merry christmas!

We had a fairly low-key Christmas this year. We’ve been keeping our spending on a tight reign in preparation for the new addition to the family. There will be lots of extra costs coming up, and Victoria is going to be taking perhaps a year off work. It’ll be a stretch, but I’m sure we’ll be fine. Fortuitously, our mortgage will be coming up for renewal in February, so we have the option of reducing our repayments for a while at least (not to mention the current lower interest rates). But I digress…

As has become the tradition, we headed around the corner on Christmas morning, the car groaning under the weight of presents, to Victoria’s sister’s house for Christmas lunch. We sat around in the proper laid-back Christmas attitude ruminating on the events of the year, nibbling strawberries and sipping punch. We exchanged presents before lunch, and unsurprisingly Charlotte, our 5-year-old niece collected the most impressive haul, although bro-in-law Steve made a late surge with a complete Guitar Hero World Tour setup for his PS3. The highlights of my pressies were the book ‘Global Baker’ by Dean Brettschneider – a very successful kiwi baker, and a bag of Grano Tenero ‘00’ flour from Vic. Oh, and a new wooden spoon! Bring on the pizza baking!

Afterwards we headed to a beautifully-laid table replete with goody bags at each place. As usual, Steph put on a very impressive spread, starting with poached Salmon fillet (sure to become another tradition) before moving on to the traditional roast turkey with all the trimmings. Two types of stuffing, multiple roast and fresh veges, bread sauce and cranberry sauce left little room for dessert. Luckily, I found a spot, as we had the first of my puddings along with the requisite cream, custard and brandy sauce. As it turned out the pudding was a triumph (if I say so myself) – even better than the previous year’s efforts. It was very flavoursome and dense, but also surprisingly light, soft and moist. It didn’t suffer from the lack of figs, and the three types of toasted nuts (walnut, almond and hazelnut) added a subtle earthy undertone. Yum.

We’d barely started digesting lunch when we had to abscond to my parents’ place for dinner, although we did sneak a quiet hour at home in between. More indulgent lounging around ensued, punctuated with a few bouts of GT4 racing using Dad’s new Logitech steering wheel control – a present from Mike. Also from Mike was a ticket for me to see Top Gear live! Very cool, and way too generous! Dinner was fantastic, the main course being an amazing Beef Wellington, the first Mum had made. With the horseradish sauce and roast veges on the side, it was nigh on perfect. Dessert was pudding again, only this time it was last year’s that Mum had kept. This one definitely had suffered from the year’s aging. It was a bit dry and hard, and much of the flavour seemed to have disappeared somewhere along the way. Lesson learned.

It may have been a low key Christmas, but it was all the more enjoyable for it. I actually felt quite Christmassy this year, and played all the Christmas music we have to death all through December! It’ll certainly be a different dynamic next year with a baby in the house!

news of the year: 1 + 1 = 3

Now that we’ve had our first proper scan (on Monday), the news can finally come out… I’m going to be a Dad! Wow! I’m absolutely over the moon, but it doesn’t quite seem real yet. It’s an amazing and slightly terrifying thought that we’ll have an additional little person in the family; someone that is totally helpless and dependent. It’s going to be fantastic!



All went very well with the scan. Our risk factors are very low, and we got a good view of bubs. All measurements were on the good side of average, and we're on track for a late-June delivery. Baby was very active, bouncing around, but stayed still for long enough to wave for the photo. You can hopefully see the head on the left with a little hand up at nose level (thumbing its nose?). Vic is doing very well, but while she's still in the throws (sic) of morning sickness, she is improving slowly.

bathrooms and puddingspoons

Although it didn't really feel like it at the time, I had quite a productive and enjoyable weekend. On Friday we sang carols in Ponsonby, and on Saturday and Sunday I got just a little closer to finishing the bathroom.

