Ooops...

I know, I know - it's been a few weeks - sorry! Things have been a little bit crazy recently, both at home and at work. Very long days at work + active social life = not a huge amount of time at home, and my brain hasn't been hugely active in order to get a blog post written...

Since I last posted, we have had another couple of friends come to stay. This was a lovely weekend, as I'd not seen my uni flatmate since 2002, far too long a time. We went back to the seals and also took a trip round Zealandia. We were treated to a gorgeous display of bellbirds, and I may have even caught some of their song on video (I haven't had a chance to get it onto the computer to see how good the sound was!) - I wasn't able to actually catch the *birds* on video as I think I need to practice a little bit on catching moving objects; I did get a lot of shots of empty branches and out of focus leaves!

I've also been having fun with hockey - we ended up finishing the initial round robin top of our grade (without letting a single goal in), so we have gone up to the next one. Sadly, we didn't win our first game in the higher grade, but it was very close (and should have been a draw, but I'm not allowed to criticise the ref's decision ;-) ), which gives us the confidence to know that we are playing at the right level, rather than potentially coming up a grade only to be knocked back down again at the end of the season.

We're enjoying the freedom that the new car is giving us; we have been out at friends' houses for the last two Saturdays for playing board games (I've got a new game which I'm really enjoying, a re-release of a game which I'd played with my cousins which I was a child; it's called Survive; Escape from Atlantis, and is great fun - as you get to attack other people's characters with sea monsters, sharks and whales, you can make silly noises as much as you like!), and have also been able to help another friend with his house move.

We're gearing up for our next orchestra concert - fortunately, I'm not having to do too much practice as I've already played two of the four pieces before (Slavonic Dances and L'Arlisienne), and the remaining two don't have too difficult a piece for the oboe. Which is a good thing, as I'm not getting that much time to play outside of rehearsals.