This was not part of the master plan. So, up I get this morning, look out the window and its beautiful & sunny, put on some nice Spring-like clothes, step outside and…freeze my arse off. As I am still learner driver, Jo & I have been driving to and from work (which has done wonders for my driving, apart from the day when we gave a colleague of Jo’s a lift home and I flaunted my skills by attempting a hill start whilst still in 2nd gear), so I only had to scamper from the house to the car, and then to the office from the car, but I still like an 18 year old sacrificing comfort for fashion. I wouldn’t mind if I actually was 18 and actually looked cool, but I’m fairly sure I fall short on both counts.
To compensate for being exposed to cold air for at least 5 minutes, I scampered into one of the 3 coffee bars that inhabit the 50m or so long block that my office sits on (this is not allowing for coffee shops/cafes along side roads – there really are a ridiculous number of them) and purchased a coffee made by a gentleman who is (according to a magazine I was reading yesterday) the best coffee barista in the whole North Island. He won a competition & everything. Not that I could tell from the coffee – it tasted okay, but didn’t blow my socks off – so I’m not sure how they judge these things. And then I went to work….only another 6 weeks to go ‘til the end of my contract.
I was thinking the other day that some of you may have the impression that I don’t like working. I’d like to challenge that. You see, it’s not that I don’t like working; it’s more that I resent spending 5 days a week being bored out of my skull (despite the financial benefits). Hopefully, my masters proves that I am not afraid to work, but I think I do have to try to find a job/role where I don’t feel the urge to go home after an hour or so. And yes, I know a lot of jobs are boring – it’s just that I don’t happen to feel obliged to resign myself to that for the next 20 - 30 years. However, there is one intriguing element to my current job. I am sitting at a desk that looks out over some car parking spaces (much like at Savile Row) and the traffic wardens here have a nifty trick of carrying different coloured chalk around with them that they use to mark the tyres of parked cars, so they can just tell by the chalk marks how long a car has been parked somewhere, sneaky…though it has been pointed out to me that you can just rub the chalk off and confuse the hell out of them.
Friday, September 08, 2006
Tuesday, August 15, 2006
For your information
I won't be doing much in the way of blogging for a couple of weeks because I have (gasp! the horror!) gone and got myself a short contract job working at the State Services Commission until the end of October. I started yesterday & I am bored already...but they are paying me a fair whack of money, so I guess that's better than nowt.
Adieu.
Adieu.
Thursday, August 10, 2006
The legendary sprain
by the way these were taken 4 days after Jo sprained her ankle - pretty impressive, huh?
Monday, August 07, 2006
All quiet on the western front.
Yes, Gert & I are taking full advantage of having the house to ourselves. We've ensconced ourselves in the study/spare bedroom/room that desperately needs re-organising & tidying, the heater is switched on, I have a cup of tea and the newly donated cordless phone is on my desk, so I only have to leave the room to use the loo and/or get more tea (the two seem oddly connected). This is the only really sensible course of action as a steady rain is falling outside (G & I have already fearlessly ventured out for an hour of vigorous yomping up & down the hills of Melrose) and a particularly unpleasant & chill southerly wind is due to hit Wellington later on. Which sucks because I have to return a couple of DVDs (Brokeback Mountain & The Brothers Grimm - an accidental Heath Ledger marathon) before 6pm and that means going out in the rain.
Brokeback Mountain. Can't say I was too excited by it, didn't find it anywhere near as affecting in the banality of tragedy/tragedy of banality stakes as The Remains Of The Day or Vera Drake, but I guess it would have annoyed many a manly man. And the 'ageing' make-up was shocking, looked really like something out of a school play. The Brothers Grimm just had an awful lots of distractingly 'northern' accents considering it was meant to be in Germany.
The steady rain that is falling is causing some concern as an equal amount of it seems to be coming through our laundry ceiling - about 2 inches yesterday & an inch & a half so far today - and the crack in the ceiling is getting significantly larger. I did the obvious thing of getting out the ladder and climbing up to peer at the roof and though there don't appear to be any holes the roof is not sloping as it should. So the water is just pooling and seeping through. And the weather forecast is for rain for the rest of the week. Somehow we're going to have to fix some temporary tarpaulin to at least try to stem some of the flow, otherwise we're going to be in big trouble. Christ alone knows how though.
So. Jo & I went snowboarding for a few days up at Turangi. I can now officially state that I am a much better snowboarder than I am a skier, but that isn't saying much because I was a terrible skier. Really appalling. But when it comes to snowboarding I managed to not only get down the kiddie slope without killing myself, I also managed to stop, do at least one turn and was able to get up when I fell over. Hooray for me! Jo is very pleased that we may finally have a winter sport that we can both participate in, but I'm thinking I'll need at least a few more days practising before I'll be able to do anything much more than just slowly creep downhill with a scowl of grim determination. After a couple of days the weather got a bit grotty, so we decided that we would drive back down to Waikanae to meet up with Len, Amy & Gertie, giving me ample time to do some driving practise. I managed to get us safely to Wanganui via State Highway 4 despite the rain, landslips (one clipped the back of the car) & trees in the road. Very exciting. For anyone who is interested, SH4 is one of those winding, hairpin, up hill & down dale, only driven by the people who own farms up there, take this corner too fast & you'll end up in a field 40 feet below type of roads. And of course we went down it after heavy rains.
Once back in Wellington Jo spent a the next few days helping Amy finish off her packing and get ready for her departure to Auckland, all of which was pretty straightforward despite Amy misreading her ticket and arriving at the airport as her flight was departing. Actually that was just as well because she'd left her purse in our kitchen & it gave Jo time to drive back home & pick it up before her brand newly booked flight left at 4pm. A couple of days later Jo Ecclestone headed back up to Auckland prior to her onward journey to LA, and Jo & I had the place to ourselves. Unfortunately, Jo went to play netball that lunchtime (Thursday) for the Telstraclear company team and managed to spectacularly sprain her ankle (though she did drive home - no one knows how). It puffed up quite magnificently and by Saturday she hobbled to the hospital to get it looked at, they promptly signed her off for another week. But it meant that we had plenty of time to finish watching Bleak House on DVD.
Jo finally got back to work today, ankle still swollen (the physio says it may take another couple of weeks to get back to normal) and the grot & I are languishing in the silence of the house, just the rain to keep us company and only another 2 hours before I have to take the DVDs back. Might wear my waterproof trousers, should do the trick.
Adios!
Brokeback Mountain. Can't say I was too excited by it, didn't find it anywhere near as affecting in the banality of tragedy/tragedy of banality stakes as The Remains Of The Day or Vera Drake, but I guess it would have annoyed many a manly man. And the 'ageing' make-up was shocking, looked really like something out of a school play. The Brothers Grimm just had an awful lots of distractingly 'northern' accents considering it was meant to be in Germany.
The steady rain that is falling is causing some concern as an equal amount of it seems to be coming through our laundry ceiling - about 2 inches yesterday & an inch & a half so far today - and the crack in the ceiling is getting significantly larger. I did the obvious thing of getting out the ladder and climbing up to peer at the roof and though there don't appear to be any holes the roof is not sloping as it should. So the water is just pooling and seeping through. And the weather forecast is for rain for the rest of the week. Somehow we're going to have to fix some temporary tarpaulin to at least try to stem some of the flow, otherwise we're going to be in big trouble. Christ alone knows how though.
So. Jo & I went snowboarding for a few days up at Turangi. I can now officially state that I am a much better snowboarder than I am a skier, but that isn't saying much because I was a terrible skier. Really appalling. But when it comes to snowboarding I managed to not only get down the kiddie slope without killing myself, I also managed to stop, do at least one turn and was able to get up when I fell over. Hooray for me! Jo is very pleased that we may finally have a winter sport that we can both participate in, but I'm thinking I'll need at least a few more days practising before I'll be able to do anything much more than just slowly creep downhill with a scowl of grim determination. After a couple of days the weather got a bit grotty, so we decided that we would drive back down to Waikanae to meet up with Len, Amy & Gertie, giving me ample time to do some driving practise. I managed to get us safely to Wanganui via State Highway 4 despite the rain, landslips (one clipped the back of the car) & trees in the road. Very exciting. For anyone who is interested, SH4 is one of those winding, hairpin, up hill & down dale, only driven by the people who own farms up there, take this corner too fast & you'll end up in a field 40 feet below type of roads. And of course we went down it after heavy rains.
Once back in Wellington Jo spent a the next few days helping Amy finish off her packing and get ready for her departure to Auckland, all of which was pretty straightforward despite Amy misreading her ticket and arriving at the airport as her flight was departing. Actually that was just as well because she'd left her purse in our kitchen & it gave Jo time to drive back home & pick it up before her brand newly booked flight left at 4pm. A couple of days later Jo Ecclestone headed back up to Auckland prior to her onward journey to LA, and Jo & I had the place to ourselves. Unfortunately, Jo went to play netball that lunchtime (Thursday) for the Telstraclear company team and managed to spectacularly sprain her ankle (though she did drive home - no one knows how). It puffed up quite magnificently and by Saturday she hobbled to the hospital to get it looked at, they promptly signed her off for another week. But it meant that we had plenty of time to finish watching Bleak House on DVD.
Jo finally got back to work today, ankle still swollen (the physio says it may take another couple of weeks to get back to normal) and the grot & I are languishing in the silence of the house, just the rain to keep us company and only another 2 hours before I have to take the DVDs back. Might wear my waterproof trousers, should do the trick.
Adios!
Thursday, July 13, 2006
It's December in New Zealand.
A slight variation on something a friend of mine was asked by an American - "When it's June in America is it December in New Zealand?".
The answer, of course, is "yes". Well, almost. When it is July 8th in America, it is December 25th at our house.
The thought process behind this slight bending of the calendar was inspired by my inability to get into the festive spirit at Christmas, for the simple reason that I couldn't get my head around Christmas being during the summer. For me, and for many of us Northern Hemisphere-ites, at Christmas it should be dark, dank, cold, wet, and downright miserable. An ideal excuse to shut yourself in the house and eat & drink way too much whilst watching dubious 'sitcoms' & old films. Just what those pagan folk were thinking when they invented it...
So, we came up with the genius idea of having a birthday christmas, seeing as my birthday has also transformed from a summer BBQ event to a wintery sludge. Hooray! Of course I forgot the vital element - I don't usually actually have to organise or do any of the work at Christmas, that's what mums do. Then, I decided that it should be split into two elements - a couple of mates over for lunch and a party in the evening. Has anyone actually done this on Christmas Day? No. Why? Because it is knackering and almost impossible to be jovial & sociable for that long (approximately 14 hours...)
Being MY Christmas I then decided I wanted to be all flash & roast a goose for lunch, just because I'd never done that before. But my plans were thwarted when I discovered that you cannot buy goose in NZ. No idea why, you just can't. Turkey isn't too common either outside the actual festive season (when Jo asked one supermarket assistant if they sold turkey he looked at her blankly and said "but it isn't Christmas".). Luckily, el fancio butchers shop in town sells boned, rolled & stuffed turkey, so panic averted. Phew.
Friday 7th July saw the early morning arrival of Jo Ecclestone, 'fresh' off the overnight bus from Auckland, and she was immediately thrown into a day of faffing about, collecting aforementioned turkey, making egg-nog & gluewein, and decorating. By the evening we had almost convinced ourselves it was really Christmas Eve - yes, we are that gullible. Up & at 'em the next morning, we steeled ourselves for the day ahead by watching "Olive, the other reindeer" on DVD & playing dodgy Bing Crosby christmas songs, peeling potatoes and being merry. I was forced to open my present a day early (my birthday isn't actually until the 9th) - a fine set of Global kitchen knives, which are terrifyingly sharp - and lunch went relatively well despite the oven pissing about and taking about an hour longer to cook everything than I had planned. I decided to skip the traditional apologising for the lateness of lunch & went straight into arsey "you'll get your bloody food when it's ready" mode. It seemed to work.
