Knotty Knickers

Teacher's Dirty Looks

Yesterday was the final day of classes, so I'll have no more of those!

Or, mostly won't unless I can't manage to keep out of the way of the tutors I had some difficulty with in class.  Outside of class I suspect they are perfectly nice, kind, friendly people.  

You might think that with classes ending and exams beginning soon I would devote time to revision and study hard this weekend.  In point of fact I am packed and waiting for Big Spoon to pick me up, take me to the redezvous place (his mate's place), pile into a car (one of two, both full of people), drive to Christchurch and participate in the big race week fun that is this weekend.  By 'participate' I hope you understand me to mean that I will be drinking copiously with hundreds of other people.    

I've got gladiator sandals (not only are they cool looking and relatively reminiscent of Xena but the 6 buckles should keep them attached to me even in the depth of inebriation), little travel size shampoo, condition, gloss and paste (to hopefully protect my hair against the wind), Bobbi Brown gel eye liner (water proof in a large degree and the single necessary cosmetic item for dress up events I believe), a nearly finished shawl on needles and two sets of gift knitting (Yarn Mama - I've had to order part of Elfman's pressie, not sure when it'll be in!), and Mirror, Mirror by Gregory Maguire (for car reading).

We'll be staying in cabins at a camp ground 800 metres from the race grounds - brilliant for stumbling home to sleep.  I've packed only the Olympus hike camera, it's water resilience seeming more important than the self-portrait option of the vanity-cam.  I promise to snap, snap, snap (taking both the batteries and the charger) and post photos when I'm back in Nelson.  PROMISE!  I know you miss photos, I miss them two.  

Massive Attack

Of stress and strain as school winds to an end.  Wasn't helped by only one document being recovered out of some 20 plus that my laptop simply decided it didn't like and erased entirely.  Even off the bloody Time Machine.  Well done, Apple, well done...you bastards! 

I didn't have senioritis half this terrible in high school or college!  Today is the last day of chemistry and I've opted out...I drank last night...I woke up in the wee hours of the night...all true...but I was going to skive off anyhow.  

Funny - the chemistry of aromatherapy was one of the topics I was very much looking forward to this year.  Unfortunately for me, the chemistry tutor is 1) not an aromatherapist and so it's not in a context I can grasp or care deeply about and 2) a Christian who believes the world is 6000 years old.  Really, can I be asked to cope with those sort of things?  No.  At least, not for one more day.  Plus, I've only missed class while out of the country or while doing medical things, and those latter were only half days.  So a bit of hooky isn't the end of the world.  Especially considering I've been working on the last big paperwork I need to hand in next week - the business plan.  Ugh.

The one file found, I'm not sure if I'm glad or annoyed.  It's got to get done...  I just would have really liked my final, beautiful, properly referenced special topic paper to be the thing that was saved.  Ah well, the business plan as is took ages to type and organize, so doing it all over would have sucked horribly.

I've decided to at least make it matter and do it as a Yoga business plan.  The program is aromatherapy and I only got confirmation and reassurance that I could write it up as any sort of business I liked about ten days ago.  It's all a bit premature however as I've got another year of school here (NZ immigration took money from me the 20th of October, so my passport and visa better be here soon - I've got Thai visas to sort and a plane to board on the 14th of December!) and absolutely not a clue what will be on the books after that.  Starting a business is definitely not a big priority.

Bizarre about the planning though, huh?  Jesse only has a plan to the end of 2010.  I can't recall the last time my future thinking was so short a span!  It's good - in the moment, taking things as they come, yadda yadda.  Big Spoon is one factor, being both the person most unconcerned with planning that I've ever met as well as winding my romantic imagination up to all sorts of levels.  Really though, it comes down to feeling a bit adrift.  I do indeed love the Pacific NW, I've just never seen myself as being settled there indefinitely.  I still want to travel.  I adore New Zealand and it pulls on my heart as strong and solidly as Mt. Rainier.  I can recognize the urges in me to buy furniture and put down roots.  And yet...and yet...  Nothing doing.  So I'll wait.  Until inspiration hits.  Until life sweeps me solidly along.  Until something.  

Something that is not happening today.  

