Up and on Skype this morning to look in on the RPG club playing at Mitch’s house. Not quite the same as being there, but all the same a great idea to be able to. Have found a dice generator that I can share with the group, so you never know, might even be able to play too! Novel or what?

Think we’ll pop out somewhere for coffee this afternoon. Not sure where yet. Must get a “”Congrats on the Grandparents bit”” card for the landlords though – they’re turning out to be a lovely couple.

We went for a drive this afternoon, and blow some of the cobwebs away. We headed over to the Hutt Valley, North of Wellington, for a looksee.

We sort of followed our noses and drove through Lower Hutt and Petone, then drove over to Seaview and Eastbourne on the other side of the bay from Wellington. Hmm, gorgeous cup of coffee at a picnic/cafe area by the ferry landing, but we’re not altogether sure we’d go visit again! 

Lower Hutt/Petone was HUGE, much bigger than we had imagined and all sorts of large shops and department stores to go back and visit sometime.

We had a chinese when we got back – LARGE portions served here – mainly because we got back too late to be thinking about cooking a large dinner that we’d planned! However, you got your 5 a day portions of veggies in the food which is fine in most dishes but not in a weak curry – I’m sorry, but curried broccoli just can’t be right or natural 

Got turned down for a job with Telecom, but received a notice about an online banking job with the Bank of New Zealand    Just finished off the cover letter for that one!!

More job hunting this afternoon. Did get a notification that my application for a school IT Administrator had been received – you never know………….

The landlord popped around later in the afternoon to say that he had just become a Grandad – beaming he was!

Picked up the recycling bin – they removed the plastic bag overflow too – phew…….. we did hear them around this morning though, so at least they hadn’t got a lie-in either. I take it all back!!

We had a lovely braised steak meal tonight, beautiful! It’s strange though, we were expecting the lamb to be cheaper, but it’s actually cheaper here (it seems to be on offer a lot) to eat steak!! What a shame I say, what was a treat in the UK seems to becoming a regular weekly thing here……….

Felt our first earthquake! 5.1 on the richter scale and about 50km out to sea and 50km down………………..not exactly a teacup rattler, but even so…………

Perhaps we shouldn’t have gone to see 2012 last night after all!!

Up at 7am this morning to try to beat the recycling collection men. Instead of paying for rubbish collection (recycling collection is free) on the Kapiti Coast, you can purchase rubbish bags that are sold by the council to local shops. Prices seem to change, but they cost about $2.50 – $3 each.

We moved into the cottage 2 weeks ago today – 2 WEEKS! Doesn’t time fly! – anyway, we had been told about the recycling collection by Cathy, from Harveys, and managed to catch them on the first day. Having seen the recycling bin out all day, we reckon it got emptied about 3-4pm, so we weren’t too worried about it last week. HAH! We should have known that the vagaries of recycling collection would mean that it mirrors the bin collection in the UK……………

Last week, we (well ok, Louise first that day – well ok, she does have a tendency to get up earlier than me, but she has trouble getting back to sleep once awake whereas I can sleep on a sixpence – if I fitted!) were getting up about 8-830am when Louise heard a rattling of glass from the road behind us, Renown Road. That meant one of two things, either the recycling guys/girls would be here soon, or, they’d already been!

I slipped on my clothes and rushed the recycling bin and the rubbish bag down the drive – this is not something to be sniffed at as the drive must be about 50-70m long! Once down by the road, panting for breath and wishing I’d had a cup of tea before heading out in the world (Joking…..really), I had a quick look around and noticed that there were wheelie bins (you can hire these instead of paying for bags, but we decided that we didn’t generally have THAT much rubbish every week and the bags seemed cheaper) and recycle bins around the next few houses. I didn’t notice if they were full or not – sometimes they just have a few bottles lying in the bottom. Anyway, guess what………………..yep, they’d already been when the little sparrows woke up and found that somebody had switched the sun on already!

So, that’s why I’m up early this week. 2 weeks worth of recycling when you’re setting up a cottage, starts to fill a recycling box pretty quickly! I think I beat them this morning though – we’ll see. I bet that they don’t pick the recycling up until 4pm today, having stayed in bed all morning and had a good laugh at those of us who were trying to catch them at 7am……………….mutter, mutter, mutter……….

Aha, 1st job reply back – ah, no quite. My CV and cover letter have been passed on by Absolute IT. Well, it’s a start!

