I promised - From this day forward, no matter what life holds for us, I pledge to give you my support, friendship, faithful companionship and undying love.
In four years, we have seen many changes from life, but that promise is still as sincere and as true as the day I spoke it. Here's to many more years to come, and I'm looking forward to the next life challenge.
In other news - we finished the round robin at the top of our grade in hockey, so it's semi finals this week - please keep your fingers crossed for us Sunday morning...
We had our orchestra workshop last weekend - it went brilliantly. We had a fantastic teacher for the oboe sectionals, and I have learnt so much. I was even enjoying the Firebird by the end of it (rather relieving to understand that the professionals have ways of 'cheating' their way through the music, too). It is such great fun to be able to spend a whole weekend playing music and feeling a whole orchestra improve together - the difference in our playing between the Friday evening when we did our initial tutti run through and our final rehearsal on the Sunday afternoon was immeasurable!
Thursday, 1 September 2011
Tuesday, 16 August 2011
Spoke too soon...
Me and my big mouth...
As we got into last weekend, I started spotting weather warnings on the news. It was hailing and snowing on Sunday night, and on Monday morning, we woke up to a light icing powder dust of snow on the hills:
This in and of itself is unusual. Whilst we do get snow in NZ (we have a thriving ski-industry), the last time it snowed in Wellington to any major level was in the seventies, and before then in 1936. No wonder, then, that we were a little ill-equipped to deal with the snow which fell steadily through Monday - it took me an hour and forty-five minutes to get home thanks to a broken down train and then frozen points (normally it's about thirty minutes door to door depending on when I arrive at the station). There was still snow on the hills when I left for work this morning, and I got a dumping of hail on me as well as I left the house.
One of my colleagues lives up the hill on the other side of the valley from us; she left early as the weather looked like closing in and they had had the snow settle overnight, making conditions very slippery going up her road. She called me when she got in to say that it was snowing very heavily in Lower Hutt and I might want to make my way home sooner rather than later. I didn't think a huge amount of it - we're pretty much at sea level, and last year we only had a couple of frosts over the whole winter, so I thought that everything would have melted by the time I got in.
Fortunately, I did take her advice (more warnings from National Office about the weather also helped to convince me) - when I got home, I was confronted with a white blanket of snow:
The Ambulance Station over the road
Our Pohutakawa tree
The garden
The very surreal sight of a fruiting Lemon tree (with a feijoa, olive and fig behind it) covered in snow. All the trees are now in the greenhouse - they may be hardy, but probably not to this extent!
The media is calling this a once in a lifetime blast - snow has got as far as Auckland ('The Winterless North') - I'm just very glad of a good gas fire!
As we got into last weekend, I started spotting weather warnings on the news. It was hailing and snowing on Sunday night, and on Monday morning, we woke up to a light icing powder dust of snow on the hills:
This in and of itself is unusual. Whilst we do get snow in NZ (we have a thriving ski-industry), the last time it snowed in Wellington to any major level was in the seventies, and before then in 1936. No wonder, then, that we were a little ill-equipped to deal with the snow which fell steadily through Monday - it took me an hour and forty-five minutes to get home thanks to a broken down train and then frozen points (normally it's about thirty minutes door to door depending on when I arrive at the station). There was still snow on the hills when I left for work this morning, and I got a dumping of hail on me as well as I left the house.
One of my colleagues lives up the hill on the other side of the valley from us; she left early as the weather looked like closing in and they had had the snow settle overnight, making conditions very slippery going up her road. She called me when she got in to say that it was snowing very heavily in Lower Hutt and I might want to make my way home sooner rather than later. I didn't think a huge amount of it - we're pretty much at sea level, and last year we only had a couple of frosts over the whole winter, so I thought that everything would have melted by the time I got in.
Fortunately, I did take her advice (more warnings from National Office about the weather also helped to convince me) - when I got home, I was confronted with a white blanket of snow:
The Ambulance Station over the road
Our Pohutakawa tree
The garden
The very surreal sight of a fruiting Lemon tree (with a feijoa, olive and fig behind it) covered in snow. All the trees are now in the greenhouse - they may be hardy, but probably not to this extent!
