Work

It feels much better getting ready for work in the morning - sometimes even getting spiffy - and working, rather than lounging around in my PJs until 7pm, which I did yesterday. Although, days like that are good for me, too. But today I just feel spiffy. It's definitely the lipstick.

I'm looking forward to dying my hair, too. I'm going to Henna it up in the next few days. Hopefully it'll take the black (read: indigo) henna. It'll be more of an experiment than anything.

In the meantime, here's me at work.



Last weekend's trip: Shootin' guns at the Auckland Pistol Club.
This weekend's trip: Rotorua.

More pictures to come.

New Pics!

Enjoy.


Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

Duathalete? Runner of duathlons? whatever...

I'm officially a duathlete. I don't know how to spell that, or if it's even a word.

I ran a duathlon with Helen on Sunday morning. 3.5km run, 10km bike, 1.5km run. I set a goal for myself - I wanted to be in the top 1/4. In the back of my head, I wanted to be in the top 100 to cross the finish line, but I wasn't sure if that was possible without having trained more than going to one spin class and jogging a week ahead of time - so I set a more realistic goal, and I totally did it. My result? I was in the top 1/5! YAY! I was #183 to cross the finish line out of about 982.

REAL Duathlon website

I did it, and I'll probably do it again - maybe even a triathlon. I need to get a bike, and I need to get out of the house a bit more often. Today was a "I'm not leaving the house" day. Hopefully I don't have too many more of those.

Ambury Regional Park is where we ran the thing. It was really nice. Afterwards, Travis and I watched some sheep shearing and pet a huge 22 year old clydesdale horse. For a girl who doesn't like horses, I could have that horse as a pet. :)

Like always, pics to come...

Item of the Week - Towel Heater

I'm sure these items are found in other parts of the world, but I'm not sure what I would do without my towel heater.

The mildewy smell is not very pleasant if your towels don't properly dry. I remember this smell from the last time I was in Auckland visiting my sister. Imagine, if you can, a day in Saskatchewan when your towel couldn't dry on the bar overnight. You can't imagine? How about if your hang-dry laundry couldn't dry in 10 hours. No? I'm on day 3 of some of my laundry. Thank goodness we have our own water heater closet. This water heater closet houses the water heater and vacuum cleaner. It also is very useful to dry damp clothes, like jeans, cargo pants, or hiking boots.

Between the water heater closet and the towel heater, our "drying of articles" takes less time. Yay!

You may wonder why we don't put our clothes in the drier. We don't have a drier. Many people don't. Requires too much electricity and too much space. Our washing machine is actually a "washer/drier combo", but it's a useless piece of junk in the drying aspect. It doesn't so much "dry" as it does "warm up." It tumbles the clothes, but it's not air drying... no hot air is pumped in.... and there's no vent going out. It's much easier to just take out the wet clothes and hang them about the house.

This became a rant about drying clothes. That's unfortunate. Stay tuned for new pictures from the last month. I've been very lazy.

Hunua Ranges

After a weekend of debauchery, playing dress-up and indulging a bit too much, Travis and I set out on a mini-adventure in the wilderness. This wilderness happens to still be governed by the Auckland Regional Council, so it wasn't that far out of town, but it was still an adventure nonetheless.

The Hunua Ranges can be found just south-east of Auckland. We drove out there late afternoon on Tuesday, and got prepped for our hike. I was told beforehand this was very rough terrain, rough enough for me to spend nearly $200 on hiking boots and socks. Let me say, they came in very handy. I walked through a creek and my feet stayed dry.

The first 90 minutes of the trek were fairly uneventful. I was the pace-setter - going fairly slowly to pace myself for later on. We got to a bunch of stairs, which was nice, but that meant that we eventually had to come down - and come down we did. We came down the side of the mountain through dense bush where a path was marked, but barely visible. I used my hands to hold on to tree trunks most of the way down, and when hands weren't enough, I held on to that tree for dear life with my whole arm. It came in particularly handy when the ground disappeared from under me, and I was left swinging around the tree, hanging on by my arm. Fortunately, there was only 2.5 hours of this downhill battle. We scaled another hill, and we had lunch. The sun was shining, we took off our wet clothes - believe me, my woolies were soaked through from sweating - and they were nearly dry after our lunch break.

Another 3.5 hours hike home. Travis took some notes - because that was the purpose of his trip - and we found some decent places to set up an array of microphones in the forest. The plan for his research is to set up an array of microphones to record bird calls in the forest, particularly of Kokako birds. Their call is really peculiar, and they're a fairly rare bird, but they've been repopulated in this area. The idea is to keep track of the location of the birds by hearing their calls.

We finally got back, had a nice warm shower, and made the trek back into town. Pictures will be posted when I get ahold of Travis's camera again. I'm backlogged nearly a month now.