September snow

It's September, which means it's spring,

which means surprise snow

that isn't really that much of a surprise.

In the case of today it wasn't really snow either.
Methven was bothered by light dry snow
that failed to stay even for a second on the ground.

Maybe tomorrow we will wake up to a snowy vista.

Two years ago on September 3rd,

it was a Friday and I was driving back from

Oxford to Methven

through the mountains and the Rakaia Gorge,

when I drove from warm sunny sunness

straight into an almost whiteout blizzard.

I was surprised.

Then my windscreen cracked.
I was annoyed.

Not much but enough.
I watched the crack slowly travel

up from the bottom and across the screen

to the registration sticker where it stopped.

The next day was Sept 4th.

We got hit by a 7.1 earthquake in the dark of morn.

It took me three weeks to get the windscreen fixed

but it held.

September 4th was blissfully sunny.

Crazy weather in September.

Yesterday I travelled the reverse journey

from Methven towards Oxford.

I only went as far as Hororata and

then towards town to Yaldhurst

to meet a group of  our TeenAg girls from
Christchurch Girls' High
who were keen to visit with

Dan the Rhymestone Cowboy and horse whisperer.

At Dan's we were smacked around by a howling Nor'wester,

sandblasted by dust,

and deafened by low flying 737s

as we were right next to the airport.

The horses weren't concerned.

Just us humans.

I did my usual thing of forgetting that I would be

tramping over dirty, uneven ground

and wore heeled boots.

I did my even more usual thing

and put lipblam on right before I got out of the car.

As I walked around the shelterbelt

I got a face full of fine Canterbury topsoil.

From then on I was trying to get dust off my lips while

keeping enough lipbalm that my lips wouldn't dry up

and fall off my face.

It could happen.

On my way to see Dan, the girls and

Duncy Monkey our Extension Manager

who had organised the outing,

I had received a phone call so pulled over to talk.

As I talked I noticed the mountain snow wisping away

in the Nor'wester wind.

After a bit I realised that there was an avalanche sliding down the mountain,

prompted by the fierce sun.

The wispy cloud was the puffs of snow as it raced along.

I suspect it would have been a whole different story

if you had been on the mountain.

I try to avoid being on mountains.

 The avalanche is in the snowy gully in the centre of the photo.

I'd never seen an avalanche before

so I was late to Yaldhurst

in favour of watching nature.

A good choice I think.

Now it's snowing pretty hard and I live at sea level so you know that's got to be cold.  Tomorrow I drive to Dunedin to meet with Young Farmer leadership so I hope the snow washes away overnight.

a new reason

to hate Nor'westers,

it drives you crazy with it's dry

forceful wind.

Now it brings a fresh kind of hell

and that's the noisy neighbour kind.

We have had large children living next door

of the 18 - 20 year age group.

First we thought they were full of new freedom type youthful exuberance.

Now we know better.

The house next door should be demolished..

water, water every and not a drop to drink....

900 buildings being demolished not 45 minutes from here

and the one next door with it's pre-earthquake

uneven floors, mould, over grown garden, thing after thing is still there.

It must be unhealthy to live in

and has super cheap rent,

which is where the large children next door come in.

Turns out they are not just large children

but junior criminals.

We've heard rumours of many things they have done.

We've seen the regular visits from the cops.

We've seen who visits the house.

We've heard the screaming fights,

the drunken fights,

the dog fights

and we have heard today for the last 10 hours

the radio,

loud and clear as a bell.

Which may be worse than just hearing

the dull thud of the beat of another non-discript 'song'.

On Friday night the large children

were out on the street

fighting each other with sticks,

actually fighting.

Not haha! play fight.

Then some guy comes along in his car and

tries to run one of them over and

very near succeeds.

He may have been a really ticked off father.

Girls are drawn to that house like flies.

Every weekend, the good girls of Leeston

stroll past the house craning their necks to catch one of the bad boys eye

and be invited in.

Stupid little girlies.

As the car screamed towards the ring leader

one of the other little beggars phoned the police!

And their nasty, ill trained, sheep worrying dog ran away

unfortunately the spoon was on the phoned with the cops

so couldn't run away too.

Oh well not too long before we can call noise control.

My luck I'll be in a fitful sleep by then

and wake up at 3am wide awake

and the neighbour's radio will still be playing

with the noise being pushed our way by the Nor'wester.

I don't live in the country to have noisy neighbours!

So much more I could say about the noisy little sods

but that would be gossip

and there's already enough of that flying around here.

P.S. National won the election, which is, y'know good.  Nicky (National) is tied with the Labour candidate, exactly the same number of votes with 3000 odd special votes to be counted.  Rahui, the sweetest, hard working MP for Te Tai Tonga Maori seat lost to some nob with a famous last name - very unhappy face.  ACT got back in.... if you can call John Banks ACT, but no other seats so it the John Banks ACTs like a liberal for the next few months, then he'll go back to his conservative roots.  Ah the politics of a couple of small islands in the Southern Pacific ocean.

one long weekend

The weekend seems so long ago and also seems like it was long.

It didn't help that I got a Nor'wester headache

on Sunday that made me cry like a sook.

Cause I worked most of the weekend

if you can call hanging out in hotels

with lovely Young Farmers work.

Oh yeah, that's my job.

I did get them to work quite hard

and we solved a few problems.

Plus did a personal productivity module

which is now being taken far too seriously in our office.

All the new staff have been inducted and are off working.

Yesterday I told Mags to the supermarket

not a big deal to those of you live near shops

but to go to a real big supermarket with a decent range is pretty darn exciting in my world.

When we were at the check out Mags got run into my an old man in a mobility scooter.

Like really hard too.

Poor Mags.

And I called the slaughter man.....

only I had to leave a message so the lambies have a stay of execution.

wind

my goodness!

