What file extension are you - 2
After our initial bout of discovering what file extension we are, Julie and Ben retook the test and came up with different results. So today, I retook the test and low and behold I came up with a different result.
Today I am a
Which File Extension are You?
Q
My cat, Q.
We love each other in different ways. I like to fall asleep with him in the afternoon, give him treats, and play games with him. He likes to bite me.
Happy Birthday to me!
Don't panic - you haven't missed it. I'm just getting into the swing of things for next Saturday.
As is the tradition in our family, I must provide a birthday list. So here goes:
- New wallet/purse (I love my current one)
- New bag/s (I need a different shoulder bag to take to work and a funky bag that I can take out)
- Funky jewellery (necklaces are a particular favourite)
- I like perfume but nothing floral or musky
- I need work toys - i.e. things that I can play with at work
- I would like a facial/pedicure
- Books are always welcome
On a completely different note Tom and I were supposed to go up the new cafe up the road around 3 this afternoon. I asked Tom to wait while I finished the last three pages of the magazine I was reading. In this 5 minutes, Tom fell asleep. I threw something at him but he wasn't amused. So now I'm waiting for him to wake up. Whilst I have been waiting I have found at least three properties that I would like to buy and I have finally corrected the problems with my CSS code that makes it display wrong in Firefox and hopefully on Macs.
Giant post-it
Yesterday at work we stole by giant post-it note from someone else in the office. We were very excited. So excited that i have chosen the post-it as the blessed recipient of the first post to blogger from flickr from my phone.
Hooray for technology!
Thank you Mum and Dad
There are many things that I could thank my parents for - giving me life, raising me to not be feral, supporting me, etc - but today I'd like to thank my parents for my mobile phone.
For my birthday and Christmas presents, my parents bought me a new mobile phone to replace the one that was stolen in New Zealand. For over a month I have been without a means of mobile commmunication which was nice but thankfully over (some would not have survived this - yes Julie, I mean you). I am now contactable anywhere, anytime - hoorah!
Lastly, I have no one in my phone book, so if you read this and think you should be in my phone book, please text me.
Lookie what I've done
I've added a flickr thingy to the side. Hoorah for me.
If you want to see all of my photos have a look at my flickr account page.
What file extension are you?
I am a .dll
Which File Extension are You?
Apparently I don't play well with others...I scoff at that notion.
If you want to take the quiz, and I know that you do, just click on the picture.
Thanks to Ben Boyle, a fellow .dll
Bad Amanda
After over a month of not going to bootcamp I really need to get back into it. This morning was supposed to be my first session. I didn't go.
At 4:45, it was raining so I had no urge to get out of bed. I also had a stomach ache. So I went back to sleep.
I resolve to attend bootcamp on Thursday.
Where did my posts go?
There's one thing that I really like about Blogger. I like that I can email my blog and it becomes a post. Well, that's what should happen.
On Tuesday, I blogged via email not once, but twice. But where are my posts? Blogger, you have let me down.
I've started up a flickr account to upload photos and stuff. I've put a some of the wedding photos in it but I haven't got as far as figuring out what to do now.
Auckland
We went to Auckland, it was closed.
Apparently, New Zealand has three public holidays for New Year: New Year's Day, the holiday because New Year's Day is on the weekend and then another one just because. Three public holidays in a row wouldn't have been so bad except that nothing opens on public holidays in New Zealand. Not even restaurants. I will say now that Auckland was the low point of our trip.
We are back now. Had a wonderful night last night in our own house. Thanks Ben for looking after it. Slept beautifully in our own bed (love me pillows).
For those who don't know - my mobile went 'missing' on the last day of our trip. So currently, you can't contact by that method. Also, our phone is not working right now either. So if you want to call me, you can call me from Tom's phone. Or you could just email me.
Waitomo, Thames, Whangerei, Keri Keri
After our wonderful experience at Rotorua, our next stop was the little town of Waitomo. Waitomo doesn't have a lot going for it except one of New Zealand's biggest cave networks. They offer two types of caving experience, one that involves steps, handrails and like, and one that doesn't. Tom and I were going for the later. Originally, we had planned to do what one of the caving companies call 'The Lost World' which involves abseiling into the cave followed by swimming etc, but we decided that was too much (please remember all of the other exhausting things we have done on the journey). So we decided to go for what is called "Tumu Tumu Toobing". This is the classic black water rafting trip. Black water rafting is pretty much any caving (or splunking) where you get wet and get wet we did.
