I find it kinda funny, I find it kinda sad (Tears For Fears)

After packing the vinyl, before the CDs

Wahey - 6.05 am! My first sleep in of the holidays.

It always takes me a couple of days to detox the teacher in me; for my body clock to start resetting a little later each morning. 

So, YES, it's the second term holidays and you find me dismantling Abbey Road Two (a.k.a. the A.R.T. room).

As I mentioned, we're on the move and I'm preparing to get my stuff into Abbey Road Three (a.k.a. the A.R.T. room) at Rochdene.

A few thoughts struck me as I started taking down the Beatle posters, peeling off the blue tack, loading my vinyl into boxes, and generally creating mess: 

• Man - I have a lot of stuff; 
• Man - I love my stuff; 
• I should play that album - now; 
• I need to read that next; 
• I hope this all fits in ART(hree) [a smaller version of ART(wo)]; 
• How the hell am I going to cope with all my music in boxes for a few weeks? Yes Wozza - there is the ipod and it can go through the stereo...still...

ART in disarray

My overriding thought: I really am still a-wide-eyed-naive-teenager-collecting-things-I'm-passionate-about at heart.

I hope I always will be!

Love and peace - Wozza

We gotta move these colour TV's (Dire Straits)

A fun weekend to report. 

This one's about TVs, technology and planned obsolescence:

Abruptly, last week our Sky reception stopped while SWMBO was in the lounge watching news on Al Jazeera.

Sky technician came, saw and delivered the verdict - the TV was the culprit! It's one we'd brought back from Al Ain so it is only 3 or 4 years old.

Said technician swapped the A.R.T. room TV (bought while we were in Stratford, so a year or two older) and we were back in business Sky wise.

The 'new' A.R.T. room TV from the lounge is fine but the connection to my stereo wasn't. Appears it failed like the Sky connection. 

Yikes!! Inconceivable! Calamity! Disaster!

So I had to buy an 'optical digital audio out' cable (and a new home theatre sound system from Harvey Norman).

Seems in the last few years TVs are now using this optical bizzo and so, gggrrrrr, if I want to blast out Rage Against The Machine live in my A.R.T....

This next bit is a return to the smart phone scenario:

I was given a new smart phone by a student at school (she'd won it and it was surplus to requirements, with the helpful suggestion planted by a rather wonderful colleague - student passed the phone to me).

It's a brand new phone so a better prospect than Jade's Sony Xperia.

It needed a cover so I got in the Purdsmobile and pootled along to the Hastings Spark office (was Telecom but they rebranded - don't get me started), only to be told in a sneery kind of voice: oh no we don' have one, we don' carry this model phone any more - best try Trade me!

I'm so sick of this!

More and more, it seems technology is outdated within weeks, days, hours!!

I remember when (yes, I'm really going to start a sentence - I remember when)...TV's lasted years and years and years. Phones? Before cordless came along and WAY before cell phones, we had the same land line phone in the house for decades.

Now - if it ain't the lastest device like an iphone 6 (which renders iphones 1 through 5 obsolete) it ain't nothin'.

Landfills are filing up with discarded technology that dies or is updated after too short a time. Fer shame!

Bah humbug, and yet, love and peace - Wozza

The river keeps on flowing, but the banks are ever changing (Mostly Autumn)

ART courtyard - pergola, planter and trellis by Wozza

The projects around Red Phoenix Farm have been getting ticked off jolly smartly of late:

the pergolas are all painted and looking spiffy;

A.R.T. is now complete - both the inside and the courtyard (left) is done;

the summer sails are all up;

hedges and gardens are looking peachy.

Next big project for the summer is the carport (cool name - the place you dock your car!). I've been scheming and planning the carport for about a year - ever since we started to transform the garage into A.R.T. I'm also keen to work on a new aviary and chookhouse over the next few holidays.

View from ART

I love building projects - so rewarding and challenging for me and a complete change from the mental twists and turns of teaching. This year has been huge - returning to teaching in Nu Zild after so long away in Al Ain and then China was always going to test me.

