Where Am Dat Cookin' Fat?

Freya's netball team has played several more matches. Sadly their initial success was just that, and they've lost every single one since then apart from the last three, when they really got it together. These matches were their first matches after Freya attended an all-day training camp and actually got to meet some of the Silver Ferns. Freya is now playing centre rather than goal attack. This was rather an unfortunate change, since I'd been on about getting a practice hoop for several weeks and the moment I buy one, she switches to a non-scoring position. To be fair, she's been playing centre even when wearing the GA vest, so the change was rather inevitable. Watching her play, the level of determination is awesome, and you can certainly tell that she has many siblings. She's like a mongoose on speed when it comes to the toss-up, rarely loosing.

Not only has Freya begun to excel on the netball court, she's turning into a rather useful runner. The school organised a cross country event, and Freya managed to come third in her year. Phoebe wasn't far behind in 5th. Freya's performance was such that she's been persuaded by the very enthusiastic sports coordinator to put in some extra practice and enter the local schools event. She managed 8th in this, and would I think have done better had she not gone for the final push a little too early.

Imogen has also taken part in her school's cross country (actually, along the beach so not really country at all), and managed to come 8th in her year. The top ten are allegedly going to be doing something else later. There may even be a dad-daughter training session at some point.

Rhiannon's sporting prowess couldn't be more limited, however. She was extremely proud of her school report which gave her excellence for everything with just the occasional merit, but exceptionally proud of the "not achieved" grades she got for every aspect of physical education.

Craig has decided he can't stick living with us again, and has moved on. This was I suspect due in part to my realisation that he hadn't been paying his housekeeping since he got back. I'd made an effort not to get on his case about anything when he came back, but this probably wasn't wise since in retrospect. He's now paying more money to live in a house with a broken window. Good luck, matey.

Some of our friends decided they were fed up renting, and were insistent on buying a house. Di thought she might get a sale out of it, but after a lot of toing and froing they plumped for a new build. They also paid more than Di suggested they should have, and we were interested to note that the builder reduced prices by $10k the following week. Ho hum.

Wayne and Vicky have decided to move over to Welcome Bay, since the kids are going to school over there, and they're both paranoid about tsunami. Because they hadbeen renting a furnished place, they had to start acquiring the usual household bits and bobs. Wayne roped me into helping him move a fridge/freezer he'd bought from TradeMe and store it in the garage. We got into a conversation about some of the remarkably good stuff you can get from TradeMe and Wayne went off on one about the possibility of making a tidy living buying and selling items. This prompted me to remark that if he wasn't careful he'd end up being a fridge magnate.

Work wise I seem to be getting a little busier. A few referrals are coming my way and I now have a semi permanent subcontract position which requires me to supervise a bunch of Indian developers as well as several kiwis and basically be the focal point for the customer. This could I am told result in up to 30 hours a week. I've picked up another customer - a church website which someone else can no longer support. There is talk of a monthly retainer and that nothing much happens for 6 months at a time. Clearly the Lord works in mysterious ways, but not as mysterious as the three separate coding styles in the home brewed CMS it's running.

Talking of home brew, the wine has been bottled. Finding bottles that weren't of the screw top variety proved something of a challenge, but there were several Jacob's Creek sparkling wine bottles lurking in the recycling which fitted the bill rather nicely. $10 spent on a corking device made short work of inserting the cork, and I now have 5 bottles of Château les Jezzers ageing nicely.

I have been under pressure for sometime to get a dog. Thus far I have been stalwart in my defences and we are still dogless. Di has however managed to acquire a moggy. There was no consultation, it just appeared one afternoon when I went out. It was apparently left behind by tenants who were neighbours of one of Di's friends. The SPCA were apparently completely full and their response was to hand over a voucher for the vet to check it out and have it seen to. The vet duly made two if the unkindest cuts and sent Di on her way with a free bag of "new patient" food.

