08/10/05 11:30PM. Ok, so here is a blog update cause people were starting to bug me about updating the blog. Its not much, but since we have a visitor, we'll probably be doing more "photo op" stuff over the next few months. Enjoy!

07/31/05 10:32AM So... Its been a couple months now! Ok, here is whats going on in no particular order:

Lets see, they posted the videos for the finalists online, so if you had trouble watching our 48hour video race entry from our last blog entry, you can watch our 48 hour video race video here (you can also watch the videos that beat us, which might be more interesting.)

We've met most of the council requirements for our house, but before the council will issue our final consent, we need to finish the fancy metalwork around the shower and bath and we have to install the hot tub on the patio off the bathroom and surround it with enough wood that will prevent kids from getting lost and finding themselves in Motukarara, then accidently tripping and travelling the 360 feet up our driveway, then another 50 or so feet before accidently lifting the lid off the hot tub and falling into it headfirst and drowning. If the sun really comes out today, i can finish painting the corrugated iron for the ceiling of the hot tub patio, which should be the last thing we need to do before the hot tub arrives.

We bought 1,000 bricks from the classifieds (took 4 loads in the prime minister) and are using them to line paths. 1,000 bricks sounds like a lot, but its only gonna barely outline the path to the clothesline garden and from the drive to the front door. Governor's bay transport was supposed to deliver 7 cubic meters of gravel for the paths but still havent. In fact, Governor's bay transport was supposed to give us a bid to put a top coat of gravel onto our driveway like 5 weeks ago. I have no idea what we did wrong to get onto their "your money isnt worth hurrying for" list.

So probably the biggest thing we've been working on is relocating a second house. Whats that? a second house? are we insane? Well, probably. The idea all along was that once the house was nearing completion we'd scrap together the last of our dimes and buy a big garage to become a garage and workshop. We were driving around some of the yards of building relocators to see if anybody had any old garages to relocate (or buildings that we could turn into garage/workshops). We didnt find any, but we did find a house that was pretty cheap. Regina suggested that we could turn half into a workshop and half into a holiday home for my mom. Since Dad died, we haven't been sure what mom wants to do with herself, but at least by having a house down here, she could bounce between hemispheres visiting her kids and have a place to entertain guests like grandbaby Flora.

Anyways, here are some random images. This is the building plan for the new house. You can see how the main hallway naturally divides it up between workshop and guest house. Here is the effluent waste disposal plan, which shows the relative placement of the new house to the old... as well as showing the location and size of our sewer pipe, which is exciting, i'm sure. Also, if you are REALLY REALLY bored or curious, here is an old photo blog of the new house that we made in march to show my mom what the house looked like. The captions arent witty, they were just trying to show what needed to be done. (ok, it could be argued that none of my captions are ever witty, but in this particular case, i wasnt trying.)

So we effectively have 3 neighbors. Across the street is a farm belonging to a nice lady and her son and her son's friend (i think thats right.). I met them once when i went to introduce myself, then once when they came over to say hi. Thats been about it. I think we ran into them at the grocery store once. Next door on our shed side is a farm that when we first moved in was rented by people that liked to listen to the worst of 70s classic rock at amphitheater volumes at 3am. Its pretty remarkable, cause, its not like we are all up in each other's faces. I mean, you gotta have some serious speakers to annoy the neighbors that are like 1,500 feet away. Anyways, they were renting and they moved out. After awhile, the owners, Brendon and Michelle, decided to renovate the house and move in. The two of them are young and nice and don't have kids, so i'm rather looking forward to having them nearby. When we helped them with their cows, they gave us a big bag of awesome ice cream bars that Brandon (i dont know how to spell his name, so i'll just keep changing it and eventually get it right) got from work (Brendan works for a dairy.) so obviously I really like them.

Next door on the other side was the Slades. They just recently moved to Chicago. I guess we got along with them. They had us over for New Year's and it was nice. We never had uncordial words, but I could never shake the feeling that they distrusted me... like, you know, the deep kind of distrust, like I was a convicted child molestor or they found my closed circuit video camera mounted in their attic or my shed filled with bloody cleavers and dismembered women's feet... that kinda of thing. Ok, maybe not that bad, but I definitely got a distrust vibe and that made me distrusting and that probably enhanced (or created) any distrust they were feeling (if they were feeling it)... It was probably all in my head, but it meant that i was always kinda on edge when they were around and while i think we made perfectly good neighbors, i dunno if we were really "friends". (Our next door neighbors in dallas, the Greiners, were very good friends, so i probably had unrealistic expectations.)

So the Slades moved away and rumors of "horse people" moving into their house had spread through the neighborhood. (ok, i only really know 5 or so people in motukarara, but they all had heard of the horse people moving in.) I dont know why anybody would categorize anybody else in Motukarara as "horse people", cause i think that until the Slades moved, both of our next door neighbors and ourselves were the only people in all of Motukarara without horses. So it seems that it should be "more of our kind moving in" or something, rather than "horse people". On the other hand, every time i heard the term "horse people", i kinda visualized some kind of genetic freaks with half horse-heads and people necks. I dont know why horse people would only be "horse head people", but thats the image that came to mind and it was kinda freaky.

