Miraz Jordan

Sitting out in the sun with my little Aphra. 🐈

Woohoo. First (frosty) sunrise on the way to mid-summer.

This has become one of my favourite recipes: easy and quick to make, delicious to eat. I don’t eat onion so use celery instead. Red lentil, chickpea & chilli soup.

The Netflix animated programme called Spirit is just lovely for kids — features 3 girls, probably ~13, having adventures with horses in Arizona. Friendship, bravery, skills of all kinds. I'm not the target demographic but find it enchanting.

I’m not actually a big fan of cutesy stuff, but these Salt and Pepper shakers had a certain appeal.

Sometimes we gets mats of small pieces of driftwood. Nice sharp edges on this one.

The answer to a question you may not have asked: no, you can’t eat olives straight from the tree. Straight off the tree, they are bitter, very bitter www.cooksinfo.com/raw-olives. I found out the hard way.

I’m working on overcoming tinnitus and improving sleep at the moment. After a professional hearing test last week, today I tried this Online Hearing Test. The results seem pretty similar: fairly normal hearing with a bit of (probably age-related) loss at 4,000 and 8,000 Hz.

I landed on the Hearing Test after visiting (and donating to) myNoise.net. I’ve been using sounds from that site (or rather, their iPad app) to help me go to sleep.

Some soundscapes, such as Japanese Garden also help during the day to mask the tinnitus and help my brain to stop focusing on the whistling I hear all the time. I’m trying to train my brain to ignore the tinnitus sounds and it might be working. Yesterday I noticed a period of maybe an hour of blessed silence.

Tinnitus Tunes (University of Auckland) has set me on this path:

You may have just discovered you have tinnitus, or you may have had tinnitus for a while and been told “there is nothing that can be done, you will just have to live with it.” It makes us mad when we hear that, because it is not true! You can take part in our 12 week Tinnitus Transformation program with online advice, information and treatment broken down into 5 simple steps.

There was a brief gap in the clouds so I was able to see a light dusting of snow on the Tararuas. That's because the wind today is coming straight from Antarctica. Brrrr.

The thunderstorm at midnight really upset Sasha. Now, at nearly 9 am it's just rain and maybe dull rumbles, but she’s still unhappy, trembling and restless. 🐶

I love how the wind smooths and ripples the sand overnight. It was rippling the river water too.

There were a lot of birds at the river mouth this morning: Black backed gulls and White-fronted terns in particular. These were just some of them. 🐦

On cooler mornings at dawn we can see the top of Mt Ruapehu, 164 Km away, from home. Kei te harikoa ahau. (Makes me happy.)

I’m using Anki flashcards to help me learn Te Reo Māori, but some longer placenames are giving me a lot of trouble. I’ve devised a Keyboard Maestro macro to help.

First I created 5 simple HTML files, one for each placename. Then I created a macro triggered by a few keystrokes. That macro calls up 5 separate HTML windows, each one displaying a placename in Māori and English. It’s proving very helpful.

This macro has grouped a set of geographically related placenames, some of which I find easy and one I'm struggling to learn.

Oversize vehicles are common on the stretch of road between Ōtaki and Levin, but I haven't spotted a huge concrete beam (presumably) before.

Allbirds with Over Under Lacing and Ian’s Secure Knot.

With a new pair of Kotare Mint Allbirds shoes on my feet I was very glad to find I still had Ian's Shoelace Site in my bookmarks.

Now to find the right lacing pattern!

NB: if you ever wear shoes with laces then do visit Ian’s site. There are hundreds of lacing patterns!

This piece of driftwood caught my eye this morning.

Today was rather satisfying. Now April has arrived I seem to be finally settling into a useful pattern of activity. I did a bit of weeding and mulching, planted out an Avocado stone, put pegs in to brace a border board, and various other activities.

A professional operator with his own DJI Inspire v1 drone visited today and took a few photos of our property and the area nearby. I was very lucky that he did this as a favour, so I wasn’t hit with a huge fee. The following 15 second video shows the drone taking off from our yard.

Blair flew the drone at various heights, including the maximum allowed 120 metres.

I was so excited to finally see our area from above (Google Maps is good, but this is better).

We live in a land of lakes around here, with ancient wetlands all up and down this coast. There are two small, privately owned and unnamed lakes at the end of our road, just a few hundred metres away. To our east, behind some trees, is Lake Huritini. To our South is Lake Waiorongomai, and closer to the coast is another privately owned lake.

One photo shows the river mouth where it meets the sea.

I can’t express how excited and happy I am to get these photos.