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It seems an age since I’ve had any new tech toys. Possibly understandable as we’ve been living out of suitcases for so long, but I thought it was about time I got myself a pressie. This time it’s a Amazon Kindle 3G. An E-Book reader. With a few tricks up its sleeves.

The most clever trick is that the 3G version can have new books delivered to it wirelessly over the cellphone network worldwide. (For a given value of “worldwide” of course, but it seems to cover anywhere I’m likely to be for the next few years anyway!) And for free once you’ve bought the Kindle. So I can get my UK books in NZ through my amazon.co.uk account, I hope.

So far it’s been a fun little toy. Same sort of size as a medium paperback and light enough to read with easily, even with the leather cover I also got to protect the screen. I can see Bec heaving a sigh of relief that maybe soon we’ll be able to go on holiday without the suitcase full of books that always seems to be needed! The e-ink screen itself is a bit of a revelation too. Not backlit like a normal laptop or tablet screen, so it’s really easy on the eyes, even with the small font I like to use. It does mean you need to have some form of lighting to read by though, and can’t hide under the covers with it. But it’s really impressive, and means the battery life is too.

The only issue I have so far is that a couple of books have some very odd formatting in them that adds white space in between paragraphs that is a bit annoying, especially when reading dialogue. And there doesn’t appear to be any way to fix this. But other books are fine, so I guess it’s up to the way individual books are published.

I’m still not sure how I feel about it all though. I really love my paper books, and there’s no way I’ll be getting rid of them all and/or getting electronic copies of the all, but the price of books in NZ has scared me since we’ve been back, and this might take some of the pain away until print copies are either on special or reduce in price in NZ.

Oh, and a couple of mildly interesting facts I’ve found out about books in the UK over the last couple of weeks. 1) There is no VAT charged on books in the UK, which could be used to explains a very small amount of the difference in price between countries, and 2) VAT is charged on electronic copies of books. Go figure. One more reason why a flat sales tax makes more sense than arbitrary distinctions for taxing some products not others…

A few photos came our way from intrepid reporters sent out to survey progress. Looks like all the trusses are up now, and they’re working on the fiddly bits in the valleys…

My, that blue sky looks good from here!

After seeing the size of the hole they’d dug out, seeing what they were putting into it was a bit of an anti-climax!

Six loops of pipe about 100m long (each way) all laid out neatly. And that’s it! Apart from the joiny bits as well, of course! All to raise the temperature of some water and antifreeze from just above zero to about 10-12 degrees. For free. Well, that’s the theory. We’ll cross fingers that’s what actually happens!

And in other news, our trusses have arrived. Looks like there’s still a bit of work to do in spreading them out and standing them up though.

But for the next couple of weeks we’ll have to rely on others to fill us in on all the exciting happenings and take some photos for posterity, as we’re off to earn a bit of cash to pay for some of this!

I know, I know, I know. We’re still awaiting a few vital things for plant safety, like a decent water supply, but one of the local garden centres was having it’s big annual sale, so we thought we’d grab a grab-bag of natives anyway on general principles. (Oh, and ignore the Rhodo. It’s not one of ours!).

All chosen for the ability (hopefully) to deal with dry and exposed conditions. We’ll no doubt give you a full detailed rundown when we finally get around to planting them. As long as we can find the piece of paper with the right names on. And as long as they make it through the next few weeks until they’re in their final new homes.

To that end, we’re paying Megan in jet-planes for every plant she manages to keep alive while we’re away. We seem to have a bit of a surplus of them at the moment. But that’s another story I’ll keep for later!

Well, the space that it will eventually inhabit, anyway!

Today we had a walk-through with the kitchen guys, who marked out all the pantry, bench and island spaces so we could have a walk around the kitchen and make sure it would all actually fit in the space left by the builders. Which it did. Whew!

As an added bonus, unexpectedly there was another digger in action today. Digging what can only be described as a “bloody big hole in the ground” to contain the pipes for the geothermal underfloor and water heating systems. It’s about 2m deep, 6m wide, and will be about 100m long when it’s finished. As I said, a bloody big hole!

Luckily before they started the digger driver spotted the golden elm and adjusted the pit slightly to make sure that it didn’t get dug out. Just as well after yesterday’s blog entry! I’m glad now we left the floppy bit of bamboo stake beside it which presumably was what alerted them to its existence. I just hope that they manage to remember it’s there when they go to fill it in!

Those of you with good memories might remember I promised (or threatened, depending on your point of view, I guess) to tell you about the surprising survival of a couple of the trees we planted. Those of you with even better memories might even remember us planting them! We certainly do! Wow. Three whole years ago!

