Friday the 13th resolution.

Posting on a Friday the 13th because it kind of matched the decor and looked cool on the dateline used to be a regular thing for. Actually, posting anything used to be a regular thing. I haven't posted on this thing in nearly a year, but before that the tempo was noticeably slower.

Back in 2012 a personal "event" for lack of a better term threw my blogging out of whack, and it kind of struggled to get back in line. I'd have ideas, but commiting them to ink/pixel just never seemed to happen and eventually I just ran out of mojo, and fell out of the habit. Not by choice, it just kind of happened.

Now the option seems to be to park it up, or put it back on the road. The blogging scene around me now is much different from when I started this thing in 2006. I've got a couple of ideas for where this blog might go from here - maybe a new lick of paint, a little bit more of the same, maybe a bit more focus, stealing an idea or two from here or there. But I'm not calling it quits just yet.

Christmas 2013

Long time between posts, but I haven't missed a Christmas post yet with this thing.

After a Christmas Day full of contentment we made our now traditional trip to the beach in the evening. It's a tough gig but someone's got to do it.



Happy Christmas wherever you are!

Perspective

So driving home after a stressful day, with a lot on my mind, and I look in the passenger seat and my two year old is sitting there singing "Wheels on the bus" complete with hand and arm movements, happy with not a care in the world, and this song starts playing on the radio, and suddenly everything's cool. It will be spring soon :)

Remembering Juliette

Last week was the first anniversary of me finding out my first girlfriend had died. A year since the phone call saying the death notice was in the paper, a year since the funeral. It was the biggest reason I didn't blog much last year. I'd never lost anyone that close to me before and it really knocked me back for a while. I was pondering just what to blog about this, or even to blog about it at all. It's a confusing thing. She was the centre of my world once, but not for that long and it was half a lifetime ago, so why so bothered? What level of grief is appropriate? Is there even such a thing? But then you remember that even if you didn't see them often, you still cared about this person.

This is me and Juliette about a million nineteen years ago. We dated for 9 months between summers in 1994, when we were both 17 turning 18. I was a first year, and she was in her last year of high school. I wasn't her first, and very much a naif - she taught me a lot about how to be in a relationship. Somebody had to, since I was clueless on the topic. Both being stroppy teenagers, we partied well (I've been told we appeared virtually inseperable at times), and occasionally fought well too. Lots of good times, a few forgettable ones, and a few that will forever stay between me and her to protect the innocent guilty.

We didn't end well, and were on each others shitlists for a while, but stayed in the same circles and eventually realised that we actually could still be friends. After a few years we were pretty much reconciled (and ironically being a bit more mature much better suited to being in an actual relationship, had the prior history not been there). Eventually though as the 90's drew to a close we went separate ways, and lost touch a little bit. We caught up on the odd occasion, but after around 2003 I lost touch with her completely until a couple of years ago. The last time I saw her was about a year before she died (at a barbecue notable for the attendance of not only all of my exes but my wife. Since they are all nice people, my world didn't implode). My wife being the wonderful soul she is, left us alone to fill in the gaps. The deal fate gave her in the form of bipolar disorder was a particularly shitty one, and the intervening years unkind. It saddens me still to think of all the talents she had (she was good at a lot of things), and potential and happiness she wasn't able to realise. After a lot of struggle though, things seemed to be looking up for her. We parted well that night, at peace with each other, and made plans to try and see each other a bit more often, but busy lives got in the way and suddenly there could be no more catchups ever. 

It occurred to me that when an ex dies, and you are still living in the same place as you were when you were dating, it's a bit like breaking up with them all over again. You look around and remember, this is where we did this, that is where we did that, like no time has passed at all. I thought about what I could write about, what stories to relate, but then realised that the things that most reminded me of her were songs. Music was one of the things we bonded over and nearly two decades later the associations are still strong, so that is the eulogy I'm choosing. They might not be particularly great or funny memories, but they're mine.

