Whips

So the latest craze amongst the youf round here is to get a bed sheet, tie knots in it and whip it so that is makes a cracking noise like a gun. Round where we used to live there would be the constant sound of this all afternoon from about 3.30 until it got dark. Once you know what it is, it is ok but the first few days we thought our street had gone downhill a bit! Round here, it is a little more subdued but this afternoon we went for a stroll and ended up coming back through the park and saw two groups of kids practicing with their whips. One group were a little older and more practised and made some very impressive cracks, bouncing off the hills for an echo effect. The other group were quite young and still trying to work out how to make the noise.
So, yeah, I guess I can see why it has caught on and all that, but is it anywhere else in the world? Did it start here? Or elsewhere? Has it spread? Or do just have our own little bed of insanity?!

Things I Wanted to Be When I Grew Up...

It seems I'm not over my listy mood yet!
In no particular order:

1. Journalist
2. Geologist
3. Vicar
4. "Something to do with horses"
5. Novelist
6. Actor
7. Athlete
8. Educational Psychologist
9. Astronaut
10. Singer
11. Someone with a PhD - cos my dad has one
12. Bookshop owner
13. Women's refuge worker

So most of these are out due to a lack of natural talent. Some of them are out due to the fact that I'm really not that interested any more (like the whole realisation of being scared of horses).

Strangely, writing this list has not suddenly made it clear what I want to do with the rest of my life. (Spot the person who is about to have to go back to a lot more temping and really, really doesn't want to!)

Best Things About Our House

• There are fantails in the garden.

• We have an open fireplace in the living room. (We are yet to discover whether we can use it...)

• Our garden is lovely and rambly, nice but not "immaculate"

• A family of pukeko live at the stream at the end of the street.

• Our landlady is not crazy. Well, she is, but in a good way. Not in a making it an awful place to live way.

• It is small enough that we actually mostly fill it. Which is so much nicer than rattling.

• The hills are at the end of the street. We can go for a bush walk from our doostep.

List of Books

So Pomgirl did this a few weeks ago and as I'm feeling highly listy today, I thought I'd give it a whirl. And then I might go on to lots more lists or I might have gotten over the list writing need...

Instructions: Look at the list of books below.
• Bold the ones you’ve read.
• Italicise the ones you want to
• Don’t do anything to the ones that you aren’t interested in.

