A Mid-winter Catch up

Life is still good:-). It's Sunday morning and we had a whole weekend with nothing planned - bliss! Friday night we went to Mom and Daddy's for dinner, and to return the treadmill Alice borrowed and hardly used! I am pleased to say M+D are making and effort to loose some weight and wanted the said machine back. No problem. or so we thought. Wrong. Alice collected it using the Mistral, which we no longer have. So, we planned to return it using the Range Rover. 30 mins later and after putting (very heavy) treadmill in and out 4 different ways we aborted the idea. Will need to use the trailer which is currently loaded up with top soil in the veg plot.

The weather has been bizarre. Don't we always seem to be saying that these days, no matter where we live? Anyway, the current bizarre-ness is a huge amount of rain but very mild temperatures. The whole country seems to be underwater, or at least sodden. We have also had some very prolonged periods of thunder and lightening. I don't think I have ever gone to bed to, and then woken up to, thunder and lightening. Having said all that yesterday was bright sunshine, which meant frost. Only the second one of the year.

My weight is really bothering me. I lost 35kgs when I went to WW's. I did not get life membership as I could not get the last 2kgs off and ended up leaving. As the exercise has dropped off the weight has gone up and I have put on 15kgs. I am really unhappy with this, my clothes don't fit, clothes shopping makes me miserable as I am looking at 16's instead of 12's and I feel blurrrrr, and would like to get on top of things. Problem has been that I have been stupidly busy this last 6 months, even more so than usual, and planning meals and eating properly and exercise just has not happened. Looking at my calenders (work and home) I think there is light at the end of the tunnel so I want to try and get back on track. I am thinking of doing WW's online and have set myself a goal of riding 80km's round Taupo in Nov.

We have been treating ourselves! Eric bought this:

and I bought this:


Harriette was 18 on 3rd July and for her birthday we took her to Melbourne to see Love Never Dies (the sequel to Phantom). Well we took all of us, and I have to say it was a big a treat for me as for her! I guess it just tied in nicely being on in July as I think we would have gone regardless. Anyway.... it was amazing!! Went for 4 days and all fell in love with Melbourne. The Queen Victoria Market is amazing. A bit Covent Garden -ish. We also had tickets for the Tutankhamun exhibition and wanted to fit in another show. Well. The week before we left was madness for me. I was in Auckland (2 hrs north of us) all day on the Wednesday for a study day. Had to meet up with the apartment tenants to check the place in the evening as they were moving (rather unexpectedly) to Melbourne, so got home quite late. Thursday I was in Whakatane and Opotoki teaching (2 and half hours south-east of us) and did not leave Opotoki until about 8pm. Had to be at Auckland airport at 5am the Friday morning!!! When we went to check in we had no visas!!! Now, I knew we needed visa but... our passports had expired earlier in the year so we replaced them. I then found out that to fly to Auz our passports had to be at least 6 months in date. The girls ones expired in 4 months! So, I held up sending our passports to NZ Immigration for our returning residency visas to be transferred until I got the girls passports back. By the time they came back we were running short of time so I had delivered all 4 passports to immigration and they kindly rushed them through. Harriette had to collect them as I was so busy with work. As described, I just was not home to even think about the visas, let alone get them. I knew we needed visas but when I did think about it we did not physically have the passports so I could arrange them. So, here we are, at check-in and no visas!! Luckily they can be arranged online so, a major dash to the other end of the airport to access the internet, arrange visas and dash back to check-in. At least we did not have to hang around for ages waiting for the flight. We virtually went through, got on the plane and took off!!!

For the next boob! We just wandered round on Friday, went to the market and got orientated. (We were in a very nice apartment block btw). Saturday we were off to King Tut. While waiting for the tram I realised no-one had the tickets. I dashed back to the apartment to get them and, on checking the time, realised the tickets were for Friday 2.30pm, not 10.30am Sat!! The long and short of it was we had to pay again!!! I then realised that when we booked (about 6 weeks earlier) we had decided to go on the Friday to give us something to do on the first day and hopefully miss all the families and school kids (not many would go on a school trip Friday pm we reckoned). Bugger!!! At least we were able to get in. Most of the days sessions were fully booked. It was AMAZING, even if the actual mask was not shown (thanks for warning me about that Helen). After King Tut we went to the market and got fish, prawns etc for a nice dinner at the apartment. We knew that we would want to shop for lots of fresh foods as the QVM so decided to get an apartment, rather than a hotel, so we could cook for ourselves. You cannot bring any fresh foods into NZ.

