NDBT

Got my haircut yesterday. It’s a bob halfway between my chin and shoulders. It looks fab. Things are slowly coming together, although the next couple of nights till I leave are likely to be long ones.

Apropos of some earlier posts on the millenials, I saw this on 60 minutes the other night; the millenials go to work.

Listiness! The 50 smartest people in Hollywood.

Gotta run. (oh – musica; Valerie – Amy Winehouse, Tranquilize – the Killers and Lou Reed)

This makes me laugh so, so much.

I feel like a chicken with it’s head cut off. Really and truly. Things are slowly getting done, but why, oh why, couldn’t Christmas be another 4 weeks away? I seriously need a week off between work and travel to pack up and finish everything here and I could REALLY use the extra travel time. Basically,

Checked with Stray, twice, to figure out my schedule. They currently have me on 3 full days in queenstown. I do not need 3 days in queenstown, nor do I want it, but they can’t change it till I’m actually on the bus. Since it’s getting into the tourist season, what do you want to bet I’m going to get there and the next bus will be all reserved already? It’s ok. I should be able to stop off in Wellington and Waitomo anyways. This traveling under a deadline sucks. I liked going around other places where I wasn’t going to be in such a rush to do everything and my plans could change with my whims. Oh well – you take what you can.

Trying to file an application for a tax refund, which I may or may not get. The only problem is that they need a copy of my last pay stub. I turn in my final paysheet Friday. The final pay stub will come on Dec 11th. I am passing back through Chch on my way up north, but only for an evening. Sooo… I’m trying to figure something out. I’ve paid New Zealand more than $1000, so if I could get some of that back, that would be fantabulous.

I also have to apply to get all of my accrued holiday pay from Hudson this week. And I shipped off my laptop. Took down all my photos from off the walls last night and devided my drawers into “to be sent home” and “to go backpacking”. It should make the next bout of cleaning and packing easier. Last night I was supposed to have a meeting with my personal trainer, waited at work for an hour at work, took off, got to the library and realized I had left my tennis shoes at work. And the new girl now has my key card, so I was locked out. And it was the first day I hadn’t brought my coat into work, so it was raining and FREEZING. That was awesome. 

Getting my haircut today. Hopefully baking a pie (the courier swung by yesterday but didn’t leave the package – hopefully one of my flatmates will get it today). Tomorrow I have to go exchange my used books at a bookstore (I just finished reading Death’s Acre, which is about the Anthropological research station in Tennessee. Good book overall, but I’d say Dead Men do Tell Tales is a better forensic anthro book. If you like that kind of stuff, I also recommend A Fly for the Prosecutiuon, which is about forensic entomology).

I’m stuck at 57th in the box office challenge (they’re up to 1,900+ players). I’d really like to be in the top 50 for the fall, but unless I come from behind and manage a perfect score on next week’s I’m not sure it’s gonna happen.

Got the next 3 ep.s of Heroes from a friend, plus Little Miss Sunshine and Ocean’s 13, so yay there. I have to ship stuff home and I’m not sure when or how. Seeing as I need a lot of my clothes until the day I move out… Maybe a flatmate can take me to the post office super early on saturday? But then what do I do with my gym clothes from Sat.? Crap. I might send off one box tomorrow if I can, and do another one sat. afternoon. I wonder if it’s open? I’m so unused to places being closed on the weekends… 

Yeah – crazy hectic here. Luckily, JOSHUA comes out TOMORROW!!! And it’s playing at the Rialto, which is an art house theater I really like. So silver lining to all the stress. I can go unwind and watch the second Sam movie in as many months.

I’m working on finishing up a couple of retrospective posts before I take off – we’ll see how it goes. If I don’t finish them now I’ll post them from Boston. Stuff about suggestions on packing, what I found best and worst about the places I went, etc.

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So… I went out to Akaroa with a tour company called Kowhai (Ko-phay), which was a great little family run operation. It was in a small van, so we got to drive through the Port Hills to get to some great look-out points over Lyttleton and Akaroa harbours (the big companies can’t navigate the windy roads). The gorse is in full bloom, giving a lot of the hills a yellow tint. BTW – in that photo of Akaroa, you can see the small teardrop shaped land mass (not quite an island?). It was the site of a large maori massacre by a northern tribe. We stopped off at the Hilltop cafe for a coffee over looking the harbour, then headed down into some small towns on the way. We passed by the oldest hotel in New Zealand (the Duveauchelle (1880, if I remember correctly)- run by 2 French brothers, till one of them married the local chief’s daughter and they had to high-tail it to Hawaii). Then we stopped at Barry’s Bay cheese factory. There was no cheese making on that day, but we watched a video about it and sampled some different varieties. I got some of the local bleu, which was okay.

