Entries Tagged 'What I've been doing' ↓

Wow, this move to San Francisco is getting real now. Finalising tickets came and went without much of a bang thanks to having made the trip a couple of times this year. But seeing the movers in the house yesterday and U.S.A. written on the boxes and the place starting to look quite uncluttered … it’s finally starting to sink in.

Moving guys are always so proficient at packing. But they do smell! Mean to say but acrid sweat and smoke hung around the house a while even though they were only here for about 45 minutes.

So there’s now a whole lot less orange in Wellington – we’ll be reunited with our stuff in the land of The Big Orange Bridge in about 2 months!

Today it’s 7 years since I started blogging – with all the technical fads and things like Twitter taking the world by storm – it’s nice to think I’m still going. I’m up to 1700 posts now and over the last year my new, fairly busy Reviews category (mostly about coffee and cafes) has been added.

Might have to have a shuffle around for the upcoming year – moving to San Francisco at the end of this month for a reasonably permanent amount of time means that I won’t be categorising activities there as ‘Travels’ any more!

It’s finished! After a start that went nowhere much back in early March when I found the edge pieces and Sara joined up one side, we’ve picked it up again over the last 2 weeks – it looks great!

It was so cool doing the first layer that had some street and building names – knew straight away which part of the puzzle to go to.

The middle layer was pretty quick and formed the foam base for the buildings to fit in.

Putting in the buildings was quite time consuming – some had unusual bases otherwise there were a lot of square and rectangle buildings to put in and the little plastic replicas often not so easy to recognise.

It’s been very cool the last week as more buildings have been put in, coming up the stairs to the first thing you see in the lounge being the coffee table with New York at eye level.

After xerocon in Taupo we had a couple of days in Awakeri – boy it was hot – 35 degrees C the day we arrived and about 30 the next day so we didn’t do much but sit very still under the veranda. Except when we were pacing backwards and forwards monitoring the hatching outbreak as the monarch caterpillar chrysalises all darkened during the 3 days of our visit. I’ve never watched the whole hatching to flying process so intensely before and it was amazing! It was great to see the other end of the munching caterpillar phase – and to know that operation monarch rescue a couple of years ago probably played a big part!

About 25 hatched in the time we were there – a couple didn’t unfold properly which was pretty sad, especially after we tried to help them out – but those that did were so beautiful.

The butterflies stayed hanging for quite a while, gently opening and closing their wings to dry them. I kept my eye on the 1st one I’d seen hatch in the hope of seeing it fly off and I did – the wings opened and closed more frequently and then began to quiver, then the butterfly turned it’s head from side to side as if to look for traffic then leapt off the leaf – miraculous! I got quite teary!!

If it took a butterfly too long to get the chrysalis off we knew the outcome wasn’t going to be good – seemed that the wings started drying the minute air got to them so they couldn’t unfold properly. In the 2 cases we saw, the butterflies ended up with bits of the chrysalis still stuck to their folded wings – it was really nerve-wracking helping them out! I was so scared I was going to rip a wing off!

Didn’t help much though, the wings stayed all folded although the butterflies survived a couple of days and tried so hard to fly.

The Mister captured a great video!

So the mystery shrub/tree/weed that’s taken residence in our patio pot is growing tall and so are it’s friends! We’ve changed our mind from our initial guess of hebeis purpleis and also rejected Mother’s suggestion of Asclepias curassavica. Orange Sister put forth a guess of baby pohutakawa which was quite exciting, but sad because it’ll never survive in the pot if it is one … mind you she was guessing by looking at the display on the back of the camera, not having seen the photo previously posted.

So here we are … 2 months on and now much bigger. Any more guesses?

Remember the pear studded with cloves that we made on Christmas day?

Well, out of desperation or perhaps interested to see how it was after 2 weeks, Mother and Father cut off the front this weekend which had long since rotted and ate the rest of it for breakfast! Reports are that it had survived well, that the back was still firm and pear-like even though it did taste quite clovey – not really a bad thing. I’m surprised it lasted so well! I didn’t think the pear was that green when we put the cloves in a couple of weeks beforehand, perhaps they have preserving qualities, not that you’d tell from the rotten bit!

In 2010 I decided to take at least one photo every single day. It was an idea I saw on Twitter at the end of 2009 and seeing as I take a few photos I thought it would be quite fun and not too much of an addition to my day. I didn’t make the project about becoming a better photographer, I just made it about taking photos of things I saw, things I thought, sometimes interesting things, fantastic sights or memories of that day. Some days I took loads of photos, especially when we were in New York for 4 months and on those days it was really hard to distill it down to the one photo of the day.

