2024 Recap

Happy New Year!  Time for a brief recap of 2024 I guess.

Main Highlights

* Trips to Mt Cook, Sydney, and Wellington

* First full year at work supporting the important operational system we're responsible for (and getting it stable / fixing all the major-ish quirks that popped up after it launched in late October 2023)

* Taking the plunge and getting a new camera setup (Canon R5 - Mirrorless) after years of using my trusty Canon 7D

* Capturing multiple Auroras, after years of trying unsuccessfully

* Starting a mini collection of my favourite aircraft as detailed diecast models at 1:200 scale (i.e. Emirates A380 + Cathay Pacific 747 in old "green-white-stripe" livery)

* Finally getting a heatpump for my main home-office  (hot room days be gone!)

* Hosting visitors a few days ago + reconnecting with a bunch of old friends

* Returning to actively posting longer-form posts on here (after a few years away mostly posting on Twitter) 

   * I'm still trying to figure out some plans for migrating off this platform onto a more stable / sustainable solution under my own control...

 

Firsts

* Spending time actually exploring the Mt Cook national park  

* First overseas trip post-COVID 

   * And, actually, having this happen after actually contracting COVID for the first time - probably at a local healthcare facility

* Flying in Premium Economy - especially on an A380 flying out of my home airport - that I paid for myself.

* Visiting the Blue Mountains + various other Sydney locations

* Seeing + Photographing an Aurora for myself... and from my back yard at that!  Then getting to do so again multiple times again during the year!

* Capturing a kookaburra + pelicans + "garbage bird" in Sydney

 

Gardening Highlights

* Watching my dahlias come back after their first winter, erupting into bloom

* Adding 2 new glasshouses to our garden

* Seeing my bottlebrush flowering so prolifically this year

Downsides

* RIP Grandpa - my last surviving grandparent. (Technically this happened at the end of 2023, but his funeral + burial was delayed till mid-2024... the day before I went down with COVID!)

* Getting COVID for the first time (after successfully avoiding it for 4 years), and being knocked of action for 6-8 weeks

* Going down with a bad bout of Flu (or something similar) just before Christmas (which has taken the better part of 2 weeks to start to shake off)

* A bunch of other minor health scares  (e.g. having to get a lesion cut off, etc.)

* Spending the last 2-ish months of 2024 in "renovation hell" - i.e. having to effectively completely move out of the home I've lived in all my life, while our bedrooms got renovated, and stressfully bleeding cash trying to source replacement furniture that may be able to be as good as my previous setup (i.e. a replacement office chair, plus an easier-to-maintain ergonomic desk setup - as my current setup is extremely hard to move + restore without lots of effort and risk of painful RSI if I get it wrong)... I may yet post details about some of those in future, as at least in the case of the office-chair situation (i.e. curse you "PU Leather"!!!  I'm never buying another one of those!), it's annoying how dire the lack of options for what I really want are...

   * Effectively getting only a severely restricted Silvereye Season 2024 (due to that renovation project), in the first year when the bush has produced such a spectacular display in over a decade!

   * Discovering that the 2nd floor of the townhouse I bought a few years ago has *serious* heat gain + dissipation/ventilation issues during mildly warm conditions (i.e. anytime the outside temperate goes above 17/18 degrees, and particularly on sunny cloudless days), and being stuck there on said hot days (despite now finally having a heat pump in my usual space after many summers doing without and wishing I had one)... then being unable to install one in time to meet the Christmas-New Years break cutoff due to having to wait for "Body Corporate" (i.e. Home Owners Association type group, of other owners in our block of units) to "approve" the addition of such a unit... 

Yeah... a good third of this year has been rather crappy I'd reckon - particularly this last quarter!

 

Summary

Overall, 2024 was a year that brought a bunch of fun + exciting firsts, coupled with a whole bunch of misery and pain. 

(So far, 2025 is shaping up as continuation of that year... heck, New Year's Celebrations were officially *CANCELLED* in Christchurch last night, due to us receiving more than the December's average rain in one day! Between that and the renovation saga still being very much ongoing for the foreseeable future - i.e. at least for much of the next month at least!, and a bout of food poisoning from a watermelon gone bad yesterday, yeah... it's gonna be a while till things start to look up I reckon!)

(*) I should've guessed this would be the outcome for both 2024 and now this upcoming year (2025)... Looking back, every time I've been stuck at home at midnight (i.e. even just driving away to another part of town then back is enough to break it) has historically lead to a rather miserable year ahead