The song she hated because she thought love should be a 24/7 thing : Friday I’m In Love

The song that reminds me a lot of that time, of being old enough to date, but still young enough to be restricted, particularly when it comes to having to catch buses to get around if the parents you are still living with won't lend you a car: Dancing in the moonlight

The song that we discussed a lot, and just seemed to capture a lot of moments, including a discussion at a party with somebody or other's cousin, who was the lead singer with a deep voice of an improbably named band called Thrusthusband (a name they wrote in Greek), and just how the deep voice in the song worked: Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm

The song she requested for me one night when we were playing dedication tag on Kix FM: Tunnel of Love. They didn't have it, so played Imagine instead, which isn't one of my faves (to put it politely). I still have the tape of the announcer's explanation somewhere.
 

The song I got played for her: Nights In White Satin. She loved The Moody Blues.

The song that at 2:20 reminds me of a single perfect moment at the 1994 Sacred Heart school ball : Hey Now (Girls Just Want To Have Fun)

The song she got bouncing up and down excited about in the car one Friday night on the way to her hockey game because she picked the “very late” lyric before it came up on her first listen: Round Here. It’s one of my favourite memories of her. I still remember the exact stretch of road we were on.

The two songs we bought a matching pair of cassingles together: Mr Jones and Streets Of Philadelphia.

The song from that year's Pink Floyd album, that we sat with nothing to say just staring out the window from her parents lounge one rainy day: Marooned. She gave me a Pink Floyd T-Shirt for my birthday, which still fits.

The song that always reminds me of a particular Friday night party in March 1994 and going to watch her play high school cricket the next day, and whose “time to say goodbye now” lyric particularly resonated after her death: Tear in your hand.

The album she introduced me to, via an arabian pirate copy she got when her family lived in Syria: Wish You Were Here

The song I first heard on a Vic Uni pub crawl we both went on, on a jukebox in the old St George Hotel bar, despite neither of us being Vic students, or of a legal age to drink: Disarm. The opening to this song from the same album is beautiful and always reminds me of those times. That album was everywhere then.

The song from an album that was at every party we went to then, and would remind me of her in the period after we split: Sitting Inside My Head.

The song I played at her the night we broke up. Yeah, subtle: Crazy Love Part II.

Two songs that for whatever reasons, helped me deal with things last year: Diamond Jigsaw and Scribble. When driving alone in the car at night for a couple of weeks I would just play them over and over.

We both loved Supertramp. I remember her favourite song of theirs was School, but they carried her coffin out of the church to Take The Long Way Home. It's a favourite of mine but I haven't felt the urge to listen to it since.

Summer's Kiss is over baby

Nobody on the road, nobody on the beach . . .

I feel it in the air, the summer's out of reach.

We made a trip to Days Bay after dinner tonight to wave goodbye to summer on the last night of daylight savings time. The distinctly unsummeriness of the weather didn't stop the girls from having a paddle though.

Lyric reference #1

Lyric reference #2

Both excellent tracks for this time of year.

Muggy Christmas

 It's Christmas Eve and Cristmas trees of various persuasions are blooming:

And after wreaking havoc in Samoa and Fiji, what's left of Cyclone Evan gave us a couple of early christmas presents in the form of yesterdays humid fogpocalypse (of which there is an awesome pic on facebook here), which wasn't altogether welcome:

 And a 30+ degree day today (seen here at my place at 4pm in the shade), which was.

 So from Wellington, Happy Christmas wherever you are :)

Sunny Taupo

Last year our camping week in Taupo was drenched in glorious sunshine. This year not so much. Despite the forecast, we went ahead with our camping trip anyway. It was dry when we put the tent up, but pretty soon looked like this:
After a day and a half of constant driving rain, the waterproofing on the fly gave up the ghost, and it started dripping inside the tent. Bailing out was briefly discussed, but instead we put the tent into stealth mode by way of a passive waterproofing augmentation device obtained from a local hardware store:
Just after we put the tarp up the sun came out for a couple of hours (long enough to dry out the tent and sunburn my feet), resulting in scenes like this all over the camp.
And as they do, despite the frustration of their parents not being able to do all the cool outdoorsy things they had planned (apart from occupy the pool), the kids made their own fun in the wet anyway.

