albatross sighting and egg buying

Hello Family -Just wanted to give a quick update because we were not on the computeryesterday. Hopefully home internet will be coming soon, since we havea phone number now (which was a prerequisite for internet). Howeverthe email that we got from the telephone company was slightlyilliterate, so I'm a little sketched out. Here's what Eden fromTelecom (the biggest telephone company in NZ) wrote:Hay David its eden from telecom store. Your homeline has been proccesedalready. whioch is extremly fast.Should we be worried? Maybe Eden was in a hurry. I hope it's notsome kind of fraud.Anyway, Eden tells us our phone nubmer is: 011 64(country code) 03 473 0046.ANYWAY, we had a full day yesterday. We bought a $3 bike at the towndump/recycling center. Sweeet. I don't think that it'll be too muchof a loss if it doesn't work out. I have my work cut out for me,though. We visited a local brewery (Emersons - a kind of beer that Ibought for Dad and Mark) and Dave decided that we should buy a Flagonof one of their selections. It's like a growler. As it ends up, theyalso have Green Man Brewery here in Dunedin, which is another type ofbeer that I brought back for Mark and Dad, and is one of the betterreceived microbrewery beers in New Zealand. Along with Speightsbrewery, that makes 3 breweries in Dunedin that we know about.Welcome home, Dave. THen we went on to the Otago peninsula (right atthe base of Dunedin). It is prettier than I remember, and the drivein was dotted with all kinds of flowers, beautiful vistas andinteresting looking stops. We made it out to the end, where the onlymainland Albatross colony in the world is. The colony is on the farside of a hill on the sea, which you can only get anywhere near with a$35pp tour. We haven't started earning money yet, so we decided toopt for 'free'. It was extremely windy, which is supposed to be thebest time for viewing because they like to get up and soar the windgusts. We watched a bit from outside the visitor's center, and sawnothing that we could identify as a non-seagull - they can be hard todistinguish. So we went in, had lunch, and watched out the viewingwindow where we were told you can sometimes see albatross. I watchedand watched, and finally after about 15 minutes, this ENORMOUS bird,flew up from over the hill into sight. So exciting!!!! They werehuge! And looked kind of like the seagulls, only as if they were 10times closer. I got some *great* pictures of specs in the sky thatboth dave and I know to be albatross. So we saw a bunch more, andthen they stopped showing up, so we headed out. Feeling extremelysatisfied. Very very exciting.We then headed out, stopping at a few local artisan shops. There is abeautiful garden that we will have to visit at some point. We gotsome fresh blue cod at a fish shop, and then headed to a garden store,where we bought leeks, strawberries, cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower,tomatoes, yellow and green courgettes (zucchini), green beans, arugulaseeds, and snail bait. We're pretty excited to get all those in theground. It's just been soooo cold and rainy, that the outdoors hasnot beckoned us much. It's been raining for 3 days straight, and thetemperatures are 40-50.Coco is brooding, and will not leave her automobile tire nest in ourbackyard. Dave wants to remove the eggs, but I don't know if that's agood idea. I've started bringing her food, and we set up a rainshelter over her. We gave up on waiting on the eggs, so we boughtsome eggs yesterday. :( Are we failures as chicken parents?Maybe we should attend a parenting class.We found a breadmaker in our closet, and made some very very richbrioche last night. It was delicious. A new fun toy for us.Today Dave walked by his new office, which just so happens to beconnected by sky bridge to the Speights Brewery. Huh. Fancy that...it's like some sort of weird... "coincidence"Anyway, love to all of you,Andrea and Daveps. the blue cod was really delicious!!