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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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    November was an extremely busy month. It felt like every friend group was like “Let’s get together and do something before the crazy season starts”, which ended up making November equally (if not more!) busy than December. Next year I need to remember to do my early Christmas organising and baking in October!

    We started the month with a belated #SMAJ activity at the 1000 Steps. I was so excited, as you can clearly tell. I barely saw anything on the way up because I was just concentrating on getting it over with as quickly as possible. Heard a lot of bird calls though.

    The way down hurt my knees.

    We had our friends over for dinner and games. I made a vegetarian Korean meal with Korean pancake, kimchi fried rice, and some crispy gochujang tofu. Scott made some banchan to go with it.

    We played Viticulture, a rare six player game. It did take quite a long time with six people though, especially at the beginning when everyone is struggling to get their vineyard going.

    My work always has our Christmas lunch super early. This year we went to Maha and it was very delicious. Felt very lucky.

    Snails haven’t been as much of a problem in the garden any more, thank goodness. Once the zucchini started flowering I moved the tent to the salad and herbs box. So far even the uncovered stuff is thriving.

    Extremely sweaty at pickleball. The headband means I mean BUSINESS. We managed to go play pickleball most weeks.

    Post pickleball doughnuts. I had a cruller craving for weeks, but after finally getting a cruller I have decided that I don’t really like them.

    Michael and Gina taught us how to play mahjong. It was fun. Wish I could have played with my mom’s side of the family.

    Jill came for a visit! With gifts! We met her at Lune and then we went back to our house for chats. She’s about to move back to Canada so it might be a while before we see her again, although we always seem to find a way.

    We went to the Night Noodle Market. It wasn’t a very nice day out so it wasn’t very busy. We had three different types of bao, kimchi fries, and Gelato Messina mango pancake. (The picture is my friend’s Oreo ice cream concoction.

    Next knitting project after finishing my green sweater. This one is slightly more complicated but still not too bad.
    I made a resin dish with a Kmart mould. Kinda fun.

    I had a couple meetings and many many emails with Simone, the designer we hired to help us with our renovations. We ended up picking the rectangle green-y tile in the centre of the picture as our fun tile, and a grey-ish stone-y looking one for the rest, for the bathroom and laundry room. We were going to do a bit of the kitchen too but have decided it makes more sense to just leave it for if/when we redo the whole kitchen. Hopefully bathroom construction will start in February.

    Unpictured stuff:

    • Another belated #SMAJ… had sushi and went to see Armageddon Time, a movie that made me feel sad about systemic racism.
    • Discount Thai food with Discord friends.
    • Several trivia nights, including trying out a new place that only had one other team there, so our team had to split into two teams to at least try and make it a bit more competitive.
    • I went to Oasis grocery store for the first time and found pink pickled turnip which made me extremely happy.
    • We had a state election and the Labour party stayed in power, which was a relief. Yes even the state elections have ballots that are like a meter long.
    • Betty’s Burgers with friends.
    • Another crafternoon! I worked on my knitting. A lady took a picture of our group cuz she thought it was great that we were all crafting and drinking.
    • We went to New South Wales. I’ll make that its own post.