Ampersand

Category: Wellington

  • Middle Age

    It’s called San Fran now but it used to be called San Francisco Bath House and of course my friend from the Bay Area, when he visited years ago, thought it was Wellington’s gay bar. “It’s not,” I said. “I mean they are gay people there but to, like, see shows. It’s not a gay…

  • Almost Forty

    Today is my mom’s birthday. She would turn sixty-nine today. Thursday is my birthday. I will turn forty. Turning forty is fine, for me. I don’t have many feelings or thoughts about it, other than I’m glad that I have a birthday and that I’ll get to celebrate it in a low-key way this weekend.…

  • The New Couches

    After a year of so of complaining about how much I hated–hated— my saggy brown 80-percent-life-size couches, I bought some new ones. They were delivered a couple Saturdays ago and the 80-percenters were picked up by the delightful people from the Mary Potter Hospice shop warehouse. One is light gray and one is sort of…

  • Fly Away

    This morning the baby bird flew into the lounge window right by my head, as I was sitting on the couch eating my breakfast and drinking my tea. I heard a huge thump and hopped up to lean out of the window to see what it was. At first I didn’t see anything and I…

  • The Baby Bird

    On New Year’s Day we saw some birds going crazy outside lounge window. Common blackbirds, a male and a female, who looked nothing alike, chirping very loudly, flapping their wings, diving around the big pink-flowered shrub in the far right hand corner of the little grassy area where the clotheslines are. Earlier in the day…

  • The Location

    It’s November now, and right at this moment I really should be packing for my long weekend in Melbourne that starts in approximately eight hours when I have to catch a before-dawn cab. Instead I am shaking my head at the results of the US midterm elections and looking askance at the spring rain outside…

  • Catching Up, Slowing Down

    I caught up with friends last night over tea and cake, under a blanket on someone’s couch because even though it’s lighter later, every evening, it’s still chilly and damp in that Wellington way. We’ve all been out of town or working a lot or just plain busy so it was nice to just hang…

  • Shortsighted

    I just got back from my friend Amber’s house for dinner. This is exactly the kind of way I like to be social, these days: someone’s house that is walking distance from mine, yummy food, nice people, and home by 9 pm. Amber is in cooking school this year and every now and again when…

  • A Good Day Off

    I was at another conference for work over the weekend, so I took yesterday off. First day of Spring in the Southern Hemisphere. I’d got home tired and cranky on Sunday night, fit for nothing but shoveling down the lovely dinner G had waiting for me, but Monday was bright and sunny and I thought,…

  • What Are You Doing Musically At The Moment?

    It’s been over a year since I sang in public. It was last Easter for my bandmate’s leaving gig, at what used to be Medusa but is now something else. I sang two songs I wrote and one cover, wearing a Def Leppard t-shirt and some heavy eyeliner my bandmate applied to my face while…

  • Just A Cosy Sunday

    I got up early-ish this morning, and waffled back and forth between going to the Sunday market and going to the Bait House, even for just a little while. The Bait House won out but not before toast with plum jam and Greek yogurt with honey, over a foo-foo magazine, with a cup of tea.…

  • Easy And Ordinary

    The year’s almost half over, and I have been spending it about as you’d expect, doing the things you’d expect I’d do. I’m working what seems like a lot but is still really only nine to five, with some travel thrown in. Because this job is only for a year—only eight more months, now—I’ve been…

  • Shows: Bullet Points

    Some excellent things about tonight’s Morcheeba show • My new friend at work asked me yesterday if I wanted to go and I didn’t even have to pay full price for the ticket so we went shopping and for dinner and the show was early and we got to sit in chairs and only stand…

  • It Was So Clear To Me That It Was Almost Invisible

    I went to see Neko Case last night, right around the corner from my house. It was my birthday present—I turn thirty-nine on Wednesday—and at first I was a little ambivalent about going. Not because I don’t love Neko Case, but because it’d been a long day at work and it was sort of chilly…

  • A Little Haven

    A month home now, a month into my new (great!) job, and thoughts of traveling and dive mastering and heartbreaking recede into the distance every time I wash my hair in the mouldy, paint-peeling shower of this flat or bemoan the lack of bench space in the kitchen. It’s meant to be the second day…

