Last For The Year

The last post of the year and I am sitting in my brother's office, on my laptop, plugged into his modem with a dog snoring at my feet. Yes, a very different change in scenery. I get the pleasure (at the moment it is) of baby(dog)sitting while everyone else goes nuts for New Year.
How am I going to celebrate the end of another year and the beginning of a new one? Simple. I'm not. I'm watching the Phoenix play later tonight and then curling up and hitting the sack. Yeah it's boring but whats' to celebrate? Tomorrow is just another day and only the date changes. Everything else is the same. Making a promise to keep for 365 days can be made on any day of a year. It makes no difference if it is made January the 1st or July the 10th.

To you who do celebrate - do it carefully and don't be stupid. Yeah get drunk, but don't fuck it up by driving, walking home alone or landing yourself in hospital.

And I guess I will see you next year. Cheers :)

So Boxing Day = Xmas Part II

The Gibson / McGhie clan arrived and more paper was strewn around as more gifts were given and received.

**Reminder to Nic when you read this, remember to send my presents down. The ones you forgot.**

Here are the highlights...more on Flickr - later







Eilish got a trike and put it to use. She still needs more practise on the pedal thing, but hey she's 2. Lots of time to practise.

Santa Left a Camera

My father has been jolted into the 21st Century with the giving of a digital camera. To make it fair, it is a fat-finger-friendly-few-buttons-to-push, but with all the important stuff.




Low and behold he was taking, viewing and deleting photos within the hour. I'm not going to try and explain downloading just yet. Let that sink in.




It must have been very tiring as a few moments later..... just like that.

Christmas 2009 - Been There Done That

Christmas is over for another year!



The fat man has left the building, leaving gifts galore and food a plenty.





In a beautiful day, we ate, opened gifts, ate and walked the dog to stop ourselves from falling asleep. The perfect Christmas.

so with that;

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE

HAVE A SAFE DAY, DON'T DRINK AND DRIVE AND DON'T DRINK AND FRY AND REMEMBER TO SLIP, SLOP, SLAP, AND WRAP.

Bring on The Fat Man

Christmas Eve is often the longest day on earth. It seems to taunt you with all the things sitting waiting for tomorrow. I'm not just talking about the presents, but the food. The grape juice, mix nuts, dip, ham, salads, strawberries, cherries.

You are ready so there is no need to go into town - not that you would want too, it's too hot to spend time in the sun. The garden is weed free, the kitchen sparkling, the lounge tidied - not quite sure as it will be a mess by this time tomorrow.

So hook up a movie, wii, or book and watch the clock tick and tick and tick.

It's Christmas Time

So the presents are out under the 'little' Christmas tree, and like any child Jasper was the first to go looking for his present. Unlike the rest of us who look at the name tags, Jasper must have gone for which smelt the best. So he started to unwrap his cousin's present.






This is the second Xmas for Jasper and like a little child he is fascinated with the tree. He is currently trying to get the nearest candy cane and has had many staring contests with Santa. He's probably trying to work out who that fat fella is!

Just had a visit from animal control after we found two dogs eating the cat biscuits. A beautiful black lab cross and a lab/mastiff/boxer cross (??) You could see their rib cages and they were dying for a drink and food. Neither had collars and I had seen the black lab earlier in the day following people down the road. That pisses me off!!!!! No collar, tags, microchips and starving to death. I wish I could do that to their owners who don't deserve such friendly, nice natured animals. I hope that they will be well looked after and re-homed to a place they deserve. It makes me sick!!!!

Yellow Fever

The Wellington Phoenix played Sydney FC on Saturday night and I had the balls to go along. Now I have been to soccer matches with Manawatu but this was on a huge new levels. Just over 6,500 people turned up on a typical windy Palmy night. What an experience! I don't whether I watched the crowd more than the game??!!?? You just got enveloped into the Yellow Fever who were a mere 30 metres away from. Their constant chanting and noise, bringing everyone into the match. With out noticing you were up and chanting along with them.
The match itself was a let down with a spot penalty given to Sydney in the 16th minute. We were playing catchup and they didn't take the wind advantage to push forward.
Had the Phoenix been leading into the last ten minutes, the yellow fever 'by law' strip shirtless and that would have been a sight to behold in the freezing temperature.
Hopefully the Phoenix will take heart and play another 'home' game in Palmy. Better weather, bigger crowd!
I will be game to go again!!

The Lowdown

Well the past few weeks have been very stressful, as Awapuni have decided to re-manage their Support Staff. That's me and a small handful of others. After several meeting, the Board decided to reduce my hours by 10 in 2010. That means I will only be working 3 hours a day. The problem with that is I can't financially survive on that. So what to do? That has been the question that have hounded me both day and night since then. Do I look for another 'full time' position? Do I look for work to cover the afternoon? or do I run myself into the ground?
School for me, has now finished for the year and I have at least eight weeks before I return. That is a lot of time with little income. Just more stress to add to the pile.