AmeriNZ Blog

The stuff of life

2026-08-10T23:53:00.000+12:00

Many years ago (up to 15, I think), I switched us to the soy and linseed variety of a supermarket bread called Bürgen. It was for specific health reasons, and that decision meant that bread was a part of the life Nigel and I shared. Today it was announced that the Australian owners of the Bürgen brand are withdrawing it from New Zealand. That baked up some memories.

I suggested to Nigel that we switch to the bread because its soy and linseed were good for heart health, and especially because at the time it was the only low GI bread sold in supermarkets (this was well before my cardiac stent). Nigel and I ended up having some nearly every morning after that—in fact, it was part of Nigel’s weekday breakfasts for the last several years of his life (usually prepared by me): Peanut butter and jam on toast, and put on a plastic plate so he could bring it in the car on his commute to the office, and he’d use an old tea towel as a bib so he wouldn’t drop any on his work shirt. Because he’d often forget to bring them back into the house when he came home, he’d sometimes bring in a stack of plates and tea towels for me to deal with—and several times I had to go out to his car to collect them myself because we were starting to run out of the supplies (I mentioned all this in a a 2023 post (forst iterm).

After Nigel died I moved to Kirikiriroa-Hamilton and noticed that particular variety of bread was getting harder and harder to find, especially at my local Woolworths, where it was often out of stock (I could get it for more often by home delivery from Woolies, or from the nearest New World). So, I started using my breadmaker sometimes, and then started experimenting with other supermarket brands, including others with soy and linseed. That led to a bit of a revelation.

I was surprised at how much more fibre per 100 grams other brands had than the Bürgen loaf we’d always bought. In fact, I thought about blogging about that, since I’d talked about the bread and it also relates to my continuing health journey. If I’d done that post, I would’ve mentioned that the Bürgen Soy and Linseed bread has 4.4 grams of fibre per 100 grams of bread, along with 347g of sodium per 100g, and total cabs of 27.6g per 100 grams. This compares to the bread I usually buy these days, a “lower carb” loaf: Fibre is 8.9g per 100g, sodium is 355g per 100g, and total carbs is 24.8g per 100g. Well, at least the fibre of the current bread is a lot higher. But, there’s more!

As it happens, I’ve been learning a lot lately about healthier eating, and I learned that if you freeze bread, the carbs are turned into what’s called “resistant starch”, which is important because the body can’t break it down as quickly as normal starch, and that means the body treats it more like dietary fiber, which reduces the bread's glycemic index (GI), reducing blood sugar spikes (and lower GI bread was one of the reasons we switched to the Bürgen all those years ago). Bonus fact: refrigerating cooked pasta or white rice overnight does the same thing for them, and that doesn’t change when you re-heat it the next day. I definitely plan on starting to keep my bread in the freezer, but I need to clear space—and I only learned about these “resistant starch” tricks in the past week, so I’m cutting myself some slack on this.

in the past couplpe years, and probably partly because it was often difficult to get the Bürgen bread here in Hamilton, I gradually became less enthused about the bread we’d had for all those years, so I doubt I’ll miss it. However, the Bürgen slice size was smaller than most supermarket breads, and that I will miss.

Seeing the announcement this morning made me think of two things. First, how even something as small (literally) as a loaf of supermarket bread can be a constant in our lives. The other thing was that I really ought to resume trying to find a breadmaker recipe that I actually like (the results have been mostly “meh” for me for several years, which is why I hardly ever make bread any more). I know I probably won’t do that, though—there are far too many other things demanding my time, attention, and my sometimes limited energy. Besides, there are plenty of options available already made for me.

Yes, all that. But what I wouldn’t give to still be making peanut butter and jam on toast for Nigel. Of course.

A good day’s adventure

2026-08-08T22:46:00.000+12:00

I had a good day today. The big event for today was that I was meeting-up with some of the family for lunch at the casino in central Kirikiriroa-Hamilton. First things first: Getting there was a challenge for me. Several challenges, actually.

