News from Nelson - May 2019

Hello again!
Another month rolls around and we are nearly half-way through the year. Staggering.

Lots of dog dramas this month with, just as I was about to take them to the vet for their vaccinations, Boo getting kennel cough. Luckily she recovered quickly, but I did think that would derail my house sitting plans, as the house sitter has a dog and kennel cough is so contagious. Luckily, due to her having had vaccinations, she had stopped coughing within a couple of days. Phew: house sitter back on. Then Finn got (a) a skin condition which has made his ears and feet very itchy, and (b) an infected toe which needed surgery. Warren has been left with the care of the invalids and some pretty complex drug regimes... and a trip to the vet on my behalf :-(

Other than that, my theme of the seven Rs has continued this month (Refuse, Repair, Reduce, Reuse, Repurpose, Rot/compost, and Recycle - and if any of you are interested in more of my story, read here), starting with cleaning out the office. After the clean out, then I did exactly the opposite of the seven Rs and consumed... but making timber purchases, and buying as many things from the op shop as I could (as well as re-purposing things that we already had).

I got containers and drawers to put away the things that didn't really have homes, to keep the dusting to a minimum. Jan had lots of computer parts which were gathering a lot of dust in open office in-trays, and the room was smelling dusty. So after cleaning, reorganising and putting away, it is all looking pretty good, and - even better - it will be much easier for me to keep clean. Only a matter of flicking a feather duster around now.

Jan and I talked about what I was doing as I was doing it, so none of this will be a surprise when he gets back. He also had a couple of A4s posters on the wall, which were getting very faded. I put the originals safely away, found replacement images online, and put the replacement images into two cheap wooden frames from K-Mart.

After that, I did the same for my desk, again using timber storage solutions:

So our home workstations are both looking good. Tidy and - even better - easier to maintain.

Shelley & Kevin had a great function at their place, with a load of the old Sealord hands, which was a lot of 'remember whens' and 'remember whos'. It was a good catch-up; and a surprising one - at times - when people turned up whom I had forgotten. Shelley & Kevin have an amazing place with views right across to Separation Point upstairs, and a microlite being built downstairs in the garage! I got this shot just as the sun was going down across the bay with some very dramatic views:

I decided, after thirty years of using an old wardrobe door leaning against the wall as a dress mirror, that I would get a dress mirror ordered and put on the wall in the bathroom. Viridian glass came and did that at the beginning of the month (and allowed me to take their photo):

As instructed, I took down the props holding the mirror in place after a day's worth of adhesive drying. The mirror looks great, and makes the room - already large - feel even bigger. Now my old wardrobe door has been repurposed... to the spare room.

John F & Chris W helped me by felling some of the kanuka on the south-east side of the building platform (the left to middle of the photo below), so that there is room for the fence that the neighbours are going to put in, and room to move the garden beds from the front down the back. They also moved the railway sleepers ready to reconstruct the beds. I delimbed the trees and John & I chainsawed the thicker wood up for next year's firewood. I would love to have left the trees there, but they were in the wrong place. At least they self-seed like wildfire, so the next generation will spring up in no time.

I will spend some time over the coming weekends barrowing the compost from the front of the house to the back. Good exercise. By the time I have done that, hopefully I will have enough in the 'house projects' bank account to get another truckload of gravel to spread around the house.

I caught up with Nane - who is in Nelson for a few weeks and staying at Scott's place - Warren, Tracey, Erica and Jenny at Headquarters in Brightwater. Jenny was up for the weekend. She came back to my place with me, then Ed with Alice, Tom and Max came around to pick her up. Ed and Jo are in the process of planning a new build, and wanted some ideas. While they were all there, I got them to help me move the last item on my 'carpark tidying up list' to a new home: the tally hut that Jan had got from the Port has now been moved around to the end of the shed. I can now do a three-point turn on the car park in the Subaru again :-)

Nane and John came up to stay for a few days before Nane flew back to Germany, which was great. John cooked and, as he too is on a ketogenic diet, we ate wonderfully well. John introduced me to smooth clotted cream, which is fantastic when dipping my chocolate coated almonds in it...

