Author Archives: SJPONeill

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About SJPONeill

Retired(ish) and living on the side of a mountain. I love reading and writing, pottering around with DIY in the garden and the kitchen, watching movies and building models from plastic and paper...I have two awesome daughters, two awesome grand-daughters and two awesome big dogs...lots of awesomeness around me...

Weekly Photo Challenge: Growth

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This is my big dog, Kirk, before he became my BIG dog – we’ve had him since he was an itty puppy and have watched his growth over the past five years into a big dog that loves to watch animal shows on TV….

I posted an item under the Mundane to Meaningful writing challenge last week about my thoughts when I spotted the Avenger being rolled out at RNZAF Ohakea last week. Although it kinda reflects my thoughts at the time, it’s a bit maudlin and, IMHO, not that effective as a piece of writing…

So without taking anything away from the young men and women that launch themselves into the air each day from Ohakea in Hueys and Air trainers and now NH-90s and A-109s, here’s what my first instinct to write about for that challenge really was…

Saryrday afternoon and I’d finished work – I normally work a Tuesday-Saturday weekend to align with Carmen’s week and also to align with the US working day as a large portion of my work is engaging with overseas partners – and I’d just relocated downstairs from the study where I work, often eight hours in a single (literally) sitting, to the lounge where I can stretch out on the couch by the fire, watch some TV and surf the net.

Surfing the net outside off the study is a relatively new experience for us as we have always been somewhat bandwidth-limited in our scenic rural location and thus never really felt the need or had the driver of cable broadband to invest in an internal wifi router, aggravated by the fact that straight routers independent of a built-in ADSL modem haven’t been that common. Just after Christmas last year, we finally replaced our standard phone and internet services with a satellite connection – complete with big ugly dish on the west-facing side of the house – from Farmside. It’s still quite a novelty being free of the study to surf anywhere in the house, even – wow – in bed!

I don’t remember the weather but it must have been cold as the fire had been on all day – whatever the weather, it’s almost always warm inside as the house has been designed as a real heat trap in winter – but opens right up to keep us cool in summer (next time we actually have one) – so it’s not like we need to huddle around the fireplace to keep cosy. It just happens to be that it is right by the couch that faces directly onto the TV.

So getting back to Kirk…as I said we’ve had him since he was a little little puppy but he’s probably closer to me because he used to come to work with me when he was little rather than be left outside with the other dogs on a large and (then) unfenced section. I had my own office and it’s not like there was a mass stream of people queuing up to visit anyone in the doctrine/lessons learned world. So Kirkie’s kinda bonded more with me than anyone else…what that means is that every once in a while, he’s gets a bit angsty and follows me around like a shadow. If I shuffle so much as a foot along the couch, he’ll get up walk a whole half-step and then thunks (it’s like he just switches his legs off and drops) down on the floor at my feet again.

So when I’m on the couch and the fire’s on, Kirk will usually be crashed out on the floor right by the fire. You may have noticed that Kirk is a large black dog and you’ve probably already joined the dots with his heat-absorption abilities. He’ll lie there for an hour or so, slowly baking before having enough of that and lumbering over to the water bowl in the kitchen where being hot, he slobbers down a couple of litres before resuming his position with his head on my foot. So what this has to with Mundane to Meaningful, WordPress Challenges and the like?

Well…just as that inaugural Weekly Writing Challenge email chirped into my inbox – I was watching JAG by the fire – big Kirk sicked up over my feet….no surprise really after he’d just slurped up a litre or so of water from the bowl in the kitchen. I let him outside, just in case there was more to follow, and mopped up his mess – mostly water so not too bad. When I let him back in, he loped over to the ‘scene of the crime’ , sniffing all a round it, almost like he wanted to make sure it was all cleaned up…and was really quite embarrassed by his little whoopsy…

Sometimes Kirk and his offsider, Lulu, appear so human…you really wonder what is going on in those big heads; why these massive carnivores dote on us so much…what did someone say recently? That we should aspire to be the people our dogs think we are…? So when Kirk trails me around the house, squeezes into tiny space under my desk or between the coffee table and the couch, just to be closer to me, I can cut him some slack because he’s my mate…

He makes me sound like a doofus sometimes…

Home are the hunters…

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Home to rest, forever in hearts of those who served with them, and those who loved them.

Lance Corporals Paralli Durrer and Rory Malone who were killed in Afghanistan on Saturday have arrived home to New Zealand.

