Rick, Nicky and Claire in NZ

With both of having been at work full time, it has been a very work-orientated week. Nicky has been as busy as usual at the library, with the additional task of getting the staff organised for their Christmas breakfast. This is easier said than done with a staff of over 40, most of whom are part time. Meanwhile, I have been running the Advance Polling Facility up at the church. The proximity of the venue has made it a very easy commute, and we were much busier this week, On Thursday we were open until 8pm (we have usually been closing the doors at 4pm). To mark the occasion for myself, Briar and Kelly (my two Issuing Officers), I made some pies (tariaki salmon with kumera, courgette and spring onion) on Wednesday evening, which Nicky then reheated and brought up to us on Thursday evening. Kelly made a pavlova and the smells in the Polling Place seemed to entice even more people to come and cast their vote, while we enjoyed the food. The on Friday we had a very hectic close down of

It has been a "nose to the grindstone" sort of week, with Nicky at the library, me at the Polling Station and Claire starting extra hours at Whitcoulls. The number of people using the Advance Voting facility has not been vast, until Saturday, when we were busy frequently for the first time this week, and saw more voters than the rest of the week put together. I have two Issuing Officers working with me and our biggest challenge has been keeping warm. Even though the weather has been mostly sunny, we have had strong southerly winds all week, blowing a gale through the Polling Station as we have to keep the doors open. Still, we are enabling the democratic process and that is why we are there. I have also done some Mac work on a couple of evenings so it has been a full week for me. Now that Claire has finished at University she has taken up permanent residence at Ryan's, but she called in to vote on Thursday after visiting the optician's. She and Ryan also called in

Finally, it is Sunday night and I am sitting down to write the blog while Nicky is finishing the ironing and after we have just watched Fair Game - a film about the CIA agent who was publicly named during the Iraq war and the evidence that the US knew all along that there were no WMD's. Nicky has had another full week at work, though it has not had any major dramatic events. Claire has sat her last exam; her last formal event of her three years of study for her degree. I don't know when she will get the results, but the three years seem to have flown. Some days I feel I am still just getting used to the routine of Claire not doing the bulk of our shopping, cooking and laundry, which is what she did before starting her degree. Now her Whitcoulls hours start to build up as Christmas approaches. On Tuesday morning Nicky, Claire and Paul (Nicky's brother) met Rachel Cocker at the airport. She had flown in from Buenos Aires after spending the last 10 months or so travelling thro

Even though it feels like it has been a busy week, I don't have notes of our having done much. I spent quite a bit of the beginning of the week finishing off my last newsletter for the camera club. Claire has been revising and doing two exams, so she hasn't been at Whitcoulls (one of the exams was on Saturday). She has spent most of the week at Ryan's; coming over on Monday so show me his new car, and then for dinner on Thursday, partially because I was cooking roast chicken and Yorkshire puds. We have been quite occupied with road works for most of the week. All the paths on our street are being replaced, and this has meant there have been periods when we couldn't get the car up the drive, so we have been parking at our landlords house on Donovan Street, which backs onto us. As Murphy's law would have it, this was when we had the worst of the weather this week and were not able to benefit from the shelter which our integral garage provides. General Election cam