Hello!

Sorry I haven't updated much.

But this isn't an update either. Sorry. I will get there, just maybe not till tomorrow or the next day :)

African IPod

Hi All,

I was sent this photo as one fo those joke email things. But I've decided I actually think it's pretty cool and not really funny at all. Well it made me think for about 5 minutes and I like things that make me think.

:)

Mindy

Happiness

I feel I am quite a happy person, well I'm extremely happy with my life anyway. And now I've found out why. They did a scientific study in Britain (for a television documentary) investigating the factors that made people happy. They came up with ten guidelines. The cool thing is I already do all of them, although some not as frequently as suggested. So I figure this is why I'm happy, and also if I do them more frequently I'll be happier! So that's great. The one I relate to most strongly is the first one, as I love my plants! I'm absolutely addicted to them. I find it hard to go to the supermarket now without buying one of the "wee cuties" range they have of small indoor plants. I've now bought 4 (2 gifts and 2 for me). So everyone should go and buy a plant and put it in a nice pot and put it on their desk. I also like growing things from seed. I'm having a second go at cacti, last time I think it was too cold but I'm hopeful this time!

Anyway without further ado I will share the secret of how to be as happy as me!

1. Plant something and nurture it.
2. Count your blessings .. at least five ..at the end of each day.
3. Take time to talk .. have an hour long conversation with a loved on each week.
4. Phone a friend who you have not spoken to for a while and arrange to meet up.
5. Give yourself a treat every day and take the time to enjoy it.
6. Have a good laugh at least once a day.
7. Get physical ..exercise for half an hour three times a week.
8. Smile at or say hello to a stranger at least once a day.
9. Cut your tv viewing by half.
10. Spread some kindness .. do a good turn for someone every day.

:)
Mindy

As You Wish Nick

Hello!

Well I just had a lovely 4 day weekend. Back at work today with a terrible cold. Go figure.

Anyway my weekend was lovely (as mentioned in the previous line). I went plant shopping on Friday and bought some strawberry plants and a Chatham Island forget-me-not for myself. And additionally I bought a fly trap for Darren. It is such a cool wee plant. On Friday night Darren fed it three flies he caught, it takes a few days to digest them, so we're expecting it to open up again any day now.

I also bought an aquarium in the weekend. There are two reasons for this:

1) I have wanted one ever since I was 10.
2) It was reduced from $109 -> $79.95 -> $50 at Mitre 10 so I took that as a sign.

It's just a wee one to start with (13.2 litres), and when I move into my new place I'm going to set it up and buy fish for it then. I can't really set it up at this flat as in my room the pump is a bit too noisey for me to sleep with. Well actually the pump is silent but the bubbles are noisey. But when I move I'll be able to set it up in the living room.

What other news? None really. My Auntie has just bought the house next door to Mum and Dad's but she won't live there for a couple of years.

John Cleese last night was interesting. It was really quite a personal type show, just him telling stories from his life, and his last trip to NZ. His daughter was involved in it, I couldn't believe she was only Amy's age!

:-)
M

Show?

So who is going to the show? For those not in Chch it's the A&P show tomorrow (yay!) for those in America this is similar (much smaller scale tho) to a state fair.

:)

Not Broken

Hello everyone,

My blog is not broken. Adam didn't break it. Despite vicious rumours started by a 6 foot 5 monster with a he.... oh actually lets not get into that.

I've lost my blogging motivation. Or maybe I'm more motivated to get straight to work when I sit down at the computer each morning. But don't worry my loves, I won't close the blog down, but might make it a weekly thing rather than daily. Or something like that, but I'll try and find a regular pattern so you all know what to expect.

Love from
Little Miss Mindy

Photos

I wrote a really long description of my trip for here yesterday but something went wrong and it got deleted. So I was grumpy and didn't publish anything.

Anyway my trip was good. While I was in Doncaster I didn't really do anything but working and also reading my book for about 10 minutes before going to sleep. I did however make it down to London for the weekend which was really fun. The things I saw/did are as follows:

• The Tower of London
• Leicester Square to buy cheap show tickets for a show.
• Trafalgar Square to watch the pigeons.
• The National Portrait Gallery.
• Convent Garden (which has a nice market and some cool wee shops!)
• Camden Markets which was awesome!
• "High Society" a musical which was enjoyable but nothing to rave about.
• St Pauls Cathedral
• The Globe
• Shopping on New Oxford St

Here are some pictures.

This is a photo I took at Doncaster Station. The trainspotters must have thought I was crazy - I was there with a camera but not taking photos of trains. Anyway I like train stations I've decided, they reminded me of Virginia Woofle in "The Hours".

Me and a Yeoman Warden. For some reason we're both looking in different directions. Weird! This is at the Tower of London.

This is me at Trafalgar Sq. A lot of people don't believe this, they say I photoshopped myself on, but you can see the droplets of water from the fountain on my hair!

This is... me! With St Paul's Cathedral in the background. The white splodge is scaffolding on St Pauls.

Inside of the globe. Everybody say oooh.

:-)
M

Back!

Hello Everyone!

I'm back! Well actually I got back on Saturday but that's neither here nor there. I'm not back at work yet, just unpacking and the like.

