Christmas was a quiet one. Usually, about 40 of my extended family descend on one person's home for the day. This time our family was fractured across a couple of countries, so I spent it with my brother and Boxing Day with my partner's family.

Felt weird not being surrounded by the cacophony that is my family, but I did crush some excellent naps over the break.

I have four tomato plants growing in my greenhouse, combined with the cucumbers and the mystery plant that turned out to be pumpkin, it's a mini rainforest. However, one tomato plant has blossom end rot, apparently a problem caused by a calcium issue, but the true catalyst is infrequent/too frequent watering. The other plants are producing like mad, and they all get watered at the same time, so unsure what my approach is here. They're fussy plants these. Good lessons for the future though, this is the first of many attempts.

Strange update. Once upon a time I played a lot of Battlefield V, across two accounts, probably about 1000 hours in it. Enough to be a menace. Back in the day I was in a 'clan' and we'd typically just have a bit of fun in a server, if we ever started to dominate a match we'd split ourselves up to make things even. Since Battlefield 2042 came out, most of us have stopped playing, because it was hot trash and it burned our love of the game. Now we hear that the BF V servers are popular again, and there's a new clan running the roost. Allegedly they're talking shit about us and other old clans, so we've been summoned, to come back for a shitfight.

Is it stupidly childish? Yes. Could we ignore it? Entirely. Am I reinstalled and testing my aim? You bet.

This weekend the battle begins, the glorious old guard BDSL (Basement Dwelling Sweat Lords) vs the whiny upstarts EZPZ.

Oh! So turns out my partner loves, and I mean fuckin' looooves, The Great British Bake Off. It's surprisingly hard to track down, legally or not. Most streaming services don't have it in NZ, and those that do, have like a season at best.

I didn't know she adored this show, and apparently she had been trying her best to solve this access issue, on and off, for the better part of two years (we have been together for almost seven..). She finally told me this week, about her deepest desire. I checked which Netflix region had the show (USA does!), flicked my VPN on in our NVidia Shield, changed to USA, and restarted Netflix. Great British Baking Show was the first thing that appeared as a suggestion and my partner lost. Her. Shit. She was wriggling, actually wriggling. I asked, once she had stopped writhing on the couch, why she never told me about this before? Took all of five minutes to rectify. She didn't want to bother me with it, apparently. Which sucks, cause she can bother me with anything and I'll take it off her plate. The new job environment is still paying dividends it seems, my partner feels comfortable coming to me with things she thinks are inane.

Reading a book next to her on the couch, cat in her lap, as she critically judges ganache application on the screen filled me with an awful lot of joy.

People around me are catching Covid for the 2nd or 3rd time, and I still remain (apparently) untouched. I am thinking by now I have had it, and I was a lucky sod who remained asymptomatic. Not so lucky for anyone around me.

My partner has had time for her ADHD medication to kick in, and holy shit what a difference. Normally I cook, clean, take care of the laundry and chores - and she will do her absolute best to help out around the house. 90% of the time though, it falls to me.

However!

This weekend just gone, she sorted out our entire linen closet, repotted all of our (her) succulent plants, took an entire carload of old clothes away to be donated, took our cat to the vet, vacuumed the house, hung up paintings she's had for two years but never done anything with, conditioned our leather couch and went to the farmers market to get some veggies for this weeks meals. She even found time to visit an op-shop, and came back with an untouched herringbone blazer that fits me perfectly, and would have sold for about $250. She got it for $10. Overall, she's beating me to chores around the house, which has never happened in our years together.

I am careful not to focus on the medication doing it's thing, and trying instead to see it as a launch pad for her. She's quick to say "Wow these meds are awesome" but she's still doing the things. She wanted to do them all along, she just now has the executive function to back up her plans. I'm confident the diagnosis was a key part of her shift towards productivity - the validation she felt when a therapist said "Yes. This all makes sense. You have all the markers of ADHD. This isn't being faked and I have a plan to combat this". She has started the conversation that I was dreading though. The one that began, "You've put up with me like this for 6 years. Why? Why would you do that to yourself?"

I love her. She's hilarious, compassionate and charismatic. She's fuckin' weird and has that delightful, British dry wit. She encourages me with my hobbies and calls me on my bullshit when I get a bit fiery and am absolutely not looking at a scenario objectively.

I'd be a far worse person without her, so.. I can hardly call it "putting up" with her. Her birthday is next week, taking her out for dinner and a nighttime walk on the beach.

Happy times.

