Tea? And a new background picture.

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Nicky is getting a taste for the long weekend. She took Thursday and Friday off and will also be on leave tomorrow. Her motivation was a conference, NZ & Beyond, which ran Thurs/Fri/Sat. At the time of booking she didn’t know what the schedule was for the conference, but it turned out to be Thursday evening, all day Friday (09.00-22.30!) and Saturday morning. However, she made good use of her time during the day on Thursday by having coffee with Jancis (walking down to the Woodside café on Margan Ave) and hosting lunch for Tanya who she works with (it was her birthday).

The conference, she tells me, was absolutely brilliant. Much singing and evangelising and she is really looking forward to going again next year. Unfortunately her Saturday morning session was a little truncated as she left early. I had texted a friend of Nicky’s to pass on a message that Paul had rung to say that Marjorie Love had died on Monday and today was the funeral. As ever, Paul was brilliant at ringing round the family and despite the short notice the entire Auckland based C-S clan (Paul, Clem, Steve Nicky and Stella) were present at St Albans in Mt Eden. It was a high Anglican mass - very Marjorie - and a new experience for me. I didn’t mind the incense but would have happily taken the pews to task. The service was both respectful and joyous, and the bun-fight afterwards had a very good amount of pastry-based sustenance.

It was good that the end of the week has been so positive and upbeat for Nicky as her manager at work has been a real pain again this week. Work has been pretty busy for me, especially over the weekend as I have been migrating a customer to a new Mac and re-purposing their old one. I had a very good evening on Thursday with my MeetUp group both with the actual discussion which I hosted, and the post-discussion social. Much hilarity. The two Russian girls who were there were stunned to find out that I am an eco-comedian - all my jokes have been used before!

The weather has been a bit transitional - not hot but not cold, not always sunny but mainly dry until today. After we got back from the funeral yesterday we had some tea then collected Jancis and headed into town to see Antartica at the museum. This was a stunning event: a 45 minute continuous loop projection all around the outside of the building of an iceberg with an accompanying soundtrack of the iceberg with musical augmentation. We just sat and watched in awe. Even though most of the image was static, the milling of the people silhouetted in front of the building gave an interesting sense of motion. My photograph does not do it justice.


We then had a tiki tour through town to find somewhere to park near Queens Wharf so we could go and see The Lighthouse. It is the shell of a two-story state house with neon lights representing the twelve signs of the zodiac and a very large sculpture of Captain James Cook inside it. It is quite impressive and the site is very well done.


I have spent most of today working and then delivering the two machines to my customer. Nicky brought a bunch of ladies back from church for morning tea and they were quickly followed by Steve and Ros for Scrabble and then three neighbours (Dawn, Lesley and Mary) who came over for tea as part of Neighbourly weekend. They had a very good gas apparently. Dawn, Jancis and I had been to another neighbourly event yesterday down at the sports ground, but didn’t stay long with having Marjorie’s funeral to attend.

So, all in all a bit of a busy and at times stressful week.


Take care, Rick

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