It's important to be warm

There’s been a lot going on, most of it not story-worthy. Most of it is work, both getting things back in line professionally and around the house. LJ linked to these, and so that I remember them so I can waste way too much time there later, I’ll save them here.

omg, the best game on the internerd: test your knowledge of word etymology! I just forced myself to close the link or I could surely have been there for hours.

Once I’m done on that site, there is The OED online and me wishing I had whatever BBC channel is showing Balderdash and Piffle. Not only should that be a show I can watch, it would be the names of my children, were I having twins (which I’m not, so they’re off the hook). Perhaps a pair of cats…something…

And because it is the signoff between any two people in this city at the moment: GO STEELERS!
It would be sacrilege as well as bad juju to not say it here.

Filed by joy at 10:19 am under life, random
2 Comments

Wow, it’s really great to be on a winning team. The entire city went nuts in such a beautiful way. Not only was the game lots of fun to watch, heading across town afterwards for a proper pub veggie burger, with all the fans in the streets, horns honking, people running around so happy, it was magic.

As we drove through Bloomfield, we rolled down the window to enjoy the gleeful roaring on both sides of the street. The police cars roaming the streets had all their lights going, highbeams flicking in celebration of it all. We enjoyed our front-row seat at a stoplight as a young white guy and a young black guy ran towards one another across the intersection box, doing a perfect jump-bellyslam in the center of the street before running back to their sides as the light changed to green. And the crowd just went wild. And we beeped our horn. And the terrible towels waved bright yellow all along the sidewalks.

We got to our pub to watch men and women wearing a good variety of number shirts, all drinking, waving, hugging, singing to the jukebox underdog rock classics as well as the underdog disco anthem I will survive.

People watching is certainly my favorite sport, though football is coming in pretty close at the moment. (The burgers were good too.)

GO STEELERS!

Filed by joy at 8:51 pm under life
No Comments

Since I haven’t been to the Storm in a while, the bathroom graffitti is mostly new to me. Lo and behold, I have a new favorite:

(in tidy, handwritten black pen script, best visible while on the throne)
you’ve got a lot to prove
i saved you a seat.

Nice.

I truly enjoyed my vegan salisbury steak brunch, but am sad that I missed last week’s Metallica Theme Brunch. Heh heh.

Filed by joy at 11:50 am under life
1 Comment

We have returned and it is cold and my nose is runny. Shocking, I know, what with it being winter and January and all that.

Due to the insanity (inanity) of US domestic travel, it actually took us longer to get from LAX to PIT than it took to get from NZ to LAX. They wouldn’t let us move up our flight (though the gent in front of us did just that with no problem), and kept us on a packed red-eye, with a change of planes, and in seats that don’t recline. I kept my ankles all the way over the Pacific, and lost them on the way to Charlotte, where I also lost my ears. USAirways, the budget service, high-price airline! A new motto for them, feel free to use at will. I know flying the friendly skies went away a long while back, but the grumpy skies are in full force.

Though beyond our borders, the airlines are far nicer, not only in the lack of grumpy they present to the coach client. Air New Zealand gave us a lovely trip, and was a happily empty plane. We got great seats in the back, noisy, but lots of space. There were four seats in the middle of the plane, all empty, into which I did not hesitate to scoot over. It amazed that if you are laying down, as flat as possible given the slight curvature of the seats, you actually feel the turbulence much more like the rumble of a train. Thus, it isn’t queasy or even a wee bit scary as you fly along, with the added bonus of being rather restful.

All told, 33 hours of travel, door to door.

I’m completely on the wrong time still, even with best efforts to act as close to EST as possible. I woke up this morning at about 3am, finally got up at 5 and made myself grandma pancakes with the last two eggs in the house. Susie has indeed painted the kitchen, making it a much brighter and more charming place to cook. She also painted her room in a surprising and charming way. It will sound silly to describe, so I’ll just wait until we do another round of photos, which of course, are far overdue.

Since it’s dreary and dark here, I’ll post a picture I didn’t take, but was present for. Another attendee of my sister-in-law’s wedding took this of the bride and groom on the veranda, just after the signing of documents. Yes, that is what it looks like in the middle of January in Timaru. And yes, despite all the pretty, I was homesick and it is good to be back.

Filed by joy at 6:16 am under travels
2 Comments

It’s time to come back to the cold, to the Stillers, to my beloved, broke city, where my personal political angers are so locally felt. (Yeah, those all imply you should click through.)

Not that it hasn’t been a wonderful time away, but all things must end, and there is no home like your own. We’ve survived the family holidays, including the sister’s wedding. Ian has drywalled the family kitchen and helped install a new door where once there was a wall. I assisted with list-making and wedding-program creation for the big day. It’s the first time may of the little cousins have met as it’s been six years since all the siblings+sibling-families have gathered. Everyone pitched in minding the 8 grandchildren running amok. There’s a lot of amok (and of muck) when half of those grandbabies are under four years old. Makes me feel like an old and achy breeder.