Leo is a slightly useless tom cat of about 18 months old. Very fluffy and currently quite smelly on account of his recent gonad separation experience. He seems mostly house trained, or rather conservatory trained for that is where we've posted the litter tray, and isn't averse to being picked up and made a fuss of, but not for too long.

I have a trip back to the UK planned for August and as we've been here nearly two years now, we needed to get our visas updated so that I'd be allowed back in to the country. Or so we thought. The wording on the website is rather confusing, claiming that you need to apply if you've spent 184 days of each of two consecutive years in New Zealand. We duly got all out photos done (fortunately a friend with a decent camera was able to produce these far cheaper than the $8 each we would otherwise have been looking at) and sent of the forms + the $160 fee.

After a couple of weeks we got a call from immigration. Apparently we did not need to reapply because we hadn't been resident for two years. It's the date of the permit stamp in your passport that's the important thing here, not the visa sticker. The guy explained that all he could do was add another 12 months travel extension to the visa and told us we could apply for an unrestricted visa on or after the 2nd anniversary of our initial residence permit being granted. The fee had already been collected from the credit card and refunds were not possible apparently, so we accepted the 12 month extension.

The Return of The Prodigal Son

Craig finally managed to blow his car up. It's taken just over a year, but it's finally died. I'm actually quite impressed that something that sounded like a bag of spanners in a spin dryer kept going for quite so long, particularly as it was getting through four litres of oil a fortnight. This episode was accompanied by the misappropriation of a bicycle and an unusually large number of visits, considering the relative immobility, discussing the "options". Apparently it's a rare limited edition model which means that a ready supply of engines is in short supply. Various schemes to install SOHC rather than DOHC engines were hatched, none of which received parental approval (don't expect the exhaust and engine management to fit/work). Staggeringly, a few days later, a local scrap yard acquired an engine from a rear ended write off. $350 secured it. Fitting it took more of a challenge, even with Craig's landlord's engine hoist. A mobile mechanic was required to bolt various bits into place, and the thing coughed into life, but more the sort of life one expects of a 40-a-day asthmatic. Another couple of weeks and several visits to discuss possible reasons for its non/intermittent starting came and went. Eventually I towed it down to Pit Stop in the mount and got them to look at it. They diagnosed a dodgy distributor and a couple of other ignition related parts, and off it went.

By all accounts, the performance was much improved, and tales of derring-do and 200KPH were bandied about. Deciding to quit while ahead, Craig stuck an ad on TradeMe, and managed to offload it for $2000. That's actually more than he originally paid, notwithstanding the $1000 for engine and fitment thereof.

Having sold the car, Craig decided to change jobs, since the place he was working was continually cutting back the hours. He succeeded in landing a new job reasonably quickly, but this necessitated a.....car to get to and from it. Eyes role skyward at the timing of it all. Thus we set out to find another car, despite my advice of using a bicycle for a month or two (it is only 7k there) and saving up fro something decent. We ended up looking at a slightly scruffy Toyota Celica which was acquired for exactly the same money as the old Honda was sold for.

The new job worked out quite well, but the domestic arrangements were becoming rather fraught, and when a fourth resident appeared in the house, but the utility bills continued to be apportioned in thirds, Craig returned home. It took the landlord three days to notice.

It's a good job that the job is working out OK, because Stig Jr managed to clock another brace of speeding fines, and as a result has no money to speak of, and has to drive everywhere like a monk for fear of loosing his licence. No licence means no job so a double whammy if he overdoes it.

Not content with this, someone reversed into him with a fair amount of force while he was queueing for petrol. The driver gave a false name and address and of course wasn't insured but the police in conjunction with the insurance company were able to trace the culprit through the number plate. The garage has CCTV of the incident and thus Craig shouldn't have to pay a penny towards the repairs. Something to be said for fully comp insurance.

Di now has another couple of sales to add to her total, having sold a pair of houses on the same section to a single buyer. The income is more than useful, as I seem to be going backwards. Various invoices remain outstanding which would go a long way to resolving some of this, and steps may need to be taken in that department.