We had bought Harriette a digital SLR which we gave her on Wednesday before we left so a) we did not have to take all the packaging with us and b)she could work out how it worked before we left. On her birthday she wanted to go to Melbourne Aquarium to use it. We went to a lovely cafe in one of the arcades (lanes full of cafes and shops in between some of the main streets) for breakfast then to the aquarium. Had a rest in the afternoon then went to the theatre in the evening. Love Never Dies was awesome. I expected it to be good but it exceeded even my expectations. I am definitely going to see it again (in London or Auckland)!! We struggled a bit to find a restaurant for dinner after the performance but had been recommended one a few blocks up from the theatre, Cumulus Inc. We could not booked but arrived and had to wait about 20 mins for a table. We were not offered drinks and it was very noisy but.. it turned out to be a great place. A very different eating experience. You order a variety of dishes from the, very different, menu and the chef decides what order you get them. They come out 1 at a time and initially I thought they were very small but when we left I had had ample (needless to say Eric could have eaten more). It was quite pricey but definitely a memorable meal for an 18th. It also quieten down quite quickly after we sat down which was good. I probably would not go back as I am sure Melbourne has lots of other restaurants to try but I'd definitely recommend it (not for Richard though!! :-))

What else has been going on? Harriette has been back from Uni for 3 weeks. It has been very stressful as she does not seem very motivated to get herself a job and sits around doing not a lot. We sat down with her and worked out how much money she needs to survive next year. We refuse to give her anymore than she gets this year. She seems to think that a job is just going to land in her lap in November!! Having said that she did work for a week at Eric's law firm as they had a 1-off filing job that needed doing. If anything like that comes up again though Alice will probably get it. Much as I hate to say it, and I do love Harriette dearly, it was a relief when she went back. I found her stay very stressful. God, what a horrible thing to say!!

The Tanner's have Sky!!!!!! I know I know. We just wanted it for the Rugby World Cup but,of course, we had to sign up for a year. We have been on the slippery slope. The TV has been in the house more than the cottage lately (so we can watch DVD's - I have become addicted to Bones) and now we have Sky. The question is, will we give it up in a years time??? Watch this space

Oh, and I mentioned our tenants had moved. They were planning to stay until Jan 2012 but Paul was offered a job in Melbourne which he decided to take. In the fortnight before we left to Melbourne I was also trying to sort out new tenants. We put an ad on Trade Me and got so many replies I could not keep up. I could not deal with it before we left so just left it. On the Tuesday after we got back I got a call from an Irish girl who had just arrived in NZ to study for her PHD. She was desperate for a place and was very keen so Harriette and Eric drove up that evening to show her around. She took it there and then as Eric had the paperwork with him and she move in the next day. Hopefully she'll stay until Feb.

Oh, and I didn't mention. I was only back from Melbourne for 1 day when I went to Wellington for 4 days. I drove a minivan of school kids down for Alice's history class. I managed to get to the theatre twice while there (went to the BATS theatre to see 'Hamlet Dies in the End' , the story of a group of people coming together for a Shakespeare workshop, and 'Escholioa and Temptation', a 2 act performance that utilises clown performance skills - very different) and had quite a good trip. The history teacher is a great guy, looks the same age as his pupils and the kids love him but he is not very good at communicating which I found a bit frustrating. The weather was shocking and we drove there and back in horrendous rain and wind. Alice did not come back with us but flew up to New Plymouth on the Sat am to catch up with the Waikato Youth Symphonic Band who were competing in the NZCBA National Festival (they got Gold again). She has also been very busy as the weekend before Melbourne she had her school ball. Actually, she did not go as her school ball was the same night as Kent's and as he is in his last year she went to the Hamilton Boys one. Kat got dressed for the Matamata ball so we could have photos of them together:



Well it's 10am and Eric will be in for breakfast soon, he's gone out to sort out a broken trough, so I guess I ought to get up. Still really foggy out.

Life is rosier

Ahhhhhhh! (That's a content sigh, not a shriek). I feel like we have been on a very, very long journey, and have finally arrived. Eric is now a 40% partner in the law firm and I have dropped my hours to 4 days/week. Life is sooo good. I have always said that our life is blessed but now I feel there is the biggest cherry on the cake. I am so very grateful/thankful for all that we have.

