27/12/12: Lower Fu#k'in Hutt

I saw this guy at Westfield (the huge mall) in Lower Hutt and I knew I had to dedicate a blog entry to him. I followed him for ages trying to get a good shot but I felt like a stalker so this is the best I could get. He was carrying his toddler around with him.

I'm a sucker for a well written character.

26/12/12: Aiden, a calm wee sham.

This is a little post on wee Aiden, the son of my sister Bernadette and her husband Kenneth. He is one and a bit and his hair is not unlike this pop singer's hair.

I am actually Aiden's godfather, which apparently doesn't mean anything nowadays but it certainly sounds cool.

25/12/12: Christmas etc.

It took quite a bit of coaching from me but Joanne eventually got the picture I was wanting. The criteria was that it had to be a picture that showed how awesomely relaxing a time I was having in the hammock with a glass of wine. Shit yeah.  Merry Christmas etc.

24/12/12: Shopping list.

I'm home alone at the moment because it's Christmas and all my flatmates have gone home to their respective places of origin.

So to find this shopping list when I'm home alone has put my imagination into some sort of frenzy. There's clearly a murder being planned. By who? And which flatmate(s) will be murdered?  Are the sponges and the laundry powder needed to get rid of any evidence? And the toilet paper?

Do you have any ideas?

23/12/12: Rosa the Smiling Girl.

niece  

/nēs/

Noun A daughter of one's brother or sister, or of one's brother-in-law or sister-in-law.

22/12/12: Janice.

This is Janice:

Janice is Stephanie's cat.  I am Stephanie's boyfriend.

Janice sleeps in Stephanie's bed.  When I am in Wanganui, I do and Janice does not.

I can't help but feel there is some friction between Janice and myself.

Janice looks at me like this:

Like this:

Like this:

21/12/12: Kai Iwi Beach

It was here at Kai Iwi Beach that I had the swim of the summer so far.  It was unbelievably lovely in the water.  I could have spent all afternoon in there, gaily jumping and splashing about in the waves like a seal.

I'm learning something about water temperature in New Zealand though.  Like, cereal, in Wellington the water is usually a bit cold.  You can still go on in and have a swim but you have to really turn up your braveness to 11 to get over the initial coldness of the water.   Up at Kai Iwi Beach the story is different.  As I said, I could have stayed in there all afternoon.

There must be some sort of line somewhere up the country.  Below the line is too cold to swim.  Above the line is just right.  I've tried to draw this on a map but I couldn't find a very good map of the New Zealand so excuse me if there are any inaccuracies.

20/12/12: Up to see my boo.

I started off today with a dirty great hangover.  Not pleasant.  My way of dealing with it was to go into school and play the drumskit.  Playing the drums is awesome.  My only wish regarding playing the drums is: "I wish I could be better at playing the drums."  When recording myself playing the drums I end up having to use a few tricks to make it sound good.  One trick is to make sure I'm not trying to play something too complicated.

After a successful recording session, I got back into my Mitsubishi Chariot 1992 and hot-footed it up to Wanganui to see Stephanie, my boo.

We went out for a little drive that night.  Here's a photo of Wanganui from the top of Durie Hill:

You'll need to click on it to embiggen it.

19/12/12: The Paquins

I went and picked up the boys of Paquin from the airport. They were playing a show later that night at the San Francisco Bath House and I was their chauffeur for the day.  There are usually a lot of laughs with these cats and today was no exception.  It was lovely to hang out with my ol' buddy Stu, who I heart very much.

I had to say goodbye to another pal, Robbie, this evening. Robbie lives in Melbourne and that's quite far away so I don't see him very often.  Robbie told me some stunning jokes and gave me some great hugs.

My picture today is of my ol' photogenic buddy Stu:

18/12/12: Jo

After doing another day of recording I went to the airport and picked up my baby sister Jo who is in Wellington for Christmas.  I took a picture of her in front of Voldemort:

17/12/12: Recording Songs.

I've got half a dozen songs floating around in my bedroom that have never found a band to play them.  I thought I'd tie them down into a recording so I've been heading in to school and laying down some sick beats.  Arrangements tend to consist of drums (played averagely), bass, acoustic guitar, and then about a thousand vocal overdubs.  I'll put up my efforts one day.

16/12/12: Kaimoana

Danny and I went out for another swim round by Wahine Memorial Park, near Moa Point. 

Danny managed to get some kai.  These are the tasty friends below.  Then Danny cooked them and we ate them and they were delicious!  Thanks, tasty friends!  You were appreciated.

Note:  we did not eat the seaweed.

15/12/12: Bottle flu, and my friends play cricket.

I woke up with a pretty severe bottle flu after having a bit too much fun the night before at a super-villain themed party.  For some reason I'd stayed up partying till about 4.30 in the morning.  The sky was starting to get light on the walk home.  Ugh.

It was now 2:30pm and I was still in bed.  I got a text from Danny that he was going in to bat soon so I hightailed it to Ian Galloway Park in Wilton to see the action.  I'd already missed Eamonn batting, but I was able to see Danny's innings.    

 Danny's forward defensive stroke.

Some variety of cut shot.

This was me the night before at about 4:30am.  Ugh.

14/12/12: Shifting an Organ, and Morrissey.

