It was the long weekend here, so Warick and Hannah kindly offered to take me along up to Murchison for some kayaking. On the way (no radio) we played I Spy. But this wasn’t quite your normal version… no… the word could be anything. For Example you will see in these next two pictures Hannah’s first word.

One is a zoomed in picture – and in the other you can see the relative size of the sticker (in the bottom left). The word was ‘Apple Board’.. as the sticker represented the apple board of new zealand. Warick, somehow, correctly guessed it. Perhaps you have to be that much on eachothers’ wavelength to get engaged. I’m sunk ;)

Hehe, anyway, on up to Murchison where we went kayaking on the mangles river. Lovely name isn’t it? I didn’t get mangled, but I did have a fairly bad start as I simply couldn’t get the boat I was in to roll. So I had a few swims in what was pretty cold water. I guess I really should just spend the money and invest in a wetsuit / dry jacket. Had a better time of it on Sunday as Jana and Co had arrived – and she looked after me wonderfully… no capsizes at all.

Then on Saturday evening Carole and Orla arrived – down from climbing up at Takaka. It was lovely to catch up with Carole before she headed back to Ireland (which is where she is about now I think). We took off on Sunday evening and had a pleasant couple of hours lazing in Sylvia Flats hot springs complete with a cask of wine. An excellent way to end a brilliant weekend.

geek post alert !

A friend in work – Liam pointed me to JQuery – a really neat Javascript library. Javascript is a language which internet browsers understand and you can use it to manipulate how pages look (and lots lots more).

So I decided to have a quick go at changing the way my reverse page works. Before it look a reasonable amount of PHP to do (I’m sure it could be done in fewer lines) but with JQuery it’s just:

Now that (to me) is pretty damn elegant.

It’s hard to know.. but Emma who arrived here a few weeks ago said that she had stayed in a dodgy hostel in OZ and had picked up bed bugs. OK to pick them up.. a completely different thing to bring them to New Zealand!!!

I’ve been finding small bites on my body. They don’t itch particularly but still.. not the best. So I did a reasonable amount of reading on the net and sounds like they’re hard things to get rid of. In fact most guides suggested exterminators. So I found one in ChCh.. and he’s going to come in and zap the place on Tuesday. I *really* hope it works as I just love this house so much it’d be a shame to be driven out by bedbugs! IF indeed that’s what they are. At $180 you’ve gotta hope that the treatment will work. You still have to heat all your duvets etc. as they can harbour eggs etc. I’m not sure my puny drier is up to heating anything to 40C..

I was going to treat you all to a picture of what the bites look like but decided to spare ya’ll :)

Fun and (bloody) games.

So yesterday I had an MRI done on my lower spine. MRI’s are weird, you have to tick lots of boxes to say you have no metal implants etc. Then they lie you down on a stretcher and put you head first into a pretty confined tube. I hadn’t been told, but apparently you could give them music which they would pipe into you for your 20 minute session. It’s certainly not a place to go if you have claustrophobia. I did get a little nervous ‘cos if you have epilepsy or diabetes you’re not supposed to go in… and I guess I just wondered if what happened to me earlier this year could have left me vulnerable. But no.. all good. Should get the results next week sometime and we’ll see what the next step is.

Now, while this is totally un-environmentally friendly, I still thought it was a brilliant idea to have a jaccuzzi on the top of Mont Blanc

Well, the weather was looking decidedly dodgy this weekend but headed off into the wilds of the Lewis Pass with some members of the CUTC. Mayer who led the trip was someone I had tramped with before and really enjoy getting out and about with. His navigation is excellent… I really need to improve mine and then actually get out there and start leading my own tramps..

So the tramp in on the Saturday went fine. The rivers were up a bit but not too bad.

It was a nice enough hut – should have taken some pictures of the inside.. it’s also a free hut to stay in – no hut tickets required. With the stove going and the wine flowing it was a fun night for all. Except for the possums.. Mayer did his bit to keep the population down.

That night we had thunder and lightning which is something of a rarity – at least for me. I don’t think I’ve been in more than a couple of storms during my whole time here.. and frankly it’s something I really miss – I love a good lightning storm.

However, with the lightning came a fair amount of rain which didn’t let up too much. We decided to attempt to get out. Using good river crossing technique (needed) of linking up we forded the main river – and after that we only had smaller tributaries (though difficult enough too) to cross. All in all a good tramp – great to be out again.

Now, as for Maths – well today I went into Burnside school and sat at the back of a few classes and heckled the teachers mercilessly until I was put in detention. Just like old times. Ok, not quite.. but I did head along and see what it was all like. Burnside is a pretty good school so I think the classes were probably pretty well behaved on the whole. I dunno where the idea of teaching got into my head… I mean frankly it does fill me with terror – the thought of standing in front of a group of 30 kids who basically want to make you lose it. And then laugh at you. Sigh.

Who knows – it looks like there might be some more IT projects coming my way in work so I might do that for a wee while and maybe try get my skills back up in the meantime… I’m not really in any rush.

And as for the MRI.. well I’m going in for one tomorrow for my lower back.. so hopefully will work out what’s been going on!