Happy Birthday to the Animator!

We were supposed to be in Vietnam today for his birthday but the way the planets aligned, we are there next week. Oh well.

We don't even get to celebrate his birthday tonight - he is off at the 40th anniversary of his old squash club and I am going to the opening of a friend's PR/events agency.

Celebrating will have to be deferred until next week.

   

   

Happy Birthday to the Animator

He'll kill me if I say how many years ago this photo was taken, so I'll leave it at this - Happy Birthday to the sweetest, funniest and best hubbie a girl could ever have.

Dylan Coburn

My piece on the Animator's long-standing mate, Dylan, is featured in this month's North & South Magazine. Props to the Animator for his amazing pic of Dylan - his second in North & South to date. And yes, he did get a credit and paid for it (click here to read).

When life hands you a block of wood and five vintage test tubes

you do as the Animator did and turn it into this funky vase.

Which he did in about two hours.

Apols for the rubbish photo but my phone has been dropped one too many times and I am hoping Santa will bring me a new one.

That aside, this vase is currently top of my thankful list. Along with a Sunday filled with friends, dogs, sunshine and the completion of a story that has been driving me mad. All in all, a very good day.

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That clever Animator

So I was doing the usual rant on Saturday about the house being a pigsty and trying to wave the magic cleaning wand before our new house-sitter came to check it/Bristol out. Mid-whinge, I tripped on the assorted shoes and detritus left on the front doorstep and seriously lost my shit.

Yesterday the Animator disappeared into his man-cave to produce this boot/shoe rack thingy which he presented to me with a flourish. It's a simple but terribly effective thing. Try being mean to the man after that.

His next trick, he claims, is to produce a similarly spiffing receptacle from a hunk of wood and six vintage test-tubes found on TradeMe a while back. My breath is suitably bated...

        

Hau Oli La Hanau

Or happy birthday, in Hawaiian.

Today it's my beloved's birthday (yesterday in NZ). And I could not think of a better place in which to celebrate it with him.

There was a late start and breakfast on our balcony with this view.

Later we went for a walk and drank up the 30 degree heat. There was a drive into the hills, a long, lazy lunch and tonight the Animator is going to swim with the manta rays. It's not my kind of thing so I plan to sit on the balcony, watch the waves roll in and drink wine. And, boringly, do some work for a story due in last week.

Here's the birthday boy:

And again, refusing to pose in front of the hilarious 'muscle' car we've been driving around for the past few days:

US readers will no doubt laugh, but we've never been to a Walmart store. So when we drove past one, I insisted we stop. And it was all kinds of novel - there is so much stuff in there I never knew I needed. Such as this avocado slicer/masher that I just had to have. Yeah, I know.

The Animator trailed behind me, laughing like a crazy person. But hey, it's his birthday so he can do what the heck he likes, no?

   

A love letter to my suburb

The September issue of North & South Magazine runs my piece on how I was won over by possibly the best suburb ever, Mt Victoria.

Thanks to the Animator, who took the pix and who gets a big, fat credit under my name. Click here to read.

And the cover of the September issue.

   

The industry continues

While I lashed myself to the laptop, the Animator got busy in his man cave.

The result: a much needed shelf in one of three wardrobes I currently occupy (yeah, yeah, I know).

There was also the sorting out of this way cool vintage picnic basket I found on TradeMe which, I'm guessing, was last cleaned when Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister. But the Animator waved his DIY wand over it and it's now good as new.

The garden, meanwhile, coughed up the final roses of summer.

  
And then there was this wee poppet who has such a tiring life, he needs to spend most of the day in slumber. Preferably between two pillows.

I want to come back as him.