The Wednesday at work

 Hi,

After a big day at work, I waited for Barb and then headed home with her. Mike joined Janine and Christine at Otto for a dinner and a chat.

The day had been full of heavy downpours.  We decided to walk home anyway - and how pleased were we with that decision? Very! We only got some misty rain - and most of that was when we were under the bush. The ground was quite soggy in places. But nothing a scrub in the laundry sink afterwards couldn't fix.

Barb and I walking up Bowen

Head torch view

Barb ahead of me

Silhouette Barb

We popped out at Huntingdon and I walked the 1.5km back home along Mairangi. Barb probably made it home before me with her power walking skills.

Thank you Barb!

I then packed for my trip to Mystery Creek with Andrew. Yes. After years of saying we should go (I dunno - maybe 8 years???) we are going.

Field day ready

Yesterday Andrew got his hand assessed - and it looks pretty good to me. Mike showed me a pic. But it will be sore for a bit without all those splints and bandages. Best keep it nice and dry at Field Day!

So today I am WFH so I can get away at 4.30. Go pick up Andrew. Then head north as far as we can and find a good place to sleep.

I will report back in full on this huge event!

Have a great weekend.

Love,

Angela

The Tuesday with busyness and a towbar and biking up hills

Hi,

Busy day at work. I went to see Maureen's smashed finger and got distracted at her desk by the barge moving around in the harbour. I must find out what it is doing. Because I am a nerd.

Lewis Road for the win

Watching the barge move in the harbour yesterday

Mike's day was full of adventures. He was off early to get a towbar fitted to the MG and worked from home at Sally and Andrew's house while it was getting done. Then working from actual home for a bit. Finally coming in to work from work (getting me a yummy tofu & rice bowl on the way) and then going to the GP after work. He has a tremor in his left thumb that is not Parkinson's disease and turns out it's from phone scrolling overuse. Who knew that was a thing?!

Towbar Express did a great job

Meanwhile I rode my old unpowered bike home up the hill and nearly died. How did I do this every day?  It was almost 10 years ago - so my younger self obviously had legs of steel. I will persevere. It will help with Spring challenge.

Mike got home from the GP and we had some tea and then chilled. Off to bed. I slept ok and then up to grab brekkie and head in on the bus with Mike. He had coffee while I had gym with Quentin. Deadlifts.  87.5kg.  3 x 3. Oosshh. And finished my push ups. 170 today. I feel like I look like a gorilla.

Went to Woolworths and got my Lewis Road. And popped into the post office to mail off some stuff to Sydney and a wee pop vinyl to Shoshana in Dunedin.

Will walk home with Barb after work while Mike runs and has burgers. He is meeting Janine to return her sleeping bag and mat that we brought home from Sydney.

Have an awesome day. Hope Andrew's hand assessment is all good news.

Love,

Angela

The Monday working from home

 Hi,

After a short week last week, getting through yesterday and realising today it is only Tuesday has been a shock.

Mike got home after I fed the cats and we had some soup and bread before doing our tasks for the evening. Mike to book things and me to paint the volcano.

Volcano

Volcano

I might do a cover of shellac stuff to harden it up and call it done. Mike like the "glacier" i added when a dribble of white snow slithered down the summit a bit.

Off to bed. A weird sleep with dreams that I can't quite remember. Howling? Werewolf? I dunno. I was surprised when the alarm went off at 5.30am.

Had my brekkie. Rode my old pedal power bike to work. In the light rain. In the dark. I must try and leave on time today and get home when it is still a bit of daylight.

Off to see Quentin now. Have a great day everyone. Parents coming into Perth soon. Woot!

Love,

Angela

The weekend with some fun despite poor weather

 Hi,

Made some bread on Thursday night - yay! The weather was really bad heading into the weekend. No tramping for us.

Sourdough Thursday night

Friday I got up and did some housework. Got so much done. Shower is now spotless. Luxed. Washing done. 2 loads!

Then headed to La Cloche with some cardboard and newspapers to get some lunch for me and Andrew. Yeah - that sentence made more sense in my head. 

Andrew had an op at the start of the week to fix his hand. And I needed to make a volcano. Andrew has been so bored that the prospect of watching me make a volcano in papier mache was better than TV or a book.

We ate some yummy food and then made flour paste and I created a volcano. Mostly. This is for Shane at work to make a mini golf course for our planning week. Hahahah.

Friday iced latte from La Cloche with Andrew

Volcano takes shape

We stayed for tea - Mike came out on the 6pm train and ordered burgers for us all. Picked them up and enjoyed some YouTube with Sally and Andrew before heading home.

