Labour Weekend

I enjoyed the long weekend. Since I'm not actually working at the moment it didn't actually mean that much to me, but it was nice having Will around on the Monday. I can't remember what we did on Saturday, but I have an idea it was fairly chilled. I think we had a wander around town. On Sunday we went through a few more open homes. The quality this week was much better than last, and in fact there was one place we were very keen on, & would probably have made an offer had it had better access. There was no off-street parking whatsoever. We are nearly in a position where we can now act when we do find the right place, as Will has now exchanged on his UK house. This means that the buyers are now very unlikely to pull out, as if they do they lose their 10% deposit. Completion date (when we actually get the money!) has been set for 4th December.

Monday, despite the weather forecast, was lovely. We checked out some of the Labour Day sales at a shopping centre in the morning, then in the afternoon we went for a walk up Mt Victoria. It only took 45 minutes from our Newtown home, & the 360 degree views over the city were superb. We are loving living in Wellington, looking down on it from Mt Vic shows just how compact it is, especially for a capital city.

The photo below shows Will 'in front of' his University. It is just to the right of the top of his head. Being such prime real estate there are some amazing harbour views from some of the buildings. There is bit of a hierarchy as to who gets the offices with the views, so it is an incentive for Will to eventually try & make professor, as that increases your chances greatly!
On Wednesday I visited the zoo. Will & I had also been a couple of weekends ago. It costs $18 to visit, but for $60 you can become 'zoo crew' which gives you unlimited access for a year. With my current employment situation, & with the zoo only a 10 minute walk away, I did just that. They have various talks & features on the different animals at different times during the day, & this visit I caught the tiger talk. At the end of the talk the keeper rewarded it with some raw meatballs...

I love the cats, particularly the serval cat & the lions, both of which I saw plenty of in the wild in africa.

The lemurs, meerkats & llamas are also very cute...

Last night Will & I went to see Lloyd Cole play at Bar Bodega. He is an English singer/songwriter who Will grew up listening to. I hadn't heard much of his stuff before, but he was very good. On Saturday night we have tickets to Fat Freddy's Drop which I'm really looking forward to. I saw them play in London & they were brilliant, so I'm expecting more of the same on Saturday, particularly as Wellington is their home town.

I'm still enjoying the gym, & Exodus, where I have my current 30 day for $30 trial is pretty hi-tech. They run a system called fitlinxx which keeps track of all your workouts. You can also look up details of your exercise history on the internet. You just punch an ID number into any cardio or weights machines before you start & it records it all. For instance, it tells me at the end of my legs workout that I've lifted around 8200 kg, but when I do my shoulders/arms or chest/back workouts I only lift around 6000 kg. It is quite motivating, & if you don't reach your full range of movement it doesn't count the rep. After this trial there is one more gym I want to try before I make a decision as to which one I want to sign up for. To get a decent weekly rate you need to sign up for 24 or 36 month contracts, so I want to make sure I choose the right one!

So much to do and see

Last weekend was a social one. On Friday night Will & I went out for dinner with Neal & Nicky. They were in town as Neal had a course in Wellington for a few days. We ate at One Red Dog on Blair street & it was very good. On Saturday night we attended a dinner party hosted by Will's head of school at the Uni. It was a most enjoyable night. The hosts had also invited another two colleagues & their partners from the department. The food was superb, & the wine & conversation flowed ( with one probably helping the other!). I was the nominated driver for the night, as Will had driven home from the dinner party at Brendon & Keryn's the previous Saturday. On Sunday we did the usual round of open homes, but they were quite disappointing this week.
Tuesday night we attended the Acoustic Church Tour at St Johns in the City. We met up with Keryn & Brendon & had a drink in a pub before grabbing a quick bite. We got to the church before doors opened & managed to get some amazing seats in the second row of the church! Lydia Cole opened up proceedings & was very good, not to mention very cute! She is tiny!!! She's got a great voice on her. Next up was Nathan King, ex lead singer with Zed. Again he put on a very good show. As you can see below, Lydia came out & joined him for his final song.
After a short interval we were ready for the main act; Greg Johnson & Boh Runga. They played a mixture of both of their songs, as well as a couple of new tracks they have worked on together. I absolutely love Greg's music, so was happiest when they were doing his stuff.

The acoustics in the church were amazing, we could hear everything clearly even though we were so close to the speakers. I hadn't taken my camera, but remembered that there was a pretty decent camera on my new mobile. The pics didn't come out too badly for a camera phone in low light...

Wednesday was free day at the City Gallery so I went to see the Yayoi Kusama: Mirrored Years exhibition again. There was bit of a queue so I waited in it & then Will came down in his lunch break & joined me when I was at the front. It really is an incredible exhibition. My favourite was 'Fireflies on water' pictured above. It's a small mirrored room with shallow water on the bottom & thousands of LED lights. You walk out on a small platform & the effect is amazing. Only 2 or 3 people can fit in the room at once, & they only shut you in for 40 seconds or so. I read in the Dominion Post today that several people have got dizzy & disorientated & have fallen into the water!
I also liked the Dots, Obsession day as pictured above. You are free to wander around the room, & again it can be quite disorientating. There is also an Obsession night version which is yellow dots on a black background. My final highlight was 'I am here but nothing' which is a 1950's living room with absolutely everything covered in fluorescent dots, & lit by UV light. Very very cool.

