This is a very long entry

Happy Thanksgiving! Well, not so much for you, my readers, since you are not fortunate enough to live in the future like Alexa and I do.

They don't actually celebrate Thanksgiving here, though. I suppose the Kiwis are an ungrateful bunch, huh? Kind of like you guys. Yeah, that's right. I spend hours meticuously slaving over each post on this beautiful blog, and yet weeks and weeks go by without any appreciative comments from my readers. It kills me.

So, what am I thankful for this Thanksgiving, you ask? I'm thankful to be sitting in our new room. Yep. We moved! ...about three buildings over, to another unit in the same lodge. Ha ha. It may seem like a pointless move since we're leaving Wellington in eight days anyway, but it had to be done. An already bad situation boiled over and reached crisis point, and we realized we needed out of the building we'd been in.

For some background information, allow me to introduce Ornery (all names have been changed to protect the innocent… or something). Ornery, along with his wife Silly, was one of the other inhabitants of our building. Ornery and Silly are pretty much the most worthless people on earth--including dead people interred in the earth, because at least they're fertilizing grass in cemeteries.

Ornery is twenty six, Silly's a little younger, and they have three kids, no jobs, and a passionate affection for drugs and alcohol. The kids live with their grandparents during the week and only visit on the weekends. This is actually a good thing, though, since Ornery and Silly aren't fit to raise a bowl of sea monkeys, let alone three young children. But because they aren't burdened by the daily tasks most often associated with child rearing, a typical day in the life of this magnificent couple involves: waking up in the afternoon, getting high and/or drunk multiple times, playing loud music, making the kitchen filthy, and having at least one (but probably more) dramatic shouting matches. But Eoin, you ask, how do these lovely fellows afford rent, food, drugs, and alcohol if they don't have jobs? The answer is simple: welfare! Every week a neat little slice of the taxpayers' money gets sectioned off and sent to the dynamic duo.

Being the terrible people we are, Alexa and I would often call the landlord to complain about, well... take your pick: loud screaming, loud music at absurd hours, pot smoke, living in filth. Now, our landlord is a good guy. He tends to get things done. He just recently acquired these buildings, and he's been doing a number of renovations to improve their condition. He works quickly, too. One day the TV in our unit stopped working, and it was replaced in a matter of hours. Yet, for some reason, we have heard the phrase "This is Ornery's last chance" at least seven point three million times. That's an awful lot of "last" chances.

Recently we found out the happy couple enjoy reduced rent in exchange for cleaning the common areas in the unit: lounge, kitchen, and bathroom. This would be fine, except--wait for it--they don't clean anything! Shocker, right? Two weeks ago we heard another "This is Ornery's last chance," in the form of the landlord telling us he was going to have a friend who runs a professional cleaning business come in to handle the common areas from now on. If you're a smart reader, as I'm sure you are, I don't think I need to tell you what happened next. But just in case Chad's reading this, I'll go ahead and tell you anyway: nothing happened. Ornery was still in charge of cleaning and nothing got cleaned.

Occasionally, and I mean occasionally, they vacuumed and took out the rubbish. Ornery would piss and moan about people leaving empty toilet paper rolls in the bathroom because he had to pick them up. At some point he left a passive-aggressive note saying "Throw out toilet paper rolls when finished using!" Later on, in his renewed frustration (Alexa and I complained again and he had to pick up more toilet paper rolls, gasp!), he added, "stop being lazy!" to the note.

This was too much. Perhaps he was being ironic, but it's more likely that Ornery was just unaware of his own laziness. So I thought I'd help him out. After coming home from the bar where I'd had my first drop of beer in two months(saving money is a bitch), I peed, saw the sign, thought "ha ha I am going to write on this," and wrote: You stop being lazy and start cleaning the toilets properly since you get reduced rent to do so.

Whoops!

