This is Kala (Kar-la), a young rescue Rottie that I picked up last weekend. She is the tiniest Rottie that I have ever seen – apparently she is almost three years old! – only a quarter the size of Louie.
She has made such massive progress in the last week. At first she was shy and afraid of everything and very defensive. She hadn’t spent much time indoors and until her initial rescue had been poorly-fed and -treated…
After a week, she is much more confident and this is how she woke me this morning – ‘my view’ of that wake-up…
The Challenge
Mental Health Awareness Week in New Zealand is 9-15 October this year. Each year, the Mental Health Foundation of New Zealand runs and sponsors a number of awareness activities.
Today, it’s been a year since my best mate, Kirk, passed away from cancer…it’s been a year and I still miss him so much…
We raised him from a puppy…because I was able to take him to work with me – rank really does have its privileges – I guess he bonded more closely with me…I don’t think he was really that interested in doctrine or lessons learned but he clearly loved coming on base with me.
He was always very dignified…
…but not always the sharpest “Hey, look! I got up on the trailer…but now I can’t get down…” And in a situation like this he would cry and cry, not bark, just cry…
Puppy poses aside, Kirky really was very dignified…he would play with other dogs but I really think he thought of himself more as a person and, apart from Lulu, his sister, he would associate with other dogs more out of politeness than anything else…
Kirk and Lulu snuggle time…
Nowhere was Kirk’s association with people clearer than in his favourite past time: watching TV. This started with a growing interest in It’s Me or the Dog and we soon realised that he would only take notice if the sound of dogs was live/genuine and not canned…it grew from there and his favourites were David Attenborough and B grade science fiction, especially the BBC rubber costume genre…
I used to leave the TV on for him when I went out. This had to stop after the polar bear incident: a few years back one of the banks had an ad that featured a polar bear leaping ‘out’ of the screen. Kirk left three deep scratches on the screen where he ‘defended’ himself against the attacking bear…
Watching TV with Kirk was often like getting a seat at the movies behind the guy with the Afro hair style…
He may have looked big and scary to some but he was really just a gentle giant…so careful around small children…and all he really wanted was to be with me…if I went away he would sit by the front door and pine til I came home. The sole exception to this was when he went to the Creature Comforts kennel in Sanson – just at the end of the runway at RNZAF Ohakea, handy for me – I think Kirk was a little bit in luff with Irene, one of the ladies who ran the kennel: normally he would get quite agitated at free-ranging stock (it probably offended his German sense of order) but at Creature Comforts which had free-range everything…chickens, pigs, sheep, alpacas, etc…he only had eyes for Irene and never batted an eyelid at the errant wandering stock…
This week’s challenge is all about reflections. Show us a mirror. You can take this photo challenge literally, and find reflections in mirrors, or in the stillness of a natural body of water. Or, use this challenge to take a photo of yourself in the mirror. Self-documentation is important, especially for those of us who are usually behind the lens.
Purakanui Inlet, on the coast (obviously), just north of Dunedin on the east coast of New Zealand’s South Island.
Lulu loves the wind in her face…we finally got her to accept that it was a better idea to keep her feet inside the car. She’s an old dog now, but still loves going for a drive..she’s not quite up to getting up on the deck on her own now so we have a little loading ramp in the garden for her to board and debus…
The prototype Fisher XP-75 in the old experimental hangar at the National Museum of the United States Air Force in Dayton, Ohio…a memento of a brief era when a highly-polished surface equalled a few more miles per hour in maximum speed…
I have no idea what this building is but it is opposite the Thon Hotel in Brussels. I always preferred to stay in town when working in Brussels: yes, it was a 30 minute bus ride to work each morning but the evenings, we explored all the eateries, bars and alleyways around the Borse…
If we were having coffee, I’d tell you how great it has been having Mum and Dad come to visit for the last week…we even got some halfway decent weather…
Leaving on the Northern Explorer, heading south…
Louie found a new walking buddy
A quiet spot in the sun
Can’t keep some people out of the garden
Dad discovers the media centre remote…
If we were having coffee, I’d tell you how great it has been having people to cook for the last week. Breakfast and lunch are pretty much self-help here but our dinner menu was pretty on to it:
Day One: Roast Baby Armadillo on a potato, kumara, parsnip mash. This is quick and easy. I only made half the recipe but added the full cup of milk to the bread which made it a bit gooey. I fixed this with a half cup of almond coconut meal (left over from almond coconut milk) which a. worked to soak up the extra milk and b. added an interesting flavour and texture twist to the meat loaf.
Day Two: South African Curry with brown rice. This can be made with meat or not but I had 500 grams of mice left over from the baby armadillo and, due to my currently congested fridge space, this was a good way of consuming it.
Day Four: Chicken and Potato Chowder. My plan was to have this with homemade bread but I got a bit careless and put into too much water. The result was a bread with a heart so hard it burst out of the when I tipped up the breadmaker bowl.
Day Five: Beets and Goat Feta on Black Rice. This was the first time I’ve made this with raw beets. These worked as well as if not better than the precooked one I snagged form the supermarket last time by accident.I did go over on the olive oil and had to up the honey and balsamic to compensate…it all worke don the day though..
