All things Work and Home

It's been a while since I posted here.  As I've commented before, the "micro" blogging tools like Facebook and Twitter seem to reduce the need to write--probably artificially.  No excuses--just saying.

So what's been up?  Too much work.  I have a large project that just hit it's busy stride in May/June/July.  I think it should calm down a bit, but the project wounds are still fresh so much smaller annoyances seem to derail me with greater effect.  It's hard to put so much energy and time in on a thing only watch it flounder.  This difficult enough by itself, but there was about a 30 day stretch where it appeared I was being held personally responsible for a degree of the failures.  I suppose in the Royal We way I am part of the project so I am part of the team.  But this was particularly hard to take as it seemed the customer was quite happy with what was happening.  My own management team was not.  Of course, in business you have to keep your bosses happy and I suppose that was my mistake.  I still find this de-motivating.  But that's business when you work for someone else.

Aside from work we've been shivering our way through a cold winter in Wellington.  I've seen frost on several days this year.  It was even so cold that my motorcycle wouldn't start for a week.

My father-in-law flew in for his usual trip in July/Aug to see us, the grandson, and participate in the grandson's birthday.  I feel a bit sorry for the old guy this year as the weather has been awful! But even bad weather in Wellington is pretty mild.

We took a few days to drive up the west coast to Hawera again.  We visited the museum there with my folks a year ago, but Don (father-in-law) had not seen it yet.  On the way we stopped in Wanganui and Patea.  I can't tell for sure, but I think a hear an unspoken "aw yuck" in front of Wanganui whenever I mention it.  LOL.  I get the impression that most Kiwi's aren't impressed with the city.  While it doesn't offer a ton, it is nice stopping point and does have a pretty fun kid park with great, dare I say, vintage playground equipment and a whizbang flying fox.  On this trip we did make time to see the local museums which were interesting if not huge.

Patea isn't far north of Wanganui, but is barely a spec on the map... and let me tell you, the specs on NZ maps are specs indeed.  I think Patea is all of 6 blocks long.  Its primary feature is the road to its beach.  There is a river mouth here which was one of the first sea ports used in New Zealand, but this port was completely abandoned in 1956.  Patea certainly hasn't thrived since.  What remans is a partially protected swimming beach with massive waves.  Outside the sea walls you have some of the rawest ocean I've experienced in New Zealand.  Waves larger than a man or 2 men.  This stretch is one of my favourites.  The sand here is deep black with sparkling flecks of mica.  The shore stretches north to high vertical cliffs.  The view is even complete with a ship wreck of some ridiculously old vessel containing a boiler.  Another interesting bit was we found heaps of rock with deep "pock" marks in them.  The kind of thing you'd expect to see in a cave that dripped on soft stone over a million years.  Looking at the cliffs I'm guessing there are a few sea caves there and these rocks probably started in them.  Each place we go has so much to discover.

The Tawhiti Museum continues to be excellent.  They even added something completely new this year.  A Whalers & Traders "river" ride.  They built a huge shed and dug a channel through it for a river.  Then they filled it with life sized scenes of NZ whaling themed events.  There was a ship trading muskets to Moari, gun/cannon fight in the bush, and a Maori village trading with white settlers.  The detail was amazing.  Hawera is barely more than a spec itself--maybe 6 specs collectively.  But this is still one of the best museums covering NZ history that I've found.  Of course, I have not tried to fully explore Auckland yet.  I would expect the countries largest city to have something pretty grand.

On the way home we drove through Palmerston and again I was struck by what nice towns NZ has.  Palmerston had quite a bit of stuff to do for being a "small" city.  This really is small in New Zealand.  But they did have a Harley shop and a Steam Museum which we'll have to check out again later.

Amy and I have managed to get out to a couple movies.  I seem to have no lack of pizza in my life so all is good.

We are waiting for the last bit of immigration paperwork and then I think we're clear.  We're talking tentatively about having Chandler come stay with us in 2011 to go to school here and then swap to have Sabrina for a year too.  I really hope that works out, but it all still discussions for now.

That's the update from the South! Talk at y'all later.