Another Sunday

Autumn has been making itself known here now .. Especially in the evenings & early mornings ... Our daytime temperatures are still warm though ...Well warm enough to wear T-shirts and sunny enough to still think about hat wearing when we go outside .... We live under the ozone hole for too much of the year .....







Work has been pretty full on again ... Highlight of the week was Friday where I had organised a multi-vendor executive seminar on the ITIL framwork ..This is a best practice framework for running IT Service Management... The discussions were excellent...lots of humour and finally the realisation from certain areas as to the extent of my work ... All processes within the ITIL framework come under my responsibility/ownership. The days session pushed this home and strenthened my case for creating a Service Management Office .. My Boss the Company CTO made a good set of notes to this ..He has a vested interest in putting this in place as well .......









My boss tells me I am to do some professional development .... .What that means is two different things betwen him and me ... But he gets his was first off and next month I have two seminars to attend in Auckland on IT Infrastructure and Service Management ..Followed by a trip to Ozz to attend another seminare on Outsourcing this time followed by a site visit to another company for a few days to look at how they manage multi-vendor outsourcing ....









It's going to be a busy winter me thinks ......

Today is the last day of my holiday ...Tomorrow it all starts again .. Work work work ....McD and I are to get back into the gym again as well so next week will be a shock to our systems ........

I've been continuing my family history work ..I'm trying to trace my real GGG-grand parents ...It's proving a little difficult ...... GG-Grand parents had the same surname when the married ! my name is not that common a name but there you go two separate families tied by blood some 300 + years previously I'm told ... So ... GGG-granparents are William and Ann D' and George and Ann D' ..no issue there really except that there are also in the same villiage another two families William and Ann D' and George and Ann D' of about the same age ...... All with kids and all married etc just before the censuses began .....

I think I have the right william as when GG-GF married they used a church that marked a parish that GGG-GF William attended ...... So the link I think is there and strong enough to use .... Would like more evidence though .....

But try and sort out the Georges !!! no chance ........................The two churches in question are about a roads width apart from each other and the 4 families lived in the same villiage ...Probably even drank in the same pubs together ......

I've not just stuck with my surname either I've worked along my maternal line and along the maternal lines of my grand parents .... All nicely packaged in a database but Oh Boy it's getting complicated and time consuming ...

My next plan is to host it all on a web site ... I've been scouring E'bay and the like buying up old pictures and postcards of the Norfolk area and portsmouth and Fettercairn in scotland .... one day I'll get time to do it ......

Pictures are from Mt Holdsworth again ....in the main .. The others of from a reserve created utilising the old railway tracks in the area ... It's a very peaceful place when not overly visited as can happen at times .....

I've been on holiday since last Thursday. Actually even last Thursday was more a 1/2 day as I was at lunch with a vendor at 12pm eating a rather nice salmon dish..Except it had bacon in it which I though detracted from the salmon flavour ... But hey ...what would I know .......

Straight after that I made my excuses to a colleague who was dining also and headed off to the new book store we have in town called Borders. Not a cheap place thats for sure but already taking over as the main shop in that area ...It even host a Cafe ... I grabebd a couple of books for the week off ... the God Delusion by Richard Dawkins and a book by a favourite author of mine - Richard Flannagin - The Unknown Terrorist...





The week has been very restful ...I've needed it ... I let myself get run down and in the work rut and then little else gets done ... We did take a trip over the hill from Wellington to the Wairapa ... Its mainly famland scarred by beautiful rivers and streams ...The soil good enough for the wine industry to move in and take over a major portion of it ....

We headed off towards a township called Masterton where we had a hotel room booked for the night ... This was close enough to the hills that we were able to easily then drive to the start of the MtHoldsworth walk and spend a couple of hours walking in the native forest and photgraphing to our hearts content ....



The plan was for the next day top travel to a tiny village called eketahuna and take some rustic building shots and sus out the trout fishing for a later visit ... Then make our way back home at a leisurly pace visiting Masterton, Carterton, Greytown, Featherston townships and nose at the curio/antique shops there before dringing back over the hill and home .....





It didn't happen ... McDs daughter was sposed to have friends staying with her while we were away .. .they decided not to stay and McDs daughter panicked that evening as she's just had her tonsils out at 19 ..... We drove back 1st thing the next morning .......

Duck Frenzie