The media is calling this a once in a lifetime blast - snow has got as far as Auckland ('The Winterless North') - I'm just very glad of a good gas fire!
Monday, 8 August 2011
Expectations...
Well - the day of my last post was the coldest day in Wellington on record, so it was definitely a good day to stay in and read - I got 120 pages through the book - I may even pick it up again this week (it hasn't grabbed me so far...)
But the weather has flipped quite considerably - the daffodils are out, as are the snowdrops, the trees are starting to get their Spring green. It isn't quite Spring yet - the weather can't make up its mind as to whether it is going to be warm or cold (for my hockey match yesterday, I baked under all the goalie gear - we then went over the hills to the Wairarapa (the local wine growing region) and went through both a hail and a snow storm. However, the signs are there; as well as the flowers, the days are getting noticeably longer, and the wind isn't quite as chill as it has been. It does seem very odd to be coming out the other side of Winter without having really had a Winter at all!
But the weather has flipped quite considerably - the daffodils are out, as are the snowdrops, the trees are starting to get their Spring green. It isn't quite Spring yet - the weather can't make up its mind as to whether it is going to be warm or cold (for my hockey match yesterday, I baked under all the goalie gear - we then went over the hills to the Wairarapa (the local wine growing region) and went through both a hail and a snow storm. However, the signs are there; as well as the flowers, the days are getting noticeably longer, and the wind isn't quite as chill as it has been. It does seem very odd to be coming out the other side of Winter without having really had a Winter at all!
Monday, 25 July 2011
Wintry weather
It's cold outside (well, cold for here - I am sure that my Canadian and UK friends would beg to differ - why, it's not dipping that much below 0, and it was a whole +5C when I went out to play hockey yesterday), we have had snow across much of the country, and, yes, as per the UK, a good chunk of the workforce (mainly on South Island) got to stay at home due to the roads being shut. It's the winter holidays, which means no orchestra tonight, so it is the perfect time to curl up by the gas fire and enjoy one of the perks of being a member of SFFANZ - my review copy of the latest George R.R. Martin arrived at the beginning of the week. At over 950 pages, and hardback, it's not one which I can carry on the train (without doing my back an injury), but I'm sure that the sofa cushions will prop it up perfectly.
Thursday, 14 July 2011
It's a small world, after all...
I'm sort of getting used to the fact that Wellington is like a village. That there is a high likelihood that two people from completely random sides of my life will know each other, usually through another, totally random, facet of theirs. I can take the knowledge that now, over 18 months into our lives here, I am going to meet someone that I know every time I walk down the main street. That I will see a colleague or friend when I go shopping on a Saturday. And I like it. It makes life a lot more friendly and a lot less anonymous.
What I'm not going to get used to is meeting someone at work, and finding out that they used to work round the corner from me in Bristol. Or than someone else used to live not five minutes' drive from my in-laws on the south coast. That's going to get me every time...
And the hockey team is currently at the top of the grade - we're going great guns as we head into the second half of the season!
What I'm not going to get used to is meeting someone at work, and finding out that they used to work round the corner from me in Bristol. Or than someone else used to live not five minutes' drive from my in-laws on the south coast. That's going to get me every time...
And the hockey team is currently at the top of the grade - we're going great guns as we head into the second half of the season!
Sunday, 26 June 2011
Catch up...
It has been incredibly busy once again; this weekend we had four different 'engagements' happening at the same time; a hockey/cinema fundraiser, a Ceilidh being run by a couple of members of the orchestra, a work social and the monthly Phoenix committee meeting and social. We opted for the Phoenix social - John is on the committee now (and was standing in for the Secretary whilst he was away), so he couldn't really miss it, and it also gave us the opportunity to pop in to see another friend (and give him a lift to the social).
We've had a mixed few weeks with hockey - a couple of draws were a bit frustrating (especially last week's, where the opposing team scored the drawing goal with less than a minute remaining!). We are still bouncing around the top of the league (there are only three points separating top 6 out of 8 teams!), but we're going to have to up our game if we want to ensure we get through to the semis and finals at the end of the season.
