November Highlights

Spring has arrived in our little place here in New Zealand.
There have been some delays in posting for so many reasons. My trip to Europe was such a whirlwind with next to no internet access. They when I returned to Oregon, the focus was on seeing friends and family. Then I returned to my New Zealand home and had one virus after another. The last one was rather mono-like in its intense fatigue nature. I was off work for over 3 weeks, and then only had energy to work part time. In the middle of all this, we decided to accept a dual job offer in Italy!

Which has a lot of interesting advantages... the first that comes to mind is that it will be my 4th summer in a row!

So now that I have energy, and in a few more weeks significantly more time, I hope to do a bit of 'back-posting.'

But for now, here are some recent events...

The piano dissection! My lovely landlord acquired a piano for me. A stray piano if you will. But as with any stray, there are sometimes unknown problems. When we called in the piano tuner, he basically said to put the thing down. He tried to tune it, but alas the keys stuck, the octaves didn't match, and it sort of hurt to listen to after awhile. Today it was decided that we would use some local help and take it to the dump... but the plan began to evolve. You can't really toss a piano out... and wouldn't be easier to savage a few pieces.. and look we're in front of a tool shed... Yes, it was quite a day!

The musical last rites, sorely out of tune, but that was to be expected:

We started taking it apart:

Removing the keys...
Cutting away the glued together bits
Cutting off the strings, one-by-one, which produces the strangest scale you've ever heard!Traveler protected himself from the noise

And crow/wrecking bars were employedAny wood that couldn't be reused, we cut into firewood -- please don't hate me instrument lovers out there....
And that was that. I learned so much about how a piano was put together. This is my favourite bit:
Cat Adoption: Two nights ago I walked into our cottage, then remembered I left something in the car, turned to go back outside-- and there was a CAT at the door. Pretty persistent fellow really. It didn't take long to realize that it was a lost cat.. and given its skinny frame, it had been lost for sometime. His ears are missing bits. But he is really beautiful and has a bit of personality. We'll be taking it to the SPCA to check if anyone is missing it, but for the next couple days he seems happy to have picked us as his personal chefs.

We'll see how he gets along with the chooks

Lime harvest: A year ago, we planted a lime tree to commemorate an unrealized dream. We also rather like limes and find that they can be hard to come by in NZ. Well, a year later we have harvested our first, and only, lime. It was a lovely treat to squeeze on our pad thai that night while we watched the sunset. This time we were marking the transition from my job in NZ to taking some time off before our next move.


Racing: I've also started racing the pair, which is a grand adventure of trying to balance a tipsy boat (often on less than perfect water) and row in sync with the girl behind you. Technically she is following me, but I still have to row as well as I can.. and well, since I've only been doing this for a year, I am not exactly a perfect role model. But we're having heaps of fun and getting better and better quickly. I honestly think I have best best pairs partner for me in the world.