Being loyal

Looking for something else in my wallet I realised I'm a really loyal person. Mind you it says a lot about me when you look at what I choose to be loyal to.

In the collection above you will find 3 coffee cards, 1 sushi card, 1 book shop card, a shoe shop card and a Heinekein Club card from the restaurant at work. I'm also on the loyalty list for 2 local dress shops, a second book shop and another shoe shop.

Doesn't take a lot of thought to work out my priorities in life eh?

Marmalade

Having dealt as best I could with a bumper crop of feijoas I am now coping with citrus. Today was spent making 3 fruits marmalade - oranges, lemons and grapefruit.

Before

during

and after

I have more than a sneaking suspicion that it hasn't set properly but that's ok, it might end up as sauce rather than spread.

A ???? of Librarians (and friends)

When librarians get together you are guaranteed 3 things; lots of noise, lots of food and lots of a selection of bevereges. Just occasionally you will also get dancing and once in a very rare while, when the circumstances are just right, you get an enormously animated comparison of knowledge.

aka the Quiz Night.

That's what happened here last night. Library staff, curators and exhibitions staff gathered for pizza, nibblies, drinkies and a test of trivia in 6 categories. As you might be able to see there was also a lot of team spirit (aka dressing up) and the Cataloguers of the Caribbean won both the costume category and the quiz overall.

Niles the garden gnome and Quiz Night Trophy is now scaring the pigeons from his windowsill in Tech Services.

Small geek moment

Given the title of this blog I found myself wondering exactly how close to true east I had moved. So I checked it out.

New Plymouth sits at 39.06667 S (that's 39 and a bit degrees south of the equator). Melbourne sits at 37.49 S (so a little bit further north). What I found really cool is that Wilson's Promontory (at the bottom of Victoria and best known for it's lighthouse) is exactly 39.11 S.

So you can draw a straight line, due east and you would pretty much make landfall at New Plymouth. Cool eh?!

Festival Finale

The Arts Festival is over and I saw it out with Slava's Snow Show and Paul Capsis, two shows pretty much at either end of the spectrum. The Snow Show was stunning and finished with a blizzard and 'full audience participation'. This means huge balloons released into the audience - needless to say, the crowd went wild.

Last night I was back at the Speigeltent for Paul Capsis who has the most amazing voice. He does Mahalia Jackson, Marleina Detrich, Judy Garland, Janis Joplin and if you shut your eyes you could quite easily believe you are hearing the real thing. This is the outside at night, a lot more pleasing than the day photo. Unfortunately none of the photos I took inside worked out.

Frozen

Not the weather, my right shoulder. For no particular reason it has locked up, confirmed by a doctor and a physio. This means that lifting my arms as far as they can go leaves me looking like I'm practicing semaphore, like this.

The worst thing about it is that I haven't fallen, knocked into anything or been giving lineout lessons to the All Blacks (which they need) and according to the experts it takes as long as it takes for it to unlock. I just have to keep working on it at the gym and hopefully it will loosen up in under 12 months, the length of time it might take according to the same experts.

Please note gym clothes and be impressed with my dedication to my treatment. Also good incentive to get off my rear and get there more than once a week.

Festival update

4th row at the flamenco! 8th row for the Gregorian brothers (classical guitar)! An end seat in a booth in the Spiegeltent! The Arts Festival is fabulous and the big ticket event started on Friday, Slava's Snowshow. I have tickets for that next weekend along with Paul Capsis.

And just when I thought there were no more fests the Film Festival starts the week after next and the programme for Rhodofest - the Rhododendron and Garden festival in Oct/Nov has been released so I'm trying to work out how many films and garden visits I can fit in.