Wordless Wednesday17_0228

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Last week we appeared to have a blanket

of snow in our front yard.

It is that time of the year again when cockatoos

or sometimes other birds descend en masse

to tear our yard apart.

They rip and tear up the hard clay soil and then leave.

Sounds like a teenager doesn’t it?

These are the Corella Cockatoos.

I think usually it is the Sulphur Crest variety

which does this job.

There may have been a

demarcation dispute during the year?

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Hope you enjoyed.

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Wordless Wednesday (create-with-joy.com)

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Black and White Tuesday18-0227

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Black and White Tuesday

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Some weekend images from…

the City of Sails.

Auckland, N.Z.

I’m not exactly sure what part of Auckland,

except to say that we were perched upon…

many of the volcanic craters situated in Auckland

which provided good view of all the sails

out on Saturday morning.

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Hope you enjoyed.

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THURSDAY’S SPECIAL-Pairs

 

 

Not my best photo. 

However it was taken as I was…

surprised to see two black swans on

Lake Pupuke in the middle of Auckland

on Saturday morning.

I always thought that Australia was

the home of the Black Swan.

Still New Zealand is not that far away. 

We can share!

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Thursday’s Special: Pairs

Pic-and-Word-Challenge_Wk128_Frozen

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Re-posts…sorry.

The morning this was taken my hands went numb

and the temperature in the car was

-3 degrees Celsius.

Not that cold in many parts of the world,

however, after waiting on an

exposed platform for fog to clear and sun to rise,

I was barely able to hold my camera.

 

I have posted this a few times.

The very foreground is the outside edge of our

spouting/guttering which had what I call

a horizontal icicle, stalagmite, stalactite frozen

in mid-air and beginning to melt over

the edge of the gutter.

This was our first winter after moving from the farm.

Never seen it before or since.

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Pic and Word Challenge: Frozen

Our-Weekend

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Our weekend commenced when the alarm

sounded at 0430 on Friday morning.

We quickly bundled ourselves into the car for the hour or so drive to Melbourne Airport.   Not much traffic that time of day an easy drive.  Check in, get rid of baggage hand have some breakfast before our 0850 flight. 

That WAS the idea/plan at least. 

Little did I know, when booking tickets, that Daughter-In-Law had her passport in her maiden name.  So when her passport was being rejected by a machine we could not work out why until Number 2 Son had a look over her shoulder.  They had this paper work for several weeks mind you. 

Time is ticking by. 

MGW could not proceed any further because the bloke who took our booking put Number 2 Son and Yours Truly on one booking along with luggage. 

Remember that piece of information! 

And MGW and Daughter-In-Law sans luggage on another booking.  There was a price differential. 

So while I stood guard over suitcases and laptops etc. off go all three to see if the can rectify this matter of an incorrect name on a ticket.  Which they did, at a cost of $130. 

By this time the clocks are showing around 0720 and we have a flight at 0850. 

Number 2 Son arrives back with some McDonald’s which was gulped down, no coffee, no tea, no liquid of any sort to start the day. 

MGW and Daughter-in-law have fronted up been asked if they have luggage and replied in the affirmative.  “It’s not on the ticket.  You will have to pay $130 per suitcase” (of which there were two) they were told.

We had booked with Virgin Australia, however, Air New Zealand was the operating the flight so Number 2 Son and I approached an Air New Zealand worker.  And explained what had/was happening.  “No worries!  I’ll fix it” and he did and we saved $260. 

Still no coffee! 

By this stage getting on the plane was our priority.  Coffee did not arrive until around 1000.  Both Son and I likened it to nectar from the Gods and begged for seconds.  However it was just airline coffee second time round!!

Life did begin to look better.  We had a safe flight.  We were met by daughter-in-law to be and taken to our accommodation with about half an hour to spare before we had to partake in a ‘meet the family’ dinner… which was excellent.  The wedding reception is to be at the same venue so it was kind of testing the food/chef as well. 

The effort was well worth it.  On Saturday night at the engagement party we met many of Number 1 Son’s future extended family.  We will not be strangers at the wedding now.

Brunch with our boys and girls this morning and then we were back at Auckland Airport boarding our Air New Zealand plane again by 1530 this afternoon and nearly four hours later back on home soil around 1730.  A busy weekend.

And with the clock now approaching mid-night (Sunday) it may be prudent to turn in and rest.

Book Review-Double-Cross

Double Cross

by

James Patterson

Another of the Alex Cross series and very typical of the Cross adventures…if you could call them adventures!

This time the serial killer likes, no loves, to have an  audience which is a slight twist on usual serial killer story lines.

While I enjoyed  Double Cross, I felt the characters were more gruesome in this book.  I don’t know where or how James Patterson would have researched this story line.

The brevity of this review is due to the fact that I first read Double Cross five or six years ago…long before I commenced these reviews.  My review from that time mainly indicates I liked the book, characters were gruesome and it was a three star read.

I have rated Double Cross a three star read.

 Other Goodreads Readers have rated Double Cross an average of 4.0 stars, from 40,153 Ratings and 1,483 Reviews.

Aread.

Double Cross

can be purchased on-line at 

Booktopia, Fishpond and Amazon

 

Cee-BW-Challenge-Structure

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The first of my nature structures…

 was shown to us while in Africa’s

Kruger National Park.

However, one does not need to travel

that far to spy a web. 

These two were sighted in and around Geelong.

 This one was overlooking Geelong’s

Queens Park Golf Course

The temperature dropped to -3 degrees Celsius.

There was a real pea-soup fog and

I did not get my sunrise photos because

of the aforementioned conditions.

Had to guess your link Cee. 

Will be away for a few days so need to schedule posts.

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Cee’s Black & White Challenge: Structure

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