Phew! What have we been up to the last few days? It's hard to remember...

We went to visit Pipi Pizza last Thursday night with everyone. It's out in Hastings, it's an old building that's Hot Pink inside. The pizza is truely amazing though, we were there at 6pm and it was starting to get busy. When we left at 7pm it was packed.

Saturday morning we had A PLAN to get up and have Breakfast with Peter and Mary at Orbit, but we didn't quite make it. Instead we had a snooze and then went to look at a property out at Pukutapau. It was a nice property, but not really what we were after, it was quite small really given the size of the section. The section was on a very sloping bit of land.

Then we zipped into Town to look at another property, which was lovely...

One of Peter's colleagues owns a lovely red MG. He's been restoring it over the last couple of years, it was in pretty good condition when he got it but it's in perfect condition now. He came around on Tuesday night and took me for a spin, here we are just before we zoomed off. You can see it's fitted with racing windscreens, plus Ian's got all the gear on! He has official MG gloves and even the caps on the tires air valves are official MG ones. He took me for a blast around the back of the Napier hills, she goes like the clappers too. It was great fun.

Last night we went and did a Baby CPR course at the local red cross. It was only an hour, but it covered everything you need to know about CPR and choking. Boy we had to slap the crap...

Here's a bunch of various photos taken over the last few months with my phone. A few reminders of Hazelmere and some of our time so far here in Napier.

Had a good first week at work in the Napier office. My desk was all setup for me when I got there on Monday which was really nice. I have a proper desk, monitor, keyboard etc. All those things that I guess are normal but seem quite nice after 3 months of working from home.

Wednesday night was the mid-year Christmas function as well, so that was good timing! We all went to the The Mission for dinner, Mark and Kiri came up from Wellington too. Dinner was nice, was a good chance to get to know some of my workmates a bit better, plus for Sarah to get to meet everyone. Was a really good night, lovely food, though the food portions were huge. Note that I'm not actually complaining about that.

I've been scootering to work every day. It's not too bad, though because there is just no...

Well, hello from the second day of living in Napier! Well I guess not really the second day, but the second day of full work while living in Napier! I have ridden the scooter to work both days from Peter and Mary's house and boy oh boy has it been cold. I mean freezing cold. This morning there was ice on the scooter seat, I had to scrape that off as I got on my trusty steed.

Having an office is great. It's an old, Art Deco building that our office is in. I'm in the back in a small room with two other people. I mean the room isn't tiny, but it's not huge. It's a good size. I've got my laptop all setup properly now, with a monitor and a keyboard and all those normal things that I haven't really had for the last couple of months while...

It's Done.

It's all packed! It's on a truck. I waved the truck goodbye this morning about 11am. Pretty good timing really, they were fast and friendly. I'm pretty stuffed, I was up late last night doing the final bits of packing and getting everything sorted. I'd done most of it, but it's always the last 10% that takes 50% of the time.

I felt sad leaving. The house is all empty and echoey. The unconscious part of my brain still doesn't realise that I don't live here anymore. I kept thinking I heard Tui's bell jingling in through the cat flap. I gave it a pat and said goodbye as I headed off. It's been a great house. A cold, impossible to dig, hard to paint, dodgy power points house, but a great house regardless. It's never given us any major grief, no flooding or building issues etc.

I...

Far out, here it is Wednesday night, nearly two weeks after. er we sold our house. Maybe only one and a bit. Anyway it's been really crazy. Last week after we sold not much really happened. The only thing I remember happening last week of note is that some bastard stole the "Sold" sign off the big billboard at the front of the house. I rang the agents and they came by and put another one on. People are crazy.

Friday afternoon I collected Maggie and Andy from the airport. It's been nearly 5 years since I last saw them, so it was lovely to see then again and to be able to return the favour of accommodation, even if it was only for a single night.

Friday night I took them to Galbraiths for a couple of decent beers and some burgers. We had a nice quiet chat there...

After the most nervous of auctions (the property before us sold fairly easily), we sold our house tonight. The main bidder we were expecting never showed up, so we were left with just two. One was out pretty much straight away, so instead of an auction it was mostly the auctioneer haggling with the people who wanted to buy it. Back and forth it went, for about 20 minutes. Phone calls, etc. It was quite stressful for everyone!

But it's sold. Not _quite_ for what we wanted, but given the hassle of selling on the open market (where people can put conditions against the contract) I'm happy to see it done and dusted. That's it, we can now move on with our lives, head to Napier, knowing that our lovely house is, sadly, behind us.

Far out it was so nerve wrecking. I got there, sat down, as it turns...

Just bumped into Scott and Charlotte while we we in Grey Lynn looking for the book fair. We went and had a chat over a couple of pizzas and a beer. Really nice to catch up with them and hear that they have bought themselves a property. And now they're going to get to go travelling again, lucky devils.

We had 20 more groups come through the house over the weekend. The drainage issue has proven to be a bit of a sticking point than I think we'd realised it would be. The main reason is because there is a "Notice to fix" attached to the council file, which there wasn't when we purchased it. The reason we didn't realise it was there was because the old owner was dealing with the council to get the Code of Compliance. But he never got it, but he did do a fair...

I'm sitting at the dining room table (we sold one of the office tables) on a terrible wet rainy day. Sarah's in bed, catching up on some sleep. What a crazy weekend it's been! First of all, Ben and Di (our quiz friends) gave birth yesterday! We were supposed to be meeting them at the baby clothes market, instead we got a text from Di saying she was in labour! They're about 6 weeks early, but it sounds like everything is going OK for them.

We've had two open homes this weekend, one on Saturday one on Sunday, 1-1:30. We had 25 groups through on Saturday and 16 groups through today. That's pretty good, especially considering today is really terrible weather. Horrid. 41 groups though, hopefully a couple of them are keen as.

Thursday morning I was up really early to catch my JetStar flight down to Wellington. Caught up...