I had a very busy very tiring time! Almost a brain overload but I managed to escape with my brain in tact. I was practically working the whole time except for the weekend (last weekend) in between my two weeks. In that weekend i went down to London which was great! I loved it, I fit in quite a lot.

I guess I'll write in more detail tomorrow, and probably post some pics.

Hope you have all been good. I haven't really heard from a lot of you the whole time I was away - maybe you've all been as busy as I was!

:-)
Mindy

The one Photo...

This is the one photo Kirsty is going to let me publish. It was such a great night!

Hello

Friday night was awesome. We took some pics on Kirsty's work camera so if she passes any on to me I might post them up here.

In other news I am feeling really sick. It's awful!

And very bad timing too... I'm going to the UK on Sunday!

Anyway got a lot of work to do.

Adios!

Mindy

New Zealand Shops

I've noticed something the other day. I was watching TV and an ad came on for The Family Guy or something like that and they mentioned Bed Bath & Beyond (a shop that has recently opened in Chch in one or maybe two locations). Now it never occurred to me that this was actually an American or multinational chain of shops until I saw this ad. In Christchurch up until maybe the last 5 years as far as I know all the shops have been New Zealand shops, or at least Australian. Of course the fast food chains were an exception, but we never even had Starbucks here back 5 years ago!

I think it's really sad. I know there are probably some shops that I just haven't realised weren't New Zealand owned and operated but in general I feel we got by without having American chains here. Now we have Borders in Christchurch which I suppose is a cool shop, but we didn't need it. We always had Whitcoulls that you could go for for normal books, or there are a few places in town like Scorpio books where you could get rarer ones, and order things in. Clothing wise I personally thought it was great that we didn't have American or international shops. It made it exciting and special when you went overseas and bought stuff, but at the same time the stuff you could already buy here was great anyway. We had enough choice and options etc. Now we've got things like Levi shops opening and stuff like that.

I know this isn't a big issue and I'm not depressed about it or anything, I just think it is a wee bit sad.

:-) M

Answers

1. Is it true what they say about women and detachable shower heads? (BHN)

Well Nick I've never had a shower with a detachable shower head before so I can't actually speak from personal experience here. And also I've never discussed this with any of my women friends but to take a wild guess, I'd say yes.

Fire Engine!

Here's a picture of the fire engine, back at the scene of the fire a good 12 hours after the were first called! You can see on the very left some of the huge pile of magazines that were surrounding their garage that the firemen had to pull out of the garage. How boring and young am I that a fire engine excites me. Oh well.

That is all for today. Sorry!

Midday Update

Good Afternoon!

Firstly sorry to hear about your lip Adam (apparently he bit it)... hope your day doesn't fall into too much disarray!

Secondly does someone please want to run my life for me. It's too hard. I need someone to make decisions for me. Or at least I make the decisions based on what I want, and they can work out how to jusitfy them. Sigh. I'm very tired!

Thirdly you should all see the movie Gloomy Sunday. Many Christchurchtonians will have done this already (it's been running at the Arts Centre Theatre since 2001!) but if you haven't definitely go! Although remember to book first. I've decided it's been a couple of years since the last time I saw it so I'm going to go again next week. They show it in this really cute theatre with only 11 seats. It is such a good movie, it makes me cry so much!

Fourthly if anyone has the soundtrack for that movie Amy and I are desperately trying to track it down. Because it's very expensive to buy (like $79!).

Fifthly Love from
Minds

Well

Turns out the garage across the road was jam-packed full of magazines! Thus the awesome flames. Now their driveway is full of magazines although most are burnt and somewhat damp. The fire engine had to come back twice during the day, I guess some were still smouldering or something!

And it was Amy's birthday on Saturday, and I think she had a good time and liked her presents. I thought she got lots of cool presents myself. So I guess now I can reveal that I've been making a quilt for her, that has been very time consuming. But now it's on her bed and she likes it and it was all worth it!

Don't really have much else to say today. Have a nice day everyone!

:-) M

Bad Week

This is most certainly going to be a terrible week.

I wrote possibly the longest post I had ever written here when i got to work, and then for absolultely no reason my computer reboots and I lost it! Does anyone know of any viruses going round at the moment that do that? Anyway.

What I had said was I am incredibly tired. Then I went into great detail about how I awoke last night at 3am to a crackling sound. Thinking it was a very odd time for a bonfire I looked out my window and the house across the road was going up in flames! It was a very surreal sight.

Anyway I described all in great detail but to summarise now. It luckily was only the garage and a car parked next to it that were alight (or so I believe). I also believe no one was injured. And it takes a very long time for the fire fighters to do their job. Infact I didn't get back to sleep properly at all as they leave the fire engines going the whole time, and they have noisey engines and the lights flashing, all this right outside my bedroom window.

I hope that the people who lived in that house didn't lose too much precious stuff.

Love from
Little Miss Mindy

Oops!

