Met the neighbour

We live down a leg-in section and share a private lane with one house. Laurie, the neighbour with whom we sahre the lane, popped in to introduce himself. He's a Cop and his partner are in the drug squad (his partner is a dog who lives with him). Also living at the house is one cat and one wife. I don't know the name of the dog, the cat or the wife, although he did tell us all of them. I think he came over so that we could read between the lines, something like "don't smoke pot because my dog will know". He looked very relived to discover that we are owner occupiers and not tenants, and even more so that Karl and I both work at the courthouse. He seems like a really nice bloke and his wife waved to me this afternoon while I was walking Jesse to his friend's place. Jesse's friend is Jamie and he lives only around the corner from us, about a 3 minute walk. Very convenient all round I'd say. We knew he was a cop because we've seen a Police uniform/jacket in the front seat of his work car but we thought that he was the driver of one of Otago's 2 speed camera cars. It has black windows in the back of his station wagon. It never dawned on me that he has a drug dog. In the week that we've lived here, I can't ever recall hearing his dog bark. In fact I've never seen it. They must get excellent training those Police Dogs. I wonder if his name is Sniff! Till later, Vance.

Aunty Karen has arrived

We've been  in our new home for one week now.  Far too many awful details about the move to go into, except to say that the vendor didn't start packing until settlement day!  Unheard of, and she didn't finally vacate until the following night.  It has now been 8 days since we bought the place and she still has a truck load of stuff here that is waiting to be picked up.  Our lawyer has sent a letter to her lawyer giving them until this coming Wednesday to get it all out, so we'll see how that goes.  We can't fit all our stuff in until she gets rid of her's.

Anyway, Karen and the girls arrived by plane from the North Island today.  They are visiting for a week and were hoping for snow (Taylor was anyway).  That hasn't happended (yet), but for teh last few days there have been terrific frosts.  Puddles have been frozen thick and remain that way all day. 

The ascent through the driveway is a little tricky but we are slowly getting used to it.  On the steepest part of the driveway there is a huge pothole in the asphalt that seems to get bigger every time we drive over it.  This afternoon, Karl and I (mostly Karl) boxed up the broken part and filled the hole with gravel.  It has managed to cope with being driven over at least half a dozen times, twice with a four-wheel drive.  In fact it more than coped with it, its beaut!.  Its inly a temporary fix until we can work out how it is that we want to seal the driveway, but I have to say that it looks pretty bloody good.  Not good enough to last forever but certainly for the next few months.  We have also sealed the bath (when we took a shower more water ran onto the floor than ran down the drain), and we also re-sealed the garbage disposal thing in the sink.  That needed a new gasket and now there are no signs of leaks.

These three things have been important in reasurring us that we can actually do the whole DIY thing (or at least give it a bloody good go).  The internet of course is an excellent source of information.  Karl has already got instructions and tips from the net for putting up a retaining wall.  I think we'll need some sort of professional help or help from someone with experience in that area because we may need to get Council consent (if its higher than 1 meter).  I didn't realise that a retaining wall is like an iceberg - there is more below ground than above it.

That's it for now. Seu!

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Its snowing and we're moving house!

Today is settlement day.  Good thing.  Bad thing though is that winter decides that today is the day for the snow to start.  Not too bad, but to make matters worse, the woman from whom we've bought the house has not even started moving.  She's thought about it. There was a big pile of rubbish too that we saw when we went to the open homes and for additional "looks" that she said she would have moved but by all accounts that has remained where it is.  Her sons are meant to be helping her move, but evidently they are in the bush pig hunting!  Not such a good thing.  So, what does that mean for us?  It means this, there is some woman living in a house we own and she's not meant to be there!  We've given her an extra day to get lost but at the rate she's moving a chance would be fine thing.  Never mind.  We are all packed and ready to move just as soon as she is, so to ensure that we keep our stress levels low (they have been suprisingly low till now) we've decided to all go to the casino this afternoon, pull the pokies, have a spot of dinner while we're there then come home and maybe have a drink.  Life is too short to get stressed out.  At least that's how I feel today - if she hasn't made a move by lunchtime tomorrow the shit will really hit the fan and I'll go around there and help her myself.  All her furniture will end up on the curbside, but that's her problem not ours.

 

Phone is about to get cut off so this will be my last post until we get set up in the new castle. Bye.

Flying Kiwi

Jesse is flying to visit with his mother in the morning - a 6:50am flight!  While he's in the North Island we'll be moving into the new house.  So that he can feel as though he has some ownership of it when he gets back we are letting him stay out of school for an extra day so that he can set up his bedroom and make some necessary adjustments to whatever he thinks we've got wrong.

A man's home is his castle

Tomorrow we move into our own home for the first time. Its very scary and exciting, both at the same time. Karl and I have tomorrow off work in preparation for the big shift (in fact we'll be moving the smaller stuf with the cars, and on Saturday a good friend from work will lend us her truck. It will be then that we move the big stuff. This is our first home so its a feeling that we've never had before so its difficult to describe. It kind of feels like the night before you fly to some country or place you've never been before. Somewhere between pre-orgasm and nausea. Weird eh?