For a long, long time we thought that all of them had died. Every last one. In fact the golden elm seemed to have been run over with a hay mower for good measure, just to make sure it was dead. But we randomly stumbled across the shattered stump of the stake that was holding it up the other week, and when we looked down next to that we saw the little stump had sprouted a little! So we kept watering it, and today I trimmed the “lawn” around it a bit, so hopefully it will survive. And grow up a little bit! As long as the resident hares leave it alone, I guess it’s got a chance…

The red maple up the front managed to avoid the severe haircut that the golden elm experienced, but again we thought it had died a long time ago. But when we removed the tree guard we found a few little buds on the trees that have since exploded into life.

Just a pity that both of them are more or less in the wrong place. The maple’s in the natives spot, and the elm will block sun where we don’t want sun blocked. Ho hum. We’ll just have to find a way around those a bit later. Maybe we can just keep the elm at a nice low height. It seems to like it! But in the meantime we’ll just hope they stay alive a bit longer.

Driving down the final road on the way out today to have a few meetings on site, we suddenly noticed that we saw some timber jutting up where there was previously no timber. It had grown!

Driving in the gate, Bec said “maybe it’s not so small after all?!”. And she might be right! It’s amazing how the space changes with a few bits of timber around the place to delineate the space a bit more. Some rooms look bigger, some still a bit smaller than we thought or imagined, but overall we think it’ll do us. It better do!

Even at this stage there are a few little issues to hopefully get fixed, and we’ve made a couple of changes to some of the windows now we’ve seen the size, shape and placement of them. Nothing too drastic though.

In other news. The sparky’s put up a temporary box, and another switchboard box in the pump-shed, so within too long we can get power on and get some water, so then we can plant some plants! One step at a time, I guess.

As our obligations to babysit last weekend vanished, we made a call and escaped city life to have had a really nice weekend “over the hill” with T&G, enjoying the obligatory Akaroa fish and chips, chicken life, getting gardening ideas, sipping some nice wine, and enjoying some really great company. Another masterclass in relaxed hospitality, and on short notice too. Just what we needed for a quick change of pace. Thanks guys!

But then it was back to our “normality” on Tuesday with another trip out to see what had happened since the concrete set over then weekend. This trip some large piles of timber had grown around the place.

I really hope they’ve got some sort of numbering or references on them so they go in the right place! Looks like a fun puzzle to try to put together. A bit more complicated than the shed!

And while we were waiting around a bit to see if they were actually going to put a frame up, with the “help” of the builder’s dog we managed to clear the rest of the lambs ears, and accumulate all the various piles around the place into a single heap. That took a few loads in the back of the wagon. The photo really doesn’t give the right idea of the size of that mound!

Now we just have to watch that bit of ground to see if they’re going to try to escape from there!

Oh, and while we were lurking around they didn’t put up a frame – either there was a bit of prep on site still needed, or they just didn’t want us watching while they all stood around scratching their heads trying to work out which bit goes where to start things off. We just left them to it!

Another early start for us today as we raced out to see the slab being laid. The closer we got to the land, the denser the foggy mist got, until we were surprised by that most rare of sights – concrete trucks in the mist….

By the time we’d got there (and we really did start early!), the concrete boys were almost half done already. But at least we got a glimpse of the underfloor heating pipes before they were buried forever in the concrete.

I have to say it was slightly amusing (though slightly worrying too) to watch them edge closer and closer to the final corner, while they were desperately trying to will the concrete to somehow spread out or swell up and fill the last remaining gap in the slab. Which it didn’t. DOH! One more truck, with just a couple of barrow-fulls on it please!!

We can only hope they sorted that out. As it was going to be some time for another truck to arrive, and as we’d forgotten all the tools we needed to actually do anything useful out there today, we left them to it and headed back into town to try to track down a toilet that was actually comfortably to sit on. It appears that simple thing isn’t as simple as we’d assumed!

Unfortunately (given that everything is now encased in concrete) we think we’ve spotted the first visit from Mr, erm…, Muck-Up. It appears that however many times over many months we’ve tried to make sure that something should be somewhere on everyone’s plans, it’s still been put somewhere else. Sigh. Umm. Shouldn’t be a major issue, but reminded us that we maybe shouldn’t just assume anything. Actually, I think we knew that anyway, but this has definitely reminded us!

Today probably rated about a 3.5/10 in terms of house building excitement. On the one hand we could see that the poly insulation and steel mesh was just about complete over the whole house area ready for the pouring of the floor slab. On the other we had to decide locations for thermostats for individual rooms. Oh, the pressure!

I suspect I really shouldn’t make that sort of remark. I suspect in just a little while we will wish for such easy decisions!

As we had to go out to meet the heating guy we also took the opportunity to dig up another 100 or so lamb-ears. Those things are really starting to get us down! (And secretly the most important part, having to go out there meant I could confirm that the shed made it through yesterday’s gales and sideways rain. Which it did. With flying colours. Whew!)

Roll on Friday for the next big concrete pour. (All going to plan with the laying of the underfloor heating pipes, of course…)