5 and a half months and getting quite resourceful – looks like he found this leg lying around somewhere and thought to himself it was about time he got started on solids.
Entries from August 2008 ↓
Aidan watch
August 31st, 2008 — Urban family
RIP Big Ginge
August 31st, 2008 — Pussy cats
Oh, just heard that my Big Ginger Friend died this week – bye bye Min Mins.
Meatball montage
August 30th, 2008 — Wannabe chef
The Mister made meatballs in Orange Kitchen tonight! Lamb and rosemary meatballs with tomato sauce and I made kumara and orange bake to go with it. Yum.
Brown Sugar cats
August 30th, 2008 — Pussy cats
Seeing as it was a fine day today and the car was gleaming and rearing to go after its service we decided to go for a Sunday Drive … Saturdays are our Sundays really. Randomly we head out to Otaki to the Brown Sugar Cafe seeing as we frequent its big brother in Taihape on trips north and don’t mind the coffee.
And what a surprise when I chose a table out in the sunny garden – 2 giant tabby cats. The biggest one (shame he’s obscured in the photo) didn’t mind being picked up and carted about by me and sat on my knee at the table for a while. Not when we were eating of course.
I think that’s going to be a popular location for Sunday Drives in the future – plus it turns out they have outlet stores out there so Aidan did well!
I don’t mind that I don’t like chocolate
August 28th, 2008 — Work
Was called into the Dev room today to take a photo of our ‘Canteen Lady’s’ latest baking effort (she’s the one who made the Xero cookies) – Chocolate Fish Cup Cakes – look at all that pink n chocolate!
Small yoga class
August 28th, 2008 — Out and about
Always bad news when yoga starts and there’re less than 6 in the class. There were 4 of us tonight, all known to the teacher, so he dispensed with the usual schedule of poses with varying levels of difficulty and pitched the class and what he believed we all could do. I’ve been hanging upside down from a rope, had my leg practically forced back behind my head, had to bend sideways leaning against the wall forcing my bad to be as straight as a board, and sat weighed down by sandbags in at least 5 hip-wrenching positions (if we’re unlucky we might normally get slapped with 2, and without the sandbag). Not sure I’ll be able to walk straight tomorrow.
Dear Beaurepaires
August 27th, 2008 — Out and about
Dear Vince,
I feel this letter may not end as well as I imagined it would, because you put stickers on my car.
I can’t believe the terrific service I had and high esteem in which I held your Kent Terrace establishment until 4.55pm today. I had the misfortune of discovering a totally flat tyre on my Audi yesterday morning, on the day it was due for it’s annual service, which unfortunately due to the age (gulp) of the car now has caused me much financial anxiety today. However, the shining light in all this was the service I received from your Kent Terrace store. In anticipation of the Audi dealer sourcing tyres for me (I knew they were all getting pretty bald, let alone the punctured one) I rang your shop a couple of times, first for a price on one tyre, then on all 4. Just in case. They guy was quite patient with me. When Audi rang me once they’d got the car in pieces to tell me I needed not one but 2 tyres, and what their price was, and the great list of other oils and belts and plugs and fluids, I decided that I would have to source the tyres myself, despite their recommendation that their tyres would be a lot better for the car. So, I’m in the city, my car’s in bits on the almost-suburbs, and as with Wellington the last 6 weeks, it was raining. So I rang my Beaurepaires man again and managed to get him to agree to go down the road to the Audi dealership when the car was put back together, take it back to your shop and put on the new tyres, and then drop it back so Audi could complete the warrant. Fantastic. What a great guy! What great service! I was so grateful – they guy didn’t know me from a bar of soap! He just told me to come in a pay later when I’d gone to pick the car up. It all worked like clockwork and I didn’t seem to piss the Audi guy off too much (the one that likes the car … which is obviously important!) so what started out to be a pretty bad car day (on top of all this other stuff it had no petrol and was filthy from the trip to Raetihi) was not so bad in the end.
Until I arrived at Audi and from the damn road could see a bumper sticker. What were you thinking? Was is all the other stickers on the car, you know ‘Vote for Obama’, ‘I like rainbows’, ‘Baby on board’, ‘Wake up with a Breeze’, ‘If you can read this you’re too f*&%#$@ close’, ‘My husband drives our big car’ etc that led you to believe I liked stickers? Or the haphazard stickering of others before you putting registration, warrant, tyre and oil stickers any goddamn place they liked on the windshield which meant that you stuck your SECOND sticker out to the SIDE? Did you not see the almost rulered line that the others followed? The ones that were there even? I suppose it’s my bad – I have trained Audi to put all non-legally required stickers on the inside of the driver’s door and not all over the windshield, and I never thought to tell you. Even though the stickers are orange (not that you have any choice really) I don’t feel at all enamoured with them. Lucky for you whether due to the rain, the newly washed and polished exterior or the talons I have for fingernails, the second highlight of my day was being able to get the sticker off the back hatch without leaving any residue.
Anyway, thanks again. I really do appreciate the guy going out of his way to organise my tyres for me.
85 sleeps to go
August 27th, 2008 — Travels
Have read about some cool photos on display in the Skyscraper museum paralleling the New York and Hong Kong skylines so might have to put that on the list.
Rocket’s got a sore paw!
August 26th, 2008 — Out and about, Travels
Poor car, in the garage looking all injured with a dicky space-saver tyre on the front passenger side. Went down to the garage this morning to take it in for it’s service and warrant and the tyre was completely flat! God I’m lucky it didn’t happen on the journey in the torrential rain back from Raetihi last night. Delayed the service until tomorrow and depending on what’s happened with the tyre (couldn’t see any obvious nails or slashes) and the diagnosis on the others I reckon we’re about due for a big bill for 4 new ones. Mind you we’ve had about 4 years out of the ones currently on it – they’ve been great! Goodyear Eagle F1 performance tyres.
This is a dreadful picture off my phone but had to take it to show Father that the Mister does sometimes do manly things outside that are a bit grubby …
… he’s only wearing gloves because we’ve never needed to change a tyre before and wanted to experience the whole of the Germanly efficient tyre changing kit that comes with everything from, well, gloves, to a plastic sheet to kneel on and a little step-by-step row of stickers telling you what to do all packed into a handy polystyrene case with a little shaped mould for each tool and widget.
Small town NZ
August 25th, 2008 — Travels
Didn’t have to do the eulogy, just stood behind Mother in case – she did well to keep it together. After the ‘normal’ service, full of great stories, a few laughs and lots of tears and some old war time favourites (yes I was up the front doing my best on the chorus of “weeeee’ll meeeet agaaaaaain, don’t know wheeeeerrrrre, don’t know wheeeEEEEennnn, but I know we’ll meet again suuuuuum suuuuuuuuuunny daaaa-y-y”) they had a small fire service and RSA dedication which I’ve never seen before. Including a bugler who played The Last Post which was pretty hard to hear.
Afterwards it was Ladies, a plate please down at the RSA – all the good old favourites little mince pies, sausage rolls, club sandwiches, asparagus rolls, raspberry slice, ginger crunch, sponge cake, date loaf, Belgium biscuits – I had a Belgium biscuit and flat white takeaway from an Emporio cafe down the road. Just great that in a small out of the way place there’s 2 cafes serving reasonable Wellington coffee!
A couple of memories … the movie theatre where Mother went to the movies as a kid,
and the RSA spread (for the Mister, because I know he was sad to miss out on all those goodies washed down by a handle of lager!)
