It’s the first of February, so that means TWO MONTHS UNTIL AMERICA!!!. It’s suddenly starting to seem very real (and very close – I was thinking of it as being ages away, and suddenly it’s not!!!). And very exciting! We’re still tweaking the itinerary (silly Skyring gave me a guidebook to read – bad move,…

Saw Mum & stepfather briefly on Thursday – they were on their way up to the top of the North Island to SF’s brother’s birthday party, so left the car here rather than at the airport (we’re so close to the airport that it’s generally cheaper to get a taxi than to pay the airport…

Been back at work for a few days, and already it feels like I never had a holiday at all… all the usual dramas and stresses (semi-substantiated rumours are that we’re in for almost as many redundancies this year as last year). At least we’re still in our nice summer quiet bit, so I can…

Back before Christmas I was looking for something in my embroidery stash, and came across the pile of half-finished projects I keep saying I’m going to finish before I start any new projects (yeah, right). Anyway, I was inspired to actually get back to work on one of them, and tonight I finished it! I’ve…

Next door have a nearly-grown kitten who is the cheekiest cat I’ve ever met. Whenever our front door is open (or a convenient window) he’ll just wander into the house, make himself comfortable, and steal George’s food (usually while George is sitting there watching). He doesn’t do it sneakily like most cats would, he just…

Poolburn landscape (or waterscape): [album 128913 100111poolburn.jpg thumblink] Back home now. I think George missed me – he’s been basically glued to my lap ever since I got home.

The party yesterday went well – loads of friends of Dad’s I haven’t seen for years (and who of course all remembered me, but I was strugling to work out who they were), and of course loads of family (some of whom I was also strugling to identify – I have 30-odd cousins, most of…

Lords of the Golden Horn by Noel Barber: this is one of the books I released way back in 2008 during the filming of the Bookcrossing documentary by the polytech students. It disappeared until it was caught (in the same place I’d released it) last July, and now it’s been caught again. Definitely a worthy…

Total = 137 books January (10) Seeing Voices by Oliver Sacks At the Hall by Henrietta Soames The River King by Alice Hoffman A Vaudeville of Devils by Robert Girardi Torchon Lacemaking: A Manual of Techniques by Elizabeth Wade Opening Skinner’s Box: Great Psychological Experiments of the Twentieth Century by Lauren Slater Hexwood by Diana…

First up, the latest batch of bookmarks: I’m having fun experimenting with all sorts of different techniques (as you can probably tell ;-)). I ended up going camping last night with brother and his family, and a friend of brother’s (FoB) and his wife (WoFoB). We were camped in total back of beyond up towards…