Renovations

Well, busy little bees we have been around here, what with picking paints, getting lovely new scotias from Carrara ceilings as well as paint from Resene & Dulux. You can see the scotia a little better here:

It took us a while, but we’ve finally decided on the following colours for our house:

Wright hill (Dulux) - spare room

White Island (Dulux) - lounge

White Island quarter (Dulux) - hall & main bedroom

Paris White (Resene) - study

I don’t know how good these colour chips come out compared to the paint itself. Paris White has been in my study for a good while now, and I still love it. It’s a peaceful, soft, bluey-green.

So far this weekend we’ve finished painting the ceiling and scotias, and are just making a start on the spare room. Wright Hill is an interesting green colour - I’ll post pics when it’s done.

Not a lot else going on - had pottery this morning, the last class of the semester. I had eleven pieces to glaze! Unfortunately, I’m not able to pick them up until the start of next semester - May the 10th.

We’ve got a massive pile of catnip at the moment - from Mum. We planted most of it, but the semi dead stuff that was left got thrown onto the path in the back yard, and immediately pounced on by Sooty and his mate from down the road, Indy.

Free afternoon

I got a phone call this morning from Brian to say he couldn’t make it this afternoon, so I’m here at work with no trip up to uni, but still it’s a little bit of a relief. Not that I don’t enjoy our discussions of my (slowly) developing research paper, but it will be good to be able to go to the next meeting with a bit more to show for myself.

Work’s incredibly quiet and dull at the moment and I’m finding it really difficult these days to maintain some degree of enthusiasm for what’s become a highly repetitious, mind-numbing set of routines.

Yesterday Steve and I went to the Wellington city gallery during lunch and had a look at the “Telecom Prospect 2007” exhibition. As with a lot of modern art, some was exciting and interesting, some pretty ho-hum. I very much like the gallery though, set in the middle of the Civic Square. It reminds me a little of the area around the library in The Hague, which I used to bike to every week or so when I lived over there.

- Some days I biked out to Scheveningen too, which was awesome. I miss being able to cycle everywhere. Wellington’s a great city, but a lot of people who drive are still real jerks when it comes to looking out for cyclists, plus the streets are often too narrow to give any cyclists real space. I don’t bike at all here, and I miss it.

Those days were really awesome, and though it’s weird thinking back to times spent with an ex, I felt good in myself back then. I was writing a lot, reading a lot, working very little, discovering The Hague, cycling around, seeing loads of great art as well. Not just Van Gough and Piet Mondrian (who I fell in love with), but a lot of other contemporary European art as well. I very much think the not working had a lot to do with it, but there was also the excitement of discovering a new place, having the time to write and read copiously, and having free reign over Aart’s apartment when he was at work. Plus it was great getting to the point when I could communicate with shopkeepers in dutch, or order things in pubs (not just ‘twee bieren’ either) . And I love foreign supermarkets, hehe.

I’d love to re-connect with that feeling again. And I do think it’s possible to do that in Wellington. There are so many things I have here that completely top what I had back then, especially Steve and Sooty, who make me feel so amazing. But my work situation really is bad news, I don’t like what it has done to my brain and my self-confidence. I need to explore more, do some more stuff on my own. (Quit and get some kooky random job…)

Best swim so far

Monday at work. The day’s actually gone by pretty quickly, and it was a lovely day, so I really can’t complain there. Yes, it’s Autumn, but it’s still sunny, with just a hint of crispness in the air. I love it.

Steve & I went home for lunch, rode home on the scooter, up past the Botanic Gardens (and bus loads of tourists), under the viaduct and up to Karori. It’s strange living in the burbs after so long being right in town. I like the space though. Like our big back yard and garden, and I love so much having a cat. Sooty is so damn awesome.

It was a good weekend, too. I met with Brian up at uni, and discussed my research topic some more - it’s actually threatening to take shape! That was Thursday. Friday was Peter’s last day at work, so we had some farewell drinks for him, and then Steve and I headed home to meet his parents, who stayed with us for the weekend.

It was really lovely to see them again, to just relax and do things like cook them dinner and watch Father Ted reruns with them. I got some study done, and actually got the drum carder out that Steve gave me for my birthday last year, and carded up a whole blend of bright pink wool with this gorgeous black Alpaca I’ve had since we made that trip out to Nicola’s friend’s farm. I started spinning it yesterday. It’s a really lovely pink with black flecks, and so soft with the Alpaca. It’s gorgeous. I spun and watched Goonies. It was bloody great.

Then in the afternoon, Steve came with me to the pools and we both did some lengths. I had my best swim so far (since I got back into swimming mid-March) - 32 lengths! 800 metres! I know that’s peanuts compared to what normal swimmers swim, but for me, it felt amazing to have got to that point. I’m really happy about it!!

New NZGamer review and preview

Just a quick “hello”, to add in these links for a new review and preview I recently wrote for NZGamer.com.

