21 July 2007

Life in the far north

Last week-end (14-15 July) was the end of School Holidays, and Susan thought it would be nice if, instead of our usual Sunday afternoon with Eddie and Eveline, we offered to stay up at their house for the week-end so they could get away by themselves for a couple of nights. So we did that. Sue picked me up on Friday (the 13th :-)) and Eddie and Ev took off for parts unknown (well, actually, a well-enough known hotel in Auckland). Warm! Eddie and Eveline have a heat pump. It is now a must-have for Susan. Budgeting may make this a somewhat distant prospect, but I must admit it was lovely. What Sue really wants for our house is a heat pump combined with a 'DVS' - Distributed Ventilation System. You put the heat pump in your main room, and then have a system that sucks warm dry air into the cool wet back rooms - hey, presto! No more weeping windows or mildew! Well, it is lovely and we congratulate them. Anyway, we had a lovely time with Eddie's kids - Robyn (8 years old), Jonny (6), and Julian (5). We have had them stay at our house in the past but this worked much better. At our house there is 'nothing to do.' At their house they are on their home turf. On the Saturday Susan took them to see 'Shrek 3' (I had an appointment at the University at that time).