Ok, i'm rambling more than usual. (See what happens when i dont have pictures to caption?)

So the new neighbors moved in and i walked over to introduce myself. Thankfully, they had human heads. After talking for several minutes about horses, ping pong, building renovations, more about horses (they are, after all, "horse people") and such, he got a far away look in his eye and asked "your wife doesnt have a blog online where you talk about renovating your house, does she?"

Um. well. Yeah. hehe. we do.

Ok, so the new neighbor had done a google search for "motukarara" and at some point the google spiders found this page right here (there are no public links to the blog on our site, so i didnt think the spiders would find it.) So now I still dont know much of anything about the new neighbors, but they know ALL about us. (cue spooky music.)

Boy, i hope the NEW neighbors dont find out about my shed of bloody cleavers. I mean... oops. hehe

ok ok ok. i'll try to take more pictures for the next update and ramble less. cheers!

05/26/05 6:31PM. Yeah, OK. Its been a long time since i updated the blog. I really lost my steam in January for working on the house. It just seems to drag out forever. Around that same time, and most likely related to my funk, my dad went into "hospice" care. That basically meant that the doctors felt he was close to death and anything to prolong his life was just cruel to him. If you didnt already know, Dad had PSP, progressive supernuclear palsy. Its a neurological disorder that attacks the parts of the brain that control the body, but leave the mind fairly intact. As the disease progressed, he became less and less capable of communication, but still had all his memories and faculties and would laugh at the most obscure references to childhood events. He described himself as "good computer, bad monitor."

Dad had declined quite a bit while mom was visiting us over Christmas. When she got back they scheduled to go on a cruise together. Kelly and Rhonda joined them and seemed to have a really great time. I signed up for broadband internet in January so I could video chat with mom and dad and not feel quite so far away. It helped... to a point.

Its all a blur in my head and the dates arent really important, but dad suffered a stroke and became immobilized except for minor hand/foot motions and blinking his left eye. The dsl was finally installed just after the stroke so the video chats were with mom trying to interpret dad. Dad could still communicate yes/no clearly and indicated strongly that he wanted us to come and visit in person so we packed up and regina and I headed to houston for several weeks. The visit was nice, but a couple days after we got back to NZ, dad died.

I dont really like talking about my dad much. Its really painful for me. I'll simply say this: he was a really great dad. I know it wont make you weepy like it does me, but you can listen to the one recording i know to exist of my dad playing trumpet. This recording was a good 10 years after he stopped playing professionally, but he still has some strong chops.

So a few weeks ago my neighbor Arron emailed me and asked if I wanted to form a team for a 48 hour video race. Video races are competitions where you are handed a random genre/prop/character/etc and you have a fixed amount of time to create a video using those elements. Regina thought it sounded fun so we signed up with Arron and a friend of his. A lot of our photo blog this time around is pictures of the video race, so if you have the bandwidth to spare, you should watch our 48 hour race video.

So after you watch the video, check out this month's photo blog. It also has photos of the purple house, so there is something there even for people who didnt watch the video.

01/08/05 1:17PM. We just updated our satellite map to show new locations. If you were confused about our local geography, Click Here.

01/1/05 11:44PM. Murry Fishmush! Hoppy Nude Year!. Its been a wild and whacky December, but we hit some exciting milestones. Check it out!

12/01/04 10:33AM. Howdy! After much complaining from folks, i've scrapped together a handful of photos to show our recent progress. Sadly, some rather momentous things... like... us moving into a tent only to have the tent poles snap in high winds, forcing us to move into pippa's sewing room... those arent documented, so they arent really discussed. On the other hand, there are some nifty house photos, so have a look!

10/17/04 10:18AM. Ok, so its about time for another photo update. In addition to finishing our decking, we have been building kitchen shelving and starting to paint. exciting!

09/11/04 3:28PM. So its about time for another photo update. Here it is. Nothing too exciting, so you dont need to change the batteries in the pace makers just yet.

09/05/04 11:18PM. I meant for this to be a lot more interactive, with links and such, but haven't had time. With David tied up with the baby, we've "borrowed" his builder and are busy on our patio and deck projects. I made this diagram in case you were trying to visualize how all the house projects and photos tied together.

08/31/04 11:56PM. Well. We have a new face to show you guys. I hope you like new faces.

08/10/04 4:38AM. Ok, its been awhile since i did a photo index update, so here goes the July Update. Its a bit thin on photos but its nice and heavy on words to make up for it. Hehe. enjoy!

07/17/04 11:09am. Zipedee hoo hah! We have visible progress! I have to run to help david move giant 12 meter long roof panels up onto his house, but i thought i'd drop off another interactive multimedia extravaganza (ok, its really only one media, but who is counting?). It not only shows the successful cutting and installation of the USA bar into the kitchen, but if you look up, you'll see that thanks to david and a pneumatic lift that i rented, we now have all our CEILINGS installed! woohoo! Can you spot regina and lulu? (This is another quicktime vr file, so if you are having trouble viewing it, please see the note from the last qtvr.) Cheers!

