Merry Christmas for yesterday everyone! I had a pretty busy day, going over to my parents' place for lunch; then dropping my Nana off before coming home for dinner with all of Natalie's family. It was a pretty good day all-in-all, there's always something a little bit special and magical about Christmas Day even if you're not a little kid anymore. Everyone tries to be really nice to each other and you get to see all of the family and share presents which is always fun.

Now that Christmas is all over we all look forward to the New Year. I guess that I'll be pretty reflective over what's been a rather interesting year in my life over the next few days - while also looking forward to 2004. It's funny how this year will be remembered as 'the year I found out Nats was pregnant', in that an entire year can really be remembered by one event, by one night. Obviously a lot else has happened this year, as it's been the first year since 1986 where I haven't been at school or university. Working fulltime has been an interesting experience, although I am glad that I'm not going to do another year of Maccas fulltime and I am looking forward to going back to university next year.

We're likly to be going away sometime during the next two or three days up to Mangawhai Heads with my parents. It's always nice to get down to the beach during the summer months, as it remind me a lot of when I was younger (I pretty much grew up on a beach somewhere near Auckland). But we should be back in time for New Year's, so that we can party hard on New Year's Eve (ha ha ha....)

Two days until Christmas. It's always about this time of the year that I wish I was younger, wish that Christmas was still that really exciting day that you looked forward to for months and couldn't sleep the night before because of all the excitement. The fun of leaving biscuits for Santa, and waking up with a pillow-case full of exciting presents in the morning. I remember one year waking up early and running my hands over all my presents trying to work out what they were while waiting for my sister and the rest of the family to wake up so that we could unwrap them all. I guess the fun thing about Christmas now is having the whole family together, and because it's so close to New Year's realising that another year has passed (although I don't really know if that's particularly much fun!) and looking back at what's happened since last year.

Tomorrow it will be a year since my laptop arrived, which is pretty amazing considering now it seems like I've had it forever. In some ways it's the biggest and most expensive Christmas present that I've ever got (although I did buy it for myself), and I can see that it's going to be one that I have got a hell of a lot of use out of. Although it's slightly depressing looking at computer catalouges these days and seeing computers twice as good which are cheaper than what I paid for this, I have to look at what I've got out of having my own computer for the first time in my life. Next year having a laptop (as opposed to a desktop) will become incredibly useful as I plan to use it for studying throughout my masters degree. Hopefully it will make studying and taking lecture notes a lot easier, as in the past I have got rather sore hands from writing a lot, which doesn't seem to happen nearly as quickly when I am typing. As my typing speed is also 'reasonably' fast, I might be able to keep up with what the lecturer is saying better than I am able just writing it all down. Also, having all my notes organised on a computer rather than a pile of papers is undoubtably going to reduce the chances of 'where the hell did those lecture notes go' happening.

Two days into my holidays, yesterday I felt really tetchy like I needed to do something but wasn't sure what it was. I guess everyone has those days when they feel stressed out but have no idea why. I eventually relaxed myself by watching a mind-numbing DVD (Mars Attacks), and then woke up this morning with the feeling that I needed to achieve something today, needed to be busy and complete something to make that day seem worthwhile. Almost the opposite to feeling lazy, which is rather odd for me as I normally put off doing stuff like that in favour of wasting away time reading or surfing the net. But instead I attempted to tidy our room, which was getting to that point where you just about couldn't see the other side of the room for all the 'stuff' in the way. A few hours later there's still a lot of random stuff that needs to find a home, but I've rediscovered the floor and it's a lot less stressful (funny how messy rooms always stress you out, and that feeling of relief when you've done a really good tidy-up is so strong).

I've finished work for the year! There was a certain amount of satisfaction walking out of work today and knowing that I don't have to come back for a couple of weeks. It's been a pretty long year of working, and it will be nice to have a decent break from the place as sometimes I feel like I almost live there. At the start of this year I wasn't really working fulltime, as I still had my Summer Scholarship project to complete. Lily was the store manager and the place seemed reasonably busy although obviously not quite as busy as it had been during last year (as university and lots of businesses were on holiday). Then at the start of February everything changed as we got a new restaurant mananger and a new 2IC. Things were really screwed up for a while as all the stock issues were sorted out and just the big upheaval of having two new people. In March university started again, and as my summer scholarship was finished I began to work basically as much as I could, while Nats went to university. This worked out pretty well I guess, and my main memory of this time was getting up at about 6:45am every morning of the week, leaving the house at exactly the same time and just missing the bus every single time. I eventually figured out it would be best to leave a little earlier - luckily at 7:15am there are buses fairly frequently. Over the next couple of months I must have impressed the right people as I was put on the short list to become a shift manager, which eventually happened in May.

