Hear my Song - March Post Card Exchange

This was due to be sent out in March, but what with sick computers, on-line roleplaying games, making a copy, and general procrastination, I've only just finished it.

The background is rust dyed fabric, with fussy-cut clematis flowers, and a fantail sitting on a punga tree. I've embellished it with brown and green seed-beads along the punga fronds. The reverse is hand-dyed fabric with stamped words, and a hand-written greeting.

Waitakere Trap Line

It was my turn to check the traps on the Dam Road this weekend. It's been at least a month (or is it two?) since I've been up there. Daylight saving ended today, so I was up there bright and early, with both dogs. The weather was warm and sunny, and at 0800, the sun was still climbing over the ridge.

Just for a change, there were rats in the traps - very dead and squashed. The lake was full, and they've built a new building at the bottom of the dam to control the excess water - and water was pouring out, and down the waterfall.

The bush is in flower - rata, rewarewa, hebe, lillies, with lots of lovely smells.

It would have been nice if I hadn't caught my finger in a trap - got a lovely bruise now. It hurt so much initially, all I could do was stand there. So ... lots of lovely pictures.

Endless March

This has been the month of no laptop. It's been pretty neurotic since I purchased the blasted thing, and Vista is a total pain. Then it started having increasing problems connecting to the internet, until I couldn't connect at all. Backed up most of the files - took 7 disks, and then I ran out.

Took it back to Harvey Norman, who sent it to their repair people, who said "no fault found" .... and then replaced the main board. Over the next week, it became increasingly unstable, until by the end of the week, I again couldn't connect to the internet, or the home network. 2 weeks with Harvey Norman's repair people - and now it has a new hard disk.

But .... it won't accept the backup disks - wants an administrator file. So now I'm trying to copy each batch of files back over into the computer. But of course, inevitably, some really important ones, like the document that contains all my logins for various sites, has been corrupted, and won't open.

Not only that, each file transfer has crashed the laptop.

So, I haven't been able to update my blog, log on to sites, download email, or do much of anything. Time to catch up.