  • The Koh Tao Fantasy

    My Koh Tao fantasy goes like this: I decide to become a dive master and study marine conservation and ecology with Caro at Koh Exist. My buoyancy is perfectly neutral as I casually untwist enough marine rope to accept every kicked-off nubbin of still-living coral and transplant them to the artificial reef. I learn a…

  • The First Week

    The job ended last Friday. Since then I have: got my eyebrows threaded for the first time, which was pretty painful but not as bad as plucking, which I can’t even do correctly anyway; applied for five jobs; gone out to lunch with some very lovely friends and had some excellent conversation; had at least…

  • Sad and Tired

    Last weekend I was sick—sinus infection run amok—and I wrote a post for this blog about that. About that, and about how I have somehow lost that new job I thought I was going to take me to the end of the year, and about how I miss my mom. You’d recognize it, I think,…

  • Forms

    In the weeks since I got back from Nelson, I have been naked on a massage table during another major (but not too damaging!) earthquake, had a meeting with a financial advisor so that I can get my multi-hemisphere act together, baked a lot of cakes and cookies, listened to a lot of history podcasts,…

  • The Shakes

    The earthquakes we’ve been having for the last couple of weeks have been big, but not too big. Or they’ve been big, but they’ve been far enough away from Wellington not to seriously damage anything. Or they’ve damaged things, but not permanently. Or they’ve damaged things permanently, but not too badly. We had two not…

  • Or Something

    There was a big storm here in Wellington a couple of weeks ago, and there has been a lot going on politically, all over the world. I’m still doing my physio exercises and getting more into my volunteer gig at the marine science centre. Wellington On A Plate and the Film Festival are coming up.…

  • The Bait House

    This past Sunday I went to volunteer for the first time at the Island Bay Marine Education Centre weekly Open Day. It’s a pretty cruisy setup—the coordinator emails everyone during the week, you tell him if you can make it that weekend, and then you roll up on the day and do your thing. That’s…

  • Her Pink Room

    If she’d been able to leave us at home on the island, I think sometimes. (‘Sometimes’ means ‘once.’ ‘Sometimes’ means ‘I thought that once, a week ago, and I am still thinking it.’) If I hadn’t come back to Wellington for those five months last year, if she hadn’t moved to Tampa as she’d planned…

  • Studies Have Shown

    I randomly read this article today, and left its browser tab open for the afternoon. It’s pretty standard, I guess: you can either have high-flying ambitions and move to the big city, or you can live next door to your parents and teach in the local school and when you get cancer your community will…

  • Another April

    I was done with the pool by 5:30 this evening and had plenty of time to make dinner, had the vegetables right there and everything, but I had dip and pita bread instead. I got fleece-lined ankle-length slippers for my birthday and have opted for them and my fleece-lined hoodie this evening instead of hauling…

  • We Will Have Band Practice Again

    Saturday night my good friend and bandmate Jez had his last Wellington gig. It was easily the best one I’ve ever been to: I got to Bar Medusa early for soundcheck and he did my makeup in the bar toilet and the place was as packed as I’ve ever seen it and for his final…

  • My Birthday

    I celebrated my birthday last week too, three days after my mom’s. I spent the day itself in an all-day Content Management System training and then put on my new jeans and a top I got for five dollars one of the recent times I was in America, I don’t remember which, and met a…

  • Baking

    I’m only working part-time at the moment and my work is just a half-hour’s walk from my house so I have what feels like the most free time since I was in kindergarden, these days. I do things like go for swims in my new, highly supportive and highly unflattering one-piece togs and get documents…

  • I Know

    It’s still warm and clear every day, I’m still wearing light dresses to work, but it’s getting dark earlier and earlier and last night I found myself feeling ever so slightly chilly under the covers. Wellington hasn’t seen a summer like this for years and I can almost believe that it won’t be gray and…

  • Corn

    Crying through Les Mis makes sense, I guess: dying mother with cancer haircut sings farewell to her daughter, right, and maybe I even went into it knowing I would cry and that a dark movie theater on a Sunday night is a perfectly fine place to do so, and that no one can see you,…

  • Will Continue Sending

    So I went to Los Angeles (saw a friend I hadn’t seen since the 90s, when we both had very different hair!) and I went to Mexico (dived with seals and sea turtles and ate a lot of huevos divorciados!) and then I came back to New Zealand (sat on a plane for many hours…

