So, no word as yet from the fire inspector people.. not even sure if they’ve visited yet.  Went snow boarding on Monday – took the day off work.  The bunny slope was out of order, so graduated (a little early) to the Green Slope.  Really had a great day, 10cm of fresh powder, so my falls (and there were many) didn’t hurt too much.  I’m totally getting the hang of turning on my heels, but when I go onto my toes I tend to get far too much speed up (turning too slowly) and wipeout spectacularly..  Then I headed back to ChCh and had the weekly squash match, so quite a full on Monday really.

Rest of the week, well getting stuff ready for immigration here, am going to apply to extend my visa for a year, though am thinking of leaving in April or so anyway.  What else, getting stuff ready for the house warming, spent about $200 between us on food and drink, and I’ve been busily baking mince pies for the last couple of days (I now appreciate my mother even more than I did before.. takes such a lot of time!)

Quite looking forward to Saturday – I fly out to Sydney for a week, will be visiting friends.. will be great to relax.  Mind you, the flight is at 07:25, so I’m supposed to be there at 6am at the latest.. and I imagine the house warming will go on until 2ish at least.. dear oh deary me!

Potential disaster… someone.. a neighbour perhaps, has reported to the council that our house might be a fire hazard.  Ok, so it kinda might be, but still.. I reckon it more comes down to the fact that’s it’s a big (fairly run down) house in the middle of a very rich part of town and they don’t like it!

 

So.. it’s remotely possible that the House Warming party that we’re going to have on Friday, will turn into a House Leaving party instead.  Which is a little worrying as I love living there.  Still, nothing I can do about it, hopefully twill all work out.

Well, grand aulde week.. Nuffink too special, the new site is going fine.  Which is a relief.. but that’s all good.  New house working out, except for having made a video when it wasn’t clean ;)  hehe, ahh well, au naturel c’est moi.  Squash on Monday was good, and brother Matts bday on Tuesday.. good to talk.  Esp when I get to talk about boarding ;)  ehem.  So yeah, had caving practice on the Wednesday.. see this weekend was going to be heading off on a fairly serious caving trip, but the weather is going to be too bad.  It would have involved camping underground.. which is kinda exciting and scary.  So I’m quite relieved that it gets postponed and I get to wuss out :)

 

Then on Friday it was Simon, Emma, Fiona and Peters last day in work.. so out for a couple of drinks.. lazy weekend ahead – can’t wait!

Here’s a short video of some of the inside of the house (4.5 Meg)

Crazy busy week, Monday squash, Tuesday pub with the Irish posse, Wed Yvonne back from Oz for a few days so headed out for dinner with her and friends from work, Thursday – Barry, Ben and Ronan were back for their last night, so headed out with them. Friday was a Mid-Winter Christmas party with work.

Then it was Saturday. And what a day. Blue skies.. and off for SNOW BOARDING Woo hoo. Damn it’s a fun sport.

Drove there with two friends from work – Simon and Fiona, both temps who will unfortunately be leaving at the end of the week… But a great day out. Mad road up to the slopes. Apparently a couple of cars fall off the edges each year, and some have even been blown off..

So it was to Mt Hutt that we went. Great day. Got a lesson – well two ish, 2 hours in the morning and an hour in the afternoon. It was a big group lesson, next time I’ll get a lesson on my own I think, but it was good. Learned how to turn on your toes, and on your heels. This is the basics of snow-boarding, once you can do those correctly then you can do S bend turns all the way down a slope..

In theory.

But sure it was such a good time. Really makes me want to get back up there again ASAP. Will have to organise a day off work next week (before I head to Sydney) and go up midweek when there are less people around.. Yup, this is a sport I want to do *all* the time now. It’s just so much fun.

There are Kia up at Mt. Hutt

So you do have to be careful. They’re a very intelligent parrot. The only thing is that the adolescents have a tendency to go on sugar highs and then attack things for fun – like it you leave a car window in they’ll happily get inside and rip your seats to shreds. For real.

But a great day. I did manage to get a couple of complete S bends (so heel & toe routine) without falling over by the end of the day.. was pretty happy about it.

Today Sunday – up and off doing some trad climbing up at Castle Rock – which is on the Port Hills overlooking ChCh. Really lovely views.. will get some mountain biking up there sometime, but will need a proper bike to do it with.

Must say though, it’s an insane bunch of people I live with, and I love it. Well, active perhaps more than insane.

Here’s a vintage Morris being loaded up with 3 kayaks (midwinter!) – the girl beside the car is Araha – Waricks girlfriend, who is back down to Dunedin to finish her 2nd year of her 2nd degree.. Good excuse to visit though hopefully :) So yeah – Warick was heading off Kayaking.. Steve & Yvonne (different Yvonne!) Michelle, Florian and I went climbing and Luke headed off to do some backcountry snowboarding (you hike with your snowboard and then head off down some slope…) Which is what Florian was up to on Saturday – except he was ‘Ski Touring’.

That was just for the morning, then in the afternoon another trip to the Supershed, got some stuff to kit out our living rooms (we’ve changed the organisation of the flat a little bit..) But I’ll make a little video of the place tomorrow hopefully and put it up.