Hi All,
Great to
have heard from so many of you over the past month. We are looking forward to
seeing Jenny L later this week again (these plant monitoring trips are great!)
and also heading off to the land for a day over this coming weekend.
We have
been busy yet again. However, Merrill's birthday in Golden Bay was great; we
used a rental car which we had won on a Travel Quiz Auction last year to drive
over (Toyota Camry; Jan said he definitely isn't interested in buying one,
having driven it!).
We
visited Fleur & Neil for lunch on the way to Collingwood and found Fleur
sitting down on the stairs saying that she was really sore; as time went on,
she became less able to move and so Neil took her to see her Takaka midwife.
The next thing we knew was that Fleur was being whipped off to Nelson in the
ambulance. That was a fortnight ago, and she is still in Nelson; the general
opinion is that, in case something goes wrong Takaka is too far away to let her
safely go home. At least the hospital has a couple of family-stay self-catering
houses in the hospital grounds, so Fleur is staying at the hospital, but not in
it. So last Weds night we picked her up and brought her around to our place for
dinner and a change of scene; if she is still here in Nelson tomorrow we will
do the same.
Jan's
Management Accounting paper is not going so well, in his opinion. He doesn't
feel that the concepts are making sense to him. I think it will suddenly start
to hang together more, as time goes on - I had a lot of trouble when starting
my first management accounting paper. It took quite a while for it all to make
sense.
However,
my AUT's Sports Degree 'People Management' paper lecturing is going well. We
are now in the midst of the first assignment (class group presentations
followed by individual 'reflective reading') and I am really enjoying it. I
have made enquiries about starting some Certificate in Adult Teaching (CAT)
qualification training.
As part
of the CAT study, there is a paper on NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming).
Through my Career Practitioner's Association membership, I had heard about an
NLP training course being run over the whole weekend, this weekend just gone,
at a very reasonable rate, so I put my hand up to attend. So I think that's one
paper almost down. I may need a couple of private sessions with the NLP trainer
(who also runs the CAT course) to cover those education areas not covered by a
career-oriented NLP course. So that means there are probably only seven papers
to go already. I like that.
My being
out of the way for the NLP training gave Jan an ideal opportunity to decide to
(a) go to work for one day and (b) spend a day cleaning out the garage. The
clean up resulted in one rubbish bag and a wee bit of recycling, and him
spending the day apparently repairing one headlight torch. Only 99.5% of the
garage to go!
We had
the annual Chamber of Commerce staff and board dinner on Friday night just
gone, and Michelle, the new Chamber Operations Manager, had hired in a couple
of oversized 'gameboys'; widescreen game motor-racing consoles with the chair,
pedals and steering wheels. Jan had to be prized away with a crowbar :-)
Bonnie
has gone home as John & Jo have returned. When Jan dropped Bonnie off at
their place, they gave us some dog toys as thank yous. One of those toys, a
blue latex squeaky cat, has been adopted as what appears be "The Best Toy
in the World" by Coco. She will not leave it alone. She even sleeps on it.
I have never seen a dog so enamoured with a toy, for so long, before. I would
dearly like to buy more of them, but I have never seen these before (and I have
been scouring the internet!).
We went
to see a German film, 'Lives of Others' (Das Leben der Anderen), last night. We
thought it was a great film. We also have tickets to go & see "Go for
Zucker" (Alles Auf Zucker) tomorrow night, which we are really looking
forward to. The Platinum Theatre here shows usually eight or ten foreign/fringe
films each fortnight, so there is a good selection of non-Hollywood experiences
on offer. Our trouble is that we forget to check what's on, and so miss lots of
them!
On the
last weekend of this month, we are going to Hanmer weekend for our luxury
weekend, staying in the Honeymoon Suite (of all things!). Then our next trip
away will be Sydney for our wedding anniversary in November. We have put our
Wellington trip back to the first week in December, and will make that a good
family catch up.
OK, I
think that's all I have time for now - look after yourselves, everyone. Alles
liebe :-)
Sam & Jan