Warhawk preview

Jade Empire (PC) review

Aside from that, have been busy with uni (I’m finally kicking off my research topic, which is going to be on virtual worlds), going to stuff around town (including the very excellent Camera Obscura concert at the San Fran Bathhouse), playing Okami on my new PS2, work, and hanging out with my boys, Steve & Sooty!

Coming soon? Lemonheads and Gomez gigs, I can’t wait!

Well, I’m 30 now.

And to be honest, I don’t feel all that different. I’m back at work, after a nice long Christmas break up in Taupo, and flew back to Welling-town this morning. Steve picked me up from the airport. It was so wonderful to see him again, I couldn’t believe how much I missed seeing his smiling face, after just three days away.

It’s a terrible day today. Grey, windy as hell, wet road and sidewalks out the window. I’ve been scouring the net for any interesting organisational software, etc. and didn’t really find that much. Something called PageFour, but I’m not really sure how good it is. I was reading about some dude on the net, a published writer, who uses this outlining software, but I really wonder how much of it is bunk and avoidance, and how much of it is useful. (I thought it could be a good way to do some brainstorming and general information gathering at work.) What I really need is some sort of note organiser. My desk is covered with notes - notes everywhere, stuff that I don’t want to throw out because it all seems important somehow. If I could compile everything together in one place then maybe I could clean up the mess a little.

Speaking of mess, Steve and I moved into a new place at the start of the month. There are still boxes everywhere (all my junk) and even though I have my own study now, I really don’t know where to put anything. I need some filing cabinets, I think. (Organisation, again!) Maybe I just need to get hard and throw everything out. I don’t know.

I’m really looking forward to getting home. Having a look around. Giving Sooty a wee tickle (O yes! My new cat! He is awesome!) I want to look out the dining room window out at the backyard, at the wet, dewy grass and dark green trees. I want to sit in my study and look out the windows at the next door neighbour’s huge ferns growing up and past the house. It has huge fronds as big as my fist.

I’m also really looking forward to trying out my new drum carder that Steve got me for my birthday! Yes, it’s an Ashford one! The drums are covered in this soft pink rubbery material, and the teeth are fine and shiny (even though it is a coarse carder, it’s nothing like the one I bought on TradeMe a while ago. Ye gods, that thing’s a monster!

I’ve also been lucky enough to find a notebook of morning pages from when I was living in Dublin. I started reading them last night in bed, but because I had to get up so early (5:30) to get my flight down to Wellington, I didn’t get the chance got have a good read. I was so organised, so creative, so hopeful about the future! I want to tap into that somehow. I’ve become…placated somehow.

(And I was also lucky enough to find in archives.com, some of the missing diary-x entries that I was never able to recover. Nowhere near all of them, but something small to remind me of what I was doing back then. I’ll try and add them to this blog, so I can at least have everything all together in one place.)

powered by performancing firefox

weekend catchup

The best thing about Ryvita crackers is that they don’t really seem to go stale. At least the ones in my desk drawer haven’t. I’ve been having them with peanut butter on them, on and off, for the better part of a month. They still seem crunchy and don’t have that stale taste to them.

I’ve been up to heaps lately.

The weekend was particularly good. On Saturday, Daphne and I went to Golding’s to do an Art Clay class. We came out of it with a silver ring each, that we’d made, and a necklace in the cast shape of a leaf. Steve picked us up, and we dropped Daphne off at her place. At the same time I picked up this aquarium that she was getting rid of. It’s quite a bit bigger than my one - 40 litres - and quite a bit longer.

Sunday we went to the pet store and got a new air pump (a flash Eheim one) to go with the undergravel filter and a hood light. Sunday afternoon was spent removing all the plants, then the fish themselves, then siphoning all the water out of the old tank (retaining as much of the old water as possible, in buckets, cooking pots, etc.), and finally transferring the gravel over to the new tank, then the fish, then the plants. It looks great now!

On Sunday evening we went to the premiere of the DVD release for the movie “The Last Hurrah” (the website for the book and the movie is here.) It was really fantastic. The Paramount was packed with bikies, most of whom showed up in their leathers and carrying helmets. They’d all shown up to lend support to two bloody tough buggers, both over 70, who had made the trip from China to Holland in three months. It was really fun.

After that we went to dinner at the Flying Burrito Brothers. We ate spicy pumkin seeds, pork crackling with salsa verde, burritos and enchiladas, and drank some beautifully sour and salty margaritas. Staggered home.

Also recently I got this great book from Amazon, called French for Reading. In addition to this, I also got some great books from Amazon.fr - including french versions of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, The Old Man and the Sea, The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe and The Magician’s Nephew. I’m really set up now. So my French lessons have been really enjoyable so far. I haven’t studied French formally since school, but I am finding it really interesting. I’m doing it for the express purpose of being able to read books in French - just to load up on books written in another language and have a crack at it. Sometimes that approach can be good - a bit like how we approached Old Norse for my uni paper.

