Update on CD

I'm ready to go with the Concert CD: CDs with the labels printed on and the booklet with all the words. And it's only taken just on a month (compare that to my previous record of three years and counting for the first concert's CD - however, even that is now progressing after all this time).

My wife and I are off to a wedding in Napier this week - on Wednesday - so there won't be much blogging done, I suspect, during that time. In fact, I'm seriously thinking of not taking the laptop. Apart from the inconvenience of carting it around, it won't do me any harm to have a break from it. (Although the heap of emails that'll be waiting when I get home isn't something I'm looking forward to. Still, I can probably hook up at an Internet cafe.)

We're going to be staying in Youth Hostels in Wellington and Napier, from Wed through to Sat nights, and then we'll probably stay in a two or three others after the wedding (which takes place next Saturday). Our plans are open-ended at the moment; we have to be back in Wellington on Wednesday week, but beyond that we could travel all over if we were of a mind. Currently Taupo's one possibility. Both the Wellington and Napier hostels are highly recommended on the YHA site; here's hope they live up to their reputations!

We stayed at a youth hostel in the UK (near Rochester) when we were there three years ago (in the picture upper left - it was a converted something, but don't ask me now what). It was pretty noisy at night, with paper-thin walls, and the bunks weren't terribly comfortable. However, the kitchen was good, and even though it was in London, officially, it was next to some woodland. Of course, very little compared to the two apartments we had in Valencia, which were not only spacious, but stylish. The living area of the first one is in the picture below (along with the ubiquitous laptop).

We hired the two apartments off an English bloke who was living in Valencia, and did all the hiring and payment collecting and admin himself. I don't know how many apartments he had, but he seemed to be doing very well, and he kept the places spotless. They were not only very well appointed but had quite an array of seemingly valuable artwork, bric-a-brac and such scattered around them. Not the sort of places to take the grandchildren!