They were met by members of their families, senior military officials, and personnel from 2/1 RNZIR and QAMR during a ramp ceremony in Christchurch.

Quick and yummy

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There are times, when I working at home alone, that I kinda lose track of time and get so immersed in a job that all of a sudden it’s dark and I haven’t really thought too much about dinner…tonight was one of those times when I had given it some thought but hadn’t gone much past that…

The ‘girls’ in the chook house have really ramped up production and we have eggs coming out our ears at the moment so pretty much any food ideas need to include some eggy aspects. I also had some sausage meat in the freezer and the idea of a sausage and egg pie had a certainly appeal for a misty mid-winter night. Finding a recipe was harder than I thought as I am not particularly pastry-confident but I was amazed at the number of sausage and egg pies that were made with whole sausages and precooked whole eggs.

I found a mix for a Coronation Gala Pie that sounded interesting but decided in the end to go for as more traditional pastry-based one (one has to face one’s fears some time!). All was going well til I sent to retrieve the pastry that I thought was in the big freezer in the garage – must have used that for something else because that particular cupboard was bare of anything resembling pastry. I was too lazy to go to the effort of making a batch of pastry but remembered that the gala pie had used a bread base instead of the dreaded pastry.

I’d made a loaf of fresh bread last night and while this was a little too fresh to be an ideal pan liner, it did the trick – one thing I really like about home made bread is that it has very big slices that allow great coverage of the inside of the pan…tray…thing…I mixed the sausage meat with a decent squirt of tomato sauce and some tomato paste; a teaspoon each of coriander seeds, chili and curry powder, and some grated carrot left from our burgers the other night. I laid this over the bread lining the tray before whisking up five eggs seasoned with S&P and pouring that over the tray and filling any gaps in the meat.

The ‘lid’ was my last slice of bread, pressed down into the mix so that it would soak in and topped off with grated cheese also left over from burgers…40 minutes at 200 degrees and it was all done. I’ve started lining my trays with baking paper instead of relying on a greasy wipe for a clean release, and this one popped out nicely like a good poppy-out thing should…served up with four vegetables and there’s dinner…

Weekly Writing Challenge: From Mundane to Meaningful

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WordPress has kicked off a new challenge to encourage more regular writing…the first challenge is themed From Mundane to Meaningful…the general idea is to take some mundane action from your day or week and lead it to a train of more meaningful thought…

Because we both often away from home, we have to always have a plan for looking after our dogs…there are big enough that we can leave them on their own for about a day and a half but anything over that, we have to make other plans…Our kennel of choice is Creature Comforts, just north of Sanson, under the approach to RNZAF Ohakea. We’ve been using it for many years and know that our ‘kids’ are well looked after there: we use them often enough that the drop-off is pretty routine for all of us.

Driving past the main gate of the air base, I glanced in just in time to see the Avenger out of its hangar – the first time I have seen it since it arrived. It’s great to see this aircraft fully restored and flyable: I sat and waited to see if they were going to fire it up but no joy this particular morning.

For me, this and the other flying warbirds are a link to a past that we don’t appreciate and are all to quick to dismiss and forget amidst the tempo of our modern world. The Avenger is particularly evocative of the massive naval air battles of the Pacific War that turned back the Japanese tide at odd-sounding and other insignificant places like Midway, Coral Sea, Leyte Gulf and the Marianas.

And the thousands of young men, all of whom had other aspirations, careers, plans, lives…who downed tools, quite school and signed up to fight for some basic values…The young, now old men, who flew for Bomber Command, Britain’s only means of striking back during those dark years from 1940 to 1942, who only now have been recognised for their sacrifice seven decades ago, recognition denied them for reasons of political tidiness.

And we shouldn’t forget that every day, other young men and women launch themselves into the skies from Ohakea and Whenuapai, into harm’s way because flying will remain an inherently dangerous act until such time as we can do it unaided…I understand the physics of what they do but remain in total awe of the way that they have mastered this unnatural act…slipping those surly bonds in such a way that it seems so natural and effortless…

An act as mundane as dropping our dogs at the kennel led to a sad nostalgic train of thought…

 