Smudge owning the cat tree

Refinement of the volcano

Refined the volcano on Saturday a bit. Went foraging for paua shells at Makara beach in the freezing cold to adorn the inside of the kete Iona made for me. We were on the beach for 10 minutes and my face was numb with the cold. Hahah.

Drove home via the back road and Mike was not pleased with the narrow roads there. Hahah.

Putting jackets and hats on to forage on the beach

Kete with kai moana shells

Up Sunday early to drive out to collect Andrew and head to Ohakune for the day! Yes. I know. Mike was keen to know how the EV handles long road trips. We started with a full charge. Grabbed Andrew. Went over Haywards. Stopped at Waikanae bakery. 

Sunday morning - we are off!

Negotiating the streets

Waikanae bakery

Tararua range has a decent dusting of snow

Andrew played with the car's infotainment screen and found a navigation mode that showed our expected range on the navigation map along with some (not all) of the public chargers. We stopped at Bulls with 60km remaining and charged at the community hall for about an hour 20. Grabbed some food at a cafe. Explored the lovely hall a lot. We chatted to some lovely women working in there. A beautiful building designed by Chris Kelly from Aus.  Apparently he did the Wellington library too.

Bulls community centre - Mike takes the stage

"This is how you do it"

Looking back at the hall

Peach teats!

Then off to Ohakune where we charged up behind New World. Mike had some issues with the elderly, clunky charger there. We had to park sideways across two parks to make the really short cable reach, and the charging session kept stopping and needing a restart. With just two public chargers in Ohakune, Friday night snow trips are going to be tricky.

Anyway we explored TCB ski shop and had some lunch while the car charged up.

The Ohakune charger refused to give us more than 80% charge so we left to go to Z Waiouru to charge for a bit. We probably had enough to get back to Bulls, but wanted to see how this charger went. The charger worked well but the conditions were bleak, with icy rain and about 3 degrees. We stayed in the car there.

From there we got to Levin on just under 50km range - the car's rangefinder map went red as we entered the outskirts of Levin! - and used the Z charger there. Went to Kiwi Grill, just up the road, for some really delicious old school fish & chips / burgers / toasties and ate in the shop while we waited for the car to charge up. Got to 70% and headed home.

Levin charging

8 hours' driving - 590km - 120kWh of power used

By the numbers:

Where	Start	End	Duration	Rate (c/kWh)	Cost	kWh
Bulls Chargenet	10:55	12:08	1:13	90c	$30.63	34.0
Ohakune Chargenet	13:46	14:32	0:46	85c	$21.03	24.7
Waiouru Z	15:07	15:36	0:30	79c	$8.27	10.4
Levin Z	17:43	18:22	0:40	79c	$18.29	32.2
TOTAL			3:08		$78.22	101.3

590 km

8h driving time

4 charges

3h 8m charging

101.3 kWh charged (120kWh total used)

$78.22 charging fees

Plus RUC ($76.00 per 1000km) $60.80 = total cost $139.02

Versus the Forester, at $2.57/L for 95 petrol, would have cost $205.60.

Dropped Andrew home and then got to our place where I made another sourdough.

Sourdough Sunday night

Moxley was suddenly alert when
a Cuscus turned up on the screen

Then she curled up and relaxed

And laid on top of me after
I'd got up to sort the sourdough

Big weekend. Off to bed. Slept so well - had no idea it was waking up time until Mike got up. He rushed off to the bus and I did a few things. Push ups for one. Day 6 of the push up challenge.  128 needed today.

Have a wonderful week ahead. My parents will be coming into Perth soon on their cruise. Woot!

Love,

Angela

the Wednesday working from home

 Hi,

Busy times - end of quarter is looming. But it was so good to WFH again yesterday because the weather is completely terrible. Like - windy and rainy.

Found the RAV4 key at home - in its place

Mike got home and we watched the last of Kawehi's daily makes. All 100 of them. I made dough (tonight - Thursday - I will bake it). And snuggled into bed with Mike nice and early.

Up this morning to hear the news of a house in Newlands that got its roof ripped off overnight. Such terrible news. And we barely felt anything so it must have been slightly more northerly than nor-westerly. 

My parents left Sydney on their huge cruise. 3 months. There is a big low in the Tasman but I expect they will hug the shoreline to Adelaide.

Have a great weekend. My Friday today. Going to build a papier mache volcano tomorrow and get ready for our weekend tramp to Waerenga hut. Unless the poor weather continues. Then it might be a Wellington weekend. I can fix the greenhouse.

