Melbourne

I'm baaaack. Back home to regular electricity and internet and noise and convenience and all the joys and ills of modern life.

My friend couldn't water my plants for me so I may have lost my hot lips salvia (which I think is severely root bound anyway) and my scotch bonnet pepper (which I don't use much of). The manzano chili was in an over exposed location and looks very shriveled and sad, but I think it's still salvageable with lots of pampering over the next few days. Please come through my precious, you are quite tasty and fruitful.

All my indoor plants are super happy though.

$1 billion of cocaine found in a Sydney apartment. Difficult task for cops to inventory $900 million in cocaine. I hope all $500 million dollars of it stays accounted for.

Two Christmas markets! Firstly Aachen’s, looking at the Cathedral that Charlemagne commissioned in 796, then Baden-Baden’s in the fog. Both were good markets, with some good variety of stuff and not too much tat. The lines for food and drinks at Baden-Baden were ridic, whereas they were much more manageable in Aachen. Cologne tomorrow!

Got a couple hours to kill at Canberra Airport and trying to find some inspiring/thought provoking podcasts... have a few episodes of Conversations downloaded, and am getting through a short BBC one on a British cult.

E: the same girls choir group has come and gone from the main entrance area like 4 times now singing the same songs. I admire their mental tenacity in not being utterly sick of the same 5 songs

E2: boarded a bit late. Boo, middle seat again. But it's a short flight. Fat lady next to me smells vaguely like fish but they've upped the air freshener in the plane so that's a relief.

Am stressed out over Christmas. I am every year though. It's the money worries, and the hoping everyone likes their gifts worries, and the "I hope I don't screw up with the lunch" worries. Same shit every year.

Miniest is sick; caught something from kids at her end-of-year class party last Friday, who admitted they were sick but didn't want to miss out on the fun and food🤦🏻‍♀️.

Spending the last week of work doing a full dismantling and cleaning of anything that can be dismantled and cleaned (and probably a few things that can't!) Then I will have that experience of wanting to relax and do nothing while my kids, who've been waiting all year for me to have time off, will be constantly requesting/demanding that we do something. It'll be like weekends but 10x longer. I will wear a Grinch tshirt or two.

I have swollen lymph nodes. I wonder what infection I'm fighting this time?

- last lunch notes for the year...phew

Anyone got any feel good stories, looking for a pick me up for this depressing “summer” weather.

Chooken is in the oven, this time I made a mustard, lemon , garlic and thyme marinade. I baste every 20 minutes

I've been listening to an audio book on Neanderthals. They were very intelligent, hardworking and neat and tidy peoples who kept their homes clean.

Which is much better than my nuclear physicist BIL and mathematician husband who are dreadful passive aggressive slobs.

Packing everything up for the camping trip starting tomorrow, really really hoping the spot isn't packed to the shithouse (I'm of two minds about how busy it will be since so far this week I've notice everything's not been super busy yet).

feels like friday

I've been looking at the pictures of those cave paintings from France and Spain.

Not only was it awesome that the pictures survived these ~35,000 years but they are rally good art. The artist was talented and hard working , these can't be the first pictures they drew, it takes years of practice to be that good.

Maybe they also drew on open cliff faces and tanned hides, neither which would have survived.

I love the handprints. I can imagine in my mind's eye, when the job was done the artist getting their family to put their hands on the walls and they spray paint to make the handprints.

Well Melby stunning weather today. Lol

i am very excited about seeing family-grade friends on saturday

how do i concentrate, do stuff, and not just AHHHHHHHH until then

Hey. 😊🤗

Is it over yet?

Ooh memmy is not a happy cow this morning

Feels like a Tuesday afternoon, about 2:49 PM

I'm sorry but 400 dollars for a passport is completely beyond the pale. Have they really looked into efficiency gains before jacking up the price 15%?

I am insufflating 0.0000075 * $1,000,000 worth of dumplings tonight.

If you needed to pick up something from sunshine West and something from Cranbourne on the same day, starting from Thornbury, which way would be better traffic wise do you think?