Um hi there

I added a new link on that lovely sidebar to your right. Don't use it. Definitely do not click on it. I am sure you will regret it. Please heed my warning.

My weekend was fantastic, and so I just have one thing to say about that. I TOLD YOU SO! I told you it was going to be great and it was! The only bad thing was when I got a blister. But I got free cake. What is better than free cake? Not much.

The cake was in celebration of Christchurch city's 150th birthday and it was of the carrot variety, with pineapple and walnuts and such delicious creamy icing. I remember when I made a carrot cake, that was delicious too. I love cream cheese icing.

I also love mushrooms. I had a wonderful epiphany the other day that just because Darren doesn't like mushrooms doesn't mean I can't just cook them and not serve them to him. And just like that my life went from average-good to GREAT. Mushrooms are yummy. They are like little puffballs of flavour goodness. I cooked them with a bit of garlic, butter, bacon and a dash of milk and sour cream and it was almost the yummiest thing I've ever had. Yum! I now have only 5 left but you can bet your bottom dollar I'm eating them tonight. Maybe with a chicken pasta.

Oh I almost forgot the new road safely theme of this blog. Everyone, drive on the left. Unless you live in America in which case definitely do not drive on the left. Oh and if you are on a one-way street you can drive on either side, but I'd recommend the left, just in case someone else forgets it's a one way. Right well I'm glad I could clear that up for all of you.

Love from Mindy

ps Don't use the link. DON'T EVEN THINK ABOUT IT! PLEASE STAY AWAY FROM THAT LINK!

Road Rules

So I had the biggest victory of my life yesterday. Hmm well maybe not the biggest, the biggest might have been something a bit deeper like, well I can't think of anything so lets just assume this is the biggest. Thought, then it will make my life look very un-victorious. Oh well nevermind.

So here's the story. There is this dodgy T-intersection near work, where the lower part of the t has a 4m (at least) wide island in the middle of it. I have always wondered if the give way rules apply normally in this case. Here is an image of the normal give way rules where the dotted line means that car has to give way (I am the blue car):

Anyway I asked Earl at work and he said as the traffic island is so large and basically separates the one road into two one way roads he doesn't give way. I agreed with this policy and this is what I've been doing. Now a few days ago I did this and someone shook their fist at me. Because this is such a questionable intersection I thought it odd that someone would be so sure of themselves and the rule in this case that they actually got mad! Like if someone did what I didn't agree with I could see how that would happen and wouldn't get mad because it is a confusing intersection, but this person got mad. So then I decided to get to the bottom of this and started a poll. I asked Earl (again), Mum, Dad and Darren and we all agreed we didn't need to give way. Also if we did it would mean stopping at least 6m before you actually want to turn.

So then I got on the phone to the LTSA and they told me to ask my council, and so I rang the council and they told me to ask the LTSA, so I waited another day, rang the LTSA again and got a very helpful woman who really took her time to understand my question... and more importantly give me an answer! And guess what... I was right!!! The red car has to give way as the traffic island means it's not an uncontrolled intersection and the red car must give way. I made a picture of it to help you visualise. (Again the dotted line means that car has to give way).


So now I might ask the council to put a give way sign there so no one ever shakes there fist at me again!

Aren't I a geek?

In other news work is going ok, a bit slow at the moment. Things are going great at home, Darren hasn't been in Akaroa this week (yay!) , the fishie babies are good and my eye is still puffy and swollen.

I am going to have a great weekend. Hope you all do too!

Love
Mindy

2 New Babies!

Hi All,

I had a great time in the weekend. Over to Beth's with Jeremy, Charlotte and Jo on Friday night. Real nice time, ended up just talking till 2.30!

Then on Saturday we drove up to Hanmer as Mum and Dad had rented a house there. We went for a ride on those four person bikes which was fun. There were 7 of us so we got two and had races, even though the rules specifically banned doing so. But really what would have been the point otherwise!

Pools on Saturday night. They've grown a lot since the last time I was up there! Very nice and not so crowded, althought that might just have been because the rugby was on.

On Sunday we went round the back of Hanmer and found an awesome tobogganing slope so even though I hadn't bought any snow clothes that was tons and tons of fun.

Then when we got home we found two new baby guppies! Yay! They are in their wee isolation tank all safe from being eaten by other big nasty fishies.

Ok have a nice day everyone!

Love Mindy

Well...

I thought I should probably write a post this lunch hour. Since a lot has happened. To make it easier I'll just give you a bullet point list, also I like bullet point lists.