The next morning a shit storm rolled through the unit. Shortly after I'd gotten out of the shower and was preparing for work--so this was around seven in the morning mind you--Ornery was out of bed and raging around the building. The first thing I heard him say was "fucking Americans," after coming out of the bathroom, and then he started pounding on doors and demanding to know who wrote the note. At first he seemed set on the idea that Happy (another inhabitant, who, quickly summed up is a mildly-retarded-due-to-braincell-loss, but otherwise perfectly nice, alcoholic woman who got me the hotel job) had written it and proceeded to call her virtually every obscenity imaginable and threatened to smash her face in. He pounded on our door too, but I didn't answer. When I left for work he was off sulking somewhere else.

As I headed for the bus stop, however, Alexa called me and said that Ornery had just tried to break into our room. Apparently he knocked. When that didn't work, he tried the door knob. Quite rudely I had locked the door since Alexa was still sleeping and he found that it wouldn't open. So, like any reasonable person would do, Ornery slammed his massive 250+ pounds of lard into the door--twice!--in an attempt to break in.

Alexa called the landlord and by the time I was home from work, a new room was ready for us to move into. I suppose our landlord must've felt this particular outburst demanded an explanation about all the supposed "last chances," because he told us the following: he can't just kick Ornery out because of the kids, and because Ornery is losing his welfare. Apparently WINZ (welfare people) check into who actually needs welfare so it doesn't get abused, and unfortunately "being a fat, lazy fuckwit" isn't on the list of qualifiers. This still doesn't make sense to me, since the kids live with the grandparents and are much better off for it--when the kids are around, Ornery constantly screams obscenities at them. I've heard him call the one-year-old a mother fucker several times. Lovely, that. Rumor has it he's been in jail for beating Silly. He does, at least, have a parole officer. All I know is that if I was in our landlord's shoes, Ornery would've been on the curb a long, long time ago.

The funniest thing about Ornery and Silly is something Silly said to me a couple days after we first met. We were discussing our backgrounds, and Ornery mentioned that they were half-Maori. Silly said, "It's embarrassing to be Maori, though, because other Maori are on welfare and don't have jobs and get arrested all the time." Come on, Silly. That just had to be tongue-in-cheek. If anything, the other Maori are embarrassed of those two.

Disclaimer: this has nothing to do with them being Maori, and I'm making no racial assertions. In writing this, I don't mean offense to anyone--except Ornery and Silly, and I'd be surprised if even they knew how to use a computer. Also, they can get bent.

So that's that. It's for the best, I suppose. This unit is much, much nicer. It's a bit more crowded as its a two-story building, but the people are all nice, polite, tidy, and--best of all--quiet. It's a shame we didn't move sooner. About four weeks ago we were offered this room, but we said no because we thought it'd be silly to move to a new room so close to leaving Wellington. And yet here we are only eight days away from leaving the city. Ha ha, oh well. It didn't take much time to move our meager possessions.

Whew!

In other news, I recently reconnected with my cousin (on my dad's side) Megan. She lives here in Wellington with boyfriend Jeremy, and we met up with them at a bar for quiz night. It was fun, despite us coming in 4th place out of 5. They were also gracious enough to invite us for Thanksgiving dinner at their place this Sunday, and we'll be heading over for that as well. Even a kajillion miles from home, I'll still be having Thanksgiving dinner with family, so that ought to be nice.

And you might want to congratulate me... because I finished my NaNoWriMo novel today! But Still We Carry On is 51,976 words (or 186 pages) long, written by yours truly, and those are all the details you're getting because it's a huge, steaming literary turd. I'm actually embarrassed to publicly display even the title. Yuck. Maybe someday I'll try to edit it, or maybe not. But either way it's there, and I managed to write over 50,000 semi-coherent words in a month.

As you know from Alexa's last blog, or the one before it maybe, we went and checked out the Weta studios, home to all of Peter Jackson's special effects/make up/costumer/everything gurus. The studios aren't open for touring, but they did have a little room with a few props and other odds and ends, as well as a brief behind-the-scenes film to watch. It was little more than a glorified gift shop, but worth a visit nonetheless. We managed to take these pictures to satiate my mom's constant demand for more pictures of us. Check it:

UGH! Just kidding, the internet is being really slow right now. I'll upload the pictures when I get a chance.


