Item: 1 hotel umbrella

It seems to be drizzly every morning when I'm walking from the hotel to the meeting venue, and I don't know what it does the rest of the day since I really don't go outside again until evening.  There is hardly any traffic in downtown Wellington.  The curbs are really low, so there's not much of a division between the sidewalk and the street, and there doesn't need to be.

I'm finding the 10-minute morning walk in the rain with the rest of the pedestrians very agreeable.  If it's possible to miss a habit one acquires for a week and half, then I will really miss that walk.  Places I've walked by but haven't yet gotten to go into include a camping equipment store called Kathmandu, several shops with cute outfits in the windows, 2 bookstores, the City Gallery, and the Central Library.

Wellington is a windy place, and is also located on a major fault line.  I don't know this, but I'm thinking an earthquake is probably the reason New Zealand consists of 2 islands separated by 23 km (about 14 miles) of water (that would be the Cook Strait).  The area we are in is reclaimed land made available by an earthquake in 1855.  They have plaques set into the sidewalk indicating that this was where the shoreline was in 1840.

And for the most significant note about the day, Happy Birthday to my dad!