Golf with the kids

Yesterday I took Megan and Duncan to Takapuna and played 9 holes of golf with them. We had a great time, lots of hacked shots from everyone, and a couple of good ones too. Megan managed to par a par 3, but in general no one counted any shot. General concensus that this was someting to do again. I think the next trip will be to a driving range or maybe lessons for the kids.

I'm feeling quite relaxed after a few days off, hopefully I've broken the cycle I was in. Started to build the shelving at the back of the garage today, the first step to getting both cars in the garage. I don't want to be one of those people with a garage that has a lot of things in it, but not cars. The expensive things get left outside in the weather!

On leave for a few days

Its really good to be away from work for a while, the project I have been working on has been running for a long time and is so big that it is easy to get lost in it. So I have taken a few days off to try and re-enervate myself.

But outside of work the surf season approaches and we are getting ready. On Saturday we did a big clean out and re-organisation of the equipment at Mairangi bay, and then on Sunday went with Dave Vos to Papakura and did an outboard maintenance course on mercury engines. We need to see if we can get a better maintenance program going at the club this season.

Speaking of the club we now have a general manager, Ross Pounds who should be taking us forward to the clubs vision of patrolling all the east coast beaches of Auckland. I met him at the launch of the Harbour Crossing swim organised by Scott Rice. Ross seems a nice guy, let's see what comes of this.

Slowly getting back into some good swimming, I am still going to the physio, Gretchen, for my shoulder and it seems to be improving. Fingers crossed there.

GE - Dealing with conflict

Had a great GE (generating excellence) module on Friday last week. We had 2 Aikido practioners in to cover how to deal with conflict situations and talked about the way Aikido covers it and how it can be applied to the work place. Really interesting and a pair of nice guys too.
Made me realise a couple of things:

• I really enjoy the GE group as a whole, but may not get on with all the people individually as well.
  
• I have so much to learn about myself.
  
• I should look deeper at eastern philosophy as it seems to make a lot of sense to me.
  

Curtains are up

Well the curtains on the house are up, mostly anyway. They stuffed up one of the 'sheer' curtains and need to redo it, but we now have curtains and not blue surgical drapes stuck to the windows of the bedroom with insulation tape.
That now completes phase one of the house renovations. Next we need to get the builders back in to redo the upstairs bathroom. And then .........

Catchup with the Grunings

I managed to catchup with Armin & Rita Gruning a few weeks ago when I was in Sydney on my second Architecture review trip. It was good to see them them again, been about 4 years. They stay way on the outskirts of Sydney (Campbelltown) so I stayed over and travelled back on the train in the morning. They trains are pretty good, and cheap in Sydney, the english ones are SO expensive.
Their kids are looking good and growing up and they seem to have a happy very domesticated life, Armin is very handy/helpful around the house. Rita still into horses and teaching art and Armin selling seals and other technical components.
They still maintain they will come over and visit NZ, same as before, believe it when I see it.

I can't login and post to this blog

This is very frustrating, I can log in to beta.blogger but cannot access
this blog. Getting no response from the blogger support team either.

Wallets and travel

Well, I'm writing this in Sydney, but the road here has not been particularly smooth.
First I started the process of getting the travel arranged quite late at work. Took a while as some of the key people, both at Vodafone and the travel agent were on leave and I had to update the travel agent with my new passport number. But eventually I had an itinerary, but no airport tax sticker, but easily sorted.
I did have visions of completing the fit-out of the cupboard for the new bedroom now that the carpet is down this weekend, but there was too much on. Saturday morning saw me watching Megan play hockey (she scored 2 goals in a 6-0 game), and then I went out to buy the materials needed for the fit-out. However, Duncan & I had to leave just after 4:00 p.m. to go to a cubs & scouts swimming meet at the other end of Auckland (Manurewa). He had a great time there but I managed to leave my jacket at the venue in the confusion, along with my wallet and personal & company credit cards.
This I realised on Sunday morning when taking Megan & Duncan to swim at the Millennium, and of course when I realised this panic set in. Numerous phone calls to the venue and organiser followed, but I'm sure the wallet has now changed ownership although when I canceled the credit cards there did not seem to be any charges against them. Alison stepped in to help here as, while she was feeling quite sick with a throat cold, she drove me to the airport and gave me lots of cash to get by with.
Ivan also stepped in by driving to the airport and lending me his P-Card so I could check into the hotel.
So all in all not the best organised trip, but I'm here now, so I'm going to have an early night and try to be relaxed for he working week ahead.

Carpet is down

Well, it has finally happened, the carpet is down in the house and we can start to use all the rooms. It was a busy few days as Alison and I had to pack up almost the entire house as every piece of furniture that was on carpet had to be moved. We sent the kids off to Hamilton to stay with Paul and Jenny for Saturay night and then organised sleep-overs for each of them on Sunday as their rooms were completely packed. I took Monday off although there was not too much to do (I did finish the downstairs bathroom shelves though).
Monday afternoon/night was spent moving furniture back and re-establishing ourselves in the house, and it feels good. Still an awful lot to do but now we are getting the benefits of the renovation, feels really good.

Motivation

Motivation is something that I have not had in abundance recently. But it seems to be coming back.
On Saturday I went to watch North Harbour beat Taranaki on a very wet and windy day with Kevin Armstrong. Crappy conditions but NH managed to get over the opposition.
Straight after that we (Alison & I) went to a belated Junior Surf Lifesaving get to gether. Lots of people that I like and I found myself getting more involved and enthusiastic as the night wore on, although it may just have been the beer and wine.I agreed to help our Peter with the Rookie program, talked about patrolling at Piha, showed interesting in the life saving sub-committee at the club, talked about doing some instruction and offered to help Dave with the IRB's.
I must have had more to drink than I thouhht.

Men and doctors

Well, today I took one of those steps that men don't like doing and, instead of complaining to innocent colleagues, took my sholder injury to a physiotherapist. I had considered going to a doctor, but it was a long drive, and I was busy, and I couldn't remember his name.......
But, while in the gym, Pam, one of my fellow swimmers, suggested going to the physio at the gym. Very sensible and it invalidated all my excuses in one hit. So I did.
Very helpfully they talked me through what had happened and it appears that this occured due to 'series of events' which may get me an ACC number and will substantially reduce the cost of the treatment.
The physio, Gretchen, evaluated the shoulder and apparently the problem is a muscular imbalance, not a shagged shoulder as I anticipated. So can be cured with a bit of work, but I am going to have to back off the swimming for a while, oh well, that's life.