I'll try to stay awake as long as I can

I'm sure everyone has been anxiously awaiting an update on how I'm doing in the YMCA competition. I'm still in the lead!! Sooo stoked. Minus the fact that I am unbelievably sick of the gym. I can hardly bear to be there for an hour, much less my usual 2 hours (5x/week). Its brutal. Katie made me an awesome workout which helps me to stay a bit motivated. I'm halfway done, just 14 more days to go!
I forget exactly what I wrote about last week, so I will just begin my ramblings as per ushe. Friday after going to the gym I went and saw Boy (a kiwi flick about a little Maori boy) with Mama T (workmate) and her son and neighbours kids. I picked up some Candy from Pac n Save and ran into Katie and Adam. I swear I see Katie every time I am buying crap food! Flippeeen Boy is a sad movie. I cried a little bit. Also, was pretty funny as it was set in the 80s. Some people thought I might not understand the kiwi humour. However, I think the 80s were just a hilarious time all over the world.
Saturday I worked out, skyped the whole world and then spent ages cleaning the bathroom and kitchen and doing laundry because it was a sunny day! Honestly, when its sunny you would never know its winter. It gets warm and feels like Ottawa Spring (you know when its warm enough to wear sandals, a tee and shorts just because you remember how cold the winter was). I went to church for Impact, a youth conference that night. The band was fantastic, so cohesive and just awesome sound. Unfortunately, the speaker was rough. I had heard him speak before and loved it, but he dumbed the message waaay down and just did like 1000 alter calls, so after 3 hours I just peaced out. Couldn't handle it anymore. I went home and ate rocky road chocolate and watched the Mentalist, my current favourite show because J & K's friends lent them Season 1. Its such a good show. All about this guy who used to be a psychic, but after his family was brutally murdered he decided he wasn't a psychic at all and joined the police to help them track down killers using his mental prowess and his keen ability to read people's body language to solve crimes. LOVE IT.
But I couldn't fall asleep because J & K were away for the weekend and I was afraid of being murdered.
I worked out Sunday morning and then took a day trip with Mike to Wairarapa. It was pouring rain in Upper Hutt (shocking!) but was only 50% chance over the hill, so we chanced it. Got lunch supplies at Pac n Save and drove to Masterton. Stopped along the way at a number of tramps so I could find them on my own next time I want to go for a walk, since I have now done Canon Point over 1,000,000 times. No exaggeration. Masterton is an insanely small town, really old school buildings, and its famous for its wineries. Some fab Pinot Noirs come out of there, I am told. Stopped at Cabbage Tree Winery to try a few wines. I tasted a Pinot Noir followed by a Semillon. Big mistake, supposedly, you are meant to have the white first. But, I am not a wine snob and I prefer reds so I had red first. The owner showed us his wine making set-up, I think winter is really slow for them. I spotted a Book sale in the town hall, so of course I bought a few books. Including a little kids book for Daph!


Moving on, drove to the coast, stopping a couple of times for photo ops. My. camera. sucks.

Final destination was Cape Palliser Lighthouse which I have wanted to see for ages. There were exactly 248 steps to the top. Made a bet on how many steps there were. I guessed 275 and Mike guessed 200. I win! The view from the top was absolutely stunning. We ate lunch, salami sandwiches with avocado, brie, hummus and chips ?!?! People here eat 'chippy' sandwiches. I was apprehensive, but when in Rome! Can't say it was very good, The crunchiness was a bit unnerving. Will probably never do it again, but it was an interesting cultural experience. There were 2 kiwis up the top of the lighthouse and I got to talking with them, they were SO friendly. When I said goodbye the girl just gave me the hugest hug. As a Jackson, I am not too big on the physical contact so my first thought was that this chick was on drugs, but I'm sure she was just friendly...

View from Cape Palliser Lightouse

There was a seal colony down by the sea, Mike got a bit too close and one of the seals started flipping out (do you see what I did there? Seals don't have arms they kind of have flippers...). It was growling and bearing its teeth. Got some pictures of it on Facebook if you are into that.