We had a bit of a lazy day today………

However, Louise did make a good go at lighting the fire – not because we were cold, but because all the makings were available (the firewood pine is now in the shed!)………….. I did try to help, but she was doing such a good job of tending the cardboard/paper fire that was attempting to light the wood that in the end I left her to it! She was muttering something about me smothering the fire too early, LOL. On the bright side, we had a lot less paper recycling than we when we started!

Note to selves, keep an eye open for a small hatchet/axe to chop up some of the wood for kindling before we try it for real again! Although it’s not cold, it seems right to have a fire going on Christmas day……………….

I chatted to Mitch after lunch for a short while – still can’t get over how useful Skype is!

Louise had a chat with her Mum and Dad, and showed them the house across the way which has been decorated up with christmas lights – lovely – and to show off her fire. We had a good chat and a catch-up.

Back to the puzzle we picked up at Coastlands, luckily Louise saved the box that the computer table came in, so we turned all the pieces up the right way in there – 1000 pieces – lovely picture. If we finish it (it looks like a heavy going and intricate – lots of the same colours everywhere – picture) I’ll post a photo……………….

No e-mail from Absolute IT this morning, so I e-mailed them “”just to make sure”” that they have the right e-mail address. They hadn’t!

Spent the late morning and early afternoon writing up a full cover letter for a job in Petone, Wellington – thats Pur-Tony…………

Louise popped off to the shops by herself in the car for some retail therapy, and because we had some letters to post and needed stuff for the next couple of meals. She arrived back laden with shopping, sort of! We now have a radio in the kitchen, some extra cushions, a noticeboard and the makings for some meals. However, we had a chat and are going to try the cinema in Paraparam tonight – to see 2012.

Good film! The cinema was lovely, considering it has 4 screens it does very well. Our film showing had about 15 people watching, and I’m fairly sure one was the projectionist (if they still have them!)!!

Quite surprised to realise that tonight was the first time of driving at night in Raumati South, roads were even clearer than they are during the day…………..spooky LOL!

Sat out on the deck this morning, having dealt with the first job of the day – checking e-mails and having breakfast in the sun Lo and behold, my phone rang. Apart from making me jump – I’d forgotten it was there and had it turned up loud for use as my main alarm clock – nearly spilt the tea I was drinking at the time!! Anyway, the woman I’d been dealing with originally had moved on to the finance department and “”Alex”” had been given my details.

After chatting with him about my job experience and knowledge, he had a job in mind which seemed to fit the bill. Wow! We chatted for a while longer, then finished with him saying that he’d e-mail me with the details.

I did some more job hunting and applied for 2 jobs which fitted (just about LOL) in with what I thought I can do. We then had a bit of a puzzle experience which lasted well into the evening!

I kept checking throughout the day for an e-mail from Alex. It didn’t arrive. If it’s still not here tomorrow morning, I’ll get in touch with him and make sure he has my correct e-mail address………

Up fairly early today and off to the saturday market in Paraparaumu (Paraparam to the locals, Pram to the teenagers!) Beach. Nice little veg market, come bric-a-brac, come car boot, come Women’s Institute come….. well, you get the idea, there was a little bit of everything!!

I would have said everything except alcohol, but we picked up a jar of strawberry jam with brandy after an “”energetic leetle tasting exercise””……. almost had to walk home!

We picked up lovely fruit & veg at some very nice prices. We also got “”encouraged”” into buying a lovelyCastle loaf of bread – the storeholder cheated by wandering through the market with a tray of freshly baked loaves! An awesome smell, and just too scrummy to ignore!

We dumped the shopping in the car, which still had the pine in the boot and was smelling like the outside of a forestry commissioner’s jacket – who needs car perfume sachets when you can have the real thing? As we hadn’t really had the opportunity, we wandered around the “”eclectic”” array of shops in Paraparam, including a craft shop, a couple of clothes shops, a bargain basement store and a fairy shop – even contained a kit to help you catch fairies, as if anyone would want to wrench them from their homes and put them in a box – poor things………..

We tried another cafe on the corner of the main street for something to eat and the obligatory lattes – and another chance to sit and watch the world go by while watching the sea.

We dropped off the fresh goods at the cottage and headed for PaknSave, the local supermarket, which was meant to be cheaper than Woolworths where we had shopped for the day to day necessities. It wasn’t bad, wasn’t brill either, but we had been meaning to do the “”get you sorted in the cottage”” shop for some time and couldn’t really put it off any longer.

