Finished at last!

Yay! This morning I completed the last assignment for the last paper for the post grad diploma I've been working towards for the last far-too-many years. I'm really really grateful to my tutor, who has allowed me quite a lot of flexibility to get this last research project completed. But now it's done, and I'm glad. I could have given up, many times, but when it got to being just one paper to go, I was too stubborn to let go. I had no real choices in the end. I've actually been enrolled for this paper three times, paid twice (got it deferred once, and then failed to complete). It was getting towards the point where there would be no more flexibility at all, and I totally didn't want to pay another $600 to repeat it. (I already have a significant fine from the library, as my enrolment lapsed in April and I wouldn't be able to renew my books) This is the last year the course will be offered, and so if I didn't complete it, I was nearly out of time. I'm just SO pleased.
I sat, with the assessment schedule in one hand and the keyboard in the other, checking all the way that I'd done "just" enough to pass. My standards, once again, are just too high. I got an A. Yay for that too.
Happy happy happy.

Away again..

...This time with 42 students, visiting the big pulp (quote: "the bleached wood pulp is 99% water before it's dried and packed")and paper mill (supplies all of NZ's newsprint and 80% of Aussie's), and a geothermal reserve, where we were able to do lots of exciting chemistry thingy things. It was still the holidays, and I'm just impressed that so many students were keen to come. It rained, pretty solidly, in the morning of the day at the reserve, but cleared up fab later on. Sadly, other people in the region had worse days than us, and floods struck yet again. Speaking of struck. There was some thunder and lightning while we had the umbrellas up, and my colleague got a tiny shock.
Most of my photos were duds, at the reserve, because the camera focussed on the steam rather than the people. And there was a lot of steam!

One whole quarter

..has passed, without a post. During this time I've pondered if I want to keep blogging. It's kinda cathartic and kinda pointless at the same time. Still, here I am again. Anzac Day tomorrow - hard to believe it's been a whole year since the last one. I won't be getting up for the dawn service tomorrow. The weather this year is so different. It's supposed to be Autumn, and we're still having hot humid days and nights.

I've just been for a jaunt down country and back. Twice. All in the aid of getting my mum here for a visit. Flew down drove back, then the same in reverse. Yesterday was exciting - got to the airport and had just checked my case through, (and made it to the loos - Murphy's Law strikes again) when sirens started and the speaker systems all instructed us to evacuate the terminal. Half an hour later, after 3 fire engines had been and gone, we were allowed back. It seems a fire alarm had set off a sprinkler system. Or something. So, eventually got on the plane, an hour late.

Got home, and all was great, I thought, until the non-english speaking neighbours came out and managed to communicate that their power had gone off at about 4pm (just as well it was the same day, as I'd been away 2 nights!), and since the meter board is in my garage, they'd been hanging out for me to get home. I called the faults people for them, and half an hour later the workman was up on a ladder fixing the fuse. Hey presto, their lights all came back on, and they went inside to turn the oven on again. At the same instant, the workman managed to put his ladder through the upstairs window of flat one, and the fuse blew for a second time, and they were back to square one. All terribly exciting, and the last thing anyone needed on a windy wet night. So, workman went back up the ladder, and the instruction was passed on not to use the oven. Their landlady has replaced the stove today, so hopefully it won't happen again. Funny thing is... we've lived next door to each other for 3 years, and never really had any conversation till the last 2 weeks. Lots of smiling and nodding, but finally, as a result of this, I've managed to get their names!

non-speedy gonzales

Have I received mail from a speed camera? Oh yes. On the first day of a new job (where I had the "company" van, and had done for some weeks before starting - some service organisations are kind like that) I received my first. It wouldn't have been so bad, except that the fine went to head office, where the van was registered, before eventually making it's way to me. I think I've had 2 since then. I can only remember the details of one.
Meanwhile, I copied this quote from the Herald a couple of weeks back:

" The 10 busiest speed camera sites in the country churned out almost 60,000 fines in the past financial year, but police say the number is falling as motorists heed the call to slow down."

