Monday, 7 January

The last few days have been spent relaxing with friends, watching movies, reading books and eating far too much chocolate (thank you friends and relations who all decided I needed fattening up and gave me loads of my faves). Sadly two of my friends returned to England at different times throughout this week which always leaves me with mixed emotions about how cool it is to see old friends again after a long time but how sad it is that people come into your life and then leave.

When I lived in Japan one of the best things about living there was how many amazingly cool people I became friends with from all over the world, but this also led to one of the hardest things about life in Japan.  Most foreigners living there were only there for a year while their working holiday visas lasted and then they would leave, most of whom I never saw again and didn’t manage to stay in touch with.  At least these days with email and Facebook it’s so much easier than in the “old days” when the only way people stayed in touch was by letter.

Today I went into town to have lunch with a friend who is leaving New Zealand to study medicine, he probably won’t return but I hope we do stay in touch.

After lunch to cheer myself up I went shopping and bought a brand new bed, which excitingly is going to be delivered on Wednesday – yay.  I would much rather have bought a new iPhone but probably a new bed will be better for me in the long run.

Tuesday, 1 January 2013

Last night I stayed at a mate’s place after the party. I woke at a reasonable hour and after several coffees we decided to check out some garden centres and Mitre 10 so I could buy a table top fireplace.

Last year (a couple of weeks ago) I discovered the table top fireplace and thought what an awesome idea, I’d love one.  So I decided to wait till after Xmas to see if I got any Mitre 10 vouchers etc and then buy one.

I could hardly wait for it to get dark enough so I could light my brand new fire. The thing actually comes with 3 pages of warnings about what not to do, which almost made me too scared to light the frigging thing.  But after much convincing and despite all the warnings I went ahead and lit it. It is very groovy but I can see why it needs 3 pages of warnings, if there is any breeze at all, the fire turns into a bonfire and could easily burn down a house very quickly, not to mention ruin your dinner guests best outfits and cell phones if they were anywhere near the thing. It’s also far too hot for a fire at this time of year, so what was I thinking when I decided I wanted one!

Sunday, 30 December

Had lunch at Dad’s, took my camera to take some nice photos of the place for him, but every time I go there the weather is crap, so I’ll keep trying coz one day the weather will be good enough.

After lunch we went for a drive – he’d bought a new car so this was a cool surprise and an added bonus for my day.

Didn’t do much on Saturday, so no blog for day 9.

Friday, 28 December

Today I got to spend the whole day with a friend who is over from the UK. She turned up at about 9:30 and we headed over to Onehunga for a day of shopping, coffee and catch up.

Once we were done we popped in on a friend who lives in the area for a beer and made plans for New Years Eve.

The photo is of the very cool old building, which is now the Library Cafe.

Thursday, 27 December.  Today I went up to Whangaparoa to have lunch with a friend and his Mum.  She’d been given some garden centre vouchers for Christmas so we took her down to her local to help her pick out some nice indoor plants.

I’ve known the people I visited since I was 12, so we were discussing old times and how things had changed and this led to a discovery that on the street where my friend used to live another friend’s house had apparently gone – moved, demolished or something, so on my way home I was keen to have a look.

Being as it was on my way I also stopped by the reserve next to the house I used to live in for a wee trip down memory lane to soak up the amazing view and take a photo for the blog.

Click for a larger view in Flickr.

Wednesday, 26 December. Today was spent relaxing with my nephew. Still raining so couldn’t do anything outside, but I did manage to get outside between showers to check out the frangipani to see if it was flowering yet.

I bought the frangipani about 8 years ago but it didn’t seem very happy so I gave it to Mum who treasured it and placed it in a great spot at her home where it got maximum sun and attention. Now that Dad has moved to a smaller place he has no room for it, so it has returned to me – but now it’s quite large, very healthy, happy and about to flower which I’m very excited about.

Tuesday, 25 December, I drove over to Dad’s new place for Xmas breakfast at 8:00, the whole family was there, even my nephew from Christchurch. We had breakfast first and then presents, that took all morning and at mid day we set out for an Aunty’s place for Xmas lunch/dinner.

After pudding (around 5pm) my nephew and I walked back to my place where we chilled out watching movies and eating chocolates. What a lovely relaxing Xmas Day we had.

Monday, 24 December was the day I got absolutely drenched trying to get back to my car with all the Xmas groceries from the supermarket in jandals. The last time I tried to get anywhere in heavy rain in jandals was on the treacherous Queen Mary museum in Long Beach where I nearly crashed through a huge plate of glass (read more here) at least it brought back a host of cool memories from my trip to the States back in March. Luckily the jandals I have now have plenty of traction and there was no sliding at all. Surprisingly the supermarket was nowhere near as crowded as I pictured it.

The most annoying thing about the rain was we’ve been expecting heavy torrential rain since last Monday, but it never eventuated which was most annoying coz every day I’ve put off watering my garden coz I knew it was going to rain – but it never did, my poor plants were very thirsty and almost dead, so I gave in and watered them and that’s probably why it finally rained – and now two days later it’s still flipping raining.

The evening was spent with a group of friends, we’ve been getting together on Xmas Eve for nearly 10 years now – loads of great food, wonderful company and presents.

After dinner to make room for desert a couple of us always go for a walk round the neighbourhood to look for Xmas lights. This year the local shops had massive blue light displays at the roundabout which was very cool.