Welcome to Winter

Ummmmm.....well......I'm kinda overdue on this blog thing aye?

It's been a funny year so far.....haven't really been interested in my normal hobbies. Done almost no fishing or photography. But work has been busy (I have come through the recession unscathed) and I've been focussed on some other things, like painting the house (didn't quite get it finished over summer) and losing weight.

At the begining of February I put on a shirt that I only bought a few months earlier and realised that it was now to small for me. I packed a fair bit on over christmas, and not just the normal chistmas excess. After not being able to do anything for 3 months last year (I wasn't allowed to lift anything more than 1kg) my muscle mass was well down, and activity reduced after my sugery, so the festive fare turned to bloat rather quickly.

To be fair I was over 100kg before my op, and that reduced to around 96kg afterwards, but by the beginning of feb I was up to 103.5kg.

So putting that shirt on and realising it was now to small finally gave the the motivation to do what I had known needed to be done for a while.

I'm now 87.5kg, having lost 16kg in around 18 weeks. A few more kg and i'll be pretty happy. Pants have gone from 104cm waist to 92cm. A combination of low carb dieting, lifting weights to build some muscle tone, and walking as often as I can is what has worked for me.

Soon the hard part will begin. Maintaining it!

2 days in the Naki

Well it's about time I revived this blog thing. So here I am.....incase you haven't guessed I survived the surgery......but I don't want to talk about that.

We spent the weekend visiting Pete and Shona in New Plymouth. We had a great time catching up with them and see in the sights. From the light festival to the mountain. (of course!) Thanks Pete and Shona!

Fun and Games

It's been an interesting week. Last wednesday I had an angiogram, another test to find out why I have not been my normal self lately. It turns out my arteries are fine, but my aortic valve, which was replaced when I was 17 is now severely constricted. That means that I'm now on the list for another replacement operation, probabaly sometime in the next 3 months. So I have open heart surgery followed by a couple of months off work, and more time after that before i'm fully recovered.
Dunno how I feel about it. On one hand I am releaved that they didn't find another problem to worry about. And I'm not suprised, as the typical life of a human graft is 10-15 years, and mine has lasted 19. But on the other hand i'm quite apprehensive about the surgury and recovery. Last time was the worst time of my life, even though it all went fairly smoothly. It isn't something I want to repeat.

Friday Afternoon Fish

So I was sitting in the office on the 18th floor this morning, looking out over the viaduct and inner harbour. I was feeling depresed, looking at the glorious weather and knowing that the forecast for the weekend is so bad. When am I going to get a fish? Then a plan started formulating.....a quick check of the calender confirmed that I had nothing to do that afternoon that couldn't be just as easily done from home while it is raining cats and dogs over the weekend. A quick word with the boss, and my plan was a go.

I haven't been able to get out on the water for about a month due to weather and other commitments, and the last 2 times I've been out off Eastern Beach I've come home empty handed, so was desperate to get a feed of Snapper! But where to go? Eastern Beach was out. With the tide as it was it would be easier to walk out to the reef than take the kayak. But I had a plan.......

11:30am: Meeting with a clent in East Tamaki

1:00pm home in Howick scoffing down lunch and loading up the car

2:00pm drop into Fergs Kayaks and pick up the NRS guide gloves they got in for me

2:30pm on the water at Kohimarama heading for the reef at the eastern end

The tide was still going out, so I started out flicking some softbaits around the westen side of the reef for half an hour or so with no takers. I'm yet to catch a fish on softies. What am I doing wrong?

By 3:15 the tide was starting to turn, so I paddled around the other side of the reef, and found a likely looking spot, dropped the anchor and burley and started putting some of the stuff I learnt at the Smart Marine winter snapper fishing seminar into practice. It was slow at first, but after about an hour the bites started coming, and pretty soon I had a couple of small snapper on board. They were bearly my boat size limit of 30cm, but I was desperate not to go home empty handed so kept them.....

After that the bites started getting quite regular, but I was making dumb mistakes that lost me fish. (Like birds nesting my new tld15 trying to cast it, and stiking with my egg beater reel in free spool ) So after swearing at my self lots, and putting the overhead rod aside I finally got my act together.

By this time the fish were on the bite big time. Every bait was getting hit within minutes of being cast. They weren't big fish, but I landed two at 40cm and another around 35cm. One of the 40cm fish got it's revenge, flicking a hook along my finger leaving a gouge 2 cm long an deep enough to paint the cockpit red. By now it was starting to get dark, and I don't yet have a light sorted. Plus I was a bit worried about how much blood I was putting in the water. (I wasn't bleeding to death, but the Jaws sound track was playing in my head ) I recon if I'd stayed another hour I would have had my limit easily, and the fish seemed to be getting bigger.

Anyway, I'm happy! I got a feed for tomorrow night, got out on the water, fished a spot I've never tried before, and got to try some of the tips I picked up at the seminar. Actually 5 legal snapper is the best I have done so far in my short yak fishing history! Now it can rain all weekend and I won't care :)

Perfect Harmony

Home entertainment geeks rejoice! Now you can have it all. The joyous games machine\media player\ and Blu-ray player that is the PS3, and 1 remote for your whole home entertainment system.
Logitech Harmaony remotes have always been cool. The ability to plug it into your PC, tell it what components you have and not needing to go through and program all the commands in by pointing the old remote at it and pressing each button 1 by 1. Then you can set up "activities" - little macros, so when you press "watch DVD" for example it turns on your tele, selects the right input, turns on the amp, again selects the right input, and turns on the DVD player all ready to play your movie, Very cool. But the IR based harmony (or any other universal remote) never got on with the bluetooth Playstation 3. There were a few ugly workarounds but they were never very satisfactory. So finally somebody has done something about it. Logitech have released this PS3 Adapter for their range of Harmony remotes. All it is is an IR reciever wired to a Blutooth transmitter. Works a treat, and now I have 1 remote to rule them all!

Player of the Day!

Daniel's team continued their unbeaten run yesterday by annihilating the Dio girls team 13-0. Daniel had his best game yet, putting in 100% effort for the whole game, and getting involved at every opportunity. He didn't score a goal, but helped set up a number of scoring opportunities, and was strong on defence too. He fully deserved the Player of the Day award!

Sup wid u?

I haven't said much on here lately have I? Oh well.....

Daniel's team won 8-1 this week!