Posted in Hunka husband, New Zealand, tagged curly coat retriever, dog hair, dog panniers, dog wandering, high-tech formula, mount wellington, neuter, neutering dog, New Zealand, roaming dog, sense of purpose, soft and shiny, storage policy, straightening hair on 29/10/2009 | 4 Comments »
Here’s what else you missed (warning: don’t get too excited).
The weekend after Husband’s departure, I was invited to lunch with The Grandparents.
Such a grand occasion warranted picking the dog hair out of my good jumper, and a shower. I thought it would be nice if, for a change, I didn’t look like I’d just tumbled [...]
Posted in Hunka husband, tagged business trip, flame of passion, nausea, pancakes, stomach bug on 28/10/2009 | 9 Comments »
He clasped her to his glistening chest.
“My one true love,” he rasped, urgently.
A frown creased her perfectly proportioned alabaster forehead. “I don’t- I don’t feel so good,” she said.
“Darling one!” he exclaimed, his eyes moving questioningly over her face. “You’re trembling.”
“You might also notice I’m a bit whitish-green as well. Actually, I think I’m going [...]
Posted in Hunka husband, Movies, tagged drew manimore, geena davis, he's just not that into you, jennifer aniston, lesbian flicks, maniston, mentally violated, movie review, movies breed violence, renny harlin, romcom, scarlett johansson, sex slave, the long kiss goodnight, wet t-shirt, yoga and meditation for relaxation on 12/10/2009 | 4 Comments »
I was mentally violated at MarkJ’s last night.
Of course, camp and all as it is, we should have watched The Long Kiss Goodnight. Geena Davis – despite that Mount Rushmore quality chin – maybe even BECAUSE OF that monumental mandible – was totally hot before she married Renee Harlin and became a sex slave instead [...]
Posted in Hunka husband, tagged auckland, double helping of cellulite, fluorescent energy, hopalong, jumping jacks, New Zealand, nuclear quantity, olympic dream, open arms, rice, shorts, shreds, sprain, summer, tatters, weather, winter on 24/09/2009 | 8 Comments »
Today I wore shorts.
Far from being a grand gesture to welcome summer with open arms and double helpings of cellulite, I was thinking more along the lines of saving a pair of trousers getting drenched and slathered in mud. But hey, at least it was warm enough to wear shorts. In fact, doing jumping jacks [...]
Posted in Hunka husband, tagged auckland, curly coat retriever, curly coated retriever, for sale, New Zealand, puppies, puppy on 20/09/2009 | 3 Comments »
So, you know how Jed recently blew away the competition to take the World’s Best Dog title? Well, here is your opportunity to own some of his genes. From the same breeder and parentage as The Esteemed Jedster:
Red curly coat retriever puppies
AREN’T THEY JUST THE CUTEST ITTY BITTY LITTLE FLUFFY THINGS YOU’VE EVER SEEN?! I’m [...]
Posted in Hunka husband, tagged au contraire, demanding, estonia, further from the truth, galaxy far far away, honourable, noble, sex god, slothful, star amongst men, superhero, wimp on 15/09/2009 | 5 Comments »
It has been suggested that in my last few posts, I misrepresented Husband as a demanding, slothful yob who thinks tossing an empty beer-can down the drive constitutes ‘taking out the rubbish’. I ‘conveniently forgot’ to mention that he also retrieves shoes that have fallen out of the bathroom window into the gutter seven feet [...]
Posted in Hunka husband, Recipes, tagged burnt sage butter, crispy sage, gnocchi, raw pastry, roast beetroot, stodgy on 10/09/2009 | 8 Comments »
Last night, I prepared gnocchi with burnt sage butter; roast beetroot, orange and spinach salad; veal chops; and apple pie.
Husband: This – what d’you call it again?
Me: Gnocchi.
Husband: Tastes a bit . . . stodgy. Bit like potato flavoured raw pastry.
Me: No, it doesn’t. It is light, fluffy and delicious, according to the recipe.
