In Auckland

Hi Doctor Nick! Hi Everybody!

Hello all. I'm in Auckland now. It was a beautiful day and Lara and I spent almost the entire day shopping. It was really fun and we ate lots of yummy food. And I tried about 50 pairs of jeans and finallly bought some. I hate buying jeans. I decided I'm going to try and find a person in the world who is exactly the same size as me and then rob them and steal all their clothes. Then I wouldn't have to go through all the hassle of trying on clothes and getting fed up and everything. Although, don't get me wrong I do really love my new jeans, I'm very happy with them.

Ok well I'm going to go and make the most of the time I have here with Lara and Lisa now.

Bye bye,
Mindy

Snow Again!

Well that's the second time this year I have driven to work in the snow! That is pretty out of the ordinary... normally we get our one day of snow per year, and we've already had two! Unfortunately I'm not too excited about it as it means its going to be another mare of a day for Darren who only has outside work to do on the building site... and while snow is fun to play in I can imagine that it isn't so fun to work in on a hill site, or any site at all for that matter. :(

I hope everyone is warm and happy wherever you are.

:)
Mindy

Surprise!!!

I think it's an extremely talented person who is able to surprise themselves. And I'm not talking a "I did really well in that test/race/game I totally surprised myself" I'm talking proper surprise like "Surprise! I've got a paid for holiday in Auckland for you this weekend!" I think if you can surprise yourself in that way that's really special. And guess what... that's what I did! I opened my diary yesterday and flipped to Friday to write something in... and lo and behold it said "going to Auckland". And so I got a huge surprise. This was because months and months ago I booked a trip to Auckland when the fares were cheap and then totally forgot about it. So now I'm all excited because I've got a totally unexpected trip to Auckland, plus I paid for it ages ago! Luckily my wonderful friend Lara who I am going to visit is much more on the ball than me and she didn't forget so she is actually going to be in town this weekend!



This is a picture of a plane. Because that's how I'm going to get to Auckland, and I like to include wee pictures that are vaguely related to my story. Oh and a big sorry to Claire who I was going to go on a picnic with this weekend and now I have to cancel.

Very briefly my other news is I am now at 48 words per minute on Dvorak. I've started running again. And my car is quite sick... sometimes it just randomly won't start and it's unrelated to time of the day or weather conditions.

Ok have a great day!

Bye!
Mindy

Hello!

Hi to Auntie Anne if you're reading this :)

Busy Day

Well busy week really. We have a release going out of two systems on Monday and there's been a lot to get organised. What sucks is Darren has been having an incredibly busy time at work this week too, so we're both a bit washed out at the end of the day. Well should calm down soon. I actually don't mind it as the day goes by so much quicker.

So not much else going on at the moment. I tidied my room on Monday and it's stayed tidy all week. Darren is much tidier than me normally but I'm really showing him up this week. I think I'll try and keep my stuff tidy from now on... I think it's helping my mood which sounds silly but it's not.

Oh I had a really horrible dream last night!!! It was awful. Luckily Claire was there to look after me (in the dream that is) sometimes I feel more like Claire is my big sister (I'm 7 years older than her) and I guess that came through in the dream. Anyway the dream was about a snake. I was cleaning out my fish tank to get rid of the snails and I'd emptied almost all the water (which is something you never do in real life) and I found that there was this horrible snake in there. It was really gross - it's head looked like a cross between a cobra and the alien from Alien... the way it's mouth came out of it's head.

Anyway the point was there was this awful snake. And the dream went along the lines of me freaking out, then catching it in a bag, then it escaped then I caught it etc. Once I finally caught it I think I decided to sell it on trademe for $40. Which I think would be a bargain.

Don't have much planned for the weekend. The weather is supposed to be cold and wet so I think I'll spend a lot of time on the couch by the fire :)

Also if anyone out there likes reading blogs you should go and check out my friend Lindsey's: http://lindseyjojohnson.blogspot.com/ I love reading blogs even of people I don't know, coz after a while you get to know them!

Oh and Charmain has emailed me a couple of times and she made it to Italy safely :)

Have a great weekend everyone!

:)
Mindy

Just trying a thing

Hi! Just ignore this please :)

The Weather

Ok well now I don't need to train anymore the weather in Christchurch is beautiful. So everyone can thank me for that. It was my pleasure.


Anyway so sometime in May I finished watching Rome. But I can't talk about that too much as it's too sad. I was the saddest I've ever been watching anything... I was really deeply involved in the characters... perhaps because I'd watched each episode about 4 times before watching the final one. Needless to say I would definitely recommend it. But anyway after a significant and difficult mourning period Darren and I are back into Surface. And I'm really enjoying it... we're really at the nail-biter stage. For those of you who don't know Surface is basically about sea monsters... which sounds lame but it's not!


