Will you still love me to-marrow - John Mycroft and Multiple Myeloma

I enjoyed my trip to Kawau so much last week that I thought there was no better way to finish the long weekend than with a return visit with Georgia and my grandsons Mack & Murphy.  So, grabbing our togs, water bottles and towels, we all leapt into Georgia's vehicle for the road trip to Sandspit. We arrived in good time and I indulged in the sadistic pleasure of watching a group of people about my age fighting with their cellphones to retrieve their reservations.  They were still at it as the boat left but, as they were on board, the ferry company had obviously taken pity.  (I will confess to having had a dry run retrieving our reservations from Dropbox on my phone yesterday evening so I could look like I knew what I was doing.)  The sun was shining brightly and we were all glad to be wearing hats and lashings of sunscreen.  It also wasn't as windy as the weather forecast had predicted, with the tail end of a cyclone coming in from the northeast. I'd go...

As this blog is supposed to be about how my multiple myeloma is treating me, I really should focus on that today. Don't worry if you can't read the lab report - anything in pale grey is fine, anything in bold black isn't. Those that are out of whack aren't much out and it's good to see my white blood cells and Neutrophils going up. As ordered by the docs in Asheville, I am keeping up a rigorous exercise regime,  mostly consisting of walking miles and swimming less miles.  My pants are in danger of falling off - must wear a belt and stop walking around with a pocket full of nails.  Over the last couple of days I have switched my exercise to enlarging the deck at Nonie and Dave's house, starting with taking up the old deck.  There were five of us working on it today (six if you count Murphy who learnt how to drill guide holes for nails.)  Progress was pretty rapid though a nail gun would probably have made it quicker if we'd had one. The missing chunk of deck...

I went to bed at 9:30 yesterday and slept 9 straight hours before staggering blearily from my pit.  Over a large plunger of coffee, I read my cousin Jill's Facebook rants about the horrors of those evil bloody coffee pods and felt inordinately virtuous.  And more uninclined to do anything than I have felt in ages.  Not sick, just bone idle. Didn't even bother rustling up a bizarre and complicated breakfast - just toast and Anathoth apricot jam (which I will plead guilty to guzzling off a knife straight out of the pot while the toast charred.)  Sorry my organic milk and jam both came out of plastic pots. Still brain dead, I headed for the deck with puzzle book in hand.  Having failed to get a decent start on a couple of "Mind-melting" level puzzles, I turned the heat down, then again and again, arriving at the smaller "Very challenging" puzzles.  I usually get stuck or mess up on about 20% of these Kenken puzzles but this morning I spent nearly 3 hours comp...

I have bought some GrabOnes kiwi equivalent of Groupons) to take Mack & Murphy (grandsons) to Kawau Island and thought a trial run was in order.  So, having packed some random food items (aka lunch), a gallon of water and snorkeling gear in a back pack, off I went to Sandspit to grab the ferry.  My reservation was handled with remarkable efficiency despite their suggestion that I get there a bit early as the boat was fully booked (I don't think it was but maybe several people didn't show up or I  wasn't paying attention). It was a beautifully calm trip, the only bumps coming as we docked briefly at a number of jetties to pick up and drop off mail.  Kawau is about 8 km off the coast and almost devoid of roads,  There are a couple of hundred houses there, mostly holiday homes ranging from the modest shack type to the almost flashy but nothing like Biltmore Forest. If I happen to win the lottery this weekend (which I understand requires buying a ticket) I wil...

The last few days have been used by NZ to water its enormous garden.  George was here for the duration so, rather than sit around looking at each other, we hit the road & beaches anyway.  Only a true nutcase would have taken the plunge into the most inappropriately-named Pacific, even in the sheltered cove at the bottom of the cliff. So we headed north to the Parry kauri park outside Warkworth where the heavy drizzle gave the whole plac e a delightful primordial atmosphere. We tromped around until we were thoroughly damp if not soaked and then went in search of the local satellite tracking station.   Using our wondrous detective powers gained from years of watching James Bond movies, we were eventually fairly sure that we had located it. Not wishing to be told to bugger off by the security guards, we hit the road back to Orewa and spent the rest of the day putting together a nice easy jigsaw of an olde American town celebrating the 4th of July.  After a seco...