The big challenge for me today was the fact that I’ve never driven myself to the casino before, and I usually get pretty anxious about driving somewhere I’ve never been. In this case, it was especially true because I’m not familiar with the streets in Central Hamilton. Nigel always drove us to places like that, and he never seemed to have the same issues that I do now. It's just yet another thing I need to work out on my own. Nevertheless, when faced with tasks that make me uncomfortable or anxious, I try to force myself to do things (like today’s trip), despite the unease I feel, because I refuse to let fear, great or small, stop me from doing things I want to do (except when I do let it do that, of course—it’s a journey…). Nigel was often impressed (surprised?) when I'd "feel the fear and do it anyway". Maybe because it wasn't often enough?

As it happens, I only made two wrong turns, both of which were my fault, and not the GPS’ (because I’m not familiar with the layout of the streets, I twice turned a street earlier than the GPS commanded, but I guess that at least I became slightly more familiar with some of the streets in the area?). When I turned onto the street that I knew led to the casino carpark, Apple Maps kept growling at me with what seemed like increasing annoyance (though reason tells me it was probably just increasing frequency…), over and over again demanding that I “return to the route”. Instead, I ordered Siri to “cancel navigation”, and silence again reigned supreme.

Today was the birthday of one of my sisters in law, which was the reason for our gathering. I thought the food was nice (I had the fish and chips, for the record, and the fish of the day was snapper). One odd thing, though, was that if a customer doesn’t finish their meal (And, again for the record, I absolutely finished my meal), they can’t take the leftovers home. It supposedly has something to do with food safety, but I’ve never heard of a NZ cafe doing that.

In general, casinos aren’t a draw for me, mainly because I’m not the least bit interested in gambling (unless you count me buying NZ Lotto tickets, where the profits are returned to the community, not shareholders). The Hamilton casino is much smaller than Auckland’s, of course, but it has a strong advantage for Hamilton in that it’s pretty central in the CBD (aka “downtown” in Americanese). But both the Auckland and Hamilton casinos are mainly about gambling, and so, they aren’t places I’d go to except for occasions like today’s.

All joking aside, I had a good day today, and I got myself to my destination and back home again. Actually, I already knew how to get home from the casino, and that means that next time I’ll also know how to get to the casino, too. So, it turns out that today’s mission wasn’t just a travel adventure, it was also a genuine learning opportunity.

Today was a good day. But I still didn’t gamble—well, apart from the drive to the casino, maybe.

Framing my egg choices

2026-08-06T11:40:00.000+12:00

It’s not unusual for me to revist ttopics I talked about in previous posts, and it’s usually because something’s changed or I have new information. This post is about both. I actually had two cooking-related posts planned for last month, but only one made it onto the blog, and that one was without the relevant photos. I worked on the other one at the end of last month, and it was meant to be about revisiting my past—until I discovered something that meant I needed to start over, and that’s where this story truly begins.

In two different posts I talked about a breakfast meal Nigel called “Toasty Eggs”, which is basically a fried egg cooked inside a piece of bread with a round hole cut in the middle. It’s unhealthy, but also really nice, and I’m sure part of that is just because of the nostalgia. Both of the posts I mentioned the meal in were about memory.

In the first of the two posts, from October 2023, I talked about it in connection with my memories of Nigel and also form my childhood, and I talked about two things that struck me when I looked at the post last month. In that post, I mentioned how challenging I found making it because:

The hole in the bread had to be big enough to contain the egg, but not big enough to compromise the structural integrity of the bread frame—it was delicate work. Then, I had to flip it at exactly the right moment to cook the white on the other side without breaking the yolk, and then cooking it just long enough to cook the white without overcooking the yolk.