So what has been happening? Well me first. Last year changes occurred with our contract at work which meant IMAC had more flexibility with how we worked. Changes were made in some teams and a new role was created in education. I have been saying for years that this position was need and I guess it was obvious that I would get it. I have also been editing IMAC's immunisation newletter, ImmNuZ, for a year now and was formally given a day/week to do this (as opposed to doing this during my DIF role). When expressions of interest were requested I made it very clear I wanted 4 days/week and the education role and to work 4 days/week. (Did I mention I wanted to work just 4 days /week? :-))I got what I wanted except... the new roles kicked in on 1st February but I was asked to stay full-time a bit longer to help orientate the new DIF. It suited me to wait until 1 April so I have only been enjoying my new hours for a few weeks and, work has been unbelieveably busy. In fact the first week instead of 32 hours I worked closer to 60!! I am clawing back hours owed now but have another very busy 2 weeks coming up. I am really enjoying my new role as I am doing some of the aspects of my old role that I enjoyed and have dropped the stuff I did not like. The only problem is I am doing a full-time job on 3 days/week.

Harriette has settled into university/city life. The first few weeks were very traumatic, for her and me. She was hugely culture shocked. The change in life-styles was massive and she struggled initially with the environment (concrete vs paddocks, people vs peace and space etc), the food (intituional vs Tanner fayre, we eat very well in this house!) and having to talk to strangers and socialise. This is Alice's strength not Harriette's. She is so her fathers daughter!!! For me the maternal concerns at Harriette's sufferings were painful. I also was very aware that if anything happened to her (not for one moment I thought it would) no-one would notice for days (because she had not made friends). I therefore insisted on a daily 'I'm alive' text :-) She met up with a friend who had moved away from Matamata years earlier and Fe is a very socialible animal. Harriette fitted in with that crowd and of course once she started making friends everything got easier (for her and me!). After the first fortnight in halls we 3 went up to Auckland and took Harriette to the zoo and out for a meal, which I think she appreciated. It soon became clear that although in halls for a year, accomodation was going to be an ongoing problem after that. The rental market in Auckland is dire and a guy from the year above Harriette is still sleeping on someone's floor as he cannot find anywhere to rent. We decided to buy an apartment for her to rent and are in the process of doing this now. The place is perfect; Just off Queen Street, a few minutes walk from the hospital and uni, top (12th) floor, on a corner so views on 2 aspects. Her balcony looks out to the iconic Sky Tower and Auckland CBD. Very chic!!

There is a lovely Irish couple living there at the moment who say they are happy to stay on until Harriette needs the place in February. We will probably move them out a week beforehand and just give it a paint job before she moves in. She is very excited about it. Also means, if we put a sofabed in the lounge, we can take over her bedroom when we want to go up to Auckland for an evening and drive home next day.

Talking of driving....

We bought this last week!! It is a dream to drive and we both love it. We traded in the Mistral so at the moment need to buy another car as the girls are NOT driving the Audi!!!! Alice was just posing. She put this photo on her Facebook and convinced her friends that we had bought this for her!!!!

Last Thursday we went to see The Music of Andrew Lloyd Webber at the Civic Theatre, Auckland (just down the road from where Harriette lives). We met Harriette at an lovely Italian restaurant right next to her to-be City Rd apartment As we then walked to the theatre she did not get to ride in the Audi so, after the show, we took her for a drive. We dropped the top down and drove over the Auckland Harbour Bridge and up Queen Street. Posers or what!! The girls thought it incredibly cool. It was a fun evening. I sat in the restaurant thinking, yet again, how great life was as we ate and chatted. And I must say Da Vinci's was superb. Shame Harriette will be so broke she won't be able to enjoy living next dooor to it :-)

"New Zealand's Darkest Day"

On Tuesday 25th February Christchurch had an earthquake/aftershock that has caused 113 (known at this point) deaths with 200 missing. The news has rocked the nation. Only today, day 5,has anything other than EQ news been on the radio. The stories of bravery and heroism will continue for weeks I am sure. The most touching is that of a female doctor who had to amputate a mans legs with a hacksaw and pen knife, to enable him to be removed from a building. She was in a group of 3 doctors and was chosen because she was the smallest and could fit into the space where the guy was trapped. She is absolutely devastated. The patient survived and is here in Waikato Hospital.





Harriette's leaving day!


Having delivered Harriette to university (in Auckland) 2 days earlier, I was particularly sensitive to those mothers who had sent their offspring to CC. I spoke to some friends of ours asking if their son Lance was OK. (He is). I then asked when he arrived. "An hour before" said Ivan!!! Everyone we know of there is safe, just dealing with damaged homes.

