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.