Husband: Is [...]
Posted in Hunka husband, Recipes, tagged au gratin, auckland, baked alaska, balsamic reduction, braised asparagus, cheese on toast, chocolate truffle pudding, extreme cooking, fine dining, lamb chops, Recipes, top class restaurant on 09/09/2009 | 1 Comment »
Husband aspires to a style of dining that could be described as ‘fine’. He treats mealtimes as if he were in a top class restaurant.
“Right, may I have . . . let me see . . . lamb chops with a balsamic reduction, potatoes au gratin, with a side serving of braised asparagus, and for [...]
Posted in Hunka husband, New Zealand, tagged anorexic models, auckland, bitumen, car jockey, forecast, karekare, melting tarmac, mount eden, mr2, spare bikini, sports car, sunny, weather on 07/09/2009 | Leave a Comment »
Since our bask atop Mt Eden last weekend, Auckland has enjoyed a week of near perfect weather. Yesterday was so warm, I was moved to strip down to a camisole top while lunching on the deck with the family in Mt Wellington.
This morning, we awoke to another perfect blue sky, sunshine winking in the bedroom [...]
Posted in Hunka husband, tagged brew, caffeine, coffee, coffee duty, degrees of foulness, diabolical plan, earl grey, fan, filter, great aunt, how to make the perfect cup of tea, jock strap, tea on 06/09/2009 | 8 Comments »
Couldn’t tell you. Tea. The stuff turns me cold. I’ve never understood why companies would manufacture a product that tastes the same as boiling a dirty twig for three weeks and straining the result through a mouldy jock-strap – and even less why customers would choose to BUY it.
This antipathy likely stems from a childhood [...]
Posted in Hunka husband, New Zealand, tagged clothespegs, dead pigeon, delineated duties, dog maintenance, fell blow, filter, flooded farms, out of water, rainstorm, verbal chinese burn, water tank on 02/09/2009 | 14 Comments »
The other day, Husband and I returned from our daily walk. We were cold, wet and covered in mud and . . . there was no water. It wasn’t a broken water pump or a dead pigeon blocking the pipe: our tank was OUT OF WATER.
Running out of water in the Waitakeres is something akin [...]
Posted in Exercise, Hunka husband, New Zealand, tagged auckland, butt sniffing bonanza, curly coat retriever, hint of humping, mount eden, mud, puppy, spring, wallowing, wrestlefest on 31/08/2009 | Leave a Comment »
There are hints of spring in the air (for the purposes of argument, I am choosing to ignore the rain dashing itself against the windows). But recently, the weather has been so much more clement, to the extent that we opened the bedroom window the last couple of nights and complained about the heat.
On Friday, [...]
Posted in Exercise, Hunka husband, New Zealand, tagged animates, ball, broom, curly coat retriever, dog training, ferndown track, fetch, grassmere road, lincoln road, mountain road, outlet pipe, speaking, storm drain on 28/08/2009 | 2 Comments »
Warning: some viewers may find the following footage disturbing.
Below are some videos we took after our daily walk this afternoon, of Jed with his favourite toy: ‘Ball’.
There are some things you should know, before these clips make you doubt our devotion to our dog.
Firstly, if you think I am tormenting my dog, well, I treat [...]
Posted in Hunka husband, New Zealand, tagged body of water, career prospects, curly coat retriever, drowned rat, forestry industry, kaimanawa road, mount ruapehu, pillars of hercules, sh1, sledding, snow, south island, turangi, wet puppy on 26/08/2009 | Leave a Comment »
Finally, the photographic evidence:-
Husband risks life and limb.
So I’m not sure what Husband was up to in this shot. He was either winding up for a rousing chorus of ‘I’m Every Woman’, or he might have been stretching.
Jed gets to grip with a tree.
If there is any body of water in the vicinity, you can [...]
