Another week bites the dust, and it is March already

With summer ending this week, it does feel like the weather has calmed down a little, not so hot, and not so much wet. LOCAL NEWS A woman climbed Mt Maunganui 38 times in one day, she started at 1am and finished at 11pm, apparently it’s the same climb as Everest, but of course she had to climb down in between as well, but she didn’t risk adema. Apparently motivated by something called the Mount Everest Challenge where people are meant to do it 38 times in a month. The Prime Minister is moving out of Point Chevalier, to Sandringham, going all fancy. Or perhaps not. Wellington is considering abolishing free parking on Sunday. We have that in Auckland and it’s bloody handy. There is talk of departure cards for leaving New Zealand being dropped, Australia has already. A man died outside a Flaxmere pub last night, police are investigating. Nobody wants to go like that. A South Auckland man got burned after the car he was working on caught fire, and then he caught fire. There was talk of demolishing a pretty tired block of flats in Greys Ave in Auckland City, then others decided they wanted to save the eyesore. You can’t win. Tomorrow is official census day, but they haven’t bothered with the census taker people coming to houses at all, far as I know. WORLD NEWS Apparently Planet of the Apes, the first movie (with Charlton Heston), was released 50 years ago. New Zealand sent a plane to search after a distress beacon was detected near Tuvalu. I really don’t expect to ever go back there. They reckon Millennials will be the fattest generation. Trump attacked European cars, Canadian steel, and lord knows what else this week. He is also talking about clamping down on video game violence, because people rampaging around schools with an Xbox is what kills people. Now he wants to talk to Kim Jong Un. Sir Roger Bannister, Minnie’s brother, and the first man to be measured to run the mile in less than four minutes, died. So did David Ogden Stiers, actor pretty much known for his role in MASH as Charles Emerson Winchester the Third. After running out of KFC, the UK is running low on bread, milk, and eggs, but it’s no big deal if they can handle their KFC without gravy. Apparently there are 80,000 young people not in work or training. Because they are useless wastes of space, basically. Everyone else has a job. Blah, 90th Academy Awards today. They make far too much of a fuss about it. Happy to see a highlight reel, TBH, at the most. MY SAD LIFE Because the Bambi walks had become a little humdrum, we pushed the boat out this week, we did a one-way walk to Westmere, through Cox’s Bay Reserve, and up the far hill and through some very large and fancy houses to Jervois Road. We put Maddie in her coat, and caught the bus back again, to the bakery, purchased breakfast, and toddled home. The bus was pretty full but I managed to tuck Maddie mostly under a seat, it was tricky when people got off. A Persian youth appeared to be terrified of Maddie and looked like he was seriously considering climbing out the window when Maddie sniffed his seat. On Thursday, I had lunch with Hannah then we wandered off to check out doughnuts that the Z Station are selling for Easter (they were pretty average, TBH), then the new butcher that has replaced the dodgy Mad Butcher guy (their mince was really cheap, $7.99/kg for premium mince). I discovered this week that it is actually really hard to report a crime to the police. It wasn’t actually a crime, but it was the possibility of a crime with four different things that all sort of pointed to a car yard near us being not really a car yard. I took some photos of the cars the next morning, to check the number plates, they aren’t stolen, and the plates match the cars, but I reckon someone was sleeping on one of the cars. That seems less than professional. As well as contacting the police, nothing appears to have been done so far on that one, I sent a request to the Ministry of Commerce under the Official Information Act with regards customers changing electricity providers. A response is due in 20 working days. That’s not anything like the turnaround I gave the Commerce Commission today in their query of telephone number porting today (I gave them a two year history in around 11 minutes). Koos went to a thing with music and people at Western Springs on Saturday, he got there about 11:30 and I think it was probably finishing nearly 12 hours later. I really don’t know why. We went to see the house the Goodins are moving in to during renovations, and we farted about replacing some curtains, it felt very much like how things were about 30 years ago when we first moved in to our first houses (which will be 30 years ago in December this year). Then Caitlin and her mates left while we were in the room over the garage. We emerged to discover we were locked out with all the keys inside, and Kathryn’s shoes, Ross’s car keys, the handbags, you name it. Luckily, I was wearing my magical pockety pants and had my phone, wallet, and glasses. Also luckily, Thomas had retained a set of keys and he came to the rescue on his white stallion (a VW golf, but it was white). Without Thomas having those keys, we would have been breaking a window. It was a bit of unplanned excitement. Then we went down the road for traditional Malaysian takeaway, but had it in the restaurant, which I believe was a first for all of us. Saturday morning, I took Maddie to Big King, it wasn’t too unusual. In the afternoon I took her for a brief walk and bumped in to all sorts of people including the father of a boy who was in Rory’s soccer team, some kids who had a lovely time patting Maddie, a guy who needed directions to the boat club, and finally the twins were in the dairy with Katrina (their grandmother) so we walked a little way with them. We walked around the viaduct on Sunday morning, turned out the Round the Bays run was starting at 9. It wasn’t too busy, surprisingly. Also, tons of hospitality tents and conference things going on because of the Round the World race. Had no clue any of it was going on. On Sunday afternoon we accompanied Koos, and Kay, to the outdoor one in Hobsonville Point, saw Gavin and his kids there also. I also bumped in to a couple who used to work at a customer of mine, she left there about 14 years ago, which is kind of scary. They live in Hobsonville Point also. Koos went to three concerts over the weekend and left two of them when he wanted to. Paul and Patricia have now been married five years. The Hawaii adventure feels a very long time ago now. Sunday night we went to see the movie Ross booked for Saturday (don’t ask). Red Sparrow has some pretty hard core brutal violent moments, it’s not for the faint hearted. The bloody motorway was closed coming home, and the diversion was a stupid route, I nearly went my own way and really should have. Diana didn’t lose her phone this week, but she left it at home this morning. I am now nine days in to my learning of French, still got a very long way to go. I have been quite diligent, exceeding the ambitious minimum I set each day. Apparently I am 35% fluent, but that seems exceedingly optimistic in my view. My comprehension of written French is getting pretty bon, but verbal is tres comme ci comme ca. As for written, forget about it. Autocorrect really doesn’t help. I had an unexpected knock on the door this morning, an old grey haired chap accompanying an older no-haired chap, who wanted to walk down memory lane. He was in his 80s and grew up in our house, I reckon he must have been just about the first occupant. The people in here before us must have been here at least ten years and so it must be a minimum of 30 years ago but I would guess more like 60, minimum. A couple of ladies a little older than me did a similar thing a few years back, they were supposed to email me photos but they never did. Jono, I’ve been thinking about your sister. Tell Lisa she lives in Hobsonville Point. I reckon anything past Villa Rosa is HP. It might be old HP, but it’s still HP. She’s either living there or in denial. Today facebook told me that Diana and I have been tagged in the same photo 40 times. That seems excessive for nearly 30 years of marriage. Meh. Send time.