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.