Speaking of chocolate coated almonds, I 'make' my own. Microwave two rows of Whittaker's Dark Almond chocolate for 90 seconds on 60% power, add three hands full of roasted almonds, stir, pat out into a thin cake and refrigerate until set. Snap off a bit when you feel like something crunchy. And dipping a bit into clotted cream? Delicious. And, as long as you either don't eat too much of the chocolate almonds in one day - or limit other carbs that day - you can stay within keto boundaries.

My mother & I caught up for coffee a couple of times in the month, once in Nelson and once in the Moutere. The Nelson catch-up was at Zumo after I had taken Boo to the canine physio: it is a great place to meet, as Boo could come too.

Work is manageable at the moment, though I haven't quite managed to get the pace of the post-graduate supervision right yet. After reflecting, I think the issue is that my supervisees aren't necessarily aware of what their responsibilities are to drive their own programme. I got my latest supervisees to do a survey, asking them what areas are their responsibility, and what are mine. Then we go through that, item by item. The survey I liberated and amended from the one I had to fill out at Griffith. This is a very useful process as it sets the expectations at the outset. Hopefully that will make the supervisee responsibilities very clear to each supervisee, and allow me the time I need to help them with concept editing, and to ask those awkward questions which every supervisee hates... but which makes their projects much stronger.

The under-graduate stuff is going very well, though. Next month there are the research project write ups and reflections to mark, and after that I will be done with marking and teaching until the Semester 2 start in week 3 of July. Of course I still need to set up courses for semester two, but as long as everything is done by the week before we restart, it can be done at my own discretion, and nothing is 'urgent'. The post-grad carries on, but as I only have two supervisees it should not be too onerous. Steady work for a bit over a month sounds lovely :-)

No frosts yet, and the weather has been pretty good here. The views from Rose Road remain a pleasure:

Jan's work as at long last started to slow down a bit. He has had the last four Sundays off, and has seen some of the area. He took some photos when he went to Mission Point, north of Traverse City:

Being spring, the weather is uncertain, and he has been unsuccessful in several attempts to go across the Mackinac bridge. He has been up to see the bridge, obscured by rain, on the shores of Lake Huron:

Hopefully when he returns to Grayling after the Toronto trip he will be able to get up that way in fine weather and go across the bridge to experience what it is like.

As you get this I am on my way to Canada to meet Jan in Toronto. We have a week of things on our bucket list, including catching a baseball game at Rogers Stadium between the Blue Jays and the NY Yankees, Niagara for a day, many museums, art galleries and tours, and a couple of Fluevog store visits.

After that, Jan is here for a chunk of July, with us being in Fiji for a week in the middle of his time back. I need him to help me with some things at Rose Road, as there is lots I want to do that I simply can't do on my own. The garden bed sleepers which John and Chris kindly moved for me still need to be rebuilt down the back so I can get the gardens started in late spring.

When Jan goes back to the US after his July furlough, he starts at a plant in South Carolina. He is currently trying to find some accommodation, but, being summer, the prices of rentals are quite alarming. At least he has a month and a bit to find something, so hopefully the time will give him some better options to negotiate a longer term rate.

Back to you next months with shots of our Toronto trip :-)


Sam (& Jan)

News from Nelson - February 2019

Hi all,
Well, this has been an interesting month!

Early in the month I was worried about all the standing grass in the orchard, so got the Slopemowing man out with his radio-controlled beast to cut it all.

Thank goodness I got Xaver out when I did, because now that type of machine activity has been banned until we have some rain. We have had 13mm of rain in over two months. It is very dry, and humidity is very low - about 36%.

Many of you may know that we had wildfires burning in the Nelson area from 4 February onwards. However, our property is fine. The fire danger for the Pigeon Valley fire passed for us on the second night, really, when the fire covered 20k in one night (over halfway to us). That was alarming, and we were ready to evacuate (first photo is on the first day from Nelson, from the Stuff website).

