Sad news today when I heard my little dog friend Willow passed away yesterday, aged almost 15. 🐶
Here she is back in March 2019 in my car with Oshi and Sasha as I took them all to the beach.
I've been taking MyComplete mushroom pills from Flowstate for ages now. After pausing recently I noticed the difference and chose to restart.
However, with changing addresses and skipping a subscription date I ended up in a huge tangle.
Ian helped me promptly, efficiently and with a friendly manner.

Will Harlow gives good tips in this 15 minute video. Implementing many has helped me sleep better. Poor Sleep Ages You Faster — Fix It With These 15 Habits (50+).
For me though, I need to feel warm so the tip about being cool in order to sleep better just doesn't gel. I pile on extra blankets!
I needed to fetch something from Deb's zendo last night and my torch caught this wee swallow huddling above the door in the cold. I wished I could give it a blanket to keep it warm and toasty.

It was a milestone moment this morning when the Op Shop truck took away a bunch of mainly larger items: an old freezer, chest of drawers, huge cabinet, bookshelves and smaller sundry items.
We're pretty much ready for the movers to come next week.
Well! The dirty truth about what's in your socks:
Your socks might say more about you than you realise. In a US murder investigation, forensic scientists used soil bacteria found on a suspect’s socks to link them to the burial site of a victim.
I haven't yet seen that plot device …
5 light links 03-Aug-2025
The world seems dark and grim. These 5 links are about bringing a little light. 💡
Kiwi medical waste company succeeding in Australia but battling Pharmac | RNZ News:
Now, a Kiwi company … is taking more than 50 types of single-use medical devices and giving them a second life.
Canterbury-based Medsalv reckons it has so far saved more than half a million devices from landfills across Australia and New Zealand, throughout more than 90 hospitals.
It collects the old devices, remanufactures them by inspecting, cleaning, testing and repackaging; and returns them.
Along the way it's saving health care providers a lot of money, and creating jobs, many of them for people with barriers to employment.
If the whole country got on board, one estimate suggests it could prevent 1700 tonnes of medical waste going to landfills a year - and generate $100 million in savings.
Malala Yousafzai and Billie Jean King Partner Up To Promote Women’s Sports:
International activist Malala Yousafzai recently announced a new venture called Recess that will deploy a partnership with tennis legend Billie Jean King to promote women’s sports across the world, including some planned investment in basketball’s WNBA and the NWSL (National Women’s Soccer League). …
Following her previous work in promoting equal educational opportunities across the world, Recess will strive to expand athletic opportunities to empower girls, and invest in women’s sports.
Wimbledon Balls Become Homes for Tiny Mice:
What happens to the 55,000 tennis balls used at Wimbledon every year?
After the tournament wraps up, used balls are donated to the Wildlife Trusts, a grassroots movement of 46 independent charities working to bring back and support wildlife.
The organisation transforms the balls into homes for one of the UK's smallest – and most vulnerable – animals: the harvest mouse.
This is just a lovely story. Go read the whole thing — Andy was New Zealand's biggest milk tanker fan. He had a very special send off:
Milk tankers were Andrew Oliver's favourite thing in the world. Local tanker drivers knew that Andy - as he was known - wouldn't go to bed until they had made their nightly visit to his parents' Te Rapa farm, near Hamilton.
Fonterra changed its milk tanker schedule in the entire Te Rapa district of Hamilton so Andy would go to bed on time.
Andrew Oliver was one of about eight people in the world living with Fryns-Aftimos syndrome and the only one in New Zealand to live with the condition. He was the longest surviving person with the syndrome, making it to the age of 41.
-
Volunteer ‘duck wardens’ are helping a group of mallards safely waddle across town after they chose a parking lot as the best place to roost with their ducklings.
15 citizens have answered the duck call in Thirsk, North Yorkshire, rotating shifts to personally escort 20 birds to the town center every evening.
As we look to moving 600 Km north from Waikawa Beach to Ruakākā we can expect more sunlight.
Times for 03 August 2025:
Waikawa Beach Sunrise 07:23; Sunset 17:27 — Daylight hours: 10:04
Ruakākā Sunrise 07:16; Sunset 17:40 - Daylight hours: 10:24

Turns out it's breeding season for the Tūturiwhatu | New Zealand dotterel. 🐦

Our new house is nearly done. 🏡 Just as well since we move in soon. 😆
The deal included basic landscaping. We've started with privacy panels across the front.

We expect grass to be planted in the new layer of topsoil.
We need bushy, 'soft' plants to counteract all the severe straight lines too.
Hmmm, on the south side of the river mouth, but not too far from our new home …
Sources quoted suggest wasps or bees.
Wasp warning: Ruakākā Beach walker warns public after being stung 50 times:
A Northland woman is warning people to be wary of wasps after she was stung about 50 times during an “utterly frightening” attack.
Elke Radewald had been walking with her dog along the Ruakākā Beach path near the end of Bream Bay Drive about 11am on July 21 when she heard a buzzing noise behind her.
“I turned around and there is this big black ball coming towards me. It was like in a really bad movie,” she said.
We decided to go upmarket on the light over the kitchen island in our new build. 🏡
Months ago a lighting shop had a big sale and we bought this flash lamp.

So pleasing to see it in place.
A small success at the gym today. I use a leg curl machine similar to the one in this video: Lying hamstring curl with weight machine.
The first time I tried a couple of months ago I couldn't do even one with the minimum 5 Kg weight.
Today I graduated to 5 sets of 6 reps at 5 Kg and 6 reps at 10 Kg.
Roughly 10,000 Km away there has been a huge earthquake off Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula:
Wednesday's magnitude 8.8 earthquake off the coast of far eastern Russia is one of the largest in years, raising fears of a tsunami around the Pacific.
That's brought us a tsunami warning for the entire coast of Aotearoa. It's due to strike around midnight.

Hmmm, the builder's photo of the Family Room on our new build is interesting. The space is 3.6 metres wide. 🏡
I'm incapable of visualising how our 3-seater sofa, couple of chairs and some side tables can be arranged in any useful way.

OneNZ (Internet and phone provider) have *generously* waived the fee for cancelling Internet with less than 4 weeks notice because the WiFi we currently use isn't available at our new address so we're switching to fibre, and staying with OneNZ.
Beautiful light at dawn this morning. A view through the bedroom window, past the garage, to nearby trees.

Things are coming together very quickly as our new house is in the final stages of being built. 🏡
The builder hadn't specifically mentioned adding a load of topsoil to the property, but it seems that's happening. And presumably it'll be grassed once the soil has been smoothed off.

I've been watching videos about food forests on the YouTube channel Byron Grows.
We're going to have an approx 15 m2 food forest at our new place. 🏡 That's rather exciting.
A food forest, also called a forest garden, is a diverse planting of edible plants that attempts to mimic the ecosystems and patterns found in nature.
I smiled as I picked up Eight Miles to Death (The Cat Caliban Mysteries Book 8) by D.B. Borton because I know I can rely on this series to be entertaining and enjoyable. 📚
Meet Cat. Retired housewife. Budding private investigator. Reluctant parachutist.

Cat investigates the present day WASP who flew huge, big and little planes for the US in WWII while suffering sexism, sabotage and lack of recognition.
A good read.