New cooker

We finally found a cooker to fill the big gap in the kitchen and replace the 1970s one that came with the house (complete with a hole in the floor of the oven).

As usual we weren't planning to get one yet, but how could we resist $1000 discount and no payments for 15 months interest free? :)

Old cooker:

New cooker!

Graduation

We graduated from the Mauri Ora course this weekend at Te Rauparaha Arena in Porirua.

It was a good experience - we were called in in the traditional Maori way and confronted by the staff from Te Wananga o Aotearoa doing a haka. We were on the front row so it was rather loud and impressive.
It was quite an informal ceremony with several of the graduates doing performances, and people jumping up in the crowd and doing haka or waita when their relatives walked up. Great stuff!

Our next door neighbour was there graduating from a different course, and we also met a couple of the people from the British Expats forum, one of whom did the course on my suggestion!

They walked up to me and said "You're Rob!" which was a bit strange but kinda cool :)

Me, and a couple of Buck Nin originals

More art from around the arena

We went to the rugby last Friday

Watched the Hurricanes thrash the Blues :)

The Westpac helicopter delivered the ball!

Hamilton V8 Street Race

We went up to the V8 street race in Hamilton, the weekend after Easter.

As usual - here are a couple of photos :)

On the way up. Hamilton is a 500km drive North from Wellington. We got as far as Lake Taupo and were running low on petrol. I'd decided to go up the West side of the lake for a change, but there are hardly any towns that way! We even turned off the aircon to save fuel when the gauge got down to 35km left. We eventually got to a small town with a petrol station. I started filling up the tank and realised after 18 litres that I had pick up the 91RON pump! The car is supposed to run on 98RON! I stopped pumping and filled the rest of the tank with 95RON - the best they have in most petrol stations, then spent another $28 on some octane booster. An expensive fill-up but the car was fine - phew!

Mana Island

Mount Ruapehu and the Desert Road

I didn't know Hamilton was where the Rocky Horror Show was created!


We arrived late evening and just got the tent up before it got dark!


We were defiitely in the Holden section of the campsite - the V8s are all about the rivalry between Ford and Holden - all of the race cars are Ford Falcons or Holden Commodores.


I love these - Holden Maloo V8 Ute - 307kw (417bhp), rear wheel drive, 20" wheels. The quad exhausts sounded amazing!

There were lots of cars on show around the circuit:

Around the circuit:






NZRAF Parachute team


The queue to get over the bridge after the first day's racing

TV presenters!

Some of the locals got an excellent view! The policeman was having a chat with them, making sure they weren't too drunk to be sitting on the roof!! They were offering him coffee and snacks.


Yoda enjoyed himself immensely!



The racing was great - very close, very tight circuit with a vicious chicane made out of two mini roundabouts - cars kept bouncing up on two wheels and breaking driveshafts and suspension when they dropped back down. I wish we'd had grandstand seats but the ticket prices were a bit steep!

One of the supporting races - the NZV8s



The Porsche Cup


The Holden Parade

The safety cars were Nissan GTRs


Toyota Racing Series


And finally the V8 Supercars themselves - teh main event was two 200km races over the two days.

The only disappointing thing was that the cars were running on biofuel to reduce carbons or some rubbish. This meant that the didn't spit flames on the overrun. They did still make excellent pops and bangs though!

Here's a video of some nice V8 noises:

The Kitchen project of Doom

As you can see from these pictures our kitchen was very old-fashioned and painted in interesting colours - I suspect the previous owners had some leftover paint from a couple of other jobs and decided to spruce up the kitchen doors with it!
There was no work surface when we moved in - apart from a pull-out chopping board under the sink. We bought a free-standing marble topped thingy to give some working space but half of it was underneath a wall unit so it didn't help that much.
Also the biggest cupboard had the old disconnected water cylinder inside taking up half of the space.
So after many attempts to persuade Melanie to let me remove the big cupboard I finally wore her down and she consented to the removal and replacement of two cupboards to give us some work surface.

