October 2008 Archives

One morning last week on my walk into work, I walked right past my cousin Stephen in front of the Strathmore shops.

Sorry, wishful thinking! It was actually a teenager I'd never met (as the real Stephen is many thousands of miles away, hopefully minding his mother) but from his hooded sweatshirt, jeans, sneakers, hair color, hair-style and gait to his twinkling blue eyes (which I'm pretty sure he inherited from our grandfather) this lad was the spitting image of my cousin. I couldn't help but grin.

Still smiling to myself several strides later, I nearly bumped into my brother-in-law. Tall, dark and stylishly handsome, dressed in a sharp dark suit with his hair expertly styled, this was Jesse only on his way to work at some corporate job in downtown Wellington.

Quite a coincidence I chuckled to myself, made a mental note to tell Brandie and then didn't think much more about it until that evening, on my drive home from work I nearly ran over my step-brother David as he crossed the street (outside of the crosswalk, I'll have you know Katie) with his takeaway from one of the Strathmore restaurants.

This sort of thing used to happen to me occasionally when I spent two semesters in college studying abroad. Every once in a while I'd glimpse a face in a crowd that strongly reminded me of my dad or my sister, both of whom I missed awfully and would have loved to have visit me in the amazing city I was living in. For a brief moment your heart skips, thinking it's some unbelievable, incredible surprise on the magnitude of ten Christmases and birthdays rolled into one, and then the heartache hits and you have to make the most out of just getting to "see" these people you miss so dearly. Often the rest of the day is spent imagining the places we'd go, things we'd see, restaurants we'd eat at.

So Stephen, Jesse and David: thanks for the visit, and I hope you enjoyed all the fun stuff I imagined we'd do in Wellington - I sure did! And if our extended family does decide to move into the neighborhood after McCain/Palin steal this year's election, well I can't blame you (and we'd love it if you did.)

True testament to our finally nearing the end of a year-long winter, New Zealand "sprang forward" last Sunday: which means we're now one hour further away time-zone-wise - or one hour closer to the actual time wherever you might be. If you're confused, don't worry - I'll provide a handy chart using my step-brother Dan as an example soon.

Not long after we arrived I left my math skills at work one night and somehow decided after putting the kids to bed at 8pm it would be a great time to call my dad. He's an early riser (I am awake at 5:30am this Sunday spring morning, listening to the songbirds and thinking about him) so having deduced it was just after 6am in upstate NY I figured he would just be sitting down to coffee and the paper and perhaps watching the sunrise.

"Hello?" Grandma answered the phone sleepily. No alarm bells for me yet, Grandma sometimes likes to sleep in past my dad's pre-dawn routine, which means she gets up at six or six-thirty and still catches plenty of worms. "Sorry to wake you Grandma," I said (at least I hope I did, due to later horror my memory's a little weak on this point): "Is my dad still there?" It also isn't unusual for my dad to be out the door by 6am if there's a crisis at work or if he's taking the day off to work on a side-project like renovating my grandfather's house, helping us relocate across the world, updating my sister's kitchen - you get the idea. He works a lot.

"Yeah one second hon." Grandma passed the phone to my dad. "Hello?" he answered sleepily.

At this point the alarm bells started to make quite a noise, but unfortunately I didn't heed them and decided to go for the joke. "Hi Dad," I think I said, grinning. "Do you have the day off or something?" On rare occasions (literally only a handful of times that I'm aware of) my dad has been known to "sleep in" to the slovenly hour of 7:30am, after which he probably mowed the lawn, closed the pool, raked the leaves, plowed the driveway and put an addition on someone's house. Before breakfast.

"Jake it's 4am." Grin leaves my face, replaced by look of wide-eyed horror.

So to save anyone else this sort of embarrassment, I've created a handy chart for converting the time of day (which coincidentally actually proves my step-brother Dan lives on New Zealand time):

11pm-7am NZDT (we are sleeping)		6am-2pm EDT (Dan is sleeping)
7am NZDT (we wake up)		2pm EDT (Dan wakes up)
8:30am NZDT (I go to work)		3:30pm EDT (Dan is hungover)
1-3pm NZDT (girls nap, good time to call)		8-10pm EDT (Dan starts drinking)
6:30pm NZDT (I get home from work)		1:30am EDT (Dan is drunk)
8pm NZST (girls go to bed)		3am EDT (Dan is incoherent)

Of course this all goes out the window in less than a month when the US switches off daylight savings, but until then Happy Sunday everyone!

One of our favorite places for an easy afternoon hike is at nearby Moa Point, just around the corner from the airport. You can watch the planes come in and take off, climb on some pretty neat rock formations and see some amazing coastal views. On our latest visit we explored some of the tidal pools and found lots of starfish and minnows. Sophie even spotted a crab, which was exciting but she thought it looked a little too much like a spider and has had some nightmares about it since. Win some, lose some.