…the earth moves…

Posted on 28 May 2013 by SJPONeill

I’ve been marking uni assignments the last couple of days and at times my head has been spinning but I was quite unprepared for another movement of the earth yesterday afternoon – enough to shake the house for a few seconds and one of the dogs even raised its head for a quick look around before going back to sleep. Pretty hohum, I guess, for Cantabs but it’s been a while since we felt one here…3.3 on the scale and ‘only’ 5 km deep… Quake 27 may 13

The little ‘I shot down a MiG’ star indicates the epicentre of yesterday’s rumble in relation to the Mountain (looking nicely white already), with reporting ‘feelings’ indicated by the baby blue boxes in (from bottom to top) National Park, Raurimu and Owhango…

Checking out the GeoNet site this morning, it looks like Mother Earth is ‘easing springs’ at the moment as there has been a string (at least two dozen) of minor shakes since then in an arc from New Plymouth to White Island…

Weekly Photo Challenge: Change | The Daily Post

Posted on 7 May 2013 by SJPONeill

These stairs were a Trademe score…I noticed them on the ‘closing soon’ page with 20 minutes to run and after a quick phone confab, we tossed in a bid for $2k fully expecting to be outbid by all the watchers ( the stairs are, after all, genuine rimu – and the spiral hand rail is a single piece) and were blown away to pick them up for the mere $600…

We were further amazed when we met the seller in Wellington that he had intended to only list them once – after being nagged into it by a friend – before converting them into firewood. He also threw in, at no extra costs. a complete set of rimu kitchen cupboard doors which had been destined for the firewood heap as well. Even so, he had meticulously itemised and numbered every piece so that the joiners were able to re-assemble it with no difficulty. They did have to take all the parts to their workshop some 55km away as that was the only place with a high enough ceiling to assemble and work on it.

Above you see us as the assembled stairs are delivered back to Raurimu, as we head-scratched and considered how to get them in through the front door (fortunately a double door) and into position (assembled, this thing wasn’t light!!). We managed though:

…and these are the horrible things that we got rid off in favour of the spiral – the drop down the central beam was a good metre or so – awesome with small children – NOT!!!

Weekly Photo Challenge: Change | The Daily Post.

My Little Life: Five Question Friday!! 5/3/13

Posted on 6 May 2013 by SJPONeill

1. What is your next home improvement goal?

In priority order….

BATHROOM!!!!!! BATHROOM!!!!!! BATHROOM!!!!!! BATHROOM!!!!!!

Knocking out the wall between the current shower and the rest of the bathroom; shifting the shower into the opposite corner of the bathroom and putting the bath in the area where the shower is now…

This wall goes and the bath goes in the new area;

…the windows are replaced by a full-length bi-fold or sliding door that provides full access to the bush outside…

…seal up the sleep-out cottage by fitting clear roofing over the deck(ette) and mounting windows (currently in storage in the Chalet’s garage) where the plywood panels are at the moment; flip the door so that it opens the other way towards the direction people approach from the Lodge; the cool bendy tree in the foreground will go as it has passed away and the deck will be extended another metre or two….

…at the moment the dining room bifolds open out to nowhere: the plan is to put a floor level deck out here extending out as far as the gate post in the foreground and, in Deck Phase 1, to just past the kitchen window (to about where the bush under the pantry window is now; Phase 2 will see the deck extended to meet the spa deck steps and around the corner to the back door…if the ugly internet satellite dish cannot pick up any decent TV channels it will go to as we now have fixed line broadband

2. If you could only read one book for the rest of your life, what would it be? No religious texts (ie Bible, Quran, Torah, etc, etc)…

This is a toughy…I once spent six week in Vietnam with only one English book and no access to any bookshop selling books in English til my last night in Saigon…had to settle for many many re-reads of Vulcan’s Glory (I’ll add the text as there’s not much as most people lack the fitness to click on the link anyways)

The novel focuses on a young Spock, a conflicted ensign, serving on the Starship Enterprise under Captain Christopher Pike. Spock is having a difficult time dealing with his Vulcan heritage and how it conflicts with his duties as an officer and what he wants personally.

Spock soon becomes involved in a mission to retrieve the ‘Vulcan’s Glory’, a priceless gem long thought lost in a spaceship crash. It is soon discovered there is far more to this mission then readily apparent.

The novel focuses on the crew of the Enterprise from the period featured in the pilot episode The Cage. A younger Montgomery Scott also appears.

