A Quiet Week

It has been a quiet week for us - Joseph off to Quaker youth camp in a town pretty far away and Emily in a ymca camp 8:30 - 4:30 Mon - Thurs. Friday the three of us went to a home and garden exposition that had well over 100 booths and displays - I particularly enjoyed watching some of the artists working on stone and wood sculptures, and Emily found a fairy costume for Haloween. The weather has not been delightful, with frequent cloud overlay - big dark ones. Joseph came home yesterday evening. Earlier in the day Emily and I went to see Beverly Hills Chihuahua and enjoyed it. The theatre is in a mall, so she enjoyed a tub of chocolate gelato afterwards from one of the many options in the food court. A daughter of a friend of ours who was in Topeka and moved to California is visiting Australia and New Zealand and we hope to have a chance to meet her sometime this month. I have one more crown to go before all the amalgam is gone. Will bring a bottle of champagne to celebrate! Carrie has been grading papers all weekend. Our latest acquisitions - a waffle iron (somewhat hard to find) and a GPS - fun to listen to it recalculating as I take streets not in its original route! Pretty amazing technology, huh. The kids have one more week of schoobreak - Emily to continue camp, Joseph to continue downloading stuff - his favorite word - stuff. We can get 20 gigs of data a month without penalty - should be enough and more. Cleverest business name we have seen recently - Pasta la Vista - per their brochure - "Traditional Argentinian pasta made fresh . . . every day" and they now deliver in Auckland and are coming to Hamilton. Yesterday we went to a pond on Carrie's Uni campus and fed the ducks stale bread - at one point a mama and four babies came up on land very close to Emily's foot and I tried to get closer and away they went somewhat to the dismay of an oma who pulled out her (previously hidden) bread to feed them while I scared them back into the water not realizing until they were off land that she had bread - ooops. Oh, well. We are heading for warmer weather, with current temps in the 50's, while those in North America, where temperatures are in the 50's, are heading in the opposite direction. We had a time change last weekend so now North America west coast is six hours later, instead of seven. My head spins. Take care, and our best to all who read this.