IT'S 2024!!!

 Hi there

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!

So many New Zealand families will be going to the beach today, New Year's Day.  Soggy, sandy, tomato sandwiches anyone?

Have a wonderful 2024 -

 Above: Oriental Bay, central city, Wellington.  Stock photo.  I think Oriental Bay is named after the Oriental, one of the first ships carrying pioneers to Wellington.

PS:  this blog is a USA site, so the date will be a day behind New Zealand's real date.

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Christmas Day

 Hi there

Merry Christmas. 

My friend and I went to Tutaki Resturant in Lower Hutt for Christmas Day lunch.  It's funny to think Aotearoa-New Zealand is so many hours ahead of other countries because of the date line.  As I type this it's 4 pm Christmas Day in Aotearoa-New Zealand, but it's 3am Christmas morning in England (the extra hour accounts for a daylight saving change).  

There was such a feast at Tutaki.  Here is the dessert table only -

Embarrassed much?

 Hi there

About ten years back I was trying on some sandals at The Warehouse when suddenly I got this electricity sort of thing zapping through the side of my body and down my leg.  I couldn't change my position from where I was hunched over putting on a sandal.  I did a type of bunny-hop around in a little circle trying to extricate myself from the stance, one shoe on, one shoe off.  I was stuck in that pose for a couple of minutes...

When I recounted my embarrassing story, a friend said to me, "At their next staff Christmas party, you'll be on The Warehouse's funniest customer video."

Goodness, I hoped there was no such video.

But last week, I upped my embarrassment at The Warehouse by a hundred percent -

On entering the Lyall Bay shop, I made my way over to the customer counter to use the hand sanitiser.  It was in a bottle with a push nozzle.

Now, I've had trouble with this particular nozzle several times.  My aim has never been very good.  Often I've had the sanitiser liquid shoot at my chest, instead of my hands.  So this time, I turned the nozzle from me, waved my hand in front of it and pressed down the pusher.

"Owwww!"  The guy behind the counter let out a shriek as he got a direct shot of hand sanitiser right in his eye.

... I apologised.  And apologised.   And apologised...

I fully expect the episode will most definitely be on this Christmas's funniest customer video....

 

exhibition - Dinosaurs of Patagonia

 Hi there

I went to the 'Dinosaurs of Patagonia' exhibition at Te Papa Tongarewa (Museum of New Zealand) on Friday .  Hey, I'm 'A Friend of Te Papa', so I get in to the exhibition a day ahead of the general public opening day.  And for free.  I'm spoilt that way...

I was somehow expecting to see the skeleton of one dinosaur and maybe a hundred or so photos and notices about the timelines of dinosaurs.  But, my goodness, there were lots of dinosaurs.  Big ones, small ones, medium sized ones.  With every step I took there was a bigger dinosaur mould than the one I'd just seen.  

above:  one of the medium sized dinosaurs

                          

                                              above:  that's part of a dinosaur leg behind me

I was surprised to see that the majority of the skeleton bones had been discovered within my living memory.  And yet the bones were 220 million years old.  I would have thought they would have been stumbled upon years earlier.  

A wonderful exhibition.

Me and Santa!!

 Hi there

I was decluttering my house last week (Swedish Death Cleaning?) and I came across some old photos.  There I was as a child, sitting on Santa's knee, deep in thought, telling Santa the present that I wanted from him that Christmas.  I'm pretty sure it was "a horse that bucks and gallops", a step or two up from a rocking horse and I wanted it desperately.  But ... sigh, I didn't get it.

But looking at the photo, I noticed I was wearing my beloved cowgirl boots.  They were really gum-boots  ('Wellingtons' if you're from Great Britain).  My boots were red with lariats entwined around the tops.  

I loved cowboy movies and I so wanted to be a cowboy.  Not a cowgirl.  Girls in westerns were sissy.   They were ranchers' daughters who needed help getting up on wagons, and the closest they got to shooting was handing rifles to the hero as he took aim out of a ranch window.  

Mum had bought me a pearl-handled pistol and holster.  There were bullets around my gun belt.  I got a waistcoat with a fringe and a big star on the back -

But...

I was given a cow-girl skirt!!!

Devastation. 

This little tomboy wanted buckskin trousers.  She would never ever ever forgive her mother...

PS>   I forgave Mum about an hour later...

PPS   Gumboots got that name in 1800s New Zealand because of our pioneer gum-diggers.

  

Going on holiday

 Hi there

I've just booked to go back to Las Vegas next year.  Hope there will be nothing to stop me going.  A friend pointed out that either just before or during my holidays, I always get some sort of injury*.

He's not wrong.  I've had a plethora of sprained ankles and knees, gone deaf in one ear, black eyes from falling over a curb, at an airport I got an explosion in my leg that left me limping for two weeks, there's been foot blisters a-plenty, have come down with lots of colds, broke my hand, got dehydrated, you-name-it....  Oh, and not to forget the time I'd had a cataract operation just before leaving for Las Vegas and had to take 15 eye drops a day during that holiday, all the while trying not to let my eyedrops bottle get in over 23c temperature (in Las Vegas during my stay it was 38c every day).

Cross fingers....

above: me, in Las Vegas, inside Venetian Casino Hotel.  Fake sky, fake canal, fake Venice.

*another friend reckons the reason I get injured or I'm ill  either just before or when I'm on holiday is because I'm always going on holiday!  Rude...