Skin in the Game

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There’s been more dross in the popular media this week about ‘killer robot drones’ and this article from the Atlantic Journal got me thinking. Those thoughts didn’t really gel til tonight. After work – I almost always forget to turn on some ambient noise while I’m working – I put on a movie while doing some work around the house; you know, the cool stuff like laundry, dishes, bringing in wood, vacuuming, etc, etc…My selection was Stealth, a good bit of pounding hitech fun. I just happened to walk past the TV as the key players were discussing the implications of ‘robot’ war…the line went something like “…war is horrible, we know that and it’s the main reason that war is a last resort; but if we don’t have skin in the game any more, if it’s all machines – then we’ll have war all the time…”

So very true, and something that we seem to have forgotten – it’s not about cost-effectiveness, or superior precision, or any other military advantage that unmanned systems might bring to the party: it’s the cold but simple fact that unmanned systems relieve those that do not serve from the burden of, not guilt, but plain old inconvenient embarrassment in case some damn fool pilot decides to imitate Francis Gary Powers or get dragged through the streets of some dusty third world capital.

These distancing also takes the pilot out of the loop as well when it comes to pushing the button; contrary to what anyone might say, sitting in a room half a world away is not the same as being in the same missionspace as those he’s having a crack at…no skin in the game and we start to forget what it is that we are going, forget that there are actually people down there on the ground who may take some exception to being rudely bundled into some distant collateral damage calculation. It is one thing to strike a target in the heat of wartime and accidentally killing some bystanders or of striking the wrong building by accident while evading SAMs and AAA; and entirely another to grant yourself a license to strike where you want and when you want.

There are claims, well substantiated legally0-supported claims that the so-called drone strikes are conducted by legal right under international law, an inherent right to self-defence, and that your nation is at war. The trouble with that argument is that when you are the biggest by far kid on the block an argument of self-defence is difficult if not impossible to justify, even less so when you are not prepared to consider your end of the Drone Wars (and it does read like a bad Muppet-ridden George Lucas movie) as belligerents and subject to the same risks as your quarry. “Excuse us, Mr President, would it be OK if we lobbed a Hellfire missile at that Reaper pilot when he stops at the 711 for some milk on his way home from the war?” Skin in the game might take on a whole new meaning if someone decides to turn your rules against you – where do you want to draw the line? We won’t bomb your wedding parties if you don’t bomb ours?

Without skin in the game, we forget what war is really all about…that sort of complacency leads to weakness and weakness draws competition and predators (lower case predators, that is)…

Five Question Friday! 7/27/12

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Quite a good set this Five Question Friday….

What is the funniest thing you saw on Facebook/twitter this week?

I’ve been working offline quite a bit this week so haven’t been scouring the net for unnecessary hours as is my wont normally…I haven’t really come across anything THAT funny this week, certainly not as funny as “I’d rather shit in my hands and clap!!!“

I had seen this before and remember when the incident first occurred (yes, this is a true story!) – it may be more scary than funny when you consider that there really are people that dumb out there, alive well and walking around….

What is your favorite Olympic event?

Don’t care…maybe the one where it all ends and the world goes back to normal – except maybe the hosting nation that hasn’t bothered to learn from any of its predecessors and now founds itself broker than Greece….

I think that the Olympics have become just yet another commercial event with a vague tenuous sporting connection and any interest I might have had, vanished when synchronised swimming was recognised as a ‘sport’…

Do your kids do chores around the house? If so, what are they and how old are the children? Do they get paid for them?

They did and they liked it…actually we only cared about the first bit…you live in the house, you do some work around the house, end of…Pay? No, not really, but then they never really wanted for much either…

If you get bad service/food do you complain or keep quiet?

If I’m unhappy with food, I may send it back…unlike Mama M, I’m not too worried about the dreaded ‘loogie’ or ‘ throat slime’ in my replacement meal: I figure that the standard of many service staff now is so bad you run that risk anyway – if you don’t like it then I guess you just committed yourself to a life of cooking your own food…

America has this great way of dealing with poor service…it’s called tipping…no service, no tip…for all the whining about it here, I think the introduction of tipping would lead to a massive increase in service standards in New Zealand…the first time I went to the US, I did a one day bus tour around Oahu. At the lunch stop, everyone just mixed and matched to fill up the tables and I ended up sitting with three generations of women from a single family(apparently all the menfolk had gone off to slaughter defenceless animals or such so the girls were giving themselves a holiday in the sun). Anyway, our waiter was pretty bad (but thought he was personally pretty good); when he brought our bill, he reminded them ” Now don’t forget the tip, ladies...” Famous last words. The Mum turned to him and hollered “Tip?! Tip/ I wouldn’t tip you if you were the last waiter on earth; you were so bad you should be tipping us…!!!!” Lil ol’ me was a little taken aback at the depth of her feeling and the loudness of her voice. She explained “Here, sweetie, we tip for good service…lousy service, no tip; ask for a tip, no tip – it’s etiquette. And you see how packed this place is today and the size of the queue outside? That boy just got a $100 lesson in etiquette!”

