Now in San Diego

So on the 27th, Pete dropped us at the airport (thanks Pete) and we flew to LAX. The flight was OK but none of us managed to sleep very well so zipping down the freeway at 80MPH, driving on the right, in a strange car, on about 2 hours sleep was a bit of a worry!

The first few nights, we stayed with Becky who we worked with at Platinum when we lived here in 1995 through 1998. We took the time to catch up with a few other friends from that time.
First was Matt (from Platinum), his wife Laura and their kids Autumn and Emily. Our kids met theirs last time we were here and Emma had plans to have frozen yogurt with them again like last time so that was what we did! The kids jumped right in as though we'd seen each other just last month!
Next day we caught up with Joe who Cathy did marathon training with. We had donuts with him and then went out to Lunch with another Platinum guy, Doug, and his family.

All of these ended up at weird hours because we were always running late and were hungry at odd hours because of the time change!

The season change has also been weird... During the middle of the day it was warmer than in Auckland (we even went for a couple of swims while saying with Becky) but it gets dark at 5 and the temperature drops rapidly when the sun goes down.

From Becky's, we moved to a hotel just up the road from Disneyland. We took the opportunity to see an Ice Hockey game at the nearby stadium. The team we supported when we lived here, the Anaheim Ducks, played the San Jose Sharks and won 6 - 3. It was a cool to be at the game and even better that the home side won.

I'll leave the Disney experience for someone else to write about but note that it was great to catch up with the Healy Family who we knew through Juggling years ago. Jugglers from that period are a bit thin on the ground now so when we went to the Orange Jugglers meeting the only person (other than Steve Healy) who we knew was Michelle Gerdes, Steve Gerdes staying away for the night because he wasn't well.

And now, we are in San Diego. Only just... Zak was sick last night so rather than the original plan on racing down here to do an attraction today, we stayed in the hotel in Anaheim until 12, drove straight to the hotel here and Zak and I have just hung out, watched a movie and done some laundry. Cathy and Emma headed out to visit the zoo. Zak is a lot better now but hasn't eaten anything yet. Hopefully he will be OK tomorrow so we can go to Legoland!

BB


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Location:San Diego,United States

The Christmas letter that isn't...

Once again a Christmas letter was started but not completed... So here it is now for the five of of you read the blog. I will try and mail it to the non-blog readers when we return from our trip...

Firstly, apologies for the lack of a letter last year. Cathy had a good excuse for not helping with its production but I didn't.

Cathy had a broken wrist. While playing soccer with some people from her work, and taking her turn in goal, she stopped a shot which, in hindsight, might have been better not stopped. As the break was so close to the joint, a plate was inserted to line things up correctly and she was off work for quite a while and then in recovery for some months afterwards.

She kept herself busy planning a road trip around the South Island which we did in January. It was a great trip, marred only by a storm which caused a bridge washout. Given it was the only bridge over that river, we had to take a significant detour to get to Queenstown. We did lots of cool stuff - beach days, walking days, glow worm caves, a boat trip in Fiordland, an Albatross colony, the Antarctic centre, swimming with dolphins, whale watching, fishing, kayaking and visiting Weta Workshops and Hobbiton on the way back up the North Island.

Continuing in theme... Cathy got a broken nose at a pre-season soccer practice so started the season a bit late. Luckily, that was the end of injuries for the year and everyone had fairly good seasons. Emma's team (which I coach) managed to win their division. (Having a horrible grading round and ending up in a lower division than we should have has something to do with that though).

Emma had her first year at Intermediate school. Other than the daily battle to get her to the bus on time, it all went pretty well. She is a lot harder to wake up than Zak. He managed to even get in some computer time before he had to leave for the bus but she never had any time to spare. Her end of year report was excellent, full of 'Advanced' and 'Mastered' with great comments about her attitude. Outside of school, she and Cathy put a huge amount of effort into preparing for her Jazz dance exam. She did very well and received a grade of Very Highly Commended.

Zak had his first year at high school. It is walking distance from here so he gets even more screen time than when he was taking the bus to Intermediate school. Minecraft is his game of choice but he is also prone to spending excessive hours on his iPod if he can get away with it. High school was a bit of a step up but he jumped right in and did very well. He has been learning to sail, starting last summer, which he is really enjoying.

We are off on another adventure in January. We are visiting California and Vancouver again.

BB

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Calla. 1997 - 10 November 2013.

Today we buried our cat Calla who has been with us for almost 15 years.

Although she had a pretty tough start (a story we told many years ago when the web was young) and had a few scrapes with other animals along the way she's had a pretty good life.