This past weekend we finally made it to the Embassy Theater, the cinema where Return of the Kind premiered. It was my first time in a premiere-worthy theater, and it was insane. Basically it was a huge, fancy opera-house type theater, complete with curtains! But instead of actors on a stage when the curtains opened, it was an enormous screen. The chairs were also quite plushy (although this seems to be a standard in New Zealand), and the chairs had the names of different actors on them. Some old guy in front of us had Liv Tyler's seats! The names on our seats weren't any that we recognized, unfortunately. In New Zealand seats are assigned in a movie theater, like when you go to a play or a sporting event. Your minds are blown, I know.

That's all for now, as I'm off to one of my last nights at Domino's. Seven more to go! I'll try to update again before we hit the road, and I'm not sure about roving updates. I may be out of touch until we arrive in Queenstown.

Good-bye Welly, it's been nice. Hope you find your paradise.

I wish I didn't have to wear pants to work.

...or, to phrase that in a way that doesn't make me sound like a pervert, I wish I could wear shorts to work instead of pants. The weather's been very nice and warm lately. Then again, maybe pants are best for the hotel job--less exposed skin means less exposed skin being splashed with poop water.

Speaking of the hotel, an odd thing happened the other day. As part of my job cleaning the bathrooms, I have to fold the end of each toilet paper roll into an intricate triangle. Obviously the reason for this is to make the guests think, "Oh! This must be a nice hotel. They can afford to pay someone to make toilet paper origami!"

In the morning when I first went into the ladies room by the conference areas, all the toilet paper rolls were still folded from the day before. Mysteriously enough, there was also toilet paper in the toilets. So either A) the guests are bringing their own toilet paper or B) the guests are making their own toilet paper origami. I'm not sure which would be stranger.

Moving on to more exciting news, Alexa and I are planning on leaving Wellington in less than three weeks! It's a little bit sad, because I think Wellington is a really great city. But soon three months will be up, we'll be 1/4 of the way through our time in this lovely country, and there's still so much to see! Our next stop is Queenstown, a town near the bottom of the south island. Our trip won't be a direct one, however. We're going to spend close to two weeks getting there. The trip will take us on a loop up and around the north island before returning to Wellington to catch a ferry south.

As we've tenatively planned it, our action-packed trip is going to include: The Tongariro Crossing, one of the best day-hikes in the world; skydiving in Taupo (this one's just for me. Apparently Alexa has enough sense to not throw herself out of a plane); Orakei Korako Thermal Park; pretending to be human-sized hamsters and Zorbing in Rotorua; going black-water rafting with the glow worms in Waitomo Caves; and taking a two-day paddle down the famous Whanganui River! Just look at all those links! You're going to be busy for hours.

The ferry ride itself is supposed to be one of the most scenic ferry rides in the world, providing it's a fair day. Really, a lot of what we have planned could easily be wrecked by bad weather. Knock on wood.

Once we're off the ferry we'll break up the 11-hour drive to Queenstown into three chunks: Picton to Christchurch, Christchurch to Dunedin, and Dunedin to Queenstown. Once we're there, we'll restart the wild and wacky job hunting game. I'm already corresponding with two possible jobs in Queenstown: one at Subway, because apparently it is my desinty to travel the country working at American fast food places. The other is a resort hotel that would take both Alexa and myself, and would pay us in free accomodation and food for 4 hours work per day. Any work in excess of that would be paid in cash. They need kitchen, waiting, and bar staff in addition to housekeeping, so if we end up going with the hotel, I will do everything my power to not be a housekeeper again. Bartending sounds more up my alley. Hell, even reliving my high school dishwasher days in the kitchen would be preferable.

So that's that. Sometime this week we're going to put in our two weeks' notices at our jobs, the following week we'll give notice to our landlord, and with any luck we'll be on the road December 4th.

