I’m incredibly lucky. I work 4 days a week and I can juggle the 5th day off. Usually I take Wednesday off, but, this week I took the Friday off and headed in to woolshed creek hut with Maaike & Anna, and Anna’s friend Ahi and his parents (Nik & Leigh Lowe). Turns out Nic is the brother of Ben Lowe, who I knew for many years through the Canterbury Uni tramping club. Small world.

Anyway, we headed off to do the hike with them. It was actually the first hike they’d done with other kids, and, like us, found it’s a heluva lot easier with two kids to run around and pull each other along that having just one kid moaning and getting bored with their ancient boring parents.

They did really well. It’s 5.6km each way, and ~400m uphill..  It’s always a gamble going tramping with people you’ve not hung out with before, but, we got on well. Of course, it definitely helps that the kids have spent a lot of time together at daycare.

The hut was (to me) surprisingly full. I guess I wasn’t expecting that for a Friday night in mid June. Shows what I know. The skies were crystal clear and the stars were just breathtaking. It was so good to be out and about!

Thanks very much to Nik and Leigh for a really excellent hike – looking forward to the next one!

Quite a social month this one. We had two comedy gigs to go out to one with Ed Byrne and the other with Dylan Moran. Interestingly they were on consecutive days.  I enjoyed them both, Ed Byrne probably had the edge this time. I thought the press was pretty mean about Dylan, though they did partly roll back their commentary. I definitely didn’t think he was drunk or slurring or anything like that. He kept on referring to previous comments later on in the night, no one who’s drunk would be doing that. No, I think it’s just his schtick to be honest.

I also had my first alcohol in 3 months. It was a (failed) experiment to see whether it would cut down on feeling tired (maybe it’s just life ;). It didn’t seem to make me feel much more alert. That said, I definitely noticed that Saturday mornings after a couple of beers were a bit easier. I think I’ll be drinking less alcohol, but, certainly not zero, even if that seems to be the current guidelines, at least in Canada.