Autumn Splendour

Sunday before last was such a beautiful day we decided to go for a walk in Cornwall Park and to have lunch in the Kiosk there - along with just about half of Auckland I reckon! Everyone was out walking their dogs, or jogging or just relaxing in the sun with their families. If anyone loves herbal teas like I do then I found a new one which is absolutely divine, it's called 'Sweet Sunday' and is made from currants, rhubarb, peach, strawberries & rose petals. It's available from the Tea Total Cafe in Milford amongst dozens of other herbal teas, they also have mail order.

These are just a few of the photos I took.

Travel/Non-Fiction Books

Thanks for the recommendations Pam, I've noted them all and will go looking for them right now. Yes, I have read 'A Parrot in a Pepper Tree' by Chris Stewart but I'm still waiting for the first one, must be quite popular but I think I'm next on the list at the library. The rest I haven't heard of, I'm especially interested in the one about the NZ family who went to live in France.

These are the names of the books written by the authors I mentioned yesterday:-

Peter Kerr

• Snowball Oranges: One Mallorcan Winter
• Manana Manana: One Mallorcan Summer
• Viva Mallorca!: One Mallorcan Autumn
• A Basketful of Snowflakes: One Mallorcan Spring
• From Paella to Porridge

 Carol Drinkwater

• The Olive Farm
• The Olive Season
• The Olive Harvest
• The Olive Route

Yesterday I picked up 'McCarthy's Bar' by Pete McCarthy, a journey of discovery in the West of Ireland, which so far is quite entertaining!

Audio Books

I found a nice little CD/Cassette player over the weekend, I can also carry it around the house if I want so I'm all set up for lots of reading over the winter.

I like reading a series if I can get them but the earlier books in a series sometimes aren't available on CD or cassette so I'm putting as many as I can onto my iPod to save for after I've read the normal books. After Annie Hawes' series I have another lot by Carol Drinkwater, a well known actress who married a Frenchman and went to live on an olive farm in France. Another two series by Peter Kerr a Scotsman who went to live on Mallorca and Chris Stewart who moved to Spain are both excellent series.

If anyone has read or knows of any other series of Travel/Non-Fiction books they think are good please let me know about them.

I also have these lined up to be ordered soon:-

A Piano in the Pyrenees and Round Ireland with a Fridge by Tony Hawks.

Shooting Caterpillars in Spain by Alex Browning

The Year of the Cornflake and Green Behind the Ears by Faith Addis

And Sweet Honey, Bitter Lemons and Eating up Italy by Matthew Fort look like they might be interesting too.

Eyes and iPods

I'm not sure my eyes are getting better, some days they seem to be fine and others they ache all day and the headaches come and go, seems like I should be making another appointment with the optometrist - so I did, for Friday!

Anyway, on to more pleasant things. I managed to pick up a nice little iPod Docking Station today, not the one I wanted but nevertheless I'm happy. Speaking of which I'm off to bed to listen to Neil Diamond's new album on it! Cute isn't it.

Thanks for all you comments everyone, I appreciate the concern. I haven't tried the Podcasts yet Sharon but I will get to them eventually when I see something that looks interesting.

Yes it's me!

You may have wondered why I've been awol for all these weeks, well even if you haven't I'm going to tell you anyway.

A few months ago I started getting small sharp pains in my head that would last just for a minute or so but were so bad it brought tears to my eyes. They gradually turned into bad headaches and then my eyes started aching and itching and if I didn't know better I would have said I had the flu without any other symptoms.

I didn't know who to go to first, the doctor, the dentist or the optometrist! I opted for the optometrist and had every eye test including a new one I hadn't had before for glaucoma. Verdict - $900 later - eyes perfectly healthy all round except for needing new glasses which I hadn't had for 5 years.

Then I went to the doctor (my doctor's locum) who didn't seem too concerned about it being anything other than my eyes, he gave me eye drops and I had a blood test for infection which turned out to be negative. So what to do - I decided to limit my computer time to no more than an hour two or three times a day to see if that would help! So what to do with my time, housework was never my forte! If the computer was the problem then reading would be just as bad so then I had a brainwave and went racing down to our local library and took out a couple of audio books! These I can listen to while do all sorts of things including walking and shopping. So now I'm getting plenty of walking in but with not having the time to download and edit photos for my blog I don't take my camera with me much anymore.

I didn't have much luck with an old Walkman I picked up off Trade Me for $5, it works okay but it's rather large to lug around in your pocket as it's only for playing cassettes. Then another brainwave (I should get sore eyes more often) I Googled 'can you listen to audio books on an iPod' and came up with this great website:-

http://aldoblog.com/audiobooks/

Everything I ever wanted to know about how to use audio books on an iPod. DH very generously shouted me an iPod Nano for my birthday (not until November, with a bit of luck he will have forgotten by then) and away I went. I found that iTunes have audio books you can download straight to your iPod but they aren't exactly cheap. I'm able to get them from my local library but they don't have a great selection of the sort I like to read/listen to - Travel Non-Fiction. I have found a few that are on CD which are easily sent to my iPod but cassettes are another story, no show getting them onto the computer/iPod unfortunately. I've just finished reading/listening to a great little series written by Englishwoman Annie Hawes about her time in Liguria Italy where she bought a house and settled into the Italian way of life. Very interesting if you ever need to know about the Italian psyche and their way of life (which I did because youngest son is married to an Aussie whose parents are Italian). These books are read by Rula Lenska, an English actress some of you may know, and to my ear she speaks perfect Italian, but then what do I know! Very entertaining books which are:-