Then back to the cottage for a restful afternoon/evening sipping a home-made iced tea for a quick thirst quenching, followed rapidly by lovely Chardonnay we picked up at PaknSave – how very lush and moorish………

I’d tried transferring some money over to Louise via the NZ bank online banking.  Sounded good, I’d need to work out how to do Direct Debits etc soon anyway and we needed to make sure there was nothing wrong with Louise’s account.

What I didn’t realise was that although our accounts had been grouped and I could see two accounts, the two accounts were a cheque account and savings account – both mine! It wasn’t until we tried to pay with Louise’s card for some stuff that it looked like I may have made a mistake – obviously not my fault of course

Once I’d looked at the link hidden in a corner of the online banking screen, I “”found”” the other two accounts belonging to Louise as well – let’s try again then!

I ran out of jobsites and jobs to apply for by about 11am this morning. Still no replies, but then I wasn’t reallly expecting anything just yet. I did realise that I’d missed two of the anti-biotic tablets I’d been given by the Princess of Wales casualty nurse for the open wound in my chest, so I thought it wouldn’t do any harm to take one and maybe provide a little boost against nasties……………..

We decided to have a look around for a firewood stockist so that we had an idea of what to do if we’re still here come the winter. As there is only an open fire in the living room, and we don’t have any other heating (except for a little heater in the bathroom, though we’re both still a little surprised to find two electricity outlets in the bathroom!) we thought it was a sound idea.

Louise found a company in the yellow pages which was based in Paraparam, so we looked them up on Google maps and made our way over there after a quick cup of tea. The guy in charge when we got there was a really big help. We just explained that we’d moved in to a rental and were presented with an open fire that we had no idea what to do with – I do remember doing the fire at Auntie Dot’s house in Bettws many years ago, but that was a closed door affair and was fairly easy to light. We needed to know what wood he sold, why which one was better than the other ones and of course what sort of size load did he sell. As it turns out, we didn’t have to worry too much about the types of wood as we ended up with Pine! We would have gone for the Macrocarpa wood, but evidently that has a nasty habit of exploding when lit and we didn’t really want to get holes in the living room carpet!! Well, it was easy and we got a good price – $25 (£10.50)  (I’d checked before we left and was expecting to pay $35 (£15) for 2 cubic metres) and found that 2 cubic metres was a wheelie bin’s worth or car boot full – still can’t quite get our heads around the metric system! I thought it might fit in the boot and we’d covered it in cardboard and plastic just in case. He did offer a lorry load at the same terms, but at about £100 for a shed full, I thought it was a little too early into our time here to decide that we would definitely still be here in the winter…………….

While we were there, Louise was her normal friendly self and was chatting to the guy about various flora – don’t ask me, I have trouble with the normal names never mind the latin ones!! Anyway, she was telling him about the tree fern that she bought six years ago for about £100 and how it had grown to about four to five feet over the following years – she’s still sad about having to have left it behind in Torquay. He stopped loading the wood into the wheelie bin for a minute and pointed behind us at these 8 ft Punga trees which turned out to be tree ferns at $15 each – that’s about £6.50 and she couldn’t wait to tell her Mum!

We decided to stay out in the car for a while and travelled up the coast through the outskirts of Waikanae to Otaki. We thought we’d have a look at the beachfronts for each and see if there was any competition for Paraparam. We shouldn’t have worried! Otaki seems a little more “”frontier-like””, I’m trying to be subtle here. We found the beach, but couldn’t find a cafe anywhere along it – strange decision there Otakians……………

We backtracked to Waikanae to see if we could find a cafe worth stopping at. Waikanae is certainly a lot more up market, when you can’t see the houses from the road because of bushes/fences/trees you just know they’re going to be smarter and more expensive. They were both. We found the beach, though no frontage like Paraparam, and no cafes. Hmm, another strange council decision?

We headed for Waikanae town and after a quick looksee, decided to head back to Paraparam for a coffee there. The afternoon was lovely, the car was smelling of pine from the boot, it would have been lovely to stop in Otaki or Waikanae but they just didn’t feel very welcoming. Mind you, by this time, the anti-biotic had kicked in and with hindsight I shouldn’t have taken it – I felt a bit iffy, to say the least. We stopped to get something from somewhere, I can’t really remember that much and Louise drove us home.

I crashed into bed as soon as we got in and didn’t surface until gone 9pm. I think I’ll leave that last anti-biotic tablet for when I feel that the nasty bugs are making their way through the scabby bits on my chest before I risk that one again!!