So, lunch over, we whiled away the afternoon watching "The Vicar of Dibley", "The Great Escape" & playing Trivial Pursuit, until someone got out the Live Aid DVD and much very bad singing began. One guest, being a mere 27 years old, was most bemused and traumatised us all by admitting to having never heard of The Thompson Twins. The horror.
By the time our evening guests started appearing, at about 8pm, we were fairly 'merry'. Most people, being under the impression it was a normal party, arrived after 9pm by which time I was knackered & decided upon the 'steer them to the kitchen, give them a drink and then head back to the sofa & let them fend for themselves' tactic. I hope it worked. It was always effective in London, let's hope it travels. The rest of the evening is a blur of red wine, crisps, pickled onions, loud music, sofa hand-jiving, Gertie trying to pretend there was no one there and sleeping, varying degrees of inebriation & lots of laughing. Jo E commented that it was just like our parties in London, but people seemed less drunk. Must have been the lack of Scandinavians or Vicky/Keiran/Sib...
As is traditional at my parties, I called an end to proceedings by going to bed & hoping that everyone else would get the hint. It worked.
The next day consisted of a very long dog walk - to the Mount Vic lookout & back - "The Sound of Music" and lasagne.
5 days later & I'm still tired. Is it because I am 36 now? Or just because I am crap?
The answer, of course, is "yes". Well, almost. When it is July 8th in America, it is December 25th at our house.
The thought process behind this slight bending of the calendar was inspired by my inability to get into the festive spirit at Christmas, for the simple reason that I couldn't get my head around Christmas being during the summer. For me, and for many of us Northern Hemisphere-ites, at Christmas it should be dark, dank, cold, wet, and downright miserable. An ideal excuse to shut yourself in the house and eat & drink way too much whilst watching dubious 'sitcoms' & old films. Just what those pagan folk were thinking when they invented it...
So, we came up with the genius idea of having a birthday christmas, seeing as my birthday has also transformed from a summer BBQ event to a wintery sludge. Hooray! Of course I forgot the vital element - I don't usually actually have to organise or do any of the work at Christmas, that's what mums do. Then, I decided that it should be split into two elements - a couple of mates over for lunch and a party in the evening. Has anyone actually done this on Christmas Day? No. Why? Because it is knackering and almost impossible to be jovial & sociable for that long (approximately 14 hours...)
Being MY Christmas I then decided I wanted to be all flash & roast a goose for lunch, just because I'd never done that before. But my plans were thwarted when I discovered that you cannot buy goose in NZ. No idea why, you just can't. Turkey isn't too common either outside the actual festive season (when Jo asked one supermarket assistant if they sold turkey he looked at her blankly and said "but it isn't Christmas".). Luckily, el fancio butchers shop in town sells boned, rolled & stuffed turkey, so panic averted. Phew.
Friday 7th July saw the early morning arrival of Jo Ecclestone, 'fresh' off the overnight bus from Auckland, and she was immediately thrown into a day of faffing about, collecting aforementioned turkey, making egg-nog & gluewein, and decorating. By the evening we had almost convinced ourselves it was really Christmas Eve - yes, we are that gullible. Up & at 'em the next morning, we steeled ourselves for the day ahead by watching "Olive, the other reindeer" on DVD & playing dodgy Bing Crosby christmas songs, peeling potatoes and being merry. I was forced to open my present a day early (my birthday isn't actually until the 9th) - a fine set of Global kitchen knives, which are terrifyingly sharp - and lunch went relatively well despite the oven pissing about and taking about an hour longer to cook everything than I had planned. I decided to skip the traditional apologising for the lateness of lunch & went straight into arsey "you'll get your bloody food when it's ready" mode. It seemed to work.
So, lunch over, we whiled away the afternoon watching "The Vicar of Dibley", "The Great Escape" & playing Trivial Pursuit, until someone got out the Live Aid DVD and much very bad singing began. One guest, being a mere 27 years old, was most bemused and traumatised us all by admitting to having never heard of The Thompson Twins. The horror.
By the time our evening guests started appearing, at about 8pm, we were fairly 'merry'. Most people, being under the impression it was a normal party, arrived after 9pm by which time I was knackered & decided upon the 'steer them to the kitchen, give them a drink and then head back to the sofa & let them fend for themselves' tactic. I hope it worked. It was always effective in London, let's hope it travels. The rest of the evening is a blur of red wine, crisps, pickled onions, loud music, sofa hand-jiving, Gertie trying to pretend there was no one there and sleeping, varying degrees of inebriation & lots of laughing. Jo E commented that it was just like our parties in London, but people seemed less drunk. Must have been the lack of Scandinavians or Vicky/Keiran/Sib...
As is traditional at my parties, I called an end to proceedings by going to bed & hoping that everyone else would get the hint. It worked.
The next day consisted of a very long dog walk - to the Mount Vic lookout & back - "The Sound of Music" and lasagne.
5 days later & I'm still tired. Is it because I am 36 now? Or just because I am crap?
Thursday, July 06, 2006
Sarcasm will get you everywhere.
In response to the cheeky git who commented on my extreme lack of blogginess - I have been thinking about blogging for some time now, but have been distracted by the vile weather & severe lack of heating in the house (note how close G has to get to the old heater to reap any benefit).
The heating situation has now been resolved and I may well blog next week. Until then I am busy organising my birthday extravaganza this weekend, which will be taking the form of a mid-winter knees-up. We're even making egg nog. I shall attempt to record the aftermath early-ish next week. Maybe.
S
Tuesday, April 18, 2006
Mice are tenacious wee bastards, aren't they?
And they don't seem to understand that they are supposed to go into the mousetrap, instead of prancing about our kitchen.
Having said that I just went downstairs to make a cup of tea and discovered our mousetrap did indeed contain a willing victim (who has just been relocated at the bottom of the street).
Let me begin at the beginning. A few weeks ago, in a land far far away (depending on where you live) we began to suspect we had a mouse problem. When I say "we began to suspect", what I actually mean is that we kept seeing mice in our kitchen. Well, when I say "we kept seeing mice in our kitchen", what I actually mean is that we kept seeing mouse arses/tails disappearing down the back of our oven. In fact some of these critters had actually taken to pooing on roasting trays left in the oven (clean ones) and larking about in the cupboards and pooing in my wok. Annoying. So it was decided that something had to be done and, after much searching, I finally found some humane mousetraps. Jo was favouring the 'splatter them all over the place' traditional trap, but I thought that a little harsh seeing as they were only doing their mousey thing, so we bought the humane one.
This took some negotiation as they were really pushing their luck with Jo by holding little soirees in the crumb tray of her Dualit toaster. They don't know how close they came. My campaign against them began quite gloriously. In fact, I caught two of the wee buggers in a single evening. Hurrah for me!!! And then it all went quiet. Not being foolish enough to think it could be that simple, I left the trap in situ.
For the last two/three weeks at least one mouse has been merrily partying away in the kitchen without even as much as poking its nose in the trap. Damn. Jo's patience with both the mice & the trap was wearing thin and there was talk of "bait" & "poison" being bandied about at the dinner table (very Borgian - and yes I did check that this is an actual word. Its used by the Vatican, no less.). The conflict was about to escalate.
Then the impasse was finally broken. Yesterday (Easter Monday), following an epic dog walking adventure of almost 4 hours, Jo & I were both in a state of minor collapse on the sofa watching 'Edward Scissorhands' on DVD (just giving you a visual) and having just consumed a fine lunch of fajitas when Jo claimed to hear a rattling in the kitchen. Off she went to investigate. The trap was indeed closed, suggesting a prisoner, but it can be a bit temperamental so I asked whether she was sure there was something in it. I usually test this theory by giving the trap a bit of a shake to see if it has anything inside (probably defeats the 'humane' aspect a bit), but Jo had tried the failsafe method of actually opening the lid and peering in. She offered to let me have a look, but I had visions of high velocity mouse leaping to freedom in my face, so declined. Off I wandered to the long grass behind the church hall to release the beastie.
Once a safe distance from our place I opened up the end of the trap and gave it a little shake to encourage our little friend out. Normally at this point a high speed leap is the chosen option of the mouse, but nothing. Strange. So I peered into the trap only to see a very wide-eyed vermin beast using its paws to wedge itself against the end of the trap in a style I can only imagine it had picked up from James Bond films - you know that classic using your hands and feet to wedge yourself on the lift ceiling so you can drop on your enemy. Nice try sonny. A firm flick of the wrist dislodged the mouse and I must confess it was quite athletic in its leaping through the undergrowth.
Back to the house and all is calm. Jo's now finely tuned mouse detecting ears were ready for any further encroachment, and later that evening something caught her attention. Off to the kitchen to investigate. No sign of the mouse/mice, but one giveaway clue. Gert hadn't eaten all food that evening - she doesn't like the new dog biscuit stuff we bought at the weekend, I don't blame her it does smell a bit like disinfectant - so there were some left over biscuits in her bowl waiting to be chucked away. Now these are quite chunky biscuits, I'd estimate at least a couple of centimetres square, but one of our combatants had managed to get one out of the bowl (which is polished metal and pretty slippery), past the sink edge and to the edge of the bread bin. Jo saw this as a blantant act of defiance, yet I had to grudgingly respect such initiative. Plus it gave me a massive hint as what to use as bait in my trap.
My first capture just now confirms that Gert's yucky dog biscuits do seem to be effective. I'll keep you updated.
Having said that I just went downstairs to make a cup of tea and discovered our mousetrap did indeed contain a willing victim (who has just been relocated at the bottom of the street).
Let me begin at the beginning. A few weeks ago, in a land far far away (depending on where you live) we began to suspect we had a mouse problem. When I say "we began to suspect", what I actually mean is that we kept seeing mice in our kitchen. Well, when I say "we kept seeing mice in our kitchen", what I actually mean is that we kept seeing mouse arses/tails disappearing down the back of our oven. In fact some of these critters had actually taken to pooing on roasting trays left in the oven (clean ones) and larking about in the cupboards and pooing in my wok. Annoying. So it was decided that something had to be done and, after much searching, I finally found some humane mousetraps. Jo was favouring the 'splatter them all over the place' traditional trap, but I thought that a little harsh seeing as they were only doing their mousey thing, so we bought the humane one.
This took some negotiation as they were really pushing their luck with Jo by holding little soirees in the crumb tray of her Dualit toaster. They don't know how close they came. My campaign against them began quite gloriously. In fact, I caught two of the wee buggers in a single evening. Hurrah for me!!! And then it all went quiet. Not being foolish enough to think it could be that simple, I left the trap in situ.
For the last two/three weeks at least one mouse has been merrily partying away in the kitchen without even as much as poking its nose in the trap. Damn. Jo's patience with both the mice & the trap was wearing thin and there was talk of "bait" & "poison" being bandied about at the dinner table (very Borgian - and yes I did check that this is an actual word. Its used by the Vatican, no less.). The conflict was about to escalate.
Then the impasse was finally broken. Yesterday (Easter Monday), following an epic dog walking adventure of almost 4 hours, Jo & I were both in a state of minor collapse on the sofa watching 'Edward Scissorhands' on DVD (just giving you a visual) and having just consumed a fine lunch of fajitas when Jo claimed to hear a rattling in the kitchen. Off she went to investigate. The trap was indeed closed, suggesting a prisoner, but it can be a bit temperamental so I asked whether she was sure there was something in it. I usually test this theory by giving the trap a bit of a shake to see if it has anything inside (probably defeats the 'humane' aspect a bit), but Jo had tried the failsafe method of actually opening the lid and peering in. She offered to let me have a look, but I had visions of high velocity mouse leaping to freedom in my face, so declined. Off I wandered to the long grass behind the church hall to release the beastie.
