Back to School

Back to School for Beth today.  She's in Miss Williams class this year.  She was very nervous/apprehensive/sad about going even though we talked to her lots about it.  I guess all children were the same.  Getting to school was mental, it's only 1km from here but the roads were jam packed, it would have nearly been faster to walk.  But I was in the car too and we had Theo, so we drove.  Once we'd dropped Beth off (well, Sarah did) we dropped Theo off and then Sarah dropped me off at the scooter place.  A few weeks back I dropped it in to have new tires on it, they've been shagged for ages and I knew it was time to get them replaced, especially after a random person stopped me a few months ago and said "Have you seen your rear tire? You need to get that fixed!"  So fixed it finally is.  The scooter man told me it would drive like a new machine, so shagged were the old tires.  I didn't believe him, but riding it today he was certainly right, it just handled so much better around the corners, didn't feel like it was riding on jelly sometimes.  I sort of forgot scooters weren't meant to drive like that!

Tonight when I got home Beth told me she wanted to do a performance.  Our first performance!  She was very nervous though and couldn't go through with it, instead opting for tears and it's all just too hard and I'm too nervous etc.  So we sat down and had dinner instead and Sarah encouraged her to make some tickets for the performance, which she enjoyed.  Then we all went in again for the performance.  She did one great sing-a-long and then asked me if I'd film the next one, so I did.  It's here if you'd like to watch the whole thing, but really I only suspect Granny would want to.  It was pretty amazing.

Saturday Sarah, Beth and Theo went to the airport to get Auntie Maggie.  I stayed behind with Biscuit to do some training in the car port while it rained.  After that we all went over to Peter and Mary's for a bacon sandwich and to see Maggie.  We came home and ran a few errands.  Sarah went to Mitre10.  Then we went to Peter and Mary's for dinner, had a lovely meal there.  Sunday I got up and made pancakes, after having not made them the day before.  I took Theo to Mitre10 to get some stuff, then we got snacks and stuff and came back home.  Then we went to the Playground with Biscuit, Theo and Beth wanted to drive their bikes/scooters around so they did that while I did some more training with Biscuit.  Then we went over to Peter and Mary's for a swim, they weren't home but we had a swim around anyway.  Holly and Age dropped over too.  Theo lost it when we left, kept crying, then popping his head out of the water howling, then putting it back under the water, then pulling it out howling.  It was so funny I filmed it.  I think he was just hungry though, oops, bad parenting there Timothy.

Sarah went up to Auckland last Wednesday morning, to see her client and also to go to Florence and the Machine that evening.  So just single Dad parenting for Wednesday night, they were great though.  And then when Sarah got back on Thursday night we pretty much swapped, she did child looking after while I went to the NZNOG dinner and drinks.

Speaking of excellent parenting though, my Watermelons are freakin' amazing.  All the sun and the huge amounts of water I've dumped on them have really paid off, they're these massive 10-15kg beasts, super heavy.  And you cut them open and they're so ripe and tasty.  Very juicy.  I'm so happy with how well they've turned out, we've only gotten through two so far, I've given one away, and there's about another 10 growing in various places around the garden.  A real success story.

Last Thursday/Friday was NZNOG here in Napier.  It was pretty good actually, I've avoided it for ~19 years because I always think it'll be a bunch of nerds talking about nerd stuff, and it totally was, but it's actually interesting nerd stuff.  Basically I guess I've just been in denial about what a huge nerd I am.  Anyway it was over two days and it was pretty good, I actually learnt quite a lot which I wasn't really expecting that I would.  So overall, glad I went.

Biscuit's good, I've been doing some training with him this week and he seems to be handling it really well.  We'll see how he goes tomorrow when we get there and there's dogs everywhere!

Tim