07/05/04 10:32am. Well, everything is coming along, although slow at times. We were awoken this morning at 8:30am (about 25 minutes after regina got to bed after working a 12 hour night shift) by the bunnings truck delivering our sheetrock for the ceiling. It was supposed to arrive this afternoon, giving us time to clean up a spot for it. Instead, we had the pleasure of a mad panic cleanup. A couple days ago I helped david and two of his friends move 20 or so roofing slabs down his goat track, i mean, steep driveway. The slabs were corrugated roofing iron and a flat sheetmetal sheet adhered to either side of around 10 inches of styrofoam. The panels were around 35 feet long and weighed about 275lbs each. Today's sheetrock, some as long as 14 feet, has "reminded" my back muscles about this weekend's lift-a-thon at david's house.

So, a lot of what we've been doing is boring to look at. Putting up insulation in the attic, tape and floating the walls. ho hum. So, in order to reward our vigilant viewers, I put together this little photo gallery of "Products that you probably wouldnt see on store shelves in north america." Enjoy.

06/14/04 8:50 pm. So today we worked on the house. HAHA! of course we did. Thats basically all we do! No wait, a few days ago we went ice skating for Regina's friend's going away party. (Her friend spends a few months each year working on fishing boats in alaska.) The good part of the evening is that both Regina and I are equally skilled on the ice. The bad part is that we are both terrible ice skaters. The rink consisted of our group, and teenagers zipping around really fast, making out with each other and... texting each other on their cellphones WHILE skating. I've never felt so old.

So our insulation FINALLY arrived and we've been shoving it up into the attic. In theory, putting insulation in the attic sounds easy, but dragging those big bales around and poking them between joists and then once you get the stuff in the attic, maneuvering it around and cutting it while balanced on the narrow ends of boards on your knees... it was much harder than we thought. But... we are more than halfway finished and the house is seeming warmer already, so hurrah for that.

I went up on the roof today to remove and patch vent pipes we are no longer using and and was overwhelmed by how nice the view was. Its nice from the ground too, but i thought it was even more dramatic from the roof... so, i took my camera back up and created a panoramic vista-tastic viewliscious interactive virtual reality experience so you can share the awe. (this link is a quicktime movie and may require you to have quicktime installed. if you are on a mac, no problem. if you are on a pc, you might have to download and install quicktime from apple). Once the movie is open, you can navigate around the farm by clicking and dragging on the image. Can you find north??

Enjoy!

06/03/04 10:17pm Holy Moley, today was eventful. So, i stayed up until 3am updating the blog, then searched the online classifieds for bargains. We have a washing machine, but no clothesline (or dryer, but nobody uses those here.) Regina found several for sale last week, but each was sold by the time i called. Since the classifieds paper comes out today, we woke up around 8 and I called an ad for a rotary clothesline for $25. (they are normally as much as $350, new). The "catch" is that the clothesline was still in the ground and it was the buyer's job to dig it up. So, i made an appointment for 10am and while regina ran some errands of her own, i set out with my shovel.

In NZ they have a disturbing trend of building "back lots", which is literally building a house in your back yard that you sell. So lots of time you'll have a normal house and driveway, but behind that, instead of yard, is a neighbor. Well, this guy lived on the back block, and decided he wanted a front yard so he bought the house in front and had it relocated and was turning the front lot into a big lawn. All that was left of the front lot house was the foundation and the clothesline. After dismantling the clothesline (the owner kept trying to get me to put the line on the back of the truck, but the thing was a pentagon about 10 feet across and would hang way off in either direction.) So, after wiggling and wriggling, I got the dismantled clothesline in the back of the truck and noticed that there were lots of bricks and "pavers" (concrete squares and circles that you put down to walk on instead of a sidewalk). I asked the owner about them and he told me anything i wanted from the remains was fair game... so i loaded up the prime minister with bricks and concrete and big decorative rocks until she couldnt hold any more and headed home.

I caught back up with regina at the house and we unloaded all the bounty, then dug a hole and set the clothesline in place. It took us a long time and lots of wrangling to get all the poles and wires back in the right place, but we did it. After our victory, we headed into town to eat at the local hari krishna restaurant. Its downtown, so its not nearly as cool as kalachandjis in dallas, but its pretty much as tasty, and its only $3.95 for the lunch special, which is like $2.50USD, so its a good deal. Then, we went by a light store to pick up some more lights for the house, then to the hardware store to buy some more building supplies and paint brushes, then we headed off to the paint store, where regina solidified her plans for the various colors throughout the house. We loaded up the prime minister with 100 liters or so of paint, (which, by the way costs about 4x more here) then headed home for dinner, after which we settled in to bed to watch a james bond movie on our home theater. (a laptop with a pile of james bond VCDs that david bought in malaysia before DVDs were out.) About 20 minutes into "for your eyes only", regina said "is somebody outside?" to which i promptly replied "no." There were some really strange sounds outside, but i remained calm, because that meant staying in bed where it was warm. About 2 minutes later there was a knock on our back door, and it was our neighbor on the north side. Well, as it turns out, his cows had gone nuts and busted through the fence and were now running around outside our house.