If you could pick ONE frivolous item for your home, what would it be? (massive room sized closet? swimming pool? greenhouse? etc…)

A green house would be too practical here to be ever be considered frivolous and we inherited a semi-room sized closet (two of them) with the house (I think maybe there were bedrooms for kinda short people – certainly there was a bed in one of them) but, yes, a decent swimming pool up here on the side of the Mountain could definitely be considered frivolous and yes, we would so much want to have one…covered, of course, with a powerful heating unit attached….

Weekly Photo Challenge: Purple

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I think this is Hers because its mouth is always open….

We love our home but the entire interior is brown…wood grain, chipboard of one form or another, for a little variety, maybe varnished woodgrain or chipboard of one form or another…boringly, depressingly brown…

It was designed to be functional as a ski lodge, not as a home, and everything is very hardy, pretty much (but not always) practical, and functional. It didn’t have bedrooms when we bought it, just cubicles for bunk beds – lots of them – and they were the first to go in the first month of our occupation.

The interior doors were all white…boringly, depressingly white and functional…a few years back we used to spend the better part of two hours a day driving to and from work (back in the good old days when we both worked in the same place) and, in winter, that used to be a whole new source of depression as it’d be dark when we left and dark when we got home: we’d turn on the lights to be confront with brooown, and more broooown…and the brooownest most depressing part of the house is the back hallway which doesn’t get much light to brighten it up….

This one night, on the way home, we decided to add a splash of colour to the booooring brooooown back hallway (well, actually, it’s just THE hallway as it’s the only one we’ve got). We stopped at the ‘Kune Bunnings (when such still existed) and bought a litre (quart for those less enlightened) of nice purple paint; had a quick snack as soon as we got in the door, and set to de-hanging doors…there were nine doors coming off the hallway (got that down to eight now with the absorption of the spare shower into a larger bathroom – yes, it actually has a bath in it now; before it was just a ‘basin’ room – one day the bath might actually get hooked up to some utilities…) and over the next two night we removed cleaned, sanded and painted four of the them (His, Hers, laundry and #1 shower).

In a previous episode of Raurimu Renovation, we had scored some wooden heads from the Teak import shop in Te Kuiti and, after much intellectual discussion on which was His and which was Hers, mounted them to respective doors….

This might also give you a teeny taste of broooown…..

 

 

Weekly Photo Challenge: Dreaming

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Dreaming was the theme in last week’s  photo challenge but the accompanying spiel didn’t really seem to align with that theme…

“We chose this week’s photo challenge subject because it utilizes one technique we love to play around with: long exposures. Sometimes we use a neutral density filter; other times, we go organic and get the aperture, ISO and shutter speed to align perfectly in an effort to give our shots an otherworldly sense of escapism. (Using a long exposure is also a great way to blur people and other unwanted “noise” out of your photo.) “

So this one here, you could argue is a time exposure or simply just dreaming….

5QF ~ July 19

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Mama M from My Little Life is off on ‘lo-cation‘ this week – a location is like a vacation but in your own locality – so Five Question Friday is being hosted by Kate’s World…

1} What do you call them- flip flops, sandals, thongs, or slippers?

Well, actually, ‘jandals’ is the word we use so the rest of the world needs to get with the programme…slippers are in front of the fire, thongs bring up visions of Borat…and flip-flop is what politicians do…

2} Are you a “my kids can do no wrong” kind of person or a “Johnny punched you? Well what did you do to him first?!” kind of person?

Definitely – angels are only in the movies….

3} Would you confront a good friend that looked/looks down on your significant other?

Absolutely!

4} Biggest pet peeve?

I’m taking my cue this week from Mama M “…right now, I’m kinda the grammar police. Drives me bonkers when people don’t use “your/you’re” correctly...” so mine is people who can not master the difference between ‘s’ as something you add on to indicate a plural or ownership e.g. its or eggs, and tacking on ‘s as an abbreviation for ‘is’….

5} What’s your favorite take out meal?