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.

Rowing start of the season

Wellington Redding Sheild - Start of 2009-2010 season - 500 m race
We borrowed some surf rowing girls, we caught a few crabs, we didn't win much, but it was so nice to be back racing!



where spectators watch perched over these huge pier gaps!




Porirua Regatta - 1500 m race - first ever race for us in the pair
The pair was so scary because I had no idea what we were doing. We had to stop when two boats crashed between them. We went around by leaving the course, then managed to 'steer' all the way to the other side of the course. I hear that we did some good rowing in there somewhere, but mostly I just felt horrid about the steering.



Korokoro - 2km race - practically our home court 'water'
Our second race in the pair. Now we know how to almost balance the boat. Our catches are getting there, but dang, still have a steering problem. This time I think it was mostly due to the side wind. I really thought our rowing was cleaner and faster. Also got to race in 2 eights -- once in an under 17 race -hehehe. And then in the open women's 8 we had to borrow one of the guys to fill the seat. But man those boats were flying. Such fun.


mate in single

sick sick sick

As if the swine flu wasn't enough. Nor was the second flu I had. No I had to get another virus, one that sent me to bed for nearly 3 weeks, and then reduced me to a fatigued pile of tears after four hours of work each day. Two weeks of 4 hour days four days a week, and I could just barely manage to go back to full time work.
One day in there I took a vacation from my bed and went for a ten minute walk on the beach at the bottom of our hill. There was a wee fort someone had built and I just wanted to curl in and hid away for a bit.



And a tree that I even stopped to photograph... too bad I didn't remember it when we were racing the pair along the beach and we nearly SMASHED into it a few weeks later. Oops. Driving backwards in a boat is not my forte.

I was one sick girl. Fever, infection, glassy eyes, but I was most impressed with my neck. Do notice the swollen neck. My lymph nodes took almost 5 weeks to return to normal!

Europe - Sans photos

Day 2 of my week 0'Europe adventures:

Iceland - Stark beauty that makes you breath slowly and stare constantly. The people and hte land were so lovely. 9 hours wandering a town on next to know sleep is an adventure, but I found good company, great food, and thoroughly enjoyed soaking in the blue lagoon hot pools.

London - Ummm a bit of a constrast going from 300k population to London. Gatwick airport alone is more people than I've seen in months. I was touched by seeing bits of humanity in the security workers... a young man crouching down to encourage a toddler to walk through the metal detector and his coworker getting down to have a little wee conversation with the kid. A women lifting up her shift an inch to prove she didn't have a belt, and all the laughs when the security guard joked that he's never had such luck getting girls to flash him before. It made the cattle truck feel of security lines so much more bareable.

Next up, Genoa... we'll see how it goes!

Volcanos from the sky

Our inflight entertainment from Seattle to PDX was volcano after volcano after volcano. It is fair to say that 'the mountains were out' which is such a rare thing in the rainy Northwest.

Reiner

St Helens




Mt Hood

American High school


PDX and the Max Line