Cape Palliser

Okay folks... stick with me here.  On the very most southern tip of the North Island is Cape Palliser which is little more than lighthouse and a set up steps.  But on the plus side it is one of the permanent seal colonies on the island.  These are bachelor colonies so there's no female seals to fight over and no pups to protect.  These seals are lazy, fat, and sleepy.

The drive out to the cape is about 2.5 hours from my house.  The most challenging bit is the hop over the Rimutaka's.  This zig-zaggy pass over the mountains is always sure to induce at least one car-sick casualty.  If  you were to compare the distance from my house to the cape you might be beguiled by the mere 60 mile journey.  But the slow mountain pass and general lack of direct routes to anything make short distances still take a good while.

At one point we had to drive over an area signed as "Active Slip Area" where the road had obviously washed out.  The road on the right side disappeared in to the rocky surf and the road on the left was a steep wall of gravel and silt.  Nothing about it was confidence inspiring.

I got a few pictures of the lighthouse, stairs and the seals.  I didn't stop to take pictures of the road--although on retrospect I should have.

The point is quite isolated.  This sensation is increasingly becoming part of my image of New Zealand.  It is very easy to round a few bends and then feel like you're at the end of the world--and I guess you sort of are.  I just forget that I live here.  A big surprise was that my oldest son, Chandler, who had a tendency to not be a joiner, decided to climb the steps with me and Gabe.  I actually wasn't going to tackle the steps but I went along.  My legs are still complaining about this decision.  However, the view was pretty awesome.

Obligatory Essay on turning 39

So I’m 39… If you’re doing the math that means I was born in 1970.  If you’re astrologically interested, I was born at 12:47 AM in the south-eastern part of Nebraska.  If you live outside the US and are not exactly sure where this is, picture a map of the USA and put your finger right in the centre of it.  You’re probably within 100 miles (220 km) or so.

In case you haven’t noticed, I’m writing in British-style (centre rather than center).  I am writing from New Zealand after all so I figure I might as well be appropriate to where I am rather than from where I was born.  While it is very obvious to those that check up on me regularly, I’ve been in New Zealand for over a year now so being here is nothing new.  But for whatever reason I feel the urge to capture these thoughts on 39 years in a more holistic way.  It starts just after midnight in early summer in Nebraska and has wound its way to early winter in New Zealand in just under 4 decades.  A physical distance of some 10,000 miles, I suppose it may be as far as one can travel from Nebraska and still be on land and on the planet.  I assure you this was entirely un-intentional.

What I have determined in 39 years is that you just never know what’s going to happen next.  Sometimes good, sometimes bad; you just don’t know.  For me so far the good has outweighed the bad.  I still am excited by what may yet happen each day.  There are still yet many unpleasant challenges.  There will be more, but I am still eager for the fight.

When I was a young boy I thought about being an adult.  About the time I could do the math, I projected to the year 2000.  That seemed a magical year at the time.  I would be 30 and I would see a new century.  I imagined myself in a suit and tie on the streets of some city like New York.  As a kid I just never imagined that at 30 I might be in the same place I was at 10.  I lived in Nebraska until I was 27 when I moved to Kansas City.  I stayed in KC until I was 37 when I moved to New Zealand.

I shall declare the day I moved out of my parent’s house at 19 as the day I became an “adult”.  But I don’t think I knew a thing about maturity until perhaps as late as my divorce at 31.  Between 19 and 31 I learned about love, women, children, and finances—almost in that order!

After 31 I began to discover something of feeling old.  Only enough to give me an idea about what being old someday may be like.  But it was also about this time I really felt like I knew who I was and how to actively live out who I was.  I think for me, at least, losing something precious (my kiddos) taught me something of what was valuable.  I learned how to live things you couldn’t change and didn’t like.  But I also learned not to stand for things I didn’t like and I *could* change.  Life is too short and often too complicated to waste time living with things you don’t have to.

So 39… not quite 40… now what?  I look ahead to 2030 and 2040 and even 2050.  Maybe even farther, who knows?  Strangely I have less of an idea of what life will be like at 60 than I ever pictured for 30.  I could talk to you about plans and retirement and kids out of college, but I can’t really picture what life is like.  The idea of me at 60 (or 80) still “online” and joining my buddies in the latest network game sounds hilarious and it’s probably true.  I only hope I can keep up with the hardware.  I hope I can still see trees from my windows and walk through mist covered hills.  I hope the ocean is not too far away for a visit.  I hope all my kiddos are doing very well as doctors, artists, and scientists.  I hope Amy is near by and walking with me.  While I’m at all this hoping, I hope all of you are with me too happy in your lives and enjoying this journey of discovery.  I have only recently discovered that there is no quota of good that can be exhausted.  If you are blessed with miracles, this does not mean that other miracles were diverted.  If you were spared, it does not me others were sacrificed.  We can all receive an endless supply of miracles.