We've had our orchestra concert; a gorgeous rendition of Alfred Hill's Viola Concerto (part 1) (part 2 and 3), which has very rapidly become one of my favourite pieces of music. We also played Bizet's L'Arlisienne Suite; most people know the first movement, but the fourth (Carillon) has a fantastic wind section which I got to play the second oboe part for - one of the few pieces where the second oboe part isn't in octaves or thirds to the first! All great fun; and now we have a couple of weeks off before we get into practising for the weekend workshop - the Firebird Suite and L'Apres Midi d'un Faun, which I'm very much looking forward to!
We also had our week away up in Auckland (a few photos in the previous post); a brilliant Sci-Fi convention weekend, where we got to catch up with old friends and make new ones. It is always nice to get to spend a few days where insanity is the norm and conversations are wide ranging from the serious to the silly. We then stayed in the Parnell area to unwind from a very hectic few months at work, and to do some touristy bits and pieces.
We had a superb tourist boat trip around the harbour; it included hop on and hop off on a couple of islands, so we have walked up a (probably extinct) volcano. Rangitoto Island didn't exist 600 years ago, and the lava fields are still very 'raw' (I got a nicely grazed knee from slipping on the clinker on the way back down!), with the vegetation in some areas in very early stages of growth (you can still see the lichen that will rot into hummus, which in turn provides the basis for small seeds to bed on). It does mean that in places it looks very bleak, but in others, particularly right at the summit and down on the shore line, there is an abundance of vegetation. Not so many birds, but, according to one of the signs, this is more due to the fact that there is currently not enough fresh water to sustain significant numbers.
We also stopped off at Motuihe Island, which is in the process of becoming a nature reserve (at the moment, the walking tracks are more hope than anything else - we got our feet very wet pushing through long grass until we got down to the beach and decided to take a short cut back across the sand and rocks!). It was very peaceful, though - there were only four of us on the island for a couple of hours until the boat came back to pick us up! On the way back to Auckland Harbour, we were treated to a pod of dolphins playing around the boat, which was absolutely stunning. It's the first time I've seen them close up, and they were definitely playing, including diving under the boat several times, and doing back flips out of the water. One of my 'must do' items ticked off very unexpectedly!
For my birthday, we went to Kelly Tarlton's Underwater World, the first aquarium in the world to do a perspex 'tunnel' through the aquarium so that the visitors can see the fish going overhead. They had a stunning collection of sharks (one of their 'extras' is to go cage or free diving (depending on how brave you feel!) with them - another of my 'must dos' but slightly out of our budget range for this holiday!), and even had some baby carpet sharks which had only recently hatched (the mini aquarium that they were in still had one shark in its egg - you could see the shadow of the baby!)
We did also find the most stunning chocolate cafe in Parnell; their cafe menu had about six pages of different chocolate drinks! We only managed three visits over the week - we may have to make further trips back next time we are in Auckland!
We've had a mixed few weeks with hockey - a couple of draws were a bit frustrating (especially last week's, where the opposing team scored the drawing goal with less than a minute remaining!). We are still bouncing around the top of the league (there are only three points separating top 6 out of 8 teams!), but we're going to have to up our game if we want to ensure we get through to the semis and finals at the end of the season.
We've had our orchestra concert; a gorgeous rendition of Alfred Hill's Viola Concerto (part 1) (part 2 and 3), which has very rapidly become one of my favourite pieces of music. We also played Bizet's L'Arlisienne Suite; most people know the first movement, but the fourth (Carillon) has a fantastic wind section which I got to play the second oboe part for - one of the few pieces where the second oboe part isn't in octaves or thirds to the first! All great fun; and now we have a couple of weeks off before we get into practising for the weekend workshop - the Firebird Suite and L'Apres Midi d'un Faun, which I'm very much looking forward to!
