuff from the bathroom supply store to save us some money on delivery fees. Thanks Pat!!

We stored all the stuff in the corners of our living room. Box life.

Carpooling to Florim and Lora’s wedding. It was a very unique wedding experience for us. There were over 500 people there, the majority being Albanian. There was a live band of electric clarinet and singing that was VERY VERY VERY loud. There was A LOT of slow snail line dancing in the middle of the room. Very fancy and tight dresses. Lots of great food. Lots of money being given to the couple. Twas a bit intense. Eventually we just had to leave and the whole way back we just sat in the car in silence, with ringing ears. Fun but I wish I had earplugs and I wish I had worn something FANCY.

Good January food.

Scott and I made 5 different curries and froze them into small portions so we can have easy future meals. They’ve already come in handy so many times. We made a peanutty one, a lamb one, brown lentils with spinach, chickpeas with tomato, and red lentil mush one.

I found pickled turnip at Coles in Dandenong and we’ve been eating a ton of shawarma this summer. Another thing I miss from home that I can now recreate here. :)

Lactose-free rugelach using plant butter and lactose-free cream cheese. Turned out nice!

Many extremely sweaty training sessions. It’s been hot, and I’ve been doing a higher volume strength training block that has been making me sweat buckets. I hope it pays off.

I hurt my back at one point doing a very routine exercise and got horrible sciatica pain for a couple weeks. That was awful, I’ve never had nerve pain before. But I recovered from it more quickly than expected thankfully. I’m completely back to normal now. I hope it doesn’t happen again.

My committee member obligations have really ramped up this year. We’re trying to get more members to save the club from impending financial disaster We’ve got actual meetings and I’m in charge of fixing up the website at the moment.

Still knitting as much as possible. I love knitting. Somewhat unusual for me.. I am working on two projects at the same time. I’m still working on my second sweater, and now a pair of socks too. I’ve finished one sock and now past the heel on the second. Unfortunately they are too small for me! I have learned a lot.

Unpictured stuff:

  • As usual Scott is very busy with all of his sports. He’s been playing a lot of lawn bowls, hockey, running, garage gymming, and pickleball.
  • I asked Sophie to come out for dinner with me because Scott was being too healthy. We had laksa and a nice catch up.

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2022 was pretty great. I managed to have two whole months of sister time!

Good things that happened in 2022:

  • Rosemarie came to Australia! It was so nice. We did so many fun things, ate so many delicious things, played so many games. We went to Wilsons Prom and Fraser Island. I wish she could come every year.
  • Solidified friendships with Discord pals. Lots of fun parties, games days, crafternoons, and meals out.
  • We finally got to go to Canada and see family and friends after more than 3 years away.
  • We went on a few small trips to Flowerdale, Sydney, and the Grampians.
  • We learned to play pickleball and became slightly obsessed.
  • I learned to knit sweaters.
  • I committed to lactose free life and feel a lot better.
  • I went on an epic trip by myself to Queensland. Already brainstorming another one…
  • We got invited to quite a few BIG parties: three weddings, two 40th birthdays, and a 1st birthday that was just as big as a wedding!
  • Got binoculars and saw many new birds.

PBs: Snatch 47kg –> 48kg in comp, and 49kg in training. CJ 58kg –> 58kg, but I did 60kg one time in training. Back squat 73×1, Front squat 58×2, Deadlift 80×1, OHP (in Sotts position lol) 34×1.

I didn’t improve much on paper in weightlifting this year. But I think I still did improve. I think I’m due for some bigger PBs in 2023.

Also I didn’t have any major problems with injuries so that is something to be very grateful for.

New board games: Viticulture, Concordia, Wingspan Asia, Mahjong, Kingdomino, Azul Summer Pavilion. We played 31 different board games with 29 different people!! We played A LOT of games in 2022 compared to other years due to spending so much time with Rosemarie.