We were given a rather large quantity of grapes by one of our neighbours, and then another large bunch my another. They didn't taste that great, but a little research indicated that they might make decent wine, if I could find a few more. I went back to the neighbour's garden, since he'd disappeared on another two month excursion to the south island, and pinched what was left - another five pounds or so. The sugar content wasn't quite what I'd hoped, and quite a bit of sugar needed to be added to make the original gravity up to 1100. Fermentation went like stink for about a week, and then seemed to stop almost immediately. The potion is currently sitting in a demijohn, and once I've collected a few bottles, I'll bottle it.

Phoebe managed to spill an entire bottle of blue food colouring over the kitchen cupboard, walls and floor while endeavouring to make her custard turn green. She tried to clean it up herself, but made it worse and then just shut the cupboard, which meant that after I'd cleaned it up, opening the cupboard resulted in the remaining contents of the bottle emptying themselves out and the whole cycle starting again. Custard will be yellow from now on.

The kids are back at school again, which is a relief. Freya was a little reluctant to take part in netball this term, because it was on a Saturday morning and it would apparently interfere with her "plans". He former teacher persuaded her by pretending that the team was short of players. Last year, the team, with the exception of a couple of girls one of whom was Freya, were rather girly and not quite with it and they got hammered mercilessly by nearly every team they played. Perhaps the constant substitution of the oversubscribed team and the frequent alternation of playing positions didn't help. This time however, they all game out fighting and showing plenty of aggression, particularly Freya who was instrumental in the 8-3 victory. Playing goal attack, she scored two goals and was frequently running back to defend and making good interceptions. No surprise that she ended up with the player of the day award.

Back on the Blog

So, here we are, three months since the last entry. It was I suppose somewhat inevitable that the frequency of entries would lapse a little when things settled down into more of a routine. It's also the case that when one farts about with websites all day, the last thing you really want to do is fart about some more later on, even if it is just adding content. Looking back, I see our last entry was just before Christmas, so I guess it makes sense to pick up from there.

Christmas eve was rather "awesome". We decided to have a BBQ, and thought what the hell, and rang round a few folks. Most of them turned up, and quite a few jumped in the pool. A damn fine evening was had by all and I have a suspicion that we might have to actually organise something for next year. Christmas day passed off OK. Another BBQ - but nobody fell out and the kids managed to get on with each other.

Di has switched agencies and took her listing with her. She managed to sell it which was a relief to the household budget. Not a lot of people seem to want to focus on web sites over the summer/Christmas holiday, so my modest income dropped somewhat rapidly. Di has also managed to list a few other properties and sold one of those within a couple of weeks. It does look as if the market is improving at the moment, with the Mount properties selling at realistic prices. The quid pro quo is that Papamoa has stagnated.

One night we were laying in bed, and all we could here was some rather loud music from a party happening at the end of the road. It was 1:30 AM, so I thought it not unreasonable to ask them to turn it down a bit. Bad move, space cadet. It turned out that the house in question was occupied by maoris, most of whom were worse for wear having been on the pop for rather a while. Despite being polite, I got something of a hostile response (although the music did get turned down) and I had to leg it PDQ with insults of f***ing white pig (Pakeha), go back to your own country etc. following me down the road. It wasn't just insults that followed - several of them took it upon themselves to stagger along too, but they eventually lost interest when one of the grandmothers reigned them in.

The new school year started back in February, which required the compulsory photo of the usual suspects. As usual there was an amount of non co-operation, but this one came out rather well, mainly because one of them farted causing all the grumpy faces to loose control and giggle. Not long after term started, we held a joint birthday party for Phoebe and Freya. 20+ girls and a swimming pool makes for a vast amount of noise, not least from the pool pump from which the most enormous gob of hair had to be fished out since it makes it through all the filter into the impeller causing a rather unpleasant throbbing sound.

