Category: New Zealand
-
NZ Minus One
Haircut at 10:30, finally. I’m looking like Frodo Baggins up in here, with this hair. Call my cousin. Call Ashley in London. Figure out what to take to New York. Figure out what to take to Value Village. Figure out what to give to the Team Sisu garage sale. Take pictures of the house before…
-
I’m Looking Forward
…to my week at the Octopus Resort, which I really did choose for its name alone, even though there’s nothing specifically octopus-oriented about it. It’s just a cool name. I mean, if I were going to be a DJ my DJ name would totally be DJ Architeuthis or something, so I can understand the impulse.…
-
Let Down, Let Go
I don’t even know why I’m not asleep right now considering I’ve had a total of twelve hours out of the past seventy-two. This afternoon I did the thing where I clutched my aching back and said oooff, I’m not twenty-one anymore, but of course, even when I was twenty-one I still loved sleep more…
-
Already In June
I got home yesterday afternoon from Sharon’s house, who was helping me with makeup and costumes for Saturday’s performance, and saw that Ian and Katie had come over for dinner and discussion. They lived in the cloud room long before the cloud room became the cloud room, and when I leave, they’re going to move…
-
NZ Minus Two
I’ve been slowly freaking out about the whole New Zealand thing for at least a week now. I’m in full-on avoidant mode: people ask me about it, saying “You must be so excited!” and I sort of pull my eyebrows and the corners of my mouth up and go “Yeah! I am!” for three seconds…
-
Out Of Your Head, And Into Your Dance Space
A couple of weeks ago I got an email from my friend and teacher Sharon, inviting me to join a new intermediate student troupe she’s putting together. As I’d sent her a long weepy email about The State Of My Dance Education just a couple of weeks before that, the news was most welcome. The…
-
Seattle Says Stay
I put the asparagus in the pan with the oil and taste the pasta for doneness, turn the heat off under tomorrow’s oatmeal. The grapefruit and baby carrots and apple are all assembled in their corner of my shelf of the refrigerator so that I won’t have to think very much as I am running…
-
NZ Minus Three
If there was an April 31 then today would be three months to the day from which I’ll get on the plane in San Francisco and fly to LA, and then to Fiji where it will be three in the morning. A week after that I’ll get on another plane and arrive in Auckland, where…
-
To Do: Seattle Before I Go
Go salsa dancing again. Wear more comfortable shoes this time and bring an ice pack. Bake an Italian cheesecake and garnish with fresh strawberries. Take to potluck. Graciously decline marriage proposals. Take a bhangra fusion workshop, if one is indeed offered this quarter. See Circus Contraption perform. See burlesque at the The Pink Door. See…
-
Beware
Okay, I’m just going to accept that I am in a very weird pre-leaving-for-New-Zealand place and that I’m pretty much going to be in that place until I get on the plane and wake up in Fiji, a hundred and twenty-two days from today. I’ve been complaining to everyone who will listen that I feel…
-
Because I Want To
Somehow the closer I get to leaving for New Zealand the further away it feels. Getting the plane tickets didn’t make it seem more real, as I’d thought. I’m about to finalize the visa thing this weekend and that doesn’t feel very real either; I’m mostly concerned about sending my passport away in the mail…
-
Laundry Day
The only clean things I had this afternoon were a pair of old pajama pants and a long-sleeved purple shirt that has a sickle and hammer logo and CCCP on it in bright commie pinko red. My dad gave it to me in about 1988 (pre Berlin-wall-fall!) and it’s about six sizes too big and…
-
Due Date
(Originally written at my livejournal) I just bought my tickets to New Zealand half an hour ago. I leave from San Francisco on July 31 and stop in Fiji for a week, then arrive in Auckland late on Monday, August 7. I’ve been saying, since about December when I found out I could go (I’d…
-
Me Eight Months From Now
It’s amazing that I am almost thirty-one years old and I still have to remind myself that if I want to go out, I have to ask people to go out, that just refreshing my email over and over and waiting for the phone to ring is not going to ameliorate my social life. I…
-
It Doesn’t Feel Real
People keep asking me if I’m excited about going to New Zealand, and I keep saying “Yes! It doesn’t quite feel real yet though.” It is a very strange feeling. I don’t have tickets yet because when I called the discount ticket place (the day after I found I’d been accepted) they told me, only…
-
The Culmination Of The Top Secret Plans
I have been smiling to myself since yesterday afternoon at about one o’clock, when I got a very enthusiastic email informing me that my application for a New Zealand working holiday visa has been accepted. I’m moving to New Zealand for a year in August 2006. This is the culmination of the Top Secret Plans,…