Once a safe distance from our place I opened up the end of the trap and gave it a little shake to encourage our little friend out. Normally at this point a high speed leap is the chosen option of the mouse, but nothing. Strange. So I peered into the trap only to see a very wide-eyed vermin beast using its paws to wedge itself against the end of the trap in a style I can only imagine it had picked up from James Bond films - you know that classic using your hands and feet to wedge yourself on the lift ceiling so you can drop on your enemy. Nice try sonny. A firm flick of the wrist dislodged the mouse and I must confess it was quite athletic in its leaping through the undergrowth.
Back to the house and all is calm. Jo's now finely tuned mouse detecting ears were ready for any further encroachment, and later that evening something caught her attention. Off to the kitchen to investigate. No sign of the mouse/mice, but one giveaway clue. Gert hadn't eaten all food that evening - she doesn't like the new dog biscuit stuff we bought at the weekend, I don't blame her it does smell a bit like disinfectant - so there were some left over biscuits in her bowl waiting to be chucked away. Now these are quite chunky biscuits, I'd estimate at least a couple of centimetres square, but one of our combatants had managed to get one out of the bowl (which is polished metal and pretty slippery), past the sink edge and to the edge of the bread bin. Jo saw this as a blantant act of defiance, yet I had to grudgingly respect such initiative. Plus it gave me a massive hint as what to use as bait in my trap.
My first capture just now confirms that Gert's yucky dog biscuits do seem to be effective. I'll keep you updated.
Wednesday, March 29, 2006
I just bloody deleted my 1st blog entry for months...bugger!!!
So...you get the gist...and it was really funny/witty/urbane...arse.
I'll give you a summary in bullet points and write a better one next week, honest.
- I am not dead/ill/traumatised in any way, just lazy/busy.
- Our washing machine broke, but we bought a new one. And now I keep getting that very strange Kate Bush washing machine song in my head. We had to cut away part of a door architrave to get it to fit - annoying.
- I chopped down a tree in the front yard because it had fallen over.
- Gert tried to choke herself on a piece of chopped down tree wood. She's fine but had to have 2 antibiotic jabs.
- Gert's disgusting ear scab/growth is being surgically removed on April 21st.
- Tennis ball chuckers are great - every home should have one.
- The weather here is getting quite wintery - mainly wet, cold & windy.
- Luckily I have a new Drizabone raincoat, so I don't care. ($100 off in a sale)
- We have mice, but I've caught 2 of them in my brand new humane mousetrap & relocated them behind the church hall at the end of the road. Jo thinks I am a soft git for buying a humane trap.
- I have been busily writing my Ancient Egyptian Archaeology course, but am already a week behind schedule (I've only been working on it for 3 weeks).
- If anything dramatic/traumatic did happen to me, rest assured Jo would let you know.
- I went to a Gay Ex-Pats club & spent the entire evening talking to a bloke from New Zealand. It was crap.
- Our pub quiz has disappeared, which sucks.
- I am now working 3 mornings a week at the Drama School cafe.
- I have got a Kiwi hooked on 'Heat' magazine, which is bad as it costs $9 over here. But its nice to know what Kerry Katona is up to.
- I'm getting my bi-annual haircut tomorrow.
- I'm listening to the Martha Wainwright album, supposedly one of the albums of 2005 but I'm not so sure.
- Jo is trying to teach Gert to play dead. I am trying to encourage the use of the command word "blam!" with matching gunfire hand actions.
that should keep you going for a couple of days at least...
Adios!
S
I'll give you a summary in bullet points and write a better one next week, honest.
- I am not dead/ill/traumatised in any way, just lazy/busy.
- Our washing machine broke, but we bought a new one. And now I keep getting that very strange Kate Bush washing machine song in my head. We had to cut away part of a door architrave to get it to fit - annoying.
- I chopped down a tree in the front yard because it had fallen over.
- Gert tried to choke herself on a piece of chopped down tree wood. She's fine but had to have 2 antibiotic jabs.
- Gert's disgusting ear scab/growth is being surgically removed on April 21st.
- Tennis ball chuckers are great - every home should have one.
- The weather here is getting quite wintery - mainly wet, cold & windy.
- Luckily I have a new Drizabone raincoat, so I don't care. ($100 off in a sale)
- We have mice, but I've caught 2 of them in my brand new humane mousetrap & relocated them behind the church hall at the end of the road. Jo thinks I am a soft git for buying a humane trap.
- I have been busily writing my Ancient Egyptian Archaeology course, but am already a week behind schedule (I've only been working on it for 3 weeks).
- If anything dramatic/traumatic did happen to me, rest assured Jo would let you know.
- I went to a Gay Ex-Pats club & spent the entire evening talking to a bloke from New Zealand. It was crap.
- Our pub quiz has disappeared, which sucks.
- I am now working 3 mornings a week at the Drama School cafe.
- I have got a Kiwi hooked on 'Heat' magazine, which is bad as it costs $9 over here. But its nice to know what Kerry Katona is up to.
- I'm getting my bi-annual haircut tomorrow.
- I'm listening to the Martha Wainwright album, supposedly one of the albums of 2005 but I'm not so sure.
- Jo is trying to teach Gert to play dead. I am trying to encourage the use of the command word "blam!" with matching gunfire hand actions.
that should keep you going for a couple of days at least...
Adios!
S
Friday, January 20, 2006
We made it out alive!
I feel it is my duty as an ex-pat to flaunt my sunny Christmas by letting you all know that I did indeed manage to get myself sunburnt on Boxing Day. I'm not sure how because I did go through the ritual of dunking myself in enough factor 30 sunscreen to cover an entire British summer, but guess that's just the way it is...
If it's any consolation Jo & I will miss the best of summer over here by coming over to Finland/UK and freezing our butts off. Great.
Back to Christmas/New Year - we arrived at Jo's folks place at Waikanae on Christmas Eve all ready for a few days of R&R, dog in tow (who Len had very kindly built a rather fabulous kennel for - it even has her name on it), and proceeded to raucously celebrate pre-Christmas with much alcohol and a surprisingly vocal game of Scrabble. Jo & I had brought our tent as we realised that if we were planning to go camping over New Year then we should check that it was still in one piece and, sensibly, had put it up before we began our Scrabble frenzy. So off we staggered, clutching torches, into the pitch blackness of the back garden (sending the dog off to her new kennel for the night), and crashed out. Not for long though, for mysterious snuffling noises awoke me from my slumber. Feeling courageous I flamboyantly unzipped the sleeping section of the tent (our tent is really quite roomy) to find out what kind of beastie had dared to sneak into the entrance bit only to find myself up close & personal with Gertie's nose. She'd figured out that she could easily crawl under the flysheet and was making a valiant effort to claw her way through the inner tent to get to us. Jo was adamant that Gert shouldn't be allowed in the sleeping bit with us, but seeing as there was sod all we could do to make her go into the kennel, she spent the rest of the night sleeping in the central part of the tent, stretching the inner liner as far as she could in an attempt to be as close to us as possible. Considering how knackered she was the next day I'm guessing it wasn't the best night's sleep she'd ever had. In fact, Jo's grandad spent most of the day suggesting that there was something wrong with our dog seeing as she was practically comatose.
The rest of Christmas passed without anything significant happening and we headed back to Wellington so that Jo could savour the delights of work before we went a-camping for the New Year. Which would have been great if we hadn't arrived back at Green Street and realised that we'd left our house keys at Waikanae...luckily we had the spare keys for Jo's folk's place and were able to hide out there until Amy returned to town.
Thus, on Friday 30th Jan we found ourselves once more heading north (stopping briefly at Waikanae to leave Gert with Jo's folks) to the heady delights of Vinegar Hill's annual New Year gay extravaganza - woo hoo! Now I really do not have the energy to go into any gory detail about Vinegar Hill, so I shall summarise our trip in a series of bullet points.
. It is not advisable to camp in close vicinity to the campsite's giant bonfire - people/cars/tents all end up with a slightly updated Pompeii theme
. Really good earplugs = essential
. if entertainment is voluntary/free expect little in terms of quality, but the predictable in terms of range ie. drag queen, lesbian singer/songwriter guitarist (even the 'love' songs were depressing), drag queen, buttocks & boobs, elderly drag queen, drag king, Guns 'N Roses karaoke, drag queen, disco (Hi-NRG/Euro).
. if entertainment is voluntary & gathered from a pool of about 500 people expect the worst. You won't be disappointed.
. Bring your own teabags
. Don't drink the majority of your booze on the first night, despite the temptation/feelings of desperation
. Kiwi lesbian campers (I can't comment on the blokes for obvious reasons) seem to have very low squeamishness thresholds when it comes to campsite toilets
. they also seem to have a very low cold temperature tolerance when it comes to river swimming
. Jo is very very good at hitting leaves with pebbles in fast flowing water
. Glow worms are very pretty
. Kiwi lesbians seem afraid of London S&M ladies (clearly not versed in the old 'just maintain a disinterested eye-contact & keep walking/smile politely and decline' protocol)
. People who park their motorcycles right outside my tent and then decide to start them up at 4am are wankers
. Repeatedly playing 'Push the Button' by the Sugarbabes doesn't make it any less crap
So, having realised that 3 days was our limit, we headed back to Waikanae to collect Gert and then back to Wellington. Upon our return to Green Street this time we noticed that one of our living room front windows had fallen out, frame and all. Luckily no one else seemed to have noticed and everything was intact, and lucky we came back that day because the overnight weather was a shocker and would have wrecked the downstairs of the house if we hadn't boarded it up. Well, if we hadn't asked the bloke next door to do it for us and paid him in beer. Just to confirm our weather worries one of the neighbour's windows went kablooey too.
Since then we've been pootling around the house making the place look half-way decent, drove to Auckland & back to attend a wedding party (great party, bloody long drive), Gertie passed her puppy school grading with flying colours (and has since been a pain in the arse - we are still working on getting her come back everytime she's called rather than just wehn she feels like it), and we've just had a long weekend in celebration of Wellington Day (?). We hightailed it out of town, but there was some extreme sports BMX/skateboard thingy on in the city for the young folk. I noticed them building the ramps etc for it as I cycled past on the way to the gym last Friday, but thought I'd best leave it to the professionals.
Only 3 weeks until we hit Europe now. Scary. But hopefully I'll get back in the blogging zone and be ready for some more Monday updates.
Adios!
If it's any consolation Jo & I will miss the best of summer over here by coming over to Finland/UK and freezing our butts off. Great.
Back to Christmas/New Year - we arrived at Jo's folks place at Waikanae on Christmas Eve all ready for a few days of R&R, dog in tow (who Len had very kindly built a rather fabulous kennel for - it even has her name on it), and proceeded to raucously celebrate pre-Christmas with much alcohol and a surprisingly vocal game of Scrabble. Jo & I had brought our tent as we realised that if we were planning to go camping over New Year then we should check that it was still in one piece and, sensibly, had put it up before we began our Scrabble frenzy. So off we staggered, clutching torches, into the pitch blackness of the back garden (sending the dog off to her new kennel for the night), and crashed out. Not for long though, for mysterious snuffling noises awoke me from my slumber. Feeling courageous I flamboyantly unzipped the sleeping section of the tent (our tent is really quite roomy) to find out what kind of beastie had dared to sneak into the entrance bit only to find myself up close & personal with Gertie's nose. She'd figured out that she could easily crawl under the flysheet and was making a valiant effort to claw her way through the inner tent to get to us. Jo was adamant that Gert shouldn't be allowed in the sleeping bit with us, but seeing as there was sod all we could do to make her go into the kennel, she spent the rest of the night sleeping in the central part of the tent, stretching the inner liner as far as she could in an attempt to be as close to us as possible. Considering how knackered she was the next day I'm guessing it wasn't the best night's sleep she'd ever had. In fact, Jo's grandad spent most of the day suggesting that there was something wrong with our dog seeing as she was practically comatose.
