Back for more adventures.
As a side note, before I get into the actual entry, I have been re-reading and trying to correct all the previous blog entries. I am up to about 120. I got over the missing years. Only a few posts over about a 5 year period. A sad time, as I recall, and some of the entries reflect that. But I hope it gets better as I read.
Back to this entry.
I was talking about the New Zealand trip. We had decided that was where we were going. Juanita wanted to visit Anna, so it was a good place. Now I had to come up with an itinerary.
She lives near Wellington, which is the south end of the northern island. It looked to have a lot of good things there, but nothing that was going to take any time to go see. They lived about an hour outside of town, but it was across the mountains. Going back and forth from where they were to Wellington was not really an option. We were going to have to stay in Wellington for most of the time. And while there were things to see, it was not really the big touristy things in New Zealand. Most of that requires hiking or backpacking to see the picturesque parts and we are not really the hiking kind of people. Plus, I don't think I mentioned, I was taking the kids with us, so Maeghan has her wheelchair and everything would need to be wheelchair accessible. Staying in Wellington made that possible, but was not really exciting.
Early on, Juanita mentioned that she had friends somewhere in the north of the north island. Near some famous bay or something. I am not going to look it up. It was a six to eight hour drive to there and she was not sure what part of the bay they lived in, so that could possibly add another two hours to the drive. I did not think this was a good idea, spending at least two days of our total of seven days traveling. And on unfamiliar roads and unfamiliar weather. Seemed like it might turn into a major issue. I said it was a last option, but if we found nothing else, I would consider it. Fortunately, her friend said they might be going away during that time and we would only have one day to visit, so that encouraged Juanita to agree it was a bad idea.
I was trying to discourage it and I had looked it up, but there is one major attraction on the north island, and it was only six hours away from where they lived. That of course, is Hobbiton. It is about midway between Wellington and Auckland. Auckland was out of the question, unless we flew there. I wasn't going to waste that much time driving. Hobbiton is in, or near, Rotorua. Turns out, there is a lot of things to do in or near Rotorua. So much so, I decided to make that our base of operations. It was a good decision.
I have to step away now. It would seem someone found me some work to do and since I do not work on Mondays and it has to be ready Monday, I am going to spend the rest of the day doing work. It means I will forget my train of thought and the rest of the entry may not fit with what I have done so far, but I will attempt to do this at home. Have to switch the keyboard to one I can type on, but William is not there this weekend, so he won't notice, unless I forget to switch it back. He says he got the new keyboard for me, but it is more for Juanita as she likes those types of things. Me, not so much.
Be back soon. I have to go to lunch before I do all this work.
Ok, several days later. Been busy and not up to doing this. Might be more to talk about on that front later, but for now, I am going to end this entry and start another one. I think I was deciding or describing making plans for the New Zealand trip. I will complete that maybe today, but work is kind of busy, we are losing another person, so there is more work to do. We have lost four in the last month. I had a meeting about two months ago trying to tell them that people were not happy. I don't mean hating their work, most of them like what they do, but this place is not providing any incentive or joy to come to work. I tried to tell them that it was not just a few people, it was almost everyone, in all departments. They wanted an example and I mentioned an incident I had recently witnessed. Instead to listening to what I was telling them, they took it to mean that this one person was a problem and they needed to do something about it. She quit two weeks later, along with one of the people I had the meeting with. I will say it in here, but I have said it many times to people up here, they just don't get it. I have always, or for the last three years, said it was not my problem and I did not need to fix it. I am retiring soon, and taking on more responsibility is not what I want to do. I want to pass on responsibility. So now, I am treated like I don't know anything and my opinions or suggestions don't need to be listened to. Maybe that is right, but maybe it isn't. Not my problem, not my issue to resolve.
How I got into that when I was just going to close this entry, I have no idea. Maybe it was because I might have insulted some people last night, we had another good bye drinks excursion. I can never hear what it going on because it is just a too loud environment, but I thought they were talking about one thing and I made my comments about warning them about it again, but they seemed to think I was talking about them. I was, but not in any insulting way. I think they might have taken offense. So I had to try to clarify myself.
And there I go again. I am going before I start another diatribe. Is that the right word. I have no idea, but the word I wanted I can't think of. Mental issues that doctors say are just normal. Makes it hard to work.
That's it.
Later
