Raining again

It has been a pretty rainy spring. Raining today again. Last night I just went home and read and took and nap, and read some more. Pretty boring night.

I think we are going to have movie night in the boardroom tonight. I hope Darran brings his Heathers DVD.

Bummer for the new girl

Last night when I got home from work I asked Brooke straight up, "Why is it that you feel uncomfortable living with me? I would like to know so that I can learn about myself." She says that I have a poor and condescending attitude towards living in the flat. I asked for specific examples of anything I did to make her feel that way and she could come up with none. I knew she had no reasons. Ha.

The new girl that is moving into the flat (not my room, the other one) started moving some things in last night. We had a chat and I told her that I was moving out. She asked why and I told her that Brooke and I don't get along, but I wouldn't give up anything else. I wanted to tell her not to move in, but I am not that mean. I couldn't do that to Jeremy. I do feel bad for the girl because she seems really cool and I hope it works out for her there.

Damn, I need to get a new WOF for my car. It expires today...

Wow, that was a weekend

This weekend was one of the best non-tramping weekends I think I have ever had. Just as things started to look like they might take a turn for the worse at the end, they got better still. Weekends like this one make me want to stay in NZ for good.

Friday was Agi Graham's art show at the Art Post in town. Agi is my CTO, Ian's wife. She had some excellent oil and water paintings. I would love to purchase one, but they are expensive and I don't know how I would get it home to the States, if I ever go (see above). After that we went out for dinner at Sohl and then to Jo's 21st. Jo is our new office manager at work and whoa, she has a crazy side. At about quarter to 12 we left to go to the Rocky Horror Hamilton show. I guess the guy who wrote Rocky Horror Picture Show used to live in Hamilton, NZ and used to frequent a theatre here that gave him the inspiration to write it. They unveiled a pretty big statue of Riff Raff after putting on a live show right in the middle of Victoria St. Good times that night.


I got up early on Saturday morning and packed up my stuff to go to Whangamata for Mel and Ben's wedding. I got over there in the early afternoon and we hung out for a while then hit up the wedding. It was a fun time. The ceremony was great. Matt sang a Van Morrison song at it.
The newly weds leaving the church:


Then on to the reception afterwards. There were some fun new people to meet there and we partied it up. It was good to hang out with Hamish and Amanda again. I realized what great people they are and I was starting to wish that I had never moved out of their flat. It crossed my mind a few times that I should move back in there, but I don't know how to come to ask after leaving them so abruptly the first time. After the reception we went to town and kept it alive until the pubs closed.
Ben and Mel at the reception:


More photos from the wedding here.

Sunday we all got up and went to the boat club in Whanga for brunch. An excellent meal and great to have some final words with Ben and Mel before they leave. I went back with Ben and Mel to the place Ben's family was staying at then over to Mel's parents.
This is the view from the place Ben's family was staying in Whangamata:


Then we all headed out to Auckland to the airport to see them off. Everyone was crying and stuff as they left on their honeymoon to Fiji, then on to the States to live and work in Vail for a while before they travel and work in the UK and Europe.
Here is a shot of them in the airport after they had gone through customs. We could see them downstairs and we talked to them on the phone for the last time before they left:


Everyone is happy and exicted for them and I am sure they are going to have a great time on their travels. I can't wait to see them in the future. I am sure our paths will cross more! I can't believe their wedding came so fast and now they are gone. It seems like I have known them for years, but really we just met about 7 months ago. I loved living with them and I feel really priviledged to meet such fantastic people. Damn, this is bringing me to tears. I love the two of them and can't wait to see them again.

I drove home from Auckland and stopped by Sarah and Gareth's place and had a yawn to them about the wedding and stuff. They were up in Whitianga and Hot Water Beach for a party this weekend too... When I got home Jeremy was like, hey, come in here for a minute. So I go in the lounge and he breathed real heavy and say, "I am gonna have to ask you to move out." We had a little chat and he says there is nothing specifically that I have done wrong, but sometimes people don't get along. Ha! Brooke is such a pansy... Makes Jeremy do her dirty work. Well, I will have a chat with her tomorrow I think. I just need to find the words... This is where I thought the weekend was gonna start going downhill. Jeremy said that he would give me two weeks to move out. I was kinda surprised by that. That seems like a pretty short amount of time. So I figured there is no better time to call Hamish and Amanda than now. So I rang them and talked to Hamish. He said he would talk to the girls and see what they reckon. He called me back in about 2 minutes and said that they would love to have me come back and it is Jo's (different than the one whose party I went to Friday) birthday next weekend and she wants to make it a "Happy Birthday Jo/Welcome Back Lenny" party. I was so stoked with that, I know that I will enjoy living with them again. So I am going to move out of here this coming weekend and leave them high and dry for a week's rent I think. Otherwise, if they want the whole two weeks rent, I will stay out the two weeks just to piss off Brooke. Good times.