That was challenging, character-building even, but I survived with no (visible) scars…looking around the library now at all the books that I have read so many times, I am conflicted…I’m leaning towards a classic like George Lucas’ original Star Wars, or possibly Dean Koontz’ Watchers or Lightning…?

3. What is on top of your refrigerator?

Dog treats, soap crystals in case one of the dogs picks up any of the poison that the Department of Conservation persist in dropping everywhere , tea pot because it is handy and unlikely to get knocked off, bug zapper, token pot plant, random stuff up high and out of sight out of mind when the girls are here….

4. What are your favorite or most used phone apps?

My phone is not really app-compliant or -capable but it does has Lego Star Wars on it from the time when the twins were born and we were spending a lot of time hanging around in hospital waiting rooms…

5. What’s the one thing you hate most about your spouses job?

That they don’t recognise her for what she does, more so considering that THEY headhunted HER for the job…be nice if some of that recognition involved extra income but ‘thank you‘ also goes a long way…

via My Little Life: Five Question Friday!! 5/3/13.

My Little Life: Five Question Friday! 4/12/13

Posted on 15 April 2013 by SJPONeill

1. Where do you hide things from your kids at?

We have two large garages – if we can’t find stuff in either of them they have no show at all…

Garage 001

2. What is your favourite rainy day activity for bored toddlers?

Painting and drawing
Twins 400

‘Helping’ in the kitchen

Another showing of 9; mercifully they are over Chitty Chitty Bang Bang now

3. Are you a punctual person or are you always running a few minutes (or more!) late??

I try to be the former but am always playing catch-up – even when I leave early for an appointment something usually happens along the way.

Ouch!!

4. When eating out, do you prefer off the beaten path “Mom and Pop” cafes or tried and true national food chains?

Some place we either know or that someone else has recommended – most of our culinary adventurism occurs at home…

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5. Does your significant other snore? Do YOU snore?

No comment. Of course not.

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via My Little Life: Five Question Friday! 4/12/13.

Pictures at eleven(-ish)

Posted on 12 April 2013 by SJPONeill

I commented on Facebook the other day that “…although the drought hasn’t been good in many ways, it certainly has been a bumper growing season…just cooked up a big pot of our own apples for freezing and future culinary adventures, and it looks like homegrown strawberries for dessert again tonight…oh no…...” and promised to post pictures of the dessert…

Twins 420

Well, not only do we have a surfeit of strawberries (which live 9 to 10 o’clock from the head of the speeding toddler), but we also have oodles and oodles (an oodle is way way more than a surfeit for those that are more technically-oriented than others) of zucchinis…so many that I am running out of creative ways to consume them and will still blanching and freezing operations over the weekend…

Anyway, I had some chicken stuffing spare in the fridge. I had made this up for the roast chicken we had last week but I failed to read the opord properly and appreciate that it was going into the oven frozen so it would not be physically possible to stuff it. While I am roughing in on my own, I am also trying to work my way through all the spare food in the fridge rather than let it go to the chooks or dogs just because…

I chopped the ends off a large zucchini that I then cut in half. Using a long parfait-style teaspoon I scooped out the seeds (chooks did get those) and then stuff both with the stuffing. Both zucchini halves then went into a steaming dish with some green beans and cabbage for microwaving while some spuds bubbled away on the stove. These were mashed with a little grated cheese, with a dab of butter and a splash of milk. All served up together – very very taste and easy vegetarian dinner.

DSCF6718 And then onto dessert…strawberries topped to remove the head and then split vertically into halves; sprinkled liberally with icing sugar and accompanied by vanilla ice cream (which apparently also goes off if left to long in the freezer). Minor calamity in the there was no cream so had to brace up and use another splash of milk to spread the icing sugar – tasted OK though…

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Color | The Daily Post

Posted on 6 April 2013 by SJPONeill

The deep blue of descending night against the stark white stone of the Menin Gate in Ieper, Belgium…during the daily remembrance ceremony that has been conducted every night since 1928..

My totally random take on the theme of colour…a quick scroll through the last few years of pictures…in no particular order…just colours….

It is what the sign appears to say…The Beer Temple’ shop in Brussels…well worth a few hours browsing and a few euro expended…

A bright London bus against the drab city (it was a drab sort of day)…

No idea what these are – big lighty things outside my room at the Radisson LAX…

The Matchbox Walrus box-art was always very orange and is well-captured in this 3D recreation at Scale Modelworld in Telford 2011…

Purty crimson looks out of place in this special ops helicopter display at the USAF Museum near Dayton, OH.