  • Can’t

    Two weeks ago the math abruptly changed. That’s the best and simplest way to describe it. There were phone calls and emails and tearful conversations on Skype and at Wellington cafes; there was a prognosis to receive, and a decision to be made. At first I thought there would be three weeks to sort out…

  • Doing The Math

    It’s supposed to be spring soon–supposed to–but I’m still sitting in front of the heater in my robot hoodie and wool knee socks, sipping tea and listening to the southerly howl and screech outside. Tui courtship season, ostensibly; I feel sorry for those poor noisy birds huddled up under the whipping branches. This morning when…

  • Finally, The Winter Boyfriend Video

    Last year I wrote a song. I sang it to myself a lot and talked about a lot and practicing it a lot with my friend Jez. At first I used to say ‘band practice’ in quotes because I reasoned that thirty-six year old public servants with no musical ability don’t really go to band…

  • More And More And More

    Been back in Wellington for two months now, pretty much as long as I was away. It’s freezing cold here, just the start of winter, and I have a wool cardigan, two pairs of socks, and both the heaters on tonight. My friend Theresa is visiting until Wednesday. I just got back from dance class…

  • Tempting

    There was someone to pick me up at the airport. My fridge had been filled with soup and carrots and hummus and my favourite kind of breakfast toast and some Early Grey were on the kitchen bench. There was a loaner humidifier and a whole new floor lamp in the lounge. It was one of…

  • Talking With Alice On The Couches

    Alice came over for dinner Monday night. I have a table and chairs in my lounge but I never eat dinner on them; I sit on the couch like everyone else. Alice sat too. We ate zucchini pasta and talked about my work and her midwifery exams and about the weather and about the election…

  • Band Tension

    [Chiara and her bandmate Jez are working on their new song at their friend Rachel’s flat. From behind a closed door some indications of band tension begin to emanate…] Chiara: But it goes: the verse about the whiskers, then the pre-chorus with the abalone, then the Pacific Ocean pre-chorus, then the chorus. Jez: What I’m…

  • It’s Been Busy

    Not much to report, really—everything’s been very busy but it’s the kind of busy where even though you’re doing lots of stuff there isn’t really a way to write about it. I mean, what are you supposed to write? You have a friend in town and there are parties and dinners and cups of hot…

  • Daylight Savings

    It’s Daylight Savings now, light later and later. My sun guilt is very firmly entrenched but I sit on one of the 80-percent-life-size couches anyway, up against the large lounge window, looking at the outside drying racks in the back yard, the chittering birds and peeling paint and golden sun of Mt. Victoria. Meant to…

  • Wellyversary

    Last night I celebrated my five years in Wellington with a gig at the limiest-green dive bar in Wellington, where the owner happens to be a friend of a friend and where I see shows all the time. I’ve been planning this for months, referring to it as my Wellyversary: two friends’ bands played, some…

  • Five Years

    I don’t even remember anything that’s happened since the last time I wrote, man. I am never home and when I am home all I want to do is put my laundry in or make sure I have enough Greek yogurt for tomorrow’s lunch and to wash my face and brush my teeth and go…

  • Weakness

    I started taking a circus—specifically, adagio—class a couple of months ago at the instigation of my friend Rachel, who is a certifiable circus freak and who is on mission to recruit everyone she knows so that she can have a Friend Circus. She drives a hard bargain; after telling me to do it for months…

  • Happy Place

    We went for a walk along Oriental Parade after Chris’ waffle party this afternoon. It’s been such a warm winter—today felt much more like November than July. The sun was shining and I was only wearing two shirts and a hoodie and there was no wind. We went to what Rachel calls her happy place,…

  • I Wrote A Song

    My big new thing is that I wrote a song. I’m thinking a lot lately about my family, and feminism (a LOT about feminism), and social media and its discontents, and circus, and money, and how I want to knit a lot of scarves all of a sudden, but underneath and around and on top…

  • That Was My Tuesday

    I bought this super cute pink-and-red-and-gray-and-black cameo-pattern skirt the other day at Recycle Boutique for like sixteen dollars and then on Saturday, after a strange series of events, I bought these super-awesome knee-high boots, which has sort of been this everlasting quest of mine for longer than I care to contemplate. Anyway over the past…