The bathroom project has been ongoing for well over a year now (I don't really want to think exactly how long), but it has been a pretty comprehensive renovation. I'm learning everything as I go - just about every aspect of the build is a first for me! It started out as a repair to the cracked shower tray, which then mushroomed into a complete strip and refit courtesy of bad build practice (no waterproofing and no tile underlay) and rotten floors and walls. I completely gutted the room and replaced the floor, adding new bearers between existing joists to accommodate the thinner 12 mm plywood floor (to keep the tiles close to the existing floor level). The floor sounds thin, but I did the calculations, and I'm absolutely happy with the overall stiffness and feel of the floor with the bonded and nailed tile underlay. I also replaced most of the wall panels with fibre cement. The biggest job so far has been the tiling and associated jobs. I didn't realise how big a job it was to tile even a small bathroom from floor to ceiling. Ouch! Only now am I putting the finishing touches on - currently the silicone in the corners. There are a few rough edges, but overall I'm happy with the finish so far. However, I'll need probably another six tubes of silicone to complete it! If I get a move on I'll be able to fit the basin and shower walls next weekend.

I also managed to get one of the shelves up in the garage. The house has a severe lack of storage space, so any more is really helpful, especially when you are a bit of a hoarder :) They are simple 300 mm-wide shelves of (my beloved) 12 mm ply - non structural defect grade bought on special from ITM. They are supported by multiple cheap pressed-steel brackets also from ITM. I've probably gone a bit overboard on the number of brackets, but they were cheap, and I really don't want them failing. Even with just one of the four shelves up and in use, there is a noticeable increase in floor real estate. Result. Got to use my jigsaw for the first time too.

Meanwhile, I was also cooking my second batch of Christmas Puddings. It's become something of a tradition for me to cook puddings at Christmas. There's something very special about selecting and preparing all the ingredients, and the magical smell that fills the house when they are simmering away on the stove. This year marked a bit of a departure in a couple of pudding-related areas. Firstly, I decided to rationalise the ingredients (read: make 'em cheaper) due to economic factors that I'll go into later. To this end, I have omitted the figs (shock!) and used pre-blended fruit mix, as well as padding out the mix with fresh apple and carrot (both are acceptably traditional, I'm assured). Secondly, I tried cooking the puddings in the slow cooker rather than the stove, with excellent results. I considered using suet again this year instead of butter, but the timing was wrong, and I wasn't keen on the cleaning and chopping aspect. Maybe next year. Overall, the puddings have come out even better than expected - very moist, and with a lovely dark colour. I must say that the slow cooker method was fantastic - the cooking time doubles, but there is no need to constantly check the water, and little consequent risk of them boiling dry and burning. And you even can go out and leave them cooking. I am a convert! Bring on Christmas - I can't wait to taste them!

causation <> correlation

One of my pet hates is the way science is misrepresented in the media, often through misuse (intentional or otherwise) of statistics.

The sort of claim I'm thinking of might read: "A study has found that those who eat five servings of vegetables per day have a 50% lower risk of heart attack before they turn 50." Without any further qualification, this statement is utterly meaningless. There are two major problems with it: The first and most obvious is that the base risk is not established - the risk is 50% lower than what? If the base risk for someone under 50 who does not eat five servings of veges a day is 1/500, then this suggests that the five-veg-eater's risk would be 1/1000. Even if you're in possession of this information, is a reduction in risk from 0.2% to 0.1% really that significant?

The second problem is the one that bugs me more, and it is potentially as much a fault of the scientific method as it is of the reporting, is whether causation has been proved. It is human nature to look for patterns - it's one way our brains cope with the barrage of information coming at them every second of the day - and often we manage to find them where there really are none. Just because there is correlation between one factor and the result doesn't necessarily imply causation. In this case, you need to know how the study has determined the link between veges and heart attacks. Have all other reasons for the correlation been explored and discounted? Off the top of my head there is a major one that would need to be investigated: does the person that eats five veg per day have a significantly healthier lifestyle overall? Do they eat less saturated fats? Do they exercise regularly? I can see that both of those things might be likely.