The pinnacles were just down the road, but it was about 1 hour until it got dark and the walk was estimated to take 1-2 hours, so it would be tight, but we walked it anyway. My pictures are complete rubbish and do not do the pinnacles justice, so you'll have to take my word for it that they were really impressive. Parts of Lord of the Rings were filmed there. That doesn't mean much to me anymore as every single place in New Zealand says part of the movies were filmed there.
Pinnacles

Got back to the car as the sun was setting and drove back to Upper Hutt where it had been raining all day! Luckily it was great weather in Wairarapa region. Caught up with J & K and had a flatmate night of watching the Mentalist and eating raspberry slice. Yum.
Work on Monday was brutal, its slow so there was nothing for me to do. I basically sat on my desk all day and distracted my workmates. I forgot my lunch and hadn't had breakfast because I went to the gym before work. Luckily I had a liquid breakfast and 2 granola bars in my car. I went to Kathmandu (an expensive version of MEC; I know what your thinking, MEC is already expensive! but this is even MORE expensive) because there was a 60% off sale, so I wanted to get some thermals and a fleece. Sadly, it was still too much for me. A crap fleece with no zipper was 50$! Heck to the no. My car stalled 3 times in the parking lot, and its not even standard! Soooo annoying. I was late getting back to work, by about half an hour, luckily no one cares.
Last night I went to Jade and Tracey's after work. Tracey made an amazing dinner of Lamb with mint yogurt sauce on pita with a side salad. For dessert we had mini meringues with cream and berries. It does not get any better than that! Jade and I watched Shortland Street which is a soap opera filmed in Auckland. Complete rubbish and totally addictive. Worst acting ever!
Today work was better, went for a walk at lunch along the Hutt River which reminded me so much of internship last summer when I ran along the Ottawa River at lunch time.
Got an email from Dad today, apparently the parents are having heaps of fun driving across the country to the NWT. Crazy.
I'm giving my 2 weeks notice to my boss tomorrow, I'm excited! South Island trip starts July 8th I booked the ferry tonight. Only 200$! Oh wow.
LOVE!

That would be the best therapy for me

My Car
Lemon meringue Roulade
Cheese plate
Twin Cars!






Another good weekend. I entered a competition last week at the YMCA, called the Tour de France. Basically, the first person to work out for 28 hours (max 1 hour per day) wins. For most of last week I had no idea what the prize was, I just wanted to win. But I have since found out the prize is a towel, water bottle, 1 month free membership and movie tickets for each section winner (senior, adult and student) and for the overall winner there is a bottle of champagne and a dinner for two at a restaurant (to be determined). Clearly, as a single lady, these prizes aren't all that exciting... However, as a competitive person, I still really, really want to win. So I am going to work out for 28 days in a row. Katie has made up an awesome work out plan for me to do every second day. So far I have worked out 7 days in a row and am in the lead by an hour or so. Up until today I have been sketchily peeking through the binder to see who my competition is, but every time I do this a staff person asks me what I'm doing, because we aren't supposed to look through the binder (because I guess some ppl might cheat and add more hours). So I have to make up some dumb excuse as to why I was peeking through it. Thankfully, as of today they have a map of the actual Tour de France on the wall with all the competitors and their places in the race.
Friday night I went to Mike's for dinner and since he has traveled the North and South Islands (as well as a ridiculous amount of other places) he helped me plan part of my trip. Which starts in just a few weeks!!! I'm so excited.
Saturday morning I went to the Upper Hutt farmer's market, and it was absolute rubbish. More expensive fruit and vegetables than the grocery stores!! Saturday night I went to Strawberry fare with Michelle and her housemate Meaghan (pronounced Mee-gan). I accidentally called her Meaghan every time. We shared an awesome cheese plate, it had camembert, smoked gouda, blue cheese, old cheddar, grapes with seeds (yuck), pear slices, some weird fruit that looked like tomato and tasted like nothing... For dessert I had lemon meringue roulade (lemon curd filling with meringue and toasted coconut on the outside) with a scoop of honey hokey pokey ice cream. Awesome. A bit too sweet for my liking but I managed to eat the whole thing!
The rugby game was on, Ireland vs Allblacks. We watched it at Four Kings, a sports bar owned and operated by 4 former rugby players. It was a good game, All blacks won by almost 40 points.
Watched Step Up 2 at Michelle's after the game. Its a super cheesy movie, but sweet as dance moves. I was jealous.
On the drive home from Wadestown I was breathalyzed. This time by a lovely cop who explained what he was doing. However, the contraption was different and I just blew on the machine (like the last time) and the copper politely told me that in fact I had to put my mouth on the mouthpiece and blow into that. I balked and asked him if it was a fresh one. He said it was, but I was still mildly disgusted. Anyway, I passed and he let me go home.
Sunday morning I slept in until 945am! I am awesome at sleeping in these days. I think its because the house is so bloody cold and my bed is comfy and warm. I went to the gym and then for a walk up canon point and down to the dam without falling into the creek or getting lost. YES! It started to pour part way through the walk and my sweater STILL isn't dry. That's how damp it is in this flippin country. Sunday night I went to church and after we went to Tracey and Jade's house for pikelets with the rest of the young adults group. Pikelets are basically tiny pancakes, but don't tell any kiwi that because they will argue that pikelets are totally different, when in fact they look like pancakes and taste like pancakes. But you put cream and jam on them. They are delish. But I will keep believing they are just little pancakes. We spent the evening figuring out each other's weird party tricks. One girl could talk with her mouth closed, Kirsten could do the wave with her stomach and make it gurgle at the same time. Warick could look in different directions with his eyes. Cherie could wiggle her ears separately and pop out her shoulder. I could do the wave with my eyebrows and flare my nostrils (which I thought everyone could do...) A few ppl had flexible thumbs, and on and on. Very humorous evening.
Monday morning I woke up on time and ran out to my car, exclaiming to Katie that I may actually be on time for the first day in ages! Got to the car and no doors would open. The driver's side door lock bailed a few weeks ago so I have been opening the passenger side door and climbing across into the driver's seat. A few times I have looked into my rear view mirror only to realize its out of alignment and kept wondering why. Obviously because I bang my head on it every single time I climb across the front seats. I'm losing brain cells at an alarming rate when programming EFTPOS machines, it seems. Anyway, so I freaked out and ran back into the house and googled how to open a frozen car door lock, as it was the first morning when the weather was below freezing. I tried vaseline on the key, but the key wouldn't budge, and I then couldn't grip the key properly because my hands were covered in vaseline... I called a workmate and she picked me up. I was 45 mins late. Walked in to realize there was a man in my seat. I freaked and realized I should have called to say I would be late and since i hadn't called i had been replaced by a new temp! But then my boss was so pleased to see me and i realized the guy in my seat was a temp who was being trained to do my job until i got there and then went back to his other work once I arrived. What a stressful Monday. At the end of the day I found out that I had somehow missed 17 machines and thus sometime this week I will have to search through the 178 machines I had programmed to find the 17 I missed. Ugh. My workmate couldn't drive me home because her son had a rugby game in Avalon, but a friend was able to pick me up on his way home from Welly.
When I got home I tried the car door and it worked, turns out it was just frozen. Just in case, the boys from work had sent me home with some CRC (aka WD-40) with instructions on how to spray it into the lock to clean out and lubricate the mechanism.
This morning I tried the driver's side door and it works too! Hooray for CRC! No more climbing over seats and banging my head on mirrors.
That's all I've got for now,
LOVE!

