Philly!

We found a Belgian place last night for dinner. It totally reminded us of Eulogy and Monk's but much nicer and just as delish. The beer was pretty pricey, though. Damned imports.... Here's a picture of my fries, beer, and grilled mussels.

They also had a TV in the corner playing great 80s videos like Stevie Nicks, Duran Duran, and Frankie Goes to Hollywood.

We will definitely be going back!

Tama caught a weta!

I was busy writing code* last night and heard a ruckus from the kitchen. Iain was upstairs. I went to check on it and there was Tama with a huge weta in his mouth.

For those of you unfamiliar with wetas, they're harmless but terrifying looking bugs that come in a variety of shapes and sizes. According to Iain, this was a small one. I'll take these any day over centipedes.

Rather than risk having half-eaten weta parts all over the house, I put a glass over it and got it back outside.



(*ok, I was actually reading 'Lost' articles on EW.com....)

Yawn

Well, we really have nothing interesting to report. Iain is working every day, I'm going to school, and on the weekend we had friends for dinner. I haven't been able to post on the blog because I've been working. A few updates:

• Iain bought bluff oysters which are without a doubt the BEST oysters on the planet. Holy MOLY. If you don't like oysters, you will if you have one of these.

• School is seriously kicking my ass -- it's a lot of work trying to keep up with the geeks. They love trying to one up the teacher and spend our breaks bantering about PCs versus Mac. I use my breaks to keep working, so they're distracting. When they do this, I want to yell at them to shut up, but I have to stifle the urge to jump in with my own pro-Mac comments.

I worked a lot this weekend testing my ability to create a simple webpage. I'm glad I did it, but I am FAR from thinking it's easy. It was pretty stressful last week but I'm really glad to be doing something again.

• The cats are adjusting well to the invisible fence, but it's not doing Iain and me any favors: every morning is like Christmas morning for the cats. At 5am they start meowing and leaping on and off the bed because they're so excited to go outside. We take their collars off at night and lock the cat door, but as time goes on we might just give them 24/7 access so we can actually get some sleep.

• We had a slight scare last week: it was supposed to be the season finalé of 'Rock of Love' but instead they showed a stupid highlights show. I was devastated. "They skipped it!!" I cried. After a brief convo with Danielle, I was assured that they do the highlights show before the finalé. Whew!

• OH!! The BEST news is that we found an AWESOME Italian restaurant in town. It was recommended to us by friends. It's called Gina's and it's incredible. Spending two years in South Philly, we never took for granted the abundance of great Italian food around us, but we also weren't prepared for how awful life is without it. We have great food in NZ but nothing beats Italian (in my opinion).

• Fall is officially here, which, from what I can gather, means that Auckland turns into Seattle from now through winter. It's gotten a lot colder (still not COLD, though), and it's supposed to rain all week. Excellent!

The Living Room

Here are pictures of our living room. We don't think the layout works -- it's boring. The thing is, we have to have the leather chair and sofa facing the TV, so if anyone has any design suggestions, let me know (besides "Buy all new stuff" which at this point I would love to do.) Like, what should we put behind the TV? Anything? Or leave the wall blank?
(we know we need to change the color of the coffee table)

Iain makes the paper...

In Fort Smith, Arkansas!

(his "article" is on the right)

http://www.swtimes.com/articles/2008/01/09/business/c-business01.txt.

First Day of School!

Today was my first day of school for web development - a one year course that teaches how to design and build websites.

I would be lying if I said I wasn't nervous. I was quite stressed about all of the important things about school: I lay awake at night, mentally planning what to wear on my first day. I wanted to look nice, but not too nice, but not too casual, but not over-dressed. Yes, I tried on a few outfits the day before. And I woke up with PLENTY of time to catch the bus, and checked and rechecked the schedule and route. Do I catch the bus on the right or left side of the road? Will the 8:17 get me there in time or should I take the 8:03? Should I take my laptop or is that too dorky? What if everyone else does? But worse, what if no one does?

The day began early, with I guess what you'd call a student assembly: we all gathered in one room and the teachers talked to us. They handed out swipe cards, temporary IDs, and jump drives around a stylish Natcoll neck thingy (I can't remember the name of those things but you can see the picture above). We did a traditional Maori greeting and a Maori guy came in and sang and recited a poem in Maori -- I had no idea what he was saying but he had a really mellow voice. If anyone remembers the PBS painter guy Bob Ross, that's what this guy was like.

There were three classes total starting today: my class, Computer Graphic Design and Digital Production Media. After that, we split up and attended our first real class.

Now I'm home, checking my email, saying hello the cats, while Iain is at the grocery store buying champagne to celebrate.

Here are my observations of Day #1:

1. Clearly, Computer Graphic Design is where all of the cool kids are. Everyone else: dorks. I found this out by approaching all of the normal looking people who looked over 30, hoping to GOD they'd be in my class and be really funny and we'd become friends and hang out and have drinks after school together and our husbands would meet and maybe they'd have cats.... No such luck.

2. As we sat in the student assembly, I kept looking around, checking out who's who. Most people were pretty non-descript and young. There were a few stand-outs like the 14 year old (I'm not kidding - he's a CHILD) with bad teeth who looked way too confident and irritating - he reminds me of some kid on TV (the kid from Mr. Belvedere?) but I can't think of it. There was the guy with long hair wearing a trench coat - not sure what his deal was. There was the chatty Asian chick who knew a bunch of people. Then there was a really loudmouthed guy who took out his black MacBook Pro to show off to everyone. The kid next to him actually did a quick intake of breath when he whipped it out (I'm still talking about his laptop). I think he was the only one who brought his computer - I was SO glad I'd left mine at home (esp. since mine is only an iBook G4...) Every dork I'd see I'd think, "Please don't let that guy be in my class."

