Melanie and Brian!

We had a fun time hanging out with these guys last week -- convos included cats versus kids, weddings, heating, Red Tettemer, roommates, parents, Philly, flight prices, Macs, working from home... and on and on. I don't think we said our goodbyes until past 1am which is ridiculously late for us. Good to see you guys!

We can all sleep tonight...

Iain finished the deck!

See riveting before and after shots!

We celebrated with dinner and drinks with our friends Claudine and Glen at our favorite Belgian place. Actually, the staining alone took almost three days and resulted in very mild poisoning because Iain forgot to wear a mask. The symptoms are similar to a hangover, which may explain why it wasn't detected earlier. Iain kept think he'd had too much beer.

Klass

It's been a rough two weeks, so no posts.

You know that scene in "Sixteen Candles" where a very young Joan Cusack plays the head-gear ridden teenager at the water fountain? It's a really random scene, but brilliantly done. She makes weird "uh huh" and "yep" sounds throughout, with musack playing behind. It's funny in the movie. Now imagine those sounds being made for THREE HOURS by the 40 year old German guy next to me.

As he tries to figure out code, he does things like snap his fingers in "ah-ha!" moments, make the gun sign with his hands, all the while making little mouth sounds of pleasure or confusion, depending on the situation.

I'm trying to find the humor in it, but of course I can't and instead sit there seething.

Yeah, I'm sure my classmates find me equally annoying since I'm always asking questions, and when the teacher asks,"So, who's code doesn't work?" I always raise my hand. But still...

I had a little chat after class with the Teenage Genius about our upcoming assignments. The teacher keeps threatening us with "the big assignment you'll only have 4 days to do" yet he provides no additional info. So I said to T.G., "Yeah, and that's on top of the design assignment we'll have. That's a lot!" He gave me a smug look then replied, "Well, not for me."

I can't wait for him to say something like that to his first boss. Let's hope that by then he's discovered deodorant.

The OTHER Deck in Iain's life

The following is verbatim:

Iain: "Well, my baby's all wrapped up for the night!"
Me: "Yeah, I'm glad to be home."
Iain: "I was talking about the deck."

For the last week, Iain's gone outside in the evening and covered the deck with a huge tarp to protect it from dew or night rain. Then in the morning, the tarp comes off so it can dry out in the sun.

To increase the amount of sunlight hitting Iain's baby, check out the pruning job.

All I have to say is, it had better be nice this weekend so Iain can get the deck stained already, or that tarp's gonna be a body bag!

Anniversary!

Our anniversary is May 27th, which is a Tuesday. Puke.

We discussed it. At length. I mean - for real - we talked about it for days. We weren't sure what to do. We checked out Cuisine.co.nz and Metro magazine's Top 50 Restaurants 2008 issue. This only added to the confusion because there are tons of amazing restaurants here, depending on what kind of celebration we wanted. We finally agreed on some key points:

1. celebrating on the actual day sucks because I have school the next day and Iain has work
2. celebrating the Saturday night before might've worked if we'd gotten on the ball sooner and made reservations in time
3. a quiet romantic meal on the weekend is nice but hanging out during the day when everyone else is at work is FUN

I have off next Monday and Tuesday, so Iain is going to take a vacation day. We're going to celebrate our anniversary a week early by taking the bus into town on Monday for drinks overlooking the harbor followed by a long, leisurely lunch in Herne Bay (a cool neighborhood next to Ponsonby - an even cooler neighborhood). I cannot wait.

We're going to a place called Andiamo (http://www.andiamo.co.nz). We had a drink at Andiamo back in 2005 when Iain brought me to New Zealand for the first time. We'd just come from dinner with our friend Toni and stopped in while walking back to our motel. I always thought it would be a neat idea to go back there - a "we've come full circle" sorta thing. I mentioned this to Iain ("Isn't that so cool? Don't you remember having a drink there??") who had no idea what I was referring to, but said, "I'll take your word for it..."

Here is a disgustingly cute picture of the cats, taken this morning.

It's Fall here

A bunch of my classmates have been sick, including the guy who sits next to me, so of course now I have it. I think I do, anyway -- I'm not 100% SICK, but I don't feel so hotsy.

This wouldn't be such a big deal, but we have a long weekend coming up so I am doing everything in my power not to get sick.

Our plans for the weekend include:

1. Staining the deck - finally! It's supposed to be sunny this weekend so Iain is going to take advantage of a few dry days.

2. Hooking up with Melanie and Brian -- visiting town from Wellington (RT folks will know who these guys are). They're up here filming stuff for a DVD they're producing.

3. Having a very long overdue dinner with a few of our Auckland friends. Socializing with others (Blue & Tama don't count) is definitely needed as Iain and I have spent the last 3 or 4 weekends by ourselves. We have a great time together but recognize that it's probably not the healthiest thing to always do that...

4. Hitting the library for some trash novels to read at night. Paperbacks over here cost as much as hardcover -- I don't get it but I refuse to drop $27 for a stupid Jonathan Kellerman thriller that I'll finish in 4 days. I have to read before falling asleep (Iain just turns the light out and he's asleep -- literally) so I've been recycling old books, but it's getting desperate.

5. Iain is getting a haircut. I desperately need one, as well, now that I think about it. My last cut was - holy crap - November 30th!! (I just looked at the calendar). Yikes!

