Roadtripping time

Last week was road trip week :)

I had to go to Taranaki for the Womens Institute Arts and Craft Festival thing, so my friend Jo and I decided to make a road trip out of it.  

Jo bused down to me on Sunday, we hung out in Hastings and Napier for the first couple of days.  We hit a lot of opshops and of course we went to Jarks, how could we not hehe.  Then on Wednesday Cleo took us to New Plymouth, stopping at opshops along the way, and via Inglewood to see Aunty Susan and mum.

On Thursday mum and I had the Arts and Crafts thingy in Bell Block, I had a few entries, all in the sewing, knitting/crochet and general crafts sections.  At this stage I don't enter in the photography, cooking or gardening stuff but maybe that will change one day.  Am happy with what placings I got.  Considering I was juggling work, study, theatre, Lions, 2 book clubs and friends I think I did pretty well :)

On Thursday night we caught up with some of my Taranaki friends at India Today, it's still as good as I remember which was awesome.  It was wonderful seeing them all there, and awesome catching up with all my old friends.  I don't get to see them all that much which is a bit sad, but I wouldn't move back there as I love my life in HB.  Haha Mother Nature agreed with me as she made it wet and blah for the whole visit, which I choose to believe is her reminding me I don't want to live there again lol.

On Friday morning we headed north via Mt Taranaki.  To begin with Mt Taranaki was being all shy, but after a cuppa and some cake he very quickly showed most of himself to us :) yay, thanks Mt Taranaki.

After the Mountain side trip we continued up north to Auckland (sorry all you Aucklanders, it was a flying trip so didn't hit any of you up).  We stopped at the Piopio opshop, cos we could and it was open for a change (I normally am not going through on a weekday).  We also stopped at the big apple, but it was locked :( that was sad as I was hoping that we could climb it, just cos of course.

Saturday was Auckland day, we were hoping to go to Waiheke Island but it turns out that everyone else was planning to do the same.  We didn't get on 3 ferry's so we decided to save our tickets (they last for a year) and we went to a movie instead.  We went to see Girls Can't Surf, if you like sports documentaries I highly recommend watching it.  It was brilliant.

Sunday I headed home, after a yum yum cooked breakfast - thanks Jo :)

And then it was Monday and back to the real world of work.... yay......

My placings, on the entries that got some

Shhh this technically got 3rd

I got one other 3rd but the photo is rather blurry, my hands weren't in fine form last week and blurred a few photos.

Other random photos from our road trip

Awww I always suspected that it did :) xxx

Mt Taranaki when we arrived....

... and then he cleared (mostly) for us

The random big apple

I just liked this, with the clouds in the buildings windows and the tree :)

Christchurch - Day 4

So Monday was our last full day in Christchurch and we headed off exploring on foot instead of in the car.  We wandered into Hagley Park to find the botanical gardens, which when we found them were pretty cool.  I could easily imagine spending some time reading a book under a tree or something if I was there for longer.  Had a wonderful photographer with me, thanks mum hehe, and we had fun taking some photos as well.  Sorry some of them are a bit dark, it wasn't the sunniest day.  

After splitting up (mum was going to visit a friend and I wanted to check out Chch central) we both managed to get rather lost trying to find where we were trying to go.  I ended up on the complete wrong side of the park and then had to backtrack to find where I was going.  Super glad I had GoogleMaps on my phone cos the park signs were just confusing me.  I did eventually find where I was headed first, which was the museum.  Had a good wander through the Museum, mostly enjoyed it... mostly cos I didn't really stop in many of the exhibitions, nothing took my fancy till I found the Antartica Exhibition, that was real cool.  And then on the way out I came across the olden days street, made a coupe of friends and wandered into some different shops hehe.

Then from there it was into the main area of Chch central.  It was rather quiet in town, which surprised me, but I still had fun wandering.  I was vaguely looking for somewhere for lunch then I saw this cool painting on the side of a building, or buildings, and I wanted a good photo so kept wandering till got one.  Then when I was closer the building itself looked pretty interesting so in I went.... and there were the people lol.  It was the Riverside Market and was full of food eating places and refreshments and all sorts.  It did help that when I walked in someone offered me a wine tasting yum yum hehe.  While I was browsing and deciding what I wanted I saw a cake/sweet type place, and there was a sign that said all the righthand side was gluten free and celiac friendly.  Of course I had to doublecheck that as there were a lot of yummy looking stuff on the righthand side.... the sign was accurate, and the baker man laughed when I said that I had to check cos I don't often get so much choice.  I ended up getting two things (wanted so many more though) and let me just say, they were even yummier than they looked, nom nom nom.

