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 :)