She was a very affectionate cat.
She always greeted us in the front yard when we came home. We thought that this was because she could recognise the sound of our cars but when she became completely deaf in the last couple of years we realised that she was just patiently waiting for us. Some of our neighbours referred to her as "the letter box cat" because she they saw her there so often.
In the evening, she would leap into my lap the second I sat down - especially in winter! On occasion, she would wait by the door into the lounge - staring at me, willing me to come and barely waiting for me to be seated before pouncing on me.
Her night time spot of preference in the last couple of years has been Zak's bed. She chose him to keep her company and keep her warm, a role he took on happily despite waking up cramped in the corner on many occasions to accommodate her chosen spot.

She provided us with a fair number of late night games of "chase the mouse (or occasionally rat) around the house" over the years and despite having lost a lot of weight over the last couple of years, she was active and agile as recently as last week. Leaping from the ground to the top of the barbecue, to the fence, to the roof so she could sit in the first place that the sun reaches our house each morning.

Something happened during the week and she completely stopped eating. Despite a couple of trips to the Vet they were unable to tell what was wrong and she died last night, in her basket in the dining room.

Cathy, Zak, Emma and I are going to miss her, as is Lucy, her daughter who is still with us.

Oxy-Acetylene torches

It was Saturday afternoon, we were coming back from visiting Grandad in the rest home and Dad decided to catch up with Uncle Dave. When we got there the chickens were in the front yard and on the wrong side of the fence, the neighbor's kitten was lying in the middle of there driveway and when you stroked it it started running around your feet or grabbing your hand. Gino had retired to the couch but Spider/Stinker was ready to give us a big lick when we came though the gate.

Uncle Dave was in his shed. He told us about his bikes and where they came from. Then he showed us the frame he was working on for Kate's new bike. He was putting flux on the chainstays and the bottom bracket to prepare the metal and so that it wouldn't rust when he welded it. He then lit the Oxy-Acetylene torch and adjusted the flow of the oxygen and acetylene to get the temperature and flame right. When Uncle Dave first lit the torch the flame was orange as he adjusted it, it changed to blue. With this he melted the welding rod into all the joints to make sure everything was strongly attached and that the edges were smooth. It was an exciting process! I particularly liked the Oxy-Acetylene torch, I look forward to seeing it used again!

Kate's bike frame



Oxy-Acetylene torch



Written by Emma, assisted by Bruce. With thanks to Uncle Dave.
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Emma Scored!

... I missed it!!!

After playing soccer for 6 years, Emma scored for the first time yesterday!

She has come a long way from the little girl who stopped half way up the field, picked a couple of daisies and brought them over the the side line so that no-one would step on them!

Being coach has some drawbacks and yesterday, it was that I was in the middle of a discussion with one of the players on the sideline when Emma put the ball in the back of the net.

We won the game 3-0 which was pretty pleasing considering we'd lost to the same team 4-1 about 3 weeks back.

BB.

Dead Planet

DEAD PLANET

I look out upon the wasteland that is my home. The rubble and junk spreads as far as the eye can see. As I walk through the trash I imagine what it would be like to live on the capital planet with towering white skyscrapers and lush rainforests surrounded by clear blue seas. It has animals too. Huge lumbering grey things with long noses and other things like tiny insects with shells that shimmer like a rainbow. The place here has no animals no green trees and no blue oceans, just endless piles of scrap-metal and waste used as the dumping ground of the capital planet.

I pick up an old engine, my father told me once he had these in his time, now days this couldn’t even run a hoverboard. I look out across the seas of rubble at a starship, dropping its load of rubbish into the junk. I start to head over, to check if I can scavenge anything new, walking atop of the sheets of rusted metal. I’ve been here all my life trying to get off this dead planet, slowly collecting scraps of metal and working parts that are not wanted, trying to create a ship that can get me out of here to the capital planet.

My eye catches a glint of something beneath the metal and machinery and I pull it from the rubble. I can’t believe my eyes at first. I’ve spent months trying to find this one piece and now, right in front of me lies an almost unused starship engine. It is complete, not a part missing. The date on the metal reads 3067, just two years ago. My creation can finally be complete. All I needed was this.

I spend the next month finishing my creation, loading my supplies from my makeshift house into my ship. I spend hours double-checking everything. I have fuel, food, drink, air and spare supplies. My starship is completely airtight, its bolts and screws are tight and its glass is polished completely clear. The engine is running and I slowly lift it up of the ground. Everything is perfect, I have waited 23 years for this moment. As I fly up, leaving the atmosphere and heading towards the capital planet, where I can live a better life, I look back one more time to say goodbye to my planet.

Goodbye to Earth.

By Zak Benson

This was for an english assignment recently.

Blogs without pictures

Cathy has added another soccer injury to her catalogue...

Way back, before we were married, she broke her ankle. Preseason... Didn't get to play a game that year at all...

Last year the wrist. She is still doing physio and has to visit the surgeon for a check up next week.

We won't be getting any pictures of yesterday's addition though... She has a broken nose and a wicked black eye! Something about a practicing headers and two people going for the ball at the same time. (The other woman has a big bruise on her forehead and was potentially concussed).

So she is out of the game again for a while but has no plans to retire just yet.

BB


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