Day 63, Level 1: Coffee, inspiration, interview, hats, land art/beach sculpture - and a great rugby kick!

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Had coffee this morning at Omaha Beach Cafe with the lovely Annie who I'd liaised with several years ago around travel and cruising - she's worked in the travel/cruise industry for a long time - until Covid hit. I heard her on the radio recently and sent her an email and - voila, we've reconnected. 

Despite losing her job in travel, she's now being highly enterprising and inspiring! And she now lives in Omaha! Round the corner actually! Great to reconnect. 

She does lots of interviews for Positivity Radio, the community radio initiative set up by none other than Noel Edmonds (of UK radio/tv fame) - who also now lives round a few corners! 

We had a brilliant creative catch-up - and she sprung an interview on me, for the radio station, about my travel companion services. I wasn't expecting that - but hey, let's get the word out about what I'm up to - all good! She's a bloody good interviewer. As I say, a very lovely lady. I like her a lot. 

She's invited me to a few upcoming local events she's running - networking, travel etc - including a rather nice event tomorrow which I will attend en route home (it has a champagne and cat focus!) 

Annie is a woman of many guises and talents and this morning's meeting set up a great (re)connection moving forward. She has a lot going on and lots up her sleeves! Brilliant. We laughed lots - and are on the same page. 

Back to base to do some work with various hats on. Didn't actually get to do much with my own Beyond hat on but completed "other hat" tasks, with a few bumps to sort, and also chaired a Zoom meeting at 5pm. 
Reality - I have too many hats. But I rather like all my hats!

Tomorrow - concentrating on my own hat! Mostly! I hope!

I did manage to do a bit more spray painting of my step stool and little nest table in between this task and that - almost nearing completion and looking good. 

The day generally was a bit bleak and gloomy - but no wind and no rain. Good conditions for the work I did today, esp spray painting.

Made a yummy pasta salad - I had three helpings for dinner!
And a couple of Wispa bars for dessert - Ssshhh!

Talked to Sam - he's got a vague plan to check out playing rugby in Europe over the winter season - perhaps Spain, he has a contact there. He asked me to dig out some of the video footage I've taken of him playing over the years. He'll need it to get a boot in. There's quite a bit of footage there ...

So I trawled through videos and sent off the good ones (deleted the rubbish ones, thereby freeing up some space on my icloud!). It was great to relive fab fun moments on the sideline during his games for University Rugby Club where he played No. 10 and was Captain for a few seasons. His last game was July 2019 before he headed to Europe and the UK. He played over 100 games for the club and was very well regarded - often called Beaudie - being No. 10, a Beauden Barrett doppelganger and playing a similar style of game. 

I've also got some more footage on my home computer - games played as a rep for the Auckland U85kg team. Will sift through those when I get back to Auckland tomorrow.

I'll post a video of one of his great kicks at the end of this post. 

SHARE-NOTE OF THE DAY:
LandArt ...

Yesterday I spent time on some beautiful nearby bays - where flat even sand and tranquility abound. 

As it happened, thanks to a post by a FB friend in the USA, last night I discovered incredible sand and beach art by a guy called Jon Foreman. He calls himself a "land artist" - and he creates beautiful sculptures on and in the sand, and sometimes in derelict buildings. It's quite stunning. 

Here are just a few images ... too beautiful! Check his website https://sculpttheworld.smugmug.com/

So simple, so complex, so effective, so mesmerising ...

This made me want to go straight back to those bays with a rake and a pile of stones. Where does he get all those stones!? It's certainly given me some creative ideas.






Creating these must take lots of time and patience!

Here's one of Sam's superb RUGBY GOAL KICKS!


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