Over the next two or three months work was pretty exciting and different as I learned to run shifts and all sorts of other stuff like that. It was good being a shift manager, a bit less physical work and more organising, although there was always the added stress that if the place stuffed up it was YOUR fault. But all in all work was pretty good, and my shift management course in July was something new and different as well. Then in September we got another restaurant manager, who was determined to put the store right and improve profit levels at all costs. There were a few stuff-ups and in the past couple of months I haven't run many shifts at all which has been pretty disappointing as my development as a shift manager has kind of stalled. I guess it's a pretty good time for me to have a break, maybe in the new year I'll have renewed energy for the place. I will also have the added bonus that there will probably be only another couple of months of McDonald's work for me and that after that I won't have to ever step inside a store again.

We did all our Christmas shopping yesterday morning, in a pretty mad rush which was quite good. I really really dislike shopping unless it feels like I'm getting somewhere and that it's in an ordered and logical fashion. Nothing drives me crazier than wandering around some random store 'checking out' what's there, just in case there's something which might be OK, or just wandering around for the sake of it. But luckily we didn't do that for too long yesterday, and chewed throught the list of about 15 people we were going to buy stuff for rather quickly.

It's been a while since I updated, because things have been a little bit busy lately and I've ended up rather tired at the end of the day and haven't really been bothered to update. But anyway, last Saturday we went to Christmas in the Park which was a pretty long day and evening, but was also quite enjoyable as there was the most incredible fireworks display that I've ever seen. Fireworks (more the big professional stuff rather than the Guy Fawkes stuff) absolutely fascinates me, as I wonder how they orchestrate it all so that it looks so damn cool! Maybe it would be a cool job for me at some stage to be a pyrotechnics co-ordinator, although you wouldn't want to stuff anything up with that amount of firepower around you.

Then on Sunday I went on the McDonald's crew outing which was a little bit boring and disappointing compared to outings in the past. I guess that I was still quite tired after the night before and didn't really feel in that 'partying' mood like most of the rest of the people there. But I did have a go at fishing for the first time which proved to be surprisingly entertaining, considering I always thought that there could be nothing more boring than waiting on the end of a line for a fish to bite for hours on end. I didn't catch anything myself, but there was always that excitement when someone thought they caught something and we waited to see how big it was, or whether the fish had got away. Sadly I also got rather sunburnt on Sunday, although as it wasn't particularly sunny just rather windy it was probably the wind as well, which has been rather painful over the last few days.

It's my last week of work this year, as from next Monday I have two weeks of holidays. It will be nice to get out of Auckland again for some of that time, and just nice to have a break from McDonald's as I've been going at it pretty much hardcore for a whole year with no more than a 5 day break from memory (when I was sick). I really don't think that I could handle another year of fulltime work at McDonald's as it's starting to drive me a little nutty and is rather frustrating (such as the complete unwillingness of everyone to make the store better), so in many ways I could think that working this year has fulfilled another one of it's purposes - to drive me a little nutty which would ensure that I would go back to university and only have a one year break rather than just a "oh yeah I'll go back at some stage". I guess that I have learned a lot about the 'real world', although I also feel that things have gone a bit backwards over the past couple of months as my boss doesn't really seem that confident in my managing ability and I haven't done many shift manager's shifts at all - which is again quite frustrating. But at least I can start thinking about the end of it all which isn't too far away, I can console myself with the fact that I won't be doing this for very much longer which will hopefully make these last few months a bit better.

The Return of the King comes out next Thursday, which is rather exciting as once again I've been waiting for a year to see how Peter Jackson is going to finish off the story. I still remember hearing that they were going to film the Lord of the Rings about seven years and which was really exciting as I had just read the books and thought that it would be incredible if they made these stories into a movie, or a series of movies as it would probably have to be. I guess one of the amazing things was that it hadn't been filmed before, considering that The Lord of the Rings was voted the best book of the 20th century by most critics. And all of this excitement was before I even found out that the films were going to be directed by a New Zealander and that they were going to be shot in New Zealand by a New Zealand crew etc. etc. I guess that these movies are essentially New Zealand films, except for the fact that they're funded by American money. Some people have been surprised by how well these films have done, and that they've 'taken the world by storm', but when you combine the fact that these stories are some of the most loved stories ever written with the fact that Peter Jackson is just a bloody genius it's not really so surprising after all.