Day Six: Curry Kumara Hash Browns with Salmon and a neat salad. These hash browns are really nice but I’ve never been able to find a decent side to go with them. In the past I have relied on a dodgy rocket salad but I’m not really a big rocket person. Last night I tried a bit of an experimental salad and sauce that worked really – both of them…more to follow on that soon…
If we were having coffee, I’d tell you how impressed I was when the train arrived 15 minutes early on Friday…but then it was almost 15 minutes late this afternoon – life balances out but the lesson is to wait in the cafe with your coffee and the crispy fire until it actually pulls up…
If we were having coffee, I’d tell you I’m humbled to have gained a seat on the National Park Community Board. Elections aren’t until October but the position wasn’t contested so it’s done and dusted. I’ve probably just signed myself for even more work but I’ve got some catching up to do getting into this community. I’ve lived up here since 2004 but it’s only been since I started to work in the Park that I’ve started to get involved…yes, I do miss the Defence travel sometimes but it doesn’t outweigh coming home each night…
If we were having coffee, I’d be telling you how excited I am to be getting into some new ventures in the Park…
Another template, I stole from Inspiring Max – not sure if it will become a regular or not…although I do miss Mama M‘s old Five Question Friday challenges…
Do you prefer a bath or shower?
Generally a shower because showers are quick and I am always in a hurry; also because it has been a long time since I actually had access to a working bath…I’d like to replace the bathroom external wall with a double-glazed slider or bifold, tile the interior and be able to lie in the bath (the same bath that has been sitting in the garage since the end of 2009) and gaze out into the native bush. Somewhere, I’d also like to spot a couple of external baths, preferably with solar heating, actually out in the bush for even more chilled chllin’…
Imagine…
..this wall but…
…with a view like this and…
…this bath where the current shower is… If you had an unlimited shopping spree at only one store, which one would you choose? Why?
ITM. I would stock up on unlimited building supplies and tools so that I can start and ultimately finish all the projects I want to do here: bathroom, kitchen, post and rail fencing down the driveway, around the boundary, and around the Lodge and the cottage, decks from the front door, dining area and bath room, and retaining walls against the banks. The only resource that I would need that would not be available from ITM would be time.
Imagine four bar post and rail fences….
…running along both boundaries and…
…closing the cottage in…
If you could be one age for the rest of your life, what age would that be?
My thirties were a lot of fun…I think I’d like to try them again but knowing what I do now…
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List at least five movies that cheer you up.
Love Actually. I don’t like all the plot lines in this but some I do and, combining a neat sound track with happy endings, this is my – for now – bestest feel good movie…
Brainstorm. I’m not sure why – this movie is set, in the real world, against the tragedy of Natalie Wood;s untimley death…the story itself is vaguely technobabbly…but it always leaves me with a good buzz…
The Quiet Man. A babe, a brawl and a bully. A John Wayne classic set in an Ireland of along ago…
John Carter. An epic that flows and that works – for me anyway – totally unchallenging, I can just let it flow over me…
Remember the Titans. I just like it…greta story…great soundtrack…
Bonus question: What are you grateful for from last week, and what are you looking forward to in the week coming up?
I am actually grateful for the big fridge deciding to pop a fuse. I put the back-up fridge – it would be THE beer fridge if I ever got round to putting beer in it – in the kitchen as an interim measure…while I miss the capacity of the big Bosch – possibly because I have to think a little bit harder about what goes where – I really like the more open appearance of and access to the kitchen area…
With your answers, please remember we are in the SYW world which may not always match our reality. Do you prefer a bath or shower? If you had an unlimited shopping spree at only one store, which on… I think that I may keep the small fridge here as the ‘ready use’ fridge and relegate the Bosch to the back pantry for longer term storage…after three years, finally making changes that suit me…
Woke up to snow at home this morning…mainly windblown but nice to see it making the effort…slushy snow on Raurimu Bridge and then increasingly realer snow into National Park Village and then down SH47/48 to Whakapapa…
All images (c) sjponeill.wordpress.com
Even though the plough and grit trucks are out, temperatuires are still below zero in most places…with the ski fields and ski field roads being closed, I’d really suggest people want to stay off the roads unless they really need to be somewhere…
Today’s post as been brought to you by the number 4 and the letters W and D…
I’m not really into the tourist thing…most places I go I like to slip away, wander around, and mix with the people…pix of me doing the tourist thing are thus few and far between…
When they refurbished our woodburner, they took out the damper in the flue and opened up the air vent at the base of the fire box.
The net effect of this was that there was more air coming into the combustion chamber, more than the flue could handle once it was heated, especially a good burn with really dry wood.
So what would happen was that the heated air would go about half way up the flue – it is about 6 metres in length – before it created a vacuum behind it and came rocketing back down the flue. On occasion we would have jets of flame a metre long blasting out the air vent! Not only did we have to put up with a smoky home but the point in the flue where the hot air reversed flow would build up and block with soot…
The solution after trying everything else was to stop the air vent opening by about a quarter inch so that the air coming in was proportionate to that amount that could go up the flue once heated…
I am actually grateful for the big fridge deciding to pop a fuse. I put the back-up fridge – it would be THE beer fridge if I ever got round to putting beer in it – in the kitchen as an interim measure…while I miss the capacity of the big Bosch – possibly because I have to think a little bit harder about what goes where – I really like the more open appearance of and access to the kitchen area…
The World According to Me... 