Here are all 365 photos for 2010 in a set on Flickr – take a browse, some fantastic photos.

And now I present one Project 365 photo for each month – these were really hard to pick and the look back through 2010 was quite hard – I still can’t look at the New York photos without a heavy heart! So the photos below don’t necessarily represent the highlight of the month, they’re just our pick of great or interesting photos from those taken that month, almost a random sample – some months just too many great photos to choose from. Enjoy.

(By the way, camera is a compact Canon Powershot SD1400 IS, orange, that we got in New York.)

January – clouds & fog over Wellington harbour.

February – my sisters-in-law at the beach house on a day when the whole family was together for a professional photographer.

March – early on in the season for ‘eating in’ at Shake Shack; we sat next to this couple who we reckoned were on a first date. This just captures the essence of the place.

April – a crisp evening at one of our favourite restaurants Morells at Rockefeller Plaza when Mother & Father-in-law came to stay.

May – Park Avenue on the way to work every day.

June – one of 2 times we walked from top to bottom of Central Park, this one after the Museum Festival when 5th Ave was closed for a mile & all museums offered free entry for one night.

July – chilly times back in Wellington but spirits were high on this day for the All Whites ticker tape parade upon their return from the world cup.

August – Aidan now has the hang of his bike & this is one of the rare moments he stood still & didn’t produce a goofy smile when he saw the camera.

September – one of a couple of gorgeous spring days in Wellington after a horrid wet winter, & hundreds of photos of the harbour were tweeted.

October – Mother, Father & Niece spent the night after their south island road trip in the school holidays. She’s growing up.

November – first trip to Sydney in a while for a wonderful long weekend with Sara & Lucy.

December – the clove studded pear we made from the Martha Stewart ‘Living’ magazine I got for Christmas. Took pride of place on the Christmas table & lasted a couple of weeks.

Am famous on the Jam Off blog – just re-purposed my holiday jam-making post … you’ve read most of it before but a few extra bits so take a look!

Finally got to meet the little black cat that lives on the Wellington waterfront today! When the sun began to appear in November a new friend I’ve made at work suggested we went for some lunch, and that she’d get something she could eat outside seeing as I take my lunch to work every day without fail. While getting her lunch we bumped into one of the Fuel baristas who’d just been down to the waterfront and she said ‘Oh you might see the little cat down there – she’s out right now!’ I was most intrigued and excited and after more questioning we found out that the cat appears most lunchtimes, is homeless and very friendly.

So off we rushed! Caught sight of her in the distance but she never came near where we were. And we didn’t see her the next time or the next time or the next time … then last week when we got to our lunch spot a man in an SPCA uniform was waiting nearby. We began to worry and imagine all sorts of things, mostly wondering why he had to take the cat away if she seemed happy living there and not bothering anyone. Eventually a woman came and met the SPCA man and took him around to the rocks opposite where we were sitting. He collected a cage on the way so I hoped that was a sign that the cat wasn’t too badly injured or dead. The man crawled down the rocks and rustled the cat out of a hidey place – it jumped up onto the wall next to the lady for a pat before being placed into the cage. And off the SPCA man went with the cat in the back.

We finished our lunch and wondered what was going on. I got onto Twitter when I got back to work and asked the SPCA if they knew anything

They did!

That was about a week ago, and when we went down for lunch a couple of days ago we got pretty close to her but short of crawling around behind others enjoying lunch in the sun I still didn’t get a pat. I waited patiently and called as much as I could without annoying everyone! (She’s behind the man in the blue/grey shirt.)

Then today we made a last minute decision to go down for a quick lunch seeing as it was such a gorgeous day and we finally got to sit next to her! She loves a pat and very much enjoyed bits of ham out of Mrs H’s sandwich. I sent a photo onto the SPCA so they could see that she was being well cared for even if she didn’t have a regular house and family.

Am insanely excited! Jiff’s Mom sent us peanut butter granola bars from America!

When we were living in New York and I couldn’t bake this was our little treat with our Saturdays Surf coffee every morning. We kidded ourselves that they were healthy, because they came from Wholefoods, with ‘organic’ stamped on the box and they were made of the healthy breakfast food granola … not really a substitute for the dry stale no-added-sugar muesli you eat for breakfast in New Zealand if you’re trying to eat what’s good for you. And who could pass up on peanut butter flavour?! Not me! Man they were good … haven’t had one of these yet … saving them for when we’ve finished the current round of baking otherwise we’ll wolf the lot!

Thanks so much Jiff’s Mom – it made our day! And we’re looking after your son … he’s eating well as evidenced by the most giant plate of food he ate at our place on Saturday when we had our Thanksgiving Dinner … and that was just his first helping! He’s the best guest ever