Daily News

I have not had any mind-boggling adventures lately (although I have some coming up!), so I thought it was time for a general news bulletin. So bear with my dis-jointed newsyness, I am not anticipating a lot of structure to today’s writing.

Work and school and busy schedules are back in full-swing after the holidays. However, the nice thing about the first few months of the year over here is you frequently get long weekends from the holidays. Of course the downside of that is that between June (Queens Birthday) and Christmas, the only holiday is Labor Day at the end of October. But never mind that, right now we are enjoying the sunshine J

The last long weekend we had was Waitangi Day. This celebrates the signing of the Waitangi Treaty between the King of England and the native Maoris in New Zealand. Maraes and museums, etc. tend to have events. There was a local one here but the weather was not the greatest so I opted for sleeping in instead. I did enjoy some of the festivities last year though, if you are really motivated and want to look back through old posts!

The next holiday coming up is Taranaki Anniversary. Each region has an anniversary date where they celebrate the day they became a region/district/province. There is not usually a lot happening but it is a nice excuse for a short trip. I will hopefully be hiking over that weekend, more on that after/if it happens.

I made a life-changing decision last week and cut my hair. Seriously cut it, it’s very very very short now. With the heat and humidity and running several days a week to train for a half marathon, it is a welcome change because it is much cooler, and so easy to manage. But I will admit to not watching while my hairdresser went snip snip. I did not realize how popular my unruly long hair was until I got rid of it. However, the consensus has been that short hair also works for me.

We have had beautiful summer weather, despite it being a bit more humid than I like. The sunsets have been lovely to watch. We are lucky to be up on a hill so we can see the sun setting over the port, and reflecting off the mountain. There is not currently snow that we can see on the mountaintop, but if there are any clouds around the top of the mountain it is simply gorgeous.

Enjoying the summer weather and lovely sunsets is easy with a nice charcoal BBQ and the recently acquired chiminea. Mmmm grilled meat and veggies, and toasted marshmallows J Plus, when it starts to cool off, we have a source of heat via the chiminea (found at an excellent clearance price, yay bargain hunting!).

 Speaking of chimneys, when we got home from work the other day, we found a bird in the living room. It had flown down the chimney at some stage during the day and was stuck there until we got home. I felt bad for the poor thing because it was almost literally banging its head against the window since it could see where it needed to go but just could not get there. Thanks to its visit, the cushions and blankets got an unplanned washing. 

It rained overnight and this morning, We were put on water restrictions effective today, so it will be interesting to see if we got enough rain for that to be lifted. 

Hope you are having a good week. Keep your eyes peeled for a post on my upcoming trip to do the Tongariro Alpine crossing :)

Field Trip

Field trips are fun no matter how old you are. So I was delighted to go on a work field trip a couple of weeks ago. One of our contractors has been working through a major project just outside of town. The project began back in November with scoping and then installing new for a section of major line. The day that we went out was to watch the new lines being put on the poles.

So, safety first. Before setting out, we had to all be decked out in proper safety gear. So we got on our bright orange and blue overalls, steel-toed boots, and bright yellow hard hats. We did not end up needing them, but we also had ear plugs, safety goggles, and gloves.
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The portion of the line we visited was on the back section of a farm. Thankfully one of the project managers had left an extra orange vest on a fencepost to point the way :)

We had a quick safety briefing when we got there, so we know where we could go and what was going on. Then we were welcome to stay and observe as long as we wanted.

The crew was using a helicopter to put the lines on the poles. The helicopter would pick up a large drum with the cable on it. Prior to that day's work, each crossarm on the poles had been fitted with a clip to catch and hold the lines. So the helicopter would hover over each pole, until the line had caught in the clip and then carry on to the next pole, while the line unraveled from the drum. I was particularly impressed with the pilot's precision, as he spent very little time at each pole having to wait for the line to find the right spot.

We stayed for maybe an hour, as we saw the pilot string three of the six lines required for the new poles. It was interesting for me to see something in action as I have spent plenty of time helping to plan the work, but do not always understand all that is going on in the field. Being on site allowed me the opportunity to see the complete set-up and ask questions to see how it all fits together.