After the Riverside Market I wandered back to the motel via Hagley Park, and planning to find the cricket ground to find Nastle's statue (hehe, and yes I know there is unlikely to actually be one but a girl can dream lol) however, guess who got lost again.... Pretty sure the cricket ground is not actually in Hagley Park, am sure I covered almost all of it at stages in the day and I never saw it.  

Overall it was a very good day, and I enjoyed our holiday.  Christchurch is a very nice place for a long wknd, probably a very nice place for a longer holiday as well :)

Hagley Park and Botanical Gardens

Christchurch Museum, Kiwiana

Christchurch Museum, Antartica

Christchurch Museum, Olden Days Street

Things of interest around town

This is the side of the Riverside Markets, the side of the building is flat.... 

All the yummies I could have <3

Hagley Park, round two

Christchurch - days 1-3

So we have been in Chch since Thursday evening (it's not counted as a day cos we didn't do anything other than find food and learn that our rental car turns corners very well), we are staying at Camelot and it is lovely.  We have a very spacious unit thing, I am up in the loft area which is great, and mum is downstairs.  I do think I need to find a way to get a loft in my next house.... somehow..... 

On Friday we went to Christchurch Helicopters so I could go for my first ever (but def not my last if I have any say in it) helicopter flight. This was meant to be done last year in Tassie but we never got over there, for some reason, the reason is currently escaping my mind but I'm sure it was a good one lol.  It was BRILLIANT (look at that, it was so good I didn't even use the word awesome hehe).  So amazing, and so cool seeing everything from above but not so high like planes go.  The copter didn't go very fast, well it didn't feel like it did but I'm sure it went fast than I thought it did... I can also say I am not a fan of 4 point seatbelts, I mean I don't even like normal car ones so adding in another strap wasn't ever gonna make me happy happy, but it was worth it to be able to sit in the front.

Then we went to Dressmart, cos we could.  We barely spent anything though, the shops were a bit blah overall.  Except for the Chuck Taylor's shop, that one was real good.  Got me two new pairs (they are shoes for all you confused ppl), and not only was one pair on special it was also on 50% off woot woot, so I basically saved money by buying them hehe.

Saturday we went to New Brighton, I fell in love with the library there, it was so well set out and super cosy feeling.  Also loved the pier, the market was only so-so though and that is what we technically went for.  We would have gone anyhow but we went ystdy cos of the market.  Am a total grown up (stop laughing, I am) cos all I got at the market was a dusting mitt lol.  We then drove out to Lyttleton much to the annoyance of Ben (Mum's GPS thing) who kept telling us to take the next right then turn right, or to do a u-turn, or to turn left then left lol.  We didn't reset him from New Brighton so he was trying to take us back there.  Turns out robots aren't smart at all lol.

Today we went to the Airforce Museum, which is still as cool as it was when bro and I went all those years ago.  This time they also had a POW area, and I got caught and became a POW, but don't fret I found the secret passageway and I escaped YAY :D 

We then went for a drive to Mayfield to check out Overflow which is a big secondhand shop.  It was amazing!! If I lived closer I think I would spend a bit of money there, but sadly we are flying home so we saved our pennies.  We wandered down the road from there to Panthers Rock for lunch and I just wanna say they are awesome for celiacs <3 They talked me through the menu and what I could eat and couldn't eat, and then said if there wasn't anything on there I wanted they would be happy to create me a made to order meal, so kind of them,  I had the roast of the day though and it was yum yum yum.

