The Wednesday that was so busy that Angela didn't post

Angela's flat stick at work! Every evening she says, "wow, I didn't even get a chance to blog this morning. I'm SO busy." So I better step into the breach.

Delivery from TheAvoTree. We're keeping the NZ Avo business propped up, one guacamole bowl at a time.

So what's been happening? I better correct her Monday post about the 'boring' weekend for a start. It was really busy. All this having to work means that I'm not working through the list of home and garden jobs like I was.

I caused Angela a bit of angst by demolishing the fence between us and Stuart, or a short rotten section of it anyway. That was lots of fun. I don't seem to be able to find my hedge trimmer (did I lend it to you? If you're reading this and sheepishly wondering where that hedge trimmer came from, let me know and I'll grab it back when we're on an acceptable COVID level) so I needed to hack through ivy with the machete and a spade. It was reasonably effective but looks about as neat as that haircut I gave myself with the kitchen scissors.

I do have enough wood in the basement, though, to put the fence back. Watch this space, it's scheduled for this coming weekend, as long as it doesn't rain.

I'm eyeing up the fence outside out bedroom window too. It's on borrowed time, believe me.

I also got the weedeater out and cleared out Stuart's backyard by our boundary (to prep for more boundary fence action to come!) and our backyard ready for landscaping. I'm now waiting for a fine calm day to follow up with weed killing, of the backyard wilderness and the ivy I've trimmed. Fine days are easy to come by, calm ones not so much.

Between that and rearranging the stuff in the garage (interminable!) I filled in the weekend quite nicely really.

The trello board progress is looking FINE

On Tuesday night we had lots of joy trying to realign the sensor light that's supposed to come on as you walk down our path from the street. Angela had to be the test dummy since she's the shortest - it reacts less to her than to me or Toby. And you have to wait about 5min after you set it off for it to switch off again.

After about an hour of interminable wandering and adjusting, I think it's right back to where it started.

I asked her for another round of adjustment tonight. She said no.

Angela is doing so well at work. Her job seems to be to form relationships with nearly everybody else in the company, suss out all of their personalities and skills and flaws, and get everybody working towards the same plan, which she also has to come up with and impose through influence rather than direction. All from home on video and audio chat, rather than actually talking to people and working with them face to face. I hear her talking and it's like she's been doing this for years - both the role and the knowledge about the company. Good on her. She's excused from her failure to blog.

Our home office is working well, with the two of us squeezed into an L shaped desk. It is a little tricky when we're both on video meetings. Angela pokes me when I get too loud and enthusiastic. Sometimes I have to push my headphones into my ears.

Smudge in the weekend, looking cute but a bit dim

Toby is back at (virtual) school and seems to find reasons why for this particular period he doesn't need to be doing anything. I need to find ways to keep him more accountable. This final year is pretty important to him but who knows how it will pan out, for him and his whole year group. I've been telling him that every NCEA credit he can bank is vital. I'm sure he's listening attentively to all my wise words and taking each one to heart.

Angela and I have moved seamlessly to virtual gym and virtual Personal Training. Quentin is great and I can't recommend him enough. He keeps us just as tired and sore as ever over Facebook Messenger, using the equipment we have in the lounge (mainly resistance bands and dumbbells, as well as chairs, crates, rugs and cats). He seems to have an endless reportoire of ways to torture us with elastic bands tied in various ways around our bodies. I am sure there are other ways he could market his skills and knowlege, for sure.

Quentin with coon-skin hat. Mike, Moxley and Angela's legs.

I've just got back from a supermarket expedition (18:30 to 19:00). We jog along quite happily until we run out of something. This time it was tomatoes.  $580 later our fridge and freezer and fruit bowl are all full to bursting. I think this is our third lockdown shop - rahui day 28 official, day 30 for us. Or maybe the fourth since there was that one where I accidentally collected IT equipment from work (someone threw it off the balcony at me). The blog history will say.

That's what $580 gets you

(So as well as mentioning every m*graine that either I get or Toby gets (with the * to avoid messing the keyword use for actual events) this blog will also mention every time we bend or break our bubble from now on. Such as if Mike drives directly to and from Thorndon New World Supermarket on Wednesday 22 April between 18:30 and 19:00. The perfect contact tracing tool!)

Tomorrow night is the weekly Quarantine Quiz which we do on a team with some friends. It's a pub quiz that they've put onto Zoom while the pubs are closed, and it's snowballed way past what they expected. It's lots of fun and the banter in the chat window beside the quiz is gold. Last week we got 169th which normally would be disappointing but there were over 400 teams so it was a B+ pass really. In Stuff Quiz terms, it was great work, try for 100% next time. You also don't really know who's quietly googling all the answers... the Stuff Quiz has become the highlight of our work day too, with a company leaderboard that the IT department seems to dominate, often with a clean-sheet 15/15. I guess we're all sad nerds who know too many trivial things.

So next week is Level 3 which as has been said too many times, is Level 4 with takeaways. I'm not craving anything really. I think we'll get some Indian in, mainly to support the local shop, but also because we're running out of pottles. But for many other people this means that they can actually start earning again which is a vital relief. Hopefully our epidemiological stats keep pointing in the right direction and we can get back to normal (what's that going to be?) soon.

Right, that's my guest post. Hopefully you hear from Angela tomorrow. We shall see. You might have to put up with my verbosity another time!

Mike xx