More Marie Kondo-ing!

While I was teaching economics I built up quite a collection of coins and notes, but now I am decluttering I decided to take them along to the visiting man who buys old coins, jewelry, watches etc. Unfortunately there are no new young coin collectors out there willing to start with inferior goods, so even my 1883 penny with the young Victoria on it was passed over. (It is very worn)All he wanted was coins with silver in them. I think he got about 1.5g of silver, so I got about $40. This has been lodged in my Grandkids Uni fund, along with last year's tax refund. Paper notes it seems are pretty worthless. He wasn't even prepared to look at my stamp album.
I am taking all the NZ coins to the Reserve Bank when we are in Wellington, but I suspect I will only get a few dollars
Next box was a collection of cards for our engagement, wedding, birth of children and 21st. Nearly all of the senders are dead now.

Now onto the toys. I have three suitcases, and hope to reduce it to one. We rarely have children to visit now. This may take some time as there are special memories. Often the things which are worn or broken are the things the kids loved the most.

Marie Kondo rides again!

As most of you know I am busy decluttering and the next target was my wedding dress which has stayed in a box at the top of the wardrobe. After due deliberation I got it out - even though it had been drycleaned after use it was badly stained. Duncan kindly asked "Does it still fit?" (Hasn't he noticed the expanding frame???)

The veil still fitted

The lace was very pretty

I struggled to find my wedding photos!

The stains did not come out

So it has been consigned to the extra rubbish bag that I am putting week by week.

OK These two are staying. Anna and Dobbyn

Festive times

Well its obviously some time since I did a blog! We have to go back to the preChristmas luncheons and dinners. I declined a few but my walking mates didn't mind me coming along trailing a tube and a bottle of bloody serum.

With Robyn Arthur

Dawn Gretton and Olwyn Black

With the Figjam girls - Gaynor, Alice, Camille and Deb

Fortunately Mr Stiven had taken out the drain for this.

So on the 19th of December we headed off for Ohiwa., I got to try my new bathing suit, but had to take it easy in the surf as getting up with such poor tummy muscles was a problem.

 We had a couple of nice days before the weather turned foul. The water supply and the sewerage also caused problems for the main block - the Eastons were not impressed! We had to have our Christmas brunch in the Haszards tourist flat. I had knitted them all beanies:

Hand knitted Beanies and a secondhand book all round.

 I managed a few walks along the road and did wonder why this little grouping of rocks occured.

Low tide at the estuary

Rat and Stoat traps dot the path

Lots of flax and Tui

 One tui gave quite a plaintive PEEP PEEP PEEP PEEP, almost as though it is mimicing a kingfisher, but probably the better explanation was that this is a territorial call of the tui and once the camping ground filled up this tui was very upset. Often he was upset in the early hours of the morning. He went on and on.

This years jigsaw was Love Letters

No fish this year.

Trying to take photos that I might use in the Fifties Forwards Mag. A Coastal Copper butterfly.

 By New Years Eve the Haszards were gone, Lyn went home so we had Jude and Merv over for the night. Didn't quite make it until midnight, but we came close. It was reasonably well controlled at the camping ground.

Merv minds the meringues.

 We managed to put together a really nice meal between the two groups, but the star was the enormous meringues that Jude had made.

What a whoppa

Heather and I farewell 2018

Jude and I watching the fireworks.

Trying out the camp pool - lots of kids!

 We took a day trip to Te Kaha, and watched them retrieving the cray pots while we waited for our lunch at the hotel

Te Kaha

Another beautiful day

 Chez Louis made pizza in a pizza oven and visited on Mondays and Wednesdays. It was quite disarming to hear them talking french while making pizza!

Pizza night at Heather's unit.

Walking back from Bryan's beach. More and more Variable oyster catchers arrived while we were at Ohiwa

Heather and I managed to make it to the end of the road and back - I'm still very slow.

Blessed on my birthday

Lyn enjoys her flat white at the French L'epicier while we wait for the crepes.

Birthday dinner of nibbles and champagne.

Back home on the 7th, and a great amount of gardening to catch up on.

Sayonara Seroma

On Saturday 1st December I had my drainage bottle disconnected. Once I recover from this surgery, say another month, I hope to feel normal again. Here are some pictures to help to understand my problem. These first two are not of me, but the situation is very similar. You can see the big lopsided seroma pushing down on my spine when I try to sleep, giving me sciatica in my hips and knees. I'm sure you can imagine the extra pressure it has added to my bladder. When I am walking it pushes up on my left lung. The fluidity of it "off centre" has seriously distorted my balance.

My surgeon says, yes it did look a bit like this when he went in.