• My car finally died.
• I finally took my car to the fixer man (auto electrician) and he fixed it! And now it is all better!!!!
• My baby fishie called Frankie, is still doing great.
• I was sick at the beginning of last week and sicker at the beginning of this week, and I got real grumpy about it! I seem to be doing better now but still not running again yet.
• In combination with being sick my eyes and their red, itchy, flakyness got really bad, and on Monday and Tuesday I could hardly see the eyelids were so swollen (ok so I didn't say this would be a pleasant update).
• Today my eyes are finally starting to look normal again! But as I'm so excited I'll probably ruin it by putting makeup on them and making them worse again... but I miss wearing makeup! Weird eh?
• Oh also in combination with being sick I have some humungous mouth ulcers that make it hard to eat. (Ok no more gross body observations from now on).
• I bought a new dvd rom for my computer and installed it last night.
• Darren is now working on a job in Akaroa so he was away Monday and Tuesday nights and it's likely he'll be away a lot from now on, maybe even whole weeks. I got lonely but the house got clean.
  
• SCRUBS IS BACK ON TV!!!!!!!!!!!!
• My hair is no longer blonde. Or brown. It's kind of a purply-red. I suspect it will be a very dark brown by the end of the weekend.
• It is snowing and hailing today.
• I am selling Darren's games on trademe (it would be funny if this was without his permission, but it was his idea). Anyway we're putting the xbox ones on first and then we'll move to the pc ones. So if you like games check them out, there are tons more coming too I will add more tomorrow. There is a handy link to your left if you want to have a look at them.
  
• I have started making a teddy bear. He's going to be gorgeous!

Also I didn't want to put this on my list as it is not the same sort of thing as the other things but my best friend from primary school died last week. We lived next door to each other and spent almost everyday together from the ages of around 5 to 10. Then I went to a new school (she was a year behind me at school) and we sort of stopped being friends. So I haven't really seen her in 14 years. When I was at her funeral I sort of felt guilty about this but then not all friendships are supposed to last forever. Also we had such different life paths. But yeah it was very sad, and it was a lovely lovely funeral she obviously had lots of people who loved and admired her a lot. I saw my primary school principal which was nice. And Amy and Claire were there with us. It was weird seeing her parents too as obviously I'd spent a lot of time with them growing up.

Ok stay warm everyone!

Love
Mindy

Baby Update

Hi! Just a quick update. I went home at lunch time and checked on the baby and he/she is still doing well. Additionally I bought another 3 guppies (need to get the Mum pregnant again) and 3 neons as we've lost a couple in the last fortnight. They were on special, really cheap, got all those fish for $16! I've paid $12 for a single guppy before!

Here is a picture of guppy fry (that's what baby fish are called). My wee guy looks like this and is about 5mm long. Also I've found out that if it is a guy it won't get it's colours for awhile yet, so we'll wait and see. I'm hoping for a female though so she can have more babies.

New Family Member!!!!

Hi,

I know it's been awhile. And I'm sorry. But anyway I have some very exciting news. We have a new baby fishie!!! I looked in the tank last night and saw this tiny wee cutie swimming around!!! It's a guppy, not a colourful one unfortunately. But still!! It makes me feel a bit better too as fish tend to have babies only in favourable conditions and I've been a bit worried about the tank as so many fish have disappeared lately, and some have definitely died. But it must be ok if fish are reproducing! Now don't get too excited because unfortunately we don't have another tank so I can't take the baby out to raise it until it's big... this means the other fish might eat it, but I'm hoping it's a survivor!! It's survived all last night as it was still there this morning.

Other news, my parents have just been over to Australia (lucky things) and they bought me back some gorgeous perfume. Also a very cool bikini! Thanks Mum and Dad! We had Becky to stay with us (family dog) so that was fun. But she sneakily got on the bed a few times and made it a bit muddy. Also she whines like anything at tea time.

Oh Darren and I have been sick too which is yuck! But we're both a bit better now. But I have this horrible eye condition which cleared up for a bit but it's back (since getting sick) and my eyes are constantly stinging and itching. Poor me.

Also it's Darren and my 2.5 year anniversary today. Happy Anniversary hun!

:)
Mindy

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

Continuation

This might be a little more brief than the first half of the story. But I'm so busy today!!!

On Saturday Bridget and I headed into town and did a little shopping. Number 1 on the agenda was a birthday present for Claire as her birthday was Sunday. I decided to get her a nice photo album for her to put her photography photos in as she's studying photography at school this year. We met up with Sarah and did more shopping. Sarah bought these gorgeous boots and I was very jealous, but managed to stick to my budget and refrain. My budget did allow me to buy one gift for myself however, I chose a book on human physiology and anatomy. It was reducing for $140 to
$35! It also proved to be the stupidest thing to buy as it was so heavy and I then had to lug it around for the rest of that day. Bridget bought one too so she's just as stupid as me ;)

We then went for a walk past Te Papa to the beach and got gelato. Yum! We also almost got blown away at this point, so I guess it was lucky I had the book to weigh me down. Then Sarah went home and Bridget and had a flying visit to Te Papa. Then home, to take off our shoes and curse the huge books we'd bought. We had a delicious Hell's pizza for dinner before braving the cold and heading to Sarah's for a party. The party was great... I spoke to some lovely people. We didn't end up staying too late as wanted to save ourselves $40 and get the train back rather than a taxi.