Posted in Hunka husband, New Zealand, tagged abalone, abyss of despair, agent of death, aldan lodge, cambridge, creel lodge, curly coat retriever, desert road, her royal goatiness, interislander, mig welder, mount ruapehu, New Zealand, oamaru, picton, plastering, roof rack, rose tinted glasses, spine chilling cackling, te koutu lake reserve, terminal, timaru, tongariro river, turangi, wellington on 24/08/2009 | 6 Comments »
So the next post was to be an account of the great road trip home from Oamaru. I am pure MORTIFIED to be writing about it so long after the event. At least two weeks’ hindsight bathes the trip in a warm, rosy tint – what I can recall of it.
Although we were sailing the [...]
Posted in Hunka husband, tagged bluetooth, compact, compaq evo n200, dell xps m1210, laptop, ram, weight on 12/08/2009 | 2 Comments »
While I wait for Husband to sort out my Dell, I’m back using my Compaq Evo N200.
Now, I love my Evo. I bought it about – ooh – six? seven? years ago. I still travel with it, since it is compact at 25.2 x 19.9 x 2.1cm, and weighs only 1.1 kg. I love it [...]
Posted in Hunka husband, New Zealand, tagged alison moyet banned, celine dion is creepy, hard pop, lame, memory stick, mp3, nougat, playlist, road trip, selection, soundtrack, true love on 11/08/2009 | 4 Comments »
Me: Ok, I’ve been thinking about music for the trip home. Now, as far as I see it, we have two options. Number one: we can load up a memory stick with both our songs. Strict 50/50 split. Neither of us can fast forward the others songs. Or maybe we can allow one FF per [...]
Posted in Hunka husband, Outlaws, tagged about time, aerial canine stunt, agent of death, cleaning a keyboard, dell, loaded glass, mig welder, niamh shaw, out of office notifier, road trip, tragic event on 10/08/2009 | 5 Comments »
Reasons I haven’t posted in the last few days:-
A tragic event involving an aerial canine stunt, a loaded whisky glass and my keyboard.
Blame has been duly attributed to my Stepfather In Law, Agent of Death. It may have been my keyboard, but the whisky was under his supervision at the time. So, allegedly, was his dog. Looking on [...]
Posted in Hunka husband, Outlaws, tagged 2.0, 32 bit microprocessor, building block, colour sensor, good old days, her goatiness, lego, matrix display, microcomputer, mindstorms, nxt, robotics, servo motors, tvnz, unltrasonic sensor on 05/08/2009 | 3 Comments »
This morning on TVNZ, the breakfast show featured Lego Robotics. For a mere $500, you get the combined versatility of lego building systems with an intelligent microcomputer featuring a 32 bit microprocessor, a large matrix display, 4 input and 3 output ports, and Bluetooth and USB communication link. Three interactive servo motors, an ultrasonic sensor, [...]
Posted in Hunka husband, New Zealand, tagged antivampire, auckland, blenheim, bp connect, carrion, distance, eggs benedict, extinguished my spirit, garage drought, hash brown, hilux surf, hislops, kaikoura, lake taupo, mitre 10, monkey wrench, oamaru, picton, road trip, sequoia lodge, superficial scar, twatter, wellington on 02/08/2009 | 2 Comments »
I planned on driving until I felt tired, then pulling up beside a lake or stream, cuddling up to Jed for warmth, sleeping like an antivampire, then waking to watch the sun rise over snow-capped mountains.
Husband failed to appreciate this romantic vision. In fact, he really didn’t enter into the spirit of the road trip [...]
Posted in Hunka husband, New Zealand, tagged blowing raspberries, bluebridge, bp connect, bruce springsteen, check in, desert road, ferry, fgth, foreigner, hunterville, interislander, kaimanwa forest, lame, led zeppelin, mister mister, north island, paraparaumu, road trip, south island, spandex, turangi, van halen on 01/08/2009 | 5 Comments »
On Wednesday morning, Husband rang as I finished packing the car.
“How do you feel this morning?” he asked solicitously.
“Terrific!” I said.