  • Scintillating Prose

    I’ve been sick for what feels like ages even though I guess it’s only been a week, really. Went back to work full time today, swallowing my antibiotics and wiping my nose. I’ve had to skip circus and parties and Cut Copy and all sorts of things: too tired to do anything but stagger home,…

  • Solitary Sunday

    7:15 Rainrainrainwindwindwindwind HeyIdon’tfeelsoawesomerightnowrainrainraininrainwindwindwindKABOOMIdon’tfeelsohot 7:45 Hmm, I see that, according to Facebook, everyone else in Wellington has noticed the bad weather as well. Fascinating. I feel gross. 8:15 Urrrrrrrgggggghhhhhh. Arrrrrrgggggggghhhhh. Bleuuuuurrrrrggggghhhh. 9:30 Bed, I love you bed. I love you forever, bed. I will never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever leave you, bed. 10:00…

  • Leaving

    It’s not all the time now, the way it was when I was first in Wellington, a leaving do every weekend. Now it will be quiet for months and then there will be a big sudden push of Facebook invites to last-night-in-Wellington drinks. Since March, I guess, a lot of friends have been leaving, one…

  • I Meant To Take Photos

    I meant to take photos of everything I did over this long weekend—in New Zealand we get Good Friday and then the following Monday off, for Easter, and if this was Australia I’d be getting tomorrow off too, for ANZAC Day—and to caption them hilariously and all of that, but it just never happened. It’s…

  • Autumn Face

    Trudge through the drizzle to the foot of a hill where they filmed Middle Earth ten years ago, to the pile of concrete blocks that houses your beloved flat. Look up at the mist rising off the reconstituted native forest. Look down at the full gutters and the empty mailbox. Throw your shopping bags on…

  • Atomic

    I was in the mood to go out on Saturday night. I’ve been very busy socially lately but it’s hasn’t been the going out kind of social, if that makes sense; like I go to a lot of dinners and shows and house parties and things like that—sometimes even events–and I have people over to…

  • This, Here, Now

    Yesterday I didn’t have yoga after work and I also didn’t have any food in the house. A quick perusal of the produce section at New World indicated that broccoli was expensive but that asparagus was (kind of) cheap because we’re finally getting into spring, and then in a flash I recalled that I had…

  • Wait Till You Get All Your Stuff In

    The good thing about having a very immediate-yet-mostly-dealable crisis is that it focuses all your nervous energy into a very specific direction: Do This Thing, Now. Make It Happen. Make It Work. The night sweats and the upset stomach and the inability to concentrate all of a sudden have a reason and a purpose: I…

  • Crying In August

    I did so much crying in August. I did lots of different of kinds: the kind where you can’t get out of bed and have to remember to drink water at hourly intervals to replenish your vital fluids; the kind where you start sobbing at work; the kind where you weep silently on the bus…

  • Boxes Of Books

    When I was in Seattle in the Northern Hemisphere summer of 2008, I got rid of something like three hundred books which my buddies at the Blue House in Ballard had been storing for me in three identical IKEA bookcases (I had another one upstairs in the cloud room, also full to bursting) along with…

  • Four Year Anniversary

    It’s four years exactly today since I first came to Wellington, coming from Napier on the Intercity Bus, waiting to meet Deirdre at the station with my big green backpack. That was so long ago. For my one-year anniversary in 2007 I was in Australia, not even paying attention, and for my two year I…

  • There Is No Requirement To Still Your Mind

    The yoga teacher seems to want to touch the American a lot in class tonight. She doesn’t correct or realign her, she just lays her hands on lightly, gently, softly: spread-out fingers in down dog, shoulders in Warrior II, the small of the back in child’s pose. She can tell, thinks the American, lowering down…

  • Pompeii To Paris

    I met the beautiful and talented Leimomi last year at the Pride and Prejudice and Zombies ball, which she brilliantly organized and at which I discovered a predilection for wearing top hats and frock coats. We became Facebook friends, as you do, and saw each other at parties and whatnot, always very enjoyably; we may…

  • Returned To Sender

    I can’t help wondering: what happens to the love, the kind that never gets to the people it was so earnestly meant for? Sometimes there’s a reason and sometimes there isn’t: they weren’t paying attention or they didn’t understand what would be required, or they just plain weren’t interested, they just plain didn’t want it,…

  • FIRE!

