Links
We've got just one booking for the motorhome; I'm guessing that's because the price of fuel has been pretty crazy. Not sure when that will come back down again. But we've had the chance to fix a few issues and make use of it. Had a quiet weekend for our wedding anniversary, and spent the time exploring the beach and the birds on the wildlife reserve. Peaceful. Except that it happened to be the start of the Hauraki Rail Trail; no railway any more but a large number of motorbikes who periodically set off from the nearby café. The birds didn't seem to care!
Josh, Hannah, Margo and Henry spent the winter with us in their caravan, and set off a month ago to start a tour of Northland. It's been great having them with us; we've missed seeing Margo attempt to adapt the ladder to the treehouse so Henry can climb up. Good thing Henry never managed; it's currently just a platform with no concept of safety! Josh has taught us a lot about off grid living, and the off grid community. But he did need to plug in to our power when his diesel heater stopped working.
Rachael has started her first job. She'll be doing geothermal research for an energy company. It took a long time for them to make their decision, but it was probably helped by the fact that she showed up to the local geothermal society meeting on the day before her interview, and met her interviewers there!
And since she's now earning good money, she's left us her car. This is good, because Bronwyn's car has a head gasket leak again, and we were told it likely wasn't worth it trying to fix it. So we now have four cars and a motor home. Only room for three cars in the garage. At some point, I'd like to bring the Fordson Dexta round to our house; it's been a very useful workhorse and Allan doesn't use it. But we'll need room somewhere!
Work has been interesting; I've begun to use AI to do the programming, which has worked quite well so far, provided that you're very clear about what you want it to do, and you check what it's done afterwards. But the donkey work is now done in 15 minutes. So I'm finding myself wondering what I can do next! There must surely be a lot of businesses that have systems that they've wanted to automate, but have never done so because of the cost. Now that the cost is out of the way, we could see a boom in automation like the boom we had in websites, just after the dot com boom in internet services. Plus a lot of hard working admin people out of work. I'm not sure what will happen next; particularly if the AI companies try to recoup their enormous spending.
Hence I've also been doing more farm work. Repaired a couple of gates, persecuted some blackberry and mended 120 metres of fence wire. Don't think I quite got that up to Ross's standards, but it'll hold the sheep in for now. Nothing holds the cows in except 5kV, so I'll be tramping along the fence line next with a bucket of tools and staples to fix the electric wire.
Somebody complained that the sheep had dirty bottoms. So we had three welfare inspectors checking on the sheep, and then giving us one week to shear the muddy bits off. It's not the season for shearing, so we had to do it ourselves. They also pointed out one sheep that was limping. When I checked the next day, it wasn't limping. So I sent five emails with photos of all the sheep, and a video. Must have taken a while to download!
After around 100 years, we've decided that the sheep aren't worth the trouble. So we'll be selling them as soon as we can, and focussing on the cows. I've also been planting trees along the road, both for privacy for the caravan park, and so that the horsey people over the road that we suspect might have a thing about dirty bottoms, can focus on their horses' bottoms instead...
Bronwyn has been busy; largely looking after her mum who has become increasingly frail, forgetful and confused. Without Ross to keep her occupied she's often fallen asleep and woken up confused, or gone around trying to find him. We've taken it in turns to pop in and check on her, and we've got a home help getting her up each morning, but most of the burden has fallen on Bronwyn.
Emily the Japanese trombonist started playing The Acrobat at band during the break. She's got to do it at school shortly, so she was practising. It's a fun piece to play, and I ended up writing it out so I could play along. She's coped remarkably well in the band; she's used to reading bass clef, but we've taught her treble and bass clef. And she coped splendidly at the regional contest last week. Shame she has to leave before the Christmas concerts in December.
Our conductor Linda is also leaving; we had her farewell meal yesterday. One of the pieces at the contest was "The Irish Blessing" - "May the road rise up to meet you". I thought that was quite appropriate for Linda, who will be spending a year travelling around New Zealand, fundraising for a trip to Wales to study music. So I learnt the words, and sang it for her at the restaurant, and they brought in a cake (ok, fudge brownie) on a big board with ice cream and the words of the first line written on it. Hope my singing was up to the event!
Comments
Add Comment
Fill out the form below to add your own comments.