The rest of Christmas passed without anything significant happening and we headed back to Wellington so that Jo could savour the delights of work before we went a-camping for the New Year. Which would have been great if we hadn't arrived back at Green Street and realised that we'd left our house keys at Waikanae...luckily we had the spare keys for Jo's folk's place and were able to hide out there until Amy returned to town.
Thus, on Friday 30th Jan we found ourselves once more heading north (stopping briefly at Waikanae to leave Gert with Jo's folks) to the heady delights of Vinegar Hill's annual New Year gay extravaganza - woo hoo! Now I really do not have the energy to go into any gory detail about Vinegar Hill, so I shall summarise our trip in a series of bullet points.
. It is not advisable to camp in close vicinity to the campsite's giant bonfire - people/cars/tents all end up with a slightly updated Pompeii theme
. Really good earplugs = essential
. if entertainment is voluntary/free expect little in terms of quality, but the predictable in terms of range ie. drag queen, lesbian singer/songwriter guitarist (even the 'love' songs were depressing), drag queen, buttocks & boobs, elderly drag queen, drag king, Guns 'N Roses karaoke, drag queen, disco (Hi-NRG/Euro).
. if entertainment is voluntary & gathered from a pool of about 500 people expect the worst. You won't be disappointed.
. Bring your own teabags
. Don't drink the majority of your booze on the first night, despite the temptation/feelings of desperation
. Kiwi lesbian campers (I can't comment on the blokes for obvious reasons) seem to have very low squeamishness thresholds when it comes to campsite toilets
. they also seem to have a very low cold temperature tolerance when it comes to river swimming
. Jo is very very good at hitting leaves with pebbles in fast flowing water
. Glow worms are very pretty
. Kiwi lesbians seem afraid of London S&M ladies (clearly not versed in the old 'just maintain a disinterested eye-contact & keep walking/smile politely and decline' protocol)
. People who park their motorcycles right outside my tent and then decide to start them up at 4am are wankers
. Repeatedly playing 'Push the Button' by the Sugarbabes doesn't make it any less crap
So, having realised that 3 days was our limit, we headed back to Waikanae to collect Gert and then back to Wellington. Upon our return to Green Street this time we noticed that one of our living room front windows had fallen out, frame and all. Luckily no one else seemed to have noticed and everything was intact, and lucky we came back that day because the overnight weather was a shocker and would have wrecked the downstairs of the house if we hadn't boarded it up. Well, if we hadn't asked the bloke next door to do it for us and paid him in beer. Just to confirm our weather worries one of the neighbour's windows went kablooey too.
Since then we've been pootling around the house making the place look half-way decent, drove to Auckland & back to attend a wedding party (great party, bloody long drive), Gertie passed her puppy school grading with flying colours (and has since been a pain in the arse - we are still working on getting her come back everytime she's called rather than just wehn she feels like it), and we've just had a long weekend in celebration of Wellington Day (?). We hightailed it out of town, but there was some extreme sports BMX/skateboard thingy on in the city for the young folk. I noticed them building the ramps etc for it as I cycled past on the way to the gym last Friday, but thought I'd best leave it to the professionals.
Only 3 weeks until we hit Europe now. Scary. But hopefully I'll get back in the blogging zone and be ready for some more Monday updates.
Adios!
Thursday, December 22, 2005
Surely it can't be Christmas already?
Well Jesus, Mary & Joseph - it's Christmas already!
Firstly a combined thank you and humble apologies. Thank you to those of you who sent us Christmas cards (& presents), you will be heartened to know that you made me cry...thus ruining my image as the cool & sophisticated urbanite that I am...and sincere apologies to those who will not be getting a Christmas card from us. There is a reason for this though, and the reason is that I am horribly disorganised. And you would be shocked at the extortionate prices they charge over here to post stuff at Christmas - it's about $6 for a card and postage to the UK - and I am skint 'cos I am too slack to work. Actually the not working thing is starting to seriously irritate me, but I shall not ruin your reading pleasure by whinging on about how terrible it is to be a kept woman. I'll save that for the New Year. So, executive decision: rather than spending loads on christmas cards etc etc, we will focus instead on birthdays. How's that sound? Wouldn't you much rather get something pointless and lightweight (under 2kg or it costs loads to post) on your special day?
Speaking of special days, and before I forget, Jo & I have some exciting news on the coming to Europe front. Yes, we've actually booked our flights. We will be arriving in Finland in time to attend Sini & Ali's nuptials (hmmm, jet-lag & vodka, should be interesting), and from there it's just a quick hop, step & a jump to London on 18th February 2006. Jo will probably only be able to stay in the UK for a week, seeing as she has a job and all, but I'll probably stay for a couple - so start booking me into your diaries now...and remember I can easily be bought by promises of food/alcohol/weeping & tales of how much you've missed me...Hopefully the south east London menagerie (consisting of Maija, Jan, Catherine & Vicky H) will be happy to share me like the cheap floozy I am, but I am hoping that I'll get to spend at least one or two drunken evenings with everyone. I'm trying to act all cool about it, otherwise I'll make a pillock of myself as soon as I see you guys. No doubt you will soon be receiving grovelling emails asking if we can stay at your place.
So, Christmas in NZ? It is sunny, and it doesn't feel like Christmas. At all. I suppose for me Christmas is all about it being cold & miserable, very dubious television programmes, Christmas lights & heinous music, Eastenders and scoffing way too much food off a giant plate waiting about 3 hours and eating way too much of the same food (only cold with branston pickle) and drinking alot. And mince pies. So far Christmas in NZ has been none of the above, but it would be very weird if it was considering we are in the middle of summer - but I am pretty sure I can maintain the traditional consumption of enough food & wine for a small family by myself, so all is not lost. And I think Jo's dad has some Branston pickle stashed somewhere. Hurrah!
As for news of me over the last couple of weeks, not a great deal to report. I've been trying to learn my road code so I can get a learner's licence and start terrorising the locals with my driving skills - might even try to get it tomorrow so I can cause the traditional Christmas row by having a driving lesson during the festive season. Amy was on the radio this morning reading a Christmas short story (v. weird hearing someone you know on the radio doing acting & stuff), the dog is growing quite rapidly and getting very bouncy indeed, and we're off to a gay campsite for New Year. I can't wait to get back and blog that! Some have suggested it may cause emotional distress, but I reckon I must have seen worse at Pride, surely? Expect tales of my steely death stare and Jo's repetition of the phrase "there's just no need for that".
Well, ho ho ho...
MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL OF YOU, DEAR READERS...like the sarcasm?
Wish you were here - maybe next year, eh?
lots of love
S & J (& G)
Firstly a combined thank you and humble apologies. Thank you to those of you who sent us Christmas cards (& presents), you will be heartened to know that you made me cry...thus ruining my image as the cool & sophisticated urbanite that I am...and sincere apologies to those who will not be getting a Christmas card from us. There is a reason for this though, and the reason is that I am horribly disorganised. And you would be shocked at the extortionate prices they charge over here to post stuff at Christmas - it's about $6 for a card and postage to the UK - and I am skint 'cos I am too slack to work. Actually the not working thing is starting to seriously irritate me, but I shall not ruin your reading pleasure by whinging on about how terrible it is to be a kept woman. I'll save that for the New Year. So, executive decision: rather than spending loads on christmas cards etc etc, we will focus instead on birthdays. How's that sound? Wouldn't you much rather get something pointless and lightweight (under 2kg or it costs loads to post) on your special day?
Speaking of special days, and before I forget, Jo & I have some exciting news on the coming to Europe front. Yes, we've actually booked our flights. We will be arriving in Finland in time to attend Sini & Ali's nuptials (hmmm, jet-lag & vodka, should be interesting), and from there it's just a quick hop, step & a jump to London on 18th February 2006. Jo will probably only be able to stay in the UK for a week, seeing as she has a job and all, but I'll probably stay for a couple - so start booking me into your diaries now...and remember I can easily be bought by promises of food/alcohol/weeping & tales of how much you've missed me...Hopefully the south east London menagerie (consisting of Maija, Jan, Catherine & Vicky H) will be happy to share me like the cheap floozy I am, but I am hoping that I'll get to spend at least one or two drunken evenings with everyone. I'm trying to act all cool about it, otherwise I'll make a pillock of myself as soon as I see you guys. No doubt you will soon be receiving grovelling emails asking if we can stay at your place.
So, Christmas in NZ? It is sunny, and it doesn't feel like Christmas. At all. I suppose for me Christmas is all about it being cold & miserable, very dubious television programmes, Christmas lights & heinous music, Eastenders and scoffing way too much food off a giant plate waiting about 3 hours and eating way too much of the same food (only cold with branston pickle) and drinking alot. And mince pies. So far Christmas in NZ has been none of the above, but it would be very weird if it was considering we are in the middle of summer - but I am pretty sure I can maintain the traditional consumption of enough food & wine for a small family by myself, so all is not lost. And I think Jo's dad has some Branston pickle stashed somewhere. Hurrah!
As for news of me over the last couple of weeks, not a great deal to report. I've been trying to learn my road code so I can get a learner's licence and start terrorising the locals with my driving skills - might even try to get it tomorrow so I can cause the traditional Christmas row by having a driving lesson during the festive season. Amy was on the radio this morning reading a Christmas short story (v. weird hearing someone you know on the radio doing acting & stuff), the dog is growing quite rapidly and getting very bouncy indeed, and we're off to a gay campsite for New Year. I can't wait to get back and blog that! Some have suggested it may cause emotional distress, but I reckon I must have seen worse at Pride, surely? Expect tales of my steely death stare and Jo's repetition of the phrase "there's just no need for that".
Well, ho ho ho...
MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL OF YOU, DEAR READERS...like the sarcasm?
Wish you were here - maybe next year, eh?
lots of love
S & J (& G)
Thursday, December 08, 2005
Sneaky
I've just finished writing an entry I started on 4th Dec, so it's hidden back down the list. You might want to have a look.
S
S
Tuesday, December 06, 2005
FYI...
Just to let you know that there are some very good bargain London to NZ flights around at the moment (mainly for next year...so if you fancy a sunny January?)
hint hint...
hint hint...
Monday, December 05, 2005
A photo of our dog...
Now that I have finally figured out how to add photos!!!!! The first one was taken the day we brought her home & the second one was taken this lunchtime.
S
Sunday, December 04, 2005
By gum we've been busy!
Ha ha haaaa! Just making myself laugh by accidentally writing 'busty' instead of busy in the title...if only...
Anyway, there is a reasonably good excuse for this blog being late. And that reason is that I've been busy. Busy with activities as far ranging as attending wine festivals and doing incredibly long bike rides.
Wine festivals are pretty self-explanatory, so I'm not going to go into too much detail here except to say that if you ever get the chance to attend Taste Martinborough you should go. The highlight of the day for me was Jo applying her dog training techniques on a very drunk Australian by repeatedly telling him to 'sit & stay' (it didn't work though and he was eventually wrestled into his seat by a Kiwi woman). So I shall instead give you a fascinating summary of our weekend at the Lake Taupo Cycle Challenge.
We, that is Jo, Harriet and I, had cleverly decided to avoid the worst of the traffic by leaving Wellington at 4pm, and this plan would have worked brilliantly if it wasn't for the ludicrous traffic jam we encountered about 20 mins outside of the city. A traffic jam that saw us travel about 50km in 2 hours. The rest of the journey was fairly uneventful, alot of it goes along a very dull road called 'The Desert Road' even though it isn't in a desert, just a very boring flat plain, and through a variety of non-descript towns. The most interesting town was a place called 'Bulls' (why?) and that was only interesting because of it's 'amusing' habit of trying to put dodgy puns on as many buildings as possible eg the local medical centre was 'cure-a-bull', the pc shop was 'comput-a-bull' etc etc, whilst the dullest place was Levin. It's so dull I can't even think of anything to say about it. Oh yeah, the petrol station toilet had no loo paper. Fascinating, huh?