Globes and maps are all around me now

It turns out that I have spent a lot of money on clothes in the past few weeks! I have neglected to look at my bank accounts and just looked today and its a bit ridiculous...
This weekend was the long weekend, I am loving 3 days off in a row! Friday night I went to jade's for a highly fattening meal of deep fried hamburger, egg and fried bun as well! Sooo much oil. We watched Glee, episode 1, season 2. Its such an awesome show! I so want to watch the first season now!

Saturday I slept in and skyped with Becky and Rachel. Had an amazing home workout and Katie and I went out for dessert at Silverspoon 9which Josh used to manage). I had almond meringue with cream and berries. It was so good. Then we went out for some upper hutt clubbing. hilarious. We walked to the hutt bar, but the pool tables were full so we moved on to the seven bar which had an available table. We played against some members of katie's gym and we lost really badly. Then we met up with the husbands, who were having a poker night, at the cozzie club where you actually have to have a membership to get in. It was full of super old people, but cheap drinks! katie and i went back to the seven bar but it was playing weird music so we met the boys a mcdonalds and piled into the car. They were placing their order as we were running to the car so we yelled out that we wanted cheeseburgers. classy ladies, we are. Really good cheeseburgers, too! Got home around 130, had some chocolate and went to bed!

Yum!

Katie is teaching me how to flex properly
$12.99 wine from Under The Tree Winery in South Aussie
Awesome Almond meringue with cream and berries from Silverspoon
Dress Jade gave me from Dotti


Sunday Katie and Josh were having guests over for brunch and I was going to the 10am church in lower hutt so we were all up fairly early. church was good and i did some shopping for friend's birthdays. and i got myself a thermal, finally. merino wool, its so cosy I will love it when I'm on the south island for sure! Sunday night we had a bday dinner for wayne (josh's dad). josh made butter chicken and michelle made custard square for dessert. soo good, another traditional kiwi dessert I will be bringing back to canada!
Today has been a really laid back day, went to the gym for 2 hours (mostly cardio because im still so sore from my saturday morning workout!) and then came home and made banana white chocolate muffins. Now I'm going to take a nap and then I'm going to kirsten's for a baking night! should be fun!
I really need to start planning my trip to the south island soon, im leaving july 9th! starting to get excited! Still haven't touched my awesome bike. I really need to get a helmet and clean it up. But I just have no drive to do it... Maybe in August? haha
I think my phone knows when someone is thinking about texting me. Its weird because when i get a text it lights up and beeps at me. But sometimes it will just light up on its own and i have no msg. Very strange.
LOVE!