The trip started off with us squeezing into wetsuits because the water in the caves is understandably cold (no thermal heating in Rotorua). We then hauled ourselves across a farmer's paddock to the cave entrance. The cave entrance was just a sign of things to come - it was a tight squeeze. We had to climb down a ladder and at one point squeeze ourselves through a remarkably small gap. After that it was lots of climbing over rocks, wading through water, squeezing through more holes. We even swam through some of the deeper parts of the cave. We had two really good guides who were very light hearted about experience which I assume would work well for people who are a little bit scared. At one point they let us swim 25 metres down a wrong way just for laughs. They also made us crawl about the same distance in a very tight space and smeared mud on our faces for laughs as well.
The best bit of the trip was when we got to the 'toobing' bit. This is floating in inner tubes through some of the cave. First there was a jump into our tubes (you could do the jump, or just flop into your tube - we both jumped). Then we all linked up (feet under the person in front's arms) and turned off our lights and the guides led us through a really long passage full of glow worms. It was really spectacular. The glow worms are really pretty. They put off a bluey-greeny light and there are so many of them.
Before the end of our trip, we tubed again, but this time less impressive, climbed and squeezed some more, had a hot drink and a chocolate and my favourite, floated on our backs through some fast moving water. The bit we did this in was called 'Pinball Alley' because you bumped against the sides. It was fun. We'd done another float on our backs earlier and this one was through a really tight bit of the cave. Not long after pinball alley, we reached the end and I was sad. I was really enjoying the trip. We hiked back up through the farmer's paddock and got out of wetsuits and back into town for dinner.
The place that we were staying at in Waitomo is owned by the same people as Rotorua, but newer. We thought this would mean it would be a bit better appointed but we were wrong. It appeared that the 20 year old pillows from Rotorua had been transported to Waitomo so that all can share in their uncomfortableness. The service was terrible as well. There are many things to complain about but there are more interesting things to discuss.
After another night without much sleep for me (Tom was not so bothered by the pillows). We headed up to the Coromandel Peninsula. We drove around the peninsula during the day and it was really pretty. At one point we took a wrong turn and ended up in a little town ship north of Coromandel Town that was really pretty and not too busy. I would have gone for a swim in the picturesque bay but I wasn't wearing my swimmers.
Thames is a really nice town. Big for a New Zealand town but quiet. We didn't do much in Thames because its the kind of place where you don't do much. Had the best breakfast of our trip at Thames. There is a cafe called Sona that does a whole range of gluten-free food. They even have a good gluten-free bread (so good that I bought some to take away with us). Tom had what he describes as the best iced-coffee ever.
We stopped at Mataoki Cheese Factory on our way out of Thames. This is a little farm where they make their own cheese. Not much to see there but the cheese was nice. On our way up to Thames we stopped at Paeroa which is where they used to make L&P. They don't anymore and all that is left is a large-ish L&P bottle and a cafe.
Our next stop was Whangerei which is about three hours north of Auckland. Not much to do in Whangerei. The place we stayed at was nice though.
We stayed one night and then moved further north of Auckland to a little place called Keri Keri. We liked Keri Keri. It's a small town with lots of tourists but its not too tourist-y. It's close to the Bay of Islands and it has good food. We stayed on an organic orange farm which was really nice. The owner was a really funny old Swede (from Sweeden, not the vegetable).
On our first day we went to see New Zealand's oldest commericial building and New Zealand's oldest house. They were interesting but there is a major road that runs out the front of them which seems odd seeing as they are such important buildings. On the second day we went to Russell, a small town across the bay. The ferry trip was nice and so was the town. After Russel we stopped at the Kaleidoscope Factory - that was really cool. I want a soap bubble one or one that lets you view the world with Kaleidoscopic vision but they were expensive.
Our second night there was New Year's Eve and I can say that we had one of the best New Year's Eve's that we've had in a long time. Pretty much everyone who was staying there (an Australian guy from Mt Tambourine, a Belgian Family, a Scottish couple) stayed in for the night we all spent the night drinking and generally having fun. Belgian's can really drink, my glass was constantly refilled. Stayed up far too late. Woke up slightly hung over and grumpy. Luckily there wasn't much traffic on the roads to Auckland so that was nice.
Running out of time. Will blog tomorrow about the last bit of our trip - Auckland.
Napier, Tongario, and Rotorua
One of Tom's most anticipated stops on this trip is Napier. Napier has two things going for it. Firstly, it's in the middle of New Zealand's first and some say the best wine producing areas and secondly, the town is full of Art Deco architecture thanks to an earthquake that flattened it in 1931. I have to say that Napier lives up to its reputation as the 'Art Deco City'. There are some amazing commericial buildings in the centre of town and some equally cool houses in the suburbs. The people in Napier are all very nice - probably because they live in a very nice town.
