Rick, Nicky and Claire in NZ

Our routine has been a little different this week, with Nicky no longer being at night class on a Tuesday and Claire swapping her Thursday evening duty for Friday to help out a colleague. Other than that, it has been life very much as normal. I have done some Mac work and a massage, Nicky has been busy at the Library, and Claire has been studying as ever. In the last few weeks we have had new front brake pads and disks and four new tyres fitted to Lilly to get her through her WoF (aka MoT). This has been expensive, but she is now much nicer to drive, which Claire is enjoying. The weather has been wetter this week, though we have still had long periods of sunshine most days. Apparently we are due to get some storms during October as we have now changed the clocks (forward an hour so we are now 12 hours ahead of BST) the weather men have more time to do storm forecasts, so they are organising storms. Well I think that's why. It is something to do with some bloke call El Nino and noth...

Monday was our two year anniversary of arriving in New Zealand, and by partial way of celebration, Claire took me out to lunch. I had dropped her at Uny before driving up to Port Albert to return a Mac I had been working on. I picked her up at lunchtime and we went to a Thai restaurant near campus and had a very nice lunch. I stopped to take some photo's on my way back from Port Albert; this is South Head: Tuesday was Nicky's last day of her Maori course, which was another evening of shared food and entertainment as concluded the course previously. This time the venue was the marae on the Mt Albert campus of Unitec. Timing was always going to be an issue with the evening starting at 6 and Nicky finishing work at 5.30, so Claire went to pick Nicky up on the way back from Uny, but was delayed by traffic and a bee in the car. So, by the time they got home to collect me and the food, it was too late to go. On Wednesday we had a very pleasant evening as Helen from Nicky's church...

It's been a fairly routine week. Nicky has been busy at work, Claire has been back at University, and I have had some MacOnSite work. I have also had one massage customer who came into the salon where I rent a room on spec. I am doing a September special of $40 for a massage to try and stimulate business. The weather has been good most of the week too, with lots of sunshine and just some rain on Friday and Saturday. Today has been nice again. We have had a quiet weekend. Nicky spent much of yesterday doing a casserole marathon for the coming week and freezer, and today has been into town with Claire. They went to see an exhibition at Smith and Caugheys which includes some clothes designed by one of Claire's friends. I have spend much of the day reading which has been very pleasant. Tomorrow is our 2 year anniversary of arriving in NZ. I am trying to put together some thoughts on experience which I started writing last year (whops!) so if I can get them into shape I will post th...

Another week draws to a close, so time to update the blog. It has been quiet again. I have had some work; on Tuesday evening I did a modelling job for a tutor I haven't worked with before. It went well so hopefully I will get some more work from him in the future. I have decided to do a September Special promotion for my massage at almost half-price, so distributed some leaflets round the cafés in Grey Lynn on Friday. Claire has been working on assignments and making sure the sofa still works this week. To break up the monotony she had Wednesday with friends playing a range of games - Trivial Pursuit, Pictionary and the like, and eating pizza and other healthy foods. She is back at Uni next week. Nicky has had another busy as ever week at Ranui, and had a quilting day yesterday. Today has been Fathers Day, which is much bigger here than in the UK. Claire bought me a wonderful book about the history of Waitakere, the area where we live. The weather has also blessed us for the last f...