A colleague of mine (in the next door ofice) lost his cottage in the fire... and all his outbuildings, farm machinery, fences and roads. They got their stock out, and the main house was OK, though he and his wife are pretty shaken by the experience. Much less dramatic for me: for five days the Subaru was parked outside the front door, because the garage door won't open if power is knocked out by flames. I filled it with precious things like Jan's viola, hard-drives, clothes that can't easily be replaced such as our wedding clothes, original artwork, shoes, tools, food, water and dog supplies. Ready to go at a moment's notice. There has been a lot of smoke which has made for some interesting photos.

Luckily, I have been a mover and shaker for digitisation so all family photos from the late 1800s onwards have been scanned, and are in the cloud, along with all family documents. I store all business files electronically, and my computer is backed up weekly with backups are stored off site. That represents a huge pile of stuff that does not need to be moved. Amazing how that simplifies things.

Each morning I got up, showered, cleaned my teeth, then bundled up my bedding, and put that and my toothbrush in the car. I fed the dogs and put their bowls in. All I needed to do was grab the dogs and keys and go if the word was given to evacuate. The neighbours down the road were going to evacuate to Motueka, where their Mum lived. They had generously invited me to go there as well (and I could take the dogs, as Hugh would have his farm dogs there too). It also meant that we didn't have to cross the fire front, which I would have had to have done if I were to head into Nelson.

However, since the second night the fire retreated from this end, instead pushing out the southern and eastern boundary into Wakefield and towards Wai Iti. The entire village of Wakefield was evac'd, with traffic being re-routed through the Kohatu Valley via Dovedale or Motueka. So by the 9th of February I started thinking about unpacking the car, and finally did so. We have a fire fighter who lives in the valley and we had a get-together one evening. I checked with him before unpacking as he said we would now get a full 24 hours warning if we needed to evacuate.

The wind stayed steady, so now that fire is under control. They are still working on putting it out (all the trees have to be felled and the root balls dug out to be sure it has stopped burning underground).

Of course, the region is still so dry that fire danger has been extreme, and there have been a few cases of idiots lighting fires to see what might happen. There was another fire outside the fire area, and closer to us, but the teams were onto it really quickly, and despite very strong winds, the fire was out by the next morning. Evacuees from that fire were allowed home by the end of the second day.

I was talking to a landscaper about what to plant on a slope in front of our house, and he suggested grasses, but I was considering flax, because it brings the tui in (and we already have flax by the garage). I heard an interview with one of the locals who thought they had lost their house - but didn't - that they had gone to a fire safety course where they had been told to plant flax: they are very hard to burn, and were one of the things that helped to save the house. This was later written up into an article here, with a list of safer plants here.

The day the fire started, the plumber came out to fix the hot water system, and to stop the 500 litres of water that was bucketing out onto the roof each day (thank goodness he was able to come that day: he lives in Pigeon Valley and drove past the fire as it was just starting). So that is all going OK now. He came back a couple of weeks ago to replace the seals in our pump, because the pump we had installed had all been recalled several years ago. We obviously got missed out. The seals he pulled out were not in a good state, and the day he came to replace them, it had just started to go, with quarter of a bucket of water having leaked underneath it. I saved what was left of the seals to show Jan when he gets home. We were lucky.

I mentioned digitisation earlier: I was doing a PC back up early this month when my external backup failed due to my PC HDD crashing. It brought down my backup as well as the PC (luckily, I have several backups so I only lost a maximum of a week's worth of data in some areas, as I have synchronised cloud storage for some things). So after 7 years I have had to get a new PC built, and have had to upgrade from a very stable Windows platform (Windows 7) to one I like much less <sigh>. I was limping along on an old laptop - which I had been planning to replace this year - with sticky keyboard keys, too small a harddrive and limited battery for two weeks while the new build was being done. However, now I have most things set up and am back working well again. I am still finding software that won't work, though, having to find new solutions. But having three screens is lovely!

