I've finally booked my restricted license test for May 7th and so in my excitement at being (hopefully) and almost driver in NZ, i've excitedly purchased a new gadget to tell me how to get places, place music and allow me to make hands free calls:

https://buy.garmin.com/shop/shop.do?pID=400

http://reviews.cnet.com/Garmin_Nuvi_660/4505-3430_7-32078943.html?tag=lst

It was funny to begin with as we departed from a car park that was almost directly under a highway it wanted me to turn onto, mmm. Aside from that bumpy start, once i'd turned out of the car park it readjusted itself (with a sweet pommy accent from 'Daniel', i wanted 'Emily', tch) and proudly predicted my next turn. Annabel was unconvinved after laughing heartily at it's first suggestion to levitate the car, however it proved her wrong by revealing a short but to the next road. Ah ha! Not to rest on its laurels, we tried to fool it into disaster by suggesting a new location (a Wild Bean station we get our hot chocs at) and it nicely asked us if we wanted to stop there before being directed home?

Wow! Now we were impressed, it had created a way point and again quietly readjusted itself. At the same time it saved our home and the station as favourites which now appear on the maps. There is also the ability to drag your finger across Auckland and select a restaurant to save (we did this for where we are going tomorrow for lunch).

I've got a 2GB SD Card loaded with all our favourite MP3s and it can stream these through our car stereo so no more arguign about who left the cd covers off and why ron sexsmith has ended up in baby jazz cover, again! All our music (well, a lot of it anyways) all on the GPS system.

Oh, and to top it all off, the damn thing links to my phone and gives me the ability to send and recieve calls. It has a pretty impressive list of phone numbers for stuff in Auckland, and i couldn't help wishing i had this functionality on my mobile. I guess that will come, location based stuff is goign to be huge...

Along with our one for all remote, MySky/Sky+/Tivo box, the GPS unit looks set to enter the annals of 'how did we live without that?'.

I've also got a list of New Zealand Speed Cameras (was updated April 2006 so hopefully not too out of date) imported as custom points of interest (POI) on the device, which will flash up if my wife is driving too fast (hey, i'm still a learner!).

http://www.gme.net.au/garmin/sample_POI_download.php

Well, now you can with the Speight's Great Beer Delivery. They plan to take a boat full of beer and some people all the way to London to bring Speight's to hard up kiwi mates living in pommy land. Awesome legends, sweet bro!

Tommy Brushing Leaves (2.5MB, wmv)

We realised we hadn't take much video of Tommy recently so here he is enjoying his evening splish splash, and practising his new noises.

Tommy in Bath (3.5MB)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/football/internationals/6504857.stm

woo hoo! "when yer man kicks the ball, northern ireland wins them all", healy, healy healy, what a legend!

The Goals can be found here

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_M3E9CkQYfY

I just realised as well you can follow the Euro 2008 games online at:

http://www.videosport.com/ifa/

"We're not Brazil, We're Northern Ireland!"

 now, i'm not exactly sure whether sitting around the corner from one another counts as 'sitting beside each other', i guess technically it does. I can't help feeling that someone somehow photoshopped this whole thing together. Paisley and Adams in the same room. Apparently they might even start talking if they have to actually run the country, woo hoo! And i though having Helen Clark and Winston Peters in the same cabinet was bad;)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/northern_ireland/6494599.stm?ls

8.4km later and a little sore but reasonably happy. I didn't post the best time but needed to pop off to the loo halfway round and got cramp so that affected my time just a little. Hyro had a tent with barbie and booze for all.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/cricket/6457689.stm

Wow, hard to believe but true, we're in the quarters;)

I just downloaded the latest updates for windows vista to find some lovely little videos you can setup as the background for your desktop environment.

Oh they joys of having children! Tommy went to his coffee group as normal on Friday only to turn into Exorcist child on Sunday morning and begin puking and pooing himself into oblivion. We were all pretty concerned as he wouldn't eat anything for ages, and then Annabel got it too and was up all night with cramps. I thought i'd gotten away with it until i went into work on Monday before it got me too. Then her Mum and Dad! Then we found out there are at least 2 kids and their parents have it from coffee group too, and one has been daignosed with gastroenteritis .

Anyway, we all seem to be on the mend now, i won't post any pictures;)