We then drove back to Chch via the Inland Scenic Route which was much nicer than the straight boring roads on the plains, just saying.  We had a couple photo stops along the Rakaia Gorge, other than that it was just a nice trip back to our accomodation. A very nice day :)

Tomorrow we are planning to go and check out Hagley Park, I am sure that they will have a big as statue of Nastle there for his 222...... surely...... lol.  And yes, every time we go through his old suburb I say 'Hi Nastle' just in case he is still there and hears me hehe.  Anyhow I know you are just wanting the photos so here you go, some photos for you :)

Christchurch Helicopters

New Brighton Pier

Random cool as tree at New Brighton Pier

Airforce Museum

Rakaia Gorge

You would think it's been a slow year....

Well based on how many blog posts I have done you would.  You might even be sitting there thinking I am not doing much and just chilling and that is.  But you would be wrong, yes you would :)

The reason I have not been doing many posts is that I have been rather busy.  More busy than I expected to be really.  I have been doing some sewing, some painting, some other crafting.  Lots of theatre hanging out, not so much theatre doing stuff though lol.  Lots of friends hanging out and just having fun.  Oh and a teeny tiny bit of study, but nowhere as much of that as I should have been doing.

Dad and I (aka Dad with my supervision) made me a bed base in the wknd just gone, it looks pretty good if I may say so myself :) bit higher than I am used to but that is ok, am sure I will get used to it in no time, fingers crossed.  Glenny likes it too which is an impt thing lol.

I have been doing sewing and craft things for the WI arts and crafts festival which is getting closer.  Not sure which things, if any, will get placings but I am hoping atlst a couple of things do as I am quite proud of them.  Some others I'm not so bothered about because they are just so-so in my mind.  I shall put up photos after the event, after all I can't be giving my mum inside knowledge as she might then make stuff to beat mine lol.

Work is going well, mostly.  There are some things that I don't like about being a manager but they are unavoidable really.  Mostly things are just the same though, and its only the odd day that I am thinking grrrr thoughts.  Had a zui (zoom hui) this morning with the other managers, which was a tad yawn-ish till one of their cats turned up demanding hugs and smooches and that made it way more entertaining hehe.  There are a few of us that work from home a day or few a week now so sometimes our zui's are more entertaining than others.  Atlst this time I didn't have Ken sitting opposite me pulling faces while I try not to laugh lol.

Have been hanging out with Jenny a bit, we are both on the Board at Theatre HB which is how we met.  We get along really well, and she has 3 cats who are super cute.  I would say they have all warmed to me except Moo sometimes is a bit skittish but he is skittish with them as well some days so it's not that unusual really.  Bucket (Charlie Bucket) and Starr are the other two.  Since she also works from home on Friday afternoons I often go round to hers to use her internet and also to hang out and catch up on our weeks.  I work from home Friday arvos, and morning if I am not needed in the studios.  Its quite nice to be able to take my time, have a bit of a lie in and just chill my way through work.  Not that I was working super hard and stressing before but still, being at home is nice.

Have changed my place around, again lol.  Nothing major this time but have the trestle table up in the spare room and only the dining table up in the lounge, table-wise.  I can also get to the sewing cabinet without having to move everything in front of it which is progress :) woot woot.  And except for the fact that all the extra stuff from the lounge and spare room is on the couch in the spare room or in front of it, I would say it looks good lol.  It shall be cleared by Wednesday though, as mum is coming over and on Thursday we head to Christchurch :D so excited.  Am sure I will update you with some of our happenings down there, whether it is while we are there or when we get back I am not sure, but some time I will :)

Marathon in a Month time again

It's Marathon in a Month time again, well come Monday it will be :) and this year I have roped a friend in to do it with me, though sadly this doesn't mean we walk half each :( we both have to do a marathon lol.

Here is the link if you would like to donate to our cause, the money raised goes to the Cancer Society.  If you would rather not donate online you are most welcome to donate via me and I will put it up :)

Donate to Jilly aka JB aka The Most Awesome Person You Know hehe 

Feel free to send in your messages of support throughout the month as well, they will be great appreciated.

And yes our team name is The Great JMs, cos we are great and we are both JMs, duh :p

It has been an interesting week….