The second thing I noticed was that I mentioned the children’s cookbook we had in the house when I was growing up, which I later found a facsimilie edition of that cookbook, something I talked about back in January, and I even referred to my 2023 post and how the cookbook had comfirmed my memory of the book calling the dish “eggs in a frame”. However, neither in January nor since did I never actually read the recipe—until I was getting ready for the July post that didn’t happen, and it was all because I wanted a photo of the recipe page.

When I actually read the recipe (at right), I saw that it said to cook the bread one side and flip it over before putting the egg into the whole. When I made it in late July, I thought about doing exactly that because I thought it might make the bread stronger before I added the raw egg. When I saw that the recipe said to cook the bread on one side first, I also realised that it would make it unnecessary to flip the bread.

When I make ordinary fried eggs (or poached eggs, for that matter), I break the raw eggs into a ramekin first, both in case the yolk breaks and I need to switch to scrambled eggs, and to make it easier to pour the egg into the pan. For fried eggs, I then add a teaspoon or so of water to the frypan and put a lit over it. The point is to let the steam cook the top of the egg while the hot pan cooks the underside (I saw some TV chef advise that). The lid I use is see-through, and I can watch until the yolk and white is properly set, and over time I’ve worked out by watching it when I can turn off the heat and let the residual heat finish the last few seconds.

I did basically the same thing with the “eggs in a frame” in the photo up top, and it was far easier than it was at any other time in New Zealand: The bread was, indeed, stronger after frying one side first, and the final result was more like a fried egg in a frame, which was the intent. The thing is, though, I know that when I was a little kid I followed recipes precisely, and that means I probably cooked the bread on one side first (and that I probably used butter to fry it in…). And I simply forgot that detail in the decades between when I made it in the USA and when I started making it again in New Zealand. If Nigel minded my mucked-up method, he never said anything—but I know he’d prefer it done the “proper” way.

When I was researching the post in July and read that 2023 blog post, I realised something else: I spelled it “Toasty Egg” because in my mind it was toast-and-egg. While Nigel never wrote down the name (and never had any reason to, of course), I think he’d probably have spelled it “Toastie Egg” because a toasted sandwich (sometimes called “grilled” in the USA, though there are differences) is often called a “toastie” in New Zealand, as in “a cheese toastie” instead of the USA’s “grilled cheese”. In my mind, Nigel used a common NZ term for something with fried bread to name this meal, while I made the name from the two elements in it, not directly connected to any other dish. Nigel would sometimes tease me, joking that, “you Americans are a simple people,” and this is exactly the sort of thing he’d tease me about—and I now know that he wasn’t wrong (to paraphrase a common Kiwi saying).

Back in July, his post was going to be about me making a meal I made as a kid, then again decades later on for Nigel, and more recently for myself. I wanted to add the specific cookbook reference I mentioned in 2023, and that led me to a whole bunch of realisations, all of which I may never have connected together if it wasn’t for this blog. And that right there is why I still blog.

Eggs, cooked whatever way, are optional.

Weekend Diversion: 1986, Part 17

2026-08-02T23:51:00.000+12:00

It’s a new month, and time for the song that reached Number One on the Billboard “Hot 100” on August 2, 1986: “Glory of Love” (video up top) by American musician Peter Cetera. It was Cetera’s first song after he left American “rock band with horns” Chicago, and it would be Number One for two weeks—the first song that wasn’t a one-week hit since the end of June. The song was the lead single from Cetera’s second solo studio album, Solitude/Solitaire. The was also on the soundtrack album for the film The Karate Kid Part II.

I liked this song well enough at the time, though the music video did nothing for me, in part because it included a lot (in my opinion) of scenes from The Karate Kid Part II, a movie I never saw, nor wanted to (or any other version, for that matter). I had nothing against the movie—it just wasn’t my sort of film. By the time this song came out, I’d been very familiar with Cetera for many years because of his work with Chicago. In fact, one of the first albums I ever bought was the band’s 1972 album, Chicago V. After that, Cetera continued to be part of Chicago up until Chicago 17, the final album he recorded with the band, a recod that is still the band’s best-selling album.

