Rotorua and Lake Tarawera!

Our weekend of fun was awesome. We took Friday off and drove down early, allowing Iain an hour or so of fishing and me some welcome relaxation with tabloid magazines. We had a picnic lunch by the water, a bottle of wine, and went for a walk along the stream. It's fed by an underground spring, so the water is a beautiful turquoise blue but it's freezing (despite this, loads of kids were leaping into it from the bridge -- it was great).

The stream empties into the lake, and the fish love it. Iain caught THREE fish in a little over an hour. Pretty awesome. Here are the pictures.

It's tough to see in the photos, but the stream bed is this insane blue color.



The first of three!!


Around 7pm, after a drink at the lakeside restaurant, The Landing, we met our friends Shane, Glenn, and Claudine for a night of BBQ and booze. Shane lives in Rotorua and let us all crash at his place. You'd think that 5 adults staying together (for the first time) in a 2 bedroom, 1 bathroom house would be potentially disastrous, but we all got along great. I admit it - I was pleasantly surprised! (it helped that no one wanted to do anything except eat, drink, watch the Crime & Investigations channel, and go to the lake).

The next day we headed to the lake for waterskiing and swimming. I had to take a picture of Iain's outfit -- he wore Glenn's shorts for waterskiing, a life jacket, his own floral shirt, and hat. Sex on a stick!

The last time I went waterskiing was 1988 on Grand Island, NY with Kate Brill. Times have changed! Waterskiing is SCARY! Our efforts resulted in one pulled hamstring (Glenn), major water up the nose and ears (Iain), extremely sore arms (me), and one 20 second success (Shane, pictured below). We are all getting old.

Shane and Iain decided to play some cricket, which was interrupted by a guy who was either drunk or severely mentally disabled, or both. We're guessing drunk, but who knows. Apparently, he took the cricket ball and threw it at family seated about 20 feet away. Not cool (but I'm a little sorry I missed it!)

We also lost a water ski, which was devastating for Glenn, who search the lake about three times. The only saving grace is that he was the one who lost it, not one of us. Here's Glenn and Claudine returning from an unsuccessful search....

The mountains in the background are volcanos that erupted in the 1800s, and no longer have their tops.

Last Weekend

Last weekend we both worked all day on Saturday. I worked on my project and Iain sanded the hallway. The entire house is now covered in a fine layer of white dust (see paw print).

We were zombies by the end of the day, and while I sat on the sofa in a mild fugue state, Iain made the brilliant suggestion that we take Sunday off. No "I'll do some work in the morning then relax." A complete day off.

We totally geeked out and rented The Lord of the Rings (see attached photo of Frodo's foot). I annoyed Iain throughout the movie by asking, "Where is that? Have we been there?" every few minutes.

Weekend!

This weekend we're heading down to Rotorua with Glenn & Claudine for a weekend of waterskiing, swimming, fishing (Iain), eating, drinking, and hanging out.

Two things we will NOT be doing this weekend: WRITING CODE AND STRIPPING WALLPAPER.

I am actually leaving my laptop at home -- this will not be easy but it has to be done.

In other news, I discovered that Tama loves corn!

Google Maps RULES!

Here's a satellite photo of our 'hood. (if you click on the photo it enlarges). We're on Taurus Crescent where the yellow star is. Check out the street layouts to see why I miss the Philly grid system and why I'm scared to drive anywhere (one wrong turn!)

I just spent the last hour on this site looking up my parents, my sister, the house I grew up in, all of my old apartments, and YOUR house!

The Week

It's been a good week. The holidays are over, and we're both back to work. Actually, Iain took a week off to finally finish the hallway. He's spent the last 4 days stripping the wallpaper off, filling, and sanding -- this area of the house was left at the bottom of the "to do" list last year. We'd spent 3 insane weeks frantically doing up the rest of the house (dining room, living room, bedroom, office, bathroom) and ran out of time.

I always thought I'd finish the hallway in my "spare time" once school started. HA!

It took Iain most of the week just to get to this stage -- I will be forever amazed at how unpleasant it is to strip 2+ layers of wallpaper and paint.

Here's some pictures. I've also included some unrelated pictures of Tama in the backyard.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

I saw this movie with my friend Nana. It was ok. I found out it was written by the same guy who wrote Forrest Gump, which explains a lot. Brad Pitt's make-up was completely flawless and Cate Blanchett looked stunning in every shot. Danielle said, "I could've watched the scenes where they're in their prime for hours."

**SPOILER ALERT**



The scenes she's referring to include a bunch with them fixing up their first house. They had no furniture, just a mattress and some boxes and they spent their days painting and hanging out. And of course, they both looked totally gorgeous. Watching the house scenes, I thought, "Wow -- that's sorta what it was like when Iain and I moved to our house in Auckland..... only it looked NOTHING like that!!!!!!!" It looked like THIS.

