There are still phone booths in Auckland, although these days they actually double as wi-fi hotspots.

If this early morning picture is any indication, phone booths still also serve their main purpose of letting you reach out – again – to tell her how you feel and how you just need one more chance and how you were meant to be together and nothing’s right without her please please don’t hang up. Please oh god oh god.

This house went from “somewhat run down” to “pile of rubble” in approximately no time at all.

We walk behind this place every week on the way to the farmers market, and I had complimented the owner last year on his exuberant plantings. Hopefully he gained some of the millions that will come from turning one house into six or eight condos.

I’m looking across three separate groups of WW1 memorial crosses here.

Furthest away are all those troops whose families lost two in the war.

Then in the middle all those who lost three.

And closest, crosses honoring the nine families who lost four.

This plaque sits in the entryway of a nondescript building in Newmarket that I walk by every day. It’s quite high on the wall, not very noticeable in the scheme of things. But it has a solid Ayn Rand vibe, I think, strong-handshake men building a city out of nothing, with a little gold changing hands down at the bottom.

Preparations underway for next month’s centennial commemoration of the end of the war to end all wars. Pics taken over a few days.

I’ll admit to fairly often buying wine based on the label, but beer not so often, maybe never.

It’s quite nice beer… or maybe I’m just easily suggestible.

The stained glass window panels are done and dusted, and it was a totally fun experience. They have pride of place in the study window (which is arguably also a dining room or living room window because our house isn’t very big).

Based on glass class, we were inspired to make this ‘koru’ motif mosaic kit. The koru is a prevalent Māori design symbolizing a fern frond opening up, aka a fiddlehead. It’s presiding over our random collection of Kiwi trinkets…

In just over a year we’ve watched this building go from a hole in the ground to where it is now.

Auckland is booming, more or less. In this neighborhood we live in there are half a dozen projects of this scale or larger. The whole suburb is transforming from 1-3 story retail and light industrial buildings to 5-8 story mixed use. Three side-by-side bungalows on the main street just sold for over $13 million. And so on.

I think this boom will generally continue until somebody starts a very large war or the Chinese stop buying milk (https://www.stats.govt.nz/news/new-zealands-two-way-trade-with-china-more-than-triples-over-the-decade).

A boatie’s life for me… shots from a Saturday morning trip down to the Wynyard quarter where all the big yachts are.

Flexible solar panels

Dry stacker yacht storage… this is really popular here. You call up an hour before you need the boat and they get it out and put it in the water.

The natural and man made environments…