New Month, New Goals

Welcome to September!

The calendar has flipped over another page and I'm beginning to see things pop up about a new season too; change is in the air and my blog isn't escaping it. If you enjoyed my {almost} daily posting through August then my apologies; if you couldn't keep up then now is your grand opportunity to catch up! ;P I wanted to knock out pile of photos -- getting them edited and posted, seeing as I have so many to catch up on; to that end daily posting was a major goal for August. Turns out I have more captures from Australia than I thought (which is great!), so I didn't get as far as I expected. All the editing and blogging actually took a lot of time, which may be due in large part to using my old, dying laptop for most of the month, (I finally replaced it last Friday!!) so in some ways it's a relief that the month is over!

The plan is to still post regularly and continue making progress through my photos, but I won't be posting daily this month since I need the time to focus on some other things. A few people are talking about Steptember; I want to get back into walking again but I think I'm going for Sleeptember first lol . . . I'm so tired right now. Here's hoping for some earlier nights to catch up. 

So my laptop. I think I've mentioned it a few times recently so if you've read a few of my posts you probably know something about it. Basically I bought a second-hand one several years ago and it served me pretty well without much upkeep for a fairly decent length of time. The battery died on it a while ago though, so it had to always be plugged in to the power; not particularly convenient, but I managed! Then it got to the point of only turning on when you tilted it back on a solid surface and pushed the battery in, and in the last few months it would randomly lose the internet connection and pick it up again. A few times I opened Task Manager to see what was going on and it would sit at 100% CPU for ages, even after I walked away. In the last couple weeks it presented even more problems that impacted it's use in the classes I teach as well, so I decided I had pushed it to the max and the benefits of a new one would outweigh the cost. 

I'm loving the speed of this new one, and finding my way around Windows 10 all right. I still have to buy Office for it, and I'm still setting things up as I go along. Had to change some of my passwords since I had them saved on my old system and couldn't remember what they were. ;P Guess I'm getting old lol. Oh and Xj I have a built in mic and webcam this time lol; one of these days we'll have to see how much better that is ;)

It's crazy to think that there are just three weeks of this term left! Guess I have a few things to work on to wrap it up, go away for the holidays, and then be ready for term 4. Private classes are booked one term at a time so nearing the end of each I have to sort out my bookings and schedule for the following one.

Think I'll wrap up here, it's already taken longer than expected to write this and my eyelids are drooping. Goodnight guys and thanks for reading. :)

Currently

So much to do, so little time. 

Apologies if I'm meant to catch up with you! I've had it on my to do list to make contact with a few people but life has been so crazy I haven't managed it I'm afraid :/ Miss you though and one day we actually will meet up again! :)

I've just gotten back into flute lessons again (had about three months off because my teacher had a baby), so now we need to get preparing for my next exam, and decide when it's realistic to sit it. Sitting it sooner means I can go for my diploma earlier, but would require a significant amount of time in practice, and already my to-do list is growing faster than I can keep up with. 

I'm juggling a few jobs now -- seriously why can't they all fit seamlessly into my schedule?! So yeah, I'm getting a bit of practice at adjusting my schedule (haven't turned up to the wrong place yet!! :P) but thankfully at this stage I have managed to work things out so I don't have to drop anything.

Nearly every night now we have to work out who's going where the next day, and with which vehicle. With four drivers, three vehicles, more and more places to be, small parking spaces that make it super difficult to park the van, and me not being able to drive the manual, it's becoming increasingly difficult to work out through vehicle logistics. So if anyone is giving a car away, I'd love to hear from you ;P hahaha

Right now I'm sitting here typing this while Mum has been cooking, and is now serving dinner. I can see a lounge chair dissapearing under a mound of washing waiting to be folded by me later tonight. Either tonight or tomorrow I'll have to give Diana another recorder lesson; we're putting in some extra ones to prepare for her exam later this month. And I didn't manage to do the irnoning last weekend so guess what I'll be amusing myself with in my spare time? :P lol

Oh and I've been thinking it might be fun to host a giveaway of some sort on here at some point, but based on the amount of comments I usually get it seems a bit pointless :P

Xj if you're reading this, I'm now 54% fluent in French apparently. Just sayin'.

Recently

I'm sure the summer holidays get shorter every year! At least, that's what it feels like. I guess it's more general than that though, all of life just seems to speed up as we grow older. 

My laptop adapter finally did arrive, so the technical difficulties have been overcome and I just need to find {ahem, make) the time to edit my mountains of images and then post them here. (Cheer me on guys ;) :P)

Over the past few months I have accomplished a fair bit of walking; an hour plus most days. (Xj why am I applying French pronunciation to English words now?! *insert 2015's word of the year* The above image was taken on one of said walks, on my iPhone admittedly, since I haven't been taking the camera with me.

In January the rest of the fam abandoned me (kidding) for a couple weeks and went on holiday to the Taranaki. I did have several good study days, but somehow I didn't manage to catch up on sleep like I planned lol. Ate plenty of good food though!! ;P Got in some good catch-ups with friends and finally went to a couple of services at a friends' church. It was different than I'm used to lol but I won't complain. And being in a church that didn't feel like it was trying to give Antarctica a run for it's money was a very welcome change. (I'm not telling the time I'm writing this, and yes I am sarcastic normally, but this is probably worse.)

Life took a sad turn midway through my time home alone when my nana in Wellington passed away. My family drove straight down from the Taranaki and I flew day on the Monday, in time for the Tuesday funeral. Hopefully a post in the near future will feature a number of photos from Nana's life. It was a pretty short trip for me, as we all left on Wednesday, with the others dropping me in Marton at the ATI Student Conference, and then driving back to Auckland. I spent a day and a half-ish with my awesome friend Susannah (first time seeing each other since we swapped numbers back in July last year lol), talking heaps,  drinking way too much coffee, and not sleeping a lot (paid for it when I got back :P) before I came back on Friday. (That bus driver had no de Bruin blood in him. Or the trip would have taken half the time. Just saying.)

Now that school has gone back I'm into teaching again (privately) -- and at this stage I've managed to get all my classes in just one afternoon!! *clapping emoji* This term half my students are returning from last year, and the other half are new students, learning the basics of how to hold a recorder and such. Putting students through exams is exciting, and it's amazing to reflect back over how far they've come, but it's pretty special as well to see new students grasp the basic concepts!

I finally have managed to make a start on job hunting, so to speak; I expect to have an interview pretty soon to discuss details, and then I should be picking up some part time work. I've made a second enquiry somewhere else so we'll see what comes of these two and take it from there. I'm half thinking about joining Stampin' Up! as a demonstrator too. (Anyone interested in a party?!)

And that's my update for now. If it changes it's because I changed my mind about how much I wanted to share once I had more sleep. Lol.