This weekend really couldn't be better. I am loving everything about it except that Ben and Mel are gone and I am not going to see them for a long while.

Update:I talked to Jeremy and he wants me to stay for the whole two weeks because they need the money, but if I want to move out sooner they won't ask for the rent for the weeks I am not there. I am gone this weekend.

yaRs 2

Went out to Raglan last night and had fish and chips in the sunset for Thanksgiving. Sat out at the point and watched some surfers rip it. The waves were a good 3-4 feet, so it was good watching...




More photos here.

Everybody is leaving

It is the end of the year and people are all moving out of Hamilton. Some will be back and some won't. Kinda weird. Harris is going to Egypt I think! That is crazy. Si is leaving today to go to the Naki for a while, but he will be back in January to do some tramping...

Went to Tralee last night to see the guys and give them a hand moving some stuff. Today is Thanksgiving, but I don't really have any plans for that. I think it will just be a normal day. Maybe I will go out to Raglan for some fish and chips in the sunset if there is one.

Tomorrow should be good. Ian's wife has an art show, there is a hardcore show at Youth Zone, and it is Jo's (work mate) 21st. I think I will hit up the first two. Then Saturday is Ben and Mel's wedding in Whangamata. Good weekend coming up even though there is no tramping involved.

Stupid power outages

So, I have had an exciting week since I came back to the North Island. Yeah right!

Monday I worked then went home and wrote some emails and stuff. Tuesday I worked then went home, went to Si's and hung out, went home and worked on photos for my album. So here I am today. We had a power outage this morning at work. Sometime during the night it went out and took out all of our servers and everything. Very inconvient. It is all up and running again now.

I used Skype yesterday to call my mom's landline. I had used it before for PC to PC calls, but never PC to landline. It worked really well. She heard an echo of herself, but to me it was perfect and it only cost 0.28euro for the 15 minute call. I am not complaining!

Ok, so I am writing this again

Current music: Brandtson - Dial in Sounds

Sometimes I hate Blogger... here goes again, but this time I am just writing a list of what I did.

Wednesday:

• Dinses arrived late from Auckland after being held up in customs
• Took the Desert Road to Waiouru and camped along the side of the road
• Slept terribly because of the trucks going by all night

Thursday:

• Left for Wellington at 5am
• Got the ferry to Picton
• Sun shining on ferry and the trip was great
• Drove to Nelson
• Decided on Mt. Owen for our tramp (filming location for Lord of the Rings)
• Stayed at Paradiso and spent too long in the spa (God, I love Nelson!)

Here is a shot of the other Interislander ferry as we were crossing the Cook Straight:


Friday:

• Took off early from Nelson and went to Kahuranga National Park
• Started the track on the Blue Creek trail to Granity Pass
• Soon above the treeline with good views
• Stayed at the hut in Granity Pass
• Dissappointed to learn Mt. Owen was another 3 hours
• Watched sunset from the ridge towards Sentinel Hill

First time above the treeline near Billie's Knob:


Granity Pass Hut:


Watching the sunset:


More photos here.


Saturday:

• Tried for Mt. Owen summit, but weather came in
• Went back to the hut for lunch
• Met some people from Christchurch including a geologist
• Walked out with the Christchurch people with geology and biology lessons along the way
• Stopped below Billie's Knob for great views up the Blue Creek valley towards Granity Pass
• Drove to Maruia Springs near Lewis Pass, but they were closed
• Camped near Lewis Pass on the fault line

Weather coming in on me and Cole:


Views up the Blue Creek valley towards Granity Pass:


More photos here.


Sunday:

• Hit up Maruia Hot Springs
• Drove through Lewis Pass to Christchurch
• Went to the Christchurch Christmas parade in November
• Did some shopping
• Went to the airport
• Took some pictures of Mt. Taranaki from the plane

Lewis Pass:


Christchurch:


Mt. Taranaki:


More photos here.

