I can see my life is in the hands of destiny (Natural Gas - yes that was really their name)

I landed firmly on earth after the highs of the wedding when SWMBO and I returned to Otane to find that my gmail account had been hacked and that the hackers used info to take out a large sum of money from my bank by fraudulent means.

What a shock! Our accounts have been frozen while the bogus emails and the bank actions are being investigated by the fraud office. We've had to close accounts and open others and I've, quite naturally, sent the gmail account into oblivion!

Today's drama has been a  telecom fault paralysing our phone lines and our water pump had a hissy and stopped working leaving us with no water!!

Eek!

Some days you eat the bear, some days the bear eats you.

Grizzly at San Francisco zoo a week ago.

Luckily all of this has been balanced  by SWMBO and me starting new jobs this week and the carpet and lino was laid in the A.R.T. room on Friday. The weekend has been solidly packed with school work and arranging the music DVD and book collection in Abbey Road Two.

Wonderful! All my vinyl is back on shelves and the room both looks great, feels great (mmmm new carpet) and is really warm now.

Okay - nuff of the news. The next post will get back to wrapping up the San Francisco experience.

Love and peace - Wozza

Yeah stick to me, just like glue yeah (Graham Parker)

I'm always good at stating the bleedin' obvious but...we met some amazing people in San Francisco. More than amazing!

Samantha long ago added a whole heap of new people to her extended family, but the San Francisco trip has meant we have too.

Although we knew many of the names before the wedding we had only met Mike and Karin's family before (minus Ian). We therefore met a lot of the SF crew for the first time including Jesse's mum and step dad - Cathy and Dan Kennedy, Jesse's brother and best man, Ian, and Jesse's step sisters Emily and Rebecca who joined Jade and Reb on the bridesmaid team .

We were amazed at their generosity and the family bonds that we have made feel real and long lasting.

Mike invited me on a mountain bike ride up Mt Tamalpais while the girls all had their wedding shower. It turned into one of the highlights of the trip.

We went up a fire road to a cabin for a brief spell and enjoyed lemonade and energy bars. Sweetest lemonade I've ever tasted. And a folksy band was playing sweet music on the porch. Very heaven.

Then we went back down through the redwood forest. I felt like Luke Skywalker on the forest moon of Endor riding his speederbike.

Fantastic views, great company, excellent lemonade (and band) and an exhilerating ride in the beautiful fresh Californian air above Mill Valley (B.J. Hunnicutt territory).

It was a glorious day, thanks to Mike.

Love and peace - Wozza

Love is all you need (The Beatles)

Jacky, Jade, Keegan and I returned to New Zealand a couple of days ago from San Francisco. Adam and Ashley return to Japan from San Francisco soon, the in laws return to Nu Zild during the next week.

We've all been there, as the blogosphere whanau knows, to celebrate Samantha and Jesse's wedding.

Basically - WOW!!

Wow for the wedding (SWMBO called it the best wedding she'd ever been to), wow for the great welcome and love from Jesse's families, wow for Keegan's dancing expertise, wow for Jade's maid of honour speech, wow for how good the Purdy whanau looked, wow for the Kennedy and Rowbotham homes, wow for Amoeba Records, wow for the San Francisco Giants and the Golden State Warriors, wow for Green Apple Books, wow for Mt Tamalpais, wow for Fred's and wow for Bill's diner, wow for the San Francisco metro service and the San Francisco Zoo, wow for Haight Street and the Golden Gate Bridge, wow for Alcatraz and last but by no means least, a big wow for the entire city of San Francisco.

We loved it all, and each deserve their own post which is what will follow in the week to come, inshallah.

Of course the ultimate moment for me was walking Samantha down the aisle and handing her over to Jesse. Both looked suitably stunning and blow me down if something didn't get into my eye during the ceremony.

As I sat and watched (father of the groom) Mike deliver his superb wedding ceremony words I thought about how important love and family always is.

Naturally I thought of my mother and my father, Samantha's grandparents, and I knew how proud they would have been to see Samantha standing there all grown up. Dad got to know all of his grandchildren but I am still sad to think that they never got to meet my mother. And I ached and missed them and was happy and proud all in a contrary mess of emotions.

The overarching emotion was a deep happiness that we could all be together in one place, if just for a few days, to share in Samantha and Jesse's joy.

Love and peace - Wozza (father of the bride)

(Want more photos? Try my facebook page!)

The cars hiss by my window like the waves down on the beach (The Doors)

The clans are converging on San Francisco over the next two weeks for the irrevocable melding together of Wozza's world and Jesse's world. Although Jesse and his family have been members of Wozza's World for a few years, it's now time for Jesse and Fanfa to marry after officially ratifying their commitment to look after each other till death do they part earlier this year.

So this means the Purdy, O'Neill and Smith branches of the whanau are in the city by the bay for a short while to share in the joy.