Work is finally having our long planned crew outing on Sunday, as we're going on a boat cruise which should be pretty fun. McDonald's crew outings are generally pretty fun, you see a slightly different side of everyone which is nice - although now that I work fulltime and know everyone a bit better than when I was part-time and going on a crew outing really showed a very different side to people, it might not show such a difference.

I went driving again today, and I'm finding that with each practice I can actually notice an improvement. There isn't the same tense feeling, and I find that my arms and legs are beginning to respond to what my eyes are seeing, and that I don't have to think through everything quite as much. There are still a lot of things that I need to work on however, as I found out today when learning to parallel park. It's going to be a while yet before I can fit into those impossibly tight spaces but at least I am improving my ability to drive really really slowly, which is a very necessary skill when negotiating tight spaces. Hopefully sometime early next year I should be able to sit my test, which would be nice as Nats doesn't really want to be driving around everywhere for too much longer.

I've got another week and a half of work this year before my holidays. It's good to have holidays around this time of the year, as it seems like that is what everyone else is doing and you don't really want to be left out. I always remember when I was younger the time between Christmas and New Year's was always my favourite time of the year: there was always heaps of new toys from Christmas or heaps of money to buy myself stuff, we were quite often down in Thames at my grandmother's with the whole big family around, playing hours upon hours of backyard cricket combined with stuffing myself with leftover chicken, fruit mince pies, and whatever other goodies were left over from the huge Christmas dinner. We would head off on cool day-trips to various parts of the Coromandel Peninsula to go swimming on the white sandy beaches before coming back to spend the night at Nannie's. Then on New Year's Eve (which was my grandmother's birthday) there would be more fun and celebrations, after which I would always go to sleep after saying "see you next year" to everyone. Funnily enough I always remember how cool it would be on New Year's Eve 1999 saying "see you next month, year, decade, century and millenium" - which I did say to my dad before we went out on December 31st 1999. People (including myself) can be cynical about Christmas (as I'm not a religious person) and New Year's (geez, it's only another day) but I guess that there aren't zillions of things to celebrate so we might as well have some fun.

I wonder if anyone else woke up on New Year's Day when they were younger and repeated in their head again and again "it's 1993 (or whenever), it's 1993, it's 1993...." I know that's something I also did when I first woke up on my brithday. I still recall going "I'm 11.... I'm 11.... I'm really 11!!" trying to make myself believe it. You know funnily enough it never really works - has anyone not just about written the year before's date down in the early months of the next year? Has anyone not said that they were a year younger (accidently I'm talking about!) out of habit? Some things just become really ingrained into your subconscious and it takes a long time to adjust to anything new...

Yesterday was a pretty crazy day all up, and resulted me doing a 12 hour time shift in a single day with my sleeping patterns which was pretty insane. But anyway, at about 10:30pm Saturday night Nats started saying that she was getting some pretty nasty chest pains, not a sharp pain but a feeling similar to someone sitting on your chest and slowly squeezing the air out of your lungs. It was rather scary, as she had never felt like this before, and we didn't have a clue what to do. Eventually I got some cold stuff from the freezer (good old frozen vegetables) to cool her down and that seemed to numb the pain. So she eventually went to sleep, feeling a little uncomfortable but not nearly as bad as she had been. Then I went to bed not too long after 12:30am, just as she was waking up because of the increased pains she was now feeling. I was feeling really really tired by now, aware that I needed to wake up at about 7:30am in the morning to go to work so I fell asleep pretty much straight away as Nats went back to sleep but was still not feeling that great. Then at about 3am she woke me up saying that the pains were getting much worse, worse than they had been earlier in the night. We tried the frozen veges again but nothing was helping whatsoever, and after considering many options she decided that she would have to wake up her grandmother to see if she knew of anything to help. Once again nothing seemed to work so we ended up heading to the 24 hour Accident and Emergency at about 4am in the morning. Luckily it was really quiet there and we were seen straight away by a doctor who was rather concerned by any signs of chest pain, but after a while concluded that it wasn't anything too serious and all that Nats really needed was a decent pain-killer, and to keep an eye on things to make sure that the pain didn't come back and didn't spread. So she got the injection of pain-killers which took forever to take effect, and we eventually left the A & E at about 5:30am. I called my work and said that it would be rather impossible for me to work as I had only had about two hours of sleep and would probably collapse. That was pretty sweet, and we probably eventually got to sleep at about 6am. An hour and a half later I quickly realised that I had forgotten to turn my alarm off, BUGGER.... back to sleep. Then at about 11am I woke up and got some breakfast, went back to bed.... back to sleep. Then at about 3pm I woke up again, feeling rather odd as even though I had only really had about 8 hours sleep it felt like I had been asleep for a couple of days. It always throws me out of kilter sleeping through the day, although not nearly as badly as it used to (thanks to doing a few graveyard shifts). Then I had to wake up at 6:40am this morning as I started work at eight.... so yesterday was a rather odd day.