In other news it would be totally wrong of me not to say anything about the new Chili Peppers album. But there is too much to say so I'll just say it is a really awesome album... their best yet. They have just grown and developed so much and have so much talent... it's awesome.

Oh and in other other news I cooked my first corned beef on Monday and it was delicious. (I know I know, it's really not that hard). We had broccoli with it, carrots and roast potatoes, and of course white sauce. And today I haved corned beef sandwiches! Yum! Maybe I should become a chef. Or maybe not but it's funny how much I'm getting into cooking and baking now that I've left home, and I just had absolutely no interest when I was living at home and Mum would have loved me to help. Oh well.

:)
Mindy

Response

To be honest I was hoping for a more over whelming response to the re-birth of my blog... but then again I realise it may take awhile for me to earn the readers trust again after disappointing them so bitterly in the month of May.

So I now have bats in my ceiling! Not the cool black flying kind, but the warm pink insulating kind. I put them there. Darren helped. Ok so it was more like I helped Darren, but it still involved me climbing up a ladder and walking around in the dustiness that is our roof. It was fun, I felt like a builder. Although I realise nothing was actually built.

In other news I am still sick. But that's not very interesting.

Also in the uninteresting category is the fact that we got out a movie called the Void from the highly recommended section of our video shop and it was not very good at all. So now I don't trust United Video fendalton in their recommendations, but I will continue to shop there due to their excellent deals.

:)
Mindy

I did it!!!

I'm so proud of myself and I don't care if I shouldn't be because I think I should. I finished the half marathon and I ran the whole way (except for the drink stations as it's really hard to drink while you're still running). Up to last night I still wasn't sure if I was going to attempt it as my sinuses still were causing me grief... I couldn't even bike for 5 mins without my inhaler. But I didn't want to let Lara down and I'm so glad I did try. I ran with Lara up to 7km and we were going awesomely right on target for under 2 hours but then I had to do a reality check and I realised there was no way I would finish if I didn't slow down as my chest was really starting to hurt... so I said goodbye to Lara and slowed my pace and got my breathe back. Then it was just a case of convincing myself for the next 14km that I shouldn't just stop and go home and watch tv.

Anyway to cut a long story short I didn't stop and my parents surprised me by coming to cheer me on. So I ran the whole 21km!!! And now my feet really hurt. And also my hips. And my... actually that's about all that hurts.

So yay for me. I hope everyone else is having a good Queens birthday weekend!

Love from
Mindy

Oh ps I finished in 2 hours and about 15 minutes. Also Lara did brilliantly and did it in just over 2 hours!! I think 2 hours 2 minutes!!

Back!!!!!

Hey dudes,

I'm back!!!! With a vengence and a hunger for blood. Not really. But if I was an action star hero I would be.

So there's a reason I haven't posted in awhile. It's because I've been working so incredibly hard. Ha! Actually that is a little true, I have been working quite hard.

I've got so much to tell you all my little minions. But I might not get through all of it as I am working hard today too just having a short break. Incidentally the reason I'm writing right now is because Adam pointed out on his site that I hadn't updated for the entire month of May. This is a shocking effort as May is the most important month of the year (being both New Zealand music month and also my birthday). Now I'm not as big a New Zealand music supporter as I probably should be but I just realised I did actually buy some New Zealand music in May... Shihad - Love is the new hate. So good on me.

My birthday was fantastic thanks. I ran a 15km race to start the day off. I won. Just kidding... the person who won probably ran it in half the time I did. But I still did ok 1 hour 27 minutes. And in other running news the SBS marathon and half marathon is on this Sunday and I am running it - the half that is! That is 21km. Now this would be very difficult even in normal circumstances... but even worse for me as about three weeks ago I developed a cold which severely interrupted my training. So I did try and go for a few runs.... one every 3 days or so but they were terrible and hurt my chest. And I still hadn't recovered and also I have conjunctivitis and so went to the doctor yesterday and I actually have sinititus (apparently colds aren't supposed to last three weeks). The good news is I now have medicine and should be ok for Sunday but just a tiny bit undertrained.

My other piece of May news is that inspired by Kon I have learnt the dvorak keyboard (pictured above). I have had many tearing hair out moments, frustrated by my new inability to type, it almost felt like a piece of my brain was missing as I was a pretty fast typist before and to suddenly be slowed to 10 or less words per minute was horrible. The good news is I am now fluent and up to 40 words per minute which is still a little slow for my liking but I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. For the record I don't have a new physical keyboard I still have the same old one... so when I press the key that says d I actually get an e on the screen and when I press j I actually get a h and so on... so when I get frustrated with the touch typing I can't even look at the keyboard for help!

I hope everyone is happy and well.

:)
Mindy