Having said all that, and even though I heard Chicago’s various singles on the radio (I’m an Illinois native who lived in the City of Chicago for a dozen years, after all…), I was probably more aware of Cetera as a solo artist, beginning with this week’s song. Unlike with Phil Collins, I never confused Cetera’s solo work with his work with Chicago, and while I don’t know for sure why that is, it’s probably because his Solitude/Solitaire album was released a bit more than two years after Chicago 17 was released. That’s unlike Phil Collins who had solo albums out contemporaneously with Genesis albums.

“Glory of Love” reached Number 9 in Australia, Number One in Canada, 25 in New Zealand, 3 in the UK (Silver), and Number One on the USA’s “Billboard Hot 100” and “US Adult Contemporary” charts. I didn’t receive a certification in the USA.

The album Solitude/Solitaire reached Number 75 in Australia, 20 in Canada, 56 in the UK, and Number 23 on the USA’s ”Billboard 200”. The album was certified Platinum in the USA.

The The Karate Kid Part II soundtrack album reached Number 96 in Australia, 86 in Canada, and 30 on the USA’s ”Billboard 200”. The album didn’t chart in New Zealand or the UK, and wasn’t certified in any of the five countries I include in these posts.

This series will return in two weeks, on August 16, and it’s another two-week Number One. August will definitely be less work for me.

Previously in the “Weekend Diversion – 1986” series:

Weekend Diversion: 1986, Part 1 – January 18, 2026
Weekend Diversion: 1986, Part 2 – February 15, 2026
Weekend Diversion: 1986, Part 3 – March 1, 2026
Weekend Diversion: 1986, Part 4 – March 15, 2026
Weekend Diversion: 1986, Part 5 – March 22, 2026
Weekend Diversion: 1986, Part 6 – March 29, 2026
Weekend Diversion: 1986, Part 7 – April 19, 2026
Weekend Diversion: 1986, Part 8 – May 3, 2026
Weekend Diversion: 1986, Part 9 – May 10, 2026
Weekend Diversion: 1986, Part 10 – May 17, 2026
Weekend Diversion: 1986, Part 11 – June 7, 2026
Weekend Diversion: 1986, Part 12 – June 14, 2026
Weekend Diversion: 1986, Part 13 – July 5, 2026
Weekend Diversion: 1986, Part 14 – July 12, 2026
Weekend Diversion: 1986, Part 15 – July 19, 2026
Weekend Diversion: 1986, Part 16 – July 26, 2026

A good change of months

2026-08-01T23:17:34.906+12:00

Today is the first day of August, and that’s a good thing. First of all, this is the last month of winter, my least-favourite season of the year. Better still, July is over, and I’m not sorry to see the back of it: I had a terrible month, caused by my old “friend”, side effects from a new prescription. That’s not a new story, of course, but there’s something else: I took action, and that’s why the month ended better than it otherwise would’ve.

The story begins in early June when I saw my doctor after my most recent routine annual blood tests. The results were fine, however, my doctor wanted me to begin a drug called Ezetimibe to further lower my LDL cholesterol (this is in addition to Atorvastatin, the statin that I’ve been on for several years). My test results hadn’t changed, and my LDL level was still at what had always been an acceptable level, BUT, the official medical recommendation had changed to reduce the acceptable level for someone with my history by a few tenths of a point, and that, in turn, meant my LDL levels were suddenly “too high”—even though those levels were still in the same range as they have been for a very long time.

I was sceptical about whether the drug was needed, mainly because I thought the drop in the new guidelines was probably an overreaction. Even so, I told my GP I’d go along with it, adding that even though I admit statins are wonder drugs, though I don’t like them, either (for many reasons), though I nevertheless take one. He reiterated that the new drug wasn’t a statin, and added it’s generally well-tolerated. Yeah, well, I have a history of not “well-tolerating” drugs others have no problem with. This turned out to be one of those times.