Eventually we reached Tuarangi, having enjoyed a rather lovely view of the big volcanoes on the way, and tried to follow Rachel's directions to the place where we were staying. This was somewhat hampered by Harriet's decision not to bring a road map with us and our decision to call Rachel to get a better idea of where we were going only to find that she'd managed to go 150 or so km off course, so eventually we gave up and headed to another petrol station to consult their maps and sample some of their finest crapola food.
We got to our destination, a weekend place kindly loaned to us by the parents of one of Rachel's friends, at about 10pm and I proceeded to commandeer the largest room (with ensuite no less) for Jo & I. I also needed to have a quick practice at riding Harriet's bike as it had those funny clip pedals, you know the ones where you attach your shoes to the pedal like skis, but having fallen spectacularly on my arse several times in quick succession I decided against using them and vowed to wear normal trainers. My falling off shame has been lessened by Harriet informing me yesterday that she did exactly the same thing last Saturday, except that she was at a set of traffic lights in town and her humiliation was compounded by having many more witnesses. Karmic retribution for laughing at me, I'd like to think. Anyway, after that little debarcle, we took ourselves away to bed in readiness for a 5.00am wake-up so that we'd be able to register and drop off our bikes by 7am.
So, fortified with 5 hours sleep and a bowl of porridge, we headed off to Taupo 40km down the road. We registered and dropped the bikes off about 30 seconds before the deadline and then realised we had sod all to do until our respective stages of the ride. I was signed up for the 2nd stage and Harriet for the 3rd, whilst Rachel & her mate Amy had 4th & 1st respectively. Once Rachel realised this (and the fact that her changeover point was about 500m from the house we were staying in) she dropped off Amy and went back home where she proceeded to go back to bed until 12.30pm! Jammy wee bastard. By this point, about 8am, I had gone to get on the bus that would deliver me to my changeover point 40km down the road. I feel it is sensible to point out that the NZ weather had decided that it would turn f******g freezing and with a slight drizzle.
My bus trip was uneventful except for the realisation that I hadn't actually met Amy (who I had to swap the tracking/competition timer ankleband thingy with) as Rachel and she had arrived after we'd gone to bed and we'd left before them in the morning. Bugger. Luckily Jo, being the only sentient one in our group, had realised this and given her a description of me and shown her a photo. We arrived at the changeover point at 9am and I proceeded to wait for Amy to arrive...thanks to the persistant drizzle and chill breeze I was forced to put on every item of clothing I had with me and by the time she arrived at 10.45am I was wearing the following couture combo - red nike trainers, powder blue 3/4 running leggings, greenish/sludge hiking shorts, red t-shirt, blue fleece, orange waterproof jacket, red woolly hat & a bike helmet. God, I was gorgeous. After an emotional changeover (I was immeasurably relieved by the fact that I could start moving and stave off hypothermia, not to mention get away from the 60-something bloke who was having a conversation about chafing and his lack of undercrackers), I began the long slow slog to meet Harriet at the 2nd changeover.
Interesting aside - why is it that you only hear the conversations about the 1st & 2nd stages being by far the hardest after the 2nd stage? Basically it was 2 hours of pedalling up and down hills in the rain, with a headwind. The only thing that motivated me was the unspoken competition between me & some of the larger participants - I would overtake them on the way up a hill only to have them sail past by sheer force of volume and gravity on the downhill. It's really aggravating, but I'm pretty sure it was mutual. As mentioned, stage 2 is the hilly part. Imagine cycling up and down Camberwell Grove for 2 hours, or Mount Pleasant for those more familiar with Liverpool, or Mount Pleasant for those more familiar with Tunbridge Wells, or anywhere bloody hilly...like Switzerland. By the time I met up with Harriet I was ready for a nice sit down, so I trudged off to the free bus that would transport me back to the start where I would meet up with Jo & Amy. I decided I would send Jo a text message informing her that I was on my way and proceeded to scoff the contents of the handy bag o'treats they give you for being stupid enough to take part (coincidence that the last time I got one of these was when I ran the marathon? I think not, they are clearly an indicator of foolish levels of physical activity) ie, a banana, a snickers bar & a bag of 'healthy' crisps. Jo very kindly bought me a coffee in anticipation of my arrival back at the beginning, alas she didn't anticipate that the bus trip would take an hour and a quarter. I drank it anyway.
Not long after we convened back at the start we got a text from Harriet saying that she had finished her stage and was heading back up the road to the house (seeing as she was only 500m or so away), but that there was no point in us driving all the way back until Rachel finished the last leg as we'd only have to come back in and pick her up anyway. So we went to the supermarket and bought booze & pizza making ingredients for the night ahead and then went and spent our free food vouchers (for being stupid enough to take part) on very messy roast beef sandwiches and sausages. Rachel mentioned afterwards how heartened she was by our rousing celebration of her crossing the finish line and I am afraid that, yes, I did burst her bubble by informing her that our delight at seeing her was mainly inspired by the fact that it meant we could go home and have a hot shower. Jo wins the prize for longest suffering though having spent approximately 10 hours doing nowt but wait for us lot.
Not much else to report - went back to the house, had a shower, Jo went to bed and slept until 9pm, made pizza (well, I oversaw rather than made), only managed 1 bottle of wine between 5 of us, crashed out. Harriet is now trying to persuade me to do the Coast to Coast in 2007, or at the very least a triathalon. I am resolute in my refusal to humour her, though I might have a crisis when my 40th is approaching and crack. I'll let you know...
S
Anyway, there is a reasonably good excuse for this blog being late. And that reason is that I've been busy. Busy with activities as far ranging as attending wine festivals and doing incredibly long bike rides.
Wine festivals are pretty self-explanatory, so I'm not going to go into too much detail here except to say that if you ever get the chance to attend Taste Martinborough you should go. The highlight of the day for me was Jo applying her dog training techniques on a very drunk Australian by repeatedly telling him to 'sit & stay' (it didn't work though and he was eventually wrestled into his seat by a Kiwi woman). So I shall instead give you a fascinating summary of our weekend at the Lake Taupo Cycle Challenge.
We, that is Jo, Harriet and I, had cleverly decided to avoid the worst of the traffic by leaving Wellington at 4pm, and this plan would have worked brilliantly if it wasn't for the ludicrous traffic jam we encountered about 20 mins outside of the city. A traffic jam that saw us travel about 50km in 2 hours. The rest of the journey was fairly uneventful, alot of it goes along a very dull road called 'The Desert Road' even though it isn't in a desert, just a very boring flat plain, and through a variety of non-descript towns. The most interesting town was a place called 'Bulls' (why?) and that was only interesting because of it's 'amusing' habit of trying to put dodgy puns on as many buildings as possible eg the local medical centre was 'cure-a-bull', the pc shop was 'comput-a-bull' etc etc, whilst the dullest place was Levin. It's so dull I can't even think of anything to say about it. Oh yeah, the petrol station toilet had no loo paper. Fascinating, huh?
Eventually we reached Tuarangi, having enjoyed a rather lovely view of the big volcanoes on the way, and tried to follow Rachel's directions to the place where we were staying. This was somewhat hampered by Harriet's decision not to bring a road map with us and our decision to call Rachel to get a better idea of where we were going only to find that she'd managed to go 150 or so km off course, so eventually we gave up and headed to another petrol station to consult their maps and sample some of their finest crapola food.
We got to our destination, a weekend place kindly loaned to us by the parents of one of Rachel's friends, at about 10pm and I proceeded to commandeer the largest room (with ensuite no less) for Jo & I. I also needed to have a quick practice at riding Harriet's bike as it had those funny clip pedals, you know the ones where you attach your shoes to the pedal like skis, but having fallen spectacularly on my arse several times in quick succession I decided against using them and vowed to wear normal trainers. My falling off shame has been lessened by Harriet informing me yesterday that she did exactly the same thing last Saturday, except that she was at a set of traffic lights in town and her humiliation was compounded by having many more witnesses. Karmic retribution for laughing at me, I'd like to think. Anyway, after that little debarcle, we took ourselves away to bed in readiness for a 5.00am wake-up so that we'd be able to register and drop off our bikes by 7am.
So, fortified with 5 hours sleep and a bowl of porridge, we headed off to Taupo 40km down the road. We registered and dropped the bikes off about 30 seconds before the deadline and then realised we had sod all to do until our respective stages of the ride. I was signed up for the 2nd stage and Harriet for the 3rd, whilst Rachel & her mate Amy had 4th & 1st respectively. Once Rachel realised this (and the fact that her changeover point was about 500m from the house we were staying in) she dropped off Amy and went back home where she proceeded to go back to bed until 12.30pm! Jammy wee bastard. By this point, about 8am, I had gone to get on the bus that would deliver me to my changeover point 40km down the road. I feel it is sensible to point out that the NZ weather had decided that it would turn f******g freezing and with a slight drizzle.
My bus trip was uneventful except for the realisation that I hadn't actually met Amy (who I had to swap the tracking/competition timer ankleband thingy with) as Rachel and she had arrived after we'd gone to bed and we'd left before them in the morning. Bugger. Luckily Jo, being the only sentient one in our group, had realised this and given her a description of me and shown her a photo. We arrived at the changeover point at 9am and I proceeded to wait for Amy to arrive...thanks to the persistant drizzle and chill breeze I was forced to put on every item of clothing I had with me and by the time she arrived at 10.45am I was wearing the following couture combo - red nike trainers, powder blue 3/4 running leggings, greenish/sludge hiking shorts, red t-shirt, blue fleece, orange waterproof jacket, red woolly hat & a bike helmet. God, I was gorgeous. After an emotional changeover (I was immeasurably relieved by the fact that I could start moving and stave off hypothermia, not to mention get away from the 60-something bloke who was having a conversation about chafing and his lack of undercrackers), I began the long slow slog to meet Harriet at the 2nd changeover.
Interesting aside - why is it that you only hear the conversations about the 1st & 2nd stages being by far the hardest after the 2nd stage? Basically it was 2 hours of pedalling up and down hills in the rain, with a headwind. The only thing that motivated me was the unspoken competition between me & some of the larger participants - I would overtake them on the way up a hill only to have them sail past by sheer force of volume and gravity on the downhill. It's really aggravating, but I'm pretty sure it was mutual. As mentioned, stage 2 is the hilly part. Imagine cycling up and down Camberwell Grove for 2 hours, or Mount Pleasant for those more familiar with Liverpool, or Mount Pleasant for those more familiar with Tunbridge Wells, or anywhere bloody hilly...like Switzerland. By the time I met up with Harriet I was ready for a nice sit down, so I trudged off to the free bus that would transport me back to the start where I would meet up with Jo & Amy. I decided I would send Jo a text message informing her that I was on my way and proceeded to scoff the contents of the handy bag o'treats they give you for being stupid enough to take part (coincidence that the last time I got one of these was when I ran the marathon? I think not, they are clearly an indicator of foolish levels of physical activity) ie, a banana, a snickers bar & a bag of 'healthy' crisps. Jo very kindly bought me a coffee in anticipation of my arrival back at the beginning, alas she didn't anticipate that the bus trip would take an hour and a quarter. I drank it anyway.
