Thursday and we have some sun back

Jon was up and away at 7.15 today as he had to drive to Auckland with Mark for a meeting.

At least the weather was good and I got Totty out for a proper walk this morning.

I had to post some birthday cards so went out to the post office and then up to the garden centre for a coffee. They had some nice looking lemon muffins which I just had to try! It was very good.

I was so full of muffin I didn't feel like any lunch so didn't bother to have any. I took Totty out for a walk later in the afternoon and by the time I got back I was shaking with hunger and quickly had to eat some Ryvita with pate followed by a yogurt and a banana but it was a long time before I stopped shaking. That will teach me to eat a muffin at 11.30.

I left before Jon go back as I had to pick Janice up for the Lions area dinner. There were about 90 people at the dinner and we had a young lady from the Girl's College singing for us. The Lions are sponsoring her as she goes on weekend singing courses and hopes to become an opera singer and she s very good for 18 years old. At the start o the meeting we had to sing the New Zealand National Anthem in Maori then English. Fortunately, they gave me a copy of the words but it was very hard as the pronunciation is so difficult - lots of vowels and not so many consonants. I will have to learn it better for the next time. It was a good meeting but rather longer than the normal Lions meetings. We had a speaker (English lady) from the Cancer Society talking to us about the new Lions Cancer Lodge which is being built in Hamilton. It is used for people who are having treatment and live more than 100kms away and they stay there Mon - Fri. Lions paid for the original one but they are having to relocate but will still call it the Lions Lodge as the Lions clubs in this area pay a lot of money to the Cancer Society for the upkeep of the Lodge.

There was also much talk about the terrible tsunami in Samoa. Lions International has sent a large sum of money to them already but there was talk of what we cold do from here. The Lions Club in Samoa is part of our area. There is a very large Samoan population here in NZ and many Kiwis go there for holidays and it was on our 'to do' list. The pictures and stories on TV have been very sad, one man has lost 14 family members and was gong back to Samoa to bury them.

I must say it had not really hit me how vulnerable we are in NZ to natural disasters and lots of people were taking about earthquakes and they say 'when' it happens in NZ and not 'if'. Everyone is waiting for the 'big one'. The TV showed pictures of some very silly people in Auckland who had gone down to the beach to 'wait for the tsunami'. How stupid are they? The police were out telling them to get to high ground but they were ignoring them. In the end all we got was a bit of a swell.

By the time I got home Jon was just making his Horliks, usually he is just finishing his dinner.

There is something wrng with our keyboard andit i not typing all th lettrs and i is drivng me mad!