Spring 2009, or October doesn't feel much like Halloween.

Spring is full on here, and the weather has been outstanding- well, minus the rain and wind, but it can't be nice all the time.  I hung out a few loads of laundry to dry on the clothesline, bought a few plants to replace the seeds that didn't sprout in my garden, made lemonade with lemons from my trees, and bought fresh strawberries and asparagus that are recently in season. 

We recently made some big purchases.  We bought a front-loading washing machine to reduce the amount of water we use, save our clothes from agitator abuse, and use less energy. We also got a new computer, another Dell, because the one we brought with us to New Zealand 3 years ago is on its last legs, so to speak. Darin uses it for work, so it's important to have a computer he can rely on.  Also, some new cookware has been purchased. The old stuff is still functional, so it will go up to the garage in Maungaturoto for use there. We have a propane camp stove up there that we use when we stay up there.  We were last there with about 24 bulls browsing around and vocalizing their unhappiness at our arrival.  Fortunately they respected the electric fence around the garage, and the dogs stayed away from them.  

Also, on that same visit to our "farm", Ruby hunted down, caught and killed a possum.  I was worried that she was bitten or scratched, but I couldn't tell if the blood on her was hers or the possum's. She had one small scar on her elbow, later, to show for it. After her gleeful, vicious, murder, she located the tree where another was located, and Darin shot it out.  This brings the total possums killed on our property to 3.  By the way, notice the pistol grip on the .22 rifle he is holding in the photo above. A change in NZ law required that he get a different firearms license and buy a new storage case.

So Halloween is just a few days away, and I don't have any plans. So I sent an email to my friends and asked if they wanted to dress up like a zombie with me and go on a pub crawl on Halloween. Only one of them emailed back to say he was busy. I probably won't do it on my own, because that's just not as much fun.  I've attached a picture from 2004, when we lived in San Diego, of me with my crazy friend. We had a lot of fun, but the drama was just too much. So when I moved to New Zealand, I vowed to myself, no more crazy friends.  But I haven't even met anyone crazy here, so that must mean that I am the crazy friend. I am sort of okay with that, because I know I'm, well, eccentric is probably a good description (deviant is too!).  I could also be considered an iconoclast. One of these days, if I am ever rich, I will buy about a hundred precious moments porcelain figurines, and make a video of each one being destroyed in a different way. Anyway my craziness or lack of it is not really the point. To me, the point is that people need to be reminded to be adventurous and playful and step out of their circle of comfort once in awhile, damn it! I need a crazy friend again, I guess. Even if I don't make a batch of fake blood and dress like a zombie on Halloween, I still may pull out the old severed neck application I'm wearing in the dead nun outfit (above). It looks pretty realistic. 

I saw District 9 a few weeks ago, and enjoyed it.  I had recently watched Dead Alive (also known as Braindead), one of Peter Jackson's early movies, and found several similarities. For example, the young man who strives to please the mother or father-in-law, when in fact he is being manipulated by her or him, the sympathetic treatment of the zombies/aliens, the beautiful girlfriend/wife who believes in him, and of course the fun gore splatter scenes. I am really looking forward to seeing Zombieland, which is getting good reviews, and REC2. Both REC and REC2 are Spanish films, the second to begin immediately after the events at the end of the first. This film was remade as Quarantine in the US- I haven't bothered to see this, as REC was just THAT good. 

I've been reading a fair bit lately too.  I read Guilo (Golden Boy in the US)  by Martin Booth, which is a memoir of a childhood in Hong Kong, which is really fun to read, and well written.  I also read most of The Opium Wars, which was enlightening because many places in New Zealand are named after the British men responsible for the atrocity that was the Opium Wars: Auckland, Palmerston, Wellington, and  Napier. The book was overall rather dry, so I didn't finish it. It starts out well, with a horrifying description of British and French military burning and looting the Emporer's Summer Palace, China's extensive collection of buildings, art, and gardens.