    It’s still rainy and cold and windy and awful here in Wellington today. I opened my bedroom window a couple of hours ago, just to air it out a bit, and when I came back in? There was hail on my pillows. Okay? Okay. So I haven’t really done much with my long weekend so…

  • Come On Baby

    As we speak I am wrapped in a doubled up blanket, underneath which I’m wearing yoga pants, two pairs of socks, a shirt, a fleece, and a hoodie (hood up). I’d be adding gloves if I weren’t attempting to type, but am still seriously considering a scarf. My fingers and toes are honestly numb right…

  • Sort Of Typing

    I wouldn’t say anything much has changed in the last couple of days re: This Annoying What-Does-It-All-Mean Angst Thing I Go Through Every Couple Of Months, but I’m ready to have something else be the front page so here I am, sitting basically on top of the electric heater in the lounge at 9:00 on…

  • Signs

    How do you know if you’ve made the right choice? Do you look for external cues—signs, signals, messages from God—or do you depend on internals, on how you feel? Can you tell the difference? How do you know when a choice has been made, made finally and all the way through so that it’s not…

  • The American Thing, Again

    Last night I got an email from New Zealand Immigration saying that they’ve done the first stage of my residency application and needed some extra information about my job to continue on. This was pretty exciting because a) the information they wanted was really easy to get and I had it in the mail this…

  • I Could Fall In Love Again

    This morning I went to Sunday Tribal Jam, which would be my first dance class since, like, August. Everything I thought would happen did happen: I forgot how to stand in angled formation: I remembered how to three-quarter shimmy: I got sore arms merely from holding them up, let alone doing anything with them: I…

  • Cuba Carnival 2009

    It was Cuba Carnival this weekend, you see—when I got the job in November I told everyone via Facebook status update that I would be back in time for it. After my beautiful friend Angela left for the airport and I was walking down to the Hataitai bus stop I thought about that, and about…

  • Down To Earth

    The days are beginning to be just days, now: up early, stumble down the stairs into the shower, out the door and down to the shops, into the car, into the office. Morning tea, lunch, afternoon tea. Meetings, emails, phone messages, stopping to chat to co-workers in the corridor, more meetings, more emails. The sun…

  • Body And Mind

    Even though I started my new job last week, this past one was the first full-forty-hour week I’ve worked since

  • Wellington Sevens 2009

    It was Waitangi Day on Friday so I had a long weekend, which was great because by the end of a mere three eight-hour days at the office I was a wreck. I did various things with my free time such as unpack some of my stuff, go to brunch, buy a new bed, attempt…

  • Anything Other Than Temporary

    I’m pretty glad I didn’t update last night after moving my stuff (which at this point in time consists of two stuffed-to-the-brim bags that barely made it into checked luggage and some very pretty bedding I got at the half-off sale at Briscoe’s last week) from my dear friend Alice’s house in Mt. Victoria to…

  • Learning To Drive

    Although I had a couple of opportunities to do so, I actually never drove on the right side of the car and/or left side of the road the first time I was over here, almost two years. I bummed rides or walked or bussed or trained everywhere and that actually worked out very well for…

  • Anti-Climactic

    Today I woke up late because I was up talking with Alice until three in the morning, drank some tea, had lunch at the Italian cafĂŠ with my friend Julie, submitted my New Zealand residency application, went to Farmer’s for moisturizer, and stopped at New World to pick up ginger nuts on the way back…

  • Contingency

    The last week or so, I guess, after I had to resubmit the visa, I was just starting to allow the concept of not going back to Wellington to lick at the edges of my brain, quickly and cautiously, nervously. After yet another paperwork-related mistake last Wednesday that involved panicked calls to the New Zealand…

  • My Time And Place

    I still have New Zealand Google as my…Google, I guess…and yesterday the icon had little flowers for the double OO, and when I rolled over it said “Happy first day of spring!” That’s what they’re having in Wellington now, spring—they’re occasionally taking off their coats outside and still getting grit blown into their eyes from…