Urban rescue teams have been arriving from around the world. One member from the UK team commented on how different this was for them to arrive in an area of disaster with professionalism and organisation in place. Their last operation was Haiti, which was at the opposite end of the spectrum.

On a far more mundane front...this week has been quite difficult for me. As I said, we delivered Harriette to university last Sunday, well her halls anyway. It has been O Week this week and lectures start next Monday. She had been ratty for the few days before she left, more ratty than usual I mean, and I put it down to anxiety and let it go. We were under instruction to deliver her and her belongings, take her for lunch and bugger off :-). I was fine with that but, after lunch she wanted to buy a fan. It was a stinking hot day. Well. You try finding a Warehouse, or Briscoes in central Auckland!! We drove out of the CBD a bit but no luck. We finally found a Warehouse in the CBD but no fans. It was about 4pm when we got her back to the halls. Just before we were going to leave I said "Oh, where's your kitchen?". She huffed and puffed and showed me but was really snappy. When then left and when I hugged her she just let go and said it was too hot. Eric and Alice got a decent hug.I was so upset. I could not even look at her when we left and sobbed my heart out until we were south of the Bombays (hills south of Auckland - the geographical barrier that separates Auckland from the rest of NZ). I spoke to Alice when we got back who said Harriette probably thought I was fussing and just wanted us to go so she could get settled. They were probably right (but I still think it was no excuse for her being so horrible. She knew this whole thing was hard on me). I sent her a text saying sorry if I fussed and she texted back apologising. She then texted the next morning and has been fine since, asking when I'll be back to Auckland (I go up for work occasionally). I get the impression she is struggling a bit, but I may be wrong. This is a huge change for her. She has a room smaller than a prison cell in the middle of Auckland CBD and is eating institutional food. She is used to a rural lifestye, large living spaces and the highest quality of fresh food, great cooking and access ti free unlimited fresh fruit and veg. In addition, she did not get a job in the summer and is now regretting it. She is realising how little 'discretionary' spending money she has. We have always made it clear that we will ensure all her residency (full-board) costs are met (her student loan only covers half those costs) and her books etc are paid for but the rest is up to her. I think she is motivate to get a job but I would imagine that will be difficult in a student saturated area. We'll see.

Work-wise I have had an incredibly busy couple of week. i feel like I've worked 80 hours this week. In addition we've had 2 full-on weekends so I feel quite exhausted. We have nothing we 'need' to do this weekend - which is a huge pleasure! Kent is here and I think we are all going to Tauranga today. Alice needs driving practice as she is hoping to sit her restricted next week.

Do we? Don't we?

Sitting in bed (on a Sunday) morning contemplating wether or not to head for the beach! It was definitely beach weather yesterday but today is wall-to-wall cloud. It does look like it might break up though so I think we'll head off. Temps in Whiritoa are meant to be 27 degrees C.

The beach trip is in aide of Harriette and her last weekend living at home. On Sunday next week she heads off to the big scary city of Auckland to study Health Sciences aiming to eneter mediciane in year 2 (that's how they do it here. A generic 1st year for multiple health releated courses then a big 'cull' at the end of year one for those wanting to do medicine). Those wanting to do medicine have to average an A- on their core subjects to get through.

Yesterday we went into Hamilton, had a short walk along the river and then went bowling before going out for a meal. Alice even forfeiting a weekend with the boyfriend for the purpose!

Roasted Nuts - a whole new meaning!

Happy New Year!!! Eric is on leave until 17th January - a nice long break which he really needed. So, he is painting the house. We had commercial cleaners in immediately after Xmas and ideally Eric would have done the roof first but we could not get the paint we wanted so he started on the house, well the cottage anyway. Roof paint arrived and that's where he has been for the last few days (he has been let down to sleep, eat etc). Well it's jolly hot at the moment and the roof is corrugated iron. Eric was in shorts (only) and squatted down. His tackle came loose and ...well I don't think I need to go any further. We laughed (Carol will appreciate that - the squatting and the laughing!). Harriette was all for running up there with an ice pack for him. I told her not to bother, it would melt. I was working but the howls came through on the radio. Eric bought me a set of walkie talkies for Xmas as he is so fed up with one sided conversations. I yell across paddocks, or up from the veggie plot, Eric answers (which of course I don't hear, I'm deaf as a door post) and then, thinking he hasn't heard me, I yell the same thing again. The radios are great.