I’ve also been really busy lately with all the reviews, etc. I’ve been writing for NZGamer. I think I’ve written eight reviews/columns in the past three weeks. Considering the fact that you have to give the games a decent play before you review them, my spare time in the evenings after work’s been pretty non-existent. I’m enjoying it though. I’ve got another three due this Friday.

Work is still boring me to tears, and I’m wracking my brain trying to think of how I can change my situation. Everything else in life is going swimmingly, and it’s frustrating to feel like how I earn a crust is beyond my control. Sure, it gives me the opportunity to do things like the art clay course, and to go out and buy fishtank stuff, etc. etc. etc., but at the same time I feel like I’m not being true to who I am with this job. Like I’m faking it. And it’s not even enjoyable to pretend to fake it anymore. I read about people who are librarians, teachers, doctors, accountants, journalists, or who serve in the armed forces. They’re such cut and dry sort of jobs, jobs that require a definite decision. I just don’t know how I could do something like that. I’ve thought about teaching, but thinking about it and feeling a passion for teaching are two such completely different things. I know I’m piddling around, wasting time. I need to set myself on some sort of strict regimen of no booze and plenty of writing - but other things seem to creep in and distract me. Perhaps I’m just too easily distracted. Sometimes I think things would be better if I wasn’t working, other times I think the structure is what I need to get out of bed and leave the house every day. I think Harvey Pekar said something similar about his file clerk job. You hate it, but at the same time it helps you out in ways you don’t want to acknowledge. It’s sort of like having to drink cod liver oil, I guess.

dampish fishtank massage Pacific pigeon freak

Hey. Well, things have been going pretty well here, in this place - the Capital city of the most isolated country in the world. It’s Friday, and for we poor slobs who live from 6pm - 7:30am Monday to Friday, plus weekends, it’s like being on the verge of a religious epiphany. In this part of the world it’s Autumn (as opposed to what seems to be the rest of the world - even Australia’s still practically in the middle of Summer), which means shitty, overcast days and a general dampish feeling in the air. Still, from where I’m sitting, if I crane my neck around about 50-60 degrees, I can see one of the Picton ferries coming into the harbor, catching the sun. It’s pretty peaceful.

I splurged last weekend and bought myself an all in one fishtank (well, I did have to get a heater). It’s very, very cool, and has rocks and plants and even water in it, which has been nicely aging over the last week. All I need now are some fish. My parents are coming to stay at my place over Easter (four day weekend!!) and mentioned they might bring me a fish or two as a housewarming present!

I don’t have any major plans for the weekend, aside from using my voucher for a half-hour massage tomorrow. I’m booked in for 11:30. Mmm…massage! After that I’m meeting Daph and Graeme at the Black Harp at 1:00 for lunch. (They’re using their vouchers from 12-1, then we’re going to use another prize voucher Daphne won at the Black Harp.) Should be a cheap day! Can’t go wrong! I’ve also got a pile of books I intend to work my way through, plus there’s Italian study for the test we’ve got coming up on the 9th, and some Old Icelandic translation and reading to do. I’m actually considering doing just Old Icelandic next semester. I love Italian, but at the same time, it’s going to get more complicated as we go along, and I am going to start running out of free time. I can just see it now. Plus it would only mean one day up at uni per week. Not that I don’t enjoy it up there, but it gets rather stressy when you’re constantly trying to get back to work etc. etc.

Travel is on my mind again, especially now that I’m a permanent employee here and thus eligible for a nice 4 weeks worth of holidays per year. I really want to save it up and then use it for a month’s holiday somewhere. But where? I’m thinking maybe the Pacific somewhere. Rent a place for a month and hang out.

*********
This from Monday’s Dominion Post:
Pigeon Gets A Gong
A Royal Air Force pigeon that delivered the first news of Allied success from the Normandy beaches on D-day - June 6, 1944 - will be recognised as the greatest pigeon to have served its country. Gustav, a grizzle cock pigeon, will be honoured in a London exhibition at the Imperial War Museum’s 60th anniversary show. He will get the Dickin Medal, the animal equivalent of Britain’s highest military honour. He died when his breeder stepped on him.
*********

It’s about half four and time is ticking (initially wrote ‘tickling’) by slowly. I’m really looking forward to tonight. No plans, just some reading, writing, gin and tonics and a little Old Icelandic translation. Most of my weekends have seen something similar.

Aedan is apparently in NZ - in Wellington - at the moment, over from Ireland. James went out for dinner the other night with him but I decided not to go. Sometime back during the time I was in Dublin we had an incident where he asked me at lunch if New Zealand had an IT industry. I said “no, we ride around on sheep and use abacuses.” He stood up and picked up his tray and said “everything’s always a joke with you!” and stormed off. He didn’t speak to me again - what a freak. Nobody else could believe it, and I didn’t think it was worth the hassle to try and figure out what his problem was.

Ben’s also coming back soon - in a month, I think? And I even got an email from Brugt recently, saying he was also coming over, sometime in November, to try and get work in a mountain hut. Nice. So it would seem that leaving (for the moment) is not all that necessary - everyone seems to be coming to me, these days.