Not long after we convened back at the start we got a text from Harriet saying that she had finished her stage and was heading back up the road to the house (seeing as she was only 500m or so away), but that there was no point in us driving all the way back until Rachel finished the last leg as we'd only have to come back in and pick her up anyway. So we went to the supermarket and bought booze & pizza making ingredients for the night ahead and then went and spent our free food vouchers (for being stupid enough to take part) on very messy roast beef sandwiches and sausages. Rachel mentioned afterwards how heartened she was by our rousing celebration of her crossing the finish line and I am afraid that, yes, I did burst her bubble by informing her that our delight at seeing her was mainly inspired by the fact that it meant we could go home and have a hot shower. Jo wins the prize for longest suffering though having spent approximately 10 hours doing nowt but wait for us lot.
Not much else to report - went back to the house, had a shower, Jo went to bed and slept until 9pm, made pizza (well, I oversaw rather than made), only managed 1 bottle of wine between 5 of us, crashed out. Harriet is now trying to persuade me to do the Coast to Coast in 2007, or at the very least a triathalon. I am resolute in my refusal to humour her, though I might have a crisis when my 40th is approaching and crack. I'll let you know...
S
Wednesday, November 23, 2005
About bloody time!
Dear dedicated readers
Please accept my most sincere apologies for the total lack of blog entries for the last couple of weeks, which has been due to a combination of slackness (in the first instance), being busy (in the second instance) and the blog website completely mucking me about and refusing to let to write anything (in the third instance). But here I am and I am feeling inspired, so let's rock!!! Jezuz, clearly I have been inspired by Jon Bon Jovi...bit of a worry.
Well, the New Zealand Spring season has launched itself upon us with a series of ultra windy days and some stonking downpours (like right now - good job I decided not to bother bringing the washing in don't ya think?), so I have been holed up in the house & pottering. Today my pottering might even stretch as far as cleaning, for even I can no longer deny the grostesque nature of the kitchen floor (and I can't even blame the dog 'cos she doesn't come into the kitchen)(it's too small and there's too much of a risk of an embarassing, yet fatal, tripping scenario). Guessing you don't really care much about that though and would rather hear of our adventures of the last couple of weeks.
Most excitingly we now have broadband! And cable TV! So I can surf the net and watch crud as much as I want - huzzah! For those of you who also have broadband and tend to keep anti-social hours you might be interested to know that I have signed us up to Skype (handy free internet phone link), so if you fancy a free chat sign up and you should be able to find me in the directory. Jo has even managed to get the Madonna-esque headset to work, so if you do chat to me you might like to visualise me looking like a Gap employee, or a call-centre flunky (or Madonna, for the more imaginative of you, though my ability to do top dance moves is restricted by the length of the connecting cable - and my crapola dance skills).
Speaking of dance skills (or should that be 'skillz' for I am down with the kids), we ventured into the bacchanalian debauchery that is Wellington on a Friday night the other week in order to celebrate Jo's mate Ingrid's birthday. We started rather sedately at the Good Luck Bar (v. groovy, slightly scary waitresses, great cocktail list) awaiting the call from Ingrid to let us know that she was heading into town, where we met up with Hollie (another Kiwi who has recently returned after several years overseas). Moving on we headed to Pound, Wellington's 'finest' & only gay club, to catch up with Hollie's sister Abbie & her friend Sandy. It being 11pm on a Friday night Pound was almost completely empty. Actually it might have more to do with the fact that Pound is horrible, naff & hideously decorated (and that's just the clientele! Ha ha! Not really...but maybe...). Ingrid arrived just in the nick of time to save me from having to attempt to drink another glass of their house red (Chateau Ammonia 2003, I think) and we headed off, en masse, to try to find some suitable entertainment. Oh dear god.
Our first stop was Maya, a local hotspot where the lighty-up dance floor immediately sent me heading for the bar & a vodka. THe music was a rather intriguing combo of crap & rubbish and we left not long after they started playing a Grease medley/mega-mix. After a quick stop at the Ponderosa bar next door for a brief moment of sanity, we headed around the corner to the Go-Go Bar. The Go-Go Bar isn't quite as hideous as it sounds, but having temporarily forgotten the fact that NZ has more women than men I was slightly stunned by the whole 'hen night' vibe (waaayyy too many boobtube-esque tops). Much jigging was going on in the dancefloor region, but by this point I had lost the will to live and chose to sit quietly in the corner and simply observe. After carefully noting a series of interesting fashion combos - my personal favourite = the gold clompy-heeled strappy sandals with ribbon ties going up the legs a la Miss Piggy) I decided that sitting quietly and not observing might be better. We left at about 2am, only to be hit by the aural assualt of another Grease medley blasting from another bar...
Obviously I need to seek clubbing advice...
To be continued tiomorrow...
Please accept my most sincere apologies for the total lack of blog entries for the last couple of weeks, which has been due to a combination of slackness (in the first instance), being busy (in the second instance) and the blog website completely mucking me about and refusing to let to write anything (in the third instance). But here I am and I am feeling inspired, so let's rock!!! Jezuz, clearly I have been inspired by Jon Bon Jovi...bit of a worry.
Well, the New Zealand Spring season has launched itself upon us with a series of ultra windy days and some stonking downpours (like right now - good job I decided not to bother bringing the washing in don't ya think?), so I have been holed up in the house & pottering. Today my pottering might even stretch as far as cleaning, for even I can no longer deny the grostesque nature of the kitchen floor (and I can't even blame the dog 'cos she doesn't come into the kitchen)(it's too small and there's too much of a risk of an embarassing, yet fatal, tripping scenario). Guessing you don't really care much about that though and would rather hear of our adventures of the last couple of weeks.
Most excitingly we now have broadband! And cable TV! So I can surf the net and watch crud as much as I want - huzzah! For those of you who also have broadband and tend to keep anti-social hours you might be interested to know that I have signed us up to Skype (handy free internet phone link), so if you fancy a free chat sign up and you should be able to find me in the directory. Jo has even managed to get the Madonna-esque headset to work, so if you do chat to me you might like to visualise me looking like a Gap employee, or a call-centre flunky (or Madonna, for the more imaginative of you, though my ability to do top dance moves is restricted by the length of the connecting cable - and my crapola dance skills).
Speaking of dance skills (or should that be 'skillz' for I am down with the kids), we ventured into the bacchanalian debauchery that is Wellington on a Friday night the other week in order to celebrate Jo's mate Ingrid's birthday. We started rather sedately at the Good Luck Bar (v. groovy, slightly scary waitresses, great cocktail list) awaiting the call from Ingrid to let us know that she was heading into town, where we met up with Hollie (another Kiwi who has recently returned after several years overseas). Moving on we headed to Pound, Wellington's 'finest' & only gay club, to catch up with Hollie's sister Abbie & her friend Sandy. It being 11pm on a Friday night Pound was almost completely empty. Actually it might have more to do with the fact that Pound is horrible, naff & hideously decorated (and that's just the clientele! Ha ha! Not really...but maybe...). Ingrid arrived just in the nick of time to save me from having to attempt to drink another glass of their house red (Chateau Ammonia 2003, I think) and we headed off, en masse, to try to find some suitable entertainment. Oh dear god.
Our first stop was Maya, a local hotspot where the lighty-up dance floor immediately sent me heading for the bar & a vodka. THe music was a rather intriguing combo of crap & rubbish and we left not long after they started playing a Grease medley/mega-mix. After a quick stop at the Ponderosa bar next door for a brief moment of sanity, we headed around the corner to the Go-Go Bar. The Go-Go Bar isn't quite as hideous as it sounds, but having temporarily forgotten the fact that NZ has more women than men I was slightly stunned by the whole 'hen night' vibe (waaayyy too many boobtube-esque tops). Much jigging was going on in the dancefloor region, but by this point I had lost the will to live and chose to sit quietly in the corner and simply observe. After carefully noting a series of interesting fashion combos - my personal favourite = the gold clompy-heeled strappy sandals with ribbon ties going up the legs a la Miss Piggy) I decided that sitting quietly and not observing might be better. We left at about 2am, only to be hit by the aural assualt of another Grease medley blasting from another bar...
Obviously I need to seek clubbing advice...
To be continued tiomorrow...
Monday, November 07, 2005
Scary Christmas adverts already on TV!
It's gradually getting warmer (except for today, which looked lovely and sunny, but was somewhat marred by quite a nippy breeze), but as it is now the 2nd week of November the Christmas decorations have started to appear...why do they (the generic "they" = whoever it is who thinks that it's appropriate to try to flog horrible Christmas cack 6 weeks too early) do it? Are they demented Christmas-ites who just love the festive season so much that they cannot bear to wait another minute? I was just getting myself psyched for Guy Fawke's Night and, boom!, there's a fake Christmas tree in the supermarket.
But enough of my ranting, I suppose you are desperate to hear what I've been up to for the last 7 days.
Most importantly, and despite our severely restricted team numbers (basically Jo, Harriet & me), we came a glorious 2nd at The Office pub quiz last Wednesday, which means a $30 bar tab. And this is despite our almost total lack of knowledge about sport (I know about British stuff, but sod all about rugby or cricket) and a slight intra-team dispute about the name of the group that starred as themselves in 'Speed 2' (none of us had seen it, but Harriet had the gall to suggest it might be 10 000 Maniacs - for those of you who care, it was UB40). Next week we'll have one of the founder team members back, Nick, from his stint doing some professional acting. I was a bit giddy at the quiz as I'd had an attack of being energetic and had spent the afternoon doing a 40km bike ride round the bays followed by 40 mins on the treadmill at the gym and a massage. Of course, I had decided to rehydrate with beer. Also, Jo's pal Hollie (who some of you will have met in London) has now resurfaced in NZ and is living at her sister's place just up the road, so we had to catch up with her too.
We also took the houndbeast to dog school. She didn't have to do anything as we were just there to do a recce and see if we liked the look of the place, but she proceeded to suck up to the dog trainer and get loads of treats for sitting attentively at her feet. She also decided that her new best pal was a bloody huge bull mastiff called Millie and proceeded to jump all over her head. Of course, since then Gert has learned that sitting quietly will get her a treat, but she only does it on her own terms...but she's still fabulous.
On Friday morning I headed up to the cafe where Amy works to help with the school lunches - each Friday one of the local schools let's their kids order a special lunch from the catering company Amy works for ('Dusted & Delicious'). The menu is classic kids' crap - hot dogs, pizza, pies, crisps etc - and I am temporarily checking the money etc. I have come to the conclusion that any kid who spends more than $5 on their lunch is either suffering from worms or has a quite astounding capacity for junk food (or maybe they are just lardy?). The afternoon was spent visiting my recruitment consultant, Lynley, and 'discussing' my job hopes (mainly we actually talked about films). In the evening we went to check out Amy in a play, "Attempts on Her Life", at The Garage, one of the spaces at the drama school. I quite enjoyed it, but I think mainly for the groovy moving scenery and because Amy had spent so long telling me how awful it was nothing could possibly be as tedious as she made it sound.
Saturday was spent at Jo's parent's place celebrating Jo's grandad's (Jim) birthday (79th) with the traditonal beer & BBQ, where Jim almost did for himself by getting macho and trying some scary chilli pickle. Anyone who's ever met Jim will realise quite how ludricrous the idea of him being macho is...but we did agree to try to play golf with him one weekend soon. Jim and Glenn (Jo's uncle) both became quite taken with young Gert and even took her for a walk for us! Excellent, should save us some energy over Christmas. As it was Bonfire Night we had planned to watch the fireworks in the harbour from the deck at Washington Avenue, but we soon realised that there were some very pesky trees in the way, so we switched to plan B, ie go into town. Then, out of the blue, Len phoned (for he was on shift on the ferry) to let us know that the ferry would be in dock and that he could get us on board to watch the fireworks close-up - huzzah!
So that's exactly what we did.