Damn Blogger

This morning I wrote a super long post about my weekend adventure. Blogger had problems and it never got posted. Now it is gone. I will have to write another one, but it will most likely be more brief since I already wrote it once and I am not in the mood. I don't have time to do it now, so it will have to wait until tomorrow. Ugh...

There are pictures up. So, for now feel free to check the pics and tomorrow there will be story to go along: Mt. Owen trip with the Dinses

last day of work

Current music: Loveline - 20041028 (w/ Jimmy Eat World)

Today is my last day of work... for the week. The Dinses are arriving today and I am heading down south with them. Should be a good trip. I have a few concerns about them being really tired and not making the ferry, but I am sure we will make it.

Last night I just hung out around home. Jeremy and Brooke had some people over for a "dinner party". What is with them trying to act so "grown-up"? Gay...

Not sure where we are gonna go hiking. I want to go to Arthur's Pass, but the weather there might be a bit crappy. Rain with snow above 1100m. No good. Maybe we will hit up the Nelson Lakes area. There are a few mountains around there I am keen to do and it would be less of a drive anyway.

Ok, time to wrap up some stuff to ship off to the customer today.

Winter is over

Well, I managed to get two photos published on snow.co.nz. They are here and here. Now i have to work on getting stuff on surf.co.nz.

Last night Simon and I came into work and watched Adaptation on the projector. That is an excellent movie. I am still not sure which parts of the movie actually happened and which were part of the screenplay he was writing, but it was cool. Strange that it had the same girl in it as Donnie Darko. I seem to always do that. I get two movies that have the same person in them without realizing it. Last time i watched Donnie Darko I also watched Texas Chainsaw Massacre (the new one). Both of those have the little boy in it... Weird.

nice relaxing productive weekend

Current music: Billie Holiday - The Same Old Story

Friday night was pretty cool. Everybody came over. We had a bit of a bbq and chilled around all night. After all of Brooke's friends left she became really weird as usual. She started cleaning up everything, but all my friends were still there and some of Jeremy's. She actually told Kenny that a beer bottle was his and handed it to him to take care of it... Kenny wasn't drinking beer. Funny as. Then she asked Simon, "You are still here? When are you gonna leave?" I was sitting right there and I asked her what she wanted them to leave for and she said she wanted to go to bed. I said fine, then go to bed! A minute later Joel walked out of the toilet and I said (right in front of her), "Joel, what the hell are you still doing here? When are you leaving?" She was pretty pissed off... ha!

Saturday morning Jeremy and Brooke left to go to the beach for the weekend. I went into town and did some Christmas shopping then went and found Simon. We went up to a mountain south of here between Te Awamutu and Cambridge called Maungatuatari. We didn't even start hiking until about 4:30pm. I love having the long days again! The view from the top was pretty much nil. It was shrouded in trees, but there was a trig so we climbed up that and got some views:


After that we came back and got cleaned up then went into town for Natalie's 21st and the Most Precious Blood show. Pretty good 21st. Awesome show. I miss hardcore shows. The ones here normally suck, so it was good to have a big band come in for a rocker:

so hard

Current music: Mineral - For Ivadell

Why am I finding it so hard to concentrate on work today? So far, I have been fooling around with my Neuros and loading new firmware on it and fixing up my multimedia buttons on my keyboard to work with Rhythmbox.

Must get back to IMA multiplexing multiple links in multiple groups... ugh.

Party tonight

We are finally having our flat-warming party tonight. Not gonna be a big one though. Hung out at home last night and worked on getting photos together. I am gonna have the best photo album when I leave NZ... Went over and visited Si and Harris for a short time too.

I think Si and I are gonna do some tramping this weekend since the weather doesn't look like it will be good for snowboarding.

Definitely time for some coffee. I think we are out of the Papa New Guinea blend. I will have to settle for the house stuff from Rocket Coffee. Oh, and I need to buy my plane tickets back here from Christchurch for next weekend...

Movie nights in the boardroom

Current music: Piebald - King of the Road

A few weeks ago someone at work mentioned the idea of having movie nights in the boardroom here at work using the wall projector and a laptop. Last night we finally did it. We watched one of my favorites: Donnie Darko. That was a good time. I suggest it for other companies.

This morning I went upstairs to get my yogurt out of the fridge for breakfast and it was sitting on top of the fridge... warm. It had been there for quite a while. Damn... I just bought that container. Inconsiderate bastards here at work.

