| Wednesday, December 9th, 2009 |
| 12:49 pm |
I need to make an official Nail Files logo.
Nail Files preparations are coming along quite nicely. I've got a lighting kit booked in. I've got one of the two main locations sorted out. Due to everyone's availability and the fact I can only use that place at weekends we could be starting that day around 4am at this rate. Still, some of us are praying that one of the cast has something cancelled that day so we can fit it all in without everyone sleepwalking through it. The lighting kit price was really cool. The place I first tried said they didn't hire lights any more and put me onto someone else. The second place gave me a price about a third of what I was expecting and because of their opening hours we get it a whole extra day without charge. That leaves the other major location to 'nail' down, a few outside locations to recce, the distribution of scripts and the fitting of costumes. I'd better make myself a more comprehensive list for all the little bits and pieces I'm likely to forget. I also need to knuckle down to working out camera shots while I'm in Napier. Right, back to it... |
| Tuesday, December 1st, 2009 |
| 2:53 pm |
Where the Big Engines Roar
I'm in the Koru Lounge at LAX. Translation: I'm in the Air New Zealand VIP lounge at Los Angeles Airport. My flying around on the cricket earned enough airports for Holly and Symeon to make it to the USA and it also gives me two complimentary passes to Air New Zealand lounges. I'm using one here. It's quite a nice lounge too. The sad thing is I'm not here with my wife and kids as they are staying on in the USA for Christmas. When I arrive in Auckland I have to fly out to Wellington that afternoon for work. I have a complimentary upgrade to Premium Economy which I've applied for on this flight. It's subject to available seating so I took the liberty of asking for a further upgrade to business class so I'll see what happens. It's worth a try. Now to get to work deciding on Nail Files camera shots. |
| Wednesday, November 18th, 2009 |
| 9:13 pm |
Due South
In six hours we'll be getting up for our flight from Spokane to Reno and the next leg of our USA trip. We've had a wonderful time up here in Spokane. It's snowed, we've visited family and I even had a couple of people from my 2005 camp visit me. Today we splurged on a whole heap of board games which included 'Ticket to Ride' at about 40% cheaper than in New Zealand accounting for exchange rates and everything. When we arrive in Reno we'll be going to listen to my brother in law's pipe organ lesson! I'm looking forward to that. Then it's back to Fallon and the rest of the family. I'm looking forward to introducing Verity to them for the first time. |
| Monday, November 16th, 2009 |
| 8:23 am |
Almost a week has gone by!
It's been a flat out week and unfortunately we're feeling the effects of it. We were planning to attend my brother-in-law's Church and hear him preach. With Holly in bed sick and Symeon's nose running all the way back to New Zealand we just have to stop and rest. It's been a great week though, only too rushed. There just doesn't seem to be enough time to spend with people. Yesterday was really neat. We had people popping in to see us, including two LJers and a couple of friends from my Camp in 2005. This morning Verity and her cousin Anastasia (just turned 1 year) were poking their tongues out at each other and making noises, it was very cute. |
| Wednesday, November 11th, 2009 |
| 9:20 pm |
Some little time, such a big territory.
It's great being in the USA again. I've been driving today and that is always a massive reminder that I'm in a foreign country, intentionally putting the car on the wrong side of the road. There are two frustrations in this trip for me that are covered by the letter T. The first is Time, specifically only having three weeks. It's not the shortest amount of time I've been in the US but it feels woefully inadequate compared to my last two visits of 1 month and over 5 months. The second frustration is a close companion of the first, Territory. I've made it this way but being in the same country does not put me within visiting distance of everyone. Only having three weeks has severely limited my ability to get around people. Unless there's someone who can get over/up here on Saturday then this will be my first trip to America in which I haven't met an LJer for the first time. I just can't see everyone in three weeks. It is so good to be here though. I bought some of my own chocolate today. It's got my name on it! They really should give it to me for free. We visited more of Symeon's cousins today and I had an absolute blast playing with them in the back yard. Maybe more another time but these days catch up on you while you're still adjusting from living in the future to living in the USA. That and the battery on this puter is a dying entity. It's barely lasted half an hour from 85% to 23%. We'll need to get a new one soon. |
| Tuesday, November 10th, 2009 |
| 9:07 pm |
Symeon got to meet some of his cousins today!
We made it! We've just finished a very very long Monday. In fact we were flying on 9/11 (work that one out, it's true!). Excellent news, Air New Zealand is now serving L&P on the plane! The Black Ferns were also on the flight (the NZ Womens Rugby Team). I might have more information about the flying later, but right now sleep is the top priority. |
| Monday, November 9th, 2009 |
| 8:23 pm |
It's Time!