So this is really the whole reason for this blog update, since "we bought a clothesline" isnt *that* exciting. However, having to pause a james bond movie, get out of bed, toss on gumboots and herd big mean cows away from your house (not the fuzzy cute cows, these are the mean cows from the other side) by running around, waving our arms and yelling things like "hey stupid cow! i'm gonna get you!"... THAT is a memorable event. It turned out that the fence was beyond repair tonight, so i offered our woods as a temporary paddock. We chased the cows into the woods, then i guarded the opening while the neighbor and his son went off and got supplies to build a barricade to keep the cows in the woods. Meanwhile, all the cute fuzzy cows were all excited so they were charging around yelling which made the mean cows yell and snort and stamp around and... Well, after having 30 giant animals charging around and bellowing frantically (and loudly)... the part where bond has to knock hired killers off motorcycles by whacking them with a board (no, not that time, that time he uses a tree branch... no, not that time either, the time where its not a regular board, but its a painte board from an old guard crossing... yeah, that one) well, it just seemed less exciting somehow.

Ok, so thats our exciting text-only blog of a fairly eventful day. In one day we managed to update a web diary, unearth and re-plant a clothesline... uh... EAT... uh... visit a light store AND a hardware store... then buy paint, eat AGAIN, watch a bond movie AND chase angry cows away from our cars and sheds into our woods. Its a full day, really. Tomorrow we plan on surfing a lava flow, knocking at least 5 assasins off of motorcycles using various boards, chase down a herd of rabid pigs AND... we might eat a BAGEL! Stay tuned!

06/03/04 2:11am Good Grief! Has it been a month already?? We'll, this has been a very busy and a very productive month... even if the effort wasnt directed towards blog updates. hehe. We have hot water! woohoo! So we finally have most of the creature comforts to make the farm seem less like camping and more like moving prematurely into our new home. We've spent all our spare time getting ready for our "post lining bracing and nailing check inspection", which we just passed. Woohoo! Anyways, see for yourself what we've been up to in this little ditty that we like to call "The May Update."

05/04/04 8:15 pm. Woohoo! I had to do some rigging to get a u.s. phone plug to connect to the nz phone system, but now that we have a "normal" jack, i was able to hook up the airport. This is the first time we've been online at the farm. Exciting! We plugged in the new fridge (dave named it "darth vader" cause its all stainless and black) and now its full of food. As I type this regina is cooking us dinner on the GE "buffet cooker" hotplate that we purchased to warm the mushroom and the cream gravy at our 10 year wedding anniversary "space" party. (i named the two types of gravy because when i typed "gravies" it looked funny.) Anyways, tonight we are planning on eating some yummy stir fry then cozy in bed to watch a dvd on one of our laptops. go technology!

05/04/04 11:27am It is hard to believe, but we are packing up our stuff to take to the farm. We got our bed out of storage and got one of the rooms walled up enough so that we can move into it while rennovating the rest of the house. For the first week or so i'm sure we'll be going back and forth between david's house and the farm, but it looks like we are at least taking the first big step towards habitation! Here are some photos of our progress towards that goal.

04/18/04 9:04am We have been doing lots of work that isnt documented. Regina installed insulation throughout the house and i've been running all the electrical wiring. However, for this update, we have photos of sheds, roof painting, and what you have all been waiting for... THE GOTHIC!!! Click here to start your "april update" journey.

4/9/04 8:11am Hurrah and Huzzah! The plumber came and hooked up our plumbing. We now have running water and... A WORKING TOILET! yay! No more pooping in the woods!

I've been busy running electrical cabling and regina has been installing insulation into the walls. We are close to ready for our "pre-line" inspection. After that, we can finally put up sheetrock and the house will start to look habitable. (and hopefully will "be" habitable, since David and Pippa have started tearing apart the house we have been staying in.)

Regina and the dogs pose here for a photo with the house. (well, they were posed a few seconds before. The dogs had to have a quick meeting right when the photo was taken.)

3/27/04 10:35am So if a picture is 1000 words, we just posted something like 38,500 words in this photo gallery of "photos of construction and progress" (do words used to describe pictures count more than once?)

3/08/04 10:57am. Ok, so it seems my text descriptions werent good enough for you people! It is likely redundant to stuff below, but here is a new photo gallery of the house and its mighty adventure. Enjoy!

2/27/04 4:36am. Electrician came out yesterday and helped sort out the mess that was our electrical wiring. (Cutting a house in half doesn't really make the wiring "better"). Anyways, he did a bangup job, and now we not only have a power meter, but we have wall sockets and lights! Now we can use power tools into the wee hours! David started removing all the walls from the living room so we can sheetrock them. Given that there are 20 windows in the living room, there is a HEAP of moulding we have to remove before we can re-rock. Wish us luck!

Oh, I almost forgot. we got our first mail! We bought a giant red mailbox and i dug a hole and buried a post and mounted the mailbox and all that semi-rural stuff. Yesterday we got our first mail at the new address... a phone bill. hehe. Anyways, if you wanna update your records, or mail us fabulous goodies, our postal address is officially:

Regina and Andrew Dean
Crazystraw Farm
Park Road, Motukarara
RD2 Christchurch
New Zealand

yay!

