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Scott got us tickets to see Weezer with Jemma and Damien. I hadn’t really listened to Weezer since like 2007 but it was still good! Very nostalgic. I could tell that they have been doing this show for a long time because everything was very polished. I knew every song except two or three, and I can’t think of any songs I like that they didn’t play. We were sitting up on the edge and it was pretty chill.

The concert was on Friday. On Saturday I was on call and Scott played bowls. On Sunday we played pickleball and then left for our camping trip in the Mallee, which I will write about in its own post.

I think on Tuesday or Wednesday we heard that Jemma and Damien both have covid, probably from Myles. Didn’t think too much of it as we were both feeling 100% normal.

We drove back on Thursday, Scott was a bit snotty and tired yet still did the majority of the driving. Thanks Scott!

I went to work on Friday as normal. Then mid-afternoon I heard from another friend that she had covid and I asked what her symptoms were and she said mostly ‘snotty and tired’. I’m like OH NO. I message Scott that he should probably do a RAT, and he shortly writes back that it’s positive!! I just spent 6 hours in a car with that guy!! I still felt 100% normal but of course did one at work too and it was negative so I finished my shift (we all were wearing masks like normal as well).

After work a few of us went to Tricky Wicket for dinner and attempting to hit cricket balls. It was very hard and none of us were very good at it, even on very easy settings. I was quite scared of the ball. I did touch the ball one time though at least (I am ‘regular k’).

And you can probably guess where this story is going, but the next day I also tested positive on a RAT. BLAZING positive. I was so worried that I infected my whole department, but thankfully no one else got it. We just can’t believe how long it took… like almost a full week since we saw J & D, and then why did it take me a few more days after Scott, when I was sitting in between them at the concert?! Otherwise, how did we catch covid while in the outback???

We both got pretty sick.. worse than the first time. But Scott never had much of a cough and recovered completely fairly quickly. I had pretty much every symptom possible, even losing taste for a few days, but gradually got better every day. My training took a bit of a hit but what can ya do. At least the timing was pretty convenient.

Oh yeah one annoying thing we had to do while sick was VOTE!? Australia had a referendum and voting is mandatory. According to the website it seemed like they still wanted us to go vote, just wear a mask and bring your own pen. I felt bad for the person checking my details. And the referendum didn’t even go the way I wanted it to so that was disappointing.

Back to fun stuff!

Yet another Birdlife photography outing. This time we went to Bunyip State Park. There was a big group this time! We barely saw any birds!! We could hear tons of birds, but they were all so far away. One of the downsides of going to a place that has great tall old trees.

I thought this quote from the group’s blog post was amusing:

After two and half hours, the group reconvened at the picnic ground to compare bird stories and photos – and leech bites. The latter were an almost universal experience, much more so than some of the 35 species recorded.

Once bleeding was staunched, and with suitable nourishment and caffeine on board, we motored the 10 minutes to Buttongrass Walk.

There really were a lot of leeches. I flicked about 20 off my pants, and one got me between my fingers, so I had a bit gruesome looking bloody hand for a while.

Rufous Whistler

Not only was there not very many birds, I was also struggling with my camera. I’m not entirely convinced that there isn’t something wrong with my telephoto lens. Sometimes it won’t auto-focus on anything for minutes at a time, and pointing it at something close, or something far doesn’t seem to help. By the time I get it to focus the bird is long gone. I talked to a few people from the group about it and they suggested it might just be from bad lighting conditions, but I’m not sure. More testing required, or perhaps sending it in for inspection.

Scott did a good job on this month’s #SMAJ. I didn’t even know what it was until we were nearly all the way there. We went to Luna Park at night and I finally got to ride the wooden roller coaster! It has a brake operator! It’s called The Great Scenic Railway and it’s the second oldest roller coaster in the world (1912), and one of only seven remaining roller coasters that has a brakeman. It was bumpy and fun.

We also rode a few other rides, and had some carnival food. It was pretty busy because it was almost Halloween. Lots of good people-watching while waiting in lines.

Scott made a lot of lactose free perogies. Perks of unemployment. They are DELICIOUS.

Cardigan progress. I thought this cardigan would take me a couple months to make but between camping and covid I got A LOT done. It should be ready right in time for summer. :P

Unpictured things:

  • I started getting allergy shots for my birch allergy. Despite there not being a lot of birch trees here I still seem to get a lot of symptoms and still can’t eat a lot of fruits (oral allergy syndrome). So I’m giving this a try. I hope it works cuz it’s expensive. I’ve almost finished the part where I have to go every week for a shot, and then they will be a month apart. I won’t really be able to tell if they work until next spring.
  • We had a games night at our house. Scott made vegetarian enchiladas and they were a hit. We played Tiny Towns.
  • The new sports centre within walking distance to our house opened after a year or two of construction. Scott is happy because not only does it mean his lawn bowls team gets to move back in, but the facilities are very nice, and it has a sun shade over the (fake) grass so he doesn’t have to worry as much about being burnt to a crisp. They also have a bunch of tennis courts and basketball courts. They do have lines for three badminton courts so we’re hoping that someone eventually starts a pickleball club there too. No, we don’t want to start it ourselves, that’s too hard.

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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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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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    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.