Drunken Weta

We dragged ourselves out of bed this morning slightly worse for wear after too much sun, Sauvignon Blanc, and a late night following the Cuba St Carnival to discover one of these drowning in the dregs of a Stella Artois bottle left on our dining room table!!!! It is a Wellington Tree Weta. Its body was approx 3 inches and its feeler things about another 3 inches!!!! When we finally stopped freaking out and managed to free it from the bottle, despite having 6 legs it was so inebriated it could hardly walk!!!!! How it managed to crawl in there in the first place is a mystery we shall never solve!!!! I like to think its now up a tree in our garden nursing its hangover recounting its tales to the other more sensible tree wetas warning them that if they are going to spend the night in a beer bottle to choose one of the weaker New Zealand beers!!!!

Cuba St Carnival

Yesterday we went into the City to join in the frivolities that are the Biannual Cuba St Carnival. http://www.cubacarnival.org.nz/ . Cuba St is a bit like the North Lanes in Brighton, crammed full of quirky clothing stores, cafes, music stores and comic shops.

Excuse me......what did you just say????

This is a picture of our newly painted 'dick'!!!!!! It took me a while to work out that when people invited us to BBQ's on their 'big dick' they were not referring to an adult X-rated version of the common Kiwi outdoor dining experience, but quite innocently referring to the fact that the gathering would be taking place on their deck!!!!!

New Zealand, same.........but different!!!!!!

Serene on the surface but underneath its a different story!!!

This is a picture of a stunning sunset taken from our 'dick' (I'm not being rude, I'll explain later!!!!) at about 2100 a couple of nights ago. A truly serene summers evening but only a couple of hours before we were wondering whether to go and hide under the desk at work or cower in the nearest doorway as we experienced another earthquake..........5.8 on the richter scale!!!!!! When the building starts shaking (not an uncommon occurence as there are over 15000 earthquakes a year in little ole New Zealand!!!) there is a wide eyed starey scarey look of anticccipatttion as everyone wonders if this maybe the 'Big One'!!!! There is a 90% risk of a quake bigger than 8 on the Richter Scale in the next 25 years in Wellington!!!! Do we have our disaster kit at the ready????? Not unless you can survive on a dried up, out of date, tube of tomato paste and a half-empty (definitely would not be half-full in this case) bottle of soy sauce!!!!! The need to start collecting 50 litre bottles of water does occasionally keep me awake at night but my pessimistic view is that all the houses here are built on the sides of a hill, the water would get buried under your house as it slides down the hill!!!! Living in paradise has a price!!!!http://www.wellington.govt.nz/services/emergencymgmt/index.html/

Hi took a trip to Makara Beach this morning which is about 10 minutes from our house along a crazily windy road that you can only fit 1 1/2 cars along!!!! Went searching in the rock pools for Starfish and purple jelly fish but found this bizarre looking purple Sea Slug instead......it is a bit difficult to see in the piccie but it was a good size 7 shoe size long and really cool!!!! You can just see its antennae sticking up if you look really closely!!!

Tis the season of the bar b q (or murder q depending on your feelings about eating huge slabs of meat!!!!) which is exactly where we are heading now!!!!! catch ya later.

The Big Day Out

Last weekend Rob and I flew up to Auckland for the 'Big Day Out'. People fly here like you would catch a train back home, its relatively cheap, punctual, no used needles in the toilets and you get a free cup of coffee and a very tasty cookie!!!!! Your chances of surviving the journey are also considerably higher than trying to drive!!!!! Although the roads here are relatively quiet we have one of the worst road tolls per capita in the world, drink driving, speeding and no Central Reservation being the major problems!!!!! The roads are far more scenic than the M23 and you can become easily distracted by those snow capped mountains!!!!!!

Santa had bought Rob tickets to the Big Day Out which is the Antipodean version of the Reading Festival and of course I had to accompany him for fear he may get crushed in the nasty heaving mass of smelly bodies that is the mosh pit!!!!! It drew a crowd of 45000 to the Mount Smart Stadium, which I pointed out is actually over 1% of the population of NZ!!!!! We listened to the dulcet tones of Trivium, My Chemical Romance, The Killers, Muse and Tool as well as a few Aussie and Kiwi Bands and had a thoroughly nice time. We even woke up with a clear head the next day, if a little hoarse with a slight ringing in our ears, as we did not manage to get anywhere near the beer tent!!!!!http://www.bigdayout.com/

Summer has arrived and so have the geeks!!!!!!

I was so excited that I had managed to upload a photo on my new blog without screaming out for some assistance from Rob but, alas, its come out the wrong way round!!!!! Clare returns to limping along the unfamiliar road that is technology!!!

Rob has been rather slack in the old blogging department recently, nothing of course to do with 'World of Warcraft' because he would never let something so mundane get in the way of keeping his friends and family informed of his many new and exciting Kiwi Adventures.........mmmmm. Therefore I thought I would attempt to start my own little blogette to keep you guys back home up to date with our life here in New Zealand.

Summer has finally made an appearance after what has been the worst Winter and Spring on record!!!! Yippee. We celebrated in true geeky style and dragged some friends and their kids to the 'International Jousting Festival' at Harcourt Park. This was the English Contestant and his borrowed Kiwi Horse!!!! It was a great excuse for the local orcs, maidens and general geeks to come out of the woodwork!!! It was actually a really good day with great local arts and crafts and the not so trusty burger van!!!!!