News from Nelson - February 2 2013

Hi all,
Just a quick update again as we are both pretty busy! Surprise, surprise!

Happy birthday to Jan's Oma Friedel who has just turned 99, here with Katrin & Monika: 

I went up to Tauranga for a couple of AUT training days, and caught up with DJ & Dilani, who are both in great form. Hopefully we will catch up with them both again when we take the Rotary exchange students around the far north this April too.

Kathleen & Frits came to stay for a weekend and we shamelessly put them to work. First we cleared some of the rubbish piles from when we had our trees felled about six years ago:

Then, where Jimmy had felled some trees which were threatening our powerlines, Jan & Frits cut them up.

And Coco and Bonnie helped.

And, what a delight for the eyes. Bonnie, sound asleep with eyes slightly open, dreaming and snoring with her tongue out. Bless.

Flissy is getting pretty frail: her back end is getting pretty wobbly due to the Ankylosing Spondylitis. We had them all at the vet the other day for check ups, and basically there is nothing else we can do for her now except control her pain (and she seems relatively pain-free, so that's good). Old dogs :-(

This week Jan has been in Auckland at a work conference/seminar and I have been in Welly for another CDANZ meeting. My next 'meeting' will be via video link from the BNZ Centres all around the country. It will be interesting to see how that works! But if it does work well, it will mean that we can save some $ for our members and have some 'minor' meetings during the year. I don't think the technology is good enough to replace collegiality yet, but it may come.

I teach students in Marlborough via video link, so does work OK: but it is not a replacement for being there.

We have rented our house again, as aside from one offer which fell through, there was nothing happening on the sales front.

Jan is playing in the next NSO concert - a salute to the Steinway - and I am trying to get my NMIT courses sorted so I can get back to my own study. I have some interesting students in my classes though. All those good things that make it enjoyable!

Our neighbour, Kath, is not good again, which is a real shame. But at least Harrison is three now, so will have memories of his Mum.

Our next trip will be the Rotary Youth Exchange one in April/May.  Hope to see some of you then.

Jan & Sam