Public Transportation

Things I Like About Taking the Bus in Auckland:

1. the drivers are friendly and actually speak to you
2. they also give change
3. if you ask nicely, they'll let you off right where you want to be dropped off, not at the actual bus stop
4. the people on the bus are friendly (mostly) and quiet (mostly)
5. people don't talk on their cell phones - they text
6. the bus is clean - you can actually put your bag on the ground and not worry about setting it down onto gum, or spilled diet Coke, or worse...
7. people (including kids) actually follow the "reserve this seat for the elderly" rule
8. there's a lot of them -- you can get pretty much anywhere, including the 'burbs
9. there's no advertisements anywhere on the bus

Things I Don't Like:

1. there's no advertisements anywhere on the bus
2. I'm on the bus for 2 hours every day (though it beats driving)
3. the regulars: the guy who smells like dirty hair who often sits RIGHT in front of me, the grody chainsmoker lady who reeks, the guy who gets off right before my stop who never wears deodorant

Unfortunately, the guy in the picture is not a regular. His outfit was so much better from the front but I obviously couldn't get a shot. He was 100% color coordinated in orange and dark orange, right down to his socks, a dark orange ribbon around his wrist, and what I'm assuming was an orange ascot around his neck. He sounded like a Kiwi Paul Lynde and was VERY chatty. He'd just purchased the umbrella stand he's carrying and couldn't have been more pleased. I thought, "Oh my god - I hope this guy takes the bus all the time!" but I've only seen him once.

Happy Hour!

Thanks to the miracle of Skype and webcams, we enjoyed an almost three hour call yesterday with Danielle and Nam in NYC. We we gossiped, we had a few drinks, we caught up. It was awesome, and free! Nam took some pictures of us from their webcam and sent them.

Where the other half lives...

The last few weekends have been pretty quiet -- Saturdays we hang out together, and Sundays I work on my code while Iain does housework.

We've ventured out to some of the cool neighborhoods for window shopping and lunch. Auckland is really spread out and there are some amazing areas. It’s really neat to see these places because now I know where I can go to buy gifts, or clothes (eventually – not now). Like any trendy shopping area, you’ve got to be careful. I bought a card and it was $9 - come ON. But the store was really beautiful.

Here are some pictures. The first 4 are of Mission Bay -- it's all along the coastline (see brunch pictures) and has some of the priciest real estate in the area. It reminds me of a less-flashy La Jolla, CA.






Here are some pictures of Ponsonby, which is a super cool neighborhood within the city -- lots of fun shops and restaurants:





Last weekend we visited Parnell, another beautiful neighborhood, but I didn't have my camera. Next time!

Saturdays

Now that we’re on one income, we've had to be creative and develop new, cheap ways of entertaining ourselves. Enter NZ music television – we’re obsessed with watching videos while enjoying a few drinks and dinner at home. This has lead to many inane convos like “I totally didn’t appreciate The Smiths when they were together!” or “Kenny Loggins sucked. I mean, come ON.” or “You know – Guns ‘n Roses really knew how to make a video.” Sometimes (usually after the 2nd Cosmopolitan) we get goofy and start downloading the songs from LimeWire. But, I usually end up going back and deleting these the next day – Def Leppard’s “Photograph” doesn’t sound so “totally kick-ass” at 10am on Sunday morning.

Four Seasons in One Day

The weather has been pretty psycho – rainy and cold in the morning, then gets hot and sunny during the day with occassional rain, then gets cold again at night. I cannot dress appropriately no matter how much planning I do (and my inability to accurately convert Celsius to Fahrenheit doesn't help).

What's cool is that NZ weather reports also provide information on Australia and the Pacific Islands like Fiji and Samoa.

Hopefully when I get a job next year we’ll be able to check out some of these places.
(that little speck to the lower right of Australia is New Zealand)

Geeks Rule!

I love the geeks! The youngest one helped me big time today with JavaScript.

JS is giving me scary flashbacks to my college calculus days, specifically the time when the teacher said, “I’m sorry – there’s nothing more I can do for you.”

I am hoping that JS eventually clicks.

Iain suggested that I score some before-class tutorials with the geeks by offering to buy them booze or cigarettes. Then he realized that’s illegal, but I’m willing to bend the moral rules a little if it means I learn these programs.

Iain cleans the deck! (not this Deck, the one outside)

It's been weeks and a lot of false starts due to rain but Iain finally finished cleaning our deck in preparation for staining. Now we just need 3-4 days with no rain -- good luck. It's rained every day for the last 2 weeks.

Footage!

Here is mindblowingly insane footage of my daily afternoon bus trip home from downtown Auckland over the bridge to the North Shore. NSFW!!!!!!! I'm kidding-- it's fine.

Sorry for the shakiness and quick cuts.

It's 22 o'clock

I guess that's late -- who the hell knows. Nothing is on TV right now.

I'm trying to adjust to military time over here to align myself with important schedules like the SkyTV (eg. DirecTV) television schedule. Example: "Hey Iain - 'Survivor' is on at, um, wait - what the - hang on - I think that's 8pm? Is that right? What's 20:00?!"

After writing code for 4 hours a day, I'm not too sharp.

Our internet has been down for the last day and a half, leading to much stress and panic. Thankfully, Iain has figured out the problem and we are back online. The best part is that our re-established connection is 10x faster than before -- I downloaded "How I Met Your Mother", "Desperate Housewives" (don't make fun of me), and 8 songs in less than an hour. Ironically, the show I am frothing at the mouth for ("Lost") is not yet uploaded to iTunes, which is infuriating since the show airs on Thursday night EST and it's currently Friday EST.

Oh my god - I just checked again and it's still not posted.

Because of our internet woes, I haven't been able to post any pictures, but stay tuned for thrilling shots of Iain's clean deck, food we've eaten, cats... the usual stuff.

It's 23:19 and I think that means it's past my bedtime. Or maybe it means it's time to eat that can of Wattie's spaghetti in the cupboard that's calling my name? No. I think it's time for bed.