2/22/04 12:26am. I don't have any photos at the moment to document what we are doing, as it is taking all our time to actually do them and there isn't anybody left to take pictures. However, in the arcane world of text without photographic support, here is what is going on: The house is down on its piles and just begging to be lived in. We have dug the 140 meter trench to the nearest power pole and had electrical cable as big around as a golf ball run down the trench. Then we buried it 200 millimeters and put some warning tape down the trench, then had telecom come out and bury phone cable. So that last sentence brings up an interesting point. Obviously everything is metrics here. The strange thing is that people almost never use centimeters. They are more likely to use inches than centimeters. Everything is in "mils", often times AFTER you get over a meter. For example, chipboard is sold as 1200x2400 sheets. That is 1.2x2.4 meters, or 120x240centimeters, but for some bizarre reason it is sold in millimeters.2x4s are "50x100mil", not "5x10cm". Anyways, i just find that odd.

So where was I? Oh yeah, Telecom came out and put in the phone service. Having had years of pretending to be a phone guy in the states, i told the installer to put a demarcation on the back of the house and i'd wire up the rest. I assumed that, like in the states, the demark would include access for the customer. Nope. Its just a little white box screwed shut with four security screws that require some funky screwdriver with 3 prongs. They sell the bit for it at local hardware stores, but i dont have one (yet). Anyways, the phone is currently installed and active, but don't bother ringing us, as there isn't a phone attached yet. FYI, our number is "Motukarara 345".

Today Regina and I headed into town and picked up our shower and tub we bought back in october. While at the recycled building supplies place we bought some hinges for an old door and a big rustic wooden gate for the dog yard and some wood to patch some of the pine flooring and some framing timber to frame up the door we bought. (it is to become the back door to the house, but that's the bit that is missing a wall so i have to build a wall first so i can hang a door in it.) The interesting thing about the recycled building materials is that they mostly date back before the metric system was implemented ( i think the 60s), so all the old materials on the house are in inches. (4 inch hinges with 3/4" gaps, 24" openings, etc.) We went back to the land and spent the rest of the day tearing various things apart to see what work we had ahead of us. I guess we don't have to say it, but we have loads of work ahead.

The joists of the house are all 2x5s. not 2x4, not 2x6, but 2x5s. They don't make those any more. So in order to add joists to the part of the house that had no floor (used to be concrete on the old site), i had to buy 2x6s, and cut a 1 inch notch into the board at every spot where it crossed a bearer. We don't have power active yet, so that was a lot of hand sawing and whacking with a chisel. Fun.

Now, as if we didn't have enough work ahead of us... David and Pippa are renovating the house we are living in. So when we've taken a day off from working on our house, it has been to help david and pippa build a retaining wall for their house. I keep thinking that it will be like a Jean Claude Van Dam movie where after being forced into carrying around heavy sacks for several development scenes that I'll end up not only with perfectly chiseled abs (from carrying sacks?) but also suddenly master martial arts when the need arises. I'm not sure who the overacting villain will be, but i hope to be ready to avenge the incredibly weak plot device that my failed character development is using to justify a series of slow motion kickboxing battles. (sorry, but THE QUEST was on tv tonight, where Jean Claude is stilt walking street clown acrobat in the 1920s and his motivation for the battles is to help roger moore steal a big golden dragon from a buddhist temple where the "worlds best fighter" contest goes on so he can take the golden dragon back to new york and use it somehow to take care of his band of street orphans that he befriended. As you can imagine, there were at least a good 10 minutes of sack carrying to get him up for the challenge.) (i cant tell you what happened in the end because i'm really tired from all the digging/hammering/bleeding/etc so i fell asleep soon after the female love interest/journalist showed up to reluctantly cheer him on to victory.)

So, its one of those things that people ask all the time to be cute and it always comes out as annoying... but "isn't it good to have a nurse around?" never ceases to be old. However, today i was glad Regina is a nurse, as I caught my palm between the hammer and chisel, before 5 minutes later gashing my finger on a sharp edge of masonite. Its not that i couldn't have tended to myself, but we didn't have running water and I don't carry around bandaids. However, Regina, ever prepared, had a first aid kit in her backpack complete with sterilizing cleanser, neosporin and bandaids. I don't know if this really has anything to do with her being a nurse, or her just knowing that when i get around tools there is a good likely hood that i'll end up bleeding, and once cut I'll do something stupid like rub dirt onto my wound to "make it clot.". Either way, I was happy she was prepared. (man, whats going to happen after we start with the power tools? hehe)

Ok, thats all for now. If i dont update for a while, infer a lot of exciting tales of sawing, measuring, chiselling, hammering and bleeding.

2/14/04 11:24pm. WooHOO!!! The day (several days, actually) has FINALLY come! Our house has been relocated onto the land! At the moment it is raised up on blocks for the foundation work, but will be dropped on monday. We took the opportunity while it was 5 feet off the ground to staple perforated foil subfloor insulation under the whole house... which is just the right height to either hunch you over or crick your neck looking up! David, Regina, Caitlin, Gemma and Andy all had to work together to wrangle the foil into place in the high winds! (i don't have any photos of any of this, so i'm writing about it. I know, I know, all you want are the photos of the house being moved. FINE. Here they are! Enjoy!