Speaking of…our travel day is the half-way mark: 20 weeks. My belly has popped out, meaning not only is more obvious that I’m not just fat, I’m plural, but that I’m not comfortable. Chairs are annoying. Beds are not as comfy. One of Ian’s sisters summed it up well: baby finds the “eject leg” button, even from a very small age. I’m in my own way, and with all the kids running around, I’m a bit dizzy from it all. Not only the obvious OMG, WTF Are We Doing!?! but also the damn, these little people are loud and amazing and really exhausting. Especially with so many of them. The good thing is we’ll only be having one at a time (to be absolutely verified, thank you, by ultrasound on Thursday).

I’m homesick. I want my nest. Susie has painted the kitchen, meaning the entire first floor is not only NOT pink, but also beautiful. I can’t wait to see it. I can’t wait to be home, to my own quiet, wireless DSLed world (dialup, in case you forgot, sucks). I will surely miss the fresh raspberries, picked right outside the kitchen door from the garden. I will miss the hot sun, and even the brisk sea-wind that takes all the heat out of that burn-in-10-minutes sunshine. I will miss my family here, in all their crazy, wonderful ways.

Filed by joy at 1:49 pm under travels
1 Comment

They still allow restaurant cats. Just about everywhere is a tough and pretty cat, keeping watch on the grounds. The golf course clubhouse has one as do the buffet restaurants and some higher end places.

Shoes are optional. I’ve been on a few cars rides where the driver didn’t bother to put on shoes before heading away. Several adults tell a story of hiding their shoes under the hedge on the way to school, as it just wasn’t cool to wear your shoes there. Of course, parents usually found out, though typically, the parents had traditionally done the same thing when they were that age. Only because summer has been a bit rainy here on the south island are people typically wearing their shoes everywhere they go. Once the heat sets in, several kids and a few adults will have toes on show from the grocery stores to the fish’n'chips shops.

Roses. Everywhere. Flowers I can’t name. Everywhere. Grass just grows, none of the work that it takes just to have the most basic lawn. Berries, fresh herbs, lemons, all grow in your yard. The rosemary bushes put our proud little potted plant of the same variety to shame. Imagine all the time and effort spent not shoveling snow, spreading salt, raking leaves (few trees here drop leaves as they’re mostly green all year) and you get a serious garden.

Houses are kept open. Doors and windows and patios are often left open all day, changing the air in the house. Also, since there is no central heat system to kick up and circulate dirt, homes are comparatively dust free.

Their money is pretty, like most countries that aren’t the US. It’s also not paper, so it doesn’t fall apart when you wash it. They’ve gotten rid of the 1cent coin and are considering nixing the 5cent coin. They have $1 and $2 coins. All the taxes are calculated into the price of what you buy, so if the shirt is $15, all you need is $15.

They say “reckon” and “blimey” and have an expression that basically means no big deal, but is said “Bob’s your uncle.” This particular part of the list could go on for days, so I’ll just leave it at that.

Plunket is considered a right, just like national health care. It is 99 years old in 2006. Ian’s mum gave me his Plunket book, carefully showing not only the usual weight at birth, etc., but tracking through his earliest years, including when he stood up, when he ate regular food, and all other things of health concern, all done via nurse visits. Civilized, no?

Filed by joy at 9:14 pm under travels
5 Comments

As I’m working on a book cover for Zig, my niece Bryanna comes in to give me a sour candy (bless her!). I explain to her the basics of what I’m doing, and she tells me about a story she’s writing. It’s based on The Hobbit. She explains to me, in the tone that only a girl of ten can use with such sweet authority, that “J.R.R. Tolkien didn’t write The Hobbit, Bilbo Baggins did.”

Well then. Can’t argue with that exactly.

Filed by joy at 11:53 pm under life
2 Comments

Timaru has a lovely bay, which is partly taken up by shipping and other business. As far as the general public is concerned Caroline Bay is a primarily a park. Every year, starting on Boxing Day, a Carnival is set up amidst the kiddie wading pool, swingsets, and new-ish skate park. Lots of kids, and no dogs allowed. (They go to another beach for a fun romp around the rocky shore.) For New Year’s, there used to be a bonfire on the beach, but they’ve given that up for a variety of good reasons, not the least of which is that the Canterbury plains tends to be tinder-box dry this time of year. Now they do fireworks, which at least keeps the sparks farther overhead.

Well, it’s no Zambelli’s, but it’s a perfectly respectable showing. The odd part was the musical choice. After all 300 verses of Auld Lang Syne, they went into not one, nor two, but three ABBA songs, which was quite fun. The likely rather tipsy ladies next to us got off the grass to sloppily skip around (as is required) to “Dancing Queen” while their men took pictures of them and the fireworks on their cell phones.

The fireworks went on for longer than their patience once the ABBA stopped. There were another few songs that I didn’t recognize going, and the little group wandered off. Feeling a little weary myself, I sat down myself while Ian took pictures of the show. Once it was all finally over and done with, to the clapping and general merriment of the crowd, I stood up to realize I’d sat in dog shit, which I decided is NOT an omen for the year to come. No sir, thank you.

I smelled horribly all the walk home, which I took at a far greater speed than I really should’ve, but the fact of a shower on the other end of the journey as well as the adrenaline of embarrassment and disgust pulled me up the hill more insistently than I could’ve managed without.

Happy New Year all the same.

Filed by joy at 11:52 pm under travels
1 Comment