Marty hasn't gotten back to me about going to Auckland for the show tonight. Maybe I should txt him.

Stupid brakes...

Current music: Death Cab for Cutie - Sleep Spent

I had a bunch of brake work done a few weeks ago. Now every time I touch the brakes they make a really terrible sound. I just brought my car over to the guy and he said it is under warranty, but he can't get to it until 3, so bring it back then. I want my car to work...

Got an email this morning from Bubba. Most Precious Blood is playing in Auckland tomorrow night. I might head up there for that. Trying to get Marty to come with me.

Went home last night and just hung out and relaxed. Read my book and worked on photos. I have two photos now that I am gonna give to my brother for Christmas. He loves the poster of Mt. Ruapehu erupting that I gave him a few years ago so I figured I would keep it in the same vein. Since he doesn't read this, I guess I can post them here for you all to see...

I took this one during the sunrise on the morning of the 27th of June from the National Park Backpackers parking lot looking out towards Nguarahoe and the northern flank of Mt. Ruapehu:


Then I took this about a week later on the 4th of July from the side of SH4 in National Park Village. It is nearly the exact same image, but a completely different scene:

Need coffee please...

Went home from work and sat in the sun and read a book for a while last night. Finally ordered Simon's camera from a different place because fotoconnection sucks. Hung out at Sarah's for a while. Damn... Daryl is gone to Australia. I didn't even know he was leaving. I will have to visit him when I am over there.

Photofriday: Radiant

Went out to Raglan last night for the sunset. I thought this shot of some surfers walking up the beach in the sunset fit well in the photofriday.com challenge: "Radiant".

Finally not sick

I went home from work on Thursday really sick. Not sure what did it. Everything was coming out both ends with full force. Not fun times. I went to the doctor on Thursday night because I was completely dehydrated and couldn't keep anything down. That was miserable. Stayed home from work on Friday and by Friday evening I was starting to recover.

Saturday morning I could finally start eating again and I felt almost back to normal. I didn't play paintball for Ben's stag though because running around would have made me vomit more... Yuck. Everybody came over to our house for Ben's stag bbq and party after that. Fun times! I will have pictures coming soon... Not too many though. Don't want to get anyone in trouble. We did set off a huge firework though. The neighbors were pretty pissed off. Eh... they are over it.

Did some Christmas shopping today and got some good stuff. The weather is awesome and I am gonna go back home and chill out in the sun.

It's the end of the world as we know it...

Current music: Piebald - King of the Road

So... Bush won. My prediction was wrong. Well, now we have nothing to look forward to. Oh yeah, we didn't before either. Kerry would have been nearly equally as bad. Hillary will run in 2008 and she is much worse than Kerry. She runs in the same circles. Yuck.

Last night I just went home and chilled out. Watched the election, the Simpsons, and the last episode of bro'Town.

I think we are gonna be filming the last bits for Simeon's film tonight. I think I will skip rock climbing. Too busy and still a bit sore from beating up my body tramping and snowboarding...

Now there are multiple cougars...

After work last night I went home and we had two girls come by and look at the flat. One was pretty good, but she can't move in until December. The other was only 17! We told her that would be a problem...

Simeon then txt me to go shoot his video over again. He wanted to do it again, but without the rain this time. I guess the rain kept getting in the lens and stuff like that. Simeon, Larry, and I went over to the Bunnings Warehouse carpark again and filmed. It only took a few hours. I think this is gonna look pretty cool when it is all put together.

The election is going on right now. I think Kerry is gonna take it. For the record that is my prediction at 8am NZDT on November 3rd. It is about 2pm on the east coast of the US right now and no "formal media predictions" have been made yet.

I have my laptop sitting next to my work desktop and it is on the CNN website. It refreshes periodically. I am anxious.

Good Halloween for me

Some hot cow sent me pictures of herself...

Turoa sequence photos galore

Here are those sequence photos I promised:
Lenny - indy grab over rock cliff above Clarke's Mistake(2.7MB)
Lenny - steep windlip cliff on Clay's Leap(2.7MB)
Lenny - "birdman" over rock cliff above Clarke's Mistake (2.1MB)
James - dropping the Fingers (2.3MB)
James - dropping the Fingers again (1.1MB)

So last night I pretty much just went home, took a nap, put together these sequences, and watched Van Helsing. That movie was pretty lacking...

Enjoy the photos!