We had a nice Xmas. Xmas Day itself was incredibly lazy. Our Xmas dinner is usually a very lavish affair planned with military precision. This year we were having, for the first time ever, home grown goose (more on that later). As usual there is no telling what the weather will do on the day. It may be so hot that having the oven on for a full roast is out of the question so salad and the BBQ would be the order of the day. Well Xmas morning we still couldn't decide what we wanted. In the end it was a bit of both. I was hoping that we could have our first feed of runner beans from the veggie plot but they were a few days off being ready. I made mango tiramasu as we had last year but it just didn't match the one we had in the bush at Lindani. Maybe it was the mangoes, I really don't know.

Xmas pressie wise we pushed the boat out and bought both the girls a netbook (mini laptops in case you don't know what they are). It was an extravagance but they really appreciated them. Harriette is off to uni in Feb and lugging her laptop around was really not going to be practical. We thought that we'd get her one and give Alice her laptop but that would not work as she would still need her laptop (the netbook does a lot less than a laptop), and, Alice uses Eric's laptop at home, which drives him mad. So, we pushed the boat out and bought them one each.

I bought Eric a remote controlled chopper. We had been to Paul (his business partner) and Jo's for dinner a few weeks before Xmas. Paul has one and it was great fun. Eric's is not working properly so I need to get it changed though. A job for the weekend.

I got a 16G iPod Nano from Eric. Now we had bought Alice one and when she had unwrapped it I looked at it and commented on how diddy it was and I much preferred my 5th generation (8G) one, though I had been saying that I should have got a 16G one when I bought it. Poor Eric, he listened to all this knowing he had bought me one. I felt like a heel when I unwrapped mine!!! However, I now love it! My only concern is it is so small I worry I'll loose it. Eric now has my old iPod so he's happy also. We tend to use them for listening to audiobooks. I am a great fan of audible.com and audible.co.uk.

I mentioned geese. Well, you may remember that we bought 4, many years ago, because I had been unable to get any goose for Xmas here. Well, they are not very good reproducers (I have blogged on the goslings in the past) but were up to 11 in numbers. Trouble is they were pretty feral, and had started grazing on the neighbours paddocks so we had to take action. I noticed that they had drifted towards the (long time empty) pig pens so I ushered them in and we had a couple of culling sessions (skip the rest of this paragraph if you're squeamish!). Rounding them up and catching them was easier than I thought. Armed with a goose we took them round the corner (I insisted they be out of sight of the others)and put their necks on a chopping block and chopped their heads off with an axe. I held and Eric chopped so I could looked away!! Trouble is, because I wasn't looking I did not take into account carotid arteries and direction of blood spurts! In fact, I had totally not even thought about spurting blood, so got a shock when it came at me!! I was better prepared for the next one. The next task was plucking. I had watch various Youtube videos on how to do this and we decided to wet pluck first time round. We had killed 2 first time and Harriette helped. I found goose feathers around the house for days afterwards. A few days later we did 5 and dry plucked outdoors!



The final result was rather skinny goosers. In future I think we will confine them and fatten before we kill. And we won;t be plucking on the 23rd December!!!

Another farming incident over Xmas was the arrival, and passing, of Freckles calf Merry. She arrived, (unassisted for the first time in 3 years) on 23rd December and was fine.


Saying Hello to my brother. (That's our house in the background.)
On 26th December we had Mom and Daddy over for the day. At lunchtime I noticed that Merry was still in the same position as she had been for several hours. I also hadn't seen her feed recently. I went down to investigate and found her listless and dehydrated. I came up to the house to defrost some colostrum to feed her and when Eric used the binoculars to look at her he saw an umbilical hernia (which was not there 5 mins earlier). I rang Richard and asked if I should reduce it and went down and spent about 40 mins doing the reduction. It stayed in place. I nursed this calf and got a feed into it. The next day I was sure it would be dead but it wasn't. However, it would not suck so I got a tube feed contraption from Richard and fed it. However, I decided later in the morning that I was not winning and got Eric to shot it and dispose of it down the offal hole (our deadstock home). All very sad. Funny thing was, Freckles, who is usually such a good Mom, just did not seem bothered! Almost like she knew she would not survive. Richard is convinced that Freckles udder will not cope with future calves so has recommended we dispatch her to market :-( I'm afraid he is right. It will be sad to see her go. Freckles was our first calf and Harriette's calf club calf.

On a happier note, and finally, (I must get up and go for a run before it gets too hot), Eric went fishing off Kawhia just before Xmas. Kawhia is the west coast whereas normally he fishes of Tauranga (east coast). Well, what a difference. They got their maximum catch in 2.5 hours. We have been enjoying kawai, snapper and gurnard since.