News from Nelson - August 2 2010

Hi all,

I hope everyone is feeling fit & well - its a time of flux for all of us; either autumn or spring.

Jan will hopefully be at the Greenhill Orchestra rehearsal tonight, but he got a wasp sting on his hand yesterday - chopping wood in the shed - and his right hand has swollen up quite a bit. He has a concert this weekend with Greenhill, over in Golden Bay, so I hope he has no complications with it. To make sure, he is heading off to the Doctor this afternoon. After the Greenhill Orchestra his next concert is the NSO one on 18 September supporting the young soloists, then in November with 'Scottish Connections' (http://www.nso.org.nz/).

Jan's study & mine carries on; I have my first case study ready for review, and have started work on the second one.

We had a fantastically fine week, then it rained on the weekend, so we still can't seal our plasterwork. Our worklist still largely exists intact to be done before our CoC can be applied for, but I am ticking off small jobs inside. A couple of weeks ago I took Wednesday off and unpacked 24 cartons of books and sorted them all out. I have two fiction shelves (living area, spare room) and one non-fiction (hall). Lugging those cartons up the stairs, collapsing the boxes, sorting, dusting and shelving took all day from 7am until 4.30.

Jan has had a look at the new drawers that Michael Bender installed, and has made some small adjustments to them, so yesterday I sorted all our CDs and DVDs and put them all away. The drawers are fantastic - push them lightly and they spring open, push them again, and they close. Lovely! Amazingly we had four drawers free, so I have put our games & puzzles in those. Another couple of cartons emptied from the garage... inch by inch I am making the room to be able get my car in the garage! A couple of photos of progress for you to view :-)

This Saturday just gone we had Jenny L over, and on Sunday we had Tiff, Kevin & Sandra here for brunch. John Fitz is back from his travels and we caught up with him the weekend before. Last Wednesday night we went to hear the NZ String Quartet performing Schumann and Shostakovich, which was great. At the concert we caught up with Derek & Kate Sherwood, and hopefully Jan & Derek will get out on the bikes again soon.

Right, that's all for now. I had better get back to work.

Jan & Sam

News from Nelson - August 2010

Hi everyone,

Amazingly, we have been back from holiday for nearly a month. The time has gone by so fast! The weather is crisp & cool in the mornings, with lovely fine days. It rained on the weekend, but we seemed to miss the cold snap that the rest of the country got. Nice to have a micro-climate :-)

Jan turns in the first of his assignments tomorrow, and is feeling a bit under pressure. However, he is at the Symphony Orchestra practice tonight, and was at the Greenhill rehearsal on Monday night, so he is not under so much pressure that he feels he has to pull out of other things, which is good. I have finished my last CAT assessment for my second to last unit and am now working on my management case studies. So it is all study-study-study around here at the moment.

Jan's next concert is on 18 September with the NSO supporting the young soloists (Solo Spotlight), then at the end of September a Greenhill concert, largely repeating pieces they played last year (a bit of info at http://www.nsom.ac.nz/classes.html), then again in November the NSO play 'Scottish Connections' (http://www.nso.org.nz/). He will be busy with that lot, and study.

We still aren't much closer to getting organised for our CoC from the council, and our mutual study won't get that done much faster either (but equally, there's no rush). It keeps raining a bit on the weekends, so we can't seal our plasterwork. Until we have sealed our plasterwork, Jan doesn't want to install the outside lights. We still have yet to permanently fix the gas bottle outside, finish all the exterior lighting and hook up the other 23,000 litre water tank. Our builder has ducted in the range hood, but hasn't yet installed the stainless steel backing for kitchen hob or completed the cowling for the range hood. However, my louvres are installed in my office.

In some ways the water tank is probably the most important thing for us to get done now - so we have the space on-stream to store an extra 23,000 litres before the rain stops in September/early November.

However, this weekend won't be all study, as we have Michael Bender coming to install our big bookshelf. At the moment our living area looks like a furniture shop with all the bookshelf components in pieces everywhere... and the spare room is full of drawers. I am really looking forward to taking some photos this weekend of the whole thing being assembled. It will be really great to finally unpack all our books - and get rid of another 20 cartons from the cellar.

Work is carrying on as normal for both of us at present, nothing out of the ordinary, so that's all good.

This Saturday night we have our friends Gary & Nick over for dinner, with their two teenagers. It will be great to see them as we haven't really caught up of late. Kathleen & Frits are off on their European journey at the moment, and John Fitzwater is still in the US. On 25 August we are going to listen to the NZ String Quartet performing Schumann and Shostakovich, which will be fantastic, and one day next week we are getting taken out to dinner as a thank you for some voluntary work I did for a fellow Rotarian - the President of the NZ chapter of the International Fellowship of Cricketing Rotarians; yes, there really is such a beast. It is an international organisation with loads of international trips for cricket-bunnies to play cricket, talk cricket, watch cricket and critique cricket. There is truly something for everyone out there, and now they have a lovely newsletter entitled "Extra Innings" :-)

Speaking of Rotary, I have just had one of my past students come along to our Rotary club with a view to joining. She is really keen to do some community work that is aligned with youth projects. Our club's focus is youth, sport & literacy, so she will fit right in. I am hoping that her involvement will bring in of her colleagues and contacts, so we start getting some more younger people joining. I am very conscious that, while our club is younger than almost all NZ clubs, unless we keep attracting younger people each year, as time ticks inexorably onwards we too will grow too old to be relevant.

Right, that's all for now. I had better get back to the study.

Jan & Sam