I totally recommend Thaidelight Restaurant in Taupō. The food arrived very quickly and was extremely delicious. The service was excellent and the decor rich and welcoming.
A private spa pool. Hooray! Maybe my multi-day headache will decide it doesn’t like hot water and will disappear.
Ahhh, relaxing with a Yunnan Yellow tea, looking over Lake Taupō.
The Moomaa Cafe, a bit up the line from Bulls, was very popular. The Hot Chocolate (me) and Flat White (Deb) were excellent. The fries and aioli (me) and Cheese Roll (oniony) and Sausage Roll (Deb) were also excellent.
Somehow I had missed reading Midnight Come Again (A Kate Shugak Investigation Book 10) by Dana Stabenow, even though I’d read all but #23. 📚
Now put right and it was, as expected, an excellent read!
I love the Alaska setting in these books and the characters are favourites too.
I enjoyed reading Three Dog Knight (A Jorja Knight Private Investigator Mystery Book 3) by Alice Bienia. 📚
Jorja is one unlucky detective who narrowly escapes with her life on several occasions. The book held my interest though, and I expect to read more in the series.
Last night I was thrilled with the Starry Time session I ran down on the beach. People enjoyed learning about the objects we viewed and liked my tale of the magic car that would travel the 94,000,000 Km to Venus non-stop at 80 Kph (50 mph) in a mere 134 years!
The teens who turned up were thrilled!
Yesterday I noticed tree felling had begun ~800 metres east of us. Incredibly, this morning it’s still 1 hour till sunrise, a brisk -3C (27F), and they’re back already.
Went out to check out the night sky to prep for tomorrow’s Starry Time session. It was gorgeous. Two handheld 10-second iPhone shots of the Milky Way: one with Crux, the other with Scorpius. 🤩
Crux and the Coalsack.
Milky Way by Scorpius (with flax spears).
I ran out of energy and useful space in the shed so the last, small bits of firewood just got thrown in haphazardly. 4 cubic metres of firewood in the shed!
Waikawa Beach has nice dark skies so tomorrow night I'm running a community event I've called Starry Time
: a casual hour of looking at stars with the naked eye or binoculars. I hope we can see Mars, Venus, Large & Small Clouds of Magellan, Southern Cross, Milky Way, Arcturus, Canopus, Sirius. 🤩
4 cubic metres of firewood to stack.
Hanging around waiting for 4 cubic metres of firewood to be delivered. With only a couple of hours to sunset I’m unlikely to get it all into the shed before dark…
A bit of fun: this was meant to be a photo of the ship/s? in the distance. What I really like is the wave in the foreground.
Uurgh, with my iPad erased and then easily restored by bringing it near my iPhone, it’s setting up the email accounts again that’s a hassle. Go to the provider, download the special profile then hunt out the correct password.
I also wonder if my long-standing dissatisfaction with the iPad battery life is distorted by expectations set by my M1 MacBook Pro and iPhone 13 (and, for that matter, Kindle)?
Step 2, while the non-charging iPad still has 20% battery: disconnect from iCloud, full device erase, in case I decide to sell it as is. Or in case I decide to fix it. Good thing the iPad is my third tier device, after MacBook Pro and iPhone. So, if I buy a new one, what do I really need?
Today I start with research on my iPad which isn’t charging. Tried the basic troubleshooting with cables etc, now onto cleaning out fluff from the port-type tips.
Not sure yet what I’ll do if I can’t get it going — maybe just use my phone instead for the iPad tasks…
Today I made a special trip to Wellington Zoo to see two Snow Leopards — sisters, Asha and Manju.
I went past the enclosure several times which meant I eventually got to see one of them barely a metre away, behind the glass.
The most noticeable thing is their long, cylindrical tail.
Wellington Zoo is today’s outing.
A midwinter dip in the sea with friends is not something a Miraz does … until today. 😆
A perfect day for it with blue sky, warm sun, no wind and a calm sea.
You can see Kāpiti Island, and to the right, the top of the South Island across Cook Strait.
Afterwards: hot soup and bread.
Some of the first mandarins off our tree. The one I ate was delicious!