Extra Virgin: Amongst the Olive Groves of Liguria

Ripe for the Picking

Journey to the South: A Calabrian Homecoming

And the latest one:

A Handful of Honey: Away to the Palm Groves of Morocco and Algeria

So that's my latest doings, my eyes are slowly getting better and hopefully I will be able to spend a few hours on updating my blog from time to time very soon. Tomorrow I'm off to look at an iPod Docking Station so I don't have to have the earphones on when I'm at home - ain't technology wonderful? I like the look of this one but I doubt I'll find one in NZ somehow!

Still here

I've been skiving off lately having a bit of a rest, well trying to but not succeeding! Last Thursday I caught the bus from New Lynn to Takapuna (on the North Shore of Auckland) and it took 1 hr 35 mins to wend it's way through goodness knows where, just as well I took Harry Potter to keep me company! I was going to babysit Harry for the afternoon and we had such a good time together. We played golf and softball and soccer and did a bit of piracy on the High Seas to top it off!

I'll be posting a layout or two from the day on my other blog so keep an eye out.

Blog Readers

Webfrau left me this comment:-
"Interesting Dawn. I subscribe to your blog using bloglines. I used to be able to read your posts and see the photos. In the ones that you've done with livewriter the photos are no longer visible in my feed - I have to go to the actual blog to see them. I've noticed a few blogs where the photos have disappeared and I bet this is why. A different feed format."

I've tried Google Reader and have no problems seeing the photos posted by Windows Live Writer Webfrau, perhaps you'd like to give that a go?

Anyone else having problems with their Blog Readers and posts using Live Writer similar to Webfrau's?

Yea for Windows Live Writer....

....it's a winner! It lets you do the whole thing offline, change the size of your photos if you wish, plus anything else then you just click on 'publish' and it's done - couldn't be easier. After a bit of fiddling and twiddling with the photo size it's now just how I like it.

Testing Windows Live Writer

I've just found this new free programme to write your blog pages offline so giving it a go, it's called Windows Live Writer.

Test of 'insert photo' - yes I like the shadow, wonder what size it will show up as when published? This is DD Justine with her very pregnant friend Emma, and this is Emma's daughter. Emma very kindly took the photos of the Whanau for us.

Okay, let's publish and see what it looks like.

Picnic at Wood Bay

Justine's last day in town so we had a picnic at Lauren & Becky's local beach. We had the whole beach to ourselves for awhile until another picnic of people arrived. The more energetic ones had a game of soccer - my excuse was that someone had to take the photos! Had a lovely time until the council arrived with a big truck to drain out a blocked manhole on the beach - phew - time to go home! Justine's plane leaves tomorrow at 6.50am so up at 3am - don't ring Justine! We'll all miss you, have a safe trip home to Macau.

Man at work!

Now I ask you! Would you buy a car off this man?

Family BBQ

We had a lovely family get together for Justine's birthday on Sunday at Scott & Kelly's place. The weather was perfect and we had a wonderful time except for little Harry - he had picked up some sort of nasty virus the day before and so he slept most of the day! I did take a couple of photos of him when he was up so I've inserted that into the family photo (click on photo to get a better view).

The Whanau

Back left: stepbro, dad, brother, stepdad, stepbro, c-i-l
Middle left: s-i-l, stepmum, mum, Justine, s-i-l, s-i-l, cousin
Front left: niece, niece, niece, 2nd cousin, nephew (insert)
Missing: brother & stepbrother who both live in Australia

Party Time!

The Big 40! Justine in party mode. She's living & working in Macau (China) hence the red Cheongsam.

And this is me (& her father) wearing the same sort of dress many years ago, so many that I can't remember when! It was more of a Hawaiian theme that night.

I can't believe I gave birth to a blonde blue-eyed baby - and 40 years ago, I remember it like it was yesterday!

Last of the Zoo photos

My word grandma what big teeth you have!




Harry had a ball that day, I think his mother fed him a kilo of sugar for breakfast!!

Justine home for a quick visit

DD Justine lives & works in Macau so we haven't seen her for 15 months! She's here for a week for her 40th birthday celebrations, here's the first of I hope many photos.

From the left: SiL, StepMum, Justine, Dad, Mum, Harry, Brother.

I was going to take a whole lot of photos of the airport while I was there but we arrived after her plane landed and in all the excitement I forgot except for these two! This is Auckland's International Airport.

We went to Lauren & Becky's place for dinner, didn't stay long as it's a school night and Justine was dropping off!

After a 10 hr flight it looks like jet lag has set in!

Meeting Aunty Justine at the Airport

Scatterdaisies

Sorry ladies but I didn't get time to do last week's Scatterday and I won't this week either. My daughter is coming home from overseas tomorrow for a week to celebrate her 40th birthday so it's all go. Sigh - wouldn't it be great to be 40 again!

More Zoo photos....

Zoo Do!

We didn't hang around here very long, phew!

I've changed my mind now, I will say 'cheese' for Nana this time, but be quick Nana because I'll be gone before the camera focuses!