Author: Gerry

New cellphone

I got a new smartphone a few weeks ago and I’m still playing around with it; this post is really just a test post to make sure I cam post here feom my phone with zero problems more than anything else 😊 I’ve been to upgrade to a smartphone for ages but have been putting it off because I wanted to get a decent phone rather than one of the cheapest ones.

It’s been great so far, though some of the apps are annoying to use. And I don’t like typing out lots of text uaing the small keyboard, as I keep hitting the letter next to the letter I mean to hit!

Christmas Decorations :)

Some of the houses on my street have started putting up their Christmas decorations by now, though most will look a lot nicer when it’s dark of course and you can actually see the lights. One of the houses which was sold earlier this year has put really complicated, for my street, decorations up in one of their trees and they have even included the branches that hang over the footpath!

They’re detailed enough that I think that they’d be as interested in daylight as they will be after dark, as it would hard to make out some of the details when it’s night. I guess, depending on how their lights are of course. It’s still a bit too early to go around and have a look at the houses after dark, as I like leaving them until closer to Christmas in case I miss anyone who puts their decorations up later on in the month.


This is the first house’s decoration I’ve seen on my street, or in the local neighbor hood that is even remotely close to the Franklin Road Christmas lights, which I don’t mind given how much traffic they get every year! (I also think the pressure to keep up with the neighbors with those sorts of displays would be awful, not that I’m anywhere near the road which makes it a moot point 🙂 ).

Bad few months

I do feel as if I’m going backwards at the moment and that I haven’t manged to accomplish anything much over the last couple of months 🙁 I’m actually more upset that I’m going to miss the annual Nat Con here in Auckland over Easter more than anything else! (Which is Conclave 3 of course, but I’m assume everyone who reads this post either already knows that or isn’t interested in science fiction conventions 🙂 ).

I’ve been applying for new jobs as they come up recently but obviously haven’t gotten anything yet.

The only thing I actually feel on top of is getting my nephews birthday presents under control already. I ended up getting him the Catwoman bike Lego set and the Riddler Lego set – I got him a small one one with a Batman figure and a second one with the Joker figure for Christmas so these will add a significant number of the Batman Lego figures to his collection 🙂

 

The owls around Auckland

There is a charity event raising money for the Child Cancer Foundation, that has owls painted by different artists up around Auckland. There is a really pretty blue, white and gold one next to the ferry terminal in central Auckland by Weilun Ha.

General update

Christmas went well. I went to my brother and his family’s place for a big Christmas lunch -they had turkey, ham, multiple salads, roast potatoes and kumera, stuffing, and this desert of individual meringues with whipped cream and lemon or berry sauce.

I think my presets for my two nieces and nephew went down well. I did ask them what they wanted as they do change what they are into and normally I have no idea what’s their current interests. I ended up getting my nephew two small Batman Lego sets as the large ones were very expensive and that way at least he got one set with a Batman Lego figure in it and the other one had a Joker Lego figure in it – given how much Lego he already has I though getting two different figures was more important than getting more blocks.

I did end up working on the Wednesday, Thursday and Friday between Christmas and new year. It wasn’t too bad quiet for the most part esp with very few to no University students in the central city at the time…

Inhumans

For the first time I can really remember I’ve been “hate watching” a TV show, in this case it’s Marvel’s Inhumans. I’m only watching it because I’ve watched most of the movies and all of the other TV series so I sort of feel obliged to watch this too 🙁

The closest before this was Luke Cage, which I found incredibly slow. With Inhumans I just found the main characters that are supposed to be the good guys incredibly unlikable to the point really don’t like them at all and I don’t care if anything good happens to them – the only reason I’m still watching it is due to the fact that it’s playing on free TV here in New Zealand and the fact that I do like having shows I’m not that interested in actually watching playing in the background while I’m doing other things.

I think my favorite of the shows at least is Jessica Jones, though someone else review of David Tennant’s Kilgrave did get stuck in my head while watching it – they described him at times as reminding them of his version of the doctor but with the evil tones added, in particular the flashback scene when he first sees Jessica.

Ruby

Unfortunately Ruby has gone gone missing and we’re assuming short of a miracle, (hopefully someone finding her), that she hid sometime overnight Thursday to early Friday morning before I got up to go to work. I had woken early enough that I was able to spend an hour trying to find as I needed to give her an insulin injection first thing in the morning but hadn’t been too worried until I got home and she was still gone 🙁

She had gone down hill quite a bit in the last year and the last time she had been to see the vet he had said that he was surprised that she had held on as long as she had. I am still feeling guilty about it all of course.

The horrible weather this past week

Today is actually good, which I’m very very happy about as it’s been freezing cold and wet/windy here. Though no where near as bad as the weather has been in other parts of New Zealand (including Wellington!). It was so cold here that I was wondering how I ever managed to survive before I got a electric blanket, as it’s been freezing cold at night time.

I ended up taking a couple of photos on Wednesday of this large lump of ice that had formed on the path –

I know that’s unimpressive when compared to what happened in other parts of the country but it was really odd for Auckland. There was a lot more on the lawn but I didn’t want to walk over cold wet lawn to get a good look at them.

America’s Cup Parade

I ended up going to the parade for Team New Zealand in the central city today. I ended up being across the road from Aotea Square right next to where it started just before 12.30pm. I think I was one of the lucky ones as it had finished in that part just over ten minutes later, before it started raining and I did notice it raining quite heavily after 1pm.

I do think I would have liked to have seen them on the boat sailing along the water front, which was the second part of the parade – the part I saw the team were standing in the back of Utes(?) in between various matching bands and  a cheer leading squad, with the America’s Cup on the last vehicle.

I am surprised that I was able to get such a good position almost directly behind the fence as I only arrived about ten to fifteen minutes before the parade started and I was expecting there to be a lot more people there. Mainly due to the photos from the 1995 parade where there looked to be people completely lining the footpath right back to the shops, while today it was really only three to four people deep at most in the area I was in.

After watching the news coverage of the parade it does look like there were more people further down Queen Street at least and it did look like there were more people on the other side of the road. Meaning that there was just a good chance I was lucky and happened to work close to the unpopular end.

I did take some photos which I’ll post here as well, not that they’ll be all that interesting and nothing that won’t be seen in a lot of other places, and it’s safe to say that places like the TV news and the newspapers will have significantly better photos than mine as I was most behind two other people and was taking them between their heads as much as possible.