Category: The Life of Lara

We had a fabulous time last night at Mandy’s place, a big thank you to both the birthday girls for allowing us to celebrate with them.

The best party I’ve been to in quite some time, and the best welcome home I could have imagined.

There was cake.

The best gluten free cake.

There were party poppers.

And there was one of the birthday girls, looking divine.

A perfect knitterly gathering.

I took a pass on work this morning, and took Jussi’s advice – got the ferry to Davenport (or is it Devonport?  Sorry) and wandered up the hill to the yarn store.  THe bloody quilting shop is mentioned in the brochure, but the wool shop isn’t.

Lovely proprietor, actually told me that she has active plans to expand her ethical yarn choices, and educate her customers about where the yarns come from, and who suffers to produce them.  Had a quick chat about mulesing, and I thoroughly regret that this lovely shop is so far from home.  But I’ll be back.

Particularly when there is a bookshop down the hill selling Alice Starmore Books.  Yup – a book I have seen on eBay and Amazon (when you can get it) for over $200 US, found in NZ for about $100 Aus.  Don’t bother hurrying to get there, I bought it.

Wandered up the hill from the ferry to a shop I had wanted to check out, only to find that it was a clothing shop, not a Korean stationery shop like I had expected.  And it was full of fur.  Bleugh.

Found a Japanese 100 Yen shop and found some wonderful stuff, then got lost in Borders for an hour.  Didn’t buy anything, but was tempted by Dominitrix.  A pretty ordinary sushi lunch, then a $70 cab ride back to the hotel, then on to the airport.

Sat between a cheerful kiwi and an intense yank on the flight home.  Thank got they were both slim.  NZ is more than its fair proportion of people you don’t want to get sandwiched between on a plane – except the yank had obviously just come from India, and was practising his tantric breathing.  It well put me off my alpaca granny square.

Mark eventually found me at the airport and took me to a new (to us) South Indian restaurant at Harris Park.  Bloody good Masala Dosa, superb Aloo Kulcha, but pretty ordinary Dahl.  Very cheap though.  A bottle of Pikes Polish Hill Riesling contributed to a perfect welcome home.

Custard is still ignoring me, but perfect apart from that.

To bed now, it’s after 11 by my body clock….

Is about how far I feel like I have walked in the past few days. Medical conventions are scary.

Here is some light relief.

Day 4 doesn’t bear much of a mention except that I had a very promising start to a business negotiation, and managed to avoid go to the ice bar with the American masters.

Day three was pretty ordinary until 7.10pm, when the lovely Jussi and he glorious daughter whisked me away from the thoracic society for dinner in the real world.

It’s about to be 11pm, and I have an early start, so I can’t do justice to my visit here. Suffice it to say that that Jussi is even more wonderful than everybody says she is (and everybody loves her), her home is lovely, her children are spunky (in a good way), her husband is charming (and a whizz with the barbie), and her cats are divine.

I had a perfect evening, and my sanity was restored (as much as could be hoped). Thank you from the bottom of my heart Justine.

And let’s not even mention the book and the hand dyed baby alpaca. Pictures cannot do it justice in the time fram allowed, but a photographic tribute to the gifts of Jussi and Kate coming ASAP.

One more day of medical insanity, some packing up, maybe a visit to some NZ customers, and back home on wed night. I miss my bunnies. And my husband, of course 😉

We saw sheep as the plane came in to land!

Straight from the airport to the convention centre. Spent all afternoon setting up the booth, did a frantic search around for something I could eat, and settled on a spinach and fetta quiche. Cold. In a brown paper bag, eaten while racing back to the hall.

There was a cocktail reception under the sky tower, where I had a pain killer with a lovely glass of NZ Bubbly, and then a glass or two of red. I was shattered. The pain in my back and shoulder was pretty bad after such a long day, and I was really looking forward to a nice meal, and a comfy bed.

Alas, it was not to be. We met up with the rep from one of the companies whose products we sell – at 10pm, after dropping our bags at our hotel. The hotel is a bit crappy, but that is a story for another day. Splashed some water on my face, then off to the posh city hotel. At this point I was starving, and really tired (having had less than 4 hours sleep the night before). I wasn’t allowed to order water, so I had a cocktail, snaffled all the available bar food that didn’t have corpse in it, and tried not to let my hunger and tiredness let me get out of sorts.

Eventually, I asked the bartender for a banana, and begged to go home. Caught a cab back to the hotel, did a bit of unpacking, and hurled my sorry carcass into bed.

Meet Neville. I wired him up myself. Impressed?