Saturday, October 14, 2006

Blown away by Wellington

The other day at work, my british coworker stumbled in about 10 am, his usual arrival time. What was unusual was that he was looking even more dazed and confused than he generally does.

"Quite a wind out there."


"Yeah," I said, watching a plastic bag outside get scooped up and launched vertically 10 stories.

Almost at a mutter he continued, "I dropped my wife off today for a tennis match and I walked over to the office from there. I walked around the corner of a group of buildings and I must have caught the wind just right, but it took my glasses off."

"Wow! That is an impressive wind!" I said. "So, did they get scratched when they fell?"

"I don't know. The wind took them and flung them across four lanes of traffic. By the time I got over there, I couldn't find where they had gone."

I'm sure the story continued from there, but I think I had already begun to wonder what I'd look like with a glasses band or maybe one of those chains that little old ladies wear.

Not to sound like a whiner, but I counted the months of predominantly inclement weather we've had here in Wellington so far. May, June, July, August, September, and now October??? What the hell? I thought New Zealand is supposed to be warm and sunny?

To be fair, October has been reasonably warm. We've only had to run our electric heater a couple of times so far this month. I've asked people if it clears up much. "Aw, yeah, well October is really the beginning of the windy season, but heading into December summer is brilliant."

Great.

Meanwhile, up in Tauranga, our friend Tim is enjoying sailing and sunny weather. The lesson here? In the distance between Billings and Missoula, you can go from sunny skies and calm weather to gale force, antarctic wind.

So, where does that leave us? Extremely happy to be looking at heading further north. Roni just got offered a year-long position in the North Shore area of Auckland. My job has been a bit of a dissapointment, so I'm not really too sad at the prospect of having to find a new one.

They say, "Nothing beats Wellington on a good day." Problem is, there are shockingly few of those.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi,

When do you make the move? Sounds great to me.

The wind can be tamed with those glasses straps that fly fishermen use all the time, keeps the specs from ending up in the river, plus they're pretty cool and in (as least in Montana). If you can't find them, let me know and I'll send along a couple.

Mary and I are in Missoula for the Montana Music Educator's Assoc. state conference (all state band and all that). Mary came along to visit Josh and his sig. other Becky.

Aaron and Angie are here too and we spent part of the day at the conference together - more fun. I'll try to cross paths with our Becky and Chad tomorrow too.

But, Roni and Peter are nowhere to be found and I miss you both!

xoxo,

Uncle Jim

Devin said...

Yay for Freedom in the North!

Anonymous said...

Congrats on the job Roni!! I just got your postcard, which had descended into the chaos that is the department mailroom. I have to ask.... what is that bird doing to the lizard?? Looks a little suspicious to me. ;)
Life is good in Washington. Fall is here and the colors are wonderful. School is amazingly okay this term, which makes me think I should be working much harder than I am. Or maybe I'm getting used to academia? Ugh.
Drop me a note if you get a chance and I'll try to be better at staying in touch. I'm using ckpouley@wsu.edu or ckpouley@gmail these days - I'm so creative!!
Love you and good luck in the north country.
Cheryl