With Jan away I have had to do some investing in new tools to do things like changing light bulbs. So I have got a nice set of high steps with a pocket at the top to put things in. While this is far too tall to fit in any of my kitchen cupboards, it does go nicely in the hot cupboard.

Lovely hot days, though you can see the rain bypassing Nelson in the distance with the rain clouds all on the Marlborough side of the Richmond Ranges.

I am walking the dogs in the evening and early mornings when it is cooler, though the temperatures are starting to fall to more 'normal' New Zealand summer levels. It is 10am here as I am writing, and 27 degrees (but the low humidity makes it quite pleasant).

I have been enjoying the sun from time to time though, listening to my iPod, wearing a big hat to avoid sunburn - all on the 'new' outdoor furniture :-)

Teaching has started for me, with the first week done. The next three weeks will be manic before it all settles down and students get underway with their projects, but after that it should be easier. While I have an all new team, all but one of the team are experienced supervisors from previous papers, so that helps. I also have had a lot of industry interest, so there are quite a few internships running, for which I have an internship supervisor for all the liaison. She will be a real plus!

Jan continues to freeze his butt off and work long hours in the wop-wops in Grayling MI.

He is coming back to NZ mid-March, which will be good (but not for long enough, of course, before returning to the snow-mines in North America at the end of March). I won't see him again until 'sometime' in May: we are hoping that perhaps we might be able to meet in Toronto. However, as he has no date yet for his next time off, which means I am unlikely to be able to organise cover in time for NMIT and AUT, which is a great big pain in the marital relationship. Hopefully we will know soon enough to do something about it...!

Next month Warren is coming to stay, my sister is coming to stay, I think Justine is coming to stay (but don't know dates yet), and, as mentioned, Jan is coming back for a fortnight. It will be a busy month, and hopefully without any burning!



Sam

News from Nelson - January 2019

Hello, everyone,
I hope that 2019 is treating you all well.

Jan went to the US on 2 January and is now in Grayling Michigan until 13 March. He is starting work at 6.30 each morning, leaving at 6 with a car-load of colleagues, and getting back to the hotel at 6.30 in the evening (12.30pm our time). They are doing somewhere around 70 hours per week, working 7 days.

The temperatures are pretty grim: mostly in the minuses, with the coldest temperature being about minus 36 C, thus far. He has had a cold which he is now recovering from, but is usually in bed by 2.30pm our time. We are using Messenger to stay in touch, usually talking on our Monday, Wednesday and Friday at around 12.30 or 1pm NZT.

 He has sent me some video which I have compiled of him driving around the area (as it is too cold to be outside):

Last week in January in Grayling, at the plant, and then the drive home (2.40 min):

(if this doesn't work, try here: https://photos.app.goo.gl/bzAUTCo3XKZkREuv5)

Sunday, late January, from Grayling to Gaylord and back again to buy warmer clothes (6 min):


(if this doesn't work, try here: https://photos.app.goo.gl/Tz8pZhxnQLC5TrTf9)

As the 'polar vortex' is coming in, last week of January, the drive from the plant to the Ramada in Grayling town centre (2.50 min):



(if this doesn't work, try here: https://photos.app.goo.gl/xrf4pjoTDbxgat3f7)

A couple of times a week something breaks here, and I have to get a neighbour in to help me (they are all going to start evading me, I am sure). Even simple things like trying to get onto our roof without someone to hold the ladder becomes dangerous when you are on your own and your closest neighbours can't see or hear you. I asked my neighbour Simon to come over when there was water running on the roof. He found to find that the top off the pressure relief valve on the hot water system was missing - and that it may possibly have been missing since it was installed, as it was sitting neatly on the top of bolt, like it had just been put aside for testing. Because it has suddenly started leaking, it may well have blown the wee spring and ball out of the top, but at least Simon found the top and put it back on. A plumber call is now needed for Monday, because - of course - this happened on a weekend.

