Granny Arrives
Thursday I worked from home having gotten up at 3:30am for a cutover of Lampton Quay and then an upgrade of the Wellington BNG from SROS 15.0R3->21.10R4. I was quite nervous such a big SROS jump wouldn't work but after 15 minutes and about 4 reboots while it upgraded firmwares on cards, it came up and started working again like a champion. The rest of the day was working with one eye open and helping Sarah have the massive cleanout she did of the kids rooms. Just getting rid of all the plastic toys and shite they've accumulated over the past couple of years. I also setup Granny's room because it was GRANNY ARRIVAL DAY!
Thursday night everyone was very excited! Granny was going to arrive! We had it all planned, I was going to take Biscuit for a walk then when I got back we'd head out, grab a Hot Chocolate from McDonalds and go and collect Granny from the Airport. But while out walking Biscuit I got a call from Granny with some bad news, due to her plane out of Melbourne being delayed, she'd missed her connecting flight down to Napier. Because it wasn't her fault Air New Zealand was putting her up in a hotel in Auckland, and she'd be on the early flight from Auckland to Napier on the Friday morning. So when I got home I had to break the news to the kids who were a little upset but nevermind, they were excited to collect Granny the next morning.
So that's what we did, the next morning we got all ready, had breakfast and drove out to get Granny from the Airport. We arrived JUST as she was walking through the arrival gate which was excellent timing! We packed her into the care, swung by to get a coffee and then went home. I jumped on my bike and rode to work and Sarah, Granny and the kids drove up to school to drop the kids off for their last day before 2 whole weeks of School Holidays! Exciting!
Home that night and we also had JoJo with us, so the kids did the usual thing of pizzas and a movie. Saturday morning there was no Tennis because of School Holidays, so at 9:45am Mum and I took Beth up to swimming to watch her go! And go she did, she's getting really good at it now. Saturday afternoon I don't really remember what we did, I don't think it was very much because all it did was rain rain rain. The grounds were muddy mess, the toilet wasn't flushing properly the watertable was so high etc. Saturday night the kids did a bit of knitting with Granny.
Sunday we took it easy in the morning, before going out to Birdwoods for lunch and meeting Peter and Mary there. Sadly because of all the rain, the grounds at Birdwoods were closed too! So the kids were a little bit bored. And they had a foodtruck instead of the usual menu, which was quite different from what we were expecting. It was night though. Sunday night Sarah and I went out to The Mission with Holly, Adrian, Tania and Matt and .... and had a nice meal there. I kinda ignored my diet and just had lots of delicious things.
The week was just a work week, Greg and Grant were both away (well Grant was there Monday but that's it) because of School Holidays. The kids either hung out with Granny or went to "Teeny and Tiny" at the Aquarium for one day (They were both shattered when they came back from this) and Beth went to a Dance day on day as well.
Friday morning I took the long bike ride to work, 20km from home to work! Friday night was a beer tasting/fun thing at work. There was 20 beers to try and you had to try and guess which was which. It was a lot harder than I expected, I came equal 3rd. So I didn't do terrible, but not great either. The winner was someone that doesn't drink beer, so it just shows how random the whole "Tasting" thing is!
Saturday I took Beth up to swimming again before swinging by the pool shop to check chemical levels etc. With all the rain I thought it'd be quite out of balance but the guy at the pool shop said it was pretty good, just needed a bit of Akalinity Up. i.e. it was too acidic. Anyway that sorted it was looking good! The kids had a good swim in the pool (poor Beth though fell over and scrapped her knees really badly!) while Sarah and I cleaned the Pergola deck. I then stained the pergola deck to get it looking good while the weather was fine. Then I took myself for a little 10k run, I'd been meaning to get up and do a long run for a while and Garmin had a 10k badge to be earnt so I did it. Wasn't too slow either, so all the various running, riding and walking I've been doing seems to be paying off. Saturday night the kids really wanted to have a sleepover in Theo's room, so we got the spare bed out from under Theo's bed and put it up and Beth slept in there. They had toys everywhere, had a great ol' time.
Sunday was also a lovely day, we went out to the Farmer's Market (I don't know why it's called that there's not a Farmer in sight anymore) and had a great time, really lovely in the Sun. It seems that half of Hawke's Bay had the same idea, queues that usually took 5 minutes were talking 20 and it was just rammed with people. Once we finished there we went to the little Lions book store, the kids love it, it's cheap and they always find something enjoyable to read.
We got back and I did a second coat on the Pergola, it's looking pretty good now and hopefully won't need redoing until at least 2-3 years have passed. We'll see if that's really true or not. Granny cooked us a lovely dinner of Meatballs and Spaghetti, Sarah watched the Japanese F1 race live for once at a normal time. Of course the stupid thing was just rain rain rain so the race was reduced to only 30 minutes. At least she got to watch it live though. Sunday night it was sleepover time again, except this time it was Theo having a sleepover in Beth's room. So Theo helped me move the mattress, then the base, into Beth's room. He really loves all the lifting/helping he's able to do these days which is great.
Now it's Monday morning, I'm up and awake and have spent the last 40 mintues typing up this diary entry. I've been looking at using Hugo the static site generator for my Diary, but I'll stick with Drupal for a while yet I think. There's no easy way to import the ~2500 diary entires I have into Hugo and I'd lose all my short URL codes etc. So as much as I love the idea of getting rid of Mysql, PHP and all the modules that Drupal requires, I think I'll stick with it a while yet. Maybe one day I'll manage to make it static... At least I easily made the LiCe website, which was only 5 pages or so, a static website with Hugo. It's a good website to test/practise on.
Until next time dear diary!
Tim