Imogen got herself a paper round - delivering the BOP times six days a week. She's taken to doing this on the roller blades she got for her birthday. Sadly it appears that they're not meant for any serious mileage, since she managed to wear the brake out inside 3 months. Needless tosay the shop deosn't stock spare parts, but in the end other parts such as the straps started to give up, so we took them back for an exchange. Rhiannon does half of the paper round and they share the cash. The downside to all the newspapers is that everyone's hands seem to be rather grubby, and I've begun to doubt the wisdom of painting all the internal walls white, such are the number of finger marks that appear everywhere.

Phoebe has finally lost most of her front teeth. She lost one months ago, but three more came out over a three week period, and the tooth fairy was extremely busy. She was less impressed at being likened to a great white shark though.

The girls have started a caterpillar collection, which threatened briefly to take over the conservatory. The monarch butterfly is a rather splendid, four inch wingspan variety that is very common in NZ. Its caterpillars love the "swan plants", which they have decimated. Fortunately most of them have now pupated and even begun to hatch, which means that we might actually get some of the conservatory to ourselves.

We've had the "pleasure" of Kylie a few more times recently. She seems to want to play musical beds, eschewing sleeping with Di in favour of various girls. Except Rhiannon, who will have nothing to do with the mutt.

I finally got round to building a new PC. I endeavoured to use the motherboard I'd brought from the UK, but managed to by the wrong processor for it (it needed core2-duo, not dual core) so I ended up buying a new motherboard anyway. IT's a Gigabyte board, and has a rather insane overclocking facility that would apparently take the CPU speed up to 13 Ghz. SO far I've pushed the 3.06 chip to 3.4, and it seems happy enough and the performance thus far is dandy.

News of the Japansese earthquake was something of a shock, and the impending Tsunami that was supposed to hit NZ was a serious concern for a couple of hours or so before it became apparent that it wasn't going to do us any damage. It didn't stop Vicky and Wayne making a run for the hills though.

The final piece of news is that I've booked a flight to the UK in a few months time, so that I can catch up with the family and indulge in a few beers and the odd curry.

Merry Christmas

We have been rather busy over the last couple of months. The bathroom project has consumed most of the spare time, and actual real work the majority of the rest. The bathroom is nearing completion and has turned out quite well. The builders did a good job on the walls, which were nice and flat making tiling a snap. Alas the original walls were rather dodgy which made things much more fun but I got away with it for the most part. The floor has come up rather well, especially as we went for a border with diagonal arrangement. The wall was quite straightforward by comparison, but was a pain in the proverbial courtesy of the dodgy but cheap Chinese tiles which are slightly different sizes. Thus we have a variable gap between some tiles, which is annoying. The spa bath is working a treat much to the amusement of various small female things. We almost didn't have enough money to buy the tiles, and ended up splurging the UK credit card. The day after, a couple of my invoices of reasonably significant value got paid, which would have more than covered the damage. Such is the uncertainty of being self employed.

I took part in a busking competition on Labour day. Despite this being billed as an acoustic event, there were a large number of 12 volt amps in evidence, powered by suitably large batteries and I was drowned out. I had to move several times because I couldn't hear myself. I also had to move on account of the belly dancer who parked herself opposite me, which was "distracting".

Imogen wanted a Rip Stick for her birthday, the skateboard being far too easy to handle. She struggled with the Stick initially, but after watching the accompanying DVD she was off. Thus far no new trips to the casualty department.

The gas on the BBQ has finally run out. It seems it lasts just over 12 months. Naturally it failed when we had a few friends round, and thus proceedings were adjourned to the kitchen.

