south island

alex(mine, not girl) are going to christchurch and the surrounding area for a few days to hang out and then see joanna newsom and jens lekman play. then we are renting a car and driving along the east coast of the south island to picton and catching a ferry back to wellington.
next week we finish work and i finish my thesis and then we do more fun things.

i saw a tuatara, live, in the wild

here is evidence:


and also some kakariki:


and this is michel in her native habitat:


after a week of catching up on things i've always wanted to do in wellington but never did because when you live in a place you forget that it can be cool, i have to do lots of thesis work for two days. then alex and i are going to the south island for four days, then back in wellington for a week, then ruthie comes and we start our road trip.

poverty, here i come.

waiting for some words to jump at me

Michel, me, and Alex

Camera Obscura

Wellington Botanical Gardens

unlucky

It's been awhile since I've played hockey here in New Zealand. I forgot until I was thinking how shitty my morning has been that when you miss a goal or break one of your bones they yell out "Unlucky!" or "Hard luck!" as encouragement. "Good effort!" is another one that was generally directed to me.

This morning I knocked over our shelf in the kitchen trying to grab soy milk and spilled green margarita salt all over the floor with just five minutes to get to work, was locked out of the office at work for an hour trying to clean up from a mess of a wedding (The place was sooo trashed. Like, college party trashed. They left blood on the walls.) while guests stared at me and waited to get into the office, and seriously burnt myself by spilling a cup of boiling water on my leg and foot.


"To begin my life with the beginning of my life, I record that I was born (as I have been informed and believe) on a Friday, at twelve o'clock at night. It was remarked that the clock began to strike, and I began to cry, simultaneously.
"In consideration of the day and hour of my birth, it was declared by the nurse, and by some sage women in the neighbourhood who had taken a lively interest in me several months before there was any possibility of our becoming personally acquainted, first, that I was destined to be unlucky in life; and secondly, that I was privileged to see ghosts and spirits; both these gifts inevitably attaching, as they believed, to all unlucky infants of either gender, born towards the small hours on a Friday night"
-from the opening to David Copperfield

drawing up calendars is not working on your thesis

today wellington is cold and misty and like a weird flashback to my most depressing days in june and july when i thought i would never see the sun again.
and i was just getting prematurely nostalgic for it yesterday, thinking how much i'll miss it when i'm gone.

i have 59 days left in new zealand. most of these will be spent not in this cold, cold city.

i just called the only mexican restaurant i've found in new zealand so far that has passable food and they're open for dinner! they've been on holiday since christmas. it's good to know this place exists, because mexican food in nz is almost always as bad as it is in europe. cream sauces and no chilies and the like. but viva mexico in wellington is awesome. let it be known.


"But it wasn't as bad as all that after All. I struck work and we had no end of a good feed and now it is 2 (by our clock). So I'll knock off this rubbish & really settle down."

Almost before this is written I shall read it from another room and such is Life.

This morning I listened to the Memorial Day edition of Prairie Home Companion while polishing the bar shutters in a Victorian boatshed on the Wellington waterfront. It was exported via Radio New Zealand National. Without realizing it, I started singing along to "You're a Grand Old Flag," but with the super offensive lyrics kids in Mrs. Miro's sixth grade chorus made up.

My life is very surreal right now.




KM on travel, 29th April, 1909:


"Shall I ever be a happy woman again. Je ne pense pas, je ne veux pas. Oh to be in New York."