Wonderful Wellington

Well, if we ever needed a reminder that we live near several fault lines, we've had it... We had a decent 6.5 magnitude earthquake on Sunday, and there have been nearly 400 quakes of magnitude 3 or higher since last Friday in the marlborough/Wellington region, compared to less than 300 in the last 10 years! The last one I felt was a 4.2 this morning when I was driving into town. The house came through the big quake fine which is reassuring. There are about 25 buildings in the CBD with some superficial damage, but nothing too major... I think the media played it up much more than they needed to, and worried a lot of people unnecessarily, it even made the BBC news!

 

My second week of holidays has been lovely. Will and I popped into town to do a few bits and pieces on Saturday, and were quite intrigued to come home to some chook 'art' on our doorstep. The girls love to dustbath in a sunny corner of the garden, and have obviously had a good shake to get rid of all the loose dirt!  

Below you can some rather different sized eggs from the girls. I hope you also admire my nice sparkly pink nails, courtesy of a voucher for a manicure & pedicure which I used on Tuesday. My toes are a nice dark shiny purple, similar to what I got last time. Before getting my nails done I had a very nice catch-up lunch with my old HOD Nada, plus Denise who also used to teach maths at QMC amongst others. It has turned into bit of a holiday tradition having  a nice pot-luck meal at someones house.

I have put some work into the garden this week. Will and I have dug permanent beds into the greenhouse, giving us loads more growing space. The last couple of years we've grown the tomatoes, capsicums and chillies in grow bags. I've also cleaned up a couple of the other beds. Any outdoor work comes with 3 'shadows' who are actually bit of a pain when I'm trying to garden! They hover so close, ready to duck in and fight over any worms or spiders that I turn up... It's a wonder one of them hasn't lost a foot yet they get so close to my spade!

Yesterday was a stunning day in the capital. I had an 11am appointment in town to get my eyelashes tinted and brows tidied up (another job I usually get done each holidays with a voucher from grab-one, treat-me etc). I then went for a nice walk along the waterfront, taking a few pics as I went. It really was glorious!

Because it was so nice I decided to grab some sushi and smoked mussels from the supermarket and have a nice lunch at Lyall Bay. Being school holidays there were quite a few people at the beach. However, despite the blue skies and sunshine it still is the middle of winter so no one was brave enough to swim, although there were a few kids paddling... There were also a few surfers out down the airport end.

I finished my scenic day out by popping up Mt Victoria on the way home. Again, I had stunning views from the top. I tried to take a couple of selfies with varying success... The light was doing pretty interesting things!

 

 

When I got home I also took this pic from our house which is the view out to the street looking south from the deck off our dining room. We take it for granted, but I forget that some people aren't used to all the house tumbling down the hills in Wellington...

 Here's a couple of gratuitous pics of the chooks enjoying the sunshine to finish... Tomorrow Will and I fly to Samoa at the crack of dawn for a week. I'm more than ready for a bit of warmth! Full details in the next post...

Holiday Time



We had some interesting times a few weeks back in the huge storm that hit Wellington. It was a Thursday night and I (luckily) had taken the car to badminton. In my absence a tree bought down a powerpole and powerlines right outside our house! That is our driveway on the very bottom left of the picture... The lines were live and went right across the driveway. If the car had been at home we wouldn't have been able to get it out for the 3 days it took the power company to get it sorted. We were without power until late on the Sunday night, but luckily we had our woodburner to keep us warm. My badminton partner Geoff had very conveniently bought a house a few minutes from us and moved in a few weeks prior, so that was handy for the odd shower, load of washing etc. The biggest annoyance was that our TelstraClear cable also came down, meaning we were without TV, broadband and landline. They weren't able to get a technician out to sort that until the following Saturday which was a real nuisance. Especially since Will was trying to get a presentation finished before he flew to a conference in Amsterdam on the Sunday!

Will's trip went well, he was away for 2 weeks in total. He managed to spend some time catching up with his family in the UK before and after the conference in Amsterdam. Him and his co-authors were awarded a 'best paper' award for their section which was exciting. Out of 570 papers submitted, 13 were awarded 'best paper' status.