The pool has been causing some concern of late. Now the weather is hotting up, the water is just the right temperature. Unfortunately, the paint is coming off, and a little, or indeed a lot of agitation turns the pool into something resembling milk of magnesia. We decided to grasp the bull by the horns and drained the thing, with the help of a pump from Pool Services. The idea was to take the Karcher power washer and blast the oxidising paint off and the refill it. However, although the Karcher blew a lot of rubbish off, there was a stubborn undercoat that continued to release a white residue when you rubbed your hand over it. We concluded that the best plan of attack was to brush this off with a number of wire brushes. This turned into a game that most of the family was roped into with varying degrees of cooperation. Some of the smaller members looked like Smurfettes by the time they had finished, being covered in blue paint. We also discovered that one of the steps cut into the concrete appeared to be rotting away. The more we scrubbed, the more concrete dropped out. Pool Services recommended we get some epoxy mortar and stuff it into the hole. This was a rather gooey job, but ultimately it was successful, although $65 for what seems like two tubs of Araldite seemed a little expensive. We refilled the pool, which took 46 hours, took 45 cubic metres of water and cost an estimated $70. A week later, the pool is still pretty clear (you can see the filter at the bottom) and the kids are in it most days after school. The floating duck thermometer has nudged 29C, which is most pleasant.

The pool has also claimed its first victim. A hedgehog managed to get itself into the pool, but sadly didn't make it out again, prompting a hedgehog funeral. A second one did much the same thing, but as the pool was empty at the time, lived to tell the tale. It nearly didn't though - given how much s**t it left in it's wake.

We had our first visitor from the UK. Di's sister came to stay for a few days before disappearing off to Oz for a week and then returning to stay with us for another few days. Quite why she did it this way round remains a mystery. We're expecting a visit from another friend from the UK, who is one of these super fit iron men types. I just know that I'm going to get dragged out on an enormous long run and probably die in the process. Looking forward to it already.

Business wise I have picked up a few new customers. Most of these are castoffs from a guy I've done some work for who has far too much on his plate. No major projects yet, but every little is useful.

Di's office decided it was going to shut down and move everybody to Tauranga. This wasn't really working, so Di jumped ship and is now working for another agency who were chasing her hard, as were quite a few others to get her on board.

One evening we went for a walk on the beach, just across from our house. While we were there, we spotted a couple of sharks in the surf. They were about 4-5 feet long and not more than 20 yards from the shore. Di wanted some photos, and ended up wading deeper and deeper into the surf to get the best shots with the camera phone. She managed a couple of decent-ish ones, and came out with the requisite number of limbs although some were a little damp. Apparently there have been rather a few sightings of late, which prompted the press to appeal for eye witness accounts. Di's photo ended up on the front of the BOP Times, and also the NZ Herald - so it made the national press.

A friend of ours had to go back to the UK recently, which meant that we ended up dog sitting Kylie, a rather bouncy stick obsessed labradoodle. The kids made a massive fuss of her and wore the poor animal out. Naturally she ended up in the pool a couple of times (did I really need to throw the stick in that direction ;) but was none the worse for wear. I tried to take her for a jog, but after she decided to do what dogs do after 200 yards and showed a general reluctance to keep up with my decidedly modest pace, I thought better of it. It turns out that every time that dog gets out of the house, it empties its bowels. Labradoodle? Poobrador more like. However, on the plus side, having had Kylie to stay for a few days, the novelty of owning a dog has faded. We have managed to acquire a pair of guinea pigs though. I am told they are both male.

It's the end of the year, and all the kids have had the school reports. Phoebe is doing fantastically well and is now above the controversial national standards in everything except writing. Freya isn't doing quite so well, but is on target. Imogen is doing just fine, and we had to attend an awards ceremony at school, where she was presented with three awards. Rhiannon, however has just about blown the school apart. She managed to pick up *ELEVEN* awards, including first place in her year for Japanese and Music, second in science and social sciences, and the finishing touch being second overall aggregate in her year group. Fantastic.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

Can I Use Your Loo?

Yet again I find that three weeks have flown past and I've not give the insatiable masses their fix of blog updates. Here goes

Phoebe has shown interest in the piano. She takes a somewhat perverse pleasure in practising whenever I remind Imogen or Rhiannon that they should be practising their instruments. I am playing up to this and making a fuss of her and trying to channel this enthusiasm as best as I can. It seems to be working. Speaking of music, I am attempting to learn a grade VIII piece, Rondo Opus 22 by Sor. Challenging doesn't do it justice.