We were on the 'new' ferry (new to NZ, but a 'previously loved' ship) so got the grand tour, including the galley, which was bloody huge and had one of the scary uber dishwashers that uses water temperatures of about 1 million degrees, the like of which I hadn't seen since I worked on a dig in Israel in 1991 (where it proceeded to regularly scald the crap out of my hands whilst I was on kitchen duty). The fireworks rocked, by the way. However, Jo & I were slightly distracted by noticing that some genius had managed to set fire to the brush on top of Mount Vic, one of the larger hills overlooking Wellington. The Fire Brigade seemed to have it all under control by the time we headed home. Gertie seemed completely unfazed by the fireworks.
Sunday saw a day of total slackness. Our DVDs of series 4 of 'Alias' and series 2 of 'The L Word' arrived the day before, so most of the day was spent lounging on the sofa watching DVDs and eating.
As for today - Monday - all I've managed to achieve is to persuade the people we bought our car from that they should fix it for free seeing as it has an unnerving judder once it gets over 3000 revs and to buy some secondhand office shelves for our study/spare room. Also I have been commandeered to assist with some more catering tomorrow, which I'm really quite looking forward to and should earn me an extra $50. Marvellous!
On that note I'll get back to some important TV watching.
Arrividerci!
S
xxxx
But enough of my ranting, I suppose you are desperate to hear what I've been up to for the last 7 days.
Most importantly, and despite our severely restricted team numbers (basically Jo, Harriet & me), we came a glorious 2nd at The Office pub quiz last Wednesday, which means a $30 bar tab. And this is despite our almost total lack of knowledge about sport (I know about British stuff, but sod all about rugby or cricket) and a slight intra-team dispute about the name of the group that starred as themselves in 'Speed 2' (none of us had seen it, but Harriet had the gall to suggest it might be 10 000 Maniacs - for those of you who care, it was UB40). Next week we'll have one of the founder team members back, Nick, from his stint doing some professional acting. I was a bit giddy at the quiz as I'd had an attack of being energetic and had spent the afternoon doing a 40km bike ride round the bays followed by 40 mins on the treadmill at the gym and a massage. Of course, I had decided to rehydrate with beer. Also, Jo's pal Hollie (who some of you will have met in London) has now resurfaced in NZ and is living at her sister's place just up the road, so we had to catch up with her too.
We also took the houndbeast to dog school. She didn't have to do anything as we were just there to do a recce and see if we liked the look of the place, but she proceeded to suck up to the dog trainer and get loads of treats for sitting attentively at her feet. She also decided that her new best pal was a bloody huge bull mastiff called Millie and proceeded to jump all over her head. Of course, since then Gert has learned that sitting quietly will get her a treat, but she only does it on her own terms...but she's still fabulous.
On Friday morning I headed up to the cafe where Amy works to help with the school lunches - each Friday one of the local schools let's their kids order a special lunch from the catering company Amy works for ('Dusted & Delicious'). The menu is classic kids' crap - hot dogs, pizza, pies, crisps etc - and I am temporarily checking the money etc. I have come to the conclusion that any kid who spends more than $5 on their lunch is either suffering from worms or has a quite astounding capacity for junk food (or maybe they are just lardy?). The afternoon was spent visiting my recruitment consultant, Lynley, and 'discussing' my job hopes (mainly we actually talked about films). In the evening we went to check out Amy in a play, "Attempts on Her Life", at The Garage, one of the spaces at the drama school. I quite enjoyed it, but I think mainly for the groovy moving scenery and because Amy had spent so long telling me how awful it was nothing could possibly be as tedious as she made it sound.
Saturday was spent at Jo's parent's place celebrating Jo's grandad's (Jim) birthday (79th) with the traditonal beer & BBQ, where Jim almost did for himself by getting macho and trying some scary chilli pickle. Anyone who's ever met Jim will realise quite how ludricrous the idea of him being macho is...but we did agree to try to play golf with him one weekend soon. Jim and Glenn (Jo's uncle) both became quite taken with young Gert and even took her for a walk for us! Excellent, should save us some energy over Christmas. As it was Bonfire Night we had planned to watch the fireworks in the harbour from the deck at Washington Avenue, but we soon realised that there were some very pesky trees in the way, so we switched to plan B, ie go into town. Then, out of the blue, Len phoned (for he was on shift on the ferry) to let us know that the ferry would be in dock and that he could get us on board to watch the fireworks close-up - huzzah!
So that's exactly what we did.
We were on the 'new' ferry (new to NZ, but a 'previously loved' ship) so got the grand tour, including the galley, which was bloody huge and had one of the scary uber dishwashers that uses water temperatures of about 1 million degrees, the like of which I hadn't seen since I worked on a dig in Israel in 1991 (where it proceeded to regularly scald the crap out of my hands whilst I was on kitchen duty). The fireworks rocked, by the way. However, Jo & I were slightly distracted by noticing that some genius had managed to set fire to the brush on top of Mount Vic, one of the larger hills overlooking Wellington. The Fire Brigade seemed to have it all under control by the time we headed home. Gertie seemed completely unfazed by the fireworks.
Sunday saw a day of total slackness. Our DVDs of series 4 of 'Alias' and series 2 of 'The L Word' arrived the day before, so most of the day was spent lounging on the sofa watching DVDs and eating.
As for today - Monday - all I've managed to achieve is to persuade the people we bought our car from that they should fix it for free seeing as it has an unnerving judder once it gets over 3000 revs and to buy some secondhand office shelves for our study/spare room. Also I have been commandeered to assist with some more catering tomorrow, which I'm really quite looking forward to and should earn me an extra $50. Marvellous!
On that note I'll get back to some important TV watching.
Arrividerci!
S
xxxx
Tuesday, November 01, 2005
Hot bloggity blog!
Sorry this is a bit late - I seem to have got very slack about sticking to my deadlines these days. One day I will get the hang of it...
I am still lounging in the realm of the gloriously unemployed and have now finished painting the hallway, thought I haven't quite managed to do the woodwork or the ceilings properly, which means it is time for me to focus on getting my career back on track. I have been rewriting my CV to make me sound much more interesting than a mere adminstrator (not that there's anything wrong with being an adminstrator except that over here it seems to be an astonishingly dull role), and have an appointment with a recruitment consultant on Friday morning. But, to be honest, I think it's more likely that I will find a role/job for myself.
On that note could I ask a favour - what do you think I'd be good at? A couple of people have suggested that I could have a go at writing properly (as opposed to just blogging), and I've always had the teaching Egyptian Archaeology thing bubbling under, but god knows if I'd actually be any good at either of them. Any suggestions gratefully received. Ann found this great travel company that takes people on 'spiritual' journeys to Egypt where they get to meditate in the King's Chamber of the Great Pyramid, but quite why anyone would want to meditate in a grave in the middle of absolute tourism mayhem is beyond me. In fact, we came to the conclusion that any involvement I had with this firm would probably be limited to raising of one eyebrow and pointing out to them how very very wrong they are. Best I avoid them, methinks.
Perhaps I should start a travel firm which takes people to Egypt simply to show them the archaeology? Crazy idea, no?
Aside from the work situation, I have suddenly realised that I have signed up for gym membership and should really start getting my money's worth out of it, and that I have the Lake Taupo Cycle Challenge in 4 weeks and have done sod all in the way of training for about 3 weeks. So this afternoon I have decided that I will cycle the very long way to the gym (I can make the bike journey about 35km), and then do some form of gym work before I go for a massage. Do I sound like Lance Armstrong? I'd put good money on the fact that I will be unconscious by 8pm. And then tomorrow we're meant to be going sea-kayaking...luckily it's a tandem kayak, unluckily Jo is going to make me sit in the front so I can't slack off. Bugger.
But, I'm thinking that my unemployment gives me an ideal opportunity to get back in shape and healthy. Then I can leap and frolic like one of those jolly ladies that appear on sanitary wear adverts. Huzzah!
Gertie the dog is still going strong. Took her to puppy school last night and she spent most of the time leaping on the head of a truly massive bull mastiff and sucking up to the instructor for treats. She seems to have quite got the hang of the fact that trying to run really fast whilst on a lead results in fantastic backflips, but strangely seems to enjoy this as she certainly isn't stopping. She is very lovely though.
Going to skeddadle now and do vast amounts of PE. It's been nice knowing you.
love
S
I am still lounging in the realm of the gloriously unemployed and have now finished painting the hallway, thought I haven't quite managed to do the woodwork or the ceilings properly, which means it is time for me to focus on getting my career back on track. I have been rewriting my CV to make me sound much more interesting than a mere adminstrator (not that there's anything wrong with being an adminstrator except that over here it seems to be an astonishingly dull role), and have an appointment with a recruitment consultant on Friday morning. But, to be honest, I think it's more likely that I will find a role/job for myself.
On that note could I ask a favour - what do you think I'd be good at? A couple of people have suggested that I could have a go at writing properly (as opposed to just blogging), and I've always had the teaching Egyptian Archaeology thing bubbling under, but god knows if I'd actually be any good at either of them. Any suggestions gratefully received. Ann found this great travel company that takes people on 'spiritual' journeys to Egypt where they get to meditate in the King's Chamber of the Great Pyramid, but quite why anyone would want to meditate in a grave in the middle of absolute tourism mayhem is beyond me. In fact, we came to the conclusion that any involvement I had with this firm would probably be limited to raising of one eyebrow and pointing out to them how very very wrong they are. Best I avoid them, methinks.
Perhaps I should start a travel firm which takes people to Egypt simply to show them the archaeology? Crazy idea, no?
Aside from the work situation, I have suddenly realised that I have signed up for gym membership and should really start getting my money's worth out of it, and that I have the Lake Taupo Cycle Challenge in 4 weeks and have done sod all in the way of training for about 3 weeks. So this afternoon I have decided that I will cycle the very long way to the gym (I can make the bike journey about 35km), and then do some form of gym work before I go for a massage. Do I sound like Lance Armstrong? I'd put good money on the fact that I will be unconscious by 8pm. And then tomorrow we're meant to be going sea-kayaking...luckily it's a tandem kayak, unluckily Jo is going to make me sit in the front so I can't slack off. Bugger.
But, I'm thinking that my unemployment gives me an ideal opportunity to get back in shape and healthy. Then I can leap and frolic like one of those jolly ladies that appear on sanitary wear adverts. Huzzah!
Gertie the dog is still going strong. Took her to puppy school last night and she spent most of the time leaping on the head of a truly massive bull mastiff and sucking up to the instructor for treats. She seems to have quite got the hang of the fact that trying to run really fast whilst on a lead results in fantastic backflips, but strangely seems to enjoy this as she certainly isn't stopping. She is very lovely though.
Going to skeddadle now and do vast amounts of PE. It's been nice knowing you.
love
S
Monday, October 24, 2005
I've been being all decisive.
You might recall that last week I mentioned that my new job wasn't exactly rockin' my world. Well, after some thought, I gave my notice in on Thursday. A brief discussion followed and it was mutually agreed that instead of my working the statutory one month's notice (seemed a little pointless as I'd only worked there for 10 days) I would depart from their shores at 1pm the next day. But, and you've gotta respect this, as it was a long weekend/bank holiday I still got holiday pay for today (Monday)!
So now I am all unemployed again. Though I have been informed that there is someone teaching history over here at tertiary level who not only is merely educated to BA level (unlike me with my mighty MA), but whose degree is from Reading! God, they should be falling over themselves to employ me...I am also thinking of trying my hand at writing, perhaps I should expand the blog into a book? Or perhaps simply I should try to find someone fool enough to pay me to write articles - I mean Julie Burchill manages to make money out of it, how hard can it be? One interesting issue that has arisen is that, as we are training Gertie to be cool about being at home on her own all day, I will have to spend a few days hiding in the house and pretending that I am not here. Good excuse to lock myself upstairs slaving over a hot keyboard.