Not too much else has happened since my last post. As you may have read in Alexa's blog, last Sunday we went to Somes Island, an island in the harbor. We took a longer ferry ride that made a number of stops in different parts of Wellington, but it was a nice day for the ride. Somes is known for its population of little blue penguins and tuatara. Unfortunately it was nesting season for the penguins, so they were nowhere to be seen. And, as always, the tuatara remained elusive. I'm starting to think they don't exist. We did get to see a ton of skinks, though, as well as a few red-headed parakeets. There were also a pair of insane ducks that made the most terrible honking noise, and the male kept charging at the female and biting her neck, then running away. Crazy. We also got a look at a few old prison buildings, because the island was originally used to intern Italians, Germans, and Japanese during the World Wars.

On the bright side, I finally got the view of Wellington that I've been trying to get since we first moved here. Remember my first blog post about Wellington, when I said I would try to get a picture of the entirety of Wellington's city center, complete with the harbor in the foreground and mountains in the background? Here it is:

Also, the island claimed to be mammal-free, but we found sheep. This picture was pretty hard to get. That lamb was not as camera-friendly as he looks in this picture.

Here's a lighthouse on the island. In the background is greater Wellington.

Lastly, my mom is always complaining about how there aren't enough pictures of me and Alexa on our blogs. This isn't quite a picture of us, but it's the next best thing: a picture of me holding a dead weta!

That's all for now, but there's a bunch of other pictures from Somes Island in the new link to the right, Album 3: Even More Wellington. Enjoy!

A Real Update

I have a confession to make to you, my faithful readers. It is with a heavy heart that I must admit to an act of simple deception. Remember the carnival and fireworks from the last post? They weren't in celebration of Obama's victory. They were for Guy Fawkes Day, an incredibly insane holiday where people shoot fireworks off and party. It's kinda' like the Fourth of July, except we know why we celebrate the Fourth of July--it's the day our forefathers declared independence from England and set off down the path to becoming a great nation.

Guy Fawkes Day, on the other hand, is the day a man by the name of Guy Fawkes tried (and failed) to blow up parliament in London. It's also celebrated in the UK, and I think they have it in Australia and Canada as well. But why do they celebrate the day some dude tried to symbolically destroy the English government? No one's been able to give me a solid answer, but I suspect it's just an excuse to get drunk and blow shit up.

That works for me, I guess.

Anyway, even though the celebration wasn't in Obama's honor, the Kiwis are quite happy about his election. Literally every person I talk to who recognizes my American accent asks me if I'm happy about Obama winning, and then proceeds to tell me how happy about it they are too.

And that works for me as well.

Life has been fairly quiet since my last real update. Last Sunday, Alexa and I did see a street performer who combined silly tricks with fire juggling, sword swallowing, and escape artistry with strange and crude jokes to create a pretty amazing show. We had seen part of his act on Labour Monday, but had to leave early on because we were meeting people for lunch.

Also, as I mentioned last time, I worked a few FIFA games at the stadium, and I discovered that FIFA stands for the "Federation of International Football ANAL RETENTIVES!"

Seriously, they were nuts. Coke is one of their sponsors, so they had all these crazy rules about how nothing could be advertised if it wasn't owned by Coke. Changes ranged from the small, such as having to pour beers into cups since we couldn't give the fans labeled bottles, to the large, such as blanketing the gigantic WestPac (bank that sponsors the stadium) sign on the outside of the stadium, to the utterly ridiculous, such as covering up the manufacturer names on our cash registers, the walk-in freezer door, and the various machines that keep food hot. Because, you know, McAllister's Refrigeration INC is a direct competitor to Coca-Cola, and if our fans were to see the teeny label in the back of our kitchen, they would immediately think, "Shit! I was thirsty for some Coke, but now I'm going to leave the game and go buy a giant walk-in fridge for my home instead!"

Thank god for business people.