The pool seems to have lost most of it's chlorine. We added what we thought was the right amount and overdid it a bit. However after a week or so and some rain the levels had returned to normal. Shame it's still too damn cold to use. We added some clarifier as well, which helps remove some of the ultra fine particles, which can otherwise pass through the filter and back into the pool.

I had an email from the guy who cooked us dinner the other week. He is a graphic designer in addition to being a chef. Er..yeah...anyway, he claimed that he designed websites on the side and had a "mate" who coded them up for him. This necessitated me pressing my business card into his hands with a directive to give me a call if his "mate", who by all accounts was becoming more expensive and vague actually let him down. Lo-and-behold I get an email asking for a quote for none other than his mother's new website. I went and met with him and his mum, discussed various possibilities including a CMS option and hosting. The quote was accepted and the site is now live. Huzzah. Even better, he's passed my details onto someone else.

I've also started work on another site based on their graphic designer's mock up. Alas this one's going to be time consuming, because the client wants to mico-manage the whole thing and is a little demanding about exactly which font size to use...

A couple more domain registrations have come my way, and I am now hosting a site that is going to be launched nationally. This has necessitated me acquiring another host just for the launch - it would be rather embarrassing if he thing fell over on day one, as new high profile sites tend to do when everyone + dog tries out the website.

The rates bill has been resolved. I still find it rather harsh that you get a demand for $950 and a threat to add 10% if you don't pay on time. Under the rebate rules, we were entitled to a full rebate of $570 since our "income" for the last financial year was, ahem, bugger all. We missed a trick with the portion of last year's rates as we would have been entitled to a rebate on the year we weren't in the country. The problem however is that the IRD have not given us any proof of the income we haven't had, and without that, the council won't grant a rebate. I explained that we had no proof to the council, who insisted we get the IRD to write something to that effect. After several phone calls to the IRD, I finally got through. The IRD person suggested that we print off a statement from the online services website that said there were no details. Apparently this rather flimsy evidence is what the council were after. Sure enough, this proved to be the case. I appeared in person at the council offices, presented the evidence and subject to a clarifying phone call "upstairs", a full rebate was granted.

Our sofa, which we bought nearly a year ago and had to have fixed, has broken again. This time it's snapped clean in the middle. We reported it to the shop. Three times. Despite this, the manufacturer never bothered to call to arrange a time to fix it. We did a little bit of research which lead us to believe that the consumer guarantees act was on our side here. In short it says that goods sold must be fit for purpose and of sufficiently durable quality. We went back to the shop and said as much. They did try and offer us an upgrade, since the items of the same "quality" weren't going to gut it, but there was nothing that really grabbed our attention. We ended up with a full refund a few days later. We did a tour of various furniture shops, but ended up buying a suite from TradeMe for $500. If it lasts a year, then it'll be worth it.

Sunday wasn't a good day. Rhiannon's laptop decided to die, an event that was accompanied by a huge amount of wailing and whining. The weather also took a turn for the worse, with thunder and lighting directly overhead, and hail stones, some of which were approaching cherry/olive size. Fortunately nothing broke, unless you count hordes of children running around outside trying to collect them all up and colliding with each other. I have no idea why they are still in the freezer.

The laptop was collected by Computer Solutions, who whisked it up to Auckland for repair. It transpired that it was the power brick that was at fault, which seemed a little odd since the old one was still giving out power. A 10 day lead time was quoted. Argh! Madam has been making her presence felt and generally getting in everyone's way by stealing whatever hardware is available to continue her online life, the details of which no one is allowed to know. Fortunately, the lead time turned into a couple of days and Madam returned to her darkened room to exhaust what remains of our monthly data allowance. No thanks, of course, for the $90 repair bill.

