A whole year! Really? I swear we just got here…
Indeed, we have now been in Wellington, New Zealand for a full year. And we have been in our new house for 6 months! It does not seem possible…where did the time go?
While there are still many house projects left, and we will no doubt be woking on the house for several years to come, it is definitely starting to feel like “home”! More boxes are getting unpacked, and more of our collectibles(personality) are being added around the place. We still need to build some custom shelving for some of the larger collectibles and we have two cabinets on order scheduled to be delivered mid November. We are looking forward to enjoying the holidays and our first summer in the house.
New challenge - attempting to determine how big (or small) a turkey we can fit in our tiny little NZ oven. Interior dims = 42cm wide x 28cm deep and only 22cm tall. For those still stuck in the imperial paradigm…that is about 16.5” x 11” x 8.5”
We continue to be busy. Eric’s 3 weeks of work has extended out to now 5 weeks and there may be more. Yay! He is enjoying it, although it has stalled the house painting for now. I am happy for the break and have been using the time to work on other smaller tasks around the house.
Spring is here and with it the typical mix of weather - all the seasons at once - sun, wind, clouds and rain. Flowers are continuing to bloom, I even planted a few bulbs 🤞🏻 and we trimmed back some of the branches overhanging the roof. Similar to Seattle, everything comes alive and start to grow very quickly.
We took a quick trip up to Auckland to visit some friends, checked out the aquarium and did a Costco run - LoL! We restocked our salsa supply, and picked up some of our favorite potato chips (crisps), peanut butter, maple syrup, and got some cheaper AAA batteries. All in all a good haul. It will be great if/ when they open a store in Wellington. Fingers crossed.
We have also had a few earthquakes. They are very common here and mostly ignored unless they start to get up to 4.5 or higher. Last Sunday we were woken up at 5:00am with a 5.8 shaker. It was a good one but it didn’t last all that long. Just enough to wake us up. We did not hear any crashes or thuds… so we both rolled over and went back to sleep. Later that morning I walked around the house to see what and if anything moved. Only a few books tipped over on their shelves, a few small plastic toys tipped over and that was it. Nothing broken. And everything we had set up in the glass curio cabinet (and quake-waxed into place) was just where they were supposed to be.
Work is going well for me. And next week we have NZGDC (Game Developers Conference) here in Wellington. I will be attending several industry related lectures and helping out with a workshop.
The rest of the month is very busy -packed with lots of fun stuff. Our usual gatherings with friends plus we are attending a showing of WoW -World of Wearable Art. www.worldofwearableart.com Then for our Anniversary we will have a nice dinner out and be seeing a comedy show - Eric Idle (one of the Monty Python team). As we near Halloween once again Eric and I are assisting with the Skullduggery Art Show that will open on October 28th and run through to Nov. 3rd.
Wishing everyone a fun and spooky Halloween!
(Speaking of scary…yes, we have voted!)