My god -- I'm like Cate Blanchett's TWIN!

HAPPY 40TH BIRTHDAY SHELBY!!

Holy crap -- my sister is 40. I remember when my PARENTS turned 40!

more Christmas shots

For Christmas day, most people do a big lunch. We were invited to Glenn & Claudine's to celebrate with their kids. It was 10 hours of EATING, drinking, opening Christmas crackers, and playing with the kids' presents. My favorite toy was the Wet Head, which is like Russian Roulette, only with water (the victim wears a hat with a cup of water on top, while the players pull sticks out -- one of the sticks releases the water.)

Despite an entire living room full of brand new toys, books, and clothing, the highlight of the day was the whoopie cushion. It was a HUGE hit. The fun lasted for a few hours before one of the kids broke it. Crying ensued, new toys were brought out, and eventually the whoopie cushion was forgotten.

We also got the kids fake tattoos, which were surprisingly difficult to apply, as seen in the pictures (that's supposed to be a NZ flag on Kiain's leg...).

It was a great day. Everyone headed into the kitchen throughout the day to sneak "just one more piece" of ham, "just a little bit more" mac and cheese. The day was capped off by the 4 of us collapsing onto the sofas at 8pm to watch 'Bad Boys II'.

It was a very different Christmas than what I'm used to, but it was loads of fun.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DANI!!

New Years

Around the holidays, everything sorta shuts down (Melanie, you were right!) On December 27, we drove around from neighborhood to neighborhood to neighborhood trying like hell to find a place for brunch. We only found one place.

While businesses might be quiet during this time, our neighborhood was NOT. Holy. Shit.

We had the family two doors down who had at least 3 parties (that we know of). Nothing like a CD on repeat of Christmas oldies sung in Maori to drive one (me) to drink. At first it's cool, it's novel, you smile, but by hour four you've HAD IT.

Worse, the family behind the house next door had what seemed like 480 children visiting for the ENTIRE MONTH. That's 30 days. We're not actually sure they're gone, but we didn't hear them today so fingers crossed.

These kids were intolerable. They were totally unsupervised and spent the entire day going up and down their driveway on a skateboard while screaming. When not doing that, they'd beat each other up, resulting in more howling and screaming. I'm not a fan of children and this confirmed ALL of those feelings. The lack of adult supervision made all of this 100x worse.

Thank god we got our insulation finished and double-glazing installed. When the kids got particularly bad we'd just shut the windows, put up the double-glazing, and the house would be sealed up like a tomb. Great for sound but not so great in summer.

We were terrified of what New Years would be like. We decided to cut our losses and book a hotel room and get the hell out of dodge.

It wound up being fantastic. We went back to the Langham and hung out by the pool all day. To keep costs down, we snuck in wine and snacks which we surreptitiously ate by the pool. We think there was a band staying at the hotel because there were these total rockstar looking guys (tattoos, long hair, grungy looking) with these total porn star girlfriends hanging over them. They drank beer and made out in the pool.

I'm still amazed at the great deal we get at this hotel. The service is comparable to a Four Seasons, with Sheraton prices. We didn't want to leave! Here are some pics.

Industry Project

I've been working on my industry project pretty much full-time for the last 6 weeks. It's been an incredible experience, and I still have 3 weeks to go!

My client is a NZ born Dutch woman named Yon, and her husband Clive. They're both really cool. They invited us for brunch last week. Ironically, I almost declined because I had so much work to do! They live outside Auckland in a place called Titirangi which is beyond gorgeous, as you can see by the pictures taken from their backyard. Check out the view.

Boxing Day RULES!!

Boxing Day is the best. It's like Christmas, only there's NO responsibility. It's the day after Christmas where no one works and everyone just goes to the beach. We joined the tradition by hitting Long Beach (a few miles up the road from our house) and going for a clifftop walk before jumping in the water.

Along the hike, we passed an all-male nude beach occupied by men who should NOT be seen in public in the nude!

Even better, we saw a hedgehog!!

Christmas in Auckland

We had a great first Christmas. Last year sucked -- we were so close to the move we literally ignored it (Iain worked, I watched Lifetime). It was good to finally have a nice holiday!

We got each other gag gifts at the $1 store and opened them on the deck on Christmas morning. Gifts included an adult nurse's uniform and a whoopie cushion.

However, we need to buy new Christmas tree lights, since half of ours burned out. This is most likely due to Iain INSISTING we keep the tree up for six full months back in 2006.

Sorry!

It's been so long since I posted that Blogger expired my "remember me" username and password.

I'll be posting some holiday pictures today!

Skype!

While Iain visited family in Dunedin, I had a girls night -- with Maureen (and Matilda!) via Skype. Much catching up was had, as well as far too much wine. It was awesome!