“Right, pay attention,” said Husband. “We’ve been discussing how to get you and Jed to Oamaru, and we think the best way is to parachute you in-”
“I’m driving.”
“You’re joking,” said Husband.
“Nope. Little road trip. <Jed: [...]
Posted in Friends, Hunka husband, New Zealand, Outlaws, tagged Outlaws, south island, public transport, oamaru, pacific blue, tokoroa, turangi, thelma and louise, brad pitt, gay cowboy theme, disaster strikes, tentacles of doom, travel crate, crate hire on 31/07/2009 | 4 Comments »
Husband left for Oamaru this day last week to catch the last weekend of duck shooting and partake in some serious alcohol abuse with the Outlaws.
I did not join him because my friend, Helen, was over from Dubai. She had asked me to accompany her on a three-day road trip to visit her friend in [...]
Posted in Dubai, Hunka husband, tagged Dubai, great lunch queue massacre, hierarchy, immigration, management, process, rank, theory, uae residency visa, uae visit visa on 20/07/2009 | 2 Comments »
I am delighted to report that Husband has returned – only a week late. The excuses get more and more elaborate; I can hardly WAIT to hear what he will come up with next time. To maintain his current form, he will need to introduce an alien abduction or a great lunch queue massacre.
Husband’s UAE [...]
Posted in Dubai, Hunka husband, tagged real estate, Dubai, uae, property, expat, spam, tenants, economic crisis, apocalypse, grapevine, urban myth, urban legend, lease, pyromania, real estate agent, dubizzle, direct from owner on 15/07/2009 | 2 Comments »
Even in NZ, we heard rumours of expats stampeding out of Dubai: abandoning their cars at the airport, trampling over fallen bodies at the check-in. Depending which reports you listen to, Dubai is an apocalyptic landscape of anarchy, looting, rioting and burning, home only to broken dreams.
In fact, the only thing thriving in the city [...]
Posted in Dubai, Hunka husband, tagged beach, blunt axe, dead skin cells, dendrophile, dendrophiliac, Dubai, maintenance company, middle east, palm tree, rental property, renting, security deposit, tenants, tequila, uae, villa on 14/07/2009 | 1 Comment »
The main reason Husband returned to Dubai so soon after his last trip was to prepare our property for re-renting. He asked if I would like to accompany him. Optimistically, he presented it as a mini-vacation. He went for the beaches and palm trees angle.
I was more focussed on the 22-hour flight with two stopovers, [...]
Posted in Hunka husband, tagged athletes foot, fungus, mushroom on 26/06/2009 | 2 Comments »
Me: Mmm, these mushrooms are nice.
Husband: That’s a contradiction in terms.
Me: No, they really ARE nice.
Husband: Mushrooms can’t be nice-
Me: They CAN. I’m a writer. I should know.
Husband: They’re a fungus! It’s like saying, mmm athlete’s foot.
Posted in Hunka husband, The Muse, tagged about time, creative writing, deadline, first draft, flat tyre, manuscript, muse, niamh shaw, novel, perspective, second novel, shopping list, shrill voice, stress scale, writing on 23/06/2009 | 4 Comments »
Last week I finished the first draft of About Time.
The pressure had been mounting for weeks.
At this point, it is worth bearing in mind that, everything being relative, our lives are comparatively stress-free. Right up there at the top of the Stress Scale is what to eat for breakfast, followed closely by when/where to go [...]
Posted in Exercise, Hunka husband, tagged built in jock strap, drama, honorary title, horror, house of horror, inhumane, innocent bystanders, long acquaintance, mountain road, sartorially psychopathic, scenic drive, shorts of shame, shorts of terror, terror, thriller on 30/05/2009 | 1 Comment »
Yesterday, Husband took Jed for a run up Mountain Road.
Those of you who enjoy/abhor long acquaintance with Husband will know the run was merely an excuse dressed up as ‘exercise’, an excuse to don the Shorts of Shame a.k.a the Shorts of Terror (depending on whether I wake up in a Docudrama or a Thriller. One [...]