I've just finished Julie and Julia, which was fun to read. Not too many of the books I read can make me giggle audibly, but this one did. I'm looking forward to this movie also. I was glad that it didn't end like I predicted it would. It made me think back to my early cooking experiences, which typically involved a box of Hamburger Helper, Rice-a-roni, or a can of Dinty Moore Beef Stew. Life was so much simpler then. Now I have two boneless veal legs in my fridge, and only a vague idea of what to do with them, having never cooked veal before. In my defense, this is NZ veal, they are byproducts of the milk industry and were two for $25. What I really wanted was lamb shanks, but at $15/kg, that was a bit too dear. I am a huge fan of lamb now, whereas when I lived in the US, I don't remember ever eating it.

South of the North Island

View of the Tasman Sea from New Plymouth.

In my previous posts, I described the road trip from Christchurch to Greymouth, and from Greymouth to Nelson. We took the ferry from Picton, on the south island, to Wellington, on the south end of the north island. We felt so disappointed to be back in civilization. The south island of New Zealand really feels like another world, or at least a different country. On the other hand, we stayed at the nicest bed and breakfast places on the way back to Auckland. The first, Oceanus Holiday home in Papapapaumu, north of Wellington on the Kapiti coast, was like a nice home-away-from-home. We could have cooked dinner there, with a full kitchen. Even better was the accomodation outside of New Plymouth, a cabin called Logger's Retreat. New Plymouth is supposed to be one of the nicest places to live in New Zealand. It is pretty remote, but has beautiful parks and convenient access to Mt Taranaki (below).Those beautiful photos of the New Plymouth coast don't display the bitter cold wind that was howling all day, and prevented us from going up the mountain at all. As we discovered the following day, it's only about 6 hours drive from Auckland, so not that remote that we won't go back some time.

Back in Auckland, the following weekend was Halloween, and friends Adam and Roberta hosted a "fun as" party. Check out Sara Palin and POW John McCain, and the other awesome costumes of our friends.

This year, I was a Lucha Libre. I had bought that mask at the San Diego Comic-Con some years back.

Book reviews:

I finished Pitcairn, Paradise Lost, by Kathy Marks. She was one of only 6 journalists allowed to cover the trials on the island. This book has shocking descriptions of child rape, which has basically been going on since Fletcher Christian and his crew basically kidnapped women and brought them there. Apparently, several of the men convicted are here in New Zealand, as well as the victims, making it more personal. The story is very sad, but shows that due to one woman's courage to speak out, and the pursuit of justice by New Zealand and England, behaviors are changing.

Following that, I started Roots. I'm 400 pages into it. This story is a real tragedy. I mean, the writing is fine, but the detail of the story made me physically nauseous and repeatedly brought me to tears. One quibble I have with the writing, is that the level of detail is a bit much. The whole book is 688 pages, and even reading about 1.5 hrs a day, it's been a long read. I understand that the author (Alex Haley) is trying to include a lot of relevant history, but it's sometimes a drag on the plot. Some of the things he writes just slap you in the face with relevance to the world even today. The most interesting thing I have learned is that slave taking is a part of nearly every culture, even in Africa. And today it persists. I just saw an article about a "baby factory" in Nigeria, on BBC news, where women were raped, and when the babies are born, taken away and sold.

Ugh.

Scary stuff

Halloween is approaching, but here in New Zealand, I had to go onto the eBay website to be reminded of it. None of the shops are advertising candy and costume sales. No decorations, either. Halloween is one of my favorite holidays, but you just can't get a carving pumpkin in the spring. I would throw together a party, but it's just prior to our trip to the US and I'm a little distracted. Part of the distraction is the fear that Americans have grown to live with these days. Last week, American author Richard Heinberg gave a talk at Auckland University, "Life After Oil". We attended and the place was packed. His book Power Down was one of the first books Darin and I read about "peak oil", and we also have read The Long Emergency. Seriously sobering stuff, and part of of the reason that we want to buy land and live a more sustainable lifestyle. How do we do that? We're not sure how, exactly, but we're working on the problem. Reading the Omnivore's Dilemma helped crystalize my thoughts about sustainable agriculture on a local rather than global level. NZ's Green Party has a petition to be submitted to Parlaiment requiring all food products be labelled with country of origin. Australia already does this, and I think it's a great idea. I've blogged about China sending contaminated food to other countries before, so I'll just attach the link.