The for-real Mother Of All Bombs in bright colours at the USAF Armament Museum at Eglin…looks more like Resene display…

My place of work at home – not sure if this is before, during or after a tidy up…

The morning after snow – crystal-clear blue sky…

A colourful character…

Good use of colour by Lily aged 5

…and Lily aged 5…

Weekly Photo Challenge: Color | The Daily Post.

Weekly Photo Challenge: A Day in My Life | The Daily Post

Posted on 4 April 2013 by SJPONeill

Weekly Photo Challenge: A Day in My Life | The Daily Post

Phoneography has been the theme of recent WordPress Weekly Photo Challenges and I find myself here even more limited than I normally might consider myself in some of the challenges…I’m a bit old school and just carry a phone to take and receive calls and send and receive the occasional text. On rare occasions, I might use it for an alarm but that’t it – no bells, whistles or other 21st Century technotomfooleery…

So when the challenge calls for photos to be taken with one’s phone, life becomes a little interesting, more so when we don’t have coverage for this particular carrier at home so I am not wont to carry the damn thing around with me when I am at home – which these days is most of the time. But we persevere and I guess that’s why they call them Challenges and not Easies…

So a day in my life, specifically last Sunday 31 March 2013…seen through a 1.3 megapixel lens…

Cuddles?

How the day started…we’ve gotten a bit slack and have been letting the big dogs sleep inside the last few weeks…a side effect of this is that one or both of us gets woken with a ‘kiss’ as soon as it is light…

The drought has been a worry for weeks now so it was good to wake up to moisture on the ground although the Island needs a lot more than this to do any real good…

…and looking at the eastern skies, the sun is already starting to burn through the cloud…

Breakfast is first up – well a bit of a clean up in the kitchen first – although it rained that night, old habits die hard and dish rinse water is poured by habit over plants by the front door, baby chestnut trees in this case…

I’d remembered to put some bread on the night before so here it is all fresh and yummy out of the bread-maker…

Because the girls are still producing big time we have oodles of eggs for scrambled eggs for breakfast, so scrambled eggs on fresh bread in the order for breakfast…but first just to pop out to the garden for some fresh parsley…

…and a reminder from the little (in relation to the ‘big dogs’) dog that I’m not the only one that needs feeding…

So that’s them happy for a while…

…and them that are exiled to the small coop while the effects of their worm dose wears off…

and then into the ‘big house’ to feed the general chook population…

…that’s these ladies…

And also to check that the new chook waterer thingie is working OK…

…while remembering to remove their early morning labours…

…before heading through the gate to the Chalet…guests from the weekend had already departed so time for a quick check inside – yup, tiptop, no problems plus a couple of Parrotdog beers left in the fridge – Thank you!!! With the benefit of hindsight, i guess that I could and should have taken some pics of what the Chalet is like inside but, to be honest, never thought about it – next, day in the life Challenge, I promise…

And now off over the other side of the Chalet to check on Fred…he’e here somewhere…

Ah, he is – Fred is prone to wander and some day soon is in for a bit of a shock when the fences get reconnected to the grid…

He does a pretty good job though – clearing away the blackberry – he could clear other stuff but he has become a little spoilt and particular about his diet…

Pre-Fred, this was all blackberry…

…and finally back to the office for work…well, actually, quite a few hours trying to work out how to get these photos off said high-tech phone (in 2006) and onto a computer…it is too old to support native USB connections and the interface software is to old and cranky to want to run on Win7, even after I went and searched and dug-out the old installation CD and connection cables – ah, yup the good old days of proprietary interfaces….NOT!

After many trials and tribulations and slings of outrageous fortune, I finally managed to achieve the mission using the common interface of Bluetooth between the phone and my trusty netbook…and this is where I spent the rest of my day working on various projects….

My Little Life: Five Question Friday! 3/28/13

Posted on 30 March 2013 by SJPONeill

Cake for Birthday #41…

1. How often should adults have birthday parties?

At least once a year i.e. birthdays should be acknowledged, not just passed over or forgotten…whether it’s a big party, or just a few friends and family is entirely a matter of choice and personal preference…

2. What was your room decorated like when you were a child?

Only room photo I could find…

Very cooly…I had loads of shelves for books and toys, had all my Matchbox cars displayed on top of the dresser, and all my model planes hanging from the ceiling…posters, mainly scifi-themed on the walls…not many photos though as this was before the era of convenience photography…

Only image of my model planes from way back then…I think this one might still be stored away somewhere…?