I began taking the drug on July 1. Within days, fatigue (a common side effect) became nearly debilitating, to the point that I couldn’t do any task that took longer than 10 minutes without sitting down to rest (while several of my medications also can cause fatigue, the new fatigue was noticeably worse). A few days later, I started feeling sleepy in the early afternoon, and one day I dozed off in my chair, something that never happened to me before that.

Two weeks ago, I began a DIY project, one that I’ve done MANY times before, so I knew it should take 2—maybe 3—days. Eleven days after I started, it still wasn’t done. My back lawn needed to be mowed (it was around half a week overdue, though partly because of weather), but that takes around 20 minutes and is physical, obviously. I couldn’t face even trying to do it.

As this continued, it became increasingly obvious to me that it was the medication causing all that. And yet: I nevertheless spent (too much) time blaming myself, that I was just being lazy, that I should just suck it up and get on with it, or even that maybe I’m too old to do this sort of project anymore (even though it’s similar to ones I did in this house twice before). Beginning a week ago, I started getting somewhat lightheaded, then I started getting low-grade headaches, too. All are also possible reactions.

Despite the growing list of problems, and how miserable I was, I didn’t act immediately. I’m generally conflict-averse, and, like a lot of folks in my age group, I tend to not want to disagree with my doctor. At the same time, however, I always read up on medications I’m prescribed using reputable sources like New Zealand’s “Medicines and Medical Devices Safety Authority”, MedSafe (among other things, MedSafe posts PDFs called “Consumer Medicine Information” on approved medications, and I always download the relevant CMI sheets). On the other hand, getting access to the particular “recommendations” that prescribing is based wasn’t easy, and getting access to the actual studies underlying “recommendation” can be even harder. That reality makes me doubt the thoroughness of my own research—and also more inclined to “give it a bit more time”.

This past Wednesday was the start of my next 28-day allotment of medications (it was delivered a week or so earlier). That morning, I was beside myself: What should I do? I had 28 more days of the drug in my house, and another 28 days would be shipped in a few weeks. I thought that maybe I could continue, and contact my doctor about stopping. Then I got clarity.

I knew that if Nigel was here, he’d have been telling me—coaching me, actually—on how to change the bad situation, just like he did in 2017 when beta blockers turned me into a “zombie” (Nigel’s actual word for it). I also knew that he never hesitated when he reacted badly to a drug he was on, including a statin at one point, which he stopped (his “need” for them having been borderline to begin with). I thought about all of that and resolved I would do what he had always done and just stop taking the drug.

When I took my medication Wednesday morning, I did not take the Ezetimibe, but I put the pill aside. Then, I sent a secure message to the practice nurse (because they took away the ability to send a message to GPs), letting them know I’d stopped the drug and why. For me, stopping the drug was non-negotiable, but I realised that it might need to be a managed process, and so, they needed to know.

I later spoke with the nurse on the phone, and she said she told my doctor about my action, and he said it was okay to stop. She also said that she’d contact the pharmacy to have them remove the drug from my next delivery (so it won’t be wasted, like this current month’s supply will be). I’ll go see my doctor next month, and I intend to begin a review of all my medications, to look for ones that may produce as good or better results with fewer side effects (especially less fatigue).

The nurse later rang back to say my GP was fine with my move, and that later one I can try a different drug—making me think to myself, “not bloody likely!” But she also said that, ultimately, the decision is mine, which I thought was refreshing.