That’s about all I think I can ramble on today.  I’m doing fine.  I hope you are too.

Kids in NZ 2009

It's winter! Sabrina is wading at the beach on Oriental Bay.

Pictures I have from June/July when we had our visitors!

Multiply needs an Update / Care a litte More

So Multiply has not be inspiring me to write much.  I find the site clunky and its applications dated (by Internet standards).  I suppose I shouldn’t be so unforgiving, but I guess I’m being honest.

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However, I have far too much content on this site to consider moving it all (yet).  I also don’t have another site in mind.  Multiply does do some things I still like.  I do want to have blogs, photos, and videos all accessible from one site.  But I do wish I had better control over the layout.  I know Multiply uses CSS and that should I get “serious” about this I could dive in to it.  But I don’t want to.  I want a tool with some customizable themes.  I don’t want to code.

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I am regularly updating Facebook, Twitter, and occasionally my game blog on blogspot.  But this remains my “main” place for general family news and personal ramblings.

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I have also been busy resolving the issues mentioned in previous blogs and doing lots of planning for family to start arriving in June through August!

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The weather here as turned a bit cold early.  For NZ this is full on winter weather.  For you in Kansas/Nebraska you would recognize it as blustery Fall days--windy and often rainy.  But we get a handful of sunny mild days in between.  My step-dad says the weather in NZ is always a choice between “t-shirt or jacket”.  Well it seems to always be a jacket day and often a scarf too.  It is too windy for anything other than the stoutest and most aerodynamic of head gear.  I wear sunglasses more as wind shields than sun screen.

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Theoretically, I am supposed to travel to Christchurch tomorrow.  That’s about mid-way down on the South Island.  While it would be cool to go, it is actually supposed be dumped on with snow and I just received a notice that our offices there have lost power—probably due to high winds.  This is not promising.  But I think it has been nearly 2 years since I last saw snow.—at least Dec 2007.  I wouldn’t mind seeing NZ in the snow as long as I didn’t end up sleeping in an airport.

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New Zealand continues to be inspirationally beautiful every day.  I sometimes pop on to Google News to check on the ol’ USA and nearly always I am so shocked and horrified that I stop and retreat back to kiwi-sized social problems.  After 18 months away, I have lost my de-sensitivity to horrific tragedies.  I actually find it painful to read sometimes—images I can not erase from my mind.  Of course tragedies happen all over the world.  But… not everywhere in the world to the same degree.  I can mentally reconcile that Somalia (for example) has horrible things happening as it is poverty stricken, war torn, and perceived to be politically “unimportant”.  Somalia in no way deserves these qualities and the violence there is not justified, but to read of tragedy in my home country where there is wealth, education, and relative security… it shakes my faith. 

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The rest of the world must boggle at why such problems exist in America.  Americans just assume “everybody has problems.”  Well, of course, but what we fail to realize is that other countries of similar culture and education do *not* have mass high school shootings, torture, and millions of unprotected (healthcare) citizens.  These are not the “costs of freedom.”  If they were, then I say they are very poor trade.

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What are the solutions? Well, I can’t fix America from a blog.  But I would start by suggesting we weep.  That we really look and comprehend the depth of these problems—not to punish ourselves, but rather to humble ourselves.  These are our problems.  We are responsible for them.  We can still be proud of the great things we’ve done while owning our flaws as well.  Only by accepting and acknowledging these faults can we begin to address them.  We have developed steel personalities that can look at death tolls causally with thoughts like “only 14 killed… that’s 20 less than last week…” We read stories of children dying from lack of healthcare and think, “well those parents should have had better insurance or better jobs.”  How callus we have become.  We needed to be.  How could one live in the US and not?  But we have to care again.  We can not just become harder and harder.  The answer is really the reverse.  We need to be wounded and healed, not more impervious.

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I hope all of you are well.  I hope tragedy stays far from you all.  There is much to be hopeful for.  I am greatly looking forward to our June/July/August visitors!  Talk to y'all again soon!