Near road death experience

Listening to: Barking - Underworld (2010). Seems an apt title to describe the way many people drive in this country :)

We nearly killed someone driving home from out camping holiday in Taupo yesterday. There was a fatal crash on the main highway, and we were diverted down a narrow back-road. When I say narrow, I mean barely wide enough to merit lane markings in the middle, and occasionally losing those too. While technically open road limited to 100kph, it is the kind of road you'd be dumb to go much faster than 80 on, and made me slow and pull over a little whenever I met any oncoming traffic (of which there was plenty since it was diverting from the other side of the crash site as well). So we are on a narrow unfamiliar road, which I'm driving at about 60-70 for comfort and safety. We get to this blind right hand corner when it happens.

A motorbike appears, coming the other way at speed, heeled over in the turn and on my side of the road. He's stuck in his turning arc and will hit us in about two seconds. Aside from the thought of "WTF are you doing on my side of the road you freaking idiot!", time briefly stopped at that point, before reflexes took over.

We had been driving along a section of road with a grass bank to our left with no verge, but luckily right then there was a gravel patch a couple of metres wide on the outside of the bend.
I pulled hard into it, braking heavily to the point where the car nosed down so much the skirt under the front bumper scraped the edge of the tarmac (resulting in the marks in the pics) as we came to a halt, hoping the ute behind us was paying attention and didn't hit us. The rider missed us by a couple of metres and sailed on, seemingly oblivious to just how close he came to being a hood ornament. After muttering a few things I hope Charlotte doesn't repeat we gathered ourselves and moved on, scared and more than a little angry at being endangered in such a stupid way.

There are a few aspects about it that piss me off. Detouring was fine, but travelling at a reasonably quick but safe speed (not crawling by any means) on the back road still caused traffic to pile up and tailgate me, since they obviously thought they should be going faster. If I had been going only a few k's faster we would have been wearing the guy on the bike. No ifs or buts, it was that close. The girls in the back would probably have been okay, but Fi and I in the front might have been in trouble.

The merchant banker on the bike annoys me most. To get on the road he has already been diverted by the flashing lights, police cars, and 'Crash Ahead' sign. Yet this reminder of consequences doesn't phase him (probably because he thinks it's somebody else's problem, and it won't happen to him anyway because he is a good rider) and so he just piles on like there is no-one else on the road, and nearly has a head-on with a family minding their own business as a result. This is how people die on the roads. I hope he got the shakes after our near miss. I hope he still has them.

The other thing that annoys was after regaining the main road we came across all the grinning idiots flashing their lights at oncoming traffic to warn of a police car up ahead. I don't know if this happens in other countries, but it seems to be a 'damn the man' tradition here. I see this all the time, and it is idiotic. There is a well rehearsed and tired argument that speed cameras are more about revenue gathering than safety, but it is a self selecting tax; if you don't want to contribute don't speed. I wonder what they thought when they got to the diversion, or if they heard about what happened up the road. Speed alone doesn't kill, but the attitudes behind speeding do.

I've said it before, but the attitude behind a lot of NZ driving habits is seriously warped. 18 people were killed in crashes over the Christmas/New Year period this season, practically all of them due to utterly avoidable stupid driving. I've also mentioned before that I survived a high speed crash (caused by my own stupid driving) when I was much younger. I wonder if more people had an insight into just how swift and violent an experience like that is whether it would make the behaviours safer or not.

After spending a week in a tourist town, we were expecting some hair-raising driving from the tourists, but while the overseas tourists in Taupo could be tricky drivers at times, the locals were worse. There were numerous episodes of craziness, but the most shining example was a guy in a farm ute we met in a Taupo carpark. Since there seems to be a bylaw that all carparks in Taupo must be illogically laid out (seriously, they are weird), we wound up reversing into a park from a long way out. Held up by us for all of 10 seconds, our ute driver smugly smiled and shook his head at us obvious noobs, before driving away. All the while he had an unrestrained Jack Russell terrier sitting in his lap. Can't see how that could go wrong. You're laughing at us mate but who is the bigger fool?

Christmas Eve

It's Christmas Eve, and on a nice summer's day and night the Christmas trees are blooming.
Be they plastic, pine, or pohutukawa:
Happy Christmas everyone, wherever you may be :)

Reading Nature's signs

Mowed the lawns for the first time in a while on the weekend. If things on the lawn start disappearing into the grass, it probably means it is a good time to get the lawnmower out:


That's better:


Due to a combination of factors I hadn't been able to get out and get the lawns done over the last little bit. Combined with the spring growth spurt we had been watching Charlotte's Dora ball slowly disappear...