On our first day in Napier, we pretty much arrived. Walked around town, ate, slept. Our second day was much more full on. As I mentioned above, Napier is in the middle of a wine producing area and a very good one at that so our second day involved touring wineries. Unlike most people who would do this in a car or on a bus with lots of other tourists, Tom and I had decided early on that we would tour the wineries by bike. The good thing about doing it this way is that once you reach the winery, you appreciate the wine a lot more. Napier is pretty much flat so technically the ride shouldn't be too hard we also had good bikes with lots of gears etc. However, the day we went out, it was blowing a gale and for half of the day we were riding into the wind. Despite that and the 35kms we cycled it was really good. I highly recommend donig the wineries like this.
We liked Brookfields - the wine tasting man there was really nice and very helpful. On the other hand, Mission Estate (New Zealand's oldest and probably most picturesque winery) wasn't very good. Firstly, the lady asked us what kind of wines we would like to try. I said: "Surprise me". She said: "What type of wines are you interested in buying". We said: "Don't know". I thought: "Isn't that why we're tasting them?". She said: "What type of wines do you like?" We said: "We like them all". It was about now that she gave up on us, and we gave up on her. We were expecting her to recommend wines for us to choose like the other wineries but obviously, that's not the deal there.
After our ride we were very, very sore and the next day we were driving out to Tongario National Park for Christmas. We survived another day on the crazy New Zealand roads. At one point the highway we were travelling on intersected with another major highway. You would expect that these two highways would have some kind of sophisticated traffic management system in place to handle the merging of two large flows of cars. Perhaps overpasses, or even a roundabout. But no. It was a stop sign. Very cleaver Kiwis.
Tongario is really nice. It's very different to most of the other landscapes around New Zealand. It's not barren, but it's bleak but stunningly spectacular. It's a major volcanic area in New Zealand and it contains three active volcanoes. The biggest, Mt Ruapehu last erupted in 1996 and Mt Tongario in 1926. They didn't do anything silly while we were there. A lot of the evil bits of Lord of the Rings was filmed around here and its easy to tell why.
We stayed at the Chateau Tongario which is an old hotel built in the 1920's that is very swanky. We had a great room - we could see Mt Ruapehu from our bed which was great because it still had a lot of snow on it. So technically, Tom and I had a white Christmas. The day we arrived we went for a walk to some waterfalls which were really pretty and then I went for a swim in the hotel pool and a sweat in the sauna. Capped the day off with extensive bathrobe wearing.
The second day was Christmas morning - yay! Was tempted to call my brother when we woke up (around 8am NZ time) just to stick with traditions but thought that was mean. We went for a walk in the morning, up through some really cool volcanic landscapes. More Lord of the Rings scenery (when we got back one of the movies was playing on the movie channel in the hotel and there was a shot that done exactly where we had been walking). There was a mountain to climb (I say climb, because it was pretty much climbing - no real trail marked and lots of rocks to scramble over). I made it about halfway before my bike weary body gave up. Tom climbed to the top and went inside a volcanic crater. We walked back down to the car and headed back to the hotel to wait for our Christmas dinner.
Christmas dinner was really nice. It was the world's biggest buffet. All the usual things, but the thing that was really cool was the salmon. It was whole and you just used tongs to pick up the bits you wanted. Tom had two platefuls of food - I had one. I was saving myself for dessert. There was Christmas pudding, cheesecake, cakes, and my favourite, pavlova and custard. I will admit that I had three helpings of dessert. One pudding (small piece), custard, and berries, one pavlova and custard and one just pavlova. Very full that night - slept terribly.
Next morning we were up pretty early to start our drive to Rotorua. I know everyone says it but Rotorua smells. However, despite the smell there are some really cool things there. We stopped at Wai-o-tapu on our way in and that was really cool. Words will not do this place justice. Some of the cool things we say there though were, chlorine pools, sulphur crystals and a lake that hissed due to carbon dioxide being released from the water. There are some really cool pictures from here.
Rotorua also has a really good museum. It's set in an old thermal spa from back in the days when they thought smelly water to cure everything. The displays were good and it gave a really interesting history of the area. There's even a cinema that shows a movie about the eruption of a volcano in the area which did a lot of damage and killed a lot of people in the late nineteenth century where the chairs shakequite violently. It was fun. After the museum, we went for a swim in a thermally heated pool (not a thermal pool - I don't believe that smelly water is to be bathed in). One of the pools was about 40 degrees. Very warm.
I woke up on the second day feeling very light-headed. I think this was because of the smelly air. It could have also been from the dodgy place we stayed at. For most of our trip, we've been staying in YHA establishments as you can expect a certain level of quality from them. YHA Rotorua doesn't even come near this level. We had a tiny double room and it honestly felt like we were on school camp (just replaced the double bed with bunks). The pillows they supplied us with looked and felt like they were about 20 years old and offered absolutely no support. The linen wasn't much better either. Firstly, it didn't match and secondly, one of the pillowcases was so faded that I thought Tom was putting it on inside out. So I really didn't enjoy YHA Rotorua - don't stay there.
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