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EDIT: Sorry for the weird "." between paragraphs... one of the "clunks" I was talking about on Multiply.  Pasting from Word to a Post messes up the formats.

All things Domestic, Large and small.

Life can be interesting and mundane at the same time. 

For example, a failing dishwasher is quite mundane.  Ours has been dying a slow death for the past year.  We have just recently decided to ask our lease holder to fix it up.  No worries, just a lot of scheduling and communication.  A detail, but it keeps you busy.

Next the gas fireplace has a tendency to blow out.  This would be even more mundane in the US where the fireplace is purely ornamental.  But in NZ that sucker is life giving heat for the whole house.  It warms up alright, but then it will try to idle, but instead it blows out.  So you have to go hit the restart button when ever you feel cold rather than having it maintain a reasonable temp.  Also a scheduling detail.

On the more interesting front, I have had to do a lot of financial manipulation and legal processing.  Painful, delicate, and stressful.  But I think the bank is finally satisfied.  We still have issues to resolve, but we have solved at least 2/3rds of our financial debts.  Of course this was necessary to support child support legal obligations and that's the lawyer part.  Having shunted all resources to only paying child support can only pay part of it.  The reality is my income has not increased in 8 years and has dramatically reduced in the last year.  Time to re-calculate.

But on the upside, the kids are coming to visit in June with my mother.  This was one of the main goals for me in this move was not only to visit, but be able to bring them here to see it.  We've had far more visitors than I've expected which has been wonderful.  I really hope that Chandler and Sabrina love the experience.  I am pretty sure they will.

While we are heading in to winter here, most days are still pretty nice.  In the last week we've had more rain, but no chills.  It is, if anything, a bit muggy.  New Zealand was designed to be damp.  Every plant seems to double as a sponge.  Green covers everything in the shape of moss, lichen, algae, and things in between.  A few trees shed their leaves, but you would hardly notice.  Green is still everywhere you look and flower continue to bloom.  Days are noticably short now.  It is near dark when I walk home from the train.  But the walk is no less beautiful.

We'll see the kids in June and then we'll see Poppop and Aunt Mo in July.  Don wants to stay through the first week in August to be here for Gabe's birthday.  Along about July the Winter Festivals start with fireworks and fairs.  I almost feel like putting up Christmas lights.  So lots of things to do.  Hopefully all goes smoothly for me and for you!

 

Alyssa's Bakery

I think I will dedicate this blog to my bakery.  You see, ever since I moved to Wellington, I have developed an affection for cappuccino.  While there are perhaps 8 places for me to buy coffee in a 1 block radius from my office, there is only one true bakery.  There are many places to buy pies, scones, buns, and pastries, but only one “we bake in the stove in the back” bakery.

 

While the name of the place is Alyssa’s Bakery, the shop gal that manages the counter is named, Tam.  The owner is a very tall bald man.  I am relatively sure his name is not Alyssa.  The shop is on the south side of Courtney Place.

 

Tam greets me every morning with a loud, “Good Morning, Curtis! Coffee?” I often do not get a chance to even agree before she’s at the machine making my cappuccino with extra chocolate and two sugars.  Tam chatters on about random events.  We talk about the last episode of Battlestar Galactica, or parliament, the weather, or the exchange rate.  I have been going to the same shop for a year and while I’m sure that her friendliness is all part of her customer service ethic, I appreciate it none the less.  It makes me feel like I live just down the street.  I feel a bit more contented knowing that I have a real bakery and not a Kwik-E-mart—that I can joke with the shop girl and look forward to an apple pie.

 

The shop offers cakes and scones.  They have about 6 kinds of pastry.   Custard twists, biscuits, and sandwiches fill the glass counters.  Finally, there are the pies.  Oh the pies! Mince, steak, mushroom, chicken, veggie, and my favourite—bacon egg pie.  All created in the back kitchen.  I find these all delicious, but each of them is still somewhat strange to a Nebraska boy.  Yet something is familiar about the bakery.  I know it is more than the food—more than the service that keeps me coming back.  Maybe it does remind me of dusty old Nebraska some how or maybe it reminds me of how I want home to be. 

Billboard in Wellington

I had to get a picture of this... I'm not exactly sure what this ad is trying to say.  But if it's suggesting the gal in the ad is using the product in that location... Colour me, Intrigued.