And then Sunday we slept in. Yay! And there was a massive storm, and then blue skies after that so back to town for some kfc and then a coffee with Sarah. Then I popped on the bus and headed back to the airport and flew back to Christchurch.

The end.

Wellington!

Hello Loyal Readers!

Well I had a great weekend in Wellington. It is such a lovely city... I love visiting there. I don't know that I'd ever move there as I love having it on option as a place to visit ;) And also I love Christchurch so much and if I'm going to move away from my family then it would be further away like in another country. Maybe. Who knows. Anyway the point is I really like Wellington.

On Friday night Sarah and Bridget met me at the bus stop which I so intellligently managed to get off despite being on a bus route in a town I'd only visited once before and had really no idea where I was. Actually that's not true I had my little map and was following it counting the stops till I had to push the button. Turns out the airport bus driver was pretty clued up anyway (as you'd expect) and kindly told me when I should get off - even though I already knew thanks to my excellent navigational skills. But I thought it was kind of him anyway.

We then dropped my bags at a locker and proceeded to walk about a million miles to the other side of town where we had a lovely Indian meal at a restaurant that's name escapes me. Of particular note was the restaurant had these little devices with buttons at each table, and the buttons had labels like "ready to order", "need service", "ready to order drinks". We thought these were a brilliant idea, so we got right into the swing of things and they worked excellently... as soon as we pushed it the waiter was over! He was a cheerful fellow and Sarah was quite concerned that if we'd been too shy to push the button we would have been sitting there all night, but the waiter assured us that they still come and check your ready in the old fashioned way too.

We were all keen on a quiet early night in preparation for Sarah's flatmate's party on Saturday night, however it didn't turn out that quiet. We decided to gate-crash Bridget's work dinner/drinks that was being held at a nearby bar. Although it wasn't so much a gate-crashing as a "come come you have to join us, here have a drink, here have my seat" as Bridget turns out to work with lovely lovely people some of whom were quite drunk by the time we got there. Sarah did manage to head home at a respectable hour Bridget and I however got caught up in some interesting games with her two bosses husbands. Namely "think of a sexy person and we'll vote whether they are or not" which warped to "think of an Irish name and we'll vote whether it sucks or not" which warped to "think of an Arab name and we'll vote on it" etc. For quite sober me these games seemed a tiny bit pointless but hugely funny all the same!

Bridget and I then headed off to catch the train to her place and met this interesting bloke who wanted to discuss child raising and philosophy with Bridget. I was a bit tired to join in, and I thought he was a bit of an egg. Then we walked up Bridget's 210 steps to get to her house and went to bed!

I had better get going on some work now, so more of this story later.

The last thing I'll say for now it bloody steps!!@?>@#$#%&

:)
Mindy

Favourites

Hi,

Just thought I'd keep you up to date with what my favourite things are at the moment. Unfortunately because of the medium I'm choosing to communicate with you all I can't break out into sound of music style song, but that might just be for the best.

- Licourice
- The TV series Rome
- My fire
- Mashed potatoes
- Dani California
- Going to bed early
- Getting letters
- Just Juice Bubbles
- Marshmellow easter eggs
- Rainy days

That is all.

Went to the movies last night with Fenia, and also Klava and Gary but they saw a different movie. Klava has gotten so much more pregnant than she was when i last saw her three weeks ago, it's incredible, but she looks so good!

Don't have any other news.

Bye!

Mindy

Time for an Update

Hello!

I thought it was about time for an update. Although it will be a short one as I really want to start work.

My life has been average to good at the moment. I've got back into my running training this week... ie I've been for a run the past two days. So I feel pretty good about that, running was actually starting to be really uncomfortable prior to this I think a few weeks with only one run per week didn't do me any good. But I'm back on the wagon now.

Oh important news is I'm selling a fish tank for Darren's Mum. So if you want to buy it or check it out at least go to the convenient link on the right that says something like "buy my stuff". On a personal note I can highly recommend keeping tropical fish. They are almost as exciting as the TV to watch and a lot more rewarding. Plus after the initial expense up they are incredibly cheap to keep, must cheaper than most other pets I'd warrant.

Other news. Um. i'm heading to Wellington this weekend to visit with my good friends Sarah and Bridget. I'm so looking forward to that!

Also there are some exciting diggers and dirt shifting vehicles building a new carpark at work so they are quite exciting to watch.

That is all.

Love
Little Miss M