We don't watch regular telly much but it's on now while I'm tapping away, the movie Blade Trinity is on. They must flip a switch at 9pm to allow the F word to be said out loud. Not long after the movie started at 8.30 we heard an FBeeeep (and queried it, not sure that TVNZ usually blocked it), and then in the last 20 minutes it's been fuck fuck fuck fuck everywhere. Must be someone's job to scroll through any movies they're going to play and beep out the occurrences that are going to occur during 'family time'.

Very impressed with the pork and spinach paella last weekend, and with a bit of the special rice left over we tried a more traditional chicken paella tonight ... well traditional but without the shell fish!

It was great, although the saffron flavour really needs salt to sharpen it up (we're still not cooking with salt). We had a big pot of chicken stock on the boil too - smells wonderful.

Saw the cutest thing at Moore Wilsons today! The guy who grows their broccoli up the coast was in store with crates of broccoli at a special price and had a couple of baby broccolis (?) growing in buckets.


We went up for a closer look, the Mister having grown up in the city hadn't seen a broccoli before, so we got chatting to the guy. He said that Moore Wilsons had had quite a bit of feedback that the new store was quite clinical, not as 'fresh from the garden' (which is what we'd thought) so he was there with his growing storeys, real wooden pallet that fits on the front of a forklift and lots of dirt. To show us all that vegies do still come from the farm.

After the shopping we went back to Gotham for some date and caramel cake. We saw it there at breakfast (not sure if they usually have it, but we'd not seen it before) and didn't want to miss out, especially not with the great coffee they make.

Me in my attempt at red white and blue clothes in honour of July 4th (hard with a closet full of orange and black!), oh and a close up of the DELICIOUS cake.

So, with all this wet weather and after seeing girls wearing gumboots in New York, I've been wearing mine around Wellington a bit lately. On the outside of my jeans. I get lots of curious looks, and comments from people in clothing stores. I can tell people think it's odd to be wearing gumboots in the city - until they realise it's wet and rainy and actually quite sensible.

I guess the fact that they're bright orange draws attention.

Which leads me to this story.

Our Short Dark Friend now works for a Big Bank on the main street. In a big glass tower. However it came about, she and her work mates were discussing strange things, or strange clothes or something ...

Boy who sits next to her: "Speaking of strange ... I was looking out the window down to the street yesterday lunchtime and I saw this chick walking along in bright orange gumboots."

Short Dark Friend quizzed him: "Really? What did she look like?"

Boy: "I don't know, couldn't see from this height. The boots were really orange and I think she had on an orange hat as well."

Short Dark Friend taps away on her keyboard and goes to my blog, finds a picture of me in my gumboots somewhere: "Do you think this was her?"

Boy: "Ommigod yes I think so, do you know her?"

So she makes a phone call on the spot to me: "Hi, were you walking down Lambton Quay in your gumboots on Tuesday lunchtime?" Yep, mystery solved. And now someone else in the world things I'm strange and orange!!

Another happy customer! Donna was complaining of cold hands and arms when working and said she needed some long gloves - so I offered up hand crafted arm warmers. She was very excited - especially when they could be tailor made in her company colours!


Now onto some for my Short Dark Friend ... have started and unpicked twice. She's not so keen on the ribbing but stocking stitch just curls up ... she's given in so attempt number 3 begins tonight!

Mojo Bond Street might be missing their mojo ... not that I go there much, in fact only twice since they opened perhaps a year ago. When my parents were here they wanted to go out to lunch, for me to take them to some 'trendy city cafe' but not somewhere with 'great big meals, just counter food or muffins'. The weather was dreadful, were in that part of town, so I chose there. I mean what do I know about going out to lunch? As I tried to explain to Mother, lunch time for me is a homemade sandwich in one hand while typing or scrolling with the other. I don't even have to leave my chair, let alone go out!