It started off like any other, well actually no it didn’t cos Monday was a public holiday – yay :) did I do much on my extra day off…?  Now that is a very good question, and one you should have asked a few days ago cos I have no idea now lol.  Work was good on Tuesday, felt like forever ago that I had last seen Ken but it was really only four days.  We still had a good catch up of course cos that is who we are.  Pretty sure Wednesday was much the same, work was work, you know the drill.  Thursday was Glenny’s birthday, well technically our anniversary but we celebrate it as his bday cos we can.  He had a great day, mine was all good too so he must have wanted me to have a good day.  Am sure he came to play a few times though, but that’s ok cos it was his bday so he got to do what he wanted.  It was a pretty big milestone bday as well, the big three oh :D I know, huge right.  Or is it scary, that we have been getting up to mischief for that long…. I’ll let you decide hehe. Today at work I managed to restart every computer, including the one that runs the station.  I am actually a tiny bit proud of how well done it was, well I was once the ‘oh crap we are off air and I can’t play music in any of the studios to cover it cos those computers are all restarting as well’ had passed.  It shall go down as a lesson learned, basically when you update your virus protection (as you were asked to do by the provider) and it now has a nice pretty admin screen that says a bunch of computers are not protected cos there is an update and to restart them to make them protected again, and there is a pretty restart all button… it may pay to check which computers are the 9 that are listed before clicking on it… just saying lol.  Am now watching free dance (ice skating) from the last winter Olympics and I’m pretty sure I could do it, if I just had some rhythm/balance/flexibilty/grace/talent lol

Not got much planned for the wknd, got BDS book group tomorrow lunchtime then heading out to dinner with Jenny as there is a pub we have heard is good so we figure we gotta do our bit and give it a try.  It’s out the back of Napier in a tiny little country town, but not far out of Napier so we are intrigued.  Sunday I shall see, I have no plans at the moment but that doesn’t mean I won’t have any come Sunday :)

2020 in books

I was wondering how best to do my 2020 summary, there was a lot that went on after all, and ended up deciding to do it in books, cos why not.  So obviously the below is for all of 2020, and the pie graph is thanks to Aunty Pam for asking for another one (first one appeared in a back issue of the JB Times).

Total books read - 70

Total pages read - 23,641

Shortest book - 70 pages (The Perfect Shadow by Brent Weeks, a novella)

Longest book - 768 pages (The Fireman by Joe Hill)

Signed books received - 3 (one from a book launch, one from winning an international competition (yes I am still sometimes lucky) and one cos I know the author)

New authors discovered and now love - many

Most popular genre read - Fantasy (duh)

Surprise second place genre - Non-Fiction (didn't expect that one)

Books bought but not read yet - 40 (whoops, my eyes in bookstores are bigger than my free time lol)

My overall reading habits of 2020 based on genre :)

Ken ain't a bad photographer....

Just thought I would share these pics with you, courtesy of Mr Ken Morrison and his handy camera of course :)
Note: both photos were taken in the last few days, just if you were wondering.  And yes I have been good enough to get a pressie from Santa this year, and no I was not working when the other one was taken lol

Probably not the update you were expecting....

Just a warning, this is probably not the blog post that you are expecting.  However I have decided that it is something that I want to share so here I go.

 

On Saturday I went out for lunch with a few friends and as per normal I went through the gluten free check etc with my order, however on this occasion it turns out that I made some (in hindsight) rather incorrect assumptions so I am willing to share some of the blame for the consequences, however I feel that I do not deserve the full blame.  I checked with first thing that I was ordering that it could be done gluten free, proper gluten free blah blah as I often do when going somewhere new, however with the second item I did not, I assumed that the waitress would realise this one also needs to be gf.  I didn’t think anything else of it except a brief ‘hmmm I guess she was smart enough to make this gf too’ when it arrived but that was it.  I started feeling a bit weird and funny later Saturday afternoon but again didn’t think much of it, mostly cos I was being busy and rushing around from one place to the next and only had about an hour at home to sort and eat dinner before rushing off to the theatre for final night of Footrot Flats (brilliant show by the way, absolutely loved being part of the set team for it).  Did I think it was weird that I wasn’t hungry and didn’t want dinner?  Yes, but not overly cos I didn’t really think about it, again I blame the busy.  The show went as per normal, but with me sitting down more and being generally not as cheery as normal.  Got home and fell into bed and assumed I was just tired…

 

