my irrational exuberance

is not connected to the fact that my outer sweat-pants were donned backwards in the dark. (my habit is to arise whilst my sleeping partner continues blithely on in her own trajectory, blissfully unaware that i am poking around for my garments.) even now, having reversed the pockets back to the front where they belong, things are exciting in Waikikamukau. our ship is landing tomorrow! we just have to live with the mystery of having it visit our hometown port then proceed to the next port for unloading. (‘our’ mover uses an agent in a different port—if this makes no sense to you, don’t worry, you are not alone.) our container will then be off-loaded, carried further north, then start the trip south to us.

in more shipping news, my piano is in the air as i write! after landing in Auckland, it will continue its' travels in an Air New Zealand truck to Wellington for official entrance into the country. this is called air freight. when asked for a prediction about how long it would take for the piano to clear customs, the broker said it might take one to two...either hours or possibly, days. if the agriculture people decide that the wood of the piano might contain woodborer, they can order that the crate be fumigated. the piano may make it to this city before the container from the ship. or, they could still both arrive on the same day. this triggers the expression ‘nip and tuck’ whatever that means…the piano will be our second item of furniture. the first, our handsome rimu bed, arrived on monday. in an unusual stroke of good luck, our bed and mattress appeared on the same day! that night was the first in the month in NZ that yours truly slept through the night.

if you are unaware of the time difference between the states and NZ, you should try imagining life at sixteen hours in the future. if you plan a telephone call to us, it is easier to subtract eight hours then tell yourself it is, you know, say thursday (instead of wednesday—the day you are dialing)…all this by way of preamble to my next night in the new bed when i got up at 4:43 am to accomplish the final stages of arrangements with credit cards and invoices that were required to allow piano travel. the bell-bird was starting her arias when i got back into bed, sleep eluding me though for that day. [if you are doing business with an entity in the states that operates from 9 to 5 and you wait for tea and breakfast before starting your long distance tasks, you’ve missed your chances because 9:00 am here is the close of the states’ workday, 5:00 pm. this arithmetic will be altered when daylight savings time takes effect on october 1st, but in which way, i have no desire to worry about yet]

back to/on to food: there are three useful designations here in NZ categorizing certain tasty items--take salami for instance. we chose ‘Danish’ as a type, but within that flavor were the choices of ‘mild’, ‘medium’ and ‘tasty’ (we found medium to be suitably tasty actually). your everyday household cheese (reminding you of cheddar) is available in ‘mild’, medium’ and ‘tasty’ (in this case, even tasty leaves you missing the tang of Cabot’s but it is still an honorable confabulation). it is difficult to talk about the meat available here without sounding like a reverse snob—‘it’s so much better here than where i come from’. if you, oh stateside carnivore, are accustomed to grass-fed (is it coleman’s? sometimes omaha) beef, you know what we have here. the difference is that you see it in all the markets on the ‘everyman’ shelves instead of in a gourmet section by itself. lamb and pork seem to be also of very high quality. the eggs are very orange-y and like the US high-end product, but really, more excellent. buckwheat flour was discovered yesterday in the health food store(!) so things are good in the gustation arena…

we have news about the friday fish. although the schools are religiously affiliated, the fish has nothing to do with that fact. the fish is a Cadbury confection, made from chocolate, made in the shape of a fish and packed into a box where it is made to look like a sardine. simple…a real treat if you earn one as did our speller. yesterday, wim said that a band had played and he that had a headache from sitting in front of a speaker. he said that today there would be a special assembly for blues. i tried to give him some tissue to plug his ears with if it was again too loud but Tessa intervened to say that ‘blues’ meant an awards ceremony where outstanding athletes were recognized with ribbons or letters or something. today in flag rugby, wim accidently gave one of his friends a goose-egg on the forehead. mark had to go to the school nurse and was then taken home,,,hopefully, wim's head will be clear for friday’s ‘indigo’ words: soliloquy, loquacious, chateaubriand, Byzantine. pterodactyl, gaseous, injudicious, triglyceride, colloquial, and patriarchy,

lastly, my previous description of driving in NZ omitted the fact that it is really fun to drive in Waikikamukau. the ups and downs of steep hills, the twisty,narrow streets give it a very sporty feel. (well, the downtown is flat and even has a one-way system…) but if you are tooling around at 50 or 60—forgetting that these are k (kilometers) per hr. (50 divided by 8 and multiplied by 5 makes a whisker over 30 mph) you feel like juan fangio, jim stewart etc. jolly good-o, what? oops, watch out, here comes a round-about…