Entries from October 2008 ↓

Wahooo! I now have a ‘team’ and I’m it’s leader. After a whirl wind of interviews, second interviews and sleepless nights (hence the blog block over the last couple of weeks) I have an assistant and she’s been on the job this week. She was able to start pretty quickly so thought that was better than having her wait 6-7 weeks until we get back from the States.

I’d been getting more and more anxious about her starting – worrying about how to transfer knowledge without overwhelming and at the right pace. Plus one of the nights I was lying awake I catalogued the roles I’d had in my working career and realised that due to the niche nature of the jobs I end up in, I’ve never really had to share my work with anyone or direct anyone in what they do. Up until now, my roles have been:

• Senior Business Analyst
• Business Planning Analyst
• Planning & Monitoring Advisor
• Documenter
• Product Consultant
• Documentation Consultant
• Application Consultant
• Project Manager
• Intranet Specialist
• Web Designer
• Web Designer
• Team Personal Assistant
• Personal Assistant

So now Team Orange (as people are beginning to call it) is up and running and my Oompa Loompa is fantastic! She’s a really fast learner and scarily similar to me so once we get through all the bits and pieces that will form her job I reckon we’re going to do great as a really well oiled machine. This is her first office job out of university and it’s been a very eye-opening experience going through a whole lot of firsts with her – sitting down at a desk all day, team meetings, argumentative developers, intranet, procedures and most odd, no official start, end, lunch and break times.

The blog of the woman I’ve done some test knitting for was asking for stories about when you learned to knit. I submitted my memories … bit of a trip down memory lane.

I can’t remember exactly when I learned – but I must’ve been 6 or 7. My mum knitted some, but it was mostly my grandmothers back then – they made us amazing aaron & bobbled jackets, dress/knicker/bonnet/bootie sets for our dolls, pom pom hats etc.
I was first shown how to knit by Mum’s mother, she was Danish so I was taught the Danish way (holding the wool in the left hand, not the right) so was watched with much curiosity by other school friends and their mothers when I ‘knitted funny’. I liked knitting a lot and was very patient with it, my knit rows were always very tight, and purl very loose but after a year or so I realised that my other grandmother knitted the ‘normal’ way and she seemed to go much faster so I spent hours on the couch next to her when they visited copying her and eventually taught myself to knit in the normal style – with much better results! To this day I think I still cast on and increase Danish style, but everything else normal style.
I can’t remember the specifics of what I was knitting as a kid – blankets for my doll’s cot, crocheting coin purses and table mats but I’m sure that before I went to high school I’d knitted my first jersey for myself – a really hideous green, pink and royal blue fluffy crew neck – those colours were big at the beginning of the 80’s!
I’ve knitted on and off most of my life but I probably stopped doing it regularly in my mid 20’s and only picked it up again about 4 years ago (almost 10 years on) when I was having a particularly stressful time at work – one day I got home and in the mail there was a ball of wool, knitting needles, and a pattern for a kid’s toy with a note from my mother that said “perhaps you need to find something else to do other than work” and I haven’t stopped since.

A second sunny weekend day in a row so we took a slow wander around the harbour. Lots of people out and about including a pervert with a telephoto lens on his camera pointed at teenage girls in their bikini’s or underwear or whatever they were wearing jumping off the wharf.

Also discovered a new pet store has opened in the Herd Street complex – perhaps a rather odd location right on the harbour alongside bars and restaurants but it seems to be focussed on pet food and supplies (handy for the apartment market). Today they did have a cage with a couple of puppies in it and another with a giant Norwegian Forest cat in it – her name was Tiger Lilly and man she was HUGE, and very soft. According to the 8 or 9 year old daughter of the guy running the place, who opened the cage so we could pat her, and told us all about her, the breed is the largest domestic cat.

And they had 2 life-sized orange dog statues out the front to welcome shoppers.

Aidan’s parents have taken him on a grandparents tour of the upper North Island (including a stop in at Awakeri) and on their travels saw these fabulous orange appliances in their friend’s kitchen.

Saw these plastic glasses in the window of World on the way home tonight – just for decoration surely – would be very annoying to wear I’m sure.

Just saw this pic on stuff.co.nz of the world’s [currently] largest jet, the ’super jumbo’ Airbus A380 that Qantas has flown into Auckland for a practice. The Welly runway is undoubtedly WAY too short for it although they can land/take off an empty 747 on it.

Planted some marigold seeds in one of the empty pots on our apartment anniversary last month. According to the picture on the back of the seed packet there should’ve been more activity much earlier on but 30 days on we’ve got one healthyish looking marigold seedling.

I planted way more seeds than that and I’m sure I didn’t plant them too deep or water them too much or too little – I think our weather is just too cold – although according, again, to the packet picture I planted them at the right time. Mind you these days, who can tell when spring is these days anyway.

I suppose it could be my fault that I didn’t use seedling mix in raised beds but I’m sure as kids we just planted seeds in the ground and stuff grew. Don’t say this funny old world of everyone allergic to peanuts and loosing concentration skills is spreading to soil nutrients. Sigh.

Why is Ricky Ponting always about to get a century at bed time (that’s cricket for my international audience)? Sigh. Oh well, I have an electric blanket and it’s still no too summery to use it.

Word from the Fuel peeps is that the olde worlde bells along Willis Street today were part of the Civil Defence Awareness week that’s on at the moment. They’re working bells and many passers by were grabbing their robes and giving them a ding. They’re representing bells that originally used to hang along the foreshore – yes the tide line used to be up in Willis Street before the big earthquake and land reclamation – and the bells were used to warn of rising waters.

They were gone by the time I walked home tonight – apparently part of an art installation and the poor artist patrolling the street received many complaints of too much clanging from various store owners along Willis Street.

“Preparation is my coping mechanism.”