Welcome to my "office"

A quick update from my office desk, and a little extra introduction about my health and disability issues. Also, more about my wife, @frittni.

On disability.

This is just a quick post to show everyone here around my office. Nice place, huh? Great views! 😁 I'm @frittro, the bloke on the ground, in the blue t-shirt and fluro-topped work socks. My wife @frittni is sitting on her walker beside me. In this photo, we are at Henderson Park, in West Auckland, New Zealand (see map). The carpark behind us is the main carpark just off Wilsher Crescent, and there are two ♿ disability parking spaces available there. The park itself is all flat, and has well maintained, smooth walkways throughout. It is actually part of the W1 West Auckland Cycleway route, so there are often cyclists riding through the park.

As you can probably tell from the photo, both my wife and I have physical disabilities. My wife was born with Spina Bifida, and I have various ailments which I've mentioned in another post recently. My heart issues are why I, too, have my own mobility aide. I can't walk far without getting tired and needing to sit down. Between the two of us, we have quite the collection of mobility aides, including the walkers, crutches, and a wheelchair.

On mental health.

Today we came down to the park here to meet up with a few friends from Te Ata, which is a mental health peer-support group that I belong to. This is the first time that we had met together in-person this year, and for quite some time before that, due to the COVID-19 lockdowns. It was good to catch up with them again, but sad to hear that one of the staff is planning to leave, this year.

In 2010, I was diagnosed with a major depressive disorder, and it was during this period that I came to be diagnosed also as being on the Autism Spectrum. In fact, that was also the same year that I was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes! It all hit me at once. No wonder I'm so screwed up, haha!

Te Ata has been really helpful to me though, giving me something that I can look forward to during the week. It is a pity that the pandemic has spoiled that a bit, recently. Hopefully we can keep this new Omicron strain out of New Zealand, so that activities like Te Ata can resume again.

Anyway, this was just a brief update. I'm still working on my homelab project, and I will be blogging again about that soon.

EDIT: We went back to the "office" again a couple of days later, and spent some time there again with the Te Ata crew, this time playing a bit of cricket, or at least cricket-like sport, haha. Here are some extra photos, from our second day there this week...

Here we are again, at the "office", sitting under the same tree again, but facing a different direction.

I have no idea what I'm doing here, but it looks good. Am I even holding the bat correctly?

This is the view from my "office desk" this time. It was another beautiful sunny day.

The peace and tranquillity of the day was broken by the groundskeepers. But it looked like they were performing some elaborate dance, which was quite amusing.

After a hard day at the office, we went out for dinner at Nando's peri-peri restaurant in Lincoln Road, Henderson. I had the espetada, and @frittni had the paella.