Boy did Sunday prove that wrong! Woke up, earlier than I would have liked given it was my one sleep-in that week, rushed to the bathroom and emptied my stomach.  Crawled to the couch with some cereal in a box and figured that was that, I would munch on cereal and feel better.  Again, I was wrong.  Basically I spent all of Sunday puking, eating a little in the following 10 minutes when I felt a bit better, sleeping, puking, eating, I’m sure you get the drift of my day.  I did test a few things, like not eating anything to see if that would stop the vomiting need, it didn’t that just created dry heaving which is so not fun and I was already doing lots of that.  I also tried just drinking something, no eating.  Again not a success, it will take me a while to stop tasting that drink on the way back up (ick, yuck etc).  It didn’t take me long to work out my body was trying to get rid of something specific, especially not when both ends were at play (sorry if the over share is a bit much but you were vaguely warned at the start lol).  It took till about 11pm Sunday night for the offending food to be removed, and by that time I was crawling around because standing meant going dizzy and falling down again.  My hands were shaking rather badly and I was just not in good shape.  

 

Monday arrived later than usual for me (10:20am if you are interested, good thing I had pre-warned Ken I wouldn’t be at work on Sunday), and while I felt weak and shaky I knew that I would keep my food down if I took it easy, much improved from the finger crossing and hoping of the day before.  I still had little appetite and ended up sleeping much of the day but felt well enough to attempt work on Tuesday (ystdy).  Managed a half day ystdy till my body said ‘nope, that’s enough, you need to nap again’.  So home to nap I went, did a bit of work inbtwn naps, but the great news is that after the 3^rd nap I woke up feeling awesome! From still feeling blah before that nap to ‘in my opinion’ magically feeling like JB again, well a lethargic limb JB but still JB all the same.  My appetite was back, I could eat choc fish again (yes that was a test), I had some energy and wasn’t lightheaded.  So I did what any sane person would do, I rearranged my lounge and bdrm and ate choc fish :) hehe.  My legs and arms are still quite lethargic overall and don’t last long doing stuff, took ages to rearrange stuff, but this is the longest side effect I get and will last btwn a week to three weeks in general.

 

You might be wondering why I decided to share this, and there are a few reasons for it.  Firstly I often tend to minimise being celiac and pretend it’s not a big deal, and it obviously really is.  So this is a lesson to mostly me, but also to those around me who may be taking my blasé view on it that it’s not a big thing.  I think I need to be more like Luke who thinks of it in terms of ‘Jill will die if I bring her something with gluten in it’.  Secondly this blog often tends to have all the good times in it, and sometimes things are not good.  Thirdly I realised some things on Sunday which I wanted to share that would not have as much value or meaning without the full context.

 

And what are those things you realised I hear you asking, well I shall share them with you now.  I am not quite sure I appreciated how much mum and dad did for me whenever I was sick when I was younger, now I do.  For example, when I wanted a hot drink I would have to get up and put the jug on, fall back on the couch exhausted often falling to sleep again (not ideal).  If I did get the jug boiled while I was still awake I had to get up again to make the hot drink and by the time I got back to the couch I would generally fall asleep again.  So yeah, the hot drinks were generally not hot, or even warm, by the time I got to drink them.  Also for someone like me who does groceries as she needs them (and Sunday was the day I was meant to be going to get some, after having put it off for a week and a half), it is interesting finding something to try and munch on that didn’t take much (if any) standing time.  So thank you mum and dad for taking care of me all those many times when I was younger and not well.

 

Also it turns out that when I am unwell I don’t really have any spatial awareness so there are more bruises than normal on me, and some more stains on the carpet from drinks being knocked over as I reached for them (not helped by my then lack of getting up to get paper towels or towels to clean them up).  Yes you are allowed to laugh at this, I have since I’ve started feeling better lol.

 

But I am pretty much all good now, the life lesson has been learnt and filed away for atlst a few months, and below is my new lounge layout for all you curious people.  Yes I have two 8-seater tables up, and yes I can only sit 2 people cos of all the crafting stuff, but that’s why I live alone, so I can enjoy spread out crafting space :) And if you are wondering where the china cabinet is, it’s in my bdrm and it looks super awesome surrounded by purple, like it’s made to be in that colour scheme (picture the emoji with hearts as eyes here lol).  Anyhow, I am back to happy JB, and I hope you dudes and dudettes are all doing good as well xxx