Busy busy busy

Thursday night saw me at work till late as we were having a parents evening. It also brought home just how affected by the earthquake some people are. The facilitator for the evening lives about fifteen minutes away from us in a newish subdivision called Northwoods. Her experience of the earthquake was that she had drawers etc toppling over and trapping her in her bedroom. Lots of mess but next to no damage fortunately. However she isn’t coping at all well. She’s now taking sleeping pills and still startling at any loud noise. For the first couple of weeks after the earthquake most Cantabrians were in that boat – hear a plane or a train or any sort of rumble and you actually would hold your breath for a second, while you waited to see what happened and could figure out ‘is it a plane?’ or is it an aftershock? But this lessens over time and for most of us we’ve got back to being able to quickly differentiate which is which (we still get lots of rumbling – sometimes accompanied by a shake but often just the Earth making some sounds…). However when we shut the sliding doors on Thursday night this person was really startled and I was surprised. She also said she’s thinking quite irrationally – like “hope the Waimak bridge doesn’t break while I’m crossing it” For those who don’t know, the Waimak bridge didn’t sustain an ounce of damage in the biggie, it’s not going anywhere soon I don’t think! I’ve known this person for more than ten years, and she’s a really strong, capable woman, who flies all around the world talking about her subject, so I guess I was really surprised to see her in this light. I know she’ll be fine and it will all work out the end, but surprised all the same.


Here at home, most of you will know, but Dad you don’t lol, that I won a Slice over at SBO. So huge thanks to SBO and to Making Memories. Totally looking forward to it arriving (in a few weeks) and will have to start looking into cartridges to buy…What a shame, I’ll have to do some shopping LOL. Gaye, (and any other friends who read this who might have one that I don't know about lol) I will need your advice on what’s good and all those little tips you’ve found out through using yours. The angel canvas was the last in the challenges for this competition. I have done a couple of layouts in the last week or so, but my memory card with them on is now saying ‘read error’ so it will be binned and I’ve chucked another one in the camera – however I can’t be bothered pulling out the layouts from the albums and photographing them again lol.


We’ve had a visitor here this week. A seven month old yellow lab. He is the most adorable, clever and friendly chap. Our dog trainer, Julie, phoned us last weekend to let us know that one of her clients in town was looking at rehoming a labby and she thought we would make a good match (Lyall would love another lab). So we brought him home and he would not leave poor Danny alone. Darcy didn’t think much of this and kept attacking him (she’s like a toddler and thinks Danny belongs to her!). Now this lab was great didn’t bat an eye but didn’t leave him either. And in the end we decided it just wasn’t fair on any of them. The labby needs some other big dogs he can roll around with and hit with his big feet – he would swipe our littlies and send them flying lol – but all he was doing was playing. Unfortunately he hadn’t had a lot of dog experience so while good and friendly he didn’t know when to stop – couldn’t read the other dogs signals. So we returned him home and he’s now looking for somewhere else to live. So that has kept us busy as we were giving him big long runs in the hope of wearing out some of his puppy exuberance to make him a bit less likely to ‘love’ Dan so much! Oh and he can open doors lol. Just stands on his hind legs and hits the door handle with his foot – damn clever at seven months! I did say this would come in handy – he could let the other dogs in and out, save us doing it! I must say, we all felt terrible taking him back (even though it was a trial) – I didn’t think I would EVER do that. I hope he finds a fantastic home, because he will make a great family pet for someone.

Now the photo of the garage - Dad asked if I could put one on here - he wants to see where it is in relation to the house lol. There you go Daddeo.


Right, speaking of dogs, I’m off to the river to give them a swim and a run. Have a great weekend.