Then we drove into Akaroa, which is a charming little town. The permanent population is only about 500, but there are lots of people with vacation homes there. It is French town, although it was owned by the British. Basically, a bunch of French settlers came over, stopped off in the North island to refuel, got drunk, told the local (Brits) what they were up to, some Brits got on a really fast ship and beat the French to Akaroa by about 6 days. Even though the Brits had claimed the town, the settlers decided to stay, and so now there are lots of French things around town (including all the street signs). We wandered around town for about half an hour (they were having firefighting relays in the park) and then our guide cooked us a bbq picnic (it was so cute – we had a tablecloth and umbrella. Plus it had been ages since I had 3 bean salad or potato salad. It was great.). Then we had some more time to wander around town before I went on the harbour cruise to go see the dolphins.

So – the cruise was fantastic. The scenery was great, there were tons of birds, we saw a couple of fur seals, and the dolphins were incredible. They are Hector’s Dolphins, the smallest and rarest of all the marine species. And they have the prettiest coloration. We saw absolute tons, and the first calf of the new season.

On the way home we stopped at a stone beach, which also had a lot of birds.

So yeah. All in all a really fantastic day out.

By the way – I don’t remember if I ever mentioned, but the most common local gulls are the red-beaked gulls. You can’t really see in this photo, but they have red legs and red beaks. A whole bunch usually hang out in the square in front of my office building. i think they’re quite pretty.

Not much new here. Work is fine, and I think Caroline is really picking everything up. I have a ton of calls to make at lunch (my bus company, the tax office, the Melbourne police, etc etc etc). I started cleaning up my room yesterday. I have lots of errands to do this week (haircut, gym stuff, taxes, exchanging my used books, shipping stuff home, and all that jazz). Still, I think with Caroline on board, everything should go smoothly (fingers crossed). I’m still a bit nervous about not having a copy of my bus itinerary, but hopefully that will be sorted soon.

Other stuff, check out the first photo here. Pretty….

I’ve had the most competely wonderful lazy day. I was up late watching the Green Mile on tv last night (WHY Sam wasn’t nominated for an oscar is COMPLETELY beyond me. Ok – not really, actors are saps and they were going to nominate Michael Clarke Duncan, but Sam SHOULD’VE been up for one.) Anyways, woke up late, did some grocery shopping, laundry, talked to my family, and met up with Hollie in town, where we got cold drinks (it was scorching today) and sat under a tree in Cathedral square and talked for ages. She told me about seeing the north island and we got to catch up on backpacking stuff.

And now I’m posting photos. Hmm… what else? We got new flatmates in the sleepout, but obviously, I won’t really know them since I’m leaving soon. My laptop sold online for spare parts. I posted it for $20 and got $200. I’m pretty excited about that.

Akaroa photos are up here. I’ll post more about the trip tomorrow.

Shari passed this along to me. It’s weird and wonderful. Making Fiends.

Oh – yeah. I forgot. So – I’m suffering from major Daily Show withdrawal (NEED JON NOW!!), but the repeat episodes are a temporary fix. Particularly last night’s showing of this interview with Dennis Leary, which made me cry with laughter. Also Dennis Leary. And the worst thing you will ever, ever laugh at.

Also awesome; the Cabaret medley from Liza with a Z.

I’m back from Akaroa, and after too little sleep, too much excitment and too much sun, I’m about 1 chocolate-covered biscuit away from crashing here at the computer. Did that even make sense? Point is; I’m exhausted. But I am very, very happy. Akaroa was so so so so wonderful. I’ll do a proper post soon (with lots of photos!) when I’m not in danger of passing out, but here are the highlights;

the cheese factory, the duveauchelle hotel (the oldest hotel in NZ; 1880?), the oldest house in Akaroa (1940! Over fifty years ago! no! surely not!), lots of gorgeous scenery, bbq lunch, firefighting races, french stuff, charming seasideness, hawks, varieted oystercatchers, red beaked gulls, black backed gulls, skuas, fur seals, white flippered penguins, swallows, a goat, deer, sheep, terns, AND the absolutely amazing Hector’s dolphins. There were TONS. And we saw the first confirmed calf sighting of the season!! Yay!

musica; Christmas carols! It’s after thanksgiving! (and there’s some big to do in Hagley park for Christmas today).

Oh yeah – I think the new girl will do fine once she has some time next week to work on everything. We had a staff dinner on thursday. I got to sit in the botanical gardens with a smoothie and tlak to my family on thanksgiving. The next week at work will be easy (the last couple of days I’m planning on finishing off my books and applying for tax back) and then I’m on HOLIDAY for three weeks. Life is good.

I’ll be away for a bit. The new girl started yesterday so I’m quite busy training her and getting everything sorted.  So enjoy this as the last post for a bit.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING! No pumpkin, but I did find some mincemeat, so I’ll be eating some of that for the next few days (no egg nog either). And the new temp and I are going to decorate for Christmas this week.

All things Doctor Who for the moment. (gah! I’ve watched them all! The season finale was Sunday night. Now I actually have to WAIT for new ones… like the Christmas Titanic ep. though…)