So had a flat warming on the Friday. Was an absolutely great success with loads of friends coming, think there were about 40+ people there in total, but we had enough mulled wine and mince pies to satisfy the masses.

Living next to Warick and Michelle has it’s – consequences ;) We ended up playing The Balloon Game at about midnight…

This involves tying a balloon to a piece of string and then to your ankle, and then everybody jumps around trying to burst the others. No wine glasses were harmed in the playing of this game. Thankfully.

My friend Thor jumped on my balloon immediately. So I killed him.

So yup, kicked off at about 7pm (Kiwis are actually kinda prompt) and didn’t finish until about 5am I think. Glynn & Carolyn, Sam and Steve turned up which was great, all looking very well. Then there was a bunch from work, and quite a few cavers and climbers. All in all, an excellent night (though you can’t go too far wrong with mulled wine in my experience!)

I wussed out at about 3am to catch a couple of hours sleep before my 7am flight to Sydney… This pic was taken flying over the southern alps.

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)