Archive for the ‘Personal’ Category

Jesus Christ

Friday, August 11th, 2006

Before I left for my last trip to the US, I went to a school board meeting where a program called Super Kids was discussed. It's a kids Christian program that wanted to use the House Of Learning (aka "library") at our local primary school after school hours. ...

House Under Contract

Tuesday, August 8th, 2006

Great news! The house in Colorado is under contract, they inspect tomorrow morning, and then hopefully it's smooth sailing to closure. This is it: if it falls through, I'm renting it out. But if it sells (even if for much less than we were hoping to get) it's ...

House Under Contract

Tuesday, August 8th, 2006

Great news! The house in Colorado is under contract, they inspect tomorrow morning, and then hopefully it's smooth sailing to closure. This is it: if it falls through, I'm renting it out. But if it sells (even if for much less than we were hoping to get) ...

Home Sweet Home

Wednesday, August 2nd, 2006

Back in New Zealand after nearly three months away. What a lot of culture shock there was, both in leaving and returning. Leaving: it's so easy to return to the US, yet so hard. The traffic was incredible: it takes as long for us to get from ...

School Update

Thursday, April 13th, 2006

In the past month or more I've been working hard on making sure William had a good experience at school. I talked to his teachers to make sure that they were keeping their eyes open for bullying (and to ensure that they knew I had very high standards for ...

What Makes a Good Day

Wednesday, February 15th, 2006

Today was unsatisfactory. I worked a solid 8 hours, packed in the email, made a coworker laugh, and made significant progress towards a goal. So why, at the end, do I feel blah? I was so knackered after the day of full on email and phone ...

Valentine’s Day

Monday, February 13th, 2006

We took William out of school for the day, drove down to Auckland, and went to Kelly Tarlton's World (like the Monterey Aquarium) and then to a buffet for lunch. Very luxurious, but you have to be on the ball when it's the missus's birthday and Valentine's Day. The kids had fun, ...

Weather, School, and Ditch-Digging

Tuesday, December 20th, 2005

It's been an adventurous week, weather-wise. Being away for so long, I'd forgotten the misty mornings that are classic New Zealand fare. We had a front parked over us for four or five days, with what the weather forecasters discreetly refer to as "scattered showers" but which really ...

Boat and Land

Saturday, December 10th, 2005

I'm reading Russell Brown's collection of other people's essays, Great New Zealand Argument, and at the same time I'm reading The Nationbuilders by Brian Easton. Both tackle the subject of what it means to be a New Zealander. I'm reading them in bite size pieces: Easton's in the bedroom and Brown's in ...

Schools, Rats, and Parents

Monday, December 5th, 2005

It's been hard to balance life and work here on the other side of the world. Some days the work consumes me and I ignore family (bad Dad!) and other days I'm burnt out and can't face the keyboard. I dug in a garden last weekend with my uncle Les and ...