Lots of love,

Angela

The Tuesday working from home with Mike

 Hi,

Once we'd got through the dramas of getting home from Christchurch, we both worked from home. We both had busy days in our home office. But it did mean we saw the cats and we got tea ready nice and fast. Yay!

Cats during the day

Moxley watching the birds on You Tube

Intent is clear

Mike had to go back to work for a bit after tea and I watched You Tube with Moxley. She loved it when the birds came on! Hahahah. Soon enough Mike gave up attempting to work and we went to bed early.

So cold. And wet. And a little bit of a breeze - not too bad as yet. Wednesday is set to deteriorate though  - lots of rain and big winds here. Snow to sea level this weekend in Canterbury is what I heard this morning. Brrrrr.

Press up challenge started today. 120 push ups. Done! My arms are like wet noodles now. Did bench this morning. 42.5kg.  3 reps x 1 set. Then 3 sets of 2 reps. And then the push ups. So hard.

Quentin has been sick. Not good for him - hope he is much better by tomorrow. He's had quite a bit of time off work. Poor thing.

Enjoy your day.

Love,

Angela

The long weekend in Christchurch with Spacey Jane and a lot of Toby and Tessa

 Hi,

The long Kings Birthday weekend in Christchurch went well despite the disappointment of the Sydney crowd not able to get across. Apparently there was an oversubscribed key flight back so they could not risk it. But it did mean Tessa joined us for the Spacey Jane concert and she enjoyed it. Yay! Let's see how the weekend panned out.

At a new cafe - Good Intentions? Was that its name?

Flew in late Thursday and got to our Salerno motel just fine. Checked in and then went to Poms for some cheese dip and chips and gravy before we dropped Toby and Tessa off home and went to our unit and to bed.

Friday saw me and Tessa check out a late brunch at a new cafe (it was ok). Then back to get Toby after his lectures finished. Mike was at work with Katla.

Toby would love this at Halloween

At Spacey Jane

Mike had to get his 100km running done by the end of May. So he came home to run and we went to Hoi Polloi for dinner.  Quite a nice tea there. I had mushroom ravioli - it was good. Mike joined us after knocking off 6.5km leaving about 6.5km to go for the month.

We finished tea and headed to the town hall for Spacey Jane. The opening act came on around 8pm. Moving Stills from north Sydney. They were pretty good. Then Phoebe Go was the second support act - she was also very good. But Spacey Jane came on around 10pm and put on a great show. The audience was keen and knew all the songs.

Back to our motel and Toby and Tessa headed home and we went to bed.

Mike was up early Saturday for Park Run (his 50th) and finished his 100k.  And then off to Little Poms for brekkie and then the ice rink for Red Devils versus Auckland Botany.

Little Poms

At the ice hockey

Go Red Devils!

Loved the ice hockey. And Canterbury won handily too.

Sunday we hung out with Toby while Tessa was at work (Mitre10) and in the evening we went to dinner at the local delicious chinese restaurant. Had a great meal there (we forgot we had a Poms booking - they rang and we postponed to Monday night). Back to the garage and Toby did his essay while Tessa, Mike and I went aurora hunting.

Faint aurora above Toby and Tessa's garage

Outside Darfield

Mike and the aurora

Rural view

We drove out at 8.30pm to Darfield and just beyond to get a view to the south without the lights of West Melton or Rolleston. The naked eye bareky detected anything but our cameras picked up the show easily.

The storm got up to 8 on the kp scale.  Bz was barely negative though. But it was a lovely evening and good fun.

Dropped Tessa off home and got back to our unit. I got into my pyjamas as the fire alarm went off. Sigh. Outside in my shorts with only a merino jersey for warmth. Along with all the other punters. Mike rang the fire brigade and they came to find out the managers were not around. So we were told to go back into our units. But the noise of the fire alarm made sleep difficult. Around 11pm they turned it off.

Fire brigade attends our motel smoke alarms

Monday run in Hagley park

Don't look down!

We went for a run first thing Monday - great morning. Then got Toby and headed to Little Poms. Then filled in our day with some shopping and playing catch in the park.

At Little Poms

Went to Poms with Tessa after her work and enjoyed that. Then dropped them and the car off at their place and Ubered back to our unit.

In bed just after 10pm and up at 5am for a quick shower and an Uber to the airport at 5.40am. Got into the queue for security that was almost at the end of its queue management ability.  Took 20 - 25 mins to get through that and got to our gate and weighed our bags as they opened for boarding. Phew!

Easy flight home. Uber to the house. Happy cats. Thank you Jason for looking after the wee rascals.

And now at work!  WFH today.

Take care - have a great week.

Love,

Angela