Back to work...

Well, the week off disappeared with frightening speed. I got a lot accomplished - all of my seeds planted out, either in pots or directly into the ground. I have a feeling that the green fuzz showing above the soil in the corner of the greenhouse is more likely to be weeds than my bok choy, but I can live in hope! Unfortunately, they all look the same at seedling level, so I'll have to wait for them to get a bit bigger before deciding whether to uproot or not. Pics may come next week when there may be something more to show than bare soil! I also managed to relax a lot - it was so nice to get the chance to completely switch off.

We did a huge walk on Saturday going round car yards in Lower Hutt - we hadn't meant to walk as far as we did, but ended up going for about 2 hours. We just got back to the front door when it started raining - perfect timing! We then had a friend round for an evening of board gaming - which ended up going till gone 2 in the morning! Then up early for the weekly Skype call home - I'm actually really pleased that I got up, as the Daffodil Express steamed past just after 9 am - it's a once a year event, with a steam train taking passengers from Wellington to Carterton for their annual daffodil festival. Tickets are a bit pricey ($70 / person return), but not bad for a 2 hour train trip. May be something to think about for future years!

Of course, back to work with a bump - I definitely chose the right week to have off, as I came back to a plethora of group emails about the Christchurch earthquake - it sounds like it was absolutely manic for the whole week. Part of me is a little sad that I missed out on it all, but I'm not *that* upset! I'm now looking forward to our next public holiday, which is Labour Day at the end of October. Then the downhill slope to Christmas!

We've also had a teeny splurge - we've picked ourselves up a nice second hand PC. It's not even close to top spec, but it was very cheap (and obviously, now kept out of landfill for a few more years), and will do for John to be able to scan and edit his drawings, for us to be able to access our terabyte drive (for some reason, when plugged into the Linux netbooks, we could read it, but not write to it), a number of the DVDs which friends have sent us over the last few months (most of which the Linux system decided didn't exist), and for me to be able to play my Windows based PC games.