Miraz Jordan

We're dog sitting for Whangārei friends while they're on holiday. Their house is large, very comfortable and pleasant to stay in.

I'm missing my own bed though, and my own stuff around me.

I'd also forgotten just how much energy goes into even very well trained and well behaved dogs …

Yesterday our friend Amanda drove up from near Auckland to visit. We had dinner at Pimarn Thai Restaurant where I ate Pad Him Ma Pan — stir-fried fresh vegetables, sweet chilli paste, cashew nuts, capsicum and mushroom with roast duck.

It was good but disappointingly, not sizzling hot.

At 3.30 am I had to let the dogs out for a pee. The bonuses were that I'd already been awake for ages and could now make a cuppa, that I spotted the full moon setting and caught sight of a shooting star.

Kiwis have chance to glimpse 'once in a lifetime' comet not seen in last 80,000 years:

Stardome [astronomer] Josh Aoraki told the Herald that the best place to see [Comet C/2023 A3] would be anywhere that has a clear unobstructed view of the western horizon.

"You're going to see a really bright star which is Venus, and if you look below that to the right, you might see this little fuzzy patch in the sky. That's the comet."

The Stardome astronomer said the comet was likely to have a tail extending from the back. … [and] the prime time to view the comet would be during a 45-minute to hour window just after sunset.

"It's a fairly bright comet. We don't often get bright naked-eye visibility comets.

A highlight for today: panfried fresh Gurnard with handcut fries at Jolt Cafe in Maunu. Truly delicious!

At Ruakākā North Beach. Look at that white sand!

An excellent reason for banning dogs from Whangārei Quarry Gardens: there are kiwi in the hills.

Deb and I visited Quail Cafe in Whangārei Quarry Gardens. The food, beverages, ambience and service were excellent. I look forward to visiting again and enjoying a long walk round the gardens themselves.

I rather like this blend of hearsay and heresy. Nicely combines the idea of incorrectness and dissidence.

We're in charge of Boo and Rush for a few days as their family members have a holiday. The dogs enjoyed their walk at the park this morning. 🐶

Off to a good start on our travels today with Air NZ letting us know before we'd left home for the hour's drive to the airport that our flights were moved around. 🛩️

All packed up and ready to go, we now have an extra 2 hours at home. And our 1 hour at Auckland Airport converts to a 4.5 hour wait.

An excellent quote from Moira on Schitt's Creek S05E06, Rock On! 🤣 :

Oh, Jocelyn, you'll soon learn that we aging mortals are blessed with weakening eyes and memories so we don't have to really see ourselves.

We learned of a new cafe in Levin, opened just a month ago, so we visited today for lunch: Old Courthouse Eatery.

Deb's coffee was apparently good; my hot chocolate was good. We both had bagels — in my case with halloumi, pesto and mushrooms. All very enjoyable.

We'll definitely be back.

Having just finished Book 7 in the series by Melissa Good, I moved on to Storm Surge: Part 1: Book 8 in the Dar & Kerry Series (Dar and Kerry Series 10) where I kept thinking I must have missed something …

It's right there in the link: even though it's named Book 8 it's actually Book 10.

A large part of the book deals with Dar and Kerry's part in assisting after the events of September 11, 2001. Frenetic! But also interesting.

Yesterday there were visitors at the place across the lane — it's a bit higher than our house. Around 10.15 pm their headlights as they left lit up my bedroom wall, with shadows from the cabbage trees outside dancing in the breeze.

First, we're all good, no damage etc. Second: shaken awake by a fierce 5.8 quake this morning. That was quite something! 〰️

A few highlights from today: Deb made delicious pikelets; I wore my shorts for the first time this season and did my weight training on the deck.

My outdoor temperature sensor has died, but a neighbour's unit, about 1 Km away, says it's currently 19.3C and earlier reached 20C. Summery.

An AppleScript to save a post selected in MarsEdit to a file in the Downloads folder. Use at your own risk. Let me know if you improve on it. 😁

-- very rough starter; use at your own risk
-- 04 October 2024
-- takes details from a post selected in MarsEdit and saves the post to a file in the Downloads folder
tell application “MarsEdit”
set newLink to ""
set newTitle to ""
set myPost to ""
set myDate to ""
set newLink to (permalink of selected post) as text
set myDate to (published date of selected post)

set newTitle to (title of selected post) as text
set myPost to (body of selected post) as text

set the clipboard to newLink & return & newTitle & return & myPost & return & "Published on: " & myDate

end tell
– thanks to Claude.io for the file saving portion below
set fileName to newTitle & “.txt” – Change this to your desired file name
tell application “Finder”
set downloadsFolder to (path to downloads folder) as text
set filePath to downloadsFolder & fileName
end tell
try
set clipboardContent to the clipboard
set fileRef to open for access file filePath with write permission
write clipboardContent to fileRef
close access fileRef

display dialog "Clipboard content saved to " & fileName & " in Downloads folder." buttons {"OK"} default button "OK"

on error errMsg
display dialog “Error: " & errMsg buttons {“OK”} default button “OK” with icon stop
end try