There is a surprising amount of stuff that works perfectly with two of you, but which doesn't work when you are on your own; even more so when have two dogs trying to 'help' you. I think Finn will stay away from the wheelbarrow now that I have partly run him over though...

I got a truck load of gravel delivered last week, and have been barrowing it around the house to cover the lack-of-lawn (technical term for weeds). We had put shell around the house four or so years ago, unfortunately over weed matting so the shell never compacted and kept sliding. With this gravel, I am trying to decide if I pull the weed matting up and let the gravel compact down with the remains of the shell, or if I leave the weed mat down in the hope that the gravel will sit on top more heavily and not slide away into gaps with the matting shining through. Quandary. However, I now have a piece of work in progress with an all-weather path to the clothesline, which is good (though I need to make some more concrete tiles)... without weed matting. My mother always used the tail end of a jug of boiling water on weeds, and I might try that too.

It has been very hot, with a bit over a week of 30 degree days. I bought some outdoor furniture off TradeMe (sort of NZ Craig's List) so, at long last, there are places to sit outside in the shade. West in the morning, East in the afternoon. I got some excellent bargains - some of which needed repair, but that was part of the enjoyment.

Since Jan left for the US I have been into NMIT for my first meeting of the year, I went to pick up all my 'new' outdoor furniture purchases, and went to John F's birthday party.

Sharon & Ian invited me out for lunch at Moutere Hills Vineyard, which led to a Danube cruise being booked for November which should be quite fun.

Jan & I are also heading off to Fiji in July for the Naenae 50ths, and there is talk of me going to the US in May. However, I suspect that the latter won't happen. In teaching for two organisations, organising deviations to delivery (and deadlines; and dog and house sitters) has to be arranged well ahead. As there seems to be little structure around Jan's start and finish dates, leave, time in lieu etc, I am already suspecting that there will not be a magic conjunction of planets which allows me to tee up cover, sitters and to get a flight at the last minute... !

My brother and I picked up some new furniture for my mother, which 'may need some assembly'... to find that "some" assembly meant entire assembly. I think we spent four hours contorted into some interesting shapes and swearing at drawings. However, all the parts were present, and we put together two new Danish-style lounge chairs with footstools, and a new Danish-style table and chairs. All very light, small, and makes her wee house look a lot more spacious.

I sometimes catch up with some of the neighbours when I am walking the dogs, and a few of them have dropped in for coffee. As it has been so baking, I am going at 7am before it gets too hot, and again at 8.30pm as it starts to cool down. Other than that, I scoot into town to pick up groceries, milk, veg and to clear the post office box once a week or so.

While we have had a couple of friends come out and get firewood earlier on in January, until we have some significant rain, I am not letting anyone else come. The fire danger is now extreme, and it will take a good bit of rain to correct that.

I have half my courses entirely prepared and ready to go for 25 February. The remainder are about halfway through. I have tried to get into writing, but am finding it hard to settle. I am not enjoying Jan being away.

The neighbours down the road are having a party next weekend, which I am going to. Warren is coming for a visit in March, as is Justine, then Jan is back mid-March.

A friend of ours, Paul Tunley, sadly passed away a few days ago following an illness. We miss you, cardigan man :-(

'Til next time


Sam

News from Nelson - November 2013

Hi all,
Wow, another few weeks have whizzed past, and here we are halfway through November already.

Amazingly green around here at the moment, and when I go outside first thing in the morning all you can smell is the bush - it takes me right back to my earliest tramping days in the third form. Just lovely! Had some late winter squalls come through in October, but they were very brief (as you can see - only lasted about ten minutes, then it was blue sky again, until the next one came through):

When I dropped Jan off to work a couple of weeks ago, I realised that Nelson Pine's gardens are maturing really nicely; the natives are looking very nice. I took a few quick photos and stitched them to remind me of what we are aiming for on our bank at Roses Road.

