Holy hell has it been one hell of a wet 'n' windy day in Auckland. A few times I thought I saw the Auckland Harbour bridge fly past the window. I know that one of our potplants blew over and there's been reports of power outages all around Auckland. Thankfully we're not one of them (I think because we live in a posh area)

The landlord is coming up tomorrow to do some gardening, the plants out the back are quite a mess so she's going to sort those out. I've spent a bit of the day tidying up the last few bits so that it "looks nice" whens she's here. Not that she'll be coming into the house, but it's a good excuse to tidy anyway.

Nothing else exciting to report, I just cooked dinner and dessert (not desert) is cooking in the oven (nothing flash though)

Tim

Happy Birthday John Harman!
I have to agree with this guy!

We've got lots done today! We went and bought ourselves a nice little outdoor table with a couple of comfortable chairs AND a sun umbrella. Sure, it's not much of a sun umbrella but it's better than nothing.
We also put up some curtains in the study/shed/shack thing out the back (after checking with the landlord, who was more than happy for us to do it)

Sarah's now fully moved out, she's just got back from the final visit with her landlord. She (the landlord) was very happy with the cleaning job the girls did, they did work really hard to make it nice.

We got a letter from MAF yesterday about our ants! All it said was "Thanks for sending us a specimen, you have Big Headed Ants (the most common type in Auckland), the end" which...

I've been very slack in updating this week because really not much exciting has been happening. We've heard no more from MAF about our ants, so I assume they're allowed to live in peace and harmony with all the other critters in the backyard.
The fleas finally seem to have gone away too, though I did find one hopping around on me yesterday while I was out in the study (what the little shed out the back is now "offically" called) but I think that was just one out of the grass or something.

We've also pretty much packed up everything of Sarah's from her old place. We're going back around today to help the other two girls move the last of their really heavy stuff and to clean the place up. Then I'm off to the SPCA to wash and clean the doggies. Well actually probably just clean up...

Hello it's Saturday morning and I've just realised what a fantastic girlfriend Sarah is. I mean I knew all along that she was pretty cool, but whoar - she's amazing.

I'm just off now to make her some pancakes for breakfast and then I think I'll take her shopping all day for whatever she wants.

--Tim

No, don't freak out/get exicted everyone, it's only static additions. Yesterday afternoon we went and hired a trailer to pickup a table and chairs that Sarah bought on TradeMe. We were in a bit of a flap because we were running and a little late and none of the places I knew that usually hired trailers had them, in fact most didn't hire them anymore.
Eventually we found somewhere that had one in stock they could loan us for the afternoon. We went and picked up our nice little table 'n' chairs set and dropped it off home. On the way home we'd realised we'd need the trailer for longer so we run the place we'd got it from back up and asked how much it would be if we dropped it off early the next morning. Amazingly enough, it wasn't going to cost us any extra. Armed with this...

Hi everyone! Finally yesterday (after lots of work putting stuff away) I was able to take some photos of our little house. Here they are! Click on a photo for a bit more information about it.

Today we're going to move some more of Sarah's stuff in, plus get the fridge. I'm sick of having to go up every day to get ice for the Eski, it'll be nice to have a normal regular fridge again!

If you'd like the address and contact details for The Nest login and read the next story I'm about to post.

Tim

Can you believe it?

Thankfully it's not fleas this time, in fact it's kinda cool in some ways. Tonight while eating out dinner (outside in the sun, it's SO nice to be able to do that, I forgot just how nice) we looked down and noticed some rather neat looking ants eating a scrap of food we'd dropped.After talking about it for a bit we decided we'd have a look at the NZ biosecurity website just in case we'd found some exotic ant. After looking at them in more detail and comparing to the website, we realised we HAD found an exotic ant species living in our backyard! We have BIG-HEADED ANTS!!!
living at our place. They've got shiny bums when they eat lots, apparently that's their "gastric" and they look really funny with skinny waists, and huge heads and big shiny butts. Hopefully we'll get a helicopter and...

Dam fleas. I thought giving them the major flea bomb attack and then vaccuming would fix them, but they're still around the little blood suckers. I went around again today and vaccumed every little nook and cranny that I thought they could be hiding it. It's much harder when there's boxes of stuff all over the place! It seems to have helped anyway, I haen't been bitten anymore though I did still find (and drown) another couple of fleas after that. Ugh, it's so horrible to move into a fantastic new place but have it spoilt by something like that.

Still haven't taken any pictures yet either, I only just found the camera today and the place is in too much of a mess for nice photos! Prehaps on the weekend.

Tim

Hello from "The Nest!"
Today was our first offical day here, but we rang the landlord and he didn't mind if we started to move stuff in yesterday, so we decided to do that. We got here about 11am in the morning, we walked in with our first car load and we were a little upset when we walked in, there was bits of cat hair all over the place, cat poos in a couple of corners and cat piss in a few other places. Erk. We realised the cat flap on the front door wasn't locked, so I locked it and we moved a few other things into the house. While we were standing in the bedroom suddenly Sarah screamed "Arrrrgh! Fleas!!", I looked down at her feet and was amazed at how many fleas she had on her, probably about 15 I think. This in a house with...

Got the keys to "The Nest" today, rang the landlord and confirmed we can move stuff in tomorrow. He's happy with that, which is good for me seeing as tomorrow is ment to be my last day at this place. Seeing as I can't get anyone to answer the phone (nor return my messages) I guess they're not too concerned. Prehaps they'll ask what's going on when the rent doesn't go in today!

My photo gallery is back online, also now upgraded to a new version. It's now at http://gallery.tjharman.com. Once we've moved into the new place we'll take some photos of it and post them up there for you to all have a look see.

Time to get back to packing!

Tim