It could have been a goblin

#35 Cook through the Edmonds cookbook
'pon my word I haven't posted for a while. That's because nothing has been happening! However today I made a couple of things that I hadn't made before - Chocolate brownie and Chocolate cake. The brownie is tres chocolaty. The cake is for my sister to take on tour with her. Hopefully it's cooked. :)

#49 Read Montana fiction winners of the last 10 years
2001 The book of fame / Lloyd Jones
I have read this before but figured I should read it again. I do like Mr Jones' stuff.

#59 Join a writing club

I have joined Kiwi Writers an online writing group. I know that it's not the same as meeting up with people who can ask you what you're up to but I do better when I don't have to talk to people. *nervous grin* I've also signed up for NanoWrimo. If I hit the word target (50,000)then I will consider #6 Write a novel complete. Here's hoping!

Perhaps nothing is happening because I've got all the easy stuff out of the way? It's the tough stuff like #73 that I'm going to find particularly challenging.

Oh, and it's six months since I've started. Let's look at some stats...
28/101 COMPLETE
17/101 in progress
56/101 not started

Read me and release me

#47 Walk the isthmus
This is so worth doing. It took LoM and I 5.5 hours but would have taken less if we hadn't have stopped for jet planes and coffee and scones and to read memorials and take pics plus other detours along the way. Landmarks are surprisingly close together - for example, 20 mins (a few mins to take a pic of the Maidment theatre and a few more to pointedly not look at a couple film sets by the university (modern cars AND horses? WTF)) from the Domain to the Viaduct.

We started at lunchtime (had to see the Rugby World Cup final first) after a complicated "park your car and we'll pick you up then The Farrier will drop us off" maneuver. It goes from Beachcroft Ave park in Onehunga up through Jellicoe Park, Royal Oak, One Tree Hill Domain (Maungakiekie), down through Cornwall park along Pohutukawa Drive then Puriri Drive, through Melville Park, past the Auckland College of Education, up Mt Eden (Maungawhau) along past Auckland Grammer, across the motorway, through Outhwaite park, up and down through Auckland Domain, past the university then Albert park, through some little back streets, along Customs Street, past Britomart and the Ferry building to finally officially end by a souvenir shop at the Viaduct but unoffically end at O'Hagens pub for wedges and beer. Or it goes the other way, it depends on what you want to do. I decided that South to North and Suburb to City was the way to go. I think it was the right choice. (Onehunga was a bit grim in the cloudy half light when we started and would have been worse in the drizzle at the end. And there wasn't a pub, only a scungy old toilet block.)

#66 Attend some festival events - arts, literature, movies etc.

Second dance show for Tempo dance festival was Touch Compass 10 year anniversary show. Absolutely brilliant. I'd forgotten how innovative they can be. Fantastic use of wires to fly people over and around each other. A couple of funny films too. Plus the dancers actually look as if they are enjoying each other and the work. Favourite piece - Hephaestus and Ares - the disabled god of the forge interacts with his brother the god of war. Magical.

Where school children and tarantulas live

Doing this

#47 Walk the isthmus

tomorrow before the second dance show for

#66 Attend some festival events - arts, literature, movies etc.

Read another one of these

#70 Read the books I own but haven't read.


Bought the following things for this


#46 Assemble Civil Defence kit
4 litres of water (total 9 litres)
1 large can spaghetti
1 large can baked beans
1 can mince
1 pack uncle toby's rice pre-cooked
1 large can peaches
1 small can cat food

Hoping that the timing will work for a bus tour that will incorporate this

#81 Do a local wine tour

and this

#77 Walk around an outdoor sculpture park.

The weather is better, so, after a bike service, I'm hoping to do this

#85 Cycle to Bees Online from my place

although I guess I should do this

#98 Change a cycle flat in under 10 mins

first.

Just like a performing monkey

#69 Participate in Bookcrossing
I must say, it's very weird to leave a book wrapped in a plastic bag with a post-it on the front saying "FREE BOOK" at a bus stop and then walk past 30 mins later to not find it cause it's gone. There's a lot of rubbish on the BookCrossing site about abandoned books constituting litter. Obviously they don't feel that way cause dude, it's not about the destination, it's about the journey. I agree. I hope that the book wasn't just thrown in the bin and that whoever picked it up will read the instructions and register the book on the site.

I left another one at a cafe. I think the waitress might pick it up.

I can see how this might get addictive.


But only if whoever finds the book registers it found!

Mother Teresa or a baby eater

#46 Assemble Civil Defence kit
Dammit. If only this had been sorted. Okay, if only I had got it sorted. Our water was off today for a while and now it's back the hot water cylinder is running murky water. (I just used extra soap.)
Here's a list of things that I will need (in the hopes that this will speed up the process cause I'll have a shopping list.)

18 litres of water (Plus 3 that I already have and some more for cooking, etc. That's a huge pile of 1.5 l bottles.)
3 large cans spaghetti
3 large cans baked beans
3 cans mince (or something)
3 packs uncle toby's rice pre-cooked
3 large cans peaches
3 small cans cat food
1 jar coffee
1 tube milk
Anti-bacterial handwash

I think I'm struggling with the fact that we'll be at home so we'll just eat what we've got. Or not. As the case may be. Plus, some of the other things will be at home.

