GROWN CHILDREN AT PLAY

I failed to mention in my journal last week what we did to celebrate Mom’s 59^th birthday.  Not much to buy here by way of birthday presents, and besides we don’t want to buy a lot of stuff just to have to find room in our suit cases to carry it all back to the US in a couple of months.  So I just tried to make her day special by cooking the meals and cleaning up afterwards. I got up early before she awoke, and walked to the close-by Countdown grocery store to buy ingredients. For breakfast I tried a recipe I found online, where you halve an avocado, crack an egg in the hollowed-out area where the seed was, then bake it in the oven.  I applied seasoning, and then I drizzled it with fine bits of cooked bacon.  You can eat it with utensils, or mash it up and make avocado toast.  For dinner I tried something new, I fixed cockles (small NZ clams) and pasta.  I cooked the cockles on the stove top in butter and garlic, it was fun to see each one open up as they cooked.  It all turned out pretty well, amazing what you can learn from YouTube!

For silliness this week, I researched and bought an electric bike online from a company in Asuza CA.  It has a 750 watt motor, a 48 volt 13.6 amp battery, can reach speeds up to 28 mph and can travel 40 miles on one charge.  It has 4 in. wide fat tires, good for traveling on streets, beaches and mountains.  It will be delivered the week after we return home, and will be fun to test drive then.  Because of all the shortages relating to disruption of supply lines due to Covid 19, I figured I’d better get my order in early.  We also found a good deal for $599 on week long cruise tickets to Alaska aboard Holland America from Seattle in May, and that will give us another excuse to visit Rachel and Brent’s family while we are in the area.

On Tuesday we had a hearing before the NZ Supreme Court in our ward missionary fund case.  We won at the appellate level, and now the tax commissioner has appealed to the Supreme Court.  The hearing was procedural, to determine whether the commissioner’s appeal raises new legal issues and its applicability to the country as a whole.  If we win, the case is over and Church members in NZ will be able to claim a 33% tax credit for their donations to the missionary fund.  If the Supreme Court decides in favor of the Commissioner, then they’ll set a hearing on the merits of the case itself.  For Tuesday’s hearing in Wellington we appeared remotely over a Zoom type app.

I’m still working from my home office, since NZ is still at level 2.  With NZ elections happening in October, I anticipate that we’ll drop to level 1 by October which will allow complete freedom of movement and the holding of church services again.  They only have something like 5-10 pending Covid cases in the entire country, so there is no real reason not to open things up again.

On Saturday the 4 attorneys in our Auckland offices and spouses travelled to Hamilton where we watched the Waikato Moo Moo’s play the North Shore Hybiscus in rugby.  We were invited to attend by Sam Hood’s law firm we use in Hamilton.  We made this same trip last year about this time.  The weather was nice but cool, we had a lamb luncheon, watched the game, then I treated the group to ice cream cones in Pokeno on the return trip.