Anyway, I need to report that the food was GOOD. I had avocado and tomato on toast, which was just that, no extra fluff or ingredients. Father had a lamb and kumara pie and Mother had a cream cheese spread on toast. All very tasty. However, after it took them 20 minutes to 'be back with some water' and much fuss at the next table over a wrong order and some finger snapping from the table on the other side of us when they had to wait more than 10 minutes for their coffees, I began to wonder what our experience would be. Well, my toast came out first, and I'd almost finished it before the other 2 dishes came out. Black mark. They remembered that Father didn't want his coffee until the meals were served, that was good, but 'I'll just get it made for you now' turned out to be a complete no-show. We decided to leave before it arrived and I'd watched many many coffees ordered after Father's, being made and delivered so I knew they'd forgotten it. The guy seemed most put out when we said we didn't want to wait for it and made a fuss that he was just doing it ... whatever, the machine had no cups and no orders up and no coffee partway through being made.

So nice food, but haphazard service.

Today Matt said he'd gone to investigate a 'geocache', and so the story unfolded. Geocaching (http://www.geocaching.com/) seems to be a GPS-based world-wide treasure hunt where enthusiasts follow coordinates to find little magnetic lock boxes hidden in various locations with a little bit of paper and pencil inside for the finder to write their name and the date they found it. By logging into the geocache website each box you find can be tracked and monitored. I struggled to grasp the concept at first, and when Matt said "there's one just outside work under one of the park benches by the wind sculpture" I jumped up and down in my gumboots and insisted we go see it right then.

So off we went. He sat down and felt around under the park bench like a dodgy crazy person ...


... and produced a little magnetic lock box with a pencil and paper inside it!

Amazing! He's found 200-something of them and had already logged this one himself so we didn't write our names on the log. Including one outside a school that needed 2 visits to open as it was a trick box that needed special instructions to open, however on the 2nd visit some nosy biddy across the road who decided that he really was a dodgy crazy person fossicking around in the bushes outside a school for the 2nd time was not to be trusted so called the police who came to question him about his interest in small children!

As is customary when parents are in town, little fixit jobs are found around the house for Father. Means I can go off to work and know he's got something to do ... as much as he loves trailing around the shops after Mother!

So I went off to work yesterday morning to leave him fixing shower rail, hole in wall and broken garage door handle. But when they opened the fridge at breakfast time and found a note I'd left, he wasn't sure what he was supposed to do to fix this problem!

Yesterday we braved the freezing south-easterly to go out and do a couple of Wellington things that you don't always think of when you live here but are pretty great and impressive to visitors. Parents aren't used to the vicious cold but they do like a long walk so off we went in the direction of the Botanical Gardens.

We walked through town and rode up the Cable Car (the ticket bit is totally new and modern since I was last there with electronic gates and glass and shiny tiles).

The Mister got hold of a map and with his Father-in-law in tow took charge of said map for extra man points and guided us across the gardens. We started off on the main path, clearly marked even without the map.


But soon went off-road to show we could cope with the outdoors. Real bush in the middle of Wellington.


And eventually arrived back at caffeine-filled civilization. As Father said, only the Mister could beat his way through the wilderness and come out in a clearing to find a Supreme cafe. It was the cafe in the begonia house near the rose garden, 'Picnic'. I was unimpressed last time I was there many many years ago as it was hot and steamy with bad smells, limp sandwiches and terrible coffee. Now serving Supreme, home baking, counter food and a reasonable menu it'll be a good spot to remember for other visitors or for ourselves if we feel like the great outdoors one weekend! I *think* they might do picnic baskets in the summer too which would be great. On a calm day!


So all smiley, filled with coffee and cake I was fairly amenable to the next leg of our journey, back down through the gardens to the start of The Terrace and down to the waterfront to, at Mother's insistence, a museum. It was the Museum of City and Sea that we've not been to (not really being into museums) but it was free and a nice break from the wind and not too bad a wander for 45 minutes. The only disturbing thing about it was a real cat that had been stuffed and sat up on a pile of sacks in a reenactment of a wharf scene from yesteryear.