It's time to go to the airport. As is Dove tradition the departing passengers have to shout everyone else a drink, which explains why my sister is going to come out to see us off. We leave on NZ2 at 11pm NZ time. We arrive in LAX before we left, at 2pm Monday Pacific Time. We then fly to Spokane via a plane change at Oakland, arriving at the former at 8:55pm Pacific Time, which means that we arrive in half an hour, two hours before we leave! I love being able to say I'm in two places at the same time. |
| 2:51 pm |
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| 12:14 am |
This evening I'll be in the USA!
Less than 24 hours until takeoff. That and we take off TODAY! Thanks to the wonders of the international dateline I will be in the State of Washington this evening. That's in another country, another continent, another Hemisphere! I have largely kept with my practice of not packing on the day of departure by completing the packing of the checked luggage with the exception of some things that were washed today and one other bunch of items that I will load in such a way to distribute the weight evenly amongst the bags. The carry on luggage in not yet packed but it has been collected together ready to be placed in the bags that we eventually deem most fit for that purpose. At this point one is in Symeon's room so I'll also be doing that in the morning. Them we can sit back and relax, ready to fly. I'll mow the lawn and Holly may well mow my hair. I'd better make sure we don't forget our camera! |
| Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009 |
| 11:00 pm |
The Centre Figure
today I played my first game of indoor netball in about five years. I could probably go through my LJ and find a match report on the last game I played but that would take a bit of time. It was a successful return with a comfortable margin of victory. I haven't done 32 minutes of near continuous running for a while either. It was very beneficial, this exercise. It's just the thing I need as a warmup for the big Inter-sibling Thanksgiving Touch Rugby Game. Just a few weeks out and I have once again demonstrated that I can run constantly and highly effectively for over half an hour no matter how hard I have to run. As far as the netball goes I was playing Centre and my defensive efforts were very rusty. I need to work on my jumping. Attack was very effective, although a strong opposition would have shut me out of the space we enjoyed. Despite not having played with our team before I was able to read their play well and our shooters really carried the day. They were the difference between the two sides. I'm hopeful that come the new year I'll be able to play for them more as I think regular indoor netball games would do great things for my fitness levels. |
| 12:48 am |
Pumpkins are no match for High Explosive.
There seems to have been a bit of drama over Hallowe'en this year. I thought I'd tell everyone what Hallowe'en means to me. It means Guy Fawkes is just around the corner. That's pretty much all it means to me. If you want to avoid Hallowe'en drama next year just come visit the ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) 617s on October 31st. New Zealand is pretty low key about it. We don't have pumpkins, they're out of season. By the time commercial interests decided they could promote Hallowe'en to make money the idea of children knocking on the doors of strangers was seen as highly dangerous and to be discouraged by parents. Most organised events tend to focus on things that aren't scary because of adverse publicity about children being frightened by Hallowe'en, one area where PC madness and the NZ education system has been surprising helpful. So for me Hallowe'en means Guy Fawkes is just around the corner. This is a far more important date in the calendar because it means that it's almost the three days of the year when we can legally buy explosives from the shops. Every year there is a debate over whether they should be banned altogether but suprisingly even Aunty Helen didn't ban them. There is an ongoing debate in my mind however about the true meaning of Guy Fawkes Day. The traditional line is we are celebrating the foiling of a terrorist attempt on the heart of democracy. I'm surprised that in today's society I haven't come across an attempt to 'rehabilitate the historical figures' involved with 'a new history' suggesting they were a suppressed minority fighting for their freedoms from the oppressive middle class white chauvanist male society. Having said that I might indulge in some historical reinterpretation of my own. In New Zealand we generally don't 'burn the Guy' (probably because we'd get arrested by the Green Party for emitting carbon) but we simply let off fireworks. Through living in a post-modern society I shall reinterpret this to suit my own worldview, lifestyle, culture and personal belief system. It clearly means that New Zealanders believe that Parliament should have been blown up to stop the skyrocketing costs of MPs flying their partners overseas with them at our expense. Perhaps Guy Fawkes Day should be picked up by Americans to express their belief in the right of the people to overthrow a government that departs from the Constitution? |
| Thursday, October 29th, 2009 |
| 11:00 pm |
Family Matters
I've felt progressively better throughout the day. I'm hoping tomorrow I'll be back to normal. I haven't felt like throwing up everything I try to eat today, which is just as well because Holly cooked up some delicious steak tonight. Absolutely delicious. She's taken such good care of me over the last couple of days. She's such a blessing to me. I married the right woman! Today I've had a wonderful appreciation of just how amazing my family is. My kids are real characters and are full of life. I think it's eleven days to go (Holly's the one that counts), almost down to ten days. At this point I'm just concentrating on getting to the weekend in full health. I have an overnight trip to Christchurch on Saturday for a rugby game. After I get back from that I'll start panicking getting excited about how little time there is until we board a big jet aircraft for a long haul flight. |