Today, in honour of my skipping days of old, where I used to save up days off, going to school feeling half alive so that I could have a full day of health added onto a weekend and go hang out with my Granma instead of suffer high school - I called that lovely lady and had a nice long chat.  My Granma is one of the toughest, most level headed, intelligent women and I have always adored her.  She was glad to hear that I was doing a Yoga business plan and stated that she'd thought from the beginning the aromatherapy was secondary to it - I don't know if it warmed my heart more to hear her encouraging what I'm doing (both the skipping and the work) or the reminder that she has been listening all the while and knows what I'm up to as well as I do.  Yoga first.  Everything else second.  This does not include people.  The people in my life could never come second.

Now, if you'll forgive me for posting no photos, I'll be off to do some more homework.

Will This Help Reduce Study Stress?

Libra Horoscope for week of October 22, 2009

It's an excellent time to see if you can remove some of the neurotic twitches from your erotic itches. For example, you could use all your ingenuity to talk yourself out of the silly guilt you feel for having a certain idiosyncratic desire -- a desire that, if acted out, would hurt no one, and that is therefore, by definition, healthy. Here's another possibility: You could invoke the full powers of your imagination as you free yourself from things that prevent you from experiencing maximum pleasure, like old wounds, simmering anger, rank egotism, and limiting beliefs.

Grrrrrrr and Roarrrrrrrr!

Libra Horoscope for week of October 15, 2009

Were you ever a tiger in one of your past lives? If so, this would be an excellent time to tap into that power. If you have never lived the life of a tiger, would you be willing to imagine that you did? During the coming week's challenges, you will really benefit from being able to call on the specific kind of intelligence a tiger possesses, as well as its speed, perceptivity, sense of smell, charisma, and beauty. Your homework is to spend ten minutes envisioning yourself inhabiting the body of a tiger. 

After a lifetime spent in the company of felines, I think I can manage this.

Mummy & Me do NZ

 

As you may know, my mother came to visit me during the last school break of this year.  She arrived on a Wednesday.  On the first Friday she was here our class took a field trip over to the Wairau Valley to visit a lavender farm.  I snapped the above shot while we were having a snowball fight on the way over.

After a full Saturday in Nelson, during which she perused the market and was taken along with my flatmate's mum to see a children's Maori language performance and was treated to typical Kiwi hospitality, Sunday saw us loading up Hetty the Honda HR-V and heading to Golden Bay.  It wasn't very golden for us, more grey and lightning silver, but we managed to stop in the Rosy Glow Cottage, a chocolate shop, and had a great time staying at the Innlet.  So pleasant and friendly were the people there I was persuaded to make and eat sushi.  That's my 'cooking' below!

 

Rain and fog slowed our progress from Golden Bay to Punakaiki but on our arrival the weather lightened up. I was first charmed by the sunset here in March 2002, this October 2009 one only deepened my adoration for this place more.

Of special delight to me was visiting Queenstown and seeing the lovely lass from class who was filling in time learning massage and studying A&P with us while her husband was at police academy. Dear Marie was the best of hostesses (green bedding and towel for me!) but her sweetheart is as kind and wonderful as I thought anyone who'd captured her heart would be, her dog was just as spunky as I expected, and there was even a polite young Kiwi officer flatting with them to chat about this and that with and continue thinking that New Zealander's really are some of the friendliest folks on earth. I was gutted not to be staying longer. Happily my schedule next year looks to be more fluid and open and I have my heart set on going down for a longer period and perhaps going tramping with her.

 

What we did do while there will make many envious:

 

Marie came with us (hard life working at Eichardt's) and my mother says we were like little kids in how gleeful the glacial landing made us. I did my best to make snow angels. Having two of the three bottles insulated me a bit from the cold...

 

We stopped in Invercargill to see the tuatara.

 

 

And the day we left QT, which began with a massage, ending with a splendid sunset down at Stewart Island.

 

Mummy and I were in a small group that went out to meet a rare kakapo. Quite a stunning experience.

 

The next day we went back to Ulva Island where we'd met the 'night parrot' and we saw all sorts of other avians. But I was most enchanted by the greenery.

 

We made it to the boulders outside of Oamaru at low tide and enjoyed playing with the rocks, searching for seashells, and snacking on olives and a Whitestone cheeseboard.

 

Tomorrow I drive Mummy to the airport. It's been a very swift trip in reality, and went better than either of us anticipated. Every day she says the last thing we saw or did was her highlight, from our crazy weather adventures to chocolate touring (4 shops!), from birds that don't fly to flying in helicopters, and from Tasman to Pacific - there is a lot to choose from! It's been a truly wonderful time for her and I both.