Catching Up on Tim's Life!
Been ages since I've written a decent diary entry. Of course last weekend for Easter we were in Gisborne, I've written that story here so I'm not going to go over it again. Of course the biggest news is that I've resigned from Prophecy and am going to go and work for NowNZ. They've been our ISP at home for the last 8 years, so it'll be neat to go and work for them. I've been on 4 days a week for what seems like a year, but I think it's only ~8 months or so. Maybe even a little less. Still a long time though, so it certainly helped accelerate my desire to find something else. I'm also not too sure about the future of Prophecy for a number of reasons that aren't worth going into here, suffice to say there's enough going on to make me really wanted to get out. Which I have! I actually put my job application in back on the 1st of Jan 2021. The Now ad was very opened ended, it wanted people for all sorts of roles and if we were interested, plus submit CV. So that's what I did and then on the 26th Jan Greg popped up on the NZNOG Slack and said he'd seen my CV and did I want to have a casual chat with him? So I met up with him that afternoon at Rogue Hop and we had a good chat over a couple of pints. He sounded very interested, but he didn't have an actual position for me yet, or a job description or anything. Anyway after 2 months of things slowly moving along and me worrying a few times that it had all dried up, I finally got offered the position a couple of weeks ago so I accepted it. There were a couple of things in the contact I wasn't super happy about, namely the odd Kiwisaver clause, but actually a week later they apologised and fixed it right up for me and a few other people, so that's a great sign. Also Greg used to contract to Now, but he's given up contracting to go full-time, which I think is a huge endorsement of the company. Anyway, I have one more week of Prophecy left, before I then am pretty much unemployed for a week (School Holidays, I'll be looking after the kids) and then I start at Now! Can't wait. I've already met up with the team a few times, once for lunch while I was still interviewing, then again for the PTN training and finally yesterday I caught up with them all again for lunch.
What else has been happening. A few weeks ago a random dog turned up outside our house in the morning. He seemed old, and tired. So I locked him in the front yard, gave him some and put a on the Jervoistown Residents group about him. 20 minutes later someone came to collect him, much to the kids disappointed! They loved having a visitor, and Beau the dog was very well behaved and lovely. Stories were written about him at school though!
Probably not a real lot else to say over the last 3 weeks. The kids have been going to swimming lessons and tennis lessons as normal. The moonies came over to stay for a night. Oh that's right I was supposed to be going to Crowded House with Sarah a couple of weekends ago, but I was sick with a stupid cold that's been lingering on for about 3 weeks. So she went with Holly, sounds like she had a good time. Oh yes Sarah got a new Apple Watch, the LTE version so it can work anywhere. It totally snaps me out, she can talk on it anywhere and it sounds just like she's talking on her phone. Because it's LTE it means she doesn't even need to take her phone with her, she can just leave it at home and go out and about with the watch. I mean, I knew Apple had this technology but I'll be honest I didn't realise how seamless and smoothly it worked. It's quite literally amazing. When she went to Crowded House she didn't take her phone, just her watch. And she realised she didn't have the tickets that were on her phone. So she just pulled up her email on her watch, found the barcode and she scanned in using the watch. Amazing. I thought my Fenix 6 Pro was amazing (and it is in other ways) but far out. That Apple Watch is bonkers crazy.
So yea I handed my notice in. Rachael was a bit sad, but totally unsurprised. I was the 3rd resignation in a week. Jonny was a bit more "Wow, OK, Wow" but I guess that's mostly because I just asked him to join a meeting randomly out of the blue and told him.
Beth and I have been playing heaps of "Baloo". She has a Baloo bear from Grandma and I make him talk and do things. In our world Baloo loves Pillows and sleeping, he had a friend "Dog" (Charlie) and his teacher is Shrimpy who Baloo laughs at because of Shrimpy's blue lips. It's a great fun little game, though gosh Beth does drag it out for ages at night when it's time for bed. Still she enjoys it though and I like to play along. She sometimes carefully writes up maths sheets or other activity sheets for Baloo to fill out. Basically: Beth pretends she's the teacher, does all the teacher pre-work and then gets Baloo to do the work and then she marks it. Tell us she's not going to be a teacher one day, she LOVES it.
Theo's still into Bay Blades though seems to have calmed down a little bit in wanting to talk about them all day every day. I took them up to the Library on Tuesday (a school day off, thanks school) and got him some books about the Space Station and Space in general which he is LOVING. The ISS in particular he thinks is amazing and loves reading about it.
Poor Chris next door had a heart attack, he's back home and OK thankfully. Sarah baked some lovely cookies and Beth wrote him a very nice card which we went and delivered during the week. Poor Chris! He's a very nice kind man, I hope he's back to full health soon. And speaking of sick, poor Simone had a mild stroke last week which has slightly affected her speech her mother says. Poor thing, I hope she recovers quickly. Getting old man, I tell you, it's not cool.
The kids seem to be doing great at school. I walked them up yesterday (They scootered) and at school Theo's teacher just randomly said to me "He's such a lovely little boy" which was nice. He IS a lovely little fella. Here he is excited for the Teddy Bear's Picnic day they had a few weeks ago, taking BananaBanana.
Beth's also doing great at school by all accounts. I can't believe how grown up she is these days, she gets in the shower all by herself now, turning it on and off etc. There's really not much she needs my help with anymore, except to remind her 500 times in the morning to DO all the tasks she needs to do. She's the eternal faffer, and then gets upset when she's late etc.
Today is Gwen's birthday party at the Aquarium, so I've dropped her off to that. Theo has a party at his friend Luke's house a bit later on. I've been viciously writing up my diary entires because I'm so far behind, but it's done now! I'm going to go and have a shower then do something with Theo for a little bit before it's time to collect Beth and take Theo to his party.
Tim