PS lest the amount of debris leads anyone to think I was mowing with a chainsaw or something, we don't collect our grass clippings, since we have nowhere to dispose of / no use for them. In this instance there just happened to be a lot of clippings, hence the mess.

This and that

Wellington from my upstairs window this morning:


And this evening:
I love this place when it is like this.

More than a little fecked off with the master and navigator of the Rena at the moment. I'm not normally one to prejudge investigations, but for pete's sake, this is the 21st century. The reef they hit was first charted in 1827. There was a hint of a story today that their charts might have been out of date, but I'm betting they are less than 184 years old. I haven't spent a lot of time in Tauranga, but the times I have been there have been good. This is just a shame. I'm getting annoyed as usual with all the "somebody must DO something, why aren't they doing this?" speculation from the armchair experts and the media which are usually in ignorance of what is actually involved. I'm not an expert, but at least I usually know enough to know what I don't know.

Another long night in A&E last night with another bit of food stuckage, ending at 2:00am with a check in to the Children's ward for Charlotte. Since this is the second incidence in a month, we had prediscussed going to Wellington hospital with the surgeon so thats where we wound up. Charlotte was well enough to come home today, but is going back tomorrow for a second dilatation. Her last was back in 2009 and went without too much drama, so hopefully this one will be the same.

Still Fi and I were watching TV earlier and a promo for 24 Hours in A&E came on. Quick as a flash she joked that was just a reference to the waiting time for those triaged as non-urgent :)

Seeing in 2011

Last night was blurry, but in a good way. I didn't want to spend too much time posing or forcing shots, so opted to go for a slightly more impressionistic approach. It was a fun night.

Here endeth the year

So as 2010 ends, the great thermometer of ish* on my back porch is showing a balmy 23 degrees in the shade, complemented by a sea breeze that is coming and going on a fine summers day.
* so named because I am not sure when, if ever, it was last calibrated.
So lasts for the year today. Last breakfast was at Shine Cafe with Fi and Charlotte in the Hutt (where they have a picture of my parents house on the wall we noted). Last ride of the year was a gentle amble along the riverbanks to get to the Cafe and back, on the way trying out the new cycling shoes which were my last major purchase of the year. Last meal of the year is looking to be at an untried Morrocan restaurant in town, followed by our last outing of the year with our co-mealers to see in the New Year in plans that are as yet unfixed, but will likely involve wandering around the waterfront, mingling with crowds, and having a good time.

Onward to 2011...

Christmas Eve

First I'm going to throw these at you because they are made of awesome.

I love this, because its from NZ, and all the kids sound like kids I know, and it is generally hilarious, in addition to being beautifully executed:


And this is just fun:


And finally a pic of our humble Christmas tree on a still summer evening.
It's plastic. I prefer the purpose farmed real ones because they have more presence and smell nice, and I grew up with them, but Fi is allergic to them so plastic it is. One year we hung a pine air freshener on it, but it wasn't the same.

So Happy Christmas wherever you are. Have a good one, and remember that while Jesus may technically be the reason for the season, the early Christians nicked the date from the Pagans, so don't feel too guilty about not going to church :)

June?

How the hell is it June already? I wasn't consulted. I just know it is getting harder to find my sunnies when I need them, since they aren't being worn every day (or week as it happens round here lately). Wasn't it summer not that long ago?

Mild inconvenience

Listening to: Twilight Singers - A Stitch In Time

I've been ruthlessly exploiting both the nice autumn weather and Fi being on break lately to ride to work as much as I can, managing to use the bike for every commute last week.

This went like a box of swimming fluffy ducks until Friday morning, when I encountered The Shard (so named because it reminded me of The Dark Crystal). I had my camera on me, so here it is recorded for posterity.

I must have picked it up crossing the gutter to get onto Melling Bridge, since I didn't get a few metres across the span before the tire was completely flat. It didn't pop (which I have done to a bike tyre before), or instantly deflate at speed (which I have also done after running over a nail. Entry and exit hole in the tube, plus stress induced cracks either side), but it fell off quickly enough that I carried the bike the rest of the way across the bridge to somewhere I could safely investigate.