I managed to Skype with Jan a couple of times while he was in the US. He was looking pretty tired, but he managed to do the main task while he was in Chicago - buy Coco some more squeaky toys! Below is a shot of him at Streeters Bar in Chicago, with a couple of the other guys from New Zealand: and of course, they managed to find some women...

 And amazing what a screen dump will do; it has captured Mr Kuwilsky wearing a tie:

In the background behind me above is my colleague Nic J (if your eyes are good enough. Hah, now that's a test for us all, isn't it!).

Jan is halfway through his trip already, having arrived in Germany last Friday evening NZT. He was shattered, having only slept for a couple of hours of his 9 hour flight, but was picked up from the train by Holger, taken to visit Dieter and Gudrun, Anne, then off to Oma's overnight. On early Sunday NZT he travelled down to Ulm to Aunt Uta. Thomas, Bettina and Svenja are there, so he got to spend some time with them too - an unexpected bonus! He said it was great to see everyone, and that they were all in good health (and that Svenja has a gap-toothed smile as her adult teeth are coming in - man, she is six already). I so want to be there - but next time!

It was Dawn's birthday today, and I went to join the throng of celebrators at Jellyfish (where Flax used to be at the Mapua Wharf complex). I had some lovely tomato soup for lunch - a perfect pick as it clouded over as we lunched and was raining a little by the end. Not cold, but damp. Dawn has big news - she and Neil are getting married next year. He is such a nice man - I am so pleased for them both! (terrible photo quality as I was facing right into the light).

Doug & Morv are off to Auckland - a big change for them. At least it looks like the test-run / holiday is persuading Katie that a northward shift mightn't be all bad.

I have just finished marking my last student assignment for the year, but am halfway through an online course on Emotional Intelligence (yeah, yeah, I know: that AND my Masters - like there isn't already enough going on. All I can say is that it was an opportunity, OK?!).

Currently I am transcribing recordings. My supervisor thinks I may be trying to be a bit too accurate with it as 15 minutes of recording is taking about 4 hours to transcribe. I don't know how you can be roughly accurate with transcription; I think it is an either correct or incorrect transcription... isn't it? Never mind, back to the grind - and everyone talks about the hellhole that transcription is, so at least I am in good company! Every other researcher on the planet!

Speaking of my supervisor, Brad is changing Unis next year - going to return to Victoria Uni to head up the School of Government there. So for the last semester of my Masters I will have to have another supervisor acting as my Primary Supervisor. Luckily it will be someone whom I have already had some contact with, Liliana Erakovic, who teaches strategic management using the Harvard case method - which is a real bonus. And yes, for you Kiwis, the Erakovic name is indeed the same family: Liliana is Marina's mother.

I have become a Lorde junkie in the past few weeks: I keep listening to Lux 400, Royal, The Love Club, and Bravado over and over. Anyone would think I was sixteen. Also just finished reading the Two Brothers by Ben Elton (thanks for the loan, McLarins!). Great book, I really enjoyed it.

The one advantage of having lots of transcription to do is that other, horrible jobs suddenly look quite appealing. So I have also been spending an hour in our gully each day, pulling out pig fern. For those of you who don't know about pig fern, it is a fern that starts with a very small aspect, but if left untended for a couple of years, it turns into this giant bionic monster that covers your land with huge canopies and kills your grass. All I can say is that at least it doesn't have prickles, unlike gorse, supplejack and blackberry (other noxious pests our forefathers cunningly imported to our little South Pacific paradise).

Montrose Drive is going on the market again in December. I think we have decided that this time it goes: that the price drops until it is sold.

We are aiming to come to Wellington briefly at Christmas, but have so far not been able to get a house/dog sitter. Everyone has plans! How mean is that? I will keep trying... we might be able to get the dogs into the kennels, perhaps, but I no longer know any of the people who run the local ones. There is a place out in Wakefield, so I might go and visit them and see what they are like (at least I do know someone who took their dog there).

Happy birthday to Justine :-D

Right, I think that is all for now. Take care, and we will catch up with you all in due course!

Sam (and Jan)