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very cold this morning as can be seen by this giant pile of ice cubes on the street near my office.  actually i think they were just chucked out by a cafe but it was 7 degrees this morning outside (and 11 degrees in our bedroom).

busy day at work for me which is good.  here’s a pile of kiwis left on a plate.

jane had a good time at her choir (week off next week) and the girls had a good time at school.

and i discovered why i haven’t received some share certificates from the UK worth a tidy pound or two.  it’s because the company didn’t put ‘new zealand’ on our address.  my post is out there somewhere.  ho hum.  let me know if you see it go by.

hello.  i was meant to be meeting someone for a breakfast meeting this morning at 9am.  it was all nicely organised so i could go there on the way to work.  i still got my normal bus though as if i go any later ii don’t get ‘a park’ (ie ‘a parking space’).

so i arrived 90 minutes early and ordered a hot chocolate in a bowl.  just as i sat down i checked my blackberry and found my meeting had been cancelled.  so i sat and enjoyed my hot chocolate instead.

i chucked my chocolate fish in the drink for no real reason (actually i was curious to see whether it floated- it didn’t).  but it did taste fab in a half melted way

i also passed this rather great sign for Ba Na Na on the way to my office.  my second meeting of the day was also a no show as the person running it forgot to dial me in.  but that was all good as i got to spend more time doing the thing i was meant to be doing.

here’s a house door number sign near my office.

 

this evening i went to the church men’s group which was about Genesis 1 – ie creation etc.  The message was that God said ‘it was good’ after each day/time period of busy creatingness.  and it’s still essentially good , so we should look to see things which give us a glimpse of God as we look around the world. 

Examples given included fab music, the sunset over poo lake (that was my example) and even amazing football games. i’d add lost dummies and bollards to the list.  so there you go.  it’s a 4-parter, so it’ll be interesting to see what the next session is about !

finally the most excellent news of the day is esther did fantastic in her literature competition thing.  i’m not entirely sure i understand what it was, but her team won some prize and were the only year 6 team to win anything so that was excellent.  she was very pleased.  and so are all of us.

and jane’s had a haircut.  she’s not sure if it makes her look funky or frumpy.  perhaps the hairdresser misheard ?   I think it looks very nice.  photo of that for another day (or via Skype for those that like real time conversations)

sorry that’s so ramblesome.  long day

today was the queen’s birthday celebration.  apparently it’s celebrated in early June as that was her grandfather’s birthday or something.  anyway, like all good bank holidays it was very rainy.  but today’ was just showery rather than long set rain of yesterday

esther was at her sleepover, so jane, kezia and I got up late and went for breakfast at the mall.  i had spiralina and kezia had apple juice to drink whilst jane had a bowl of coffee.

we picked esther up then drove up to the seaside town of orewa just up the coast.  we’ve been through it a few times, but not stopped.  this time we were there to look at art – some of the auckland photography festival is up there, and there was some local art exhibition on too.

then it was time for a pie and cookies on the beach.  we sat and watched surfers pootling about

 

and the girls threw themselves on a ledge down on to the lower bit of beach

 

it was a little chilly, but not overly so

i think i was slightly over dressed, but better to be warm than cold

and cold weather is kicking in later in the week

i’m off for a walk with warren this evening, but first we need to have a family game and some pizza.

and here’s a cockroach we caught earlier which was so big it dragged the plastic cup round the bathroom floor !

 

sandwich pie cake.

our lovely friend ian from our old church is in auckland this week for work and he kinds came and spent today with us.

we picked him up early from his hotel in town and went to our new church.  after that we came home to do some proper chatting and catching up.

then after lunch we went to the waitakere bush where it chucked it down with rain.  we had a good (though rather wet) walk then went to a vineyard cafe for afternoon tea.

after some more chatting we went out to some other friends from church’s house to celebrate one of their birthdays.  and we’ve just dropped ian back at his hotel.  esther is still at the party as she’s having a sleep over.

it was great to catch up with Ian (and receive all the fantastical goodies he brought, including a supply of bic biros !) and to catch up with news from the old world. 

 

thanks to all who sent messages and presents and loveliness.  we’re going to spend a happy evening reading the post-it note covered greetings card

today was a good day.  after some skyping the girls had their orchestra lesson. 

when they got back kezia jumped on her bed and cracked one of the wooden slats so the two of us then went to the local DIY place to get a new piece of wood which was nicely cut to size.  it’s a bit thinner than the other pieces though so i suspect it may soon suffer the same fate but it’ll do for now. anyway, that wasn’t the good bits of the day.

