I was walking home Sunday morning, coffee in hand. Glancing over my shoulder, the road behind me was empty and the far side had tons of time to stop ahead of the crosswalk. On about half way, it was becoming clear that the driver of the little red car had no intention of minding his legal obligation to stop for me.

Fuck, man, straining my already hoarse voice. Hearing me through his open sunroof, I think it was the first he’d noticed that I was there.

Drunk? Blind? Stupid? Sure. It pains me to think that some people have driver’s licenses.

Not more than 10 steps down the road, an older Indian man with a warming smile fixed everything. He simply said to not let it ruin my day.

The sun was shining, the wind was calm. The world was singing spring. Why should I let one moment ruin it all?

Thank you, sir.

For the first time in nearly a decade, I went skiing. New types of skis, new kind of snow, new terrain and lots of unhelpful muscle-memory. Oh yeah, and no confidence. I have a season pass for Mt. Ruapehu and I hope to be getting more use out of it before my upcoming vacation, but this trip was one for the bruise books.

The weather was stunning at the start – very light winds and quite sunny – but the hills were packed. School holidays had lightly dented the anticipation of getting back on skis. We fought the queues and got up the hill a few times before lunch. Heading back out was a lot colder, as a storm was set to roll in. This is where things started to go wrong. There was a fair bit of ice around and I let myself get into situations outside of my comfort zone. That’s where the muscle memory kicks in and does those sorts of things that you really don’t want it to do. Dragging heels leads to popped bindings and having to recover skis from further down the hill. Add in a few icy falls and the scrapes and bruises moved into both larger numbers and larger shapes. It wasn’t until the last run of the day that I got back into a solid rhythm and started having fun again.

Unfortunately, the weather descended overnight and everything closed up for Sunday, citing blizzard conditions. Fair enough, I probably needed the recovery time. As it stands, I’m not rushing out to buy a bunch of gear to get me through this season. We’ll see what happens over the next 2 months, which may put me in line to gear up with the end-of-season sales. If I’m still standing by then.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been adjusting to the new training schedule for Richter City Roller Derby. The new venue is nowhere close to home and I can no longer count on getting there quickly and easily. We’ve adopted a car-pool scheme that has me grabbing a bit to eat after work in Petone before being picked up. Unfortunately, Petone seems to roll up and go to sleep after 5pm and restaurants are slow to open for dinner. This leaves me hunting for good, light food on a time constraint.

I’ve tried Lone Star and I don’t want to repeat the experience. Overpriced and overly rich food, accompanied by horrible music – no thanks. For round 2, I went to the cafe at Lighthouse Cinema. It wasn’t bad, but I got zero 3G coverage inside the building, which cuts my options for futzing around. It’s not the end of the world, but I’ll keep searching anyway. I may try one of the pubs next week.

The wind woke me up last night – that never happens. I had to get up and shut the window because the wind was knocking the blinds against the window frame. Winter has blown in with all its turbulence. As a tribute to the coming storm, I offer this photo. It was taken on a rainy night last week, the poor umbrella having been sacrificed to the season.

If you look closely, there is a bit of an ugly smudgy thing in the shadow on the footpath. I have no idea where that blemish comes from, but 3 of the pictures on that roll have similar problems in different locations on the photo. It’s a bit bummy, but there is nothing I can do about it.

I have been off work for two days as a result of being sick¹. I think that I am showing signs of improving, but it is never easy to tell from the first person.

Being drained is boring. I now have a solid plan for my upcoming European vacation and have been fixing some nagging computer problems. However, I suck at actually resting. I snuck out of the house for a bit today to try to track down a single fold-out map for the countries of choice – no luck there. I assume that doing some language study is also not resting. So it goes.

I should be back at work tomorrow. If not, I will be pounding on the door of our IT department to get us some real work-from-home options. This is silly.

¹ I am reasonably sure that I have not contracted whatever swine flu thing that is causing the media to panic. The person I caught the cold from only had a cold. So there.

I took advantage of a day of great weather to go skating along the waterfront over the Easter long weekend. I had left the bulky stuff in a locker at Fergs Kayaks and went to put my skates on. A few minutes later, I was doing a quick warm-up lap around the wharf and I was… stopped by the weirdest sensation that I was forgetting something. My wallet and mobile phone were not in my pockets. I’d left them on the bench where I’d changed into my skates.

When I returned to the bench, one of the staff ushered me inside. My stuff was waiting for me behind the counter. Cheers guys. I’ll bring you as much business as I can.

It’s been nearly a month since I’ve pushed anything onto this blog, and yesterday, everything was redirected to the Creative Freedom Foundation blackout page. Have a quick read through that link – the fight for our rights is not over and much more needs to be done by the end of March.

Summer has been busy and a lot of that stuff has taken priority over writing blog entries. Cuba Carnival just finished. The Wellington Fringe Festival is still on and I’m about to head to Sydney for a weekend. I’ll report back soon.

The new year doesn’t really sneak up – it’s fairly well announced and largely predictable. However, it always seems to catch me off guard. It’s already over a week into January and I’m sure the summer will move on as fast as we perennially wish winter would.

The holiday break was very nice. It started with a train trip northward and concluded with a plane, so naturally there must have been some driving in between. Having taken nearly 350 photos, there is even evidence of how wonderful the weather was¹.

I owe the idea of taking the train out of Wellington to Douglas. Ever since he mentioned it on Facebook, I was keen to jump on The Overlander and find myself somewhere else. The trip was stunning and very well attended – fully booked. While I didn’t take a single picture on the journey, I did smash through² Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book.

The bulk of the trip was spent in the sun. The first stop was Raglan for some serious beach time. Toes were freed from shoes and played in the sand until toasty, and cooled in the Tasman Sea. If that wasn’t enough, the second part of the trip was on a yacht with some friends, sailing around the islands near Auckland. Both halves were punctuated by rain, true, but I’ll happily run away with 80% sunny.

I returned to Wellington with 2 days of weekend before starting back at work. The wind hasn’t abated, so it’s been hit-and-miss since touching down. It’s probably for the best, though. I have a huge amount of stuff to catch up on.

Happy New Year

¹ When I get some of the pictures uploaded to Flickr, I’ll drop a link.

² I really can’t recommend this book enough.

While finishing up some shopping, the girl at the till asked me if I was Canadian. Given that I was wearing a t-shirt emblazoned with Canada across the front, I had to reply, “Why? Does it show?”. She proceeded to tell me that she was trying to decide between going straight to university or to travel to Canada for a year. I was taken as the sign that she should get on the plane. It was a neat feeling.

I received a message from Vodafone a few days ago to let me know that they now offer $2 for 60 minutes overseas. They pegged my calling destination as Canada, which actually caught my attention. The plan looks pretty decent, but I have no idea how they expect customers to distinguish land-line numbers from mobile number, which are not included in the promotion.

Two things keep me subscribed to a home phone:

1. It is required for my DSL connection.
2. Under normal conditions, mobile voice charges are ludicrous.

Take away the second reason permanently and I’ll make a serious decision. Cable-based broadband is not available to my townhouse block, but if I shift again, that could change.