I had the surgery privately  as I wanted it before Christmas, and the amounts of fluid being aspirated were increasing - up to 520mls. My surgeon, Peter Stiven does not stand on ceremony. So I text him my measurements of outflow of serum each morning until he says  that it is small enough. This happened on Saturday, so I texted Peter and he came in in his gardening clothes and snipped the stitches which were holding the tube in. I felt like a prisoner with an ankle bracelet who is finally freed!
The serum cam back as "sterile" so that was a positive start.

By the time I was finished this was nearly full.

The red stringy things are like egg white - protein deposits in the serum. They occasionally blocked up the valve.

I had a worrying few days when I thought he had put me back together without a tummy button, but as the swelling went down it gradually appeared - I dont know why I worried about this!!!

The stitches have now dissolved and I have a new shooting star to add to my constellation of scars.

Now we are on seroma watch. The original seroma was evident a week after my hernia operation. So far so good..

Mac Conference, Gold Coast, 2018

We load the car and head off to the Gold Coast. After lunch at Balina (where there have been  a couple of recent shark attacks) we book into the hotel at Royal Pines and then return the car to Surfers Paradise. We think we will take an Uber on the way home, but the man in the offlicense says that he does Uber driving and because of the trams and poor parking he will not pick up in this district and tells us where to go to be picked up. However we have to walk past a taxi rank with 3 taxis on the way, so give in and take a taxi.

Our 10th floor view over the golf course - PGA coming up this week.

It takes quite a bit of walking around to get our bearings and find out where we will have to go in the morning. Later we have an Italian meal at the resort.

On Tuesday morning we go down and collect our satchels which include the milkadamia product. I just love  my fudge creamer - it has so much mouth feel - something which really slows you down as you drink it.

"a Cuddle in a cup"

Duncan's milk product is the normal milk - barely any calories, but I imagine not so nice in tea, but people seem to enjoy it in their coffee. The first lecture is on soil. Duncan was hoping to go to bees, but cannot get in as there are too many people registered. I have our soil data and analysis from vineyard days, and with great relief see that our soil fits the bill. The main message seems to be mulch and manure, so we are on target there too. In the afternoon Duncan plays golf while I have a browse at the machinery stands, then a quick rest before we head of to the Caribbean Cocktail party. Despite our intention to give the Aussie wine a chance, they didn't really measure up, but the food - pulled pork sliders especially were great!

A harvester - will we be able to afford one of these in the future????

The price of breakfast at the resort is phenomenal! (about $30 each) However we head off to the headline speaker who founded Bulmer the major vegetable producer in Australia. Next we hear about all the innovations for macadamia products. The one on integrated past management is of less interest as we don't have most of them living in NZ at present. And the last talk before lunch is on irrigation, which wasn't really aimed at those with a usually good rainfall and a clay soil. The talk that impressed us most was the small session concerning the desire to identify and preserve the old, indigenous species of macadamias, especially in case they need to hark back to the old gene pool as pests or climate may require re-engineering of the gene-pool. Happy hour followed.

Aussie beers - Critical analysis by Rod, Duncan will give anything a go at this time.

Both Rod and Duncan give the sponsor of happy hour a go to do his spiel. Nice machine. Overkill for 4Ha though! 

Filled to the brim with macadamia nuts leading to great bowel transitions, we head back to the Italian place for a bit of starch!!
Up early on Thursday for the Gourmet (Pete O'Donaghue - Australian friend of Jamie Olivers) breakfast. Of course it was all macadamia based.

The first course was salmon, so I decided to opt out - after all I wasn't exactly fading away.

The brown creamy stuff is fermented garlic aioli  which lead to many a case of bad breath that day! 

The Mango Kulfi with Macadamia cream was more to my taste. We sat with Pam and Fredrick Lips who were interesting company - about the same size as us but quite a few more years down the track, and looking to expand more.

Some good tree talks on tree architecture and physiology, and a talk from a guy which had gone from marketing macadamias to setting up an orchard. As the sugar price slumps in Queensland much of the land is being turned into nut farms.
After quite a long lunch  - more macadamia goodies -  I watched the 3 minute presentations by the PhD students. Of 10 students, 8 were foreign. Many to do with marking and manipulating genome material to increase yield or to shorten time to maturity.
The final social event was the Bond night.

Still not very good at taking selfies!

These girls and their Bond were part of the dance troupe that entertained

Vanessa, Rod and Jan

"Pour more wine or I'll shoot1"

Very spectacular.......

..but loud, very loud.

Most of the old people turned in quite early due to the loudness.

Fortunately Robert Mannes from NZ was able to give us a lift to Gold Coast airport. Good flight home, but very tiring.

The pleasing thing is to see we are on track!