Another month over already

Now that its December I can officially start thinking about Christmas. I find it very hard to do any Christmas shopping before December as it seems far too early. I struggled with the fact that in the UK all the department stores had their Christmas shops set up in October - it seemed obscenely early!

Its the first official day of summer and to celebrate we have a very cold southerly. 2 days ago we had screaming nor'westers and very high temperatures and today I have the heater on in my office. At least the weather is consistently predictable: 2-3 days hot & windy, 2-3 days cold & wet which should mean that the weekend will be fine as yesterday it rained as well!

Speaking of yesterday, I had a fantastic day. I took the morning off (which turned into the afternoon as well) and helped my friend J. in her business. She owns a furniture rental business and was putting furniture into an empty house that was for sale. There was a bit of a time constraint as the first open home was at 3pm yesterday afternoon but we thought we'd easily get it done.

Issue #1: Raining, therefore when shifting the furniture it all had to be covered with sheets to protect it.
Issue #2: Very narrow windy drive that you can't get the furniture truck up and its a back section.

Put those two things together and it meant lugging all the furniture by hand up the drive, without it getting wet or damaged and, more importantly, without hurting ourselves! But we made it.

I found it fascinating to see how different the house felt after we'd put the furniture in. The difference was really obvious when we were part way through and people started coming in to see the house. Even though the open day was at 3pm, real estate agents were bringing people through before that which did slow us down quite a bit. You can't really continue to assemble a bed when people are standing in the middle of the bedroom or vacuum around them! But the furniture made quite a difference because people were exclaiming that the second bedroom does fit a double bed once we'd put one in.

But it all took us a lot longer than we expected and we only walked out of the house at 2.20pm! I was absolutely shattered, so after I'd dropped J's car back home, I took myself off to Cafe Red at the Riccarton Library for lunch. I went there because our friend Walpole runs it and I hadn't been there before. He was able to come and sit with me for a while which was lovely. It was a great spot and the food and company were excellent. Another point in its favour is that the cafe is right by the magazine racks so there's plenty of excellent reading material available.

By then it was 3.30pm and it would take me half an hour to get to work so I bailed on the whole idea, went grocery shopping (so exciting!) and then on home. At which point another issue arose. Namely that I didn't have a door key! Remember that it was raining as well. So I spent a good half hour breaking into the house, which I eventually managed to do. I would not make a good burglar. At one point I'd actually given up and went across to the neighbours to cadge a coffee but they weren't there so I had to go back and try again. Serve me right for not having the key on me.

I was a very tired little girl last night after my big day out.