Also, I've been doing some writing, using the word "writing" very loosely. November is National Novel Writing Month. It's just an online thing where participants try their hardest to write 50,000 words (roughly 200 pages double spaced) in a month. You "win" if you make it to 50,000 by November 30th, but there really aren't any prizes involved in winning. I'm not sure if there's a real point to it, other than to encourage people to produce 50,000-word-long heaps of doo doo. What else can you expect when you're writing so quickly and not editing? It's the method the big bad Woolfe used when writing Mrs. Dalloway, after all, and look how that turned out (oooh, sick burn). At any rate, my heap of doo doo is currently 11,130 words long. Last time I tried, in 2006, I only made it to about 7,000 before I quit. So my doo doo making skills have improved!

When not busy making doo doo, I've been working a lot more. For the past four weeks, I've had over thirty hours every week, which means I've been saving more money for fun things, like...

Whoops! Speaking of work, I had really better be getting ready to go to Domino's. There are hungry Wellingtonians who want pizza to go with their Friday night raging, and I'm the only one who can help them!

Here, McCain. What's this? It's Your Ass Being Handed to You, Sir.

YES! YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS! YES!YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!

YES!


Okay, I'm finished.

But seriously. What an awesome day. I spent about four hours fervently watching the AOLnews and MSNBC websites (a life, what's that?). Mostly waiting and growing increasingly hopeful as Obama gobbled up electoral votes and McCain stagnated.

At some point, I think about ten minutes before the west coast closed their polling centers, my buddy Amos said to me, "Some website says they're going to call in it ten minutes. Obama won."

I thought, "Bullshit. The west coast hasn't even finished polling yet! How could they call something so soon after what happened in 2000?" I was getting anxious because I had to go to work soon, and I wanted to see how Virginia, North Carolina, and Florida were going to end up, since they were so incredibly close (by the way, how awesome is it that Obama got Florida and Virginia?).

But, low and behold, ten minutes later, CNN declared it: Obama wins. MSNBC followed up a few minutes later with, "Obama Wins! First African American President!" accompanied by a really cheesy photograph of a black family with American flags.

I had to go to work right after that, but I remained cautiously optimistic. It's not like the networks hadn't dropped the ball before--uh, didn't Gore win that election in 2000? Wait, what? After I was at work two hours, though, Alexa texted me with the final news "O won. m concedes!"

Even the Kiwis were super excited. I was texting Alexa during my website monitoring, and she informed all her coworkers of how Obama was doing. And tonight they even threw a festival in his honor to celebrate! There was a band, a carnival, and some sweet fireworks down at the waterfront. Check it out:

Pretty sweet, eh?

Reading about different states' ballot initiatives was interesting too. I haven't had a chance to see the final results, but it looked like Massachusettes legalized pot (sort of), Maryland legalized video slots (right???), and a handful of states managed to continue keeping the gays from getting married. Congratulations, guys. It warms my heart to see that even in the face of war, our troubled environment, and economic disaster, there are still people bigoted enough to care about whether two dudes get married. Also, nice job putting a stop to stem cell research. Grow new organs, cure cancer, who wants any of that shit? Phew!

Anyway, to those of you who supported Obama: High five! To those of you who didn't, I'm sorry. If you were just mildly opposed to Obama and, really, were just voting along with your party for the sake of it, don't worry. Just be open-minded, sit back, and wait. Things will get better soon, and you will be bewildered when you realize just how appalling the past eight years have been.

On the other hand, if you were truly, passionately opposed to Obama... well, that's too bad for you, I guess. But I know how tough it is. When Kerry conceded to Bush I was inconsolably pissed off. I couldn't believe that Bush had, somehow, made it into the White House again. It's not a good feeling, thinking that your country is heading in a direction opposite your values. But just try to keep an open mind, and support Obama as your new president. The country needs unity, not more division, yeah?

Some brief other news (I'll post a proper update soon): as of yesterday it's been two months since we arrived in New Zealand. Crazy! No regrets yet, except that I brought Alexa with me (ha ha)!

Also, uh... I worked a couple FIFA World Cup games. The Women's Under-17 division. Why didn't I see you on the field, Zach?