It's funny how people react when I tell them that Nats is pregnant and that I'm going to be a father. At first everyone was really shocked, but for some reason now the people I talk to seem happy and excited about it. Maybe everyone has a little more faith in me now, or is it just the way that I'm telling them? Or is this all just a giant coincidence? It still feels rather surreal, even when I'm watching Nats' tummy bounce this way and that it still doesn't seem like there's an actual baby inside there. Even though I've seen the ultrasounds I think the only way that could make it real would be to have x-ray vision and actually see the baby inside her. Then it might actually seem as though it's actually real. I remember when Natalie's auntie was almost due with Alexandra it seemed crazy that this bulge in her stomach would soon disappear and there'd be a baby. And then once Lexie was born it was quite amazing that this is what came from that bulge. That this baby was actually in there....

Well, some of this makes sense:

Advanced Big Five Personality Test Results

Sociability	||||||||||||	42%
Gregariousness	||||||||||||	50%
Assertiveness	||||||	30%
Activity Level	||||||||||	38%
Excitement-Seeking	||||||||||	34%
Cheerfulness	||||||||||||||	58%
Extroversion	||||||||||||	42%
Trust	||||||||||||	46%
Morality	||||||||||||||	54%
Altruism	||||||||||||||	54%
Cooperation	||||||||||||||||||	74%
Modesty	||||||||||	34%
Sympathy	||||||||||||||||	70%
Friendliness	||||||||||||||	55%
Self-Efficacy	||||||||||||||||	66%
Neatness	||||||||||	34%
Dutifulness	||||||||||||||	58%
Achievement	||||||||||||||	54%
Self-Discipline	||||||	26%
Cautiousness	||||||||||||||	58%
Orderliness	||||||||||||	49%
Anxiety	||||||||||||||||	62%
Anger	||||	18%
Depression	||||||||||	38%
Self-Consciousness	||||||||||||||||||	74%
Immoderation	||||||||||	38%
Vulnerability	||||||||||||	50%
Emotional Stability	||||||||||||||	54%
Imagination	||||||||||||||	54%
Artistic Interests	||||||||||||||||	62%
Emotionality	||||||||||	34%
Adventurousness	||||||||||||||||	66%
Intellect	||||||||||||||||||	78%
Liberalism	||||||||||||||||||	74%
Openmindedness	||||||||||||||||	61%

Take Free Advanced Big 5 Personality Test

We went to see my Nana today, a combined trip of where we had said many times that wed go out to see her now that we have a car, as well as obviously telling her about our big news. Obviously I should have told her earlier, but we just didn't seem to have the chance and I probably didn't make the chance, but now that Nats is beginning to show it was obvious that we couldn't delay things any more. So we went out to see her and had a really great time, I learned a lot about bits and pieces of my family that I didn't know before - a sort of expansion upon what I had previously been told. One that was updated for the fact that I am now an adult and filling in the gaps, telling things the way they were and not just the sugarcoated version that you get when you're a kid - this whole time I'm thinking "when's the right moment to break the news?". Eventually there was a bit of a pause (you know how older people tell stories...), and I managed to tell her that Nats was pregnant, waiting for the "oh my gosh" reponse. Instead we got a pleasant "oh really.... congratulations" and a huge smile on her face. I think it was an immense relief to me to see someone who finally took it as good news, and we had a great chat about everything. All in all a very nice way to spend a Saturday.

I think that the geography paper's mix-up has been solved as the paper which was either offered or not offered next year (that varied according to what I read) isn't offered, which is a bit of a pain but at least means that I don't have to make a difficult decision between that paper and another - in some ways it's always a bit better when the decision is out of your control because at least then you don't have this nagging feeling in the back of your mind that you should have chosen that other paper rather than this one. I've done that a few times, although I guess you can never really know what paper's really going to be like until it's a little late to change so you're always taking a bit of a chance. This latest development means that I will probably have a bit more of a resource management focus to my masters than would otherwise be the case, which is not really what I'm most interested in, but it is the field where most of the jobs are available for geography graduates so I always need to keep that in mind.