Thursday morning, the pharmacy rang me to make sure I knew the drug was being stopped and wouldn’t be in the packet, which was great. But this is a good spot to say why the drug I have in my hime is being wasted: It’s because it’s in my house, and it can’t be reused, so it must be destroyed. The pharmacy sent me an email about a week after I’d received the previous allotment to tell me it was on its way. However, due to accumulated missed doses over the past several years, I start each 28-day alottment around a week after the scheduled start date. What this means is that I’d barely started the drug when I go the email, and the worst was yet to come: At that point, I had absolutely no reason to expect I’d have such a bad reaction. In fact, the worst effecys weren’t present until after I received my current 28-day allotment. So, there’s no way I could’ve known what would happen in order to stop it earlier. Not surprisingly, I nevertheless feel guilty about the doses of the drug that will be wasted. Of course.

This particular tale began with my somewhat reluctant willingness to go along with a medical recommendation I was sceptical about, and probably with a false sense of confidence that it’d be okay (because I haven’t had a problem with a prescription in a long time). Then it became a tale of misery and woe before becoming one of a new resolve to do what I know to be right for me, and to advocate for myself, since no one else will.

Thursday morning, I woke up feeling better than I have in several weeks—though part of me was frightened it was an illusion that would pass. However, that was 48 hours since I last took the drug, and it was leaving my system, so the misery didn’t return. In fact, I later mowed the back lawn, and it went well, though my recovery time was a bit longer than usual.

Is this a new era for me? Maybe. But it’s also possible that I’ll forget this latest bad prescription experience and repeat the mistake (unless I check this blog, as I often do: By sharing it here, I may be reminded about all this). I was also reminded, yet again, that even now Nigel can still help me find my way through difficult times, especially when I’m feeling the most miserable. That will help me again in the future.

Right now, though, I’m just glad for the end of the headaches, lightheadedness, and extra fatigue on top of the existing fatigue that other medications seem to have given me. After all, I still have to finish that DIY project, do other ones, and then in a couple weeks the back lawn will need to be mowed again. For the first time in a month, all of that genuinely feels possible.

Weekend Diversion: 1986, Part 16

2026-07-26T23:50:00.000+12:00

On July 26, 1986 “Sledgehammer” (video up top) by English rock musician Peter Gabriel became the month’s final one-week Number One on the Billboard “Hot 100”. Released on April 16, 1986 it was the lead single from Gabriel’s fifth studio album, So. I first heard of Gabriel when he was a founding member of Genesis, where he would remain until 1975 when he began his solo career. I think it’s kind of, sort of, ironic that the subject of last week’s “Weekend Diversion” post was a Genesis song.

I was aware of Gabriel’s solo work, and it was impossible to miss “Sledgehammer”—especially its music video (above). That video! It was ground-breaking at the time, and went on to become the all-rime most-played music video on MTV. In fact, the story of the video is so expansive that I can’t do it justice with a brief discussion here, so instead I’d recommend Wikipedia’s section discussion of it in its article about “Sledgehammer” (the entire article is linked above). I was fascinated by the video. It reminded me of a lot of stop-motion animation I’d seen over the years—and yet is was nothing like any of those. As I remember it, it was the video that made me like the song though, as was so often the case, I never bought the song or the album—or any others by Gabriel, for that matter. I liked the video and song, though.

“Sledgehammer” reached Number 3 in Australia, Number One in Canada, 3 in New Zealand (Platinum), 4 in the UK (Gold), and Number One on the USA’s “Billboard Hot 100”, “US Album Rock Tracks”, and on their “US Dance/Disco Club Play” charts, as well as reaching Number One on the Cash Box “Top 100” chart. I didn’t receive a certification in the USA.

The album So reached Number 5 in Australia (3x Platinum), Number One in Canada, New Zealand (5x Platinum), and the UK (3x Platinum), and Number 2 on the USA’s ”Billboard 200”. The album was certified 5x Platinum in the USA.

This series will return in next week, on August 2, and it’s not a last one-week Number One song!. As I said last week, August will be less work for me.