  • Golden Days, Golden Bay

    Since the last time I wrote I have taken an eight hour bus trip, cried my little eyes out during Once while eating an entire bag of gummy worms, spent a lot of time feeling sad and lonely in Nelson, been to the Warehouse no less than three times in three days, seen baby seals…

  • Enough Of Denial

    I started crying yesterday afternoon while taking down the various little decorations in my sweet silly room: the flower garlands and postcards and pictures that I’ve accumluated over the past eighteen months, the things I look at when I first wake up in the morning and that let me know I’ve arrived home at night.…

  • A Very Good Wednesday

    Yesterday I was on an early-ish bus to town because the previous evening, while I was snorfing down some veggie couscous and indulging my very camp inner gay man by watching back-to-back showings of Priscilla and Truth Or Dare, David had texted me to let me know that my (and everyone else’s) boyfriends

  • Loving And Leaving

    It’s seven in the morning and I just got home four hours ago but Marcy leaves today and she’s graciously agreed to be a mule for me and take some of my stuff back to the States, including this laptop, so have only a little while to tell you what an amazing time I had…

  • A Week And A Half To Go

    Everything is so crazy right now, my people. Tomorrow is my last day of work and Saturday is my leaving do and Marcy is visiting from Olympia this week and it turns out that Stormy, Danica, and Danica’s two teenage brothers are coming with me for the first three days of my Raro trip and…

  • In Denial

    I got back from my awesome Tongariro Crossing trip on Monday evening and I was all fired up to post a photo entry, with pictures of me standing by craters and me standing by lakes and me standing by Mt. Doom and me standing under tree ferns, but I was having power cord issues so…

  • Today

    Today I woke up about ten minutes before my alarm and the sun was shining, so I got to put on a somewhat flouncy skirt. I put in a load of laundry and a load of dishes and made sure to put on sunblock before I left the house and I listened to Fat Freddy’s…

  • First Week Of The New Year

    The first week of the new year has been pretty fun, I am happy to report. The weather has been good a lot of the time, I’ve hung out with some excellent people, I saw a great show for New Year’s Eve, work has calmed down a little bit, and I successfully made some dulce…

  • 2007

    2007, as I think about it, has been like most years: ups and downs. You know how it goes: some confusion and anxiety and even a tiny bit of heartbreak, but mostly silliness and happiness and fun. It’s been pretty ordinary in terms of how I spent my time; as usual, I spent the year…

  • Christmas in Wellington

    None of my pictures came out and it rained for most of today, but Christmas went okay this year. I had to work Christmas Eve and had a really rough day, so by the time Alice came over to make tiramisu I was pretty tired and grumpy and not really feeling the spirit, to say…

  • Just A Hint

    Attention all you young lovers out there: you are all very adorable and you have cute hair and everything, but seriously, girl, you need to work on your game. If you see me out on a Friday night and you are interested in getting with me, as the kids say, it’s really quite simple: tell…

  • There’s Bees All Over My Body

    A Saturday night out in Wellington. Chiara is wearing a low-cut shirt and sparkly barrettes and is with a large passel of delightful and good-looking people in rather a swanky bar that is playing unfortunate electronic music. Chiara [attempting to shake her well-endowed booty]: This is difficult. Lovely New Friend: I don’t understand this music.…

  • To My Own True Love

    I am sitting on the rocks at low tide, watching the sea breathe in and out, over and away from the stones and snails and algae. Tiny fish and driftwood pulse and glow in the sun, the wind, the afternoon. The divers go in after paua, my toenail polish glints under the hole in the…

  • Work

    This is the first job I’ve had where I’m never even slightly bored; I only work six hours a day so by the time I get in I’m already thinking about what I have to do, where I have to go, who I need to see. Who needs a food parcel today, and who needs…

  • Tapu Te Ranga

    Friday for work I went to Tapu Te Ranga Marae, which is just down the street from my house but to which I’ve never been. It was my first time visiting one and I wasn’t really sure what to expect; people kept telling me that it’s very different to most marae so I was even…

  • Yaaar, Or Whatever

    It’s only November, but apparently it’s time for the Santa Parade again. Last year I was content to sit on the sidelines over by the library with Jill and look at all the weird floats and wonder what, exactly, they had to do with Christmas-in-November, but this year I was actually on one of those…