Books (in rough order of favourite to worst):

  • Pachkino by Min Jin Lee – A book about multiple generations of a Korean family living in Japan. Enjoyed.
  • The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah – A kind of sad good book about a family going through a terrible life in USA in the 1930s. Why are people so awful.
  • A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini – A somewhat depressing book about the oppression of women in Afghanistan.
  • Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles – Kind of cute. Some clever funny writing.
  • Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner – Made me sad and hungry.
  • The Pull of the Stars by Emma Donoghue – A clever nurse working during a pandemic. Emma’s books are always very readable.
  • The Giver of Stars by Jojo Moyes – Who wouldn’t like a book about fierce lady librarians.
  • The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett – Good, about two sisters who go totally different ways.
  • My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell – This is written by someone I used to be in an Livejournal community with! Reminded me a lot of what happened with the music teacher at my high school.
  • The Push by Ashley Audrain – Didn’t really like that the book was written in 2nd person, but overall a very thrilling story about a psychopath child.
  • Malibu Rising by Taylor Jenkins Reid – A bit lighter, made me want to go surfing in California
  • Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel – Weird to read a book that has covid in it. Some nice Canadian descriptions.
  • Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams by Matthew Walker – Very pro-sleep, even naps. I skimmed through a bunch of chapters because I already knew the stuff from my BSc Neuroscience days.
  • In My Dreams I Hold a Knife by Ashley Winstead – I thought it was a pretty stupid book. Kind of immature. Written in annoying alternating chapters.

Great new recipes:

Favourite bird pics:

2021 Final Thoughts: This year is finishing off pretty nice… the weather is great, we got to have a normal Christmas, and it’s summer fun times all the time. The government has completely changed their stance on covid and now we’re just letting it rip? We’ll see how this goes. I’m just hoping it lasts because we have a few big things planned in 2022 and I REALLY hope they don’t get cancelled.

Nothing got cancelled!

Last years goals: I dunno. Not get covid? (Nope, Scott and I got covid separately, in May and August. Thankfully very mild, and we didn’t have to miss anything important.)

2023 goals: Use my good camera more. Become more athletic. Eat more protein. More knitting. Start volunteering in migrant services.

2022 Final Thoughts: We are so lucky to be able to do all the things we got to do in 2022. I am very grateful for my friends and family, they really enrich our lives. I will be very happy if the next year continues on like last year.

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Another busy month. Scott and I had to work a bit in between Christmas and New Years but still managed to get a good break. The Lonard’s came for Christmas this year so we got extra family time with them. Winter finally ended and we’ve had warmer weather.

Cousin Shaun (unpictured) had his 40th birthday party at a lawn bowls club. Scott was so excited he even brought his own bowls. It was a big party… around 70 children!!! It was so hot that day though we couldn’t actually bowl that much.

I made the biggest pan of Nanaimo bars I’ve ever made. They freeze so nicely I knew that future Katrina would be very happy with past Katrina if I made a double batch. It was so convenient to be able to just pull out what I needed for multiple different social events.

Scott turned 44. Originally he was going to go to a fancy vendor dinner that night, so I didn’t plan anything at all at home. And then at the last minute he told me he wasn’t going. So we just went out for dinner at S.owl in Carnegie. It was fine. We had the chefs selection which came with lamb and potatoes, and a bunch of sides, and the dinner was an espresso tiramisu type thing which was meant for sharing, but I don’t like coffee or dairy, so he got to have the whole thing.

Phoenix Christmas Hit Out

I competed in the Christmas Hit Out. I did better than my last comp, but still no PBs. If I had just gotten one more snatch, it would have been quite a good result, but alas… no. I snatched 45kg, then missed 48 by a hair. Harvey asked if I wanted to go up to 49 (which would be a PB, and a compromise from the 50 that Nic had planned for my 3rd attempt), which I said YEAH! But then I lifted with too much gusto and missed it behind me. Then I clean and jerked 55 and 58 (equal PB), but then couldn’t stand up 60 despite quadruple bouncing.

I have found my last two competitions very frustrating!! I wish we got unlimited attempts.. but that is not how it works.

After I was done competing I photographed the boys session. I was bored of boring weightlifting photos so I decided to crank up the speed and catch everyone with their funniest faces. I’m not sure the athletes liked the pictures I got of them, but I did!!!

We went out for lunch with some Discord friends and the bar was suuuuper air conditioned. Scott, the gentleman, let me borrow his hoodie. We had a cheesesteak that had kimchi on it, and swiss cheese (nearly lactose free!). Sounds weird but I liked it.

