Gypsy Tea Room

We've had some a-MAZ-ing weather on the weekends. The weeks have been semi-crappy, but once Saturday hits - damn! I'll take a little rain on a Tuesday if it means drinks with friends outside on Saturday.

Last weekend, on a whim, we drove to The Gypsy Tea Room. You may remember The Gypsy Tea Room from such blog entries as Julia's Birthday.

Julia and our friend Tash live in the neighborhood so we met up with them and Julia's bf Ian. It was just such a novelty to be able to sit outside again! Bring on spring and summer!!! The place was really hopping, too -- you can tell that everyone is just DONE with winter and rain.

After drinks, Iain and I picked up an American style pizza from Sal's. Thank god for Sal's.

Saturday

New Zealand was supposed to have been hit with a storm "the size of Australia" yesterday. Apart from some really crazy rain and a bit of wind, everything in Auckland is status quo this morning. I was on the bus home last night when the torrential downpour and wind began. I stepped off the bus with my soon-to -be-turned-inside-out umbrella and braced myself for the walk home, when I spotted Iain waiting for me in our car! We drove home to a delish meal of spaghetti carbonara.

Today we're taking Blue to the vets -- his breathing has gotten labored with even the mildest exertion. He's also losing weight quickly and we think he doesn't have long to go. I am still so thankful that we got these four months with him. We'll just have to see what the vets says. He still seems really happy, though, and even chased a kitty who wandered into our yard.

After we return from the vets it's off to Hallertau with new parents Sarah and Sean.

USA! USA! USA!

Thanks to Facebook most of you know that I was in the US for two weeks, getting my annual Target fix, plus enjoying other "must dos" like rare hamburgers, Greek food, Oprah magazines, having a decent cocktail, and indulging in lots of my mom's cooking.

There were a few downers. I left 2 bracelets at the LAX security checkpoint and didn't notice they were missing until I was in Charlotte. It took my mom and I about 34 threatening phone calls and 5 days to get them back. We were on the phone at least 15 minutes every day, leaving voicemails, getting transferred to different departments, hearing a different story every time. There's a number to call for Lost and Found, but it's voicemail and they never ever ever ever ever call you back. I called so much I was like, "Hey, yeah, it's me again."

The whole ordeal culminated in my mom going right to the head of HR to demand to speak to the head of security. This was on day 5. I received a humble callback from some chick named Patricia. What's interesting is that I'd already left Patricia 3 messages, each time growing more and more frantic ("PLEASE call me back!!"). Danielle said that I sounded like Liz Lemon. I guess when Patricia's boss got involved, she rang me back immediately and was all, "How can I help you?" Horrible. But the bracelets are back and I've learned a very valuable lesson: take off all of your jewelry before flying.

The rest of the trip was pretty fabulous. A lot of relaxing, a lot of visiting, a lot of eating. While I was sipping Veuve on my parents' lovely patio, poor Iain was back home dealing with a fender bender and a flea infestation. Poor guy. This year we've got some fun New Zealand travel lined up for the both of us.

Here are two cool pictures of my fam - the rest are all on Facebook.

OH: I learned another valuable travel lesson. When you can, purchase the day passes to the airport lounges. For $40US, I booked a day pass to the USAIrways Club lounges. I had 24 hour access in any airport, so I was good to go for Buffalo, Charlotte, and finally LA. It was a godsend. Free wifi, comfy chairs, a clean bathroom, it's QUIET, and you get a free glass of wine and/or free water, coffee, tea, etc.

Family Dinner

We had fish last week and the cats were extremely jealous.

Brunch!

We continued our theme of having friends over for brunch and hosted Julia, Ian (not to be confused with Iain), and Tash (short for Natasha) last weekend. While I'd like to say our riveting conversation kept everyone around until the late hours of the afternoon, in reality I suspect it was the radiators.

Iain broke all the "brunch" rules and made a delicious roast beef, cooked to temperature for each individual. This was possible only through some serious mathematical equations and two pieces of meat.

Birfday

Our friend Julia turns 33 this weekend so she invited everyone out for drinks. We're chronically early for events. For us, fashionably late for a 7pm event means arriving at 7:04.

To stall ourselves we decided to go out to dinner.
In Devonport (totally out of the way).
We still managed to get over the bridge and across town by 6:50pm. Arrrggg!

We went to this place (Gypsy Tea Room) last year and it was FUH-REEZING, so I made sure to wear wool socks and a big poncho/coat thing that's more blanket than coat. Thankfully, the place has made the leap into modern times and has heat now. The service is still a little chilly, but we were just there for a few drinks.

By 7.45 most of the guests had arrived, including the guest of honor (who thought she'd put "7.30" on the invites). It's an interesting group, half of whom are from our original New Kiwis group, the other half friends we've met along the way. It was fun getting dressed up again -- it's been really cold lately so everyone was complaining of only being able to wear thick sweaters and jeans everywhere.

Click HERE for some more pictures (if you haven't already seen them on FB).

