My first earthquake.

I'm guessing that you can figure out what our big news is this week - yup, I've started work! And we're in the process of adopting a 15 week old puppy from the local SPCA...oh yeah, and I got to experience my first earthquake. Obviously, in light of the goings on in Islamabad our earthquake was extremely piddly and small, in fact Jo didn't even notice it 'cos she was almost asleep, but I was quite weirded out. I have got used to our swaying in the wind house, I just think of it as being on an old boat on a slightly choppy sea, but the earthquake was more like someone making the house doing a giant shimmy. Quite fun, in a screwed up way.

But, more fun news. Jo is now getting settled into her new job at Telstra and I have just finished my second day at the Ministry of Women's Affairs. The weather has been bloody awful, which has buggered my plan to walk to and from work each day, so we've been driving (the price of a car park ticket is cheaper than 2 return bus fares) as Jo's office & mine are about the same distance away from the railway station, just on opposite sides of the tracks. For those of you who have lots of time to spare and who might want to see where this is on a map of Wellington, just find the Westpac Stadium and I am to the west right next door to Old St Paul's whilst Jo is to the east near the waterfront. My lack of walking and constant spare tyre inspired me to head to the gym behind work ('Bodyworks'), where Jessica (a very sprightly Sara Cox-esque 26 year old from Stoke on Trent) talked me out of $72 a month and into membership. I'm even considering spending some of my soon to be hard-earned cash on a series personal trainer sessions to turn me into a bronzed and buffed Cameron Diaz-a-likee...it could be the only way...

I did manage to put the fear into Jessica though after we checked our respective weights on the scales by pointing out to her that she only weighed 0.5kg more than I did at her age...though I think that 0.5kg might explain her bosom advantage.

So I need to take my PE kit to work with me tomorrow.

The ministry (MWA) is pretty cool, though tiny. I think there are only about 35 staff and I am in a team of 4 (no change there then), and there are only 6 blokes. So far it's all very civilised - as a team we actually stop for tea at 10.30am and 3pm (!?!?!?!) - and if your baby is suffering from the lurgy and can't go to childcare guess what? Yup, bring em to work and let them crash out in their pram! Actually the baby in question, who must be all of 6 months old, was doing some quite rockin' burps in the policy meeting this morning and almost managed to distract me from the huge muffin I was trying to shovel down my gob. The shocking news, aside from being told that I've apparently been employed for my intellectual capacity, is that I am having to skip my first office drinks on Friday afternoon 'cos (with luck) we'll be off collecting our new dog. If any of you would like ot contact the SPCA and tell them quite how much commitment this clearly demonstrates, feel free. I'm not allowed to tell you sod all about my work though except that its kind of a recruitment service for all the statutory boards in NZ.

And now I shall tell you about the dog. As some of you know, Jo & I had agreed that we would get a dog when we got settled, and I came to the conclusion that having our own house and proper jobs was pretty settled, so it was time to start dog searching. I really had made my mind up that I wanted a Weimaraner, but we did some research & decided that we might be rather over extending our dog capabilities. Seeing as we are only about a 10 minute walk from the SPCA we headed down there to see what dogs they had available for adoption and were swept off our feet by a 15 week old female terrier cross. All we are waiting for now is their agreement that our place is okay for a dog and then we should be able to bring her home. Hooray!

Guess what I'll be blogging about next week...

love
S
xxx