We got our pottery back from our pottery day! This was one of the lil’ pinch pots I made. I still need to take pictures of the rest of the stuff. Also that’s homemade strawberry and mango sorbet. I’ve been on a sorbet kick lately.

The neighbours put up a big Santa. So cute.

Christmas was nice. It was very hot and sunny! There was tons of children, presents, meats, salads. A fun day. The waterslide was a huge hit. And I didn’t get called in to work so that’s a plus.

We’ve played three games of Concordia this week. I beat Scott every time. 😎

We went to Day 2 of the Boxing Day Test for our December #SMAJ. It was VERY hot. I lasted about 90 seconds in our actual seats before I said WE HAVE TO MOVE INTO THE SHADE. Luckily we were able to stay in the shade the rest of the time. Scott brought me lots of snacks to keep me entertained, like a toddler. It was an ok session, we saw a 6, several 4s, a run out, a century. We left a little bit early and missed seeing someone get hit by the spider-cam!!! Australia ended up winning on Day 4.

Melting but not sunburned!

Today Scott and I used our day off to cook five different curries, which we froze in little packs so we can mix and match them for future meals. We made a lamb curry, a brown lentil curry, a red lentil curry, a sweet potato curry, and a chickpea curry. All dairy free.

We’re heading to Walkerville tomorrow to crash on Donna’s campsite for a night. Should be nice weather for an ocean Polar Bear Swim on Sunday morning.

Unpictured stuff:

  • After more meetings with the designer and the builder, and many trips to random bathroom stores, we’ve finalised our design for the bathroom and laundry room renovations. Now we’re waiting for the builder to quote, and to start ordering stuff, and then hopefully construction starts in February!
  • We had our annual EH Survivors Group Christmas lunch. No one even works there any more but we still like to get together.
  • We went to trivia with my trivia friends AND Scott’s sisters. Despite having a big team, we did not even come close to winning. It was all Christmas themed… bah humbug.
  • I organised after work drinks on Christmas Eve Eve. Our boss let us leave a little bit early too. That was nice of him. We went to Otter’s Promise and I had a very sour blackberry beer.
  • Ava came to our house for a sleepover. She is 7. Scott actually ended up doing a lot of ‘solo parenting’ while I was out for drinks and gym, lol. They made cookies and watched movies, then I came home and we had dinner and played a slightly simplified Ticket To Ride. She caught a spider under a glass. She went to bed easily and the next morning we played Blokus and they iced the cookies. She is a good kid. Hyper, but well behaved! It took us the rest of the day to recover. How do people have children all the time??!
  • Christmas Eve dumplings with Sophie and Joel. We played Azul. I was a sore loser.
  • We tried a Christmas/Boxing Day video chat with the Perkin’s. Everyone was separate because the weather was so terrible in Ontario no one could travel. The connection was not the best but it was nice to have a brief chat with everyone.
  • I went to Aquafit with Ash. It was entertaining. Why is everything I do lately for old people??

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OK well in October I took plenty of pictures! Long post ahead!

We have been playing lots of pickleball again. I even got an upgraded paddle! We have been playing with the Bayside Pickleball Club and have been improving every week.

Another one of Scott’s (belated) #SMAJ activities was dinner at Serai in the city. It’s a fancy Filipino restaurant with a lot of stuff cooked over wood fire. It was all lovely if you didn’t think about the price. We had coral trout, broccolini, calamari, and hashbrowns with peanut sauce. The highlight for me was the dairy free dessert called Taho. It is made with soy ice cream, brown sugar syrup and tapioca pearls. The girl told us to stir it all up. Delicious!

Couple of lil’ pots.

Our friends Jen and Robert ran a private pottery workshop for a small group of friends. It was epic. We started with making some pinch pots, then did a bit of wheel throwing, and then did some large pieces where we painted coloured clay onto newspaper and then transferred it onto the slabs of clay which we layed over big molds. We got to pick what glaze we would like them to put on each piece and they are going to finish them all up for us. I can’t wait to see the results! It was a lovely afternoon.