| 9:44 am |
Contains unpleasant details of sickness
I don't like being sick but what I really don't like about being sick today is I've had to call up and ask if they can find someone else for my shift this afternoon. I'm a freelancer, I'm not supposed to get sick. I work when staffers get sick but I'm not supposed to get sick and miss shifts. I don't like causing hassle for other people who then have to try to find someone else to do the work. Right now that's a little more important to me than the fact I'll miss a day's pay. I was throwing up yesterday and I was hoping it was just something I ate and it would pass quickly enough. Nobody else in the family was throwing up anything they ate so it can't have been that. It's not so bad today and so far I've kept the little food I've had down. My stomach muscles though are really sore from yesterday's efforts. I do have one theory about where I picked this up from. I had to get some spare asthma inhalers for our trip to the USA and rang the doctor's office to get a prescription. Because I hadn't seen the doctor in a couple of years they told me I had to come down. It was Tuesday and the day after a public holiday so the waiting room was packed and I spent at least an hour and a quarter waiting to spend two minutes in the doctor's room while he listened to my breathing and printed out a prescription. I could well have picked it up off someone else sometime but I could easily go with the waiting room theory as it would indulge my sense of grievance. Instead I shall indulge in the pleasures of a bed and pillow. |
| Tuesday, October 27th, 2009 |
| 9:06 pm |
I'll be the USA in less than two weeks!
Today I dropped off some library books and rather fortuitously found another book to add to the list of possible anti-annoyance books to read on my flight home (to keep the person sitting next to me from annoying me). Given the resounding success of 'All Four Engines Have Failed' in the last poll I figured I'd put this up against the new library book called 'Air Disasters'. Incidently, both have pictures on the front of planes with flames coming out their engines and one has a bright red ciricle on the cover saying 'Terrifying Actual Transcripts' as if it were an overhyped and ridiculously drama-filled reality TV show. I've also added a couple of other questions, one about which sized Bible to take as it seems that if its evangelistic effect is negated it can serve a dual purpose as an anti-annoyance book. The last question gives a list of possible reading material if the person next to me is not annoying. These books are chosen from ones that I have real and ready access to and that somehow seem to fit the theme of travel, aircraft or randomness. Poll #1476990 How to BOOK my flight
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 8 Which book shall I take to read on my return flight? Which Bible should I take on the plane? Which other books would be worth a read on the flight? |
| 5:13 pm |
The Amazing International Dateline!
This time two weeks from now we will have just landed in Spokane and probably be collecting our luggage. That means we are scheduled to arrive in Spokane two hours before we are scheduled to leave New Zealand. |
| 10:22 am |
Less than 500nm to go.
By my calculations in exactly two weeks time we'll be about an hour away from landing in Los Angeles. I'm thinking I will take All Four Engines Have Failed to read on my return leg if necessary and combine it with one or two of my piloting books like 'Handling The Big Jets'. My Dad suggested The Bible might be just as effective at stopping someone from annoying me. |
| Sunday, October 25th, 2009 |
| 11:19 pm |
A long stretch.
It's been a long day today. It's been a good day but a long one. I didn't sleep too well last night. I was teaching at J-Team (our Sunday School/Children's Church) for a couple of services and then came home to prepare for our Board Games Day. Being a holiday weekend (Labour Day on Monday) it was a small gathering but a fun one. I've just finished getting my work invoices up to date as they may get caught up by the holiday tomorrow. Speaking of work, tomorrow and Labour Day - I'll be spending some of it working and some of it finishing up my GST (Sales Tax) return which is due this week. What a way to spend Labour Day, doing tax paperwork. Still, by this time tomorrow it will be less than two weeks until our scheduled departure to the USA. Now there's something to look forward to! |
| Saturday, October 24th, 2009 |
| 10:37 pm |
How to stop annoying passengers annoying you on a plane flight.
I have two books which I now take with me on international trips in case I end up sitting next to annoying passengers. I really wish I'd taken one on my 2004 flight from Singapore to London. On the way to the USA next month I shall be with my family but on the way home I could be sitting next to anyone. I recently added a third book to my collection and there could well be others I should consider. It's a very narrow genre as the title must have something to do with plane crashes. That way if I get an annoying passenger I can start reading it and prominently angle the book's title at the person in the seat next to me. Of course to reduce weight in my carry-on bag I usually only take one of the books so I have a decision to make. So why make a decision when I can make a poll instead? Poll #1475605
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 7 Which book shall I take to read on my return flight? Any other such books that I should consider? |
| Monday, October 19th, 2009 |
| 8:00 pm |
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| Sunday, October 18th, 2009 |
| 9:34 pm |
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