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Rock Moot

Me and Brendan left Auckland on the Thursday before Easter and used every form of transport known to man to get to the most awkward destination on earth, Nelson. We flew from Auckland to Wellington, took a shuttle bus into Wellington, took a free bus to the ferry terminal, took the ferry over to Picton then a bus from Picton to Nelson, and a Moot minibus from Nelson to Moot site. After a full day's travel we finally made it to Moot late on Thursday night to find the other Aucklander's (who actually had the nerve to book early and hence take a plane straight there) sitting down drinking (how unusual).

During the Moot we did all sorts of Mootish things like:

A cross country through lots of mud that me and Karlz got completely lost in, and hence came completely last.

A tour - me & Brendan did kayaking in the Abel Tasman. This was fantastic, especially since I didn't have to do much of a strenuous nature since we had a double.

Service - pulling out weeds. Not a popular service project, but I thought it was ok.

Shooting trophy - lots of activities to do with rocks. It also involved putting one's head into a paddling pool of germs, which I wasn't too keen on. I think some people thought I was weird, but I was just thinking about how easy it is to spread menangitis in large groups of young people living in proximity to each other for periods of time. Menangitis is a disease that can kill, and we in Auckland have had a scare with it recently. I'm very surprised that no one else had any objections to that activity actually. Anyway, considering that I was unknowingly coming down with tonsillitis on that day, the people who did that activity after us should be very thankful.

Centre of NZ - we walked up a big hill to find some Easter Eggs and were rewarded by a lovely view.

Parties - a rock party and a rocky horror party.

After the Moot we left very early on Tuesday, reversed our travel process and made it back to Auckland late at night.

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Trudy's Going Away Party

We seem to be having an awful lot of these going away parties lately.

Trudy was off to Europe for goodness knows how long (not so long after all as it turned out), so we gathered to say goodbye to her. It was a pleasant affair. We sat and chatted and ate pizza.

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Roskill Cocktail Party

The theme was "Back to School", so to be different me & Brendan dressed up as school teachers - I think it was a bit lost on some people though as I quite often got "You went to school like that?" Brendan's shorts sure were a hit though! I was a designated driver, hence didn't have much of the cocktails. For a while I amused myself with Angela making non-alcoholic cocktails in the kitchen (and passing them off as alcoholic ones). Playing with the kitten was also a bit of fun. We left just after the drunk people had been put to bed.

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Auckland Central Gang Show Rover Night

The theme was pirates. Me and Brendan dressed ourselves up to the nines in pirate gear, but as anticipated not too many others really got very much into the spirit (except for a token eye patch and hook). Yay for Mark from Bays who also got dressed up. The Gang Show was quite as expected of a Gang Show, with lots of singing, dancing and acting.

The party was quite good, except it was a bit of disaster for us because we had bought a whole lot of food needing cooking and there was no oven! We could swear there had been one there the last time. Bummer.

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Wellington Halloween Party

On Fri we drove down to Horopito and shared the hut with Graeme & Mary & co. Sat we went skiing - awesome! Sat night we were stuffed, but managed to make it to the party by 9pm. We were in costume but no one else except Karlz & Keith were! We lost Dorothy. Sunday we went to the Wellington Zoo, and also to see some Irish Dancing. Monday we left for home at about 2pm, stopped at Tokaanu for a hot swim. We decided to take an alternate route home, but didn't have a map. However we didn't get lost, and I think we actually went the best way, certainly the scenic way. We made it home quite late. It was an excellent weekend all in all. We still don't have Dorothy back, but someone had better bring her with them to Moot!!!!

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Yvonne's Birthday

This was a pleasant evening, and a nice meal.

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Onemana Weekend

Summertime, so time to visit the beach house. We swam, sun bathed, relaxed, shopped and invested Sarah on the deck. For dinner we had pasta cooked in wine. Not enough wine according to Trudy. We played pictionary, which Rae & Darryn started really badly, then Brendan started helping them, then they won. Darryn is very annoying to play Pictionary with as he apologised all the time, which takes the fun out of saying things like "That doesn't look a thing like a submarine, where's the periscope!". Sunday we played Rummykub. Trudy won after an amazingly fluky good start. Raewyn bought some shorts from Whangamata. We stopped at Miranda on the way home.

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Coca Cola Christmas in the Park

Amazingly enough we were actually able to find the other Rovers in the middle of the huge crowd in the Domain - aided by the Bays banner, which stood out for miles. It was a pleasant affair, and went as these things generally do. As always the fireworks were the highlight of the night.