Previously in the “Weekend Diversion – 1986” series:

Weekend Diversion: 1986, Part 1 – January 18, 2026
Weekend Diversion: 1986, Part 2 – February 15, 2026
Weekend Diversion: 1986, Part 3 – March 1, 2026
Weekend Diversion: 1986, Part 4 – March 15, 2026
Weekend Diversion: 1986, Part 5 – March 22, 2026
Weekend Diversion: 1986, Part 6 – March 29, 2026
Weekend Diversion: 1986, Part 7 – April 19, 2026
Weekend Diversion: 1986, Part 8 – May 3, 2026
Weekend Diversion: 1986, Part 9 – May 10, 2026
Weekend Diversion: 1986, Part 10 – May 17, 2026
Weekend Diversion: 1986, Part 11 – June 7, 2026
Weekend Diversion: 1986, Part 12 – June 14, 2026
Weekend Diversion: 1986, Part 13 – July 5, 2026
Weekend Diversion: 1986, Part 14 – July 12, 2026
Weekend Diversion: 1986, Part 15 – July 19, 2026

Neither shaken nor stirred. Again.

2026-07-25T13:38:00.000+12:00

Every morning I make my coffee and then pick up my iPad to check my emails, social media, and any news alerts for things that happened overnight, something I’ve done that for a very long time. This morning I saw an alert for a news story: “Why phones woke thousands before 5.9 magnitude earthquake”. My first thought was, “what earthquake?” It happened at 4:51am, while I was asleep, and was centred near the King Country town of Taumarunui, some 170km (around 106 US miles) south of Kirikiriroa-Hamilton. I never felt a thing, and I also didn’t get any alert, of course, since I’m an iPhone user.

Actually, not only have I never been awakened by an earthquake (so far…), and I’ve only ever felt two earthquakes (so far…). The first was on July 19, 2004, when we were living in Paeroa, and the second (and stronger) one was on February 21, 2007 when we were living on Auckland’s North Shore, something and I mentioned both in a post about the 2007 earthquake (it’s quite handy that I’ve been blogging for nearly 20 years).

Having said all that, there have been times when I’ve felt a gentle rumble and wondered if it was a heavy truck nearby, or maybe Rūaumoko was stomping about underground. More often than not, it would’ve been a truck—or not (very mild ones, mostly too mild for humans to feel, happen all the time in New Zealand).

Earth Sciences NZ seismologist Sam Taylor-Offord told 1News that aftershocks will continue for months, and he also explained something I’d wondered about: Why folks on the east and west sides of the North Island may not feel earthquakes on the opposite side as strongly, or even at all. According to the linked article, he said:

"There's kind of this shadow between running right down the middle of the Taupō volcanic zone, where the Earth is sort of softer, hotter, and seismic waves get worn down really quickly."

The thing that started my journey into finding out more about this morning’s earthquake was the phone alerts some people got, and I think the tech behind is interesting (of course…). It’s likely to improve and become more accurate over time, and, if it does, it’ll inevitably come to iPhones, too. This tech won’t mean people will necessarily feel the earthquakes they’re alerted to, but it could give folks a brief warning before a potentially bigger one reaches them wherever they are. Maybe?

Once I got to social media late this morning, I read the stories of people who felt the earthquake. While it’s not even remotely unusual for others to have felt an earthquake I didn’t, this time my first thought was actually about how I couldn’t even imagine being awake at 4:51am on a Saturday morning. That’s definitely about me.

This morning, and not for the first time, the morning news alerts on my iPad told me about something that happened while I was asleep, and so, I was, also as usual, oblivious to it all. But the Internet brought me up to speed on the story, and this blog helped me precisely remember specific details about some of my own history with earthquakes. To me, this is a good example of technology making my life better. Others may not feel that, of course. C’est la vie.

Hauling for the house

2026-07-22T23:45:00.000+12:00

Another day, another haul post—sort of. Yesterday’s post was about the things I bought for creative work. Todat;s is all about stuff for projects around the house, which mean; that today’s post is actually closer to what my 2022 post was about. Similar, but different.