Following the photo shoot earlier in the week, Nonie generously lent me her "spare" Nikon D90 camera which I have been blasting away with for the past couple of days.  Alas, I don't have a working USB cable for it and the thing in this laptop that looks like a card reader is actually a slot to keep your bus ticket in so no pictures today.  I'll put them in later - promise. On Wednesday I decided to go wandering, safe in the knowledge that I had a GPS in the car in case of overdoing it.  So I headed north and left the main road at Puhoi to follow the old main road.  Puhoi is now much quieter than it used to be and quite idyllic.  So I ventured up the Puhoi Valley.  The road quickly became dirt which took me back a few years and I drove on through rugged sheep country for miles.  I was amazed at how flashy some of the houses are out there.  After driving for quite a while and wondering if I would get to see the dirt road from the opposite dire...

A couple of long nights' sleep (no jigsaw) have me back in working order.  I averted the disaster of the missing glutamine by plucking up the courage to go to the local muscle builders' shop (nzmuscle.com) where they couldn't have been more welcoming to my lumbering flab if they'd tried (which is more than I can say for the miserable bugger at The Rock Shop where I bought new ukulele strings.  The young guy who helped me try out the pickup was terrific but the older one who sold me the strings was far more intent on  sticking price labels on stuff than he was on being helpful). But I digress - I picked up a whole kilo of glutamine, pineapple flavor, no less which makes a pleasant change from the "ground chalk" flavor I've been taking for the last 2 years. And so today which was, indeed, Take Your Dad To Work Day.  Nonie was doing a photo shoot for NZ artist Teresa Trzan and asked if I'd like to troll along.  But of course!  I also took along my t...

I have now returned to my shack by the sea (sorry, Denise - it isn't really a shack - far from it) in Red Beach and the sea is sloshing against the bottom of the cliff while a "Swoon" compilation plays on the new CD player that Denise, the owner, was kind enough to istall in my absence.  Kind of "Music to Do Nothing By" which is exactly what I need today. I've just had a  hectic week in Waihi with Georgia, Cassie and Amy and their menagerie of damaged and loony animals (yes, I'm talking to you, Simon). About 4 years ago, my Uncle Sid & Aunt Rosemary sent me what is probably the most difficult jigsaw I have ever done.  Once I'd finished it, I shipped it off to Georgia in NZ safe in the knowledge that I would never see it again.  "Would you like to help me do a jigsaw, Dad?" says Georgia, all innocently.  "Love to," I replied and yup, here it is again.  We stayed up way too late doing it and, as you can see, progress was not...

We are expecting 150 mm of rain today.  It has blown half a gale and I think we have had the 150 mm.  Not that I am complaining, really.  I've spent much of today installing new lights in Georgia's carport - the old ones were of the "40 watt light bulb screwed t o a 4 x 2" variety and were neither aesthetically pleasing nor particularly illuminating so I have replaced them with LEDs.  While I was at it, I brought some of the connections either up to code or up to my not overly high standards.  It was good doing it in the rain as it showed me the few places where the carport roof leaks (no light installed there).  Before you ask, I not only had the fuse out but had cut the cable at the most evil joint - there are some things duct tape should not be used for. We also insulated Georgia's two hot water tanks, the larger of which is, predictably, right up against a wall, making the "wrap jacket around tank" a lot easier said than done.  Cassie is now c...

 Yesterday's high spot was a tour of Waihi's gold and silver mine.  The photo doesn't do justice to the size of it and the pit in the photo is about half the size of the various tunnels that run under the town.  The days of digging out nuggets are long gone (they never really were) and all the precious metals are now extracted by various chemical and physical processes that yield a whopping 3 grams of gold per ton of rock. It was a busy day today, starting with a gargantuan breakfast on the newly covered deck - fortunate that it was covered as it was bucketing.  My first job of the day was to go for a blood test which took longer than expected as half of the staff of two at the local lab was off sick.  The remaining lady was very friendly and efficient and I enjoyed the time in the waiting room reading the 1977 Giles annual.  As I had been a good boy, I found a custard tart waiting for me in Georgia's car. Then we were off to Waihi Beach again where s...