Our Petty Lives: April in Christchurch

Rogo, William and Jonathan are all doing well. Mark and Nicola go to Kaikoura.

General Conference
We had a lovely Sunday on Conference Video day, and we listened to a session of General Conference at home. We didn’t have to get dressed or drive anyone anywhere. Bliss. The talks were interesting, though I fluctuated between feelings of guilt and relief, when listening to the talks about parenting. Guilt that we didn’t do all the things we were supposed to while raising the boys, and relief that it’s pretty much over and they both turned out okay despite our deficiencies. With Elder Holland’s talk about pornography I was trying to explain to Jonathan what pornography is, and decided that it is so predominantly visual, that whatever limited understanding he has will be sufficient.

William

William is enjoying the Far North, being companion to the DL and driving all over the place. They went up to Cape Reinga on Pday and one week they drove down to the temple in Hamilton for a Zone Conference. They drive 90 minutes to District Meeting and several of their investigators are in outlying branches. He says if he has beautiful scenery to look at, he can keep his spirits up. He will probably spend his whole winter there, so that will be most pleasant for him. And they are doing well. They had a record 30 baptisms in the Far North Zone last month, even surpassing South Auckland. The photo is of Elder Petty at Cape Reinga lighthouse, in the far north of New Zealand.

Photo of three cute things!

Rogo
For Easter we spent Monday relaxing, and then on Tuesday Mark and I drove up to Kaikoura, stopping at Amberley and Cheviot on the way, to see if they would like to stock Rogo books. We managed to sell 5 to a “Take Note” shop in Kaikoura. We stayed in a nice motel with a spa bath and went out to dinner. About 8pm we got a call from Jonathan saying that Sharon hadn’t arrived. So we rang her, and she had got confused over her days. Jonathan was saying that the last time he missed his dinner was when he broke his leg, and then he gave the date for that! He wasn’t upset at all – I think he was rather pleased at the adventure of it all.
The next day I had my hair cut and Mark went to take photos. Then we approached the people at “Go Pukeko”, who bought 20 books and 10 childrens packs. Cool! Then we travelled across the Waiau road to Hanmer Springs and home through Culverden. In most of the places the buyers weren’t there, so I left a book and said I would ring them. It was surprisingly fun once I got over the initial fear. “Feel the fear and do it anyway!”. We have some more ideas on how to sell the books. We plan to go to Wanaka at the end of May for a Rogaine, so we will do some selling down there too.

Photo of the laminated set.

We have made some laminated puzzle sets for sale at the Market, for children, as they really liked the laminated demo Rogos. There was this very cute little boy called Josh, who really liked our puzzles and wanted to buy a book as he couldn’t afford the laminated set. Fortunately his brother or uncle gave him some more money so he could get the laminated set. He was SO keen. He was 5. I told him to write to us and we would put it on the website. Rogo is making good progress – to paraphrase Monty Hall, a gameshow host, it takes a long time to become an overnight success. I have made a Facebook Page for Rogo and we have 33 fans. Shane and I spoke to the University Printing manager, who is keen to do business with us. There are lots of different directions we can take, so it is exciting, but perplexing.
We had a meeting of the shareholders of Creative heuristics and decided we needed to develop a business plan. I’m looking into the educational market, and we are exploring newspaper, book and electronic as well. The Rogo Facebook page now has 20 fans. We met with various people to talk about having an i-phone application made, and bought an i-phone so that we can become familiar with the interface. It is beautiful. It is amazing. Mark thinks it is the most beautiful man-made thing he has ever seen. I have downloaded quite a few apps and already have quite a few ideas on how we can make this a winning game. I read on-line about a person who made a game that made $250,000 in the first two months. We are trying not to get too excited before our chickens are hatched.
Photo of some customers trying out Rogo.

Party
We went to the 50th birthday of Brian Porter, my best friend when I was 16 going on 17. He took care of me. (And yes he was 17 going on 18 at the time!) (I’ve always thought that was a particularly redundant expression – if you are 16 you can only be going on 17!) Anyway the party was very nice, and there were some cool stories about Brian. He is now Engineering manager for V3 which is part of Virgin Airlines. He has recently been setting up the workshop in South Africa. He is based in Brisbane. Maria Martin was there and we had a nice time together.
Current events
We found it intriguing hearing about the Volcano eruption in Iceland that stopped flights in and out of the UK for over 4 days. The ensuing chaos was amazing. Air NZ is telling people not to start out on their flights to the UK, as there were no hotel rooms available in LA or Hong Kong at present. The eruption could go on for quite some time. As Mark pointed out, it shows how much we are at the mercy of Mother Nature. The first time there was a problem like this was in 1982 when a 747 flew through the smoke from a volcano near Djakarta and all four engines cut out. The announcement from the cockpit has gone into legend:
"Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. This is your captain speaking. We have a small problem. All four engines have stopped. We are all doing our damnedest to get them going again. I trust you are not in too much distress."

Graduation
During graduation week I went to the Maori graduation. There were 39 graduating and it took from 2pm to 6.30pm, followed by a good feed at the new AMI stadium. Gina got her PhD awarded. Man that is an amazing achievement, as during the time her mother, father and sister all died individually, she fostered four sons in three different batches, they moved house to Wellington, and generally faced a lot of turmoil. So well done to her.

I marshalled at the regular graduation, which was about 400 students in just over an hour. Much less personal than the maori graduation, and the food was nowhere near as good. But more efficient as well. I had a nice time this time, with no difficult graduands.

Mark
Mark is gaining a lot from his time with Jonathan, as is Jonathan. He is keen to have lots of good time with William on his return also. 2011 will be our year to empty the nest, so that in 2012 we can go on sabbatical – or maybe we won’t be working for the university any more by then. Who knows!
Mark has also been quite busy with his calling, and drove down to Timaru to sort out an audit one Sunday, and to Ashburton another Sunday. Jonathan and I had commitments in Christchurch so we couldn’t easily go with him.

Jonathan
Jonathan received his patriarchal blessing. It was a nice experience. It talked about him serving a mission in the next life, and also that he would be a great influence for good in this life. I can see that happening. It also talked about him attending the temple, so I guess that's the next step for him.

As part of Jonathan’s jazz course, he plays in a blues bar every second Wednesday night with his ensemble. Mark has gone with him so far, and I went once. It is good to see him fitting in and gaining kudos for his talent.

Woodburner
Because of the clean air regulations, we had to change our woodburner. the first photo is of Nicola saying goodbye and thank you to the old one, and the second photo is of the new one. We haven't used it yet as it still needs to get a permit. We are told it is a bit big for the house, so we might find it too hot! Can't see a problem with that. What appeals is that it can burn up to 9 hours over night, we are told, and it is a wetback.