So off I went with the first task - removing the offending cupboard and the cylinder.

One of the half dozen wallpapers I uncovered:

The plan was to move the washer to the back wall, leaving the old sink in the corner, then but a worktop over the top. But when I took the cover off the old sink it was all 'orrible and mouldy - so that changed the plans a little and it had to come out.

After removal of the big cupboard there was a capped-off pipe sticking out of the wall. I carefully traced the pipe and concluded it was definitely dead, so I started to saw the end off, only to get very very wet! Water was spraying all over the kitchen, I was soaked, I ran out to the front garden to the toby (stop-cock) and discovered the cover was stuck, so I had to run back to the house and grab a screwdriver then run back again to prise open the cover and turn off the water!
Fortunately there was the hole in the floor from the cylinder so there was only a centimetre or so of water in the kitchen!!
The local plumbers came out and sorted it for us - leaving a large hole in the wall.

Here's the wall after I patched up the hole and slapped on a couple of coats of paint.


And finally, the new wall cupboards


The new light - before I painted the ceiling

I got on with painting the existing cupboards and walls. The wallpaper was very well stuck and we had to buy a steam stripper to remove it.

We got the plumbers back to remove the two mystery taps sticking out of the wall and the four seemingly dead pipes. They also put in the new washer connections.

Once the walls were done I started to install the new base units. By this time the plan had changed again and we were moving the washer to the other side of the room in order to be able to add a set of drawers and more worktop.

More painting and stripping:

At this point we had a freezer disaster - the freezer had a habit of icing up to the point where it pushed its door open then defrosted itself. This was the fourth time we'd let it happen, so we decided to get rid of the fridge and freezer and get a nice frost free fridge freezer. So I had to remove part of the cupboard I'd just painted so it would fit:

I also decided to remove the corner cupboard as we couldn't get to it anyway!

The new fridge freezer - lovely!

We planned a second phase to replace the sink unit and also move it along a bit to make room for the cooker we really want - if we can ever afford it! I realised that the sink unit had to be done before I could get the flooring down, so we left things alone for a few weeks.

Buying the last couple of units inspired me to get the back cupboards finished.


Then it was time to do the sink! I'd planned it carefully so that we wouldn't need to move the existing wall-mounted tap, just replace it with one that didn't drip or have creaky plastic knobs!

A good weekend's work I think! I did the plumbing myself this time and even put in a tap for the dishwasher! We were going to wait a while before getting one but it was on special :)

Then the final job was to do the laminate flooring. Noodle helped a lot with this - mainly by dropping her toy in the middle of any sawdust that was present - or in the dustpan. It was so nice to finally get rid of that lino!

And here is the finished kitchen at last!

Big Update

Hi, sorry for being rather lazy with the updates this year.
We've been up to a few things and here they are.
(sorry, I've gone picture mad as usual)

Firstly, Noodle has been ill :(

A few weeks ago she woke us up a few times in the night and she was all agitated. At 5am she woke me up and was frothing at the mouth.

Melanie called me when I was on the train to work to say Noodle was having a full-on fit - she fell over and was twitching and unable to move. She then got all vicious and tried to bite Melanie. (she's never so much as growled at anyone). Noodle couldn't get up or move her back legs for a few minutes.

I rushed home and we took her to the vet where she had another frothing incident.
They took blood for tests and we took Noodle home and she still wouldn't stop pacing. She started frothing again so Melanie took her back in for observation.

Noodle had another grand mal seizure at the vets and they put her in a drip. She came home that night and had more seizures in the night.
She was on the drip for another two days and at one point she was so bad they were planning to put her into a coma to help her recover.

Fortunately she started to get better on the drip and gradually came out of it.

It was horrible to see her so completely out of control and not being able to do anything for her (except administer medicine up the bum - not very nice!).

