Christmas Tradition

The wind dropped from 40 mph to 0 today, so we took full advantage. Sunset. Bocce ("petanque", it turns out, is what it is called here after lots of searching). Margarita. Merry Christmas.

Barbie would like to add that there were lots of cute dogs to play with.

New Plan

Ok, we were going to try and backlog all of the funny things that have happened to us in the last 2 months. Fail. We both kept waiting for the other person to do it. We decided that if we have to backlog everything neither of us would ever end up posting and then more cool things would happen, and it would become too overwhelming. So here are pictures of our new place. It's a work in progress, but it's pretty cool. If you don't believe me, come here yourself and see. Consider yourself up to date.

The Bedroom.

The unfinished office/sewing room.

The bathroom. Mold free since 2010.

The commode. Yes, they are all like that.

The living room. That color of green is "Happy Hour".

The bay window is huge. I had to talk Aaron into laying down to show you.

It will make a very nice bed for lucky visitors.

The Kitchen. I do some of my best work here.

The fridge is the height of my shoulders. No joke. Kiwis are cute like that. And they don't even try to be.

The sheltered outdoor area. Home to future plants. And more cleaning.

It's a hot tub! Book your tickets now to avoid blackout dates.

The view from the bay window.

moving day

backlog 10/13/2010:

We moved into our new place yesterday. There were many many trips back and forth to get all of our stuff, the usual. We went over all of the items in the house with the landlord, and determined their condition (while doing this, a cupboard door fell into my hands and another door's slats fell out). It was fun chit-chatting with him, until he had to go to class. lots of lifting, cleaning, and moving, but at the end of the day all of our stuff was in one place. hopefully, the place it will remain for 2 years.

Christmas in September

Backlog 9/30/2010:

So when we were deciding which clothes to pack on the plane with us, and which to ship via FedEx, I thought..."Oh, we are moving in the Spring. I'll take some t-shirts and a fleece jacket".

Bad decision.

Though, technically Spring, it felt more like late Autumn. We were freezing. People rarely saw us without our fleece and many layers. Our FedEx packages, were actually supposed to beat us here, but we knew they would probably be a few days late. Try a few weeks late.

When the FedEx man rang our door today I had to fight the urge to hug him. Seriously. He lugged in all of our numerous boxes and we went after them like a fat kid at Baskin Robbins

We couldn't believe all of the really cool things we packed that we had totally forgot about. Sweaters. Martini Shaker. Knitted Angler Fish. Scrabble. (on a side note, we played Scrabble for about 8 consecutive days after receiving it). Unwrapping it all with a steaming cup of coffee, it acutally felt like Christmas. And like we were a bit closer to being home. (cue gay music).

The pretty house

Backblog 9/27/2010:

Until recently, our house hunting adventures have been pretty slow and disappointing. However, we recently made strides in this area with a couple recent viewings. Well. Maybe it's more like 1 step forward, 2 steps back. We found a place that is pretty nice and has a lot of potential, but definitely needs a bit of TLC. With a bit of effort though, it could be pretty awesome. I'm stoked. Barbie....well, she got hung up on another unaffordable one that became known as "the pretty house". Story time:

Driving back from TLC house, after I put our names down as interested despite B's hesitation. Here it comes: Tears. Turmoil. Pull over.....
...
What's wrong?
(through snot and quivering/blubbering) "I wanna live in the pretty house!"
"...There there."
We signed a lease for TLC place a couple days later after negotiating a new fridge, shower head, curtains, and paint. We don't get to move in til mid-October.

Bonnie

Backblog 9/23/2010:

Meet Bonnie, our new wheels. We got her from a pregnant Scottish woman. A 1996 Toyota Rav4. All-wheel drive. All-around bitchin'. We took it for a test drive and decided we wanted it. All is well. Transferred some money online, etc. Next day, pick it up. Drive 1 km (that's like 10 miles or something) to the post office where we registered it. When we get there, the driver's door handle doesn't work. Boo. Suck. Trapped inside. Open it from the outside. Not cool. But, despite Barbie's lack of faith in her "dot E D U" man, I took the door apart and fixed it. Better. She's been good to us ever since and has really made buying/moving things much easier.

Bank

Time to get a bank account landing pad for my fat postdoc paycheck. Cue National Band NZed (think "z"). We're getting things setup and homeslice asks if we want an "eftpos" card (That's right. A what? F-possy? F-p...? What?) or a Visa debit card. Some inquiring determines that an "eftpos" allows direct debits at local shops in New Zealand. A Visa debit is what you think it is and work like you think it should. Cue me..."why would anyone get just an EFTPOS card?"
Reply: "Visa debit is new to New Zealand as of July."
....
What? I thought I moved to New Zealand, not 2001.

Arrived

We arrived 1.5 days later. It was 9:30am on Friday. We arrived at our temporary accomodations. All we wanted to do was to shower. That was it. It had been 2 or 3 days since our last hot shower. No. The hot water had just been turned on...Sigh. So we took it to the streets. We walked downtown and took in some sites.

Problem. It is windy here. Second problem. It rains hard. And sideways. We grabbed a huge burger at a local joint. We managed to sign up for cell phone service. Well, kind of. It's a bit different here. And then we grabbed a much needed beer at Macs, down by the water.

When we arrived at our new diggs on Collier Ave., we were cold, wet, and tired. But a hot shower finally awaited us. We managed to stay up to 10pm. Done.

Last minute departure

It's a couple weeks later, but we'll try and document for the 2.5 interested people what we've been up to lately. Let's start from the top.

Random friend (RF) circa September 11: When are you leaving?
Us: Um. Probably in 4 days.
RF: What do you mean "probably"?
Us: Well, we got our visas yesterday, so the 15th feels good.
RF: ....

I probably had about 30 of these conversations. At first I thought this wasn't a big deal, but everyone's consistent reaction made me nervous. Needless to say, the last week before our departure was a stressful scramble. We didn't get our visas until Friday. Sunday I got in touch with the kiwis to buy us tickets (they wouldn't buy them until we had visas). Monday we had tickets. Wednesday we left.

A post

It's Friday night. We have no friends. We made a blog.

Details will come in due time. But with our unreliable stolen internet, we're just happy to have this thing up and going.