News from Nelson - December 2010

Well, what a busy few weeks we have had. We are both well, but Jan has tweaked his back again (the same type of injury as when he came to Germany), playing underwater hockey. He has been going to an osteopath who seems to be straightening him again. I have been studying flat out, and Jan has also been trying to pull his team into shape at work :-)

And speaking of Jan's work, check out the "Changes at the Top" section on the bottom of the front page of the latest company newsletter:

  

In the evenings, despite his back, Jan has been cutting gorse from the top of the gully, and I have been trying to pitchfork it up beside the house in a big pile to dry out, so we can burn it in autumn (not alongside the house though!). A colleague at NMIT reckons we would go well with Boer goats on the property, as they actually enjoy eating gorse. I am not so sure; a friend of mine years ago got about 50 scrub goats on his property - 700 acres being re-broken in from scrub - and all the goats ate was grass and the odd thistle head :-)

We have our cars in the garage, and the pilgrimage of workshop items continues across to the shed. We picked up some posts so that we can do the retaining walls around our water tanks, and then back fill them. That will mean we can have a clothes line at last (never thought I would get excited about a clothes line!). And, after borrowing our builder's trailer for the umpteenth time, we have just ordered the same tandem axle trailer from Briford in Christchurch which should arrive up here just before Christmas.

I had a chat with our as yet un-met painter/decorator neighbour Rob on Friday about fencing our eastern boundary, which he was really co-operative about. Our boundary has a really weird shape along that side, and he too is keen to determine exactly where his place ends & ours begins. Since clearing, seeding and putting up the industrial unit, he has been renting the place out. He had some good tenants in there for a year - Shane who plastered our house - but he & his wife have moved on and the place is empty at the mo.

John H is out here today cutting our building off-cuts into lengths for burning, separating cedar for storage. It is a big pile that Jan & I only just managed to make a tiny dent in, so it is great that John is out here for the day getting it done. Jan worries about all these jobs, so it made sense to get someone in to tackle the ones that keep getting put off. I got a load of cartons from the supermarket to store the bits in to use as firewood, but we aim to get a few apple pails instead, and buy a tractor with a forklift attachment so we can just truck a pail of firewood around to the western deck for the winter. We can strap a tarp over it & be sorted.

I have been being TradeMe queen again this past week, selling off some unearthed items from the garage as we have been clearing out. We have the big treated pine beams on to sell, as we need to empty a whole bay in the shed to fit our new trailer into... gee, that's not going to be easy! I have been ferrying some of Jan's timber which has been stored in the cellar over to the shed so we have some room in the cellar for the wine rack to be built... man, we are definitely getting to a crisis of space.

At least we can get the cars in the garage now. That makes all sorts of things a lot easier - like unpacking the car of the week's groceries onto a flat, clean surface for a start!

Flissy had a lovely time at the neighbour's the other day. Lyn Redden has rented his house out again, and his tenants had a BBQ and dumped the leftovers in an open pit. Fliss and Coco went up there and gorged themselves - Flissy in particular. Jan was horrified that she was so full she was sick, and hurled up a whole sausage without a mark on it. Ah, dogs.

We have Kathleen & Frits' old piano installed now. The piano movers had no trouble finding the place, and said that the map I emailed them was the best set of instructions they had ever had. Nothing like an engineer and a management consultant to get instructions right, eh. So the piano is here, sounding quite sour in places, but there is no point in getting it tuned until it acclimatises...

Jan & I have joined the local tennis club, and have a key to go & play at the lovely new Moutere Rec Centre courts. I am looking forward to having a good bash about over the summer (and I have very little skill, but lots of enthusiasm).

Our last power bill wasn't (ha ha). We got a $10 credit, even netting off the supply charge, which was good. 

We caught up with Karen Batten a couple of weekends ago for lunch in town, and then after a fab Chamber recital at the Chanel Arts Centre in Motueka (which we nearly missed, because we didn't book tickets, thinking door sales would be fine, and they were fully booked out! We were VERY lucky the organisers put some extra seats in). She was playing with Martin & Victoria Jaenecke (violin & viola) Konstanze Artmann (violin) and Paul Mitchell on cello. I hadn't heard an alto flute solo before, and, as it was a piece of Andean music, it was really haunting. Just lovely. The near miss on getting seats for that event gave us a huge spur to get on with booking our Adam festival tickets (next Feb here in Nelson).

We have a week of Christmas functions again - having already had the NSO one, the Career Practitioners one, the Rotary one, the NMIT one and the last Founders meeting of the year. Coming up this week we have the Chamber of Commerce, the AUT graduation party, NMIT graduation, a farewell get together for the Business School's Programme Leader, the Roses Road Christmas Party, the Neudorf Road Neighbourhood Party (at Glenys & Kevin's Mudcastle - always a blast), our family pseudo-Christmas lunch... we were also supposed to have fitted a BBQ with Gary & Nick and a BBQ with Kevin, Sandra & Tiff in there too, but have run out of days. 

Then we are up in Wellington for three days. It will be good to have a few catch ups in the North Island. We have already raided the Nelson Market for edible treats to share. If any of you are travelling around the Nelson Tasman way, give us a call; we are aiming to have a summer at home. John, Brigitte and Tanja are coming down to see us mid-January for a week, otherwise we have an empty spare room and a caravan. Please feel free to come & visit/stay.

Speaking of staying, we will have Bon dog coming for a couple of long stints while John F is off on tour next year. Fliss & Coco will love that.

Right, I think that's it. All the very, very best for Christmas, and we look forward to catching up with you all in 2011 :-) 

Take care and alles liebe!

Jan Kuwilsky & Sam Young