We are still waiting to find out if our cable company are prepared to pay for the pavement outside our house to be dug up and let us have broadband/cable tv etc, so you'll just have to wait for photos. If you're lucky that will give me to get a bit of a tan and lose the belly, so I'll look all foxy.
Other news. Jo is enjoying work, bonus! Amy is furiously rehearsing for a play - this would not normally inspire a reference, but she's been bringing home a lot of very nice "excess" food from work, so I thought an honourable mention was in order. We are planning our 1st BBQ next week, low key 'cos we now have a puppy to train (real reason = we don't know many people yet) & because it's halloween I've invested in a pair of inflatable batwings to wear from the $2 shop. They are very cool, though could inhibit my BBQing with their potential for going bang if they get too close to a naked flame. I'll keep you updated.
Au revoir for now! Oh, and Mrs Clarke is winning the phone call competition, though she really needs to find a cheapo calling centre online so she can phone for 1p a minute. Or sign up for Skype and get free broadband calls.
S
xxx
So now I am all unemployed again. Though I have been informed that there is someone teaching history over here at tertiary level who not only is merely educated to BA level (unlike me with my mighty MA), but whose degree is from Reading! God, they should be falling over themselves to employ me...I am also thinking of trying my hand at writing, perhaps I should expand the blog into a book? Or perhaps simply I should try to find someone fool enough to pay me to write articles - I mean Julie Burchill manages to make money out of it, how hard can it be? One interesting issue that has arisen is that, as we are training Gertie to be cool about being at home on her own all day, I will have to spend a few days hiding in the house and pretending that I am not here. Good excuse to lock myself upstairs slaving over a hot keyboard.
We are still waiting to find out if our cable company are prepared to pay for the pavement outside our house to be dug up and let us have broadband/cable tv etc, so you'll just have to wait for photos. If you're lucky that will give me to get a bit of a tan and lose the belly, so I'll look all foxy.
Other news. Jo is enjoying work, bonus! Amy is furiously rehearsing for a play - this would not normally inspire a reference, but she's been bringing home a lot of very nice "excess" food from work, so I thought an honourable mention was in order. We are planning our 1st BBQ next week, low key 'cos we now have a puppy to train (real reason = we don't know many people yet) & because it's halloween I've invested in a pair of inflatable batwings to wear from the $2 shop. They are very cool, though could inhibit my BBQing with their potential for going bang if they get too close to a naked flame. I'll keep you updated.
Au revoir for now! Oh, and Mrs Clarke is winning the phone call competition, though she really needs to find a cheapo calling centre online so she can phone for 1p a minute. Or sign up for Skype and get free broadband calls.
S
xxx
Tuesday, October 18, 2005
Gertie Grot of Green Street
Afraid this is going to have to be brief as we haven't yet got our internet connection set up at home and my new job isn't exactly the kind of place where you get enough freedom to actually use the internet for blogging. In fact, so far the job isn't too exciting, but I think it would be rather indiscreet to go into further detail here. Suffice to say I'm hoping it improves significantly in the next few weeks or I might be back on the job market. If you want any more gory details you'll have to email - but don't expect a quick response 'cos there's a long weekend coming up and we're probably going to head up to the beach for a couple of days, show the dog the sea for the first time.
Ah yes, the dog. So far (and fingers crossed) she's fantastic! We haven't been able to do too much with her because she has stitches from having her ladyparts chopped, but once they take the stitches out on Saturday she'll be able to let rip. She's getting very comfortable around the house and seems to have settled quite quickly into understanding that indoors is not for looning about and that she isn't allowed on the sofa (but if you sit on the floor she does sit on your lap, literally, which could be an issue when she's fully grown). She even happily sleeps in a kennel outside the back door! Today we took her for her proper first walk and the great big outdoors kind of freaked her out when it got a bit noisy (traffic, cars starting, noisy shops etc), but she seems to get a bit more confident each time we go out. Once we are broadbanded we will publish photos so you can see what kind of trouble we've got into and quite why I am so determined she will be well behaved - cos she's going to be big. They think she is a NZ Huntaway crossbreed, a type of sheepdog, but I have taken to describing her as 'Pacific Fusion'. She is gorgeous though and doesn't even stink too badly - amazing!
Sod all else to report. I got squiffy on Saturday night and ended up having a long conversation with a bloke who plays one of the main characters in a soap opera over here about how he should give his older sister chinese burns more often. If you can think of a reason why I would think that was an interesting topic of conversation please feel free to let me know.
Adios for now!
S
So that's us committed for the next 12-14 years.
Ah yes, the dog. So far (and fingers crossed) she's fantastic! We haven't been able to do too much with her because she has stitches from having her ladyparts chopped, but once they take the stitches out on Saturday she'll be able to let rip. She's getting very comfortable around the house and seems to have settled quite quickly into understanding that indoors is not for looning about and that she isn't allowed on the sofa (but if you sit on the floor she does sit on your lap, literally, which could be an issue when she's fully grown). She even happily sleeps in a kennel outside the back door! Today we took her for her proper first walk and the great big outdoors kind of freaked her out when it got a bit noisy (traffic, cars starting, noisy shops etc), but she seems to get a bit more confident each time we go out. Once we are broadbanded we will publish photos so you can see what kind of trouble we've got into and quite why I am so determined she will be well behaved - cos she's going to be big. They think she is a NZ Huntaway crossbreed, a type of sheepdog, but I have taken to describing her as 'Pacific Fusion'. She is gorgeous though and doesn't even stink too badly - amazing!
Sod all else to report. I got squiffy on Saturday night and ended up having a long conversation with a bloke who plays one of the main characters in a soap opera over here about how he should give his older sister chinese burns more often. If you can think of a reason why I would think that was an interesting topic of conversation please feel free to let me know.
Adios for now!
S
So that's us committed for the next 12-14 years.
Tuesday, October 11, 2005
My first earthquake.
I'm guessing that you can figure out what our big news is this week - yup, I've started work! And we're in the process of adopting a 15 week old puppy from the local SPCA...oh yeah, and I got to experience my first earthquake. Obviously, in light of the goings on in Islamabad our earthquake was extremely piddly and small, in fact Jo didn't even notice it 'cos she was almost asleep, but I was quite weirded out. I have got used to our swaying in the wind house, I just think of it as being on an old boat on a slightly choppy sea, but the earthquake was more like someone making the house doing a giant shimmy. Quite fun, in a screwed up way.
But, more fun news. Jo is now getting settled into her new job at Telstra and I have just finished my second day at the Ministry of Women's Affairs. The weather has been bloody awful, which has buggered my plan to walk to and from work each day, so we've been driving (the price of a car park ticket is cheaper than 2 return bus fares) as Jo's office & mine are about the same distance away from the railway station, just on opposite sides of the tracks. For those of you who have lots of time to spare and who might want to see where this is on a map of Wellington, just find the Westpac Stadium and I am to the west right next door to Old St Paul's whilst Jo is to the east near the waterfront. My lack of walking and constant spare tyre inspired me to head to the gym behind work ('Bodyworks'), where Jessica (a very sprightly Sara Cox-esque 26 year old from Stoke on Trent) talked me out of $72 a month and into membership. I'm even considering spending some of my soon to be hard-earned cash on a series personal trainer sessions to turn me into a bronzed and buffed Cameron Diaz-a-likee...it could be the only way...
I did manage to put the fear into Jessica though after we checked our respective weights on the scales by pointing out to her that she only weighed 0.5kg more than I did at her age...though I think that 0.5kg might explain her bosom advantage.
So I need to take my PE kit to work with me tomorrow.
The ministry (MWA) is pretty cool, though tiny. I think there are only about 35 staff and I am in a team of 4 (no change there then), and there are only 6 blokes. So far it's all very civilised - as a team we actually stop for tea at 10.30am and 3pm (!?!?!?!) - and if your baby is suffering from the lurgy and can't go to childcare guess what? Yup, bring em to work and let them crash out in their pram! Actually the baby in question, who must be all of 6 months old, was doing some quite rockin' burps in the policy meeting this morning and almost managed to distract me from the huge muffin I was trying to shovel down my gob. The shocking news, aside from being told that I've apparently been employed for my intellectual capacity, is that I am having to skip my first office drinks on Friday afternoon 'cos (with luck) we'll be off collecting our new dog. If any of you would like ot contact the SPCA and tell them quite how much commitment this clearly demonstrates, feel free. I'm not allowed to tell you sod all about my work though except that its kind of a recruitment service for all the statutory boards in NZ.
And now I shall tell you about the dog. As some of you know, Jo & I had agreed that we would get a dog when we got settled, and I came to the conclusion that having our own house and proper jobs was pretty settled, so it was time to start dog searching. I really had made my mind up that I wanted a Weimaraner, but we did some research & decided that we might be rather over extending our dog capabilities. Seeing as we are only about a 10 minute walk from the SPCA we headed down there to see what dogs they had available for adoption and were swept off our feet by a 15 week old female terrier cross. All we are waiting for now is their agreement that our place is okay for a dog and then we should be able to bring her home. Hooray!
Guess what I'll be blogging about next week...
love
S
xxx
But, more fun news. Jo is now getting settled into her new job at Telstra and I have just finished my second day at the Ministry of Women's Affairs. The weather has been bloody awful, which has buggered my plan to walk to and from work each day, so we've been driving (the price of a car park ticket is cheaper than 2 return bus fares) as Jo's office & mine are about the same distance away from the railway station, just on opposite sides of the tracks. For those of you who have lots of time to spare and who might want to see where this is on a map of Wellington, just find the Westpac Stadium and I am to the west right next door to Old St Paul's whilst Jo is to the east near the waterfront. My lack of walking and constant spare tyre inspired me to head to the gym behind work ('Bodyworks'), where Jessica (a very sprightly Sara Cox-esque 26 year old from Stoke on Trent) talked me out of $72 a month and into membership. I'm even considering spending some of my soon to be hard-earned cash on a series personal trainer sessions to turn me into a bronzed and buffed Cameron Diaz-a-likee...it could be the only way...
I did manage to put the fear into Jessica though after we checked our respective weights on the scales by pointing out to her that she only weighed 0.5kg more than I did at her age...though I think that 0.5kg might explain her bosom advantage.
So I need to take my PE kit to work with me tomorrow.
The ministry (MWA) is pretty cool, though tiny. I think there are only about 35 staff and I am in a team of 4 (no change there then), and there are only 6 blokes. So far it's all very civilised - as a team we actually stop for tea at 10.30am and 3pm (!?!?!?!) - and if your baby is suffering from the lurgy and can't go to childcare guess what? Yup, bring em to work and let them crash out in their pram! Actually the baby in question, who must be all of 6 months old, was doing some quite rockin' burps in the policy meeting this morning and almost managed to distract me from the huge muffin I was trying to shovel down my gob. The shocking news, aside from being told that I've apparently been employed for my intellectual capacity, is that I am having to skip my first office drinks on Friday afternoon 'cos (with luck) we'll be off collecting our new dog. If any of you would like ot contact the SPCA and tell them quite how much commitment this clearly demonstrates, feel free. I'm not allowed to tell you sod all about my work though except that its kind of a recruitment service for all the statutory boards in NZ.
And now I shall tell you about the dog. As some of you know, Jo & I had agreed that we would get a dog when we got settled, and I came to the conclusion that having our own house and proper jobs was pretty settled, so it was time to start dog searching. I really had made my mind up that I wanted a Weimaraner, but we did some research & decided that we might be rather over extending our dog capabilities. Seeing as we are only about a 10 minute walk from the SPCA we headed down there to see what dogs they had available for adoption and were swept off our feet by a 15 week old female terrier cross. All we are waiting for now is their agreement that our place is okay for a dog and then we should be able to bring her home. Hooray!
Guess what I'll be blogging about next week...
love
S
xxx
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