Imogen had been badgering us for a fishing rod for a while now. We finally gave in and took her to get one. This if course necessitated a trip down to the Mount to try it out. She actually manage to catch a couple of fish - lane snapper. They were unfortunately too small to eat and had to be thrown back. One didn't make it though - a passing cormorant got an easy meal.

Rhiannon and Freya both managed to get themselves into the paper with various school events. Rhiannon was recognisable from a distance, but Freya was most distinct.

We went to the Tuesday pub quiz at Rain bar - and managed to come second winning a $50 bar tab. We did have a little help from our B team, but were still a long way above third place.

Craig announced this week that he was moving out. It came as rather a shock, particularly as we hadn't been winding each other up for several weeks now. It turns out his boss has just kicked his girlfriend out and wants a lads only bachelor pad for a while. Although the rent is a bit less, he's going to have to feed himself, sort out his own internet and wash his work clothes, gym clothes, posing clothes, etc, etc. He seems to get through more clothes than all his sisters put together, so good luck with that.

Our builder told us that he's coming next Monday to start work on the office/bathroom conversions. This was also the day that Di managed to reverse the Odyssey into a parked car, cracking the bumper. Apparently the reversing camera wouldn't work fast enough and she couldn't be bothered to wait. Sigh. I also met with the director of another internet firm, who seemed interested in my development capabilities. We had a loose agreement that any odd jobs might come my way. This came through quicker than expected with a call on Saturday. He wanted a couple of sites revamping and the details will be discussed next week.

Sunday I was VWed. Wayne has bought a rather ancient Toyota Lucida MPV since he and Vicky have impending parental visits, and carting them all about with the kids requires more than the usual five seats. Sadly, it had no in-car entertainment. I'd bought a CD/Radio off the catchoftheday website a few months ago, with a plan to fit it into the Mirth Mobile. Sadly I could not figure out how to remove the old one, and as the Radio is just dandy, I slung it into a box and left it there. Wayne was keen to have it, and bribed me with some beer to install it. The connectors were incompatible, but a trip to Repco provided one half of the solution. The other required a judicious amount of soldering, and it all went quite smoothly. That was until we tried to push the unit into the dashboard. It was too big by about 5mm. A problem such as this called for a beer and a large amount of air to be sucked through the teeth. Measuring things up, it seemed that the fake walnut veneer on the dash might be filed down, and a few metal protrusions persuaded not to. With such a fine end to a Sunday afternoon, we decided that the pleasant weather was conducive to a barbecue, and the beast was fired up for the first time this season. Sadly, the weather turned by the time we were all assembled, so the BBQ was dragged into the conservatory.

The builders turned up on Monday, and demolished the walls. The electrician didn't, so operations were suspended at about 4PM. We have concerns that the bath which we don't yet have might not fit through the doorway, so a trip down to Plumb in was in order to measure up. I wanted a corner bath, and the measurements are such that this is actually the only realistic option. A regular bath would fit, but it would be cramped by comparison.

Personal Services

It's all going ballistic. As I reported in the last post a few weeks (oops!) ago, I've been putting a number of quotes out. It's rather pleasing to be able to report that they've all been accepted, but worrying that they've all come in at the same time. I have 6-8 weeks of work ahead of me, which is nice, but also a bit of a juggling act. One of the more interesting jobs involves me working for a male escort agency. Not as dodgy as it sounds - I'm writing a customer registration database back end and it's not that sort of an agency - it's more of a companionship thing and allegedly no rumpy pumpy is allowed.

We've had our first fuel bill since the insulation was fitted, and we've achieved a $60 drop. Hurrah. Sadly we've also had our rates bill. This comes in at a biennial $960 and the b******s want it up front by the end of the month, or get this, they add 10% on top. Apparently it's not possible to pay by instalment. Unbelievable. We are eligible for a rebate however, because it's based on the previous year's income which was approximately $0.00. But they won't just take our word for it, they want some sort of acknowledgement from the IRD. This is where the rot has set in, because although Diane has received an official notification of earning sod all, mine has yet to be "processed", according to their website. I tried ringing up, but the automated call handling system was buckling under an apparently excessive load.