We also had our week away up in Auckland (a few photos in the previous post); a brilliant Sci-Fi convention weekend, where we got to catch up with old friends and make new ones. It is always nice to get to spend a few days where insanity is the norm and conversations are wide ranging from the serious to the silly. We then stayed in the Parnell area to unwind from a very hectic few months at work, and to do some touristy bits and pieces.
We had a superb tourist boat trip around the harbour; it included hop on and hop off on a couple of islands, so we have walked up a (probably extinct) volcano. Rangitoto Island didn't exist 600 years ago, and the lava fields are still very 'raw' (I got a nicely grazed knee from slipping on the clinker on the way back down!), with the vegetation in some areas in very early stages of growth (you can still see the lichen that will rot into hummus, which in turn provides the basis for small seeds to bed on). It does mean that in places it looks very bleak, but in others, particularly right at the summit and down on the shore line, there is an abundance of vegetation. Not so many birds, but, according to one of the signs, this is more due to the fact that there is currently not enough fresh water to sustain significant numbers.
We also stopped off at Motuihe Island, which is in the process of becoming a nature reserve (at the moment, the walking tracks are more hope than anything else - we got our feet very wet pushing through long grass until we got down to the beach and decided to take a short cut back across the sand and rocks!). It was very peaceful, though - there were only four of us on the island for a couple of hours until the boat came back to pick us up! On the way back to Auckland Harbour, we were treated to a pod of dolphins playing around the boat, which was absolutely stunning. It's the first time I've seen them close up, and they were definitely playing, including diving under the boat several times, and doing back flips out of the water. One of my 'must do' items ticked off very unexpectedly!
For my birthday, we went to Kelly Tarlton's Underwater World, the first aquarium in the world to do a perspex 'tunnel' through the aquarium so that the visitors can see the fish going overhead. They had a stunning collection of sharks (one of their 'extras' is to go cage or free diving (depending on how brave you feel!) with them - another of my 'must dos' but slightly out of our budget range for this holiday!), and even had some baby carpet sharks which had only recently hatched (the mini aquarium that they were in still had one shark in its egg - you could see the shadow of the baby!)
We did also find the most stunning chocolate cafe in Parnell; their cafe menu had about six pages of different chocolate drinks! We only managed three visits over the week - we may have to make further trips back next time we are in Auckland!
Some Auckland photographs
Because I've been so bad at writing words recently, have some photos of our recent (a few weeks ago now!) trip to Auckland...
We travelled up north by train, which was an incredibly relaxing way to go. Mount Ruapehu dominated the scenery for about half an hour of the journey.
The Skytower from the Rose Garden park in Parnell.
Rangitoto Island, a volcanic (now believed extinct) island off of the coast of Auckland; it didn't exist until roughly 600 years ago!
A thrush at the top of Rangitoto Island, which had very little birdlife (according to the signs, because of the lack of fresh water), until we got to the summit, and then there were small birds everywhere! Most of them were paying very close attention to a couple of backpackers who were having an early lunch break...
The silvereyes were also more interested in breadcrumbs than they were with me and the camera.
On the way back to Auckland harbour, we were treated to a pod of dolphins who played around the boat for about ten minutes. I got a lot of photos of empty water!
Even though our hotel wasn't near fresh water that we could sea, there was a small kingfisher sitting outside the window on the first morning.
We travelled up north by train, which was an incredibly relaxing way to go. Mount Ruapehu dominated the scenery for about half an hour of the journey.
The Skytower from the Rose Garden park in Parnell.
Rangitoto Island, a volcanic (now believed extinct) island off of the coast of Auckland; it didn't exist until roughly 600 years ago!
A thrush at the top of Rangitoto Island, which had very little birdlife (according to the signs, because of the lack of fresh water), until we got to the summit, and then there were small birds everywhere! Most of them were paying very close attention to a couple of backpackers who were having an early lunch break...
The silvereyes were also more interested in breadcrumbs than they were with me and the camera.
On the way back to Auckland harbour, we were treated to a pod of dolphins who played around the boat for about ten minutes. I got a lot of photos of empty water!
Even though our hotel wasn't near fresh water that we could sea, there was a small kingfisher sitting outside the window on the first morning.
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