As I mentioned in my last post, John is leaving Wellington.  I am going to miss him.  Not only is John an amazing multi-instrumentalist (Drums, Guitar, Bass, Keys - anything else you throw at him), he is also a wonderful person.  Perhaps it's his unique sense of humour.

On this day John was moving his things out of his flat.  He asked me to help him move some of his possessions out to Chris-and-Emma's place in Titahi Bay where it could stay till he was able to move it to Dunedin.

It was mainly this organ
that he needed help with.

We borrowed Jim-and-Claire's car (towbar), and got a trailer.  We also had Jim-and-Claire's dog Tui with us for the fun.

That evening, Logan and I attended the Morrissey concert at the Town Hall.  It was a religious experience. 

He played for 90 minutes.  Amongst the set of his solo stuff were six Smiths songs (Shoplifters of the World Unite, How Soon is Now, I Know it's Over, Please Please Please let me Get What I Want, Meat is Murder, and Still Ill).  Significant tingles occurred in the vicinity of my spine during I Know it's Over.

13/12/12: Snorkeling Twice

It's amazing how I don't look at all like a dork in this photo.  I just look nothing like a dork.

Snorkeling with a wetsuit is amazing.  For most of the year the water around Wellington is too cold to swim in without a wetsuit. Since I've never had a wetsuit, I have not been able to swim in the water around Wellington for most of the year.

Wetsuits are a bit of a catch 22.  They are expensive, which means I'm not going to buy one unless I know how awesome they are to wear.  But if I don't buy one then I'll never know how awesome they are.  Is that a catch 22?  I think so, but tell me if it isn't.  I think it's a catch 22 which I've made a meal of explaining.

The way to go is to borrow a friend's wetsuit, which I did.  Twice.  In one day.  Two different friends. Things are better in twos.

Snorkeling around the rocks of the south coast is great.  I found it to be a very peaceful experience.  It felt like I was on a drug trip and I'll explain why.  Under the water there is a lot of sea plants growing on the rocks.  It's kind of like floating through a garden.  Fish swim in and out and around the plants and they are kind of like the birds in the underwater garden.  It's like another world.  I think I'm going to buy a wetsuit. Thanks to John for giving me a go in his wetsuit in the afternoon, and thanks to Danny for the evening wetsuit lendage.

This is John. He's leaving Wellington.  I'll miss John.

12/12/12: Big Walk

This was originally going to be a review of an app called MapMyHike, but will not be any more.

I downloaded the aforementioned app and decided to go on a whopper walk to test it out.  Basically, it maps where you've been using GPS and gives you all sorts of statistics about our walk, such as graphing the ups and downs, and telling you how many calories you burn.

This was all awesome until my phone ran out of battery four hours into my walk.   DOH!

Anywho, here's a map of my walk that I made on google maps:

The walk started up near the Brooklyn wind turbine, continued south over the hills to the old war bunkers above Red Rocks, down to Red Rocks, around the coast to Owhiro Bay, up Happy Valley to Brooklyn and back to the car.    It was a total of 23km and I knocked it off in four and a half hours.

I was buggered by the end.

Here are some photos:

I wasn't really able to take much more than that due to the whole phone running out of battery thing.

11/12/12: Driving and op-shopping.

This is a short one.  Basically, I had a fabulous time doing a bunch of op-shopping in Wanganui and then op-shopped my way down to Wellington.  If you're passing by Foxton during the day and you have some spare time, I recommend looking around the main street. Awesome second-hand shops.

I got back to Wellington in time for band practice, but actually, it was more drink practice since it was such nice weather out.  Then as I was walking home from Newtown (half cut), I stopped in and bought myself some groceries from the new Countdown.  I was impressed that I had been able to go into a place that sells cigarettes while drunk and not buy cigarettes.  Go me!

Atene Skyline Track, Whanganui National Park

This happened on Monday.  I had the day free to try out my boots and I was told about this day-walk by one of the nice ladies at the iSite in Wanganui.  She warned be that there was a lot of uphill climbing   and added: "but that should be no problem for a young fit man like you."

"Fit."  Hmm.  We would see about that.

Anyway, here's the walk.  It's supposed to take between 6 - 8 hours.  It climbs up to the Atene ridge and then along it.  The geographical interest is the loop of old river bed.  You see, what happened was that the Whanganui used to go through this valley and then it found a quicker way to get to where it was going by punching through a hill.  That means now theres a dry river bed in the shape of a horse shoe and my walk was going to give all sorts of views of it.  Anyway, here's the walk:

And here are some pictures from the walk.  I must have brought all my vintage cameras with me.

This character was snuffling around me as I was putting on my boots at the start of the track.

There were a lot of wild goats.  Big ones, little ones, middle-sized ones.  One time I walked around a corner of the track and there was a mummy goat and a baby goat.  The mummy goat looked terrified to see me but the baby goat came bounding right up to me, bleating like a maniac.  Being me, I got freaked out that the mummy goat was going to come and smash me to protect the baby goat so I jumped into a tree.  "Go away baby goat!"  I yelled at it.  

This isn't the baby goat from the story, but it is an equally baby goat.

The panorama below shows the old river path. It's now farmland.

I got back to the car only five and a half hours after I left it.  That's quicker than the 6-8 hours they said it would take.  I am fit!!