  • What I Did Today

    I know that it’s 2007 and one does not really post blog entries about why one hasn’t had time to write recently anymore; I just still, after however many years it’s been, feel guilty and itchy and weird when I don’t write a couple of times a week. I wrote a list of everything I…

  • Guy Fawkes Night

    You walk along the waterfront with a friend you didn’t even know last November, flinching at the fireworks’ boom and watching their shattered reflections in the windows of Oriental Parade. You’ve run into five or six acquaintances this evening in town, all out enjoying the late afternoon sun and looking forward to a weeknight’s rather…

  • Quite Another

    Dissatisfyingly and unhappily, I didn’t get to have the second weekend away for which I had dearly hoped, but me being me, my friends being my friends, and Wellington being Wellington, I managed to pull a good one together in town anyway. It involved buying three pairs of jandals and two new singlet tops, a…

  • The Being-Unable-To-Work Thing

    It’s been a pretty hectic week since I got the good news. You’d think that with the being-unable-to-work thing I’d be sleeping in until noon only to wake and lounge around watching daytime TV before rehydrating my Top Ramen, but no. Your friend Chiara is still waking up at eight every day and checking things…

  • Don’t Dream It’s Over

    I got it. I got something. I got a job. I got thirty hours a week for four months at an health care clinic that already knew and liked me from last year, across the street from old work so I’ll have the same commute and everything. I’m picking up the employment offer letter tomorrow…

  • The First Really Warm Day

    Two of my three interviews in the last two days have been held at cafĂŠs—that’s Wellington for you–and as I walked down Cuba Street after my last one this morning the sun decided to come out. Interview wear for this would-be social worker usually means Nice Shirt And Not-Jeans, and all of a sudden I…

  • On The Case

    Wednesday I spent the afternoon with my beautiful friend Giulia, who made me fusilli with ragu for lunch and immediately got on the phone to everyone she knew when she heard about my job visa situation thing. By the end of our four hours together I was on the phone myself with one of her…

  • More

    Now that I’m coming right down to it, the worst case scenario is that the miracle doesn’t occur and I won’t get any sort of job offer and I have to leave Wellington at the end of this month—you know, in two weeks. I’d spend a couple of weeks in the South Island and a…

  • Back Home

    It’s windy and rainy in Wellington and I have a hell of a chest cold and today on the way home from town my bus broke down and I still kind of wish I was wearing flipflops on holiday in Cairns, but I am back home, babies, and I have to say it’s pretty good.…

  • Out Of Sorts

    Well, yes, not really the chill pre-trip weekend I had (rather stupidly) anticipated. No, not really at all. It’s almost ten as I write this and I’m waiting for my sheets to get out of the dryer and I have to be at the airport at four in the morning but that’s the nice thing…

  • The Ministry Of Awesomeness

    (first half of this very long story here) Sunday 9:00 am: Wake up. Much against your will. 10:30 am: Listen to the song about sixteen times on the bus on the way into town for Sunday morning class. How are you going to get onto the floor for that torso rotation? And when exactly do…

  • Rocking The Party

    Six Weeks Ago Whisper “Yes,” when Sylvia asks you in a low intense voice: “Would you…like to do a duet with me?” Decide you will rock the party at the next hafla. Five Weeks Ago Have a fun duet date with Sylvia, wherein you shop for tribal accoutrements like padded bras, tiny Indian coins, silk…

  • Stuff Around My Neighborhood

    I’m in the middle of packing (“Phone charger? Check. Gloves? Check. Goldfish underwear? Check check check it out.”) for my South Island trip and I keep getting these texts from my friend Lydia, with whom I’m traveling, going IT’S REALLY COLD THERE and WE CAN BUILD SNOWMEN and CAN YOU BRING ME AN EXTRA HAT?…

  • Better Than Prozac

    Ugh, what an awful day. It’s cold and windy and wet now and I am constantly putting on more sweaters and jackets and socks. I got a scarf and hat at Glassons over the weekend that I really hate but I had to buy them there since I had a gift card and couldn’t justify…

  • Nod-Head Bouncy-Dancing

    Friday night I went to see Fat Freddy’s Drop, and then, sort of by accident, Katchafire, both of which are NZ dub bands. I didn’t even know what dub was until I got here, but over the summer I randomly saw Ladi 6 and liked her a lot. When a bunch of friends invited me…