The photo up top has only three items, but they have little to do with yesterday’s post, and nothing at all to do with each other. First up, in the back and at the left is my biggest bargain: A box of flocked thin coathangers. I learned about them from YouTubers who focus on decluttering and organising. They used them because they’re thinner than normal hangers, and that means they take up less space, and because the flocking helps keep clothes from slipping off. When I started decluttering clothes from my wardrobe, I bought some of the hangers to hang up t-shirts in the newly freed-up space, mainly because I realised I never wore the t-shirts because I needed to be able to see them to remember I have them. Then, I decided to switch all my shirts to them—and that meant I needed to get a lot of hangers.

The hangers I was buying were $6.99 for a pack of eight, and I planned to get up to six packs, which would mean they’d be $55.92. But when I was using the store’s App to find out what aisle they were in, I saw they had a box of 50 of the hangers for $25.99—less than half price plus two more hangers—such a deal! But, wait—there’s more! I also got the 5% Gold Card discount.

When I hung the t-shirts on the hangers, I also tried the trick of turning the hanger “backwards”. The idea is that I wear an item, then after I wash the shirt I hang it back up the right way around. If the hanger isn’t turned around in six months or year, then, the theory goes, the shirt (or whatever) can be donated. The trouble is, I started this with t-shirts—in winter. While I do wear t-shirts on mild days, there aren’t necessarily very many of those in winter. So, I figured that this probably wasn’t among my best ideas, though I have already turned some the right way around. Here’s what that actually looks like:

On the right in the back is the next thing, a small sheet of coreflute (a plastic sheet similar to corrugated cardboard, but stonger). I bought it to make a prototype/proof of concept sort of thing for a solution to fix a defect in my kitchen cabinets, one that annoys me every single day. More on that another time, but I chose the material because it’s inexpensive and easy to work with, and the store had one that was cheaper and smaller than what one of the home centres offers (better for a prototype that may not work). However, it was also the main reason I chose that day to buy the new cutting mat I mentioned yesterday: It’ll be big enough for me to use to cut the coreflute.

In front, on the ground, are some cheap (both senses of the word…) placemats. The placemats I currently have are around 15 years old and perfectly usable, but the main reason I wanted new ones is because their white stripes mean they don’t make good backgrounds when I take photos of food I make. I take a lot of photos of my meals, but I very rarely share any because I take the photos just to get better at and shooting those photos.

I saw the new placemats on the store’s App, and I thought the'd make a better photo background, and also that they’d also go better with some fabrics in my living space. In fact, I’ve already used the placemats for a background to a photo of my breakfast for a post that’s still to come (which really means I haven’t written it yet…), however, that identified a problem.

When I finished my breakfast that day, I noticed that I'd spilled something on the placemat, so I got a damp kitchen cloth to wipe it off, and for no particular reason I lifted up the placemat and the table underneath it was wet: What I thought was a fake “weave” look turned out to be more like an actual weave, and they’re not solid as I thought (the photo at right shows the light streaming through a placemat I held up to a window). All of which means that they’re fine as photo backgrounds, but not as placemats. Still, they were cheaper than anything else I saw, and dramatically cheaper than some. You get what you pay for?

These items aren’t related to each other, except that they’re all for the house, one way or another, but two things are at least conencted to yesterday’s post: The placemats are related to creative projects (photography), and the coreflute convinced me to get the new cutting mat that I’ll use for a lot of projects, including creative ones. But all of the items in both these posts have one thing common: They all have their own stories. Apparently, everything does.

A creative haul

2026-07-21T23:40:44.006+12:00

Two weeks ago today, I went on a mini-shopping trip. I intended to do a blog post of the “haul”, much as I did way back in March of 2022, when I shared a “shopping haul” photo, in a post that was somewhat tongue-in-cheek. So, I began a post in the same vein, however, I was having trouble making it come together. When I got to the third draft of that post, I realised that this one was different: It was motivated by a very specific thing