I really should change my profile image, as that picture, believe it or not, is actually of David Hasselhoff and not of me at all. Sorry David! I don't condone people trying to make others believe they are in someway affiliated with the Hoff when they are not. You know who you are ;-)

Don't have much to write. It's Amy's birthday tomorrow! The big 21! Happy Birthday for tomorrow Amy! And today marks the end of my week long stay back at home keeping Amy company. It's been a good week, we didn't really even argue at all which is not like us. Apart from me refusing to answer her questions. Also she didn't ask me any this morning!! Well done Ame!

Have a great weekend everybody!

Love from
Little Miss Mindy

Workmates

Lara requested me to do little intros on the people I work with. Oh first for those who don't know I work at Jade Software Corporation as a programmer, my official title is "Jade Scholar" which just means I'm only just out of uni and don't get paid very much. But I love my job so much! I actually do quite a mixture of programming and admin work (eg tracking bugs etc) and liasoning with the customer. My team makes software for a frieght company in Britian, when I started we had quite a small team (I was the fifth person) but now we're up to 8 which I guess is still small really. I have been working here since I finished my honours degree in Computer Science last year (quite literally, my first day of work was the day after I handed in my project), however I did get a week long holiday after the first couple of days.

I really don't work with many people so I thought I'd do them all at once! In order of who I have most contact with:

Earl: Earl is another Canterbury graduate, he started a few months after me, and lives in the office next door to mine. My job changed dramatically once he started as I had someone nice to talk to! We always go and ask each other first when we get stuck on something, and also if we're really bored. Earl is from a farm near Nelson somewhere well that's where his Mum lives, and I don't know much more about him and he's good to talk to about movies etc.

Colin: Is my manager. He's really nice. I don't know how old he is, Earl's the only one who I have any idea about really. Colin is going to England with me, and he's from England orignally. He's extremely atheletic, apparently a very good runner, and he lives in Rangiora and occasionally bikes in from there. Colin has a very cute family, a wife and two set of twin girls! Very blonde ones!

Pieter: Is new to my team but old to Jade. He's in the office of the other side of me. Again I have no idea how old he is, they're all about 35-50 I think. Except Shiree, I know she's in her very early 30s as she had a birthday shout. Anyway Pieter is also very nice and is also a great runner. I should try and get some running tips from them!

Graeme: Graeme and I were the only ones on this floor in our team for awhile, so when I started he was the lucky one who was continually harrassed by me trying to learn jade, but he was very helpful. He's a great programmer and always has good advice. Graeme has a very cute new baby girl, and he's really into sports, the ones I know of are mountain biking, paddling (not sure if it's canoes or kayaks) and extreme skiing. Oh Graeme is also quite funny and has a great laugh!

Shiree: Shiree is another girl! Yay! Shiree is lovely, and very helpful. She's also sporty... it seems everyone in our team is! I think she plays netball, I remember her limping around on a sprained ankle due to a netball injury sometime ago.

Simon: Is downstairs with Shiree, Colin and Victor. Simon also loves Stargate (!!!) and he's shared the whole first season of Stargate Atlantis with me. Simon is very clever (in my opinion) and he has a new(ish) wife and their wedding photos looked beautiful! Also I find Simon hilarious! He's always making funny jokes in our meetings and cracking us all up!

Victor: Victor has been on our team for awhile, but working on a different project to me so I haven't worked with him too much. But he is very nice.

There you go Lara!

Love from
Little Miss Mindy

Amy

Well, I have sad news. In the last, say 12 hours I've found out my beloved little sister Amy has a problem. I'm surprised I've never noticed this before! But, despite being practically a genius and winning all kinds of scholarships and what not, and almost having completed an honours degree in Economics, Amy, bless her wee soul, cannot think for herself. Honestly that girl must have asked me 50+ questions since I got home from work yesterday!

I started noticing it while we were making earrings last night. Now you all know me, I'm not actually a jeweller by trade, and I haven't even made more than one pair of earring before. However, despite the fact that Amy has a head on her shoulders at least as good as mine she ran everything past me before doing it, and asked me how to do everything! I don't know! I just make it up as I go along! It's not rocket science!

This morning I reached my breaking point, I know it didn't take long. And when she asked me whether or not she should put her earrings on before biking to uni, or once she got to uni, or during the day at uni I snapped. I am now not answering any of her questions. Sorry Ame, you're a smart girl, you can figure these things out for yourself! Love you though...

Love from
Little Miss Mindy

Cake

This is the cake Andrew and I made Kirsty for her birthday. Isn't it wonderful?

Anyway Kirsty's birthday was fun. We went to Cobb & Co and got kiddies cocktails and Cobb Crunchies.

On Saturday I got sunburnt! Yeah I know! Suburnt! Anyway then I started feeling sick, I've been sniffly for days but I started feeling really rotten so we didn't make it to Rach and Greg's house warming which was sad. Darren has been really sick for awhile, but on Saturday night and Sunday was the sickest I've seen him. But the silly boy said he wasn't going to take today off work because he felt he'd already had enough days off. I don't think he has actually because his year started May and he hasn't had that many since May. But anyway I hope he did take a day off because he really needs it.

Also I'm back staying at home while Mum and Dad and Claire are away to keep Amy company. This is great because I can have a heater on just before I go to sleep :-) Plus it's nice to see Amy lots.

Love from

Little Miss Mindy