 

after we’d mended the bed and had lunch we drove in to town in search of the photography festival, and the Auckland triennial art festival.  neither of which allowed us to take photos unfortunately, but it was a good selection of modern arty stuff which was jolly good.

this chalk thing above was not anything arty.  it was just chalk on a giant concrete statue which sits in town.  i thought it looked nice though.

whilst in town we went to the highly popular gelato ice cream place which we’ll take you to if you visit

then this evening we went to some english friends house who live in a fantastic house not too far away.  they invited a couple of other poms who happened to live next door to the people who used to rent the house where we live in (just to prove what a small world it is).  we stayed for yonks, the girls ate melted chocolate and the grown ups ate italian type food.

a good time was had by all.  on the way out the door we mentioned about going back to our cold old house and they took pity on us and leant us two oil heaters.  excellent stuff !

not much to report from me today.  was quite chilly walking up the hill to work, but that was fine as i had my warm coat on.  my car thermometer said 7 degrees this morning and apparently it’ll get much colder, but probably not for long.

it’s a bank holiday weekend which means lots of busyness on the roads.  the police are being really strict about speeding so have introduced a 4% rule rather than the usual 10% tolerance on speed limits and they’ll be out in force with their speed guns.  exciting stuff.

And Auckland now has super powers as the various bi

And Auckland now has super powers as it got turned in to a Super City this week thanks to government merging the various parts of it in to one. 

some people didn’t like that, especially those who live on the nice bits beyond the edge of the stinky bits so they decided to have a protest and do a big blockade if the main motorway to annoy people heading out of town for the long weekend.

this being new zealand they weren’t very good at being annoying and actually caused the traffic to flow better by slowing everyone down to a sensible speed !  little bit more here

the girls had a good day at school and their photos were shown in assembly along with everyone else’s.  swimming was good and jane had a nice time with her ladies group and jolly friends.  there was cake involved.

my day in wellington went really well.  my presentation was fine and despite another one of the presenters dropping out we had a really good day.

the journey home wasn’t quite so good.  we all got on the plane you can see above before the pilot announced there was some sand residue in the engines and some engineers had been called.  after 5 minutes the pilot said he didn’t feel comfortable flying the plane so we all moved to another plane which just happened to be parked next to it.

as we walked between the two planes we could see the engineers having a shufty

and then we got stuck in a massive traffic jam in Auckland so the whole journey took an extra hour and a half longer than it needed.  ho hum

and this was front page news today on the Dominion (one of the national papers).  apparently there’s a professional mourner down there who goes to up to 4 funerals a week just for the food.  they’ve nicknamed him the ‘grim eater’ which is good.

and it’s good to see the journalist has unpicked the story a bit to give you the inside story on funeral food.  nice quote.

meanwhile jane has been spending all her future salary on necessity clothes and the girls had their violin lessons.  jane is now out at her ‘crafty chicks’ church lady evening thing.  and i’m not.

the girls had to take a photo on the way to school this morning as part of enviro day.  they had to email their best pictures in to school.  these are esther’s (above) and kezia’s (below).

they needed two camera which left me without my belt camera today, so i wandered in to work with my big camera round my neck.

but that was ok as i was meeting someone for breakfast near bacons lane.

 

and today another one of my presenters got ill and dropped out of the conference i’m organising for tomorrow which is a shame, and a bit too late to replace.  so we’ll just have to mumble on and wot not instead.

jane’s out choiring again tonight so the girls and i watched the end of charlie and the chocolate factory.  taxi man cometh at 5.30am so i’ll not stand here chatting if you don’t mind.  toodles.

here’s a cool thing. it’s a hair growing thing (a bit like cress egg heads), but made growing grass out of a stocking filled with some dirt in a plastic cup.  excellent stuff.  and much more dramatic than cress egg heads.

and here’s esther’s player of the day trophy that she gets to keep for half a week for helping the other flippa ball team out on sunday.  the other player of the day was another sub who also joined them

and it’s been really rainy again today.  water has been coming in to our bedroom under the door which is a bit of a shame.  the estate agents said it was exceptional weather, but it’s at least the third time it’s happened so it’s not that exceptional.  i suppose it all comes down to definitions.  it’s not a huge puddle or owt, so not a worry.

 

and the house electrics tripping seems to coincide with heavy rain showers which is a bit more of a worry.  jane had an electrician out this afternoon but he spent an hour trying to work out the problem but couldn’t (and by then the fuses weren’t tripping).  ho hum

home group this evening where the question was posed are you a doer or not a doer.  i said i was neither.  i’m a jar.  how we laughed (silently inside).

my name’s dave.  goodnight.

 

Here is the sky tower. It’s Jane btw. Guess what, I’ve just gone to the Auckland half marathon website, it’s on 31st October, and it is already sold out. That is annoying. Now I have no focus in my life and even less motivation to get up early to go running.

I have been feeling better today. I had a lovely chat with my sister on the phone this morning, then met a friend for coffee and then went and helped in Kezia’s class.; Then I did my “wellbeing” thing at school. This means I did some odd jobs for the teachers, it is nothing to do with women’s health! It was quite fun today because I got to put lots of books away in these slidy shelves (pathetic, I know but that is how I get my fun these days). Then this afternoon I met up with Debbie. After school I took the girls to the library and Kezia and I asked a helpful lady about what would be good books for her to go on to. The I mowed the back lawn, so I have achieved something today.

Toodle pip