1/25/04 12:44pm. So the driveway is done but is a bit bare. Coincidentally, the digger is coming to David's house to excavate the section for his new house expansion. In the way are hundreds of Agapanthus plants. Rather than bulldoze them to the side to die, David offered them to us to plant around our new driveway. The problem is that we don't have any water on the land yet... so however will we water the freshly transplanted plants??? Click here to find out.

1/22/04 9:27am. Progress! Things are getting done! Last week we received our building and our resource consents! This means that we can move our house! The house relocators now have us on the books for February 9th-11th. (it takes a few days). Whew! Finally!

So you can't very well have a house without a driveway, so we rang up the Governor's Bay Transport and they sent Neil the Digger to come and Dig us a driveway!

1/19/04 9:30pm. We took the day off and headed to Akaroa. We only took a few pictures, but here they are.

1/12/04 5:05am. We had our first visitors! Marc Harty and his friend Katherine passed through Christchurch so we showed them around for the day.

1/02/04 11:40am Ooops. I accidentally pointed the sheep photo gallery to the bonfire photo gallery. If you looked before, look again!

12/31/04 12:18pm.So more than one person has been asking "why haven't you updated your blog?" There is some funky routing problem that is preventing me from accessing the blog site from our dialup account in New Zealand. Very frustrating. Anyways, we seem to have found a workaround so I'm gonna try to catch up before this year ends.

In mid november, we took a walk down to Henk and Aprilla Jacometti's house to meet with their friend who will be our neighbor once we get to move to Motukarara. He was visiting the Jacometti's in order to shear their sheep for them. Here is a photo gallery of that morning.

The house we've been staying in, "David's house" (That's in quotes because Pippa wanted it clarified that while the two of them own houses, they do not live apart and really both houses are "theirs", so when I refer to "David's house" what i really mean is "The house that David already owned before he was married to Pippa and which Regina and I are staying in while we await our house relocation") anyways... what was i saying before the parenthetical departure?... oh yeah, Pippa and David are in the midst of renovating"David's house" which they plan on moving into when the renovations are complete. The first step is to move a bunch of dirt from the back of the house to the front... and in order to do that they have to cut down a bunch of trees... and in order to do THAT... click here to see.

We've been out shopping for appliances since we got here. Here is a fridge that we like.

For the Christmas holidays, David and Pippa took the girls camping. Since Regina had a week off, we headed up and joined them in Golden Bay, a beach on the far north tip of the South Island. It was loads of fun. Here is a photo gallery. Having Christmas in the middle of summer is kinda cool. It is kinda silly though, since shops still spray the fake snow flocking in the windows.

So, that's what's been up for the last month. We are still waiting for council approval before we can relocate the camp kitchen onto our land, but it should be coming any day now.

We want to wish all our friends back in the states a happy holiday season and hope 2004 will be as fun for you as it looks to be for us. Thanks again to everybody who helped us move here!

11/07/03 1:40pm well, hot doggees. We closed on the land on halloween and are now officially farmers! or... at least we are farm owners. At the moment, our new next door neighbor is borrowing our front paddock for a cattle inspect, so here is a photo of a cow on OUR land! mooo!

Halloween was great. David, Pippa and the girls came over and we made caramel apples and toffee popcorn and watched a movie on david's home theater. Aside from the home theater part, it was reminiscent of halloweens as a little kid. Great fun.

The other night we ran out of water. That was a bit of a surprise. It wasn't that big of a deal, since David has a backup water tank on the property that we were able to use, but he had to come over and help to re-prime the pump. Oops. So that's the drawback to using rainwater as your water supply. hehe.

TADAAAAH!!!!! The moment you have all been waiting for has finally arrived! Or, at least, the shipping container you have all been wondering about has finally arrived! You can click here to see the dramatic unveiling and unpacking of our shipping container filled with worldly possessions. It has traveled around the world by boat to meet us! And if you have broadband, here is a 4 meg movie of the really cool truck-crane that they use here to load and unload shipping containers. (They aren't allowed in the u.s. for some political reason, but they work like a champ.)

So everything we own is now in storage until our house arrives. Stay tuned for house moving news!

10/28/03 12:06am Okeedoke. Its funny how stuff is moving at light speed and at a snails pace at the same time. Here are some updates: We have confirmed the purchase of the land. We are scheduled to close on friday, October 31st. Additionally, our shipping container is finally arriving! (its only like 20 days late). It is scheduled to hit port on the 30th of October, and we should be able to claim it on... you guessed it, October 31st. It seems that halloween is continuing to be an important day for us.

Here are some random photos for You to look at.... This is a photo I took out of the window of the car because the light looked really neat. Here is a one when it was really foggy as I took Regina to work. (see that windy road across the hills at the bottom? That is the road we have been commuting to town on.) This last weekend we packed up the dogs and drove down the coast to a secluded beach. They really liked it. As you can see, Petunia is thrilled... and Lulu is savoring the taste of Sea water. Being used to Galveston, I think the ocean water here is a really nice color.