The other scary thing is the secret concentration camps in the US, supposedly 800 of them. When I heard about them for the first time last week, I thought "no way". But in fact, they have been around since 1984, and known of at least since 1987, when Oliver North was questioned about the REX-84 program during the Iran-Contra hearings. Their purpose is unknown, and there are many conspiracy theories. "A Halliburton subsidiary has just received a $385 million contract from the Department of Homeland Security to provide "temporary detention and processing capabilities.""

This, with the knowledge that the US Treasury has the power to sieze and freeze gold, silver, and any other asset in the event of an emergency, leads me to think that paranoia is not such a bad thing.

The cemetery photos are from the Symonds Street cemetery, where a number of important historical figues are buried. The cemetery is in the heart of Auckland, and is obviously very old. The Grafton Street Bridge was built over and through the cemetery, and the motorway is at the bottom of the ravine. There are trails through the cemetery, and as I mentioned in my last blog, it is haunted. Haunted by big, brown rats, living in holes below the gravestones. I didn't see any zombies, unless I count the one apparently indigent guy I see hanging around the area. When I told my Kiwi co-worker I'd been there, she said the cemetery is frequented by drug dealers and prostitutes. I didn't ask her how she knows this, heh heh. Back in my hometown of Fargo, there is a cemetery on a road with a sign that says "Dead End", get it? Ha.

Here's a photo of the mural in Swanson, with an incorrect use of appostrophe (posessive). It looks old, so I like it anyway. The picture of Darin is from O'Neill's beach, just north of Bethell's beach. We went there after watching France beat the NZ All Blacks in the quarter-finals of the Rugby World Cup. We'll get them next time, when the World Cup is held here in Auckland!

In other news, I got my NZ driver's lisence! I also got the motorcycle lisence, because although I don't have a motorcycle (yet), it's easier to transfer the US lisence to NZ than start over from the beginning. In my lisence photo I have an angry face, because their stupid eye exam machine wouldn't allow me to see the 3rd column of letters. I got really upset because I've had an exam recently and know my vision is good (with corrective lenses). Still, I had to go to the eye doc and get a 5 min exam and pay $20 for this certificate saying my eyes are fine. I'm feeling like a real Kiwi now because the local elections were just held, and we got to vote. Darin has joined a hunting group, Deerstalkers, and intends to do a bit of hunting here. Deer are only raised on farms here, typically for export. When they escape, along with the goats and pigs gone wild, they are fair game. To my knowledge there is no hunting lisence or fee to pay, so to hunt a wild deer, pig, or goat is to protect the NZ biosecurity and get "free" meat- a win/win situation.

Darin built me an herb garden using the wood from the old fence in our front yard, and we're supposed to plant the garden today. The wind is blowing so hard, I really don't want to go out. Also, I'm recovering from a minor food poisoning. Yesterday we ate at a purported "Mediterranian" restaurant, where I ordered moussaka. I have ordered this at another restaurant in Auckland, and it tasted nothing like real moussaka. Again, I was disappointed- no eggplant, made with potatoes, topped with tomato sauce/katsup. Moussaka is a classic dish, and I'm just offended that Auckland restaurants serve this pathetic excuse for the dish. But, yeah, I ate it anyway, I was hungry. Based on how I felt the rest of the day, the dish was obviously sitting around for awhile. I'm feeling better now, so I should get some other things done.