Torch
Radio
Blankets
First Aid kit
Toilet paper
Rubbish bags

I also want to do a van kit.
Blanket
Towel
3 litres water
2 square meals
Running shoes
Rain jacket (old cycling one, bright yellow but need to be stuck together with duct tape...which can then go into the at home kit.)
Socks
Sticky tape
Toothpaste + Toothbrushes
Anti-bacterial handwash

I used to have one in the van all the time. Extrememly useful when I'd forgotten my towel for swimming!

Gotta get thru this *

#49 Read Montana fiction winners of the last 10 years
2007 Mister Pip / Lloyd Jones

* song title

Nibbly

#51 Visit North Shore literary locations

Completed this morning. LoM came over to Devonport on the ferry. We wandered around the Stanley Bay and Devonport literary walks for about an hour and a half and then had a delicious breakfast at a cafe on Church St. Although we didn't know all of the literary personages it was interesting just walking around and looking at houses. A nice young gentleman helped us when we were a bit lost so that was nice too. The cafe was a real neighbourhood cafe. It was well patronised and every person who arrived after us seemed to know someone who was already there. About 5 dogs were attached to various people. They were well behaved and looked as if this occurance was a regular Saturday morning thang.

#7 Visit all Auckland Regional parks

After finishing at Devonport we drove up to Long Bay. And it is looong. It took a crazy amount of time to wander around the park. It took an even longer time to realise that the land I was looking at over the water was the Whangaparaoa Peninsula. Felt like a complete egg especially after taking a careful look and identifying bays and individual buildings. Stopped looking at the buildings on the way back to the car. See, the sun was out and the birds were singing but the mud was deep in places. So on the way back we came back along the beach.

The rocky, slippery, twisty, shelly, tricksy beach. I fell over a couple of times. My shiny white shoes are no longer so shiny. I am sunburnt. I almost had to claw my eyes out because of the nude sunbathers but luckily remembered to be distracted in time and babbled on about walking Shakespear Park. (At the end of the aforementioned Peninsula.)

One of the best ARCparks. Good parking, well patronised (lots of teens flexing) (not that I was interested in them!), good facilites for BBQ etc, nice beach. Highlight - it's close to suburbia but unlike some of the others, doesn't feel like it.

It's got the x-factor...

Karma used me to do its dirty work

#95 Buy some bonus bonds

Finally got this sorted. Had a nice chat with the bloke behind the counter. He said that he'd given up marathons because he'd managed to run the last few kms of one without realising he'd done it. I told him that sounded briliant but he wasn't having a bar of it.

#51 Visit North Shore literary locations

Meeting LoM at 7am tomorrow. Walking, having breakfast, maybe walking a bit more if the weather holds. It's nice round those parts.

Only famous for being famous

#46 Assemble Civil Defence kit
In a couple weeks it will be "Get thru" disaster coping week. I PROMISE I'll get to this one then. (Appropriate cause it's been bucketing down round here and I'm not sure that our hillside is going to continue to cope with it...) (Well, not really. A little self scaremongering never hurt anyone right?)

#95 Buy some bonus bonds
Payday tomorrow! Heres my chance to get this one done. Friday. Definitely Friday.

#51 Visit North Shore literary locations
Maybe this weekend.


I know it seems as though a lot is planned but I think it's a reaction against my slothfulness over the last few weeks. Since I sorted 86 and 87 it's felt like I haven't been working on anything. LoM is back and we'll be chivvying, erm, encouraging each other to get things done. It's interesting to see that the easy things that don't require much effort on my part are often put off because of the very fact that they are easy and shouldn't take too long.

I went to Bath from Bristol

#44 Go without Alcohol for a month and check results
I'm back drinking and it's brilliant.
Quite an eye-opening experience this. I thought it would be all positive - no hangovers or seediness; save money; better skin (no toxins to get rid of); ability to converse without slurring or rambling; no "OMG- I can't believe I said that" moments. However, there's a real social price to pay if you're a non-drinker. Perhaps if I was a regular abstainer I wouldn't have noticed it as no-one else really commented upon my non-drinking. For e.g. I was the only woman at a casual work meeting and the only one without a drink. Usually I'd have had a beer so it felt like my otherness was accentuated because I wasn't drinking. There were a couple of other dinner/social occasions were I would normally have had a drink that felt very weird without one or even offering one to others who were there. What will this mean for the future? Well, I'll be taking a page out of a colleagues book and drinking lower alcohol beverages (beer instead of spirits, watered wine) and recognising that a drink or two of a night isn't a huge health hazard. I'm glad I did it and to be honest, this was probably the best month as I had a lot of responsibilities at work so had to find other ways of relaxing.

#49 Read Montana fiction winners of the last 10 years
LoM has noticed that there aren't any reviews on these. That's because a) they aren't the types of books I'd usually read and b) I don't want to bag them out of ignorance. What I've noticed so far - authors surnames usually start with J or G; they like multiple narratives and multiple narrators; recurring themes are drugs, sex, murder, homosexuality, illness, detachment from regular society (not quite the 'man alone' but almost).

Did I mention I'm back drinking?