Jade arrived a week ago and we (Keegan, SWMBO, and me) arrived yesterday. Adam and Ashleigh arrive next week along with the O'Neills and Mr Smith.

We've been busy bees since landing - a walk around the Castro area, a walk across the Golden Gate bridge, and a Jesse city tour have been great introductions to this fabuloso city. We've all fallen in love with it!

Tomorrow we visit Alcatraz and I finish writing my father of the bride speech. Photos to come (I can't figure out how to load from my camera to the iPad just yet).

Love and peace - Wozza

And they whirled and they twirled and they tangoed (America)

Wozza's world has been gearing up for Samantha's wedding of late. Jade has flown to San Francisco already and the rest of us head there in the next week or so. Happy day is on the 27th April.

We've been looking after Jade's pooch Tango (hence the lift from Muskrat Love for the title) while she's been in America and untangling Tango - every day he manages to get himself in some bizarre tangles involving his lead and the fences around his dog house. Amazingly he does not seem to learn from his mistakes so every day SWMBO has been trying to out think him. What will Tango do next? has become a private game involving the two of them. So far Tango's ahead on points.

I have been at work all week - my last week of relief teaching at Woodford House before I start there permanently as Head of English next term.

What a fantastic school and a fantastic place to work. I am very lucky.

We had Shakespeare Day at school yesterday and so the staff and a lot of the students dressed up in period costumes. Including me - I'm pictured (far right) with the rest of the English staff.

During the day I left my keys in a computer room. They were found by some girls and handed to the DP (also in the English Dept and pictured third from left). The girls said they were Mr Purdy's.

When Catherine (the DP) asked the girls how they knew that, they said, " Because they smell like him". Whaaaaat? I'm hoping it's my after shave but who knows.

Next posting comes from San Francisco inshallah.

Love and peace - Wozza
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There's a mockingbird singing songs in the trees, singing just for me (Barclay James Harvest)

I've just finished 7 days of relief teaching at Woodford House and I've loved it.

I'm in my element in the classroom. I'm not sure exactly what that phrase/cliche means.

Let me put it this way - I got home from school last Tuesday, it's a 30 minute drive, so it was about 6pm by the time I grabbed a drink and headed out onto the deck at home - slight autumnal features - liquid blue sky about to go down in a fiery red sunset; slight breeze moving the few yellowing leaves off the trees, and I remember wondering 'when was the last time I was this happy?'

The thought/feeling kinda blind sided me and I felt self indulgent and great at the same time. It was a fleeting moment - those kinds of feelings tend to be like a movement in your peripheral vision. When you try to deliberately isolate it, it's no longer there.

Autumn often puts me in that kind of mood and the day of teaching had left me tired and fulfilled.

People at school have been asking me if I have any regrets. No. I tell them.

I don't.

Love and peace - Wozza

You may find yourself in a beautiful house with a beautiful wife (Talking Heads)

You may find yourself in another part of the world; you may find yourself sitting at your desk in the teacher workroom at Woodford House and you may find yourself teaching English again and you may say to yourself, "Well. How did I get here?"

In brief: SWMBO and I returned to Nu Zild from China in February and waited to hear from my Chinese boss about our pay and flights and visas and such. And waited…and waited. When it became obvious that we weren't going back to China (and weren't going to be paid for two months work) we went searching for new jobs. As luck would have it we were offered jobs on exactly the same day – mine was Head of English at Woodford House in Havelock North (a thirty minute drive from Otane) and SWMBO has casual nursing hours at Waipukurau Hospital (a ten minute drive in the opposite direction from Otane). I was also offered a position in the Middle East as well, and, although it was much more lucrative, the words 'permanent full time' tagged to the NZ job swung the deal.

We wanted to be normal again, you see, and stability is a condition I have come to yearn for after three years of zapping around the earth.

Woodford House is a delight too. It's a smallish school of around 300 girls nestled in the Havelock North hills. It's largely a boarding school for Hawke's Bay girls but there are some day girls as well from around Hastings. Class sizes are small! I have 12 girls in my Year 9 English class! Somebody pinch me (http://www.woodfordnz.com/ for more info on my new school).

Life has been busy with preparing for a re-entry to the NZ workforce (I started last Thursday), planning to go to San Francisco for Fanfa's weeding and getting our house sitter out of our house and our stuff back in.

We gave her a month's notice but things have not gone smoothly. She initially acknowledged that damages to carpets and furniture (done by her cats) were her responsibility but she has since refused to pay for repairs and replacements. During the six months she was house sitting she moved about two households worth of stuff into and onto our property and that has taken her weeks to remove. All traces have now been removed!

Sadly that has meant no time for blogging of late but the A.R.T. room is now looking like my space again and so are SWMBO's Habibi Stables.

So now I'm back and the normalcy means the blogging will kick back into gear. Hurrah!!

Love and peace - Wozza