Maxwells vs The World

Well, hello there fellow minions.

In a stark contrast to most of our mass letters of electronic persuasion, we have decided to embrace the back end of technology, and deliver this festive message via dead trees and pictures of the queen. Secondly, we have a decided lack of anything interesting to talk about.

So I shall talk about our cat, our house and our lawn.

Dixie (Destroyer of Worlds), has successfully circumnavigated the Sun for her first time. She celebrated this most unique of events by killing a thrush, bringing it inside, and then getting dags on her backside after going to the toilet in our garden (where, in doing so, she dug up Geraldine’s cucumber seedlings). As punishment for these most inhumane actions, we gave her a good brushing, and some whiskers cat treats. That’ll teach her!

Dixie has been keeping us company the past seven months as we did up our three rooms. In January I made the statement that the ceiling tiles were as attractive as a bulldog eating custard. That, combined with me knocking holes in the study wall to let out trapped sparrows (along with a mouse and 17 sparrow skeletons), resulted in an eight month odyssey of home handyman proportions. Tore walls and ceilings down, put them back up again, insulating, sanding, plastering, painting, but most important of all, CURSING! That’s right; I pretty much exhausted all possible permutations of the F word, C word, S word, B word, and the D word. And we are still not finished!

So to calm myself down, I have developed a habit of pottering around in our garden. None of the girly stuff like weeding, or tending the vegetable garden like Geraldine has, but hacking away at an army of Doc plants, and that broadleaf lawn weed that sounds like oxymornondoesntknowhowtolookafterhislawn. I also have been training a grapevine that I found at the bottom of our garden last year. Oh, and I have had to re-sow some parts of the garden because I went a little bit crazy with the roundup one day…

Anyway, it’s been a great start to the summer, with the BBQ being used for the first time last week. The blue-sky weather has also brought an old friend home as well, as the Tall-ship Soren Larsen is back in Auckland harbour. We are contemplating being some volunteer crew for a few weekends over summer, as a few of the old crew are still onboard. See
if I’m still up for climbing to the t’gallent.

For those who don’t know. Last year Geraldine and I flew to Vanuatu and New Caledonia for a tropical holiday, before joining the Tall-ship Soren Larsen as paying voyage crew, and sailing her via Isle of Pines and Norfolk Island to New Zealand. We hauled the main’sl, scrubbed the decks, climbed the rigging and waited for yardarm. Brass was polished, grog was drunk, and everyone was seasick. A Healthy, pure and simple trip with plenty of stories to tell. Yaaaar!

Which reminds me, I have finished my wedding DVD, as well as our Pacific Island and Soren Larsen holiday DVD. If you have a perversion for other people’s videos, then by all means
feel free to ask for a copy (If you haven’t got one already).

So, anywho, Merry Xmas and all that

Geri and Ricky.

P.s. We are going to the South Island this Christmas holiday to walk the Routeburn track in Fiordland National Park, followed by a nosey up the east coast up to Christchurch. I hear its one of the most spectacular walks in the world. But no need to worry, I won’t be taking a video camera…