I had a good finish to the school term. On the Friday of the second to last week we had fairly epic 'staff drinks' in the staffroom after school, kindly put on by our principal. There was a very good turnout, I think by that stage of the term there were a lot of people ready to let their hair down! By the end of the night the staffroom had been transformed into a mini nightclub... It was all over by about 7:30pm, but that wasn't a bad effort considering we had our first glass of wine in hand by 3:35pm or so!

The last Friday of term was House Performing Arts day. It was a good (if loud!) way to finish the term... Just imagine sitting in a school hall all day packed full of over-excited screaming girls! My house, Lochleven (all the houses are names after Scottish castles), didn't do so well, but everybody still had a good time. One of the highlights was the staff item. This year they did the 'black and white dance' of which there is a link here if you haven't come across it before... It was very entertaining, I wasn't enough of an exhibitionist to take part!

That afternoon I flew to Auckland with Geoff to play the Auckland Masters badminton tournament. We stayed the weekend with our friend Kelhi who lives near Albany way. Kelhi was kind enough to pick us up from the airport. We picked up a Thai takeaway on the way to hers and had a nice relaxed evening catching up.

The tournament on the Saturday went really well. My usual partner from wellington wasn't playing so I had put in 'partner required' for the women's doubles. I ended up getting Jenny Hawkyard who is one of the top Auckland Div 1 players! We actually ended up winning it which was pretty cool, it might be the only title I pick up in my life! I won a nice Prince badminton bag which I've donated to Geoff. I didn't need it as I got a big new Yonex bag earlier this year... Geoff's small and outdated bag was a constant source of amusement to our team, so it has gone to a good home!

Geoff and I played OK in the mixed doubles. It was boxes of 6 meaning that we had to play 1 game to 31in order to get through all the games. We won 3 games, but lost to the top seeds. We then lost 31-29 to an Auckland pair which prevented us making it through to the semi-finals. It was an epic match however, and very enjoyable, despite losing in the end...

That night we went out for dinner at a local BYO Indian restaurant. Another couple of Kelhi's friends also joined us and it was a good night out.

We weren't due to fly out until the afternoon so on Sunday morning we hit the Takapuna market, enjoying some very very good Hungarian fried bread for breakfast (breakfast of champions!). We then visited Cafe Melba which is renown for its coffee art. Kelhi got a cat on her latte, while my flat white came complete with an angel...

Suitably fed and watered, our original plan was to have an explore of some of the local beaches. However, it was a grotty day so that wasn't really an option. We then tried to find a cinema showing the new Superman movie at a time that fitted in with our flights, but that didn't work out either. In the end we headed back to Kelhi's and watched the Avengers movie which was great fun.

 

In the afternoon we headed out to the airport where I managed to catch up with my long-lost husband! He was heading back from his UK trip and was meant to arrive in Wellington 3 hours ahead of me. However, all hell was breaking loose in Wellington weather-wise... He was actually on a flight that had flown to Wellington, realised that landing wasn't possible, then returned to Auckland! He was in a surprisingly positive and upbeat mood considering he was having to contend with this on top of 30 or so hours of travel... Air NZ managed to rebook Will on a flight later that night (otherwise they would have had to pay for a hotel room for him since he was in transit). Geoff and I could only get on a flight at 9:30am the next morning. We weren't relishing the thought of making our way back to Kelhi's, then fighting the morning traffic to get back to the airport in time for the morning flight. Luckily Geoff bumped into a colleague who was desperate to get back to Welly. The guy managed to get his travel agent to book a hire car (they were in huge demand and pretty hard to get hands on) so we decided to tag along for the ride. There's nothing like an impromptu road trip!!! We left at about 6:15pm and got in to Wellington at 3am. It was an interesting trip with the Desert Rd closed, and all sorts of debris littering the roads. I was pretty lucky in that I got to sleep in the back for most of the trip while the boys shared the driving...

 

So, after the adventure of the weekend, my first week of holidays so far has been quite quiet. I've been enjoying nice lie-ins in the mornings, and have been getting to the gym a bit. Yesterday I had lunch with my friend Lucy (who left QMC after the birth of her child) followed by a haircut.

 

I'm about to head out to a garden centre now, and will need to spend some serious time in the garden over the next few days, getting it ready for the new planting season. I want to get a whole lot of seeds on the go too... There isn't a huge amount happening in the garden at the moment, bar the tamarillo tree which is doing its thing. The bottom pic shows a second tree that Will grew from seed from the parent tree below. It is producing its first crop of fruit this year which is exciting...