We've had gale force winds for two days now and it's doing my head in!

Yesterday I went to leave the office to go to lunch and the door slammed back in my face.

As I was walking back with dust and small branches blowing into my legs as I stepped up onto the curb the wind blew my sandal off!

All this on top of 30 degree temps makes the house insufferable with closed windows

but who wants to 'escape' to air conditioned malls at Christmas time??

Today I woke up to grass fires to the south of us and a flood warning for the river.

Fire and flood at the same time,

somethings up!

Meanwhile the baking urge has yet to leave me

the floor washing one has yet to arrive

which is good

because with all the dust and mess the wind has blown in the floor is truly appalling

makes me happy that I have yet to tackle my daily goal of floor washing.

I ran out of mixing bowls and coincidentally

(I really wanted to spell that cowinceidentally)

I had to go to the brand new Rolleston Wharehouse

and found this really great bowl for $6.99

Lovin' this bowl

cheap and nasty pink, nobody will ever nick it.

Score!

More banana muffys I think.

Must go and batten down the lambies before they blow away.

And thanks for asking, we are still having earthquakes.

We just don't notice them so much anymore. 

It's got boring talking about them unless you meet someone new.

Then you automatically share scary Big One stories and then you have the shared trauma bond. 

We are just a ball of natural disasters lately.

Happiness!

Let's talk about happiness - well I'll do the talking and you do the reading but feel free to comment - blogs are meant to be interactive!

Yesterday and the day before I was very happy. It doesn't take much in my increasing old age to make me happy. So Thursday and Friday all it took was brilliant sunshine. Yesterday it was a long, hot day so that even when I finally left work at 10.30pm (I started at 7.30am) it was still 19C - loved that!

What made me very happy on Thursday was that because I was working in another building but needed to go clear across campus to get back to my office at least 6 times (I only worked 11 hours on Thursday so the hourly average wasn't too bad) and I was wearing heels, I got to take them off and walk on the newly cut grass on the Forbes Lawn (I don't know if thats what the lawn is called but it makes sense to me). This is a picture on a not so sunny day but from the Forbes Building to Ivey Hall library - see the grass. The gardeners keep it all so lovely and
walkable on.

So now heaps of people think I'm a hippie wandering around campus in business attire sans shoes. I even got catcalled from a passing van - it was on campus so only driving at about 20 kms and hour so I called back.

Anyway before you think I'm some crazy person (one word out of you Mrs L! One word!) for working all those hours I should explain. I'm whats called on conference - actually thats what I call it, not sure if any other conference organisers call it that. So this is how my week has been.

Tuesday - A.M. Small group arrives for a one and half day meeting, oh plus an evening meeting, staying on campus, meals, equipment (hmmm where did my stapler go???) and pleasant conversation from me.

Wednesday - get same group going with additional equipment, needs to vacate room at 12 sharp. New group (one I'm actually getting paid to organise) starts at 11am and is of on a bus tour of ecological sites - one delegate phones to say he'll be late and could I drive him to catch up with the bus - of course I can. Notice there are more people than brown bag lunches - like about 12 more people! hmmm pretty sure I counted numbers correctly, double check, why yes I did. Some sneaky people changing their minds! Good thing the bus was big enough, but then no need to worry about this because we use Travlon buses, best buses in the world, nah universe! Seriously if you do something like forget to book a bus for about 50 that are lining up at the bus stop... waiting... for a bus to come right now - you just call Alex and he makes a bus appear! I've never forgotten to book a bus but someone I know has.

Then Wednesday night is drinks and nibbles and poster reading - thats what they do at academic conferences, read posters. Good thing: Have organised poster boards to be there for the drinks and nibbles (they don't consume much) slight change in plans from having them there for Thursday only. Posters are a big academic deal and cost about $400 to $800 to get made up (that includes design) and they are quite hard to print because they SHOULD be A0 size but some academic struggle with the concept. Nod to the Spanish academics at ISBCA for printing theirs on material so they are easy to transport (major conference issue is lost posters) although very hard to keep up for three day with Velcro sticky dots.

Thursday - Sunny day and full day workshop - more people arrive... late. Good thing there are back doors to lecture halls. Pretty easy day, just long. I really like the organiser Glenn he makes me laugh and we have this weird thing where we bump into each other in the supermarket often - seriously at more than one supermarket too. Conferences are easy when you like the people you work with.

Friday - new mini-conference, just one day. Very pleasant people and got meet Katie's mum, lovely woman just like her daughter. Spent the day running around but in two small windows of time got to sit in the sun and read - was reading two books, The Winner's Bible (because the author is potential speaker for another project, but basically the book is a guys self help book filled with Formula 1 stories but the science bits are interesting) and A Field Guide to Melancholy (was on the for sale desk as Jacky the author was also the convener of the day's programme). I was only borrowing the Field Guide and I do realise the irony of the two titles.


Friday night - building opening (new School of Landscape Architecture building above) and art auction - a luxury to be involved in one capacity, the money taking capacity. Had a lovely but long evening using the EFTPOS machine - that was really fun. Heaps of people turned up and so I didn't get to hear the building opening speeches (dang it!) maybe because I stayed in a completely different building (it has a open door to the new building and believe me you can hear every word said the in hall of new building). Anyway the SoLA students did a fantastic job getting a massive and impressive array of art together and most of it sold well. Turns out the hungry attendees ate all the food and the food for today's reunion and dance. Whoops!

So today is another long day and for those of you who think going to functions and dances and lunches and gala dinners is fun and games - not so much fun, more relief that another function has gone well. Besides today is meant to be 29C and windy as a windy thing and it already is. Nor'Wester today so must get lots of pain killers and wear sandles so I can walk on the grass in barefeet. Tired but happy.