1. The Da Vinci Code (Dan Brown)
2. Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen)
3. To kill a Mockingbirg (Harper Lee)
4. Gone With The Wind (Margaret Mitchell)
5. The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (Tolkien)
6. The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (Tolkien)
7. The Lord of the Rings: Two Towers (Tolkien)
8. Anne of Green Gables (L.M. Montgomery)
9. Outlander (Diana Gabaldon)
10. A Fine Balance (Rohinton Mistry)
11. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Rowling)
12. Angels and Demons (Dan Brown)
13. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Rowling)
14. A Prayer for Owen Meany (John Irving)
15. Memoirs of a Geisha (Arthur Golden)
16. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (Rowling)
17. Fall on Your Knees (Ann-Marie MacDonald)
18. The Stand (Stephen King)
19. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Rowling)
20. Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte)
21. The Hobbit (Tolkien)
22. The Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger)
23. Little Women (Louisa May Alcott)
24. The Lovely Bones (Alice Sebold)
25. Life of Pi (Yann Martel)
26. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams)
27. Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte)
28. The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (C. S. Lewis)
29. East of Eden (John Steinbeck)
30. Tuesdays with Morrie (Mitch Albom)
31. Dune (Frank Herbert)
32. The Notebook (Nicholas Sparks)
33. Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand)
34. 1984 (Orwell)
35. The Mists of Avalon (Marion Zimmer Bradley)
36. The Pillars of the Earth (Ken Follett)
37. The Power of One (Bryce Courtenay)
38. I know this much is true (Wally Lamb)
39. The Red Tent (Anita Diamant)
40. The Alchemist (Paulo Coelho)
41. The Clan of the Cave Bear (Jean M. Auel)
42. The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini)
43. Confessions of a Shopaholic (Sophie Kinsella)
44. The Five People You Meet In Heaven (Mitch Albom)
45. Bible
46. Anna Karenina (Tolstoy)
47. The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas)
48. Angela’s Ashes (Frank McCourt)
49. The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck)
50. She’s Come Undone (Wally Lamb)
51. The Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver)
52. A Tale of Two Cities (Dickens)
53. Ender’s Game (Orson Scott Card)
54. Great Expectations (Dickens)
55. The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald)
56. The Stone Angel (Margaret Laurence)
57. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Rowling)
58. The Thorn Birds (Colleen McCullough)
59. The Handmaid’s Tale (Margaret Atwood)
60. The Time Traveller’s Wife (Audrew Niffenegger)
61. Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoyevsky)
62. The Fountainhead (Ayn Rand)
63. War and Peace (Tolstoy)
64. Interview with a Vampire (Anne Rice)
65. Fifth Business (Robertson Davis)
66. One Hundred Years Of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
67. The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (Ann Brashares)
68. Catch 22 (Joseph Heller)
69. Les Miserables (Hugo)
70. The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)
71. Bridget Jones’ Diary (Fielding)
72. Love in the Time of Cholera (Marquez)
73. Shogun (James Clavell)
74. The English Patient (Michael Ondaatje)
75. The Secret Garden (Frances Hodgson Burnett)
76. The Summer Tree (Guy Gavriel Kay)
77. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Betty Smith)
78. The World According to Garp (John Irving)
79. The Diviners (Margaret Laurence)
80. Charlotte’s Web (E.B. White)
81. Not Wanted On The Voyage (Timothy Findley)
82. Of Mice And Men (Steinbeck)
83. Rebecca (Daphne Du Maurier)
84. Wizard’s First Rule (Terry Goodkind)
85. Emma (Jane Austen)
86. Watership Down (Richard Adams)
87. Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)
88. The Stone Diaries (Carol Shields)
89. Blindness (Jose Saramago)
90. Kane and Abel (Jeffrey Archer)
91. In The Skin Of A Lion (Ondaatje)
92. Lord of Flies (Golding)
93. The Good Earth (Pearl S. Buck)
94. The Secret Life of Bees (Sue Monk Kidd)
95. The Bourne Identity (Robert Ludlum)
96. The Outsiders (S.E. Hinton)
97. White Oleander (Janet Fitch)
98. A Woman of Substance (Barbara Taylor Bradford)
99. The Celestine Prophecy (James Redfield)
100. Ulysses (James Joyce)

I wouldn't advise all the ones I've read, nor am I snubbing all the ones I've not italicised...
And I resisted putting comments next to a lot of them...

High Speed Update...

So today is the day of cleaning the old house...I have dusted, hoovered, kitchened (ahem) and ought to be bathrooming...but the super power cleaner needs time to work...
New house is lovely (though no broadband yet) - it is all cute and cottagey and we actually fill it so it feels much more like a home than the strange rattling about we've had for the last nine months. And the move? It went amazingly well! We were all shifted and half unpacked in four hours! We had mucho good helpers. :)
Much as it is tempting not to, I suspect it is time to attack the shower now...

Hallelujah!

We have a house! We signed this morning and we move on Saturday!
I should really be packing now...
It is a lot smaller than where we are but feels really nice and cosy...and for winter, I don't think I'll complain about the smaller rooms. It also has an open fire but we are waiting to find out when it was last used...
And the best thing? (Besides being $100 a week cheaper...) is that the hills are right there at the end of the road. Ah...

Being Volatile

So, I've mostly got my head round the impending surgery. Or at least, I'm not entirely distracted by it.
However, I am mostly distracted by our housing situation. Which is that in ten days, we don't have one. We've currently rejected about four houses following drive bys (one of them was a shed). We've been rejected by three houses we were interested in. Twice for not wanting to stay long enough (a fair reason but really, what are we meant to do for nine months?) and once for being a couple (he wanted to let it out to a young, single, guy. surely as a landlord that should be bottom of the list of what you want?!).
So there has been a lot of crying...a little bit of throwing things...a lot of thinking of mean things about people (mostly about the various landlords)...a lot of hiding in a book to pretend that it is all going away...and a lot of being unable to string sentences together...
I also have a silly cold so I can't breathe either.
Grump. Grump. Grump.

