Hello from New Zealand! Yes we're back, we arrived safe and sound late last night. I love the new electronic passports we both have, it makes it so easy to get through immigration and even customs. Thanks, government.

Once we got back from our uber adventure we had a pretty lazy day, Sarah and I headed into central Brisbane and had a look around the Queen St Mall. Lots of shopping, lots of things to look at. I loved how they were playing the cricket in the mall for everyone on big TV's, with the audio being piped into the mall too. Everyone could sit down anywhere and watch the cricket while having a break from the trials of shopping.

We instead chose to sit in a pub and have a couple of drinks while we waited for Michael Clarke to score his 200. Finally we did and we left...

We had an amazing 4 days away. We landed into Ayers Rock airport (that's what it's called!) on the 30th of Dec and collected our hire car, a big meat-axe 4WD. We drove to our hotel (Sails in the Desert) and checked in, our room wasn't available though so we went and examined the visitors centre instead. Once we'd got the call our room was ready we went back and checked in, then hung out at the pool for a while. In fact quite a while, you need a pool when the temperature is 40c+

Later that night we drove out to THE ROCK. We got a bit grumpy when we were stung with the $25 per/person fee to get into the park, but at least the ticket was valid for 3 days. Once in we parked up, though we still had 30 mins before sunset.
Sunset was simply brilliant...

Hello from the skies of Australia, as we jet from Carins to Ayer's Rock. We're flying along at 765km/h according to my GPS.
It's Mum and Bill's 10th wedding anniversary and we're along for the ride (at Mum's invitation I should add!) Mum has organised for us to fly to Ayer's Rock for a couple of days! The whole trip had been a surprise up until we got to the airport, up until then we didn't know where we were going. In fact up until dinner last night, we didn't even know if we'd be flying or driving or walking or what!

Sarah was right in her prediction that lunch on this plane would be a "cheese sandwich" - well she was almost right, it was actually a roast beef one.

After the boys morning of playing golf on Tuesday, Sarah and I drove down to Bulimba in the Super...

Hello and Merry Christmas from Queensland. I've meant to post this story a number of times the last few days but every time I go to post it something comes up and I don't get to finish it. Nevermind, it's nice and long now and hopefully I'll get to hit the publish button.

We'd had a great time so far, heaps of fun. It's really hot and muggy, quite hard to get used so far. The fact the sun sets so early as well is strange, eveyone tends to go to bed quite early but get up quite early too. Makes avoiding the heat a little easier.

We flew into Queensland on the Friday, our flight was a little bit delayed because of the big Christchurch aftershock that happened, Christchurch controls a large amount of the flights within the New Zealand airspace so that was a bit of a problem...

Look at my new catcus we purchased yesterday! Tell me that isn't an awesome scary death cactus. I'm going to be taking it to work so I can feed people I don't like to it.

We also bought a Christmas Tree! But not a cut off one that's going to die and make us sad, but a planted one that's going to live and be happy! It was the last one at Kings Plant Barn so it's a bit crooked, kind of a sad deformed one. But we have put it in the loungeroom and given it many baubles so it looks pretty. We have also named it Cedric. Cedric the Christmas Tree.

It's been a very miserable weekend, rain rain and more rain. In fact it seems like it's Winter at the moment, it's cold, it's wet, it's miserable. Not that it matters, we only have a few more...

Sarah was cooking a lovely meal the kitchen last night. She ducked into the other room for a few minutes while I was still in the dining room. I hear a bit of a funny "creeakkkk" noise but didn't think much of it. I got up from the table and walked towards the kitchen when I heard *CRACK*BOOM*CRUNCH*SMASSSHHHHHHHHHH.*

This was not a sound I'd wanted to hear. Indeed, it was a sound I'd really not wanted to hear, because it was the shelf in the kitchen decideding to break and dump its contents onto the kitchen bench and floor. The major problem was the books that came down with it knocked the pot of oil on the oven onto the floor. So there was a huge sea of oil slowly spreading out on the kitchen floor as I arrived.

Quite annoying! It's our own fault though, in moving all the...

Another wet and miserable Monday morning on the way to work. Pretty sick of this crappy weather Auckland! All weekend it blew a gale, it was crazy. The windows rattled, stuff blew over etc.

Poor Tui yesterday! Sarah and I were in the lounge watching the cricket on TV when I heard a real commotion in the other room. I put it down to the wind, but then I thought I'd better just double check it wasn't someone stealing our stuff. So I went and checked it out. Tui had managed - somehow - to fall down the gap between the washing machine and the wall and was looking very pissed off and distraught. She's never been a very nimble cat, no idea what she'd been trying to do but she'd failed pretty badly!

We had a nice quiet weekend. Spent a bit of it watching the cricket which was...

Had two job interviews today, one was external and one was internal, basically re-applying for my job. I think that both of them went really well, so I'm pretty happy. Neither of them were heavily technical, more about how I design things and document them and that sort of stuff. So yea, pretty happy!

Tim

Got off the bus on Thursday night and suddenly remembered one small thing. We were flying to Napier on Friday morning but had forgotten to sort anything out for poor Tui! We hadn't booked her into the cattery, nor organised anyone to check on her etc. A quick panicky phone call to the cattery and that was sorted, they were able to take her on Friday morning for the weekend. Phew!

Photos from the weekend.

I stuffed my bag full with 10 bottles of the Secret Brew, which can now be revealed to be an Apple Cider that I brewed for one of Mary's Christmas presents. I thought the bag would be over the 23kg limit when I picked it up, but it was only 17 or so kg.
Our flight down to Napier was uneventful, Peter Chats was there to pick us up after we landed and took us...

Bottle my secret brew last night, quite exciting. I didn't manage to get quite as much as I'd hoped out of it, but I was was still quite impressed with the final results. I just hope when it comes time to taste it that it tastes as good as I want it to! The taste I had of it last night indicates it's pretty good though, so fingers crossed that it's awesome.

Did some Christmas shopping yesterday, going to do some more today. We've done really well with our shopping this year, nearly all of it has been done before Decememebr even rolled around. Quite impressed I must say. Of course none of this would have happened if it wasn't for my lovely wife who is ever so much more organised than me. If it was left to me we'd still be running around 10 minutes before Christmas trying to...