The offending piece of glass turned out to be pretty gnarly on removal, enough to pierce the thickest part of the tread and go straight through the tube. Probably part of a beer bottle. I don't know what the story is, but it is hard not to notice the sheer amount of shattered glass around the edges of the road that cyclists inhabit.

Luckily (or self fulfillingly, depending on your outlook), I had bought a spare tube to carry around for this exact eventuality only a couple of weeks ago. I figure it was either just as well, or tempting fate. A few minutes of wayside surgery later and it was sorted.

I patched the incumbent tube over the weekend and put it back on the bike, so retaining the perfect tube as a spare.

So there you have it, an exemplary blog of the mundane :)

I wasn't even annoyed. It was only a minor inconvenience. Reminding me of the relative cosmic scale of things on the other hand, someone I know got refused entry to the US and deported back here last week, which goes somewhat beyond inconvenient, beyond ruining your whole day even, especially as she was going to rejoin her partner who has been working there for the last few years. That sucks on all kinds of levels.

News

Listening to: The Guards Themselves-Minuit

Direct from Chez Kelson, here is the news.

Sun comes out, may reappear tomorrow
In an unexpected move, the sun shone today for several hours, after a prolonged absence of nearly a fortnight. While the Sun itself could not be approached for comment, an enigmatic spokesperson known only as 'Annie' gave the impression that it would be coming out tomorrow as well.

House Book population decreases for the first time
In an extremely rare event, the recorded book population of the house decreased for the first time since records began in the 1970's (see image).
The upcoming Hutt News Book Fair, to be held at Belmont Memorial Hall on Saturday 9th August was cited as the reason. When asked why this bookfair and not others had prompted the decrease, the owner replied that as he is scheduled to be out of town on the fair date, he is extremely unlikely to encounter any of the donated books on sale, and hence unlikely to inadvertently repurchase them. As to how the books were selected, reasons given varied from owning similar titles, over familiarity, expectation/fulfilment gaps, and some being just plain not good enough for a reader of his ability and knowledge.

Experiments establish bicycle spray speed
In a series of experiments conducted over recent weeks, 30 kilometres per hour has been established as the critical velocity at which water picked up from a wet road surface by a mountain bike front tire will be sprayed far enough by centripetal force to affect the rider. At this speed water is projected far enough both vertically and horizontally from the top of the wheel to be encountered by the rider as they progress forward. This is usually detected as a spray of water onto the face and body. While this velocity is rarely approached on a level surface, it is routinely exceeded on a normal downhill excursion, leading to continued research into how it may be alleviated. Protective eyewear is already proving useful, as is a reduction in speed on rainy days.

Vehicles animal magnetism proved beyond doubt by recent photos
Recent photographs have proved beyond any reasonable doubt that the household red convertible is indeed a Pussy Magnet (see images)

While feline attraction to the vehicle is no longer in question, the duration of the visit is open to conjecture, as the vehicle had been parked for over 24 hours at the time of the observations, with a corresponding length of time since any warmth had been generated by running the engine. Also possibly affecting visit duration is the vehicle's internal alarm sensor, which has been been known to deliver a series of loud warning noises prior to alarm activation when movement above the vehicle is detected.

More news as it comes to hand

Purification by fire

Listening to: Exit the Dragon-Urge OverKill. Should have bought this years ago, found it yesterday in sales bin for $2, which is kinda cheap. I have rediscovered a few songs I had forgotten. Also in the same bin for the same price was a copy of Powderburns by the Twilight Singers, which is almost indecent, as it is a really good album worth far more than that.

This is my notebook from the job I left on Friday, filled with handy tips and hints about how to do various things.
Since it was a job I wound up having a healthy dislike for, and the contents of the notebook came to symbolise only angst and frustration, I thought there was only one reasonable way to dispose of it while gaining a reasonable degree of cathartic satisfaction:

BURNING THE THING

I was aided in this ritual by an enthusiastic Molly on her last day in NZ. Kids, don't try this at home

Initial combustion was somewhat slow, and verging on disappointing.......
until we (carefully) added a small amount of accelarant.....
which resulted in a much more satisfying effect.
Finis
Been looking forward to that for some time.......