Update: I just got home from work and she has been busy. There is a small plastic guillotine (of the paper slicing variety) on the kitchen table.

Me: What's that?

Her: A tiny guillotine

M: Ooo for crafts?

H: For beheading tiny revolutionaries

M:....

H: And crafts.

Met my newborn nephew for the first time over the weekend. He's very cute, wriggles a lot and makes a huge amount of snuffling noises.

While visiting, my brother took me to his monthly poker night with his friends. 9 of us around a table, and I had no fucking clue how to play poker. 5 hours later I was in the last three, staring down some seasoned card wranglers. I credit my success to being impossible to predict. After all, if I don't know what I'm doing, how can they? I bowed out quickly once I was at that stage, but it was a good time. Lots of beers, watched the rugby (a nice distraction when I discovered I had a full house but had to play it cool) and headed home about 1am. Then we played games till about 3am, but of course Daylight Savings kicked in that night and it became 4am immediately - oh my poor head the next morning.

Now to meet him and see how it pans out. My boss is jumping for joy that I'm making moves. Outwardly for her staff to progress, inwardly (I'm sure) to get me out of her hair.

All my job issues have led me to apply for a role in IT as Desktop Support within my organization. Completely different direction to the management I've been doing, buuuuut I like IT. I've always wanted to work in IT, but have had no qualifications and so it's always been out of my grasp. I like the fact that IT stuff is needed everywhere, middle management has always felt very tenuous in comparison. I had a chat with the hiring manager when the role got posted, and explained my situation, experience and desire to shift.

She not only encouraged me, but said that she is confident my salary could be retained. It'd be a drop in band, but I'd be brought in at a higher level on that lower band, to equal what I'm on now. So my ceiling for pay rises would be diminished, but that's only as long as I stay at that role. With management experience under my belt, I'll learn everything I need and climb that specific ladder instead.

Quietly hopeful. My boss has been blessedly calm about everything, neither of us are poking at each other. She has other problem children for now so the spotlight is off me.

Going through my phone and clearing out texts, came across this beauty the night before we all went into lockdown here in NZ. Got me feeling kinda strange that lockdown came and went, 2 months flew by. I'm not a hugely patriotic person but that "Kia kaha" at the end did make me a little teary.

I've finished The Last of Us Part 2. It's good, the gameplay is excellent as expected. I just found the story to be so fucking dark. I know it's post-apocalyptic and all but damn, it was harrowing. Maybe I'm just getting too old, but I found it difficult to enjoy the game when I was just feeling so bad for every character involved. It was honestly a depressing bloody time..

9/10.

My whisky collection is growing, NZ Govt considers alcohol delivery an essential if it can be contact-less.

My parents had their 35th wedding anniversary last week so we had a ZOOM meeting with the family to raise a glass to them - was a bit odd but very nice to do.

Work has all but ceased, I've volunteered to help other departments cause I'm bored as shit.

Finished the Final Fantasy 7 Remake over Easter, 36 hours and I didn't do much outside of story based things so eventually I'll go back to properly flesh it out, but I fucking loved what I got from it all the same.

Our Govt is looking at easing restrictions, but only slightly, after we hit our four week lockdown period next Thursday. I might even be able to go back to the office! 9 deaths is 9 too many for any time, but it's a tiny number compared to what it could have been. Proud of my fellow Kiwis for putting in all the hard work needed.

Holy shit I miss the gym.

My parents visited with my 3 year old nephew over the weekend - mum got a cute photo of he and I jamming on the piano. His curly hair is the best - before I lost mine to the great Male Pattern Baldness War of 4 years ago, mine was the same. `

A friend is coming round this weekend bearing all kinds of whisky for me to taste - he went to this big festival last week and brought some goodies back, intent on getting me into the world of whisky. Time will tell if it suits but I'll hardly turn down the attempt! Once everything has been tasted we'll turn to the tradition of 1v1 Quickscopes on CoD, 1 sip for 1 death, 2 if it's a particularly humorous death. I'm nearly 30 so this will surely haunt me on Sunday.

Also the Final Fantasy 7 Remake has me all kinds of excited. The music of the opening in the demo genuinely brought a tear to my eye. My brother and I would play that game end to end while he was in hospital/home with whatever new injury he had. Now we're all grown up with careers and lives, and this game brings us straight back down nostalgia alley.