  • The Mirror Bar

    I know the words to every single cheesy eighties song they play at the mirror bar, which is not officially named The Mirror Bar but which my friends call the mirror bar because every single wall is covered in mirrors. Everyone checks themselves out when they’re dancing and fixes their hair; a couple making out…

  • Exactly What I Wanted

    Things I did over the weekend: Bought my tickets for Melbourne, woo! I can’t wait to spend some more time in this fabulous city with the fabulous Georgina in her fabulous new spare room. When I emailed something anxious like “I DON’T WANT TO BE A BOTHER I CAN STAY IN A BACKPACKERS” she immediately…

  • You Can Do It Face To Face, Too

    On Cuba Street Sunday evening, in front of Satay Kingdom. Chiara: My knees really hurt now. I’m going to be all bruised up. I think I went down too hard. Sylvia: How about when you go down soft, does that work better? Hillary: That’s what I have to do or I get all calcified. Chiara:…

  • [Dirty!]

    I was at a party last night with my friend B. B is a very smart doctor and wears a tie to work every day and is very prim and proper, except when he talks about sex, when he is so dirty, so unremittingly filthy that I am going to have to censor him heavily…

  • Gone, Like That, Nothing

    Let me tell you something, my friends, and that something is this: a year is nothing. Seattle people: you haven’t even noticed I’ve been gone, right? You still think we’re having dinner at the Hi-Life next Wednesday, right? Do you even know where you were a year ago? Are you slightly surprised every time you…

  • A Great Weekend For Biology

    My friend Dawn from the ABL was here over the weekend, on her last stop on a whirlwind Antipodean tour. When we weren’t getting lost amongst similarly-named waterfront restaurants or discussing crushes on skydiving instructors, we were spending some very cool time at the gorgeous Karori Wildlife Sanctuary. We saw a lot of very cool…

  • Speaking The Language

    Six or so weeks ago my friend Traysi, who has opened a very cool new dance studio/vending space over her shop on Cuba Street, asked if I wanted to perform at the first hafla—an informal performance-slash-dance-party—to be held there. I sort of hemmed and hawed and finally politely declined, saying, with a rueful shake of…

  • ANZAC Bickies

    Yesterday was ANZAC Day, and I thought I’d celebrate a day off in the middle of the week not by going the traditional dawn parade but by a) sleeping in and b) making some ANZAC biscuits and then going to the beach. The story behind these is that the WWI women at home in Australia…

  • Turning It Around

    This past week was awful for a couple of reasons, really. You have your Virginia Tech shootings coming not one month after those at my alma mater in Seattle, and then you have the crazy no-exceptions-for-the-health-of-the-mother abortion ban. I told A., who is this very hardcore badass lawyer, about that this morning when we were…

  • Me Of Right Now

    I think it was ACB who turned me on to this FutureMe thing, where you can email yourself a year from now, whatever you want yourself a year from now to know from yourself today. Yesterday I got the email I’d written this time last year. It’s funny, isn’t it, how some things change and…

  • It’s Not Fall Yet But It Will Be Soon

    It’s not fall yet but it will be soon; since we didn’t get summer until the beginning of February Wellington is giving us a last couple of weeks of sun. It’d been two full months since I heard the wind shriek up through the drains, but last night as I was getting ready for a…

  • Home To Come To Me

    Anna and Rob just got into the cab after their week with me here in Wellington. They’re probably rounding the bend bythe Mt. Vic tunnel and heading towards the hill right now as I write this, on their way to the airport. They haven’t even paid the cab or gotten their bags out of the…

  • The After-Effects

    It has been a very long and fun weekend—two sets of houseguests down, three to go—and I am so tired. I finally made it to bed before five in the morning last night, which seemed like this huge accomplishment, and today I’ve been thinking long thoughts about going home and doing a face mask and…

  • Entry Title That Somehow Combines “Wellington” And “Pictures Thereof”

    It’s been a busy couple of days. Abi got in last night and my cousin arrives tomorrow and a lot is happening at work and I’ve been staying out late and our fridge decided to freak out again so all our food is out on the counter and I had to bring my yogurt into…