Being Grown Up

Today, I feel like being grown up has been forced upon me. As many of you will know, I've had surgery twice in my life on my jaw. Although the second time I was 18 so technically I gave my consent, it had been rumbling on since I was 5 so there wasn't really a decision to be made at that point.
Today, I went to see a specialist and came away less than an hour later with a date for surgery (just over a month away) all booked in and ready to go. I also came away with lots of not very jolly information about said surgery and about my preparation for it.
Anyhoo, the point of all this is that I had to make the decision. And I didn't really get any time to ponder that decision. Husbink is at work so he couldn't help me. My mum was asleep on the other side of the world so she couldn't help me. I had to sign myself, as the patient, that yes, I'd have this, yes, they had my consent to talk to all relevant parties about me, yes, I'd have a blood transfusion if needs be, yes, they could do whatever necessary on opening me up, fundamentally yes, I would not sue them.
As my previous two surgeries were fairly hefty (5-6.5 hours each), I have never really considered a lot of routine surgery as that major, it would be something that I could take in my stride. And this particular instance definitely doesn't count as that huge. It will be all over in two hours tops. It could be over in twenty minutes. (Or there abouts...) And yet now that it is happening to me, it does feel rather more major...

Gym

Today, we joined a gym. As we don't have anywhere to live in 2.5 weeks time, I'm unemployed in 3.5 weeks time, our visas semi-expire in a month...this might have seemed like a slightly strange priority. But oooh, it did feel good. When we joined a gym in Leeds I thought it would be the one and only time I joined a gym. I didn't think I'd like it at all. But having somewhere safe and warm and nice to exercise seems to agree with me. It even made me do strange things today, like saying "of course, 8am on Friday morning is a perfect time to have my fitness assessment". Hey ho.
Of course, really the good thing about going to the gym is coming home...and feeling justified in eating chips, chocolate and drinking wine...

Fashion

For my birthday (which hasn't happened yet), my mum has given me some money for some new winter clothes. As we are staying in NZ until Febuary (I realise I may not have said this before), I now need a whole winter wardrobe which wasn't really in the plan. So I brought only a few big jumpers with me. And having not brought so much clothing, a few items have been worn to death now...so the new clothes are really needed.
So yesterday, I did a very brief perusal of a few of the nicer shops in the area so see what I might want to spend birthday money on (and will then go to the cheaper shops and spend my own money too!!). The only problem is that the fashion here seems to be mostly really quite weird at the moment. But I don't know whether that is NZ fashion or whether UK fashion has also gone weird. So should I go with the weirdness or resist it?! So confusing...
All I wanted was a lovely cuddly jumper or two and a few new layerage options...
Ah, the trials and tribulations.

Temping

Today and last Friday, I had two one-off days of temping, doing reception duties for two very different companies. Both of them lacked in actual work to do and so I've done rather a lot of sudoku...
On Friday, it was super organised and all laid out very well and generally friendly and easy to deal with and so on. But due to the nature of the company I was working for, I will never return there. (I had accepted the job before registering the name of the company...let's just say it had "tobacco" in it...). I spent the entire day having to bite my tongue and not ask the staff how they slept at night...
Today was a shambles. They weren't at all prepared for someone coming in. They didn't have a phone list in anything resembling a sane order, the only information they had was written by a previous temp... Fortunately, all the visitors who came seemed to know what they were doing which was a great relief!
I think though, like waitressing, I was not built to be a receptionist. This is not something that surprises me.

Hip hip hooray!

Congratulations to Welsherella and the Tart on their engagement!
It was very exciting to wake up to a rather cryptic but instantly understandable text on Saturday morning. Hip Hip Hooray indeed!

If I don't write a title straight away, I forget...

So anyway.
Husbink and I have just (mostly) wasted the last week of our lives. Not as in the last week ever. As in the week just gone. The way in which we have wasted it may explain why I felt compelled to clarify that...
Last Monday we both felt pretty lousy. Wiped out. Bleugh. So we went to the library to rent some DVDs and accept that we were in need of a couple of "sick days".
Thing is, one of the DVDs we rented was the entire third season of 24. Those you who knew me at the time of the first season (particularly those of you who lived with me during that time) will know the effect it had on me. Those of you who didn't know me then...nice one!
I started watching season two but managed to stay detached enough that a few weeks of holiday broke my resolve. I had successfully avoided any further seasons until now.
So now we both think everyone is watching us, that we are about to uncover a plot of some hideous nature and that either one of us could die any moment. Nice.
I returned all the DVDs to the library today. I didn't want to get any more DVDs out but having had to go round the carpark three times to get a space, I felt compelled to do something more than just drop off the returns. So I just thought I'd check to be sure. And it is ok. They do have season 4...

