what and stuff.

wow, much life is happening for friends.

my friends in Portland have just closed down their knitting cafe (transforming soon into something new) and are struggling with the issues involved with having a new child and a dog in your life. many decisions, and not easy ones, for two of my favoritest peoples in the whole wide world.

another of my bestest mates who currently lives in Colorado (or is it Wyoming at this mo'?) is preparing to move to Scotland in September to live with his partner and her child. This is a big change for a man who spent many many moons as a single man.

as i've already mentioned multiple times, my co-worker is about to start a new job and have a child of his own.

transitions are afoot.

celeste and i are struggling with what we are to do about a place to live. the owners of our current house bought it to refurb and sell. they only guaranteed we could stay for 6 months. we would very much like to stay there for a few years I think, but we have to roll with the punches. we need to decide whether it is worth sticking it out as long as possible with some uncertainty in this house or whether to really start looking for another place that we will be able to stay as long as we want before having our own baby to take care of.

personal training is going well and my back is behaving itself. i go to another session of training in about half an hour.

Back in the DJ booth so it must be time for an update.

Listening to a song off the new Stars album. I love them. The song is called Personal which you would be hearing if you were listening to my radio show right now! Why aren't you?

The past couple of weeks have been very busy work-wise. Mellower outside of that.

My back is still being problematic. Very frustrating because this past week I have begun working with a personal trainer twice a week in the hopes of getting into better shape, but it is going to be hard to keep up with workouts if my back keeps spasming and causing me misery. Gggrrr.

Hey, thanks for the comments from Kurty and Cait! My readership is double what I thought :-)

Oh, I have a couple bits of fame to report. I was asked by Schmap.com to allow them to use a photo of mine on their online travel guide for Wellington. If you want to see the photo it is in the Karori Wildlife Sanctuary portion of the Wellington travel guide. My other shot at fame is upcoming. The government is updating their immigration website and want stories of immigrants and I have been asked to share mine. We will see what develops from that.

On the work front, my co-worker Guy (we started at the same time and have very much created our office in our image) is leaving at the end of the month. I am having a hard time with that. Not only do I not know when (if) his position will be refilled, but I have really come to enjoy the way we work together and like him a lot as a person. I am a bit nervous to have full responsibility for the running of our office. Well, it will be time for me to get my ass organised and do some hard work for awhile.

I look forward to hearing more about the trip Midge and Mom had to the Kingdom and hearing more about Mabel's transition!!!

Kiwisms: everything is sweet as... or good as... not sure what they are sweet as or good as, that is left to the imagination.

Enjoy the week all!

Hi, just to make clear, thought it will start out as a complaint entry, it will move on and become more pleasant. OK?

So, yeah, a couple of days after turning 40 (ouch) I woke up and started getting ready for work. As I bent over to pick up something (a shirt?) I felt a big crunchy pop sorta thing in my back and spent the rest of the week in quite a bit of pain. Not only that, after a couple of days of the back pain I started having big time digestive issues (that's the nicest way I can think to say it). I had three days of non-stop (well, not quite literally) diarrhea. NOT FUN!!! So, that was my welcome to being 40.

Another thing to complain about is my co-worker. And I am not complaining because he isn't good at his job, quite the contrary. I'm complaining because we began the job at the same time and have worked quite well as a team (i think) putting the office together and creating quite a good atmosphere in which we work. Well, he's leaving at the end of this month and it is causing me anxiety. First of all I worry if our friendship will last his leaving. I think he's a great guy, but I don't know if we've developed a relationship that will last past his leaving. Second, this will leave me all alone with full responsibility for the running of our office. We had already lost our administrative assistant and there is no guarantee how soon Guy will be replaced. It will certainly increase my workload but it will also focus the spotlight on my performance whereas before it was shared between the two of us.

Mostly I think it will be fine, but I would rather he was not going. It is an exciting opportunity for him and I am happy for his future.

One more complaint, but with a happy ending (hopefully they all have happy endings really). Last Sunday Celeste and Samson came with me to the station for the show and about 40 minutes into the show Samson disappeared. Off we went wandering the campus looking for the pup. We spend around 45 minutes including looking around the streets to see if he had become roadkill. Thankfully he wasn't found in that state, unfortunately we didn't find him at all. So, very upset we went home not knowing what more we could do. I pretty much went comatose and decided to sleep. Celeste was a little more active and put up a lost notice on petsonthenet. An hour or so later the phone rang and it was the Animal Control. Had they found us from the microchip we were required to have inserted under his skin? NO. Had they found us from the registration tag he was wearing around his collar that we are also required to pay for? NO, in fact, they tried entering the number into the database and it did not show up at all. How did they find us? They used petsonthenet. So thankful that Celeste put that on immediately! Such a good girl.

So, they told us he was found around College St. and Cambridge Terrace when he ran into a bakery. That's my dog, always looking for something to eat. It is a little amazing to me that he made his way that far without becoming roadkill. Admittedly it was earlyish on a Sunday morning, but he had to cross a few busyish streets. I am just glad that he was safe. We had to pay $100 to get him out of puppy jail.

Okay, enough complaints perhaps?

How about the good stuff? I feel it is safe to announce that Celeste is pregnant again, now about 14.5 weeks along. Of course, my only blog readers (penguindevil and celeste) already know this. It is very exciting though! Also, Celeste just had her 30th birthday. it was a low key affair. My stomach was still quite fragile so I vetoed going out for dinner. We did get some incredibly good Italian takeaway and she got gifts and cake and ice cream. Not so bad, eh?

Otherwise, life is just humming along. Work is quite busy which has made for multiple 12 hour days lately, but I took a day and a half off when my back and intestines were complaining. This coming week will also be quite busy and much more planning needs doing for the future.

Enough for now...