Most days this week I've made it to the gym. I have finished a '21 days for $21' trial at Les Mills which I really enjoyed, & have just started a '30 days for $30' trial at Exodus. It's great having the opportunity to try the gyms out, as when you do sign up, it has to be for 24 or 36 months to get a reasonable weekly fee. You'd want to make sure you were at the right place! It is taking up a decent chunk of my day as often I've been walking into town (35-40 minutes), doing some cardio (30-40 minutes), doing some weights (30-40 minutes) then having a leisurely shower before catching the bus home. I am enjoying this life of leisure!

This morning I was up early as my mate Marty was in town. He had been in the South Island on business, & was driving back to Hamilton that morning. I met him for breakfast at Sweet Mama's Kitchen on Courtenay Place. A guy Jake who also used to work at the Warehouse & now lives in Wellington also joined us. After breakfast I had a look around Te Papa for a couple of hours, before a session at the gym & then walking home.

That's about it from me. We don't have much planned for the long weekend, apart from looking at a few houses on Sunday. It will be a treat spending a week day with my lovely husband on Monday :-)

No longer unemployed!

You would think that with my current status as a lady of leisure I'd have all the time in the world to keep my blog updated. However I am managing to fill my days quite nicely, & never quite got around to writing a post last week! Hence this post covers the last couple of weeks, so bear with me...

Last Tuesday week I was at the computer at 9am on the dot in an effort to nab some tickets for the Wellington Sevens as soon as they went on sale. I managed to buy two, which is quite a feat considering I found out afterwards that they had sold out in 3 minutes!!! I then caught the bus to Thorndon to visit Queen Margaret College. This was one of the maths positions I had applied for, & I had a call on the Monday saying the principal would like to meet with me. We had a productive meeting & she showed me around the school, which was lovely. Later that day I got an email offering me the job. It is a small private girls' school offering me small class sizes, longer holidays, & pay 3% above the state sector, so I decided it was too good an offer to turn down! Hence I am now employed come the end of January, so still have 4 months off to enjoy first... For those that are interested the school website is http://www.qmc.school.nz/

On Friday we had our first house guests, Nicky & Neal, who were visiting from Taranaki way. I used to play club rugby with Nicky, & Neal used to coach our team. They were down this way as Nicky was competing in the regional tree-climbing champs which were on at the botanical gardens on Saturday. Will & I went to watch some of the action & it was fantastic! We managed to catch Nicky in her specialist foot-lock event where she has to climb 12m straight up a rope (in this case attached to a crane because there were no trees of the right size) as quickly as she can. She set an unofficial world record, getting up in less than 15 seconds, which was superb. She already holds the world record, but will hopefully better it at the nationals later on in the year. The reason she couldn't count this effort as a world record was because it was hand-timed instead of automatically timed.

We also watched her work climb where she had to manoeuvre her way around a tree as quickly as possible, completing different jobs at different stations.At the end of the competition Will & I wandered back towards the city through the gardens. We paid a visit to the begonia house which houses the tropical collection where Will took a couple of nice pics...Outside there were some very very cute & photogenic ducklings which were drawing a large crowd.On Wednesday mum & dad arrived for a 3-night visit. Dad had a meeting in Wellington, & being the school holidays, mum came along with him. It was lovely having them around, even if the weather wasn't the greatest for them... We spent a couple of hours on Thursday wandering around Newtown where mum was in opshop heaven. Later in the afternoon we drove out to the airport retail centre at Lyall Bay for a look-around. We were planning on going out for dinner that night, but the weather was foul so we had a very scrummy take-out curry instead, huddled up in the warmth of the living room!

On Friday mum & I drove out to Whitby for morning tea to catch up with my old primary-school friend Trudy & her two young boys. It is the first time in about 18 years that we are actually living in the same area, so it will be great to see more of her!

Saturday was more visiting... We all headed out to Kelburn to have morning tea with Anna & Ross, & to catch up with my nephew Andrew & his two sisters. I hadn't seen them since my sister's wedding, so that was a very enjoyable morning.

Early afternoon we dropped mum & dad off at the airport for their flight back to Hamilton. That night Will & I drove out to Epuni to have dinner with Keryn & Brendon. Again, I hadn't seen these guys in AGES, so it was a lovely night of catching up. Keryn produced a wonderful meal, & a good time was had by all. They had also invited some friends of theirs from the UK who emigrated out here a couple of years ago, so that was nice for Will to hear a familiar accent & talk to them about their experiences.

Sunday was the familiar open-home circus, but a bit more relaxed than usual as we only went through 3 properties. We were planning on going through up to 3 more 'appointment only' places, but they were either already sold, withdrawn from the market, or unavailable for viewing. We are finding places that aren't too far off from what we are after, so that is encouraging. Luckily we have time, the owners of the place we are staying in have now said that they won't be back until January, so we are able to rent it until then if we need to. There are some amazing views around, the one above was on the way to a house in Northland that we looked through.