That there five things...

So, in my continuing not so chatty mood (but getting a little more so), I thought I'd do the tag that delightful Welsherella left me a wee while ago.
Which is five things that you don't know about me. You all know different things about me...a challenge methinks!

1. When I was eight, I really, really, really wanted to be a geologist when I grew up.
2. Having wanted a horse/horse riding lessons etc etc since a young age, I discovered, aged 18 that I was really rather terrified of them. Well, just roaming ones really.
3. I'm currently wondering how many pairs of socks one person can wear at a time. (Currently on two and not really feeling my toes.)
4. As a young child, I used to believe all of the following: I would one day win an olympic gold medal; I would climb to the top of Mt Everest; I would go to the moon. I think this was mostly to do with a lack of concept of size of world population. I also believed I would become an incredibly calm and serene person one day. There, I was just plain deluded.
5. To my best reckoning, I have been on 87 flights in my life. I am prepared to stand corrected on that one, but probably only by my mum. As she doesn't read this, I feel pretty safe!

So, some of you might know some of them...I did my best!
I tag MM, d/w and Ruth.

Holidays, houses, home?

Well, I've not been in a right chatty mood of late and so blogging has fallen by the wayside a little, even since the Scouses went home. I suspect it might continue to for a while so apologies if you keep feeling compelled to check and nothing is there... So I've put in a whole heap of photos to compensate. ;)






Our holiday was fabulous but the first week was exceedingly tiring. We went over to the South Island and indulged in much beautiful scenery along with some good walks, good cake, good wine, amazing drives, animal spotting (birds & seals mostly), lie ins, early starts, beaches, glaciers and fun.




















We were then home for the weekend so Husbink could work and I could lead the Easter morning service which was very much a privilege.








We then had a few more chilled nights in Martinborough, just over the hill (we went there before, see here). We pootled on bicycles, went to wineries, ate lots, slept lots, and the Scouses taught us cribbage. We are now addicted. Though we prefer to call it "cabbage".

The Scouses left last Thursday which was very sad. We had a fantabulous time with them and miss them lots.

So a few short hours before the Scouses left, we got a letter telling us we would be kicked out of our house on May 25th. This is not a big problem, barely even a problem, as if we intend to stay, we wanted to move somewhere a bit cheaper anyway and if we are not staying it is two short weeks before Husbink finishes work and we already have several offers of beds for that time. The problem comes that we really must now galvanise our thoughts and decide which it is to be. Should we stay or should we go now? I can argue really convincingly either way at the moment and no one is brave enough to argue back.

Time for more adventures

Tomorrow, we embark on another adventure, this time with the Scouses. Yay! They have arrived and all is very good (they are currently sleeping off the 36hours of travel...).
We are going for a week long jaunt on the South Island - as long as the ferry crossing is ok tomorrow I'm very excited!
The last week or so has been quite busy with lots of time catching up with people (including a visit from one of my managers from my last job at home) and lots of jobs to be done. I'm very much in need of a holiday but I'm not sure this one will count as relaxing with the distances we intend to cover!
Last Saturday we did a 63k bike ride with some friends. I am amazed that I a) coped with it and b) didn't suffer too much afterwards! I was completely exhausted physically but not really all that sore. Husbink even made me get on my bike again the next day and that was ok! I didn't scream when my bottom made contact with the saddle! Therefore, I've concluded I must be superwoman! An obvious conclusion to make I'm sure...
Time to apply my mind to packing. Hey ho. I promise to post in more detail than you could ever want on my return.
Tally ho!