10/08/03 10:19am Well, we got all the contracts for the house and the relocation and the land... so it looks like our plan is in motion. We purchased a salvage tub and shower with fixtures, now we just need a house to plunk them into.

We got an email from the shipping company that our shipping container had "slipped off the ship". Given that 10,000 shipping containers fall into the ocean annually, i found that alarming. It turned out to be a poor choice of words. There wasnt room on the HMC Arizona, so it "slipped" onto the next available ship, the HMC Alice, which is due to arrive October 20th.

I don't have many photos to show you, but i do have this one I took of the opening in the shelter belt where our driveway will pass to get to our house. Snazzy, eh?

9/25/03 1:47pm Its been a crazy few days. We've negotiated back and forth with the land owner and today he accepted an offer from us. Hurrah. SO... for better or worse, we are now embarking on one heck of an adventure in home renovations. Up on the horizon?... We have to contract out a septic system to be installed... or use a dehydrating centrifuge potty like David. (FYI, no chance in heck we are gonna have a centrifuge potty. We are gonna spring the big bucks for a septic system). We have to buy the camp kitchen, petition and pay for permission to move the house and build on the property, pay for the title paperwork on each, pay to have a new foundation for the house laid on our land in Motukarara, pay to have the building moved onto the new foundation, pay to have electricity run out to our home site (that might be *really* expensive), then pay for the electrical and plumbing in the house to be brought up to code, then attach them to the city power and the septic system...

THEN, we get to worry about installing a bathroom and refinishing the floors.

After that, its just a matter of scraping and sanding and painting all the wooden cladding and the metal roof (paint here is around $40/gallon) and installing the water collection system and... oh yeah, build a kitchen and bedroom and add the missing exterior walls and replace some windows with doors and and and...

Get the idea? In the next few weeks our blog updates will slow to a trickle for an indeterminate amount of time. You can assume if it isn't being updated its because we are tending to one of the above items... or one of the many other pressing items that I forgot to mention. hehe. We'll try to update if something interesting happens. (like going to borrow Pippa and David's newspaper.)

9/22/03 8:08am We are still waiting to hear about the offer on the land, but in the meantime we've been madly sketching out plans for the new house and getting design ideas. I found a truck that i liked, but David pointed out that being de-registered would make it very expensive and tedious to get it roadworthy again. Darn.

Yesterday was rather fun. We drove to David and Pippa's to return their newspaper. They weren't home, and we felt like an adventure so we kept driving past their house (after dropping off the newspaper) and kept driving out Banks Peninsula until the road turned to gravel for several miles. Eventually, the gravel road ended at what looked like a gate leading to private property. We drove through it anyways, walked down a little path and came to a foot gate leading to a little beach. Here is a picture of me and regina on the beach. (i'm the one waving hello). I was very excited because you could see out of the harbour to the pacific ocean. One part of the beach was scattered with volcanic rock, the other appeared to have once been a pier.

The beach was a little chilly. We left and drove back to the Gardens at Godley House and fed the birds. From there we could see Lyttleton, where our shipping container will arrive in October. David, Pippa, Gemma and Caitlin all met us at the gardens, rough-housed for a bit, picked up lovely fish n chips takeout and we all had a pleasant evening at Pippa's House. It was a Lovely Day.

9/18/03 4:45pm The camp kitchen is exciting! I want it! We meet with the Motukarara property broker tomorrow. I think we are going to make an offer on the land. -r

9/17/03 1:56pm We've been driving around the country like mad. I've put 1200 kilometers on the ignis in the last 12 days. Most of the time its open road, but several times we've come across *really* brutal traffic. You sit and wait and everybody is yelling at each other. Its really dramatic. Here is a 2.8meg movie David took out the window of some of the worst traffic we've encountered to date.

The 11 acres in Motukarara look pretty promising still. We are going to talk to a "valuator" to see if the land has any issues with it. We cannot afford to construct a new home on the property, but have found a building relocator that will move an existing house to the property for a reasonable price. Regina and Dave and I are going to go out and look at an old forestry "camp kitchen" we are considering relocating to the property. Take a look.

9/11/03 11:17am Well, i guess we had to have some drama before too long and it appears that my body was the volunteer. Woke up at 5am yesterday and drove Regina to work (I'm much more aggressive around the mountain turns and can shave 10-15 minutes off the commute time) when i got home i was oddly tired, but assumed that it was because I got up at 5am. So, i went back to bed, slept for a few hours and woke up freezing cold. It was cold outside, so i didn't think much of it. I made a big roaring fire and it didn't seem to warm me up (odd). so, i went back to bed with an electric blanket and heater and... woke up a half hour later shivering violently. I figured i had a fever but was too delirious to take the warm covers off. I sent text messages back and forth to regina and david and pippa and eventually decided that the heaters weren't working so i got into the ignis and cranked the heater up. This actually worked. my feet and hands stopped feeling cold, but made me nauseated so i puked all over the driveway. Puking made me feel kinda better so i made the ever so smart decision to drive to the city to a doctor (40 minute drive when i'm sentient). I made it to the city limits and completely lost control of my vision. I called dave and pippa they came out to where i was and drove me and the ignis to the nearest medical center. So... at this point i know that most of you are thinking "um. stupid. you had the flu. take tylenol and remove the covers". The thing is, our friend Mark had flu-like symptoms here in new zealand that turned out to be viral meningitis and he ended up having all his limbs amputated. I had never had a flu anywhere NEAR this painful and was paranoid.

