Back to front pictures. Kahu peels off tape on the outside of the kitchen window. I've been meaning to do this for ages. I list the bottom end of the oak bed, another job. There's a bit of stuff I bought for the house lying around cluttering up the place. Not to mention the piles of laundry up and down the house...in the living room, the laundry, the garage, the hallway, the spare room, Kahu's room, my walk in, my room. It's everywhere and is swamping us. I dream of returning to normal. But that's impossible, we have mountains of scabies washing and the weather is cold and rainy. I'm doing most of the work and I'm over it.

Meanwhile Covid continues to rumble on. My friend Jill tells me there have been over 18 million deaths world wide. Sounds like a lot. I check up and Wikipedia says 4.96 million. New Zealand, 28 deaths.

8th October

There are 44 community cases of COVID-19. 41 are in Auckland, and 3 are in Waikato.
There are 3 cases in managed isolation.
Today's cases are higher than recent days. This is not unexpected because there have been a number of contacts of new cases and we can expect to get fluctuations from day to day.

9th October

There are 34 new community cases today, of which 23 have already been linked to the outbreak (of which 11 are household contacts) and 11 are still being investigated to determine how they are linked. 

All the new Waikato cases are linked to the initial Hamilton East case.

10th October

There are 60 new community cases today, 56 in Auckland; 3 in Waikato and 1 in the Bay of Plenty.

The three new Waikato cases are linked to the initial Hamilton East case.

And there's a Vaxxathon....this article from The Guardian, UK

Covid ‘vaxathon’: over 2.5% of New Zealanders get jabbed in one day

Celebrities encourage turnout as response surpasses Jacinda Ardern’s call to administer 100,000 shots

The Thompson family arrive en masse to get vaccinated in Auckland. Photograph: Fiona Goodall/Getty Images

Associated Press in Wellington

Sat 16 Oct 2021 15.15 BST

New Zealand’s “Super Saturday” of Covid vaccinations has proved a hit, with more than 2.5% of the population responding to the call to get jabbed on a single day.

The prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, set an ambitious goal of administering 100,000 shots on the day, aiming to push vaccination rates towards her 90% goal.

But New Zealanders turned out in even greater numbers. As of 7pm local time (0700 BST), health workers had administered 127,342 Pfizer doses on Saturday, jabbing at a higher per capita rate than any day of the rollouts in Australia, the UK, US or Canada.

Lining up to be vaccinated outside Manurewa Marae, a Maori meeting house, in South Auckland on Saturday.

Credit...Natasha Frost/The New York Times

11 October- 35 new cases and an announcement that teachers will have to be vaccinated by 1st January next year. That's gonna annoy anti-vaxxers.

12 October -43 new cases of Covid. Police are still turning vehicles away from Covid-19 border checkpoints despite being weeks into alert level 3 boundary settings in Auckland.

There were 22,460 vehicles processed at the checkpoints yesterday with 196 of those vehicles being turned around, police said.

A total of 50 out of 4699 vehicles were turned away at the northern checkpoints yesterday, while 146 vehicles out of 17,761 were turned around at the southern checkpoints.

October 13th-

55 community cases of COVID-19 — 53 are in Auckland, 2 are in Waikato
No cases in managed isolation
More than 2 million second doses of vaccine administered to date
25,799 tests were taken yesterday

October 14th-

71 community cases of COVID-19 — all are in Auckland
1 case in managed isolation
87% of Aucklanders have 1 vaccine dose
28,646 tests were taken yesterday.

So far two deaths from Covid in this outbreak. The first on September 4th, a woman in her 70's, and a younger man from an anti-vacc church.

Life goes on. Maxine drives up to pick up a wagon wheel to make a light for a bar in Clyde. I drive around town picking up Marketplace purchases, I've really got to stop this, but I get a really good buy of Halswell Quarry stone which I need for the path I'm trying to organise down the living room side of the house. It's from the back of Chch Boys' High, a common finishing material back in the day. Now I need to find the money to get someone to make the path. That's the trouble with finishing a house, there are lots more costs. I borrow the school trailer and the vendor helps me load. At the other end Kahu does his usual spit the dummy before he settles down to help.

The garden goes gang busters with the constant rain and flowers pop up everywhere. The newly planted area where the garage was is thriving. I keep putting cuttings and odd roots and bulbs in spaces. The potatoes push their heads above ground. I visit Daryl who grows seedlings to give away as a hobby and pick up an armful of plants. An important part of planting is figuring out where everything will grow.

It's 150 years since Ernest Rutherford's birth and I go to a lecture on his connection with Russia. He was an amazing mentor and apart from splitting the atom did lots of chemistry work.

Luke arrives from Ranfurly with the tui. She looks so life like, especially the eyes and feet, and the iridescence pops blue. She'll be kaitiaki of the entrance. As he leaves, Luke tells me he has a huia which was returned. Hmmm.

My last job for the week, taking the frame into Commercial Mirror and Glass to cut and fit a mirror. Amazing what you can do you had no idea of. Custom make the perfect mirror.