Work Weekend, Visiting Gwen, Guide Dog Biscuits

Last weekend I spent it in Auckland with my workmate Damian.  We flew up on Friday, picked up our car from the airport, found out accommodation and settled in for the evening with not much to do.  We went to GPK for dinner, then headed back for an early night.  Saturday morning we got up really early and drive to the Datacentre.  It was super amazingly foggy, I could only see 1-2m in front of me driving the car. 

Good thing we had GPS because I had no idea where we were going.  It was only a 10 minute drive and we arrived at the Datacentre, gloomy place that it was.  We basically spent the day there, slowly moving circuit after circuit from the old equipment to the new equipment we'd installed.  It all seemed to go very well, we encountered a few problems here and there, but nothing we couldn't sort out pretty quickly.  At the end of the day (~8pm) we called it a day, headed back to our Albany Quest Apartment, then went out to dinner.  We found a little place a 5 min walk from our accommodation and had dinner there, it was a decent meal. 

The next morning we got up and drove back to the airport, dropped off our hire car and flew home.  We were originally booked to leave at 4pm, but everything was stable and the customer was happy, so I flew at 10:30am instead.  Beth, Theo and Sarah were waiting for me at the airport, Sarah told me all about her nightmare Friday night/Saturday with Theo, who'd spent most of it projectile vomiting!!  Of course it has to happen when I go away.  Anyway we drove from the Airport and went and had a lunch at the Speights Alehouse in Arurihi, then headed home and spent the rest of the day vegetating.

Tuesday I had to fly up to New Plymouth to visit my customer again, this was just a fly in and fly out visit.  4 flights for 1 hour meeting, seems so silly.  But good to go and see my customer, confirm they were happy with the work we'd done on the weekend and just to see how things are going in general.  So that was nice.

Thursday night was a bit of a nightmare, Beth had caught the vomiting bug (That apparently is going around all the childcare centres at the moment) so she was up 3-4 times during the night.  She's really good with a spew bowl now though, she can tell when she's going to be sick and manages herself really well.

This weekend was nice, Saturday wasn't swimming for Theo because his last lesson was the weekend before (though he didn't go because he was berking all over the show).  Beth went to visit her friend Gwen and had a lovely playdate there, so while Beth was there I took Theo into visit "WorldTrain" as he calls it.  I sat around in Train World for two hours while Theo looked at everything, played with the trains etc.  Funnily enough he didn't want to ride on the little model train I think because the usual man wasn't driving it, but instead there was a young lady who was driving it.  Not sure if it was the lady, or if Theo was just being difficult, but he really didn't want his train ride.  But he still had a great time otherwise, playing with the toy trains, looking at them going around the tracks etc.

Once we'd visited Train World we drove out to Hastings to visit Brave Brewery to get some tasty beer and some lovely chicken burgers.  Then we drove home and did a bit of garden work before it was time to go and pick up Beth.  Then the kids just played outside on their bikes while I cleaned out the gutters, trimmed the Wisteria etc.

Today has been a bit of a quiet one, Theo has been super grizzly since he got up.  I put them outside for a few hours while I cleaned up around the house.  Sarah baked Guide Dog Biscuits with Beth while I took Theo to get some breakfast for us.  He didn't even want to walk into the Cafe, which he usually loves.  When we got back we gave him a snack, a bedtime story and put him to bed.  He's been asleep in there for a couple of hours now, so I hope he's feeling a lot better when he gets up.  The Guide Dog Biscuits are going to raise money for the Guide Dogs, I'm going to take some into work tomorrow and try to sell them to my workmates.

What else... We've burned HEAPS of wood so far, we'll need to get some more soon.  We have a pile under a tarp out there, so I'll move that into the woodshed then get another couple of bins from Meeanee Firewood.  I finally got around to writing a letter to the Dog Lady, she hasn't returned her signed copy yet.  But the shed has arrived out the back and it's actually quite alright, it's dark and you can hardly see it.  The car hasn't disappeared yet though, but it better soon or she'll get getting asked when!

Nearly 50 days uptime on the QOTOM Chinese box in the cupboard.  Looks like it definitely was that stupid $5 surge protector causing it to power off at random times.  Doh.

I think that's enough... I'll try and write in you more often this week diary, but I've only been saying that every fortnight for the last two odd years...

Tim