So... As it turns out, it was the flu, but in my defense, the nz strains of the flu are very different than the u.s. strains and i had little natural defenses against it. (David said his first nz flu was really bad too) Additionally, the doctor at the after hours surgery (i'll get to that), kept saying that this was the tail end of a particularly horrific flu that normal meds have no effect on.

After more vomiting and anti nausea meds injected into my butt muscle and taking normal meds, my fever really hadn't changed much. It was still around 39.7-40.3 centigrade (103.4 to 104.5 f) and I lost feeling in the tips of my fingers. The medical center was closing so they transferred me to an "after hours surgery" for observation. Its kinda like a halfway step between a normal doctor and a hospital. There i got more shots in the butt and was forced to lie shivering on a table to help bring the fever down. David and Pippa and the girls were all troopers. They not only picked me up by the roadside, but stuck it out with me at both med centers. Eventually regina got off work so Pippa and the girls went and picked her up while dave waited with me.

By around 10pm, my fever was down to around 38c (100f), so they released me to regina and she drove me home. According to the doctor if i am active at all in the next few days, it is highly likely the virus will jump back into action and it will be really nasty. I feel like i was in a car accident, so i doubt i'll be out plowing a field or anything soon.

Ok, so here is the cool part (if there is a cool part), i had two doctors checking on me at two different medical centers. i had various meds including a big stack of codeine to take home with me. I had various booty injections and nurses and doctors checking on me every 20 minutes or so for like 6 hours. The TOTAL charge for all this emergency medical attention?

$41 nz. ($22 usd). Go socialized medicine! I can absolutely say that i received better medical care here than any visit to any doctor in the states that i ever had. (handy tip: puking in the waiting room helps escalate you in the queue.)

The first medical center let me take the cold washcloth with me that was on my head... but asked that i return it to them when i was done with it, since they didnt have all that many. Its times like this that its very clear we are in a different country. I like it. -a

9/08/03 Hi from New Zealand!. I just got back from taking regina to work. Now that i have a few hours, i'll try to catch up on some entries. For starters, i took Regina to work in our new Suzuki Ignis, (yeah, its a weird name) which we picked up last night. Its actually a nice little car. Fairly roomy inside with lots of pep, but still with pretty good mileage. Anything is more fuel efficient and easier to drive than David's Red Landrover, which didn't have power steering of any kind. After finishing parking you felt like you had completed an olympic event. (still, its a might bit more comfortable than David's gray landrover)

One of the reasons we picked the Ignis is that the suzuki dealer here offers a "year for decade no worries" deal. Essentially, for every decade you are old, you get a year of bumper to bumper service. This isn't like those kinds of scams in the states, either. For the covered years they pay for inspections, oil changes, filters, maintenance, repairs, etc. This even includes the brake pads and even wear on the tires. If you have a problem or its time for maintenance, you call them, tell them where the car is parked, and they will drive over, replace your car with a loaner car and take your car back to the shop. When its ready they will do they same in reverse. Unlike in the states where they drag butt to charge you hourly, this dealership is paying for the service so getting it done quickly is important to them... so you get your car back fast. For those covered years you literally only have to pay for insurance (which is way less than in the states) and gas, (which is way more.) Anyways, i'm sure you didn't come to the blog to read an advertisement for a car dealership, but i thought it was pretty cool. Oh, i haggled and we got 4 years of the guarantee.

So this weekend we packed up David's poop colored land rover and Dave drove us out to look at the below mentioned house. The very nice neighbors Hank and Aprilla followed us and gave the house a good look too. Leaving the house, we needed to rush to pick up Gemma from a sleepover, so we headed over to Sumner, a township on the outskirts of Christchurch. Hungry from all the house hunting, we dropped by the beach, and took a minute to pose on some rocks before walking around town and eventually having "rice pizza" and banana pancakes. (not on the same plates). All in all, it was a lovely day.

Going back a little further... the animals are in Quarantine and will remain there until the end of the month. Lulu and Petunia are still in high spirits, while Monster is a little less perky. I know they will all be happy when they get to leave and sightsee New Zealand with us.

Going back even further... here is Regina in her "Travel hat" that she wore on the trip over here. Oddly enough, where the April trip we were hassled by customs and security over and over again, having Regina in a big silly hat seems to have a calming effect on airport personnel. We not only never had a single hassle the entire time, but our baggage arrived entirely intact. Even my cello, which we threw caution to the wind and checked as baggage, arrived without so much as a ding. If you are traveling soon, we wholly endorse the "big silly hat" as your traveling companion. -A