Rick, Nicky and Claire in NZ

This week has been an "at home" week. I haven't had any on-site work until today, neither of us have been out any evening, and Nicky stayed at home on Wednesday with a bug. She started to feel unwell while at work on Tuesday with sore glands and throat. The library wasn't too busy at the beginning of the week due to the wind and the rain, but it was busy again when a high pressure system brought clear skies at the end of the week. I have had a couple of shopping trips, one to Sylvia Park to the Sony shop to get Nicky a new BlueTooth headset for using with her iPad. The other was to Airport Oaks to buy some new trousers from the Icebreaker Outlet store with my birthday money. I know it was pre-birthday but it was a nice day and I fancied a trip out. I also managed a trip to Whatipu on Friday morning and had a lovely walk along the beach in-spite of the cool wind. After a lovely breakfast of bangers and toms on toast yesterday, Nicky went off to Spotlight and I di...

Another autumnal week has been populated with sunshine and showers, and finished with some major wind and rain in the last 48 hours. The weather hasn’t made the library significantly quieter so Nicky has had another busy week, which has included her annual personal development interview (pleased that’s out of the way!). She was out two evenings with prison prayer group and house group. I was busy with Mac work for the first three days of the week, and then out on Thursday to a Chamber of Commerce exhibition and then my MeetUp group. Friday was a domestic day for me. Nicky took Thursday off as annual leave and we both attended John Mynett’s funeral at the Church of the Saviour. As expected it was very well attended, with family coming from Luxembourg and friends from Macclesfield. It was also relayed live to Luxembourg. Nicky was one of the many helpers with the wake and I think appreciated having a quiet afternoon at home afterwards. Yesterday, in spite of the rain, we had ...

Autumn has made its presence felt this week, with some lower temperatures, some rain, and even a bit of fog on Monday morning. This had cleared by the time I got to Karekare and I had an enjoyable walk as the sun came out, as it has also done frequently during the week. We have had one of our quieter weeks with social commitments, though I was out on Monday evening modelling, and Nicky had her hair appointment on Tuesday evening. The library has been very busy again and I have some Mac work, both on-site and via telephone but still had plenty of time to do laundry, ironing shopping and cooking. The weekend had been quite busy - I took advantage of a lovely day yesterday to empty the laundry basket and do a little shopping. Nicky had a very good BHB quilting session with 13 ladies this time - it gets better each month. As soon as she came back she re-packed the car and headed over to Henderson for Scrabble with Steve and Stella. Afterwards she delivered food supplies to Anne, whos...

We didn’t have any public holidays this week, but Nicky had two nights of poor sleep over the weekend and was battling against a bug which most of her colleagues had succumbed to, so took Monday off. She wasn’t entirely right by any means on Tuesday morning but went back to work anyway as the library was very short staffed. She has slowly improved through the week though still feels like she is recovering. Work for me has gone almost from feast to famine. I have only done a couple of on-site jobs this week, but have been tied to the desk with other issues for quite awhile. I had my final B12 injection on Monday, and a quick swim at Herne Bay on Thursday but the water wasn’t very warm. Evenings have been busy, with Nicky at Te Reo on Tuesday, house group on Wednesday, and me out at my MeetUp group on Thursday. I had a fun afternoon on Friday, making carrot and spud soup while watching the BBC Election coverage over the internet. It is much more entertaining watching it at a sensib...

So now we are into May, but when the week began it was still April and we had a public holiday for ANZAC Day. This has now been “mondayised”, i.e.: because the actual day fell on a weekend, we get the Monday following as a public holiday to make up for the fact that lots of us were having the Saturday off anyway. We had planned a delayed trip to Rangitoto with Jancis, but the weather forecast was not good, in fact it was very bad, so we decided not to go. This turned out to be a Good Decision as the rain on Monday morning wouldn’t have got us very wet - it would have dissolved us. The direction of the wind enabled the rain to come into the channels at the bottom of the ranch sliders in the lounge, and we decanted (via towels) almost three buckets of water before the rain eased off. The afternoon was dryer and Jancis came over for Mah Jongg and took us out to dinner. We went to an Indian restaurant on Lincoln Road in Henderson and had a very enjoyable meal. When we returned home we w...