I work for a University and we're planning the "what-ifs" for if COVID-19 hits us properly. Most of our Department is actually setup already as we have a large cohort of distance students (some as far away as the UK) so it only takes some tweaking of the undergrad papers to get them up to speed. I'm yet to be allowed to trial working from home but having done it before I know it's possible. Students and staff are about the same as usual, not many people outwardly panicking. But we've only had 5 cases so far, early days yet.

Last week we had a public holiday, Waitangi Day, so I took some further days off and had a nice 4 day weekend. I went to Christchurch to visit my brother and my partner's parents. Was such a lovely trip! My brother likes his hiking and long distance running, so he dragged me up into the Port Hills where I took this shot

The body of water is near Lyttleton harbour, on the other side of the Hills we climbed up. The city is well off to the left down the hills once more. The harbour exits into the Pacific.

We went to the latest installments of the Art Gallery

I found this tree! I used to play in this tree when I was a child growing up in this city. I remember the feel of the bark and the safe surroundings very well. A wonderful bit of nostalgia during my trip.

Now this is new. This is the Riverside Market, it opened up at the end of last year, in the main area where the city was demolished by the Earthquakes. We arrived at about 10am and it was dead quiet, but that photo was taken just after lunch and it was humming full of people. The Market was primarily indoors and hosted at least 50 different shops and eateries. Absolutely mindblowing to find it here! We had crepes in the morning, ramen for lunch on the tables in front, then went upstairs and had a few beers from the local brewery under one of those red umbrellas.

We visited the memorial erected for those lost in the earthquakes

It was really tastefully done, I felt. A simple wall just sitting by the lazy Avon river, people having lunch in it's shadow, or visiting the names of those they lost.

Just another photo - this is directly outside the City Council building. I've always admired the energy put out by the Maori carving work.

Afterwards we headed back to her parent's place and by night time her father had his telescope out and we had a look at the moon in startling clarity. Could make out the scars and craters all over.

I've become a 12 year old again and have been having an absolute blast playing Modern Warfare. I thought I was too old and crusty to be any good but my old friends who felt the same banded together and clean house most matches. Infected is a wonderful game mode - for the uninitiated, Infected is where all players started with the same equipment; a count down begins giving you time to run and hide or barricade yourself in somewhere. Once the countdown ends, a randomly chosen player switches sides and becomes the infected player, armed with a knife and greater movement speed - tasked with turning every other member over to their side. It quickly becomes an absolute mess as you find your team mates whittled down and switched over, suddenly you're holed up in a dingy building as these madmen clamber over your walls and claymores to end you. Or you hide in a bush and pray they don't get close enough to see your nametag.

Anyway I've been having fun. Hope you're all safe and sound.

When the cuts come, they won’t come for the administration or the diversity staff. Academic programs will be the first to go, which raises some interesting questions about what the purpose of a university is.

Interestingly, I work at a University and we have just finished phase 1 of the dreaded "restructure" in our division (Health Sciences). All they've done so far is cull about 180+ administrative/non-academic jobs and reshape those remaining so they get paid less. Hilariously, we're now woefully understaffed, performing poorly and morale is at an all-time low.

Apparently the Academic roles are next in the firing line but they will have so much more negotiating power so I anticipate them being better off than us. Having said that, the division I'm in is the gem of the University and the Arts/Humanities programmes are slowly being destroyed so my experience might be odd the exception to the articles prediction.

So in February next year it'll be two years with this weird, balance issue. Dr said she'd arrange for a CT scan if things get worse before them or come February on the two year mark.

Am a little nervous to find out what's going on, I'm 95% sure it's PPPD (Persistent Postural-Perceptual Dizziness) and related directly to my anxiety, but the other 5% (of which anxiety likes to build a mountain from) has me worried it's something sinister. Dr has assured me, if it was sinister, it wouldn't show symptoms that never progress for two years straight - the ENT I saw said the exact same thing, and every test they've done (plus the ones with the Physio School) have suggested I actually have zero balance issues and this is my own brain fighting me.

That 5% though, yo.

Relearning the piano in my spare time - I did some kind of grading when I was much younger but I truly cannot remember any of it outside of muscle memory for small ditties. So am going back to basics and learning to read it again, hoping it comes back nicely.

Also, planning for my Japan trip - my boss reminded me to check on my passport, I haven't flown in years, absolute years. Guess when my passport expired?

April. 2015.

Applied to have it renewed and haven't heard anything back outside of a confirmation that it was received so that's a good sign. Should get it before the end of the month with my now shaved head as the photo.

My plants are sprouting!!! Or they're weeds. Time will tell.

That was a hell of a read.

I don't know if I should thank you for posting it.

Man..