For a few days she was not herself and very grumpy and subdued - she even growled at Sam when he wanted to play. She gradually came back to her normal happy self and now seems to have forgotten all about it.

It could be epilepsy that might return or it could be something poisonous that she'd eaten. The vet says we need to wait a year before we can assume it was poison.

Once she was feeling better I gave her a haircut!

Sam's growing up quickly and is getting much bigger!

He's allowed out now (but not in the dark yet) and has discovered cicadas. He likes to bring them in alive, torment them in the house and leave them dead on the carpet.

Trying to make friends with Meg and Mog

He likes to climb on your shoulders and lick your head - ew!

He's done this trick a few times!







He's tried to kill both of us!

Greedy cat!!

A couple of weeks ago we went to see Billy Connolly in Wellington. A very funny man but it was a little disappointing that we'd heard a fair bit of his material before.

We visited the colossal squid at Te Papa

We went into Wellington on Waitangi Day

We went to a free concert in the Botanic Gardens

We found little crabs in our mussels!!

Some random photos from my office window

Two cruise ships in at once. There's been two or three cruise ships a week in Wellington for the last few weeks. Lots of lost looking tourists wandering around clutching maps.


Window cleaners next door


Wellington CBD and The Terrace

We went to Martinborough Fair

We were excited to find the first jacket spud place we've seen in NZ!



It was a bit hot!

I polished the car

Added more blue pipes


and fitted some lovely bling 18s (well I needed 4 tyres so it was rude not to!)

And of course the car sailed through its warrant of fitness with no issues.

Oh yeah and I had it dyno tested to find out how many horsepowers and torques it has

We've got worms !!!

OK. Well firstly, Happy New Year and all the best for 2009 to anyone taking the time to read our blog and secondly, Surprise! I am still alive and am finally getting around to doing a post (after much nagging from Rob over the past year). Sorry, nothing personal. I've become a bit of an Internet hermit whilst I've been getting my head around teaching. I think I'm getting there although next year will no doubt throw up lots more challenges.

Can't complain - much - I am loving it and it certainly beats sitting in an office or staring at a photocopier all day, but as with all new things it takes some adjusting to and the rest of my life has been put on hold for a while. I have high expectations of myself which has probably meant I have done much more than is actually required of me in my first year and so it has been time consuming. However, I am sure all the time and effort has not gone to waste and I will reap the benefits in the coming years.

One of the things which has fallen by the wayside over the past year is our garden. We have plans to make large areas of it much lower maintenance this year with the cunning use of weed mat and gravel. As with all things there is a cost involved in this though so we are taking small steps. OK, let's be honest - I'm making plans and Rob has made a start on the hard labour :-)

I have managed to get on with starting growing herbs and veggies again and have several things happily flourishing on the deck at the moment as well as some pumpkins and peas growing around the back.

Hopefully the veggie patch will be dug over in the next few days (by the two of us) and I can set about planting more things to give us a nice supply of healthy food over the coming months. The challenge will of course be keeping on top of it this year but we'll see how it goes.

I'm not a big fan of chemicals - especially with all the animals running around and licking and chewing things - but I concede that veggies do need a bit of help to grow. So, I've invested in a worm farm to start producing fertiliser. The bins for it were purchased a few weeks ago but I only got the worms today. It's a bit weird having a courier turning up with a can of worms, inviting jokes about opening it, but it was strangely exciting (I'm turning in to a weirdo).

We put the worms in to their new home this morning and gave them some yummy scraps from the kitchen.

They seem happy enough so far - do worms feel happy?? They need to be fed every couple of days from now on - which is a further incentive to eat more fruit and veggies - and we should start getting good quality fertiliser from them in about 6 weeks and then every couple of weeks after that. Will have to see how it goes!

Sam update

Happy New Year!!

Sam's growing very quickly! I reckon he's at least doubled in size. Still best mates with Noodle but sometimes they get a bit too rough and have to be separated to calm down!
He's desperate to explore outside and keeps trying to work the cat flap.