And to finish off the day we walked on to the movies, then back home to change, then back down to Capitol before it started raining for a lovely dinner with all the parents.

No duck confit at Moore Wilsons yesterday morning :-( However we'd been perusing the latest Cuisine magazine at breakfast and Father had spotted a pork and spinach paella that he thought look quite tasty so we just adapted. Yikes. Changed our plans!

We got all the exact ingredients from Moore Wilsons per the recipe ... instead of just scooting by with ordinary paprika, we got smoked paprika and rather than any old rice from in the cupboard we actually got Spanish Calasparra short grain rice that comes in a special little fabric sack with that clever sewing that I remember being on maize sacks as a kid where you just pull one end of it in the right way and the bag comes undone! We even blanched and peeled the tomatoes. It was serious stuff.


And it paid off - really REALLY delicious and even though we didn't have a stove top pan that could go in the oven we had success using a heated oven dish - looked just like the recipe! (Don't look Steph, we can leave the pork out when you come to visit.)


And I made sticky date pudding with THE most divine caramel sauce for desert. And there's some of that left over - YUM!

Went up to Wellington Zoo yesterday - seemed like it was going to be the only fine day this weekend, it was half price day and as good a place as any to go for a walk with the parents. It was a great couple of hours. Our last visit to the zoo was just over a year ago to see the baby giraffe. He's not so baby any more!

A highlight this time was seeing one of the little red pandas in action - last time there were just asleep in the trees but this time this little guy was out trotting about the place - never still enough for a good photo though!


We also hung around the giraffe enclosure for a while thinking there was to be some feeding/patting action at 3.30pm but it never eventuated.


And the absolute best thing was seeing the kiwi up close. It was almost closing time when we went into the old hut that's the entrance to the kiwi enclosure and for once no-one else was in there. Which meant it was quiet and we all stood very quietly by the fence and watched the kiwi pick around just in front of us. The enclosure is open, just a stick fence separating us and I bent down to look closer at him and he came right up to my face, just a foot or so away. It was amazing!

The Mister nearly got covered in tiger's pee - they were also up near the fence (as opposed to sleeping up the back on our last visit) and the big cat smooched on the fence so the Mister start up his best cat voice "hey kitty kitty" and the tiger backed his rump into the fence and fsssssssssstttt!!! Sprayed! Thankfully the Mister leapt out of the way ... although I'm sure I could smell animal pee in the car on the way home ...

Am pretty mean all over the place really. We're getting a bit cramped at work and there's now 4 of us in Team Orange's space and we're all for the 'no smelly lunch' rule. Except now there's a boy in here too and he's not sure about it. And for some reason I am the main enforcer of the rule. To the point that if he's out buying his lunch, he thinks of me and picks a reasonably smell free option, which sadly for him normally means healthy! And if he does get tempted by the smelly smells and gives in and gets fries or something, he scuttles away to the back of our training room to eat his lunch by himself!

And just now, Jiff came in and asked him if he wanted to go get McDonalds, and then roared with laughter when he glanced guiltily at me before accepting the offer! They'll be having lunch in the training room!!

The Mister cooks on yoga night and last night I left him without the normal array of ingredients for his Thursday night solo effort so didn't know what I'd be getting when I got home. And he outdid himself! Did something brand new and I was so off with my 'smells like tomato risotto' comment as I was coming up the stairs - it was an amazing leek/pine nut/lemon sauce with pasta. Although his resulting kitchen mess that comes from making something new and trying to get all the timing right meant that the kitchen splats were in very strange places and there seemed to be far more pots and bowls than I would've thought necessary for that meal. Hence our rule of you cook, YOU clean!!