We stopped in Box Hill on the way home for dinner. We randomly picked this Uyghur restaurant called Dolan On Silk Road because it seemed to be quite busy, and it turned out to be great! We ordered this massive lamb and bread platter which had a nice flavour and lots of vegetables and sauce. Fun to try a new cuisine. Everything the people around us were eating looked great too.

My work did a Medical Imaging Bake Off and it was pretty much the best day ever. I made a lemon blueberry yogurt cake that was decent but not prize-worthy. It was so moistly that the icing sugar I sprinkled on top got absorbed almost immediately.

I tried nearly everything. Even though we took tiny slivers of each thing it still put everyone into a sugar coma.

I went birdwatching with a bunch of oldies in Corinella. It was a weekday outing so I think the age group was extra skewed towards… retired. I didn’t get any good pictures but we did see lots of birds. The highlight for me was the Crested Shriketit, as I had never see one before and they’re pretty cool looking. It was nice to get out on a particularly lovely day.

I thought the birdwatching was going to finish at 12pm like it said on the website so I didn’t bring a packed lunch. Ohhhh I was so jealous of everyone’s delicious looking sandwiches when they stopped for a picnic lunch before continuing on to site number two and three!! Instead I bailed after site two and got Maccas on the way home. This is what a burger looks like if you ask for +2 pickles. Pickle overload!!

I did a quick volunteer session on the computer at the tiny girls session of Victorian Senior Championships. Always inspiring. It rained a lot.

Speaking of rain. Snails absolutely decimated our garden. We pretty much had to start everything again after snails ate all of our seedlings (two coriander, four cucumber, three eggplant…) The snails ate $15 of marigold flowers in one night.

After that we ordered the green garden box tent and these plastic cones which have been helping. Mesh food covers also help. And every night after dark we go out and stomp snails. In one week we killed NINE HUNDRED SNAILS. Our backyard isn’t even that big!!! They were literally everywhere, all over the sides of the garden boxes, the ground, the side of the house, the fence. It’s like the grossest Easter egg hunt ever. If you want to see a disgusting picture of mass amounts of gross snails, click here.

We are possibly winning though, because this week there have only been a few every night. We’re hoping the constant rain has ended and we’ll be able to uncover stuff soon, because we also need to let the bees in for pollination.

Gardening is hard. I can’t believe the first year we basically just chucked everything in and did almost no maintenance and everything grew very well.

Expectation.
Reality.

I got quite a bit of hair cut off. It’s a bit crazy. But I re-remembered that it actually only takes like 2 minutes to blow dry my hair when it’s this short so I’ve got it semi under control again.

Doreen have me a couple snapper which I attempted to filet with my fish knife from last Christmas. I think i did ok considering they were quite small! I also learned how to gut the fish this time too.

I went to watch Scott play hockey before going to a Diwali Halloween party. Diwaloween.

I tried candy corn for the first time and I thought it was fine? I don’t get the hate. The party had a lot of delicious food.

Rosemarie mailed me some clothing and some cascatelli!!! She is the best! We had it with a sausage pasta and it really did have great forkability, sauceability and toothsinkability! If I lived in USA I would use it as my go-to pasta for sure.

A beautifully golden tourtiere.

True love is Scott making me a tiny container of gravy to go with my lunch tourtiere when he hates the stuff.

Homemade kimbap. Yum!!
Lactose free ice cream with chocolate coated pretzels and a fudge ripple. I just used (expensive) lactose free cream and milk to make it.

Korean gochujang bbq short ribs. They took 4 hours in the oven!! Worth it, this was delicious. Can’t link the recipe because it’s from Nagi’s new cookbook.

Scott says I should have just stopped here.

I finished my sweater!!! It’s super warm and cozy. I just finished blocking it so I’ll take better pictures next time I’m home during the day. The forecast for this week is 25-29°C… so might not get much use out of it any time soon.

Unpictured stuff! This is the post that never ends!

  • I risked doing three different activities on an on call day: an online CPD seminar mostly about brain PET, afternoon weightlifting training, and post-training pizza with weightlifting pals. Thankfully I didn’t get called in and got to do everything!
  • That same day Scott went down to Tarwin for his cousin’s wife’s birthday bash. I enjoyed my alone-y evening.
  • We had a nice lunch at Dean and Ness’s new house.
  • More trivia with Ash and Charlie.

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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.