Quiz Mastering and liking blogs

 On Thursday last, I Quiz mastered the music quiz at the Southern Cross for the first time!

Hans on acoustic round, me on the rest!

I did the acoustic round 11 times since April 22, which is a fair few, and because our beloved quiz master Vorn wasn't able to attend, nor his usual back-up, I volunteered.

SUCH FUN. It was a lot of work doing the research and assembling play lists, but as this whole quiz is about listening to songs and answering things like artist and title, as well as in one case, which movie the song was played over the credits of, it's fairly straight forward. 

So now I want to be a quizmaster somewhere every week. It's lots of fun, and I can do it with a 20 minute hair and face makeover instead of a two hour one!

Of course in spite of this it was not plain sailing -  I had bought all of the songs off a website and all was well until an 80s hit came up and it was so quiet we could hardly hear it. Realising this was going to be an ongoing issue, Hans quickly assembled the playlists in Spotify on his iPhone and played them off there. OMG WHAT. Thank goodness for having a millenial by my side

Lots else has been happening too, of course. I'm giving up lone contracting and joining a consultancy company with handover mid May, I've taken up aqua jogging, and I'm still sorting out how I want to focus my spare time, while squandering it on games on my phone.

I'm finishing with a thanks to those who still blog, and read blogs. I'm not an instagram kind of gal, I like a good chewy read. I subscribe to a few newsletters that are basically blog posts that get dropped into our email aren't they? And Youtube, with its longer form chatty videos. But I really like blogs.

Free time!

 Well, I am no longer a person who owns a shop. On 1 January it became Wendy's baby and no longer ours.

It's pretty idyllic really - I love it still and love our team, and I am still welcome and will be teaching hopefully, later in the year. 

BUT, I have my Saturdays back!!!! Hallelujah!!! We went to Martinborough this past weekend with friends and didn't have to worry about what we were leaving behind. Amazing.

While we were there we went to see Graham and Sons Upholstery about our sofa. It is in good nick, except the cushions which are borked. As replacing it with like is a $6k investment, we are looking at just having the cushions done and these are the two stand out options, either side of the original.

I am a big fan of mixing up patterns and having a stripy frame and patterned seat cushions is fine with me. Which one do you like best?

Hair and PM refresh

So, after four months it was time to get my red, pink and purple edge streaks refreshed. It's all new for me, well it was 1998 when I last had any hair on my head bleached, and that was sort of bandy streaks of sunset orange.

It is really hard to get into a hair salon in Wellington. So many of those wonderful senior stylists in their late 20s and 30s have taken off overseas (including my darling Harlie) at the same time as the lock down messed up the more gradual rotation. So I was over the moon to get an appointment within two weeks with the lovely Nicole at Hair Ministry (it's near Parliament) and she was so lovely and the salon is lovely too. All the great service and experience but none of that inner city baditude that I have experienced.

The regrowth was impressive! The colour looks strong still as I refresh it every few washes, but it was getting dire.

First up, bleaching those roots. Nicola did this in two stages, the very base against my head was second as the product works faster close to the warmth of the head. Such care.
I really loved the Trelisse Cooper robe, it even had hand holes in it.

Bleach washed out, colours painted on. So many processes! That's Gowry the other stylist (boss lady?) in the background. The guy whose hair she is cutting came in with the biggest mop, she cut SO much oout of it, it was fascinating to watch in the mirror. Yes, I am nosy.

The finished look. It is a 2.5 hour process and I eschewed getting the offered curls because I was running late and Nicola's next client was waiting. Next time.
Hard to tell in this pic but the top if red, and the next section down is pink, and under that is purple. So on the right of my part (my right) it is just pink and purple. It works!

Well, our PM has resigned. Her daughter is starting school in a few weeks and she wants to be a Mum. And a wife - not like she just wants to be a wife and mum, but she wants to do those things justice. Jacinda Ardern is amazing, and part of that was, she never really wanted to be PM in the first place. And she's so burned out, she is doing the right thing. Chris Hipkins is our new PM and I think he'll do well. The new deputy PM is Carmel Sepuloni, first Pasifika person to be DPM. they are all great mates, from the 2008 intake into opposition that brought Jacinda into Parliament too.

New beginnings eh.