So we want to have a cook-up at the weekend with Mother - get her to help us with something we don't normally make and something fiddly or special or a little bit expensive that it's worth making when there's 4 of us. The Mister has chosen duck confit. No-one's sure where to start - will have to ask the Internet. However, as a backup I fired a quick email off to Nikau owner ... he's got nothing to do right? ... waiting for the renovations to be complete ... and right away he emailed back with some great instructions! Thanks Paul!

It does all sound very grown up, curing and submerging and twice cooking on stove top and oven ... methinks this will not be a low salt weekend!

I'm not that taken with iPhones, it's the finger print thing plus my uneducated assumption that it costs a fortune to use it for the Internet which is why, again, I'd assume you get a phone like this. And then the Mister sent me a link to this iPhone customisation website! Might be changing my mind ...

Parents are coming to stay this weekend and last time they visited in the winter they brought their nice warm hats to keep heads and ears warm around town, including a visit to my office in their hats ... when people were there! So I emailed Father to hint tell him to bring a different hat this time ... it was a bit mean really ... I was just joking.

However, now being retired, they had plenty of time to get out hats this morning and play NZ Next Top Model to send me a whole lot of photos to choose something that wouldn't embarrass me! They're so funny and I *am* mean!!

In our house we've got pairs of cups and saucers that sit on top of the coffee machine, latte cups and espresso cups, and we use them every day because there's always 2 of us having cups of coffee ... as you know, one of my favourite pastimes is to have a coffee and bikkie gathering. But, there are a couple of one-offs: a Ritzenhoff latte glass that Basel Lisa sent me years ago and my new present from New York, a ceramic version of the classic blue New York takeaway cup.

I only get to use either of these cups when the Mister is not around - so typically once every 4-6 weeks when there's a Xero product release and he has to get up in the wee hours of the morning to go into work, or stay there all night like he did last night - and because a) I have to drink my morning coffee alone and b) because the cups don't have a mate, they're referred to as a 'sad cup'.

Maiden voyage for the New York sad cup this morning. Good brew too!

Great weekend in Blenheim with urban family but MAN it was cold there. Who knew that within a 20 minute flight the weather could be so different. We just about got blown away with vertical needles of driving southerly rain to get out to the plane on Saturday morning, took off to the south and with such strong wind gusts the pilot had barely reach max run-up speed when we leapt into the air and arrived in Blenheim 20 minutes later to a gorgeous sunny still morning. And a really crunchy frost! Similar thing coming back yesterday - left a beautiful cold orange bathed scene as we flew over wintry vines into the sunset into a wall of black cloud just off the coast of Wellington into one of the roughest landings I can remember, and I'm pretty good at the flying sideways landings but last night's was particularly horrifying because we touched down and cruised on the 2 back wheels for quite a while before they could bring the nose down to taxi. Again the howling southerly! We had sub-zero temperatures on Saturday night and they had -4 last night!

Here's the lovely orange sunset back over the Marlborough Sounds


However got to catch up and eat baking and delicious corn fritters and walk the dogs and have lots of lovely Aidan & family time.

Reading is still a favourite


As is posing for the camera (check out his cool new cap)


And here he is making his second favourite noise to DA!, bla-dle-la-dle-la-dle-la.

Frost! Not that it's easy to see frost in the city but the roof over the road had a thick white coat on it. Off to Blenheim this weekend where it's forecast to be MINUS 2 overnight! Packing the slippers.

Every time I walk through the Harbour City Centre it seems that Kirks has taken over another little shop or corner in there to use as one of their departments or to continue to sell things they couldn't shift in the sale, although I don't remember there being a sale lately so I hope they're not going to have stuff on sale *all* the time because it takes away some of their exclusivity.

Anyway, yesterday, one of these little stores was selling a bunch of crockery and Mario Batali cookware and such. And there was a whole 2 (albeit small) shelves of orange crockery! Jugs, sugar bowls, plates, mugs, bowls and cups! Wonder what I need want ...