A Good Two Weeks

It's winter here which means a few things:

1. Clothes take like 4 days to dry unless you have a dryer (we don't).

2. Because NZ has this ridiculous idea that it doesn't get cold, 90% of restaurants have little or no heat. Certainly none of them have central heating. We went out to eat last week and you can see me pictured, right next to a fire with about 3 layers on. The food here was really crap, too. You know how places in really incredible locations (right on the beach, anywhere in Niagara Falls, etc.) often have really bad food? This is one of those places.


3. Blue is doing really well -- getting lots of love and attention!

4. But the winters in Auckland aren't horribly cold, really, so you do get some lovely days where you can sit outside. We had friends over for brunch and enjoyed an hour of warm sun before it got chilly again. Thank god we have central heating!


If you're wondering what that red liquid is in our friend Catherine's champagne glass, it's evil sparkling shiraz. It combines the fun of champagne with the hangover of red wine. It's delicious, but you can only have 2 glasses or you'll hate yourself the next day. Last year they had a party with a bunch of this stuff and we're still talking about it.....

Catherine and her husband Steve just returned from a 10 week honeymoon around the world. Incredible!

Lunch

We had a light Sunday lunch at Bees Online, the awesome place with the stupid name where we took Iain's parents. Pictured here is my latest pet peeve: salads served in really deep bowls. I mean, how the hell am I supposed to eat this?!

Happy Hour

We had a VERY early start on Friday morning. Iain woke up at 4am to watch the Tivo'ed NZ v Paraguay game. I might as well have gotten up, since the cats, ecstatic to have someone awake, began the racing and fighting and meowing extra early.

Because of meetings, etc. we also left the house early and arrived at work around 7.30am. You'd think that getting to work a full 1 - 1.5 hours before everyone else would give one a real headstart on the day but no, there's always more work. Thankfully I left at 5pm.

Later on we met friends at La Zeppa for a few drinks. Our waitress was a large, rude woman who was visibly annoyed that we "just" wanted to drink. I've never understood this -- drinks end up costing MORE most of the time! Although our party of 6 did include a pregnant gal and 2 designated drivers.

La Zeppa is a tapas place, which simply means they charge exorbitant amounts of money for minuscule plates of food, but you can't complain because "It's tapas!". $12 for three tiny pieces of grilled calamari? I know they aren't different from any other tapas place, here or in the US, but it still annoys me. According to people who've experienced REAL Spanish tapas in Spain, the whole concept is enjoying small INEXPENSIVE plates of food before heading off to a big meal. That said, it's still a pretty cool place to go on a Friday night.

For Kate Brill

Hey skank,

Here's a picture of what we have in our fridge.

I hope this lays your fears to rest!!! (Although, I DO say "toMAHto sauce" in restaurants.)

What Aucklanders are Eating

This is a neat link promoting the Auckland Museum's latest exhibit. They've asked people to upload pictures of typical (and not so typical) Kiwi culinary delights. The Auckland Museum has great exhibits -- from what I can tell from walking by, viewing stuff on Twitter or seeing their posters. No, I've never actually BEEN to the museum...

I don't know the people in this picture, but based on where they are and what they're eating, I wish they were my best friends.

http://www.aucklandmuseum.com/1429/showcase

Sal's Pizza

About a month ago we discovered Sal's Authentic New York Pizza here in Auckland. Considering THIS is what we've had to tolerate (please see below), finally getting the real deal has been worth the wait. Of course, we had it once. Then a week later had it again. Then Iain's parents were in town so we had it AGAIN. Then a coworker mentioned it so now I want it again.....

More on that list of what we've been up to...

4. We celebrated our 4 year anniversary in style last Thursday in style: a small tasting platter at The Lobby in the SKYCITY Grand Hotel, followed by a traditional Iain Cosmopolitan at home.



3. Now that our weekends aren't spent buying sinks and pricing doorknobs, we have resumed our social life. This has been an absolute novelty. The first year we were here, I was in school so our social life sucked. Then it was all about the house. It's so nice to have a weekend arrive and have nothing to do. Wanna go have brunch? Sure. Two hours of Tivo'ed Gossip Girl? Why not. Sleeping in? What's that? It's great. For example, last weekend we had brunch with friends on Saturday, and on Sunday we hoped in the car and just drove around to different cafés. And why the hell not?

These pictures are from 3 different places we visited. The best part is that we had no intention of doing this, and two of the places we found we didn't even know existed. Really cool! And a really inexpensive way to check out a bunch of places.

One of the places had this insane back garden with a terrier running around, a huge cage of pigeons, and tropical plants everywhere. I can't even imagine how cool this place must look in the summer!

Weekend

This weekend was going to be all about packing, cleaning, and getting prepared for the move.

So why did we wind up:

1. eating lunch by the beach
2. wandering around the Viaduct
3. visiting friends, Jenny + David and week old baby Max
4. watching rugby (Iain)
5. seeing Precious (me)
6. having drinks with our 85 year old neighbors, Mitch + Lois

Maybe it had something to do with the weather -- spectacular!!

Dinner the dog, aka "Din Din"

Kitchen Krisis Averted!

Stupid kitchen. Wrong handles, wrong wastebin, and UGH! Wrong sink!

