Christchurch shakes on

Another quake last night which I felt here on the Coast. My son called it a doozy, and I'm sure everyone is just wishing they would stop already.
Eldest son now has his father's bike, his work is re-opened, power and water (at low pressure), back on and food in the house. He is one of the luckier ones. His workplace has also organised showers, washers and driers for their workers and good on them for being proactive.
Youngest son lives in an area which had very little damage at all and for him life goes on much as normal, with the addition of being 'all shook up' several times a day.
Mother-in-law, with food delivered by Jean, now has power and water back on, and a chance to be taken out shopping with some stores re-opened.
We have many who have fled Christchurch here on the Coast and you can tell by some faces that they are shattered. Our family are some of the lucky ones. From all we hear Christchurch seems like a city of two halves. There are areas where people have lost everything and other areas where it is as if nothing has happened, at least in the way of damage.

Keeping in touch with those in Christchurch each evening, plus work with a staff member away, has meant little energy for quilting, which somehow doesn't seem too important anyway. Must get back to it though as it serves me as a great stress relief. I brought back fabric from the North Island to make into gifts for those we stayed with, so the placemat-making production line is going to have to swing into action.
This is usually my weekend for a quilt retreat in Marahau, out of Nelson, but having just had a holiday I have to skip it this time. Nothing like a weekend sewing, with no household distractions, to get heaps done. I will be hanging out for the next retreat in Nelson in July.

Taking up a lot of spare time at the moment is the new toy - the iPad. I have loaded on more word games, Solitaire and Sudoku,  which can all be great time-wasters. The excuse is it is keeping the brain active! There are also several downloaded books ready to read when I finish the supply of 'real' books I have on hand. I've found an iPad app which lets me check out my Google RSS feeds, plus added a dictionary, thesaurus and calculator. Then there is the app which gives me a series of Monet paintings to explore and an iPad version of Stumbleupon. If you have never tried this out then, depending on your point of view, it is either another time-waster or a form of serendipity as you are led to many websites you might otherwise not come across. The choice of websites depends on the initial interests and topics which you set up.

Naturally I still make time for reading and at the moment it is Lee Child. Just finished 61 Hours and moved on to Worth Dying For. Despite the formulaic style they still make fairly satisfying reading without making great demands on the brain. 
I've also just scanned Martin Hawes' Twenty Good Summers which poses the question of how to spend the years left to live as we get older. It's rather intriguing to look at life in terms of the number of summers which may remain, but rather depressing to find that you probably have to spend most of the few you may have left working just as hard as usual. Guess we just have to win Lotto.