Greetings

My Graceway Christmas Eve candle has kept us in a twirl all day...

May Hope, Faith, Love, Joy and Peace be yours.

Just Ribena...

Was greatly amused to see this article in today's herald, in light of this:

If it looks a little dated, that's because it was filmed back in 2004 in my classroom, when the girls were in year 10. The wheels of justice turn slowly, it seems. At least a year ago, one of them showed me some mail from the commerce commission, indicating that this court case was in the pipeline.

A critical note - the old "christmas tree" uniform is shown here - we have a new one now, much much more sleek. One of these girls has been elected head girl for 2007.

NZ Downunder

These 2 photos show NZ in the background of the Discovery astronauts on their 3rd spacewalk for the current mission to the Space Station.
The gap between the north and the south island:

And (?) Otago Peninsula

According to the article:

With the Land of the Long White Cloud 400 kilometres below them, American Robert Curbeam, and Swede Christer Fuglesang fix a damaged solar array. The accordian-like 34-metre array is supposed to fold up into a box when it is retracted.

oop nawth

I went for my first trip on a glass bottom boat today. It was fab.


















We were treated to a pair of whales diving - a mother and her calf.















Quintessential NZ summer.


















And then the reptile park. This gecko was irresistible!

wrapped up

...is what the term is. Well and truly. Speechifying done, dinners eaten, farewells over. I spoke briefly once today - farewelling someone who I think will be happier checking out the green grass elsewhere. One of those "determined to only say positive things" occasions. It was brief.

On the other hand, a couple of staff who have been teaching for many many years retired. One of these I can remember (hearing of) from my own school days - he taught at the "other" school in the town where I grew up, and he remembers you well, Helebabes!!!!!

I enjoyed most of the speeches, and we had some fab songs as well. Speaking of - one of our leaving staff composed a brilliant NZ summer/Christmas song a couple of weeks ago, which had it's world premiere at the junior prizegivings yesterday, and another outing at the staff dinner today. I hope he records it soon, I'd quite like to have it.

There's still need to wrap up a bit of paperwork before I can close the office door for the holidays, but I hope to be out of there by mid next week.

I was feeling a bit maudlin by the end of today, so a general blowing away of the cobwebs was in order - a plan was hatched, and a beach was targeted. A brisk and lengthy walk ensued, and the net result was a far more positive frame of mind all round. (Thankfully!)

Afterburn

Watched the shuttle go up, live on CNN & Fox (yes, I annoyed the cat by flicking between them). I've never actually watched it right through before, until the rockets separate, and it goes into orbit. Wow! It was a night liftoff, so was very impressive.

I was silly enough to sit on the front porch this morning chatting on the phone. Doh. I did it because it was warmer out than in. Far warmer than I realised - I didn't notice I had burnt until about 4pm, when it announced itself VERY loudly. I have very very silly looking hot red patches on the left side of my knees and forearms. Grrr.

all change

Feeling veeeery pleased tonight. For some time I've been considering selling off my sofa-bed as when extended it really was too large for the spare room. It is the most wonderfully comfy sofa to sit on, but this wasn't enough to convince me to keep it. The plan was to find a single divan bed with drawers to replace it with. So, I checked out trademe last weekend, and bid on a terrific bed and won it. Next task was to get quit of the sofabed, and in a fortunate turn of msn conversation with a friend that was rapidly accomplished. He's having visitors from England, and his current sofa was allegedly horrible.

So today was the big day - I hired the covered trailer, and an expedition was planned to Pukekohe to retrieve the bed. On waking I was only mildly concerned to see that it was absolutely HOSING down. It turned out to be one of those days when the weather changed frequently, and there was a fair amount of heat in the sun when it was out. We achieved acquiring the bed fine, and then the performance of getting the sofa-bed OUT began. Short version: It was tricky but we did it. The new secondhand bed is now installed and made up - fits perfectly in the available space, and further adventures were had installing the sofabed in it's new home. The door there was narrower, bizarrely.

Thanks to Lynda (tow-bar-car & muscle) and Graham (muscle and new owner) for all the effort and time :) Muchas appreciated.

early

I seem to be running early this morning - dunno how that happened - maybe cos I woke just before the alarm (as distinct from 2 hrs before the alarm, grrr, which is a more frequent occurence) and actually got up, rather than waiting for the news to wash over me. I've been crunching my way through appraisal interviews this week - never an easy task, and have had to mediate in another couple of touchy situations. I seem to be getting better at dealing with the tricky stuff, but it doesn't come naturally! If I've been able to stop a resignation from occuring (which remains to be seen) I'll be happier.

We had a huge turnover of deans and assistant deans recently, so when new appointments were made this week and 3 of my department were appointed to positions, suddenly a whole new crisis arose - we were already pretty thin in some areas of the timetable, but physics in particular is now stretched to it's limits!

So, this morning ties up my own appraisal - except my appraiser had lost all my papers when we last met on Wednesday, and I have one more tricky one to do myself. Yay to have that all out of the way a week before the end of term!