Why is this interesting? Well, just look at the following map, which shows the locations of 2 of these top 10. X marks the spot where I live (ish). Neither of these cameras has ever sent me mail. Not that I feel particularly deprived by this.

catching up on technology

Second go at this post... serves me right for not saving a draft.

I love Trade Me. No, I didn't win the funeral, I didn't even bid on it! I did, however, sell my old fridge within hours of listing it, but I made up for it by buying an mp3 player. It arrived today, and I really think the instruction booklet was translated on babelfish. Truly - no-one's english could be THAT bad??? Just as well the intuition works well.

It's just in time for my new-found interest - podcasts. Yeah, I know the rest of the world has been onto them for some time, but now the technology and the bandwith match. So, first stop was the Ricky Gervais show, which I appear to have missed the first 3 episodes of - ah well... Followed by podbible, though "my" chapters don't look to be coming up anytime soon on either of the podcasts there. I saw an article about the fantastic site Yahoo! have set up, and found loooooaaaaads of interesting stuff! I recognised it was easily time to stop! There's only so many feeds you can ever get round to checking out! And it's not like I have time this week anyway!

Oh yeah...

And the cat travelled ok as well. Apart from the bit where we got to Mum's retirement village at 11pm, and she went AWOL at that point. Took 1/2 an hour, food and being very tricksy to retrieve her. The cattery was half the price of up here, and really nice.

Wedding

... Came back from down south just in time for Kelli & Randall's wedding. What a gorgeous spot:

Another one of "THOSE" days...

Actually, it's been one of those weeks. I discovered that I'd failed to book the cat into the cattery, so now I'm taking her on the ~8hr drive down country with me. I've got some herbal tabs from the vet to calm her (ha! Can I take them too??), so it "should" be ok. Nevertheless, I've invested in a harness and a lead as well, just in case.

Once again I found myself still at school days after most others had finished, trying to finish off the coursebooks to send to the printer. Finally got them finished last thing on Friday afternoon. After sitting for the best part of 2 weeks, the last thing I felt like was another 3hrs, watching King Kong, but hey - it took about 30s of film to change my mind on that! What an excellent movie. So funny, so sad. What HORRIBLE creatures PJ dreams up! What dreadful fates the crew meet. Didn't manage to spot my colleague from work, but that came as no surprise. He was one of 400 extras in the Civic Theatre shots (Alhambra, in the film).

Earlier this year I won some tickets (the ones I used to go to Johnny Clegg) from a competition at the Civic in Heritage week. (We went on a free tour, and had to fill in a quiz sheet as we went, which went into a draw.)

And then tonight....
I got out of the car, locked the door, and then at the instant it closed, I realised my keys were still inside. Including my house keys. AA took nearly 2 hours, the last of which was dark. Yay for my kind neighbours, but by the time the chap turned up to break into my car (took all of 30 seconds) they really were keen to go to bed. Honestly, I could have wept. It was very much the last straw :(

OOS in my mouse hand...

After today, it would be little surprise!
Talk about an exercise in frustration. With the phone in one hand and the mouse in the other, I was armed and ready for the battle for U2 tix. Only problem was, I couldn't get through on either front. Kept getting an "error" message on the website, and "overloaded" message on the phone. Wasted far too much precious time on it. What a wally!

Any spare minutes throughout today were dedicated to the cause. To no avail, I might add.

Well.

Not until...


I got home, stomped around the house a bit (went to Johnny Clegg last week - see below - so I'm well acquainted with stomping), and got back online to try again.

45 minutes, and hundreds of clicks later (no, no... no exaggeration, really...)

I SCORED!!!!!!! 2 tix, of the variety I wanted.
WHEEEEEEE!!!!!!

Happy dance ensued.

Sigh.
U2,
down the road,
on St Patrick's Day.
And I'll be there. Yay!!!
I'm exhausted now!

(this was the first song played for the encore, video here, with Nelson Mandela, live in Frankfurt, and slower than the version from last week. What was really cool was hearing the story behind each song. Asimbonanga was written in 1986, described by Johnny himself here, when Mandela was still in prison. The grand finale, as it really had to be, was Dela... and WOW! I'll try and ignore that it was on the soundtrack for George of the Jungle!)