3. All of those people (except for chatty Asian chick) are in my class.

4. There are 20 students in my class. 4 of them are women. I don't think I'll need to worry about what to wear to school every day. If I'd worn acid washed jeans and a sleeveless tshirt with that image of the burning twin towers with the crying bald eagle, I still would've looked cooler than 99% of my classmates.

5. There is one potentially normal looking woman in my class -- we exchanged a brief hello earlier in the day, and she tried to sit next to me in class but we have assigned seats. Damn.

6. 14 year old prodigy brat (F.Y.O.P.B.) with his long surfer hair and buck teeth nodded emphatically and laughed at everything the teacher said in this knowing , "Oh my god - I've been there!" way, like they're colleagues or something. I think FYOPB might be American. Great. Way to represent, jackass.

7. One of our teachers has a habit of walking around clenching and unclenching his fists in order to crack his knuckles. I'm not sure how much of that I'll be able to stand. Knuckle-cracking is pretty high on the pet peeve list (right after gum cracking and chronic sniffling).

Cattiness aside, I'm sure this is going to be a really challenging year. It seems like an excellent course - I'm pretty excited. And I might be the only one in my class who's been to a prom, but these kids will probably wipe the floor with me and my amateur webskillz.

I'm so glad the first day is over, though. The anticipation is the worst. Tonight, we celebrate! (but not too much -- it's a school night!)

Desperate times...

Tired of burning popcorn on the stove and not wanting to eat processed fatty microwave popcorn, we went out yesterday to buy a popcorn maker. Slate.com just had an article on their site about the best popcorn makers (this always happens with me and Slate -- a few months ago they had an article on air mattresses, just as we were considering buying a new one). Anyway, the article concludes that the old-fashioned Presto air popper from the 70s is still the best. Unfortunately, the 3 stores we went to didn't carry popcorn makers. Crepe makers, smoothie machines, hotdog cookers - no prob. Popcorn makers? Forget it, except for one store that had one model. Behold our new popcorn maker:

A new Blue emerges!

Blue is a whole new cat now that he's allowed outside. He climbs trees, he scratches furiously on tree trunks, and last night we saw something completely new. A neighborhood cat ventured into our backyard (not Neighborhood Kitty - we haven't seen him for a few weeks). Iain and I were sitting on the deck and we stood up to watch would happen, fully expecting Blue's usual well-meaning but stupid attempts at being friendly. Instead, Blue catches sight of the strange cat and TEARS after him, chasing him completely across the lawn until the cat bounded over the fence. It was AWESOME. Afterwards, he sauntered back to join us on the deck, all 18 pounds of pure bad-ass. In other news, Tama is still a wuss.

3:33am

I don't actually think our house (or Iain) is possessed like in the Amityville Horror, but there are a few freaky things in the house.

There are a lot of flies in here, and priests won't come near this place. Ok, yeah, we don't have screens, we don't know any priests, and Tama takes care of most of the flies. But check out these pictures: these are shelves in our big hall closet. Each shelf has a kid's name -- this might not be so weird but there's six shelves, and they're all large enough to house a small child. There is no way six kids lived in this house. Even though I was skeeved out, I had no problem putting the closet to use: towels and tools and books now cover each shelf. At some point we should probably paint over the names. Also, less visible but 10x freakier (doubtful it will even come out in the blog photo) is the date "19.12.92" that someone wrote on one of our walls (you can kind of make out the "19"). Even weirder are the random sounds coming from our attic. Stay tuned!

Wild Jungle Cats!

The invisible fence is installed and the cats are out! Blue got a small shock by venturing a bit too close, but after a quick hiss and dirty look he was fine.



See attached footage of Tama's very first tree climb. This must be how parents feel when their kid takes his first steps!

Romantic!

Here's a really cool picture of our friends Danielle and Nam. This picture was entered in a contest by their wedding photographer and won.
This one didn't win any prizes.

Tane Mahuta

Tane Mahuta isn't a line from "Nell". It's the largest kauri tree in NZ. It's sacred to the Maori and is on their land. Iain got a tear in his eye when he saw it, the same way I get weepy when I see the Mississippi. Oh wait...

The pictures don't do it justice but this tree is freaking HUGE. The tree fern on the right looks like a plant next to it. It's 169 feet tall (the tallest California redwood is 325) and really wide. It's beautiful.

Oh cool -- they just aired a promo for Dr. Drew's Celebrity Rehab show - it premiers next week!

I love tabloids

Russell

We drove from our hotel to the historic town of Russell, where we had very mediocre scones and jam at the Duke of Marlborough hotel. It was New Zealand's first licensed (booze) hotel and has a really funky, dated look.

Russell is a classic seaside town with lots of old trees, gorgeous homes, and neat little shops. Well, one of the shops was cool - the rest were overpriced "art" and local sculpture. It's a great place for people watching.

Most people take a ferry across the bay, but we drove around to further explore the area. It's so cool how there are still places that aren't totally built up and touristy -- we'd pass these tiny pristine bays and there'd just be homes near it. Of course, those homes are probably worth a mint, but there's something reassuring about a place that beautiful that's still mainly populated by locals, not hotels.

Saxon

It was bad enough when they made Saxon condoms and Saxon cologne (sold for about $4.99 in drugstores). Then I went to England and saw Saxon toilet paper and tissue. And let's not forget the horrible 70s hard rock band by the same name. And now this: public vending machines.