Wow.... it's three weeks until Christmas today... just makes you see how 2003 has seemed to just zip by. In some ways that seems really scary knowing all the changes which are going to happen in the next few months, but at the same time it's quite nice to head back into summer and Christmas time, which is always a nice time of the year with holidays and stuff like that. Last year was a nice time around Christmas, I had just got my laptop so that was all exciting, we went away to Mangawhai Heads for quite a few days which had been my first real break from work or university for about a year and a half at that stage. Then in January I remember playing a lot of Gran Turismo 3 on Natalie's cousin Ben's Playstation 2. This year I've got a couple of weeks of holidays I think, around Christmas and New Years, and then we're planning to move into a place of our own sometime during January which will be rather exciting.

Yesterday was the last Wednesday that I will be at Head Office for the year (except for possible product trials and the like). It's funny how that has developed this year - at the start of the year I had worked for McDonald's for about three years but had never been to the Head Office even though it's pretty close to all the stores which I have worked at. Then in April I had a Crew Trainer's development class there, and was pretty amazed by the flash new building they have (we all went "so this is what our hard work goes to"). Shortly after that I went up there a couple of times to help out with other people during some product trials and must have obviously impressed the right people as they became more frequent over the next few months, until sometimes in July (I think) the person who supervised me most of the time said that they would be opening the test kitchen every Wednesday so that people who worked there could buy their lunch and he wanted me to organise it all. This all seemed pretty exciting, me basically being in charge of running a mini-store for one day a week which is what I've basically been doing for the last four months. During that time I've got to know a hell of a lot of people who work at Head Office (always good to have contacts) and learned a lot in the process. It's quite cool all the nifty little tricks that these people tell you, and the things that I have learned through all the product trials etc. I guess now I have a good idea about all the promotional items coming out in the next few months, as well as many new ways to improve the quality of the food which I can take back to my normal restaurant and pass on to everyone else. It's been a pretty cool development in my "McDonald's career", and something that I will probably miss a lot more than my normal work once I got back to university in March.

Just when I thought that my cynicism about christmas was about to become overpowering, I was shown twice in two days what I think the real christmas spirit is, and why it really is a special time of the year. Firstly, last night while we were dropping Nats' sister Grace home we decided to take a little bit of a detour to Franklin Rd, where they often put some pretty lights up on the houses at christmas time. Sure enough, the lights were out in force and it looked spectacular! Then as we were heading up the road we decided to stop for a little while to have a walk, and there turned out to be a big street party going on outside one of the houses which had possibly the most impressive decorations of all - lots of people talking and generally having a good time. It kind of felt like I was gatecrashing a party (maybe we were), but as it was being held on the footpath we were well within our rights to be there. They were giving away free coffee from a cart which was a nice touch, and it really felt great that we had this sense of community in our city. It made me think how cool it must be to live on this street (which is one of the more expensive streets in Auckland I may add).

Then this morning we went to see Natalie's cousin Nathan in his school's christmas concert. I have to admit that I was a little apprehensive going to something like this as I used to go to Ella's school things and often it had a huge cringe factor watching little kids doing silly stuff. But this one was really well organised, based on all the places around the world where the kids come from, and singing christmas songs in all the different languages - and it was really quite amazing, taking me back to how christmas was when I was little and how magical it can be. So I guess these two encounters have made me look forward to christmas a little more - although it still annoys me when I see christmas advertisements in September.

It was the Santa Parade through downtown Auckland yesterday, which meant that work went completely mad for the day. It was actually pretty cool working, as just about the whole store was scheduled and everything was fairly well organised. The parade started at 2pm, so from about midday until just before two we got absolutely wasted, with something in the range of 900 customers being served in just two hours. The CEO of McDonald's New Zealand came in to say hi to everyone which was pretty cool, and it was a nicely different day from the daily grind which working at McDonald's can be like. It just meant that at the end of the day I was really tired, and had really sore feet!

We went to see the midwife today, Nats has really begun to look like she's pregnant over the last week or two and sure enough the baby's growing healthily and I got to hear the heart-beat properly for the first time (previously it had been a real mission finding the right spot).