3. Do you have any traditions for Easter? If so, what? and do you have a why behind that?

Not really but it is usually a chance to get last-minute summer jobs done before the weather rolls in for the next few months…this year, however, we are just hanging out for that weather to roll in as it is so dry at the moment we don’t dare do any ground work for fear of extending the desert…

4. Do you get Good Friday off? If so, any plans?

R&R…I am finding the one problem with working from home on a casual/part-time basis is that work days are not as clearly defined as they are in the Monday-Friday 9-5 paradigm so this weekend so yesterday was definitely an enforced chillin’ day…

5. Did you wear hats & white shoes to church on Easter? (Or was that just in the South?)

Not here but maybe in the South…?

via My Little Life: Five Question Friday! 3/28/13.

My Little Life: Five Question Friday!! 3/22/13

Posted on 25 March 2013 by SJPONeill

My Little Life: Five Question Friday!! 3/22/13.

1. What advice would you give a newly married couple?

Starting out doesn’t have to be flash…

Save….save like you don’t know where you next paycheck is coming from…eschew (say ‘no’ to) flash new cars and household bling, turn away from offers of credit cards and cheap loans…get your house paid off and build a home…

2. Who does more laundry around your house?

Me…but, in all fairness, I currently work from home so have the best opportunity to load up the machine and hand each load out during the day – and to recover it just on the off chance it should actually rain here in the Raurimu Desert…

Not my turn today though…

I must say, though…really, I must, thjat this sounds very much like one of the domestic issues that will lead to a conversation that ends in the ‘statement’ “See…!!!!!” and/or “I told you so…!!!” Tread carefully on this one, guys…

3. What items, if any, do you prefer to buy organic or make yourself?

The writing on the eggs is their collection date…

As much as possible, we like to grow our own vegetables and now starting slowly on our own fruit…we have been growing our own herbs for years and even had lemons growing successfully until Mr Lemon Tree got caught out by nasty old Jack Frost…we’re self-sufficient for eggs including having enough surplus to trade for chicken feed…

The white things on the ground are summer hail stones…

4. What book/TV series would you recommend for a friend on bedrest?

All five seasons of Babylon 5 and Battlestar Galactica for TV series…two of the greats scifi sagas ever told…more so after Mrs Lucas’ little boy dropped the ball…

William Shatner’s three Trek trilogies: Odyssey, Mirror Universe and Totality…I like them over other Star Trek books because Shatner (or his ghost writers) gets into Kirk in an almost autobiographical manner…

The best of the nine by a good country mile…

5. So, they say it’s Spring now…what does your “spring” look like at this very moment?

Well, here on the upside-down part of the world from Mama M, it is still the worst drought in seven decades (does that sound better or worse than 70 years?). Although it is still relatively green here, we are rationing our water just in case in continues on for more than another few weeks…

Green 2012 North Island on the left, 2013 scorched version on the right…

Weekly Photo Challenge: Beyond

Posted on 28 January 2013 by SJPONeill

Weekly Photo Challenge: Beyond | The Daily Post

In this challenge I have looked for photos where the subject has been in the foreground but which (probably more by accident than design in my case), the background draws you in other directions…beyond…

Raurimu down the hill Aug 04

The purpose of this photo was to have the national roading agency on about the recurring pot holes at the top of our driveway where it meets the state highway…in the distance though, you can see the road reappear as it rises north out of Raurimu, on its way to Owhango and beyond…

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Here’s our gate again, this time looking back the other way – as you can see, about the six months later, the potholes are getting sorted – with the ‘new road (it used to follow the hill round to the left) disappearing into the deviation towards National Park and beyond…the digger on the lawn was trying to (for 2 dozen Tui – beer not bird – and a banana cake) to even out some of the bumps in the lawn but it was too heavy and just left big trenches I had to fill…

Follyfoot in the Mangaroa Valley May 03 - 1

This is Follyfoot Farm (no, not the farm of teen screams in the 70s!) at the northern end of the Mangaroa Valley, which parallels the Hutt Valley in Wellington. Although the farm is the focus of the picture, the range of hills on the skyline draw the eye and the imagination towards the south and the point where these hills meet Cook Strait…

Greg, Dan, Tom, Bren, Jock, Maurice, Ash and Mr Stead on the Red Lakes track

This was taken on a 7th form study trip in 1981 up to Mt Cook – that’s Mt Cook Village below and, beyond, the mountains rise to peak at Mt Cook. The picture was taken about where the Mt Cook Village inset box intercepts the track in the map below. Unwin Hut at the bottom of the map is where we stayed for the week…if you’d like to know more about Mt Cook Village walks, click the map…