Last night we had dinner with friends at The Quay Cafe, Restaurant & Bar by the marina in Whangārei.
I had a huge chunk of pistachio stuffed Lamb Saddle, with parsnip and shiitake mushrooms, which was delicious, but too much meat.
The view from our table was very pleasant.
Setting up a brand new Mac from scratch is a bit of a hassle, but I love it.
Downloading the apps, choosing fonts, finding extensions, rearranging Toolbars, setting Settings, realising I no longer need certain apps …. It's all a nice adventure.
I had to wait all day for the courier, but my M5 MacBook Pro finally arrived. Turns out that after logging in to Micro.Blog, the first two apps I installed were Keyboard Maestro and TextExpander.
BTW: there was a charger included in the box.
We haven’t had fish and chips from the shop for ages. Ruakākā Takeaways did a nice bit of battered snapper and the chips were good too. As usual, the fish was better without the batter. 😆
Someone down the road is revving their boat engine, making lots of noise and clouds of smoke. As you do.
One of the features of a beach community in Bream Bay, I guess.
On 25 November 1769, the Endeavour sailed into a large bay. Cook commented:
We had no sooner came to an [anchor] than we caught between 90 and a hundred Breams, (a fish so called) this occassioned my giving this place the name of Bream Bay
James Cook, ’25 November 1769’, South Seas: Voyaging and Cross-Cultural Encounters in the Pacific (1760-1800)
The fish was probably snapper.
🤣
Via: Toitū Te Whenua.
In our flash new house we don't have mere blinds and curtains; we have "window treatments". These arrive today.
Here are a couple of Before photos: dining area and lounge.
I like this uncluttered look with its clean lines.
This strawberry is pretty much the first fruit of our food forest. Yum.
I'm really surprised "our" magpie hasn't scoffed it. Too busy chasing off "our" white-faced heron I guess. 🐦
Another lesbian romance: Fire Fall by JD Glass. 📚
Bennie Grego, an EMT by day and comic book artist by night is forced to make a near impossible decision.
I guess romance books, of any ilk, just don't sit that well with me (though I keep hoping). This left me a bit uneasy. I may have liked it better as an action-focused novel with a side of finding that special someone.
Sometimes a recipe I've found online specifies Kosher salt. I've never been able to find that here in NZ, so finally searched for alternatives.
Two videos were very helpful, explaining it mainly just means flaky salt.
Do I Need to Use Kosher Salt?:
Regular table salt is comprised of many minute, regularly shaped cubes.
Kosher salt … forms large, craggy flakes that don't fit together very well.
A cup of table salt will have twice the salting power of a cup of Diamond Crystal kosher salt
See also: What is kosher salt, and why do (American) chefs love it?.
Off to buy flaky salt.
After insufficient sleep I was a bit reluctant to drive down to Waipū Cove for the walking group but decided I just needed to push through it.
When the road was closed though, I figured fate had stepped in and simply returned to enjoy this splendid sunny morning at home. 😆
I'm a little mixed about the lesbian love story Beowulf for Cretins: A Love Story by Ann McMan. 📚
A burned-out English professor toiling away at a small college in Vermont’s Champlain Islands finds love and ensuing complications that very well may spoil her last shot at tenure and happiness.
With a cast of brilliant academics and a university as the setting the book wandered off into highfalutin topics and verbal exchanges that were too stratospheric for my simple tastes.
It was a decent story though.
People pay thousands to go to a Pacific Island for a holiday but here we are living just down the road from a cafe with tables outside and a view across the marina to Mt Manaia. Bliss.
Drove with our friend J to brunch at the Anchorage Cafe, then biked around the area seeing sights.
[Legend says Manaia] began battling Paeko with incantations. Because of the two men’s power, they became frozen as peaks on the mountain, along with Manaia’s wife and their children.
Via Manaia.
Spotted this sticker on a car. 🤣
I've been monitoring a magpie nest high in a nearby tree for a while now and I believe there are new chicks up there. I saw 2 adults leave the nest, but there was still movement. I'm pretty sure I could see a chick's head. 🐦
Mallard ducks on the Dune Lake. 🐦
Pretty sure I just heard a horse whinny. According to Google Maps the closest possible horses would be about 350 metres away on the far side of the slight rise behind our place … 🐎
Beyond that is the racecourse.
This photo from 10 October 2025.
A flash of very vivid blue caught my eye across the river — it turned out to be a Kōtare | Sacred Kingfisher. It's barely visible in the two photos below, flying at centre right. 🐦
Meanwhile a Matuku moana | White-faced heron took flight.
Today I strolled across the road to the river — a 3 minute walk. After going about 500 metres south beside the river I turned and took this photo looking upstream. The trees on a small hill behind the river are on an old pā site, not far away. A few middens have been found beside the river too.
Yes! This is in my near future — Apple unveils new 14‑inch MacBook Pro powered by the M5 chip:
Apple unveils new 14‑inch MacBook Pro powered by the M5 chip … faster storage, up to a phenomenal 24 hours of battery life
M5 also includes a faster and more efficient CPU, an enhanced Neural Engine, and higher memory bandwidth