The Mirth Mobile made it through another WOF. This was a bit of a rush job, as I was driving on Saturday morning, and happened to glance up at the sticker on the windscreen and noticed that the due date had passed three days ago. Oops. I dimly remembered that there was a cryptic comment about one of the tyres being a bit dodgy, so I got it replaced with a cheap second hand one (now the tyre with the deepest tread!) at Tyremaster before wandering down to VTNZ. I still have one borderline tyre, but it's not the one they moaned about before!

Diane is on the verge of signing up not two but three and maybe even a fourth listing as one of these has a neighbour who wants to sell. Di came up with an apparently convincing argument that two houses up with the same agent makes for a quicker sale etc. Said with a straight face and a confident tone, it rang the appropriate bell.

Freya had to visit the doctor earlier this week because of ear ache. The English doctor we saw prescribed the usually amoxycillin and some paracetamol. 24 hours later Freya was more or less back to full scream. So much so in fact that she managed to trip over the dishwasher (while walking backwards through the kitchen) which of course sent the contents flying, including the very sharp vegetable knife which stuck in her leg. I'd just come back from a Sunday morning run and was just stepping into the shower when I was required to cover up and take her off for stitches. She was quite good about the anaesthetic, no doubt aided by the lollipop she was given to chew on by yet another English doctor.

We have had a few builders round to give quotes for putting up and taking down various walls. The first task is to put up some walls around what has become the office space. When we sell, it will of course be a fourth bedroom, but as far as the council are concerned it will be an office. More bedrooms apparently means a large rates bill, and it's big enough as it is. We're also getting quotes for putting up the walls for the bathroom, since the lack of a family bathroom will be a sticking point when we sell, and I'm getting fed up playing U-Boat Kommander every time Freya and Phoebe have a bath.

Getting Busy

I am pleased to report that things are starting to get busier. I met with a rival design firm, who are very much in the "eye candy" department and not in the down-and-dirty-database mangling that is my forte. They have a customer who's in need of some requirements that they just can't handle and we've worked out a quote together which has been accepted. It's a reasonably large project, which I expect to take two weeks of solid development. I expect to be relying very heavily on jQuery for some of the more funky requirements, including AJAX population of various parts of the page.

I am also trying to complete a newsletter authoring system which I'm told is a must have for a number of folks. All the versions I have come across are either over complex, limited in functionality or cost serious money, none of which makes them attractive.

I discovered that Google have dropped me from their maps database - allegedly for breach of "quality guidelines". Having read them, I really can't see why this should be the case and of course they're eing typically opaque and non-responsive about the whole thing. Google are the new Microsoft, IMHO.

I had a meeting about the Quickbooks integration which went well. I need a little more info from the hosting company, but I should then be able to put a quote together.

Freya is now wearing glasses! Apparently she has my eyes and is a little short sighted. We went to Specsavers in Bayfair - and because we have a community services card, the two pairs of glasses cost us the princely sum of $30. Can't be bad can it? Shame she keeps pulling such silly faces.

Freya's netball skills continue to improve - she's really got the interception and passing sorted out and she's streets ahead of some of the other team members - some of whom are just not very coordinated at all.

Diane's real estate activities are beginning to move forward too. After a rather dispiriting period where everyone around here seemed to be picking up sales and listings (only for them to fall through later) she's on the verge of her first listing - when the lad gets back from Vietnam or Cambodia or wherever it is she's flown off too. An out of the blue call this afternoon saw her racing off to show someone round a house being marketed by another agent. They were very interested and may well put in an offer.

Last night we had an excellent dinner, prepared for us by a local chef. Phoebe won this prize in the school raffle - an $800 value meal for eight with free booze (and plenty left over) all for $5. She raided her pocket money to pay for the ticket and all she got for it was a pizza she didn't like, and some magic reappearing coins that ended up in her money box which really confused her.