Variable with occasional ironing

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Moving into the second half of the year this week has been accompanied with work, new things and good news. The first three days of the week were very busy for me with work, most of it on-site, and it was good to be greasing the wheels of commerce again, but I also appreciated Thursday and Friday being quiet.


The screen on Nicky’s iPhone broke last week, and the repair has resulted in her being provided with a new iPhone this week (exactly the same model), which is working well. Dawn, our lovely landlady, has provided us with a new dish washer this week, which is quiet and very good - the dishes come out clean! However, we have been using some free sample detergents so far (which are much more expensive than what we normally buy) so I will be interested to see if the standard is maintained when we start using our usual powder this coming week.


Our good news is house related, not that anything is happening yet. We were very fortunate to receive a First Home Grant of $20K at the end of last year which helped us buy the section. One of the conditions was that we had to provide a Code of Compliance Certificate by July 31st. This would be issued by the local building inspector and certifies the building as being habitable. With Covid and foundations re-design there was no way that we were going to make that deadline, so we wrote to them this week explaining the situation and they have kindly given us an extension to November 30th. Bert the Builder is hoping to have the build ready for the CCC by the end of October. We are hoping we can move in this year!


Other than that, Nicky has continued with her church commitments, attended her first post-Covid Book Chat over in Henderson, and been to Life Group. The laundry has been done when the weather has been dry, the ironing has been done when The Chase has been on, and some games of Rummy-O and Mah Jong have been played. We cooked a brisket on Tuesday for dinner which was very good and has helped fill the freezer.


Friday started very chilly. The app on my iPhone indicated that while I was outside emptying the tea pot for our first cuppa’s of the day it was 2.7º, but feels like 2º! How gratifying to get such accuracy. I had noticed it wasn’t very warm. Ken (who ran the prison outreach group when Nicky started) called in because he had lost Nicky’s phone number, and we had a good chat for awhile. I finished the day with a beer up at The Block, while Nicky got started on our weekend jigsaw, the last of our the Millennium jigsaws. They depict the same fictional scene in the 1200’s, 1700’s and at the turn of the century. We haven’t had all three out completed before, and we finished the last one during the evening while having a video chat with Jancis in Loughborough and in her PJ’s (I think she might have said not to mention that, but I can’t remember).


The usual suspects came over for Scrabble on Saturday afternoon. Nicky made scones (date & cheese and onion) prior to their arrival, and I made pumpkin and spud soup for tea and some walnut and pumpkin seed bread to go with it. Stella stayed and joined Nicky and I for tea which was good. 


Nicky has hosted a Maranatha prison outreach group meeting after church today. She was very pleased that Ken came along and they had a really good meeting. I provided some assistance with food and customer facing type roles, which are not as good a cheese rolls, but never mind. We were very generously left with a pre-cooked chicken and Caesar salad by one of our visitors, so that provided us with tea and more protein for the freezer.


We are in for a wet and stormy night. No new photos this week so here is another one from the archive, taken on Waiheke Island while waiting for the ferry to return us to Auckland in 2013:



Take care, Rick

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