Just being normal

 Last night wife had one of her luxury baths, they take about 90 minutes.

Not wanting to be bored, I decided to go to the pub for a drink, so a quick change and make over, then taking a coffee into the bath room for my wife, she tells me to "be careful". 

I like how concerned she is about me and responded "in case I get abused by some somebody?" Her rely was "in case someone recognizes me" - not exactly the response I was expecting.

Not having anyone to chat to, meant after about 30 minutes of drinking wine and looking at my device, I decided to head home and join the rest of the household in watching MAFs Australia. As I enter the house, wife advices the daughters to "close their eyes", they replied "why?" so I said " so you don't see this amount of gorgeousness", they all laughed.

Anyway, I got changed and we had the rest of the evening in front of the telly.

I did get out mid week, thought about buying some more clothes as my oldest daughter picked up a lovely dress and I was hoping for something similar in my colour.

  

While I fell in love with the maroon dresses, I'm trying to save up for a new camera lens and also I've plans to go black water rafting and a few other adventures soon (and my daughters tell me I need to reduce my wardrobe size).

Fun away

Plane and train and fun at the fair, what a way to spend a weekend.

Wife went, so a nighty was my only girls clothing, but then I was carrying 2 DSLR cameras, stack of lenses, hoping for a great star scape that remained hidden by soggy clouds.

 

This week, a book that I ordered months ago, finally arrived at the library. It took me 10 pages to remember the previous book in the series.

Today, my oldest arrived and I was instructed to cook burgers- any excuse to go shopping in girl mode 😁

I did the cook and the girls did the salad, the burgers were we well worth the shopping trip.

Coffee with Jan and practicing my photography

 We lost our Daylight Savings, so we're back to GMT + 12 hours.

It means sun rises (and sets) an hour earlier, which caught me out this morning as I wanted to photograph a few stars and the sunrise, but by the time I got to the east coast, I had missed the best part. So I decided to try out the flash on myself. I think I was still on manual mode on my daughters camera and I didn't have a diffuser for the flash.

After missing the best part of the dawn, wearing same daughters cardie to keep warm, I decided to have coffee at McDonalds.

Eventually the day started at the new time. I meet up with Jan for an enjoyable beach walk (both enjoying the sun while being worried about sun burn), eventually ending up having brunch.

Once home (and in male mode), wife and I spent a bit of time planning the next renovation, measuring everything 3 times, visiting shops to see if they can supply what we need.

Later in the day I had time to pop over to Bethells beach to watch the sunset.

 

Been a high stress week

 And the best way to combat stress - be someone else, even if it's just an hour at a time :)

I also discovered my daughters camera has bulb mode (something I gave up when I sold my film camera). So had a bit of practice at night time photography. Not bad but I think I need to buy her a faster lens. It was fun painting the tree with my torch.

Working weekend

 Wife's pushing ahead with MORE renovations.

This weekend was about painting interior doors and add a new door - sure that's simple, but the door was so perfectly square, it didn't fit in my non-square door frame. So after hanging it 3 times, it now fits and is painted - job done.

I shaved my arm hair, such simple things making me feel so much better

I did have a couple of great outings, including coffees an lunch and basically buying stuff for the kitchen at Briscoes (at half price apparently). Also had to get groceries from Pak'n'Save, trip to Bunnings for weedmat. 

I think most of Aucklanders are at the shops enjoying the air conditioning on these hot days, playing dodge walking around the mall.

I did get a lot of smiles from other shoppers - great fun interacting with so many people.