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Area Christmas Brunch in the Park

Organised by us! It was quite a nice affair if I do say so myself. We had lots of exciting things to do, and lots of lovely things to eat. The highlights were the mini Christmas tree decorating competition (with lifesavers), the pavlova guzzling competition between Gavin and Helen, and the Egg Nog which was much loved and enquired after. For your benefit here is the recipie:

Separate egg yolks from whites. In large bowl, mix yolks with sugar until pale and thick ribbons form when dropped from beaters. Add milk, liquor and nutmeg and combine well. Chill overnight. Place beaters and large mixing bowl in refrigerator or freezer. When chilled, add whipping cream and whip until soft peaks form. Set aside. Using a clean bowl and beater, whip the egg whites until soft peaks form.

Add whipped cream and egg whites to egg mixture and fold until well
incorporated. Sprinkle individual servings with additional nutmeg.
Notes: Egg nog can be stored in pitchers or bowl and refrigerated until use. Since the cream will rise to the top, be sure to stir gently but thoroughly to recombine before serving. The amount of liquor used can be adjusted to taste. Rum, cognac, brandy or bourbon can be used. I use a combination of about 2-1/2 cups dark rum, 1 cup brandy and 1/2 cup
bourbon.

Raewyn's Note: I didn't chill it overnight - only for about an hour or so. I didn't do the chilling of the beaters and bowl either. I used a little bit of Kahlua and a lot of Canterbury Cream. I didn't bother with the exact measurements, I used 12 eggs, not quite a litre of milk and 1 large bottle of cream.

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Finnish Rovers Guided Tour

Some (more) Finnish Rover found us by looking us up on the Net, so we offered to take them out for a day in Auckland. Well we had the most terrible weather you could imagine for sightseeing. We took them first to Muriwai (they didn't seem too impressed by the gannets, in fact I think we found them more interesting than they did). Then we had a picnic (in the rain) at the Cascades, and did a little bush walk. Then we took them to the Arataki Visitors Centre and had a thorough look round, before driving back to my place and getting fish and chips (a good Kiwi meal) for dinner.

Story continued below…

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Millennium…

After showing Finnish Rovers around for the day it was time to start some Millennium celebrating. Unfortunately the weather didn't seem to agree with us about that. We were waiting to hear what Sarah, Gavin and Helen were up to, but they were just hanging about at Sarah's, so we thought we'd head into the domain to see what was happening there. It wasn't too exciting there, but it was interesting enough, so we stayed there, getting a little wet (there weren't too many people there because of the rain). Just before midnight we headed up the hill to get a better view of the fireworks, but it didn't help much because the mist from the rain obscured most of it. Oh well, it was a bit of an anti-climax. Next we headed into town to see if anything was going down. There were a lot of drunk people there, but not much other than that. Darryn gate crashed a party next to Macdonalds. The Finnish Rovers were pretty tired by that time (they'd only got into the country the day before!) so we decided to get them home, and head over to Sarah's. By the time we got there it was 4am. We watched TV for a while then, but the sight of sun rays shining over the Chatham Islands, decided we'd better head down to Long Bay before we missed the sunrise. We sat on the beach (there were other Rovers from Auckland there too) and drank fizzy wine, and watched the sunrise, which wasn't too bad - thank goodness the weather had cleared up by then. Then we had a BBQ breakfast and drove home in a trance, went to bed and slept, slept, slept.

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Mini Moot

This was a pretty cool weekend, somewhat relaxed, but that's ok. Friday night we watched some senseless violence on TV, then sampled Helen's Father's home made alcohol and gossipped into the wee hours of the night. Sat morning we did some service, which for me was doing exactly what we did last year (I mean exactly!!!) which was cleaning out the drains of the bush track. This was not bad service really, real hot and sweaty though. We got quite a bit done, but we gave up eventually as we were stuffed and hungry. After lunch we relaxed to watch one of the America's Cup races. In case you were wondering, Team NZ won! Then we painted some Moot signs, had our own mini-cup race (cardboard boats) which was ultra cool since Waitakere won (actually we kind of tied with Whangarei, but they're not allowed to win since they're not in Auckland, and also they copied our design). Then dinner time (yummy BBQ), then into our costumes for the Bondage party which was fun! Sunday morning we had an AGM.

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