Rick, Nicky and Claire in NZ

It has felt like an odd sort of a week, though I am not really sure why, though I never seemed to be quite certain what day of the week it was. I have had quite a bit of work on. Monday I was in Manley, Tuesday Takapuna, and Friday the CBD, where I took this picture while walking up Wellesley Street: The shopping and laundry has been done as usual, and I had my Deep and Meaningful group on Thursday, after earlier in the day doing a photo shoot for one of my fellow conversationalists. The library has been frantic for most of the week due to the school holidays. Nikcy’s week has been marred by a trivial incident which lead to a borrower complaining about her and ending up with a ghastly meeting with her boos over a cup of tea in the café. She had most of Thursday in Penrose on a Reference Training course which was good. The weather has been lovely with cool beginnings and endings, but lots of lovely sunshine in-between. Jancis wanted to take us out for a meal so we went

Nicky has had another three-day week with taking Monday and Tuesday as annual leave. She has really enjoyed her six-day break, and has spent most of her time sewing. Monday was our rain-date for going up Rangitoto with Jancis, and this time the weather was perfect - dry and cloudy so that it wasn’t too hot.  We picked Jancis up at 7.45am and parked down in New Lynn before catching the train into town. The short walk from the Britomart to the Ferry Building helped us catch the 9.15 ferry with ease. The half hour journey across the Waitemata was fairly calm, though Nicky jared her foot, pulling a muscle, while coping with the undulating motion of the boat. The wharf at Rangitoto has been completely rebuilt since we were last there, and is now a long, modern, concrete affair. We had decided to go up the summit using the quick route (rated as an hours walk on the map and by the signs), and then come down one of the longer shallower paths to get a different view. Even though the path w

The highlight of our week has been seeing Claire and Ryan. They booked some GrabaSeat tickets awhile back and flew up on Thursday evening. We collected them from the airport and deposited them at the Quest apartments in Newmarket. We met up with them again on Friday evening at Sal’s Pizza in Parnell, and were joined by Shani, Steve, Ros, Stella and Kate, and shared pizza’s and Ben and Jerry’s ice cream and had a very good evening. On Saturday morning they got to train to New Lynn and walked up to Blockhouse Bay so that they could borrow our car to visit Ryan’s family. They deposited our car in the cathedral car park in the evening (more on that later). I picked them up from New Lynn station this morning as Claire wanted to sort through her boxes of stuff in our garage. She appears to have done a good job of weeding as I now have four boxes of goodies to take to the charity shop. We had a nice lunch together (including chocolate cheesecake as Claire missed out on my birthday on

We started off the week with a public holiday (due to it being Easter Monday), which is always a good way to start a week. The weather greeted us with a lovely sunrise and a warm day, so Nicky came to Karekare with me and we thoroughly enjoyed walking, sunbathing and being knocked over by the surf. Nicky went to Stella’s for Scrabble in the afternoon and I made a bacon and egg flan. Tuesday was very busy at the library for Nicky with four days of returns to deal with and the schools being closed for the day. The rest of the week has been more reasonable. She also had an evening at life group and one at prayer group up at church. I have had a good and busy week with quite a bit of work keeping me occupied most of the week. I have also been out most evenings, with a pension seminar, small business MeetUp group, Deep & Meaningful in Orewa, and rounding off the working week with drinks up at The Block. The weather continues to be warm, and warmer that we expect this time o