Shouting at God

That is how I spent my morning. It isn't something I do all that often. In fact, I think the last time I had a real scream at God was about three and a half years ago when something fairly spectacularly bad was going on with some good friends of mine.
Maybe it is part of this whole Britishness thing (see last post) that means I don't tend to let all the anger out. Or be 100% honest, I tend to like to sugar coat things at the very least. I wouldn't want to offend.
Anyway, God took it well and ultimately pointed me to some Psalms that while not resolving the big issues of the shout, at least gave me enough peace to (mostly) be able to cope with the day.
This all led on, by some roundabout thoughts, to the image that I choose to project of myself. (I don't know if it is the image others see!)
When I was in the first year at uni, I remember discussing with a friend that we both actively chose to reveal quite a lot about ourselves and seem very open. This was not because we were very open - instead, it was a strange self defence mechanism: if we appeared so open and honest, no one would think we had anything we didn't want people to know and so would never push us. I'm not talking big skeletons in the closet or anything like that, just those girly insecurities and the like that you'd rather other people were not able to scrutinise.
So on moving to a different country for a while, I semi-consciously decided on the image I wanted to portray of myself. This was not a move to deceive everyone here or anything like that. Instead, it was an attempt to portray myself as I wanted to be in the hopes that that would help it happen. I can't say it has really been a success story, at least on the wanting to change myself front. But perhaps that is just how I feel today. And perhaps I shouldn't actually be wanting to change. Or at least, perhaps those aren't the important things to change or the things that should change. Gosh, I wish I didn't think so much.

I wonder what the gull thinks of all this introspection?




[For a recent discussion on whether talking to God/hearing God etc etc is sane, have a look a doctor/woman's recent post here.]

Lacking in...

...all kinds of things, but most of all inspiration. Because I'm a little low at the moment (it is a little more wide ranging than the MMC thing but not really definable...or all that interesting so I'll just keep moving...), I've been struggling to blog this last week. A few times, I've started posts (about such things as british comedy and cultural icons) and then binned them. I've read lots of other blogs this week, many of which I've thoroughly enjoyed (you've all been having a highly inspired week, good on ya!) and have been highly tempted to pinch ideas from a good range of blogs. Which leads me, slightly roundaboutly, to a question of blog etiquette*...
Mostly, I write this as a means of keeping in touch with people I know. Mostly, I only read the blogs of people I know. However, I have started to read blogs of people I don't know. In some instances this is through "blog hopping" - following links and reading what I come across. I am unlikely to regularly start reading these blogs. But there are a few blogs that I have started to read where I don't know the authors. And I also read these blogs silently - as in, I don't comment, I have not introduced myself. So my question is, what is the etiquette here? Should people introduce themselves when they start reading a random blog? I know there are a number of people that I do know who read this and don't comment and that is absolutely fine, but is it different when you don't know the person? (Oh, and if I do have any silent readers that I don't know, I don't mind at all, feel free to continue!)

*I don't imagine there is such a thing as blog etiquette...however, I have become aware from being in a different country, that I am a whole heap more "British" than I thought...I find people who don't queue for buses, who don't say please and thank you, who are generally not "polite" almost intolerable at times! The fact that they might be more open or more welcoming can at times be neither here nor there. And so I'm crying out for some social rules in my life. ;)

MMC explained

doctor/woman posted this very useful link to someone who has carefully gone through the background to the MMC and tried to make it "understandable" for those either on the inside or outside. Should you have any desire to know more, do read it. I feel a whole heap better for reading it - mostly because it is as bad as I thought it was so I'm not going mad!!!

Chin Up

So I have been allowing myself to creep into a bit of a downward spiral of late. Not feeling so good has led on to a whole heap more of not feeling so good.
After a conversation with Husbink yesterday, I decided I needed to take matters into my own hands and start getting on with life a bit more again.
Unfortunately, I have gone from one extreme to the other...

Today I have:
Had lots of blood taken for tests
Bought zips, thread, stuffing, and frilly bits to make cushions with
Been to the library
Been to the i-site to try to sort some stuff for the arrival of Scouse Dangermouse and Mr S.D. in just over two weeks! Yay!
Finally tracked down some decaf earl grey
Mostly made one of the above cushions
Done lots of internet hunting with regards to the arrival of SD and Mr SD
Done some gardening
Cleaned the bathroom
Hoovered
Run the dishwasher
Read a Latin book (more of this later I suspect)
Watered and fed my tomatoes
Sorted some washing

Now, I feel lousy! But at least I feel lousy for a different reason. Tomorrow, I shall attempt a more balanced approach to "getting back to normal"...

There was a whole heap of bad telly accompanying the cushion making...from Dr Keith and his show on virgins (he was treating them like they were a different species) to Tyra and her show on girls flashing their boobs for some big porn company thing (I generally can't stand Tyra but somehow get sucked in...) to Oprah and her weight loss boot camp (after the first two, this was quite relaxing!). Crazy days.