I'm generally happy with how I went but I know there will be improvements next year as I become more familiar with stuff (the school, the girls, the curriculum, the staff, the expectations), but I'm excited about 2014 and the chance to build on this start. Teaching is weird in that respect - it's like a yearly cycle of rebirth.


Nature watch returns - the spring into summer transition means the cherry blossom on the cherry tree behind A.R.T. has turned into cherries. This has not escaped the notice of the hungry birds who have been helping themselves.

SWMBO's cunning plan

So SWMBO hatched a plan so fiendishly cunning you could put a tail on it and call it a weasel - simply go to Giant Spiders Are Us and buy the biggest giantest spider they had in stock to drape said cherry tree in said giant spider's web.

The results were...ah...good.

The hungry birds flew down, get caught in the web, became angry birds and were then devoured, pacman style, by the massive metre long spider!

Moral of that particular story - don't piss off SWMBO by trying to gorge yourself on cherrys before she can!

We've had some purlers of sunsets lately as well. As avid readers will remember - an Aussie wattle tree (this here is called the wattle, the emblem of our land, you can stick it in a bottle or you can hold it in your hand) fell down some time ago - damned unreliable thing - and opened up a window onto some of our front paddocks and across to some distant lands. The sun now filters through the gap in spectacular fashion as I'm sure you'll agree.

View through the wattle gap, Max and Meg in foreground

And in other news: I am no longer a beardy. I don't know how my friend Stas does it. He's had facial hair since he was about 9 and his beard is massive.

I must be a sook.

I lasted three weeks into Movember and shaved it all off this afternoon. I got sick of touching the whiskers, sick of hairs getting into my food and drink and sick of not looking like me.

Love and peace - Wozza (can you see the real me? Can ya? CAN YA?)

'Cause here with you is where I belong (Mary Chapin Carpenter)

Okay - time flies like an arrow but fruit-flys like an apple. I can't believe it's been a month since I last wrote a post in my blogs.

This is the longest gap I've ever had. And the reasons you ask?

• Adjusting to living in Nu Zild (quite a change after the Middle East and our life in Al Ain)
• Unpacking our house that was in storage for nearly two years (boxes and stuff to sort - you know the drill)
• Working every day on farm stuff (see below)
• Painting and working on A.R.T. (see http://googoogarjoob.blogspot.co.nz/ for details). As this is where the office is as well, it meant a week without a computer being handy.



Mrytle in front of our place. A.R.T. is on the left.



I can't believe how much time has been devoted to farm stuff in particular - chopping down trees, trimming hedges, fixing fences, tractor collection (yes Mrytle is fine), mowing lawns (the grass growth has been amazing in the Hawke's Bay this year!!), planting Maple trees, putting up shelves and various horsie stuff in SWMBO's Habibi Stables, collecting horses (we now have three on the property - called Roch-dene by the way) and a thousand other little jobs.

I'd forgotten that farm living is not simple. One job invariably leads to three others.

But it's all been fun (apart from the fencing wire which bit me back on the right hand ring finger. Lotta blood but SWMBO enjoyed acting like nursie and Samantha was very calm too when it happened).

We have also had a few biggie celebrations in the month that has zipped by - Jacky had her 50th birthday on the 14th April with Samantha, Jesse, Jade, Gavin. Michelle, and Sallie all making the trip over to help us celebrate in our new home.

SWMBO with her family team effort cake.

 

Fanfa adds the message after Jade did the icing and I baked the cake.

Jesse, Dookie and Fanfa

SWMBO and I also celebrated our 28th wedding anniversary on 21st April. Pretty cool huh.

I will make a determined effort to do entries as regularly as in the past so stay tuned again for updates. I'll also be including some snaps - the views are breathtaking, particularly of late with the misty mornings (the hills around us look like islands in the mist) and the evening sunsets.

Love and peace - Wozza