What should've been one of the easiest parts of the construction almost turned into one of the worst. We've discovered three mistakes in our kitchen, the latest being the sink model! An appointment with our kitchen designer was scheduled for Saturday, so we spent Friday evening going through all of our paperwork. Yep - they installed the R100 sink, not the RJ10 sink! And the handles? Bilma, not Bilma Straight! WTF???

Even though the company was in the wrong, I was still nervous and suffered a sleepless night on Friday. We've heard horror stories of people going back to their installers and being ignored, or handed some arcane set of terms and conditions that absolves the company from everything. How many months did we spend comparing kitchen sinks? The thought of all that research, only to get stuck with the wrong sink was depressing.

We've had a good experience with this company, which is why we were so disappointed when they screwed up. The garbage bin and even the handles I could live with but the sink was just WRONG.

Just in case they didn't own up to the mistakes, we went in guns blazing -- invoices, pictures, pdfs... and a back-up plan involving a social media blitz if they refused to own up.

We were pleasantly surprised. Our designer took responsibility for everything. She'd gone on vacation during the process and in the handover, a bunch of things got screwed up. And from her tone, it sounded to me like we weren't the only dissatisfied customers.

They're completely re-doing our kitchen counter to install the right sink, and we're being compensated for the handles and the garbage bin. They'll also pay for our plumber to come back in and re-install the faucet and garbage disposal. Whew!

We celebrated with a delicious lamb dish and rosé at a tapas place called Altar.

Kickass Dinner Party

Our friends Julia and Ian had us over to Julia's apartment for dinner on Sunday night. She made these incredible organic lamb meatballs that were ridic! Today is Wednesday and I am STILL thinking about them. They were done with orzo and feta and a tomato sauce -- I wanted to grab the bowl and go crouch in the corner with it, growling at anyone who approached me. Totally delish. (BTW Julia doesn't read this blog so this is not gratuitous!)

Disclaimer: Pete + Zeke, it did not beat your cooking!

She ended the meal with a homemade cheesecake. Holy MOLY.

In the Closet

It was Waitangi Day on Saturday. This meant that a lot of the stores were closed, forcing us to actually set aside house crap and enjoy the weekend. It's the height of summer -- really hot, really sunny, really awesome.

We went grocery shopping and visited a few tile stores to see if we could find something affordable for our kitchen backsplash.

Answer: no.

Damn!

Looks like more subway tiles... we investigated a glass backsplash, but the price is still the same: $1200+. Since we're already so far over-budget, we'll compromise and get some subways. We'll probably live.

Pictured below is Iain on Saturday while we figured out our upstairs closet configuration. We measured our own closets in the rental and figured out what we think we'll need in the new house.

The closet is going to be a freestanding structure so we're investigating closet companies -- for those of you who immediately leap to your California Closet / Broadcast News / SATC fantasties, you're not alone. This, however, is going to be a basic closet with some shelves.


Boring: the freestanding closet was a big discussion when we first started renovations -- we didn't want to build a closet for fear it would affect resale in case a future owner wanted to use the "dressing room" space for an office or baby room. But you know what? We need to live there, too, so we're revamping a lot of our "resale vs what we actually want" decisions.

(This late-in-the-day decision has left us with a perfect and now useless cable, power, and phone jack right where the closet will go. Brilliant!)

We finally nailed down a good design which I incorporated into Excel and emailed to our closet dude. Done!

Cut to four hours later and we're at Flax in Browns Bay for a late lunch.


We love this place because of its proximity to the beach. It's like being in Miami or LA or... New Zealand!


We ordered some fish cakes instead of something good like the burger and fries. Alas... trying to be healthy. I should've returned mine - it was vile. Iain didn't mind his.

After our 2pm lunch we headed for home for a quiet afternoon of laundry and books.

BBQ at Sunnyhaven Ave

We had a BBQ on Sunday and nature did NOT cooperate. First, it started pouring approximately 5 minutes after I'd texted back a skeptical guest,"Rain? Nope -- it's fine here!"

We bought a big plastic gazebo and it saved the day! The BBQ took a cue from 1964 and the guys hung outside by the barbecue discussing sports I guess. The ladies all remained inside and talked about guys, pregnancy, families, make-up, and wine -- I'm not joking. Everything was fine until we saw a roach crawling across the coffee table towards the Kiwi dip -- in keeping with the times, I yelled for Iain who had to come in and dispose of it. Iain swears it was a beetle but there are 5 women who disagree.

Despite the uninvited visitor, I think everyone had a good time. Lots of steak, chicken, vegie burgers and pasta salad was had. We also had a surprise dessert courtesy of our friend Kevin's mom who shipped him the ingredients for s'mores all the way from Buffalo! Diet? BLOWN! It was awesome.

It felt good to entertain again (a perfect excuse to clean!) and we can't wait to do it in the new house.

Blue stayed under the bed most of the night but Tama ventured out once or twice to check out the guests.





As the day wore on, some guests left while others braved the increasingly scary-looking weather (see the sky behind Steve) and colder temps until around 11pm.