46 - 51....

I seem to be doing this in weekly chunks now...Imagine how behind I'll get at this when I get a proper job again!

Day 46 I was feeling a little sad - getting used to an empty house again, and missing the one who vacated it. So I spent most of the day researching Richard Armitage and making cufflinks and then my Q turned up - which reminded me I needed to enter the World of Q! So I did. Ahem. So my new thing was sending in a photo of me reading Q magazine on top of Mt Tongiriro!

I am abit crap when it comes to maintaining friendships, and letting potential new ones develop. I love seeing friends and doing stuff, but I'm not so good at making it happen, preferring to wait to see if they make the suggestion. Anyway, at the Mission Bay Craft Market last October a fab lady called Patricia went halves on a stall with me (wife of a colleague of Andy's). She makes beautiful jewellery using recycled glass and trade beads, and we had a lovely afternoon chatting away. We've kept in touch via emails but as she works in Auckland there is absolutely no reason why we couldn't just meet for a coffee or lunch! So I prompted a coffee date, and this was my new thing for day 47. This may seem lame, or even as Andy said - calculated, but in fact I don't want to be the kind of person that disappears from peoples lives,but I never want to impose either (which thinking about it now, it seems you can't do one without the other, but that's not a bad thing!)and so this was a good new thing for me. We had a lovely lunch catching up with each others' news.

This was another day for something personal to myself. I never like to refer to myself as lazy, because I'm not at all - but in my spare time I can easily be not bothered to do stuff if it seems too much hassle. For example in my whole time of living a 15 min walk from Mission Bay I have never once on my own walked down to the beach, thrown down a towel and read a book for an hour or 2. Why? Because I have to walk down there firstly, then walk back up, then find somewhere to sit.....(this is generally how my brain works most of the time, thinking everything through first before acting.It gets tiring ALOT.) Anyway on Day 48 I just did it. Walked to Mission Bay, laid on the beach and read a book! It was just lovely.

Day 49 was a fun Friday evening....I had spotted a free Choral Concert at the Auckland Town Hall and persuaded Andy we should go to it. This is the kind of thing that prompted my new things year, as normally I would see it, mark it in my diary and then just not go. But I've never been to a Choral Concert before, and it was free so off we went.
Hilariously it was very disorganised and there seemed to be some kind of hierarchal seating going on for members, which upset some non members (FREE CONCERT?!), there were a whole world of Nazi ushers (who told off a 13 year old for taking a photo but missed the Japanese guy who was takin photos with his camera ontop of the tripod...), bad ettique with seating (move up people!)and children. Many children under the age of 8.
Now, I like the idea of educating children in classical music and live concerts - but I struggled to sit still for an hour, how was that 2 year going to manage without wanting to have a little sing himself?
Anyway the concert itself started off brillantly with "O Fortunata" - love that! Then it went downhill really - a low being a Kiwi famous composer named David Hamilton conducting a piece he'd written about Tui birds, which I shit you not, ended with a chrous of Tui birds tweeting for a very long time....But it was free, and I was glad we'd gone, if only to know that I like the big choral famous choral pieces, and probably wouldn't pay to see something that didn't fit that description.

On day 50 Andy & I headed to Waiheke for our meal at Mudbrick lovingly paid for by his mum. Beforehand we stopped for a drink at Cable Bay - beautiful views of the Gulf and the Auckland city skyline. This constitutes as my new thing, as although we've eaten there before, I've never had a drink outside the bar on a gorgeous sunny day! And Mudbrick was amazing by the way!

So yesterday my new thing was making carmelised onions from scratch in order to put on my homemade pizza. It takes patience (and 40 minutes!), and luckily I stuck it out and topped the pizza with it - seriously yummy! Who knew I could make my pizza even better?!