But then that wouldn't make such a sensational headline would it?

carols by candlelight

I'm such a sentimental sucker for Christmas, especially the carols (as my family can attest)! They evoke such good memories. So on Friday night, I couldn't resist taking Victoria and our five-year-old niece Charlotte to Carols by Candlelight at Western Park in Ponsonby. We had a really lovely evening singing along to the carols played by a ska-styled band, even though we didn't get to use our (free) candles due to the complete lack of darkness. Charlotte was only intermittently interested, and spent much of the time colouring in the pictures of Santa we were given on the way in. We did get her singing along to a couple of carols she knew. Well done Auckland City Council for organising such a great event. It was a much better (and more relaxing) experience than and Christmas in the Park I've been to.
Once the band had launched into a couple of covers (including some pretty decent beatboxing by the lead singer), we headed over to Franklin Road to look at the lights. Lots of oohing and aahing later, we found ourselves at Victoria Park in front of the big Telecom Christmas tree. By this time it was properly dark, and the tree looked very impressive flashing its lights in a multitude of patterns. We lay down on the bean bags provided underneath the huge 'tree' and watched the lights until my eyes went weird, then I helped Charlotte leave a voicemail message for Santa on one of the phone boxes at the base. I'm not sure what I was expecting, but the whole Telecom tree experience was really pleasant - no hard sell, just a company giving a bit of festive cheer to the community. If I was an even more hardened cynic, I could say that if they could afford such a grand gesture, they could obviously afford to reduce their prices, but it's Christmas...
It was 10 pm before we returned Charlotte to her parents and we were all fading pretty fast. Hopefully another positive Christmas memory for her.

Adventures in DIY #2

To get decent access to the hot water cylinder plumbing last weekend, I had to pull out the shelving in the hot water cupboard. This gave me the opportunity I needed to upgrade the shelving. As it was, the shelves were only half the depth of the cupboard (< 300 mm), making them next to useless to actually store things on, and leaving a huge dead space between them and the doors. So this weekend I set about making better use of the available space. I dropped into Three Bros ITM in Glen Innes to see what was available, and they had a stack of 18 mm Melamine sheet seconds at half price ($40). Bargain! I quickly calculated that I could get all the shelves (just) from one 2400 x 1220 sheet, so I grabbed one along with some edge strip, and a sheet of 12 mm ply for the shelving in the garage.

The rest of the day was spent cutting, routing and test fitting the shelves. I cut a 75 mm strip off the front of the existing upright to support the front of the shelves, with the rest remaining where it was. This meant that there was less access to the HWC plumbing, but it’s a small price to pay for more than doubling the shelf space. And it can be relatively easily removed anyway. I also cut some strips from one of the old shelves to use as supports for the shelves and screwed them to the new front and rear uprights. It was a pretty tense time when I came to check that the new assembly actually fit in the space, but fit it did. Cutting the Melamine sheet was interesting, and a good learning experience. I used the circular saw, running the edge along a sheet of 3 mm MDF that Dad had given me. On the first cut, the saw ran under the edge of the MDF for a short distance before I noticed. Bugger. This was kind of annoying, as there was very little room for error. For the rest of the cutting, I used a piece of ply as a straight edge as it was much stiffer. The size of the sheets also meant that I couldn’t use the router on the edges of most of the shelves, otherwise I would lose precious shelf space. Thankfully I had the forethought to make sure that the front edge of each shelf was an outer edge of the sheet. Unhappily, the edges I did cut with the circular saw were pretty ragged where the melamine was chipped baldly. Next time I will cut the sheets with the melamine side down, and the blade set to just penetrate the sheet, reducing the angle the teeth make to the facing. Live and learn.

Anyway to cut a long story short, the shelves are in and look good. I still have to trim the edges, which I’ll do this week some time. Most pieces fit in nicely, except for the top shelf which was the full width and depth of the cupboard. What a mission to manoeuvre that thing in! Overall, I’m very happy with the result. And all for under $50!