Growing....

The Great-niece is growing...
She has the same big blue eyes I remember her mum having at that age...

Classic!

How's the top letter on this page for classic?
I'm left speechless.
(nb, the "official party" were the Principal, Associate Principal, Kaumatua, Deputy Principals, House Deans, Board Chair, Head Boys (2) & Girls (2) & the local Member of Parliament. I may have missed one or two, possibly)

Satisfaction...

Londonkind were back in town tonight, so we took a stroll down to the viaduct for dinner. Although it's not quite the hopping venue it was when the America's Cup was "ours", it's still pretty busy.
Apart from the joy of spending a few short more hours in the company of good friends (and I love the way we are just able to pick up again from wherever it was we last left off 5 or 6 years ago), it was a pleasant surprise to be ably waited on by an ex-student of my last school. He has just qualified as a chef, he says, and is finishing off the Hospitality diploma. He was a student of "character", and it is a joy to see him grow into such a nice young man.
Finished with the special guided tour under the bridge and looking back across at the city lights...

Rugby week....

It's been a great rugby week. Not that I'm a fangirl or anything - not half! First the news of the 2011 rugby world cup being allocated here, though it'll be a case of taking out a mortgage to buy tickets, and then the lovely win over England in the early hours of this morning. And no, my dedication doesn't extend to getting up at 3.30am to listen (since free-to-air isn't an option, and I'm too cheap to have Sky).

And then, to move on to other good news, this morning I read that U2 are going to be playing just down the road on March 17. Yay! St Paddy's day was never as good as this before! Another mortgage, probably. I'll be able to pay that one off just in time for the rugby.

On the home front, lovely to have London visitors. I took Helen and her mum on an outing to Piha yesterday afternoon. We did a wee bush walk, and strolled along the beach. It was gorgeous and hot! So good to see them :):)

Logical intelligence...... below average

Sigh... and I like to think of myself as quite logical. Just shows how deluded it's possible to be. (I couldn't work out the sequence question. blegh.)
Another nonsense online quiz-type thingy thing

Your IQ Is 120

Your Logical Intelligence is Below Average Your Verbal Intelligence is Genius Your Mathematical Intelligence is Exceptional Your General Knowledge is Exceptional

A Quick and Dirty IQ Test

Rosey tinted glasses....

I discovered, today, after driving 25 mins across the city, that I'd put an event in my diary a week too soon. Ah well. My friend and I decided instead to head for the Parnell Rose Festival, but were easily diverted by the weekly French Market. YUM!!! After a jolly good shop (and having bought some honey and walnut bread, and exceedingly yummy aioli and chutney), we finally headed for the Rose Gardens. You can see that there were plenty of lovely blooming roses. I was amused, also by the cultural mix. On the one hand we had the morris dancers, on the other, the flamenco dancers. There were Devonshire teas to be had, or carved Nativity sets and Christmas decorations from the lovely woman from Bethlehem (mostly NZ woods, although her husband still loves to work in olive). We always have a wee chat, whenever I see her - I have visited her brother-in-law's shop in Bethlehem. When I first met her, about 10 years ago, I was not long back from there, and had been given an olivewood kiwi by a friend. Meeting her solved the puzzle I'd been mulling over - how it was that someone from Bethlehem was carving kiwis.
Today felt like summer is upon us. I'll not be surprised to discover a bit of sunburn, which I wasn't anticipating at all.

dreaming...

Hahahahaha!!! One of them told me today that he'd dreamt about the mountain in my book, last night. We had a big combined morning tea with them all this morning, and the hall was full of tears. That letting go and moving on thing is hard anytime, but when you're fraught with the thought of upcoming exams, and it's the close of not just a whole chapter, but a book, it's that much worse. The sudden shock that they are being turfed out, that it'll never be the same. Every year I see them suddenly wake up to it, and even the hardest of them seem to suddenly turn into big softies!

Stephen, over at Greenflame, talked about songs that define the moment. They played one of those songs today at morning tea. Cat Stevens' "Old Schoolyard"... I'd just been telling one of my leavers about my last day in 7th form, how we'd had a ceremonial sofa burning (that's another story), and then gone down to the local park with a tapedeck, and the Cat Stevens album, and made us a memory, on the swings and roundabouts and seesaws and so on. Not two minutes later, it came over the soundtrack to the morning. It was one of those moments! I was really amused - they'd put together a whole bunch of feel-good tracks, so much more pleasant than the nasty stuff they played at the Grad dinner.

...you're off to Great Places!

Today is your day!
Your mountain is waiting.
So... get on your way!
And they were off! Another year, another crew, another great bunch of young adults making their way in the world.
We've had good laughs this year, and they wrote lovely things in their card. It's always good to be reminded that even when you think you've done a crap job, mostly it's gone ok.
What really DID warm my heart today, was an unsolicited comment passed on from my previous school...
Cut and paste from an email I received today:

Out of the blue, RL says... "what was the name of the science teacher I had in Y10??" I supply your name, and he says "yeah. I think she was the best teacher I ever had."

Aint that sweet? It's always so much nicer when it's completely unexpected!

Snap Crackle Pop..

I don't remember another Guy Fawkes night that was sooooo full of it! It feels like some of them are coming right in my windows! Went outside to watch, and am convinced I can see a place actually burning away right across the valley, and I did hear sirens a while ago. Honey came out to investigate with me, and really didn't seem at all intimidated by the crashes and bangs, but when I came inside, she RACED!!!!! She was so "I'm not going to be left out here without you mummy"!!! It's all just an endless series of little explosions. So cool. I have no other sounds playing, so it's really the theme tune for the evening.

I was going to a fireworks party tonight, but in the end, was just too tired. It's been a very draining week. Yesterday was both David's funeral in the afternoon, and our Year 13 students' Graduation Dinner in the evening. Both were celebratory, but in quite different ways. The funeral service was of course tempered with loss. The priest pointed out that it wasn't yet 2 years since David had been standing in that very spot, speaking about one of the lads killed in the massive car accident that had sent shockwaves through the school and community. And that it was a great testament to David how many current and ex-students had come to farewell him in turn - hundreds were there. The words that were shared about his life were in themselves filled with life, and I think David would have been delighted. The haka the boys from the 1st XV performed in his honour at the end of the service was an absolute show stopper. It was filled with more emotion and passion than I've seen in an All Black haka in quite some time. (although the test tonight may be the exception to that rule, of course) It was awe-inspiring, and rousing, and while I don't work there anymore, I still know quite a few of the boys, and felt sooo proud of them.

Grad dinner was a hoot. It seems very American, to me, to be handing each student a certificate of graduation from high school. They were a very raucous bunch. The "most likely to...." awards were the funniest of the night, and they didn't stint on them. My year 13's had given me a gorgeous pendant and a card on Thursday, which had me smiling over the good memories of the year. I hate saying goodbye to the leavers, but it's such a necessary part of their journey, that I like to make it a bit special, but humorous at the same time. I have a copy of Oh The Places You'll Go by Dr Seuss that I read them on the last day. I hope they all turn up like good little campers on Monday!!!!!

And today, my friend was up from Dunedin, and had organised a brunch out in West Auckland. Yum (shame about the service). I used the opportunity to get to a plant nursery out there and purchase a chinese pistachio sapling. I've wondered for ages what this tree was that I just love in the autumn. There was one outside my window in the first place I lived in Auckland. It will grow quite a bit bigger than I expected, so that'll be interesting. It won't happen overnight, though.

RIP David

Well, David died this afternoon. It's horrid, even when you're expecting something, that it hits quite hard. It's 11 years tomorrow since my Dad died, so I guess there's some feelings hanging around about that too. Tomorrow is the first November 1st since 1994 that has been a Melbourne Cup day. Isn't it silly the little details that stick in your mind. It was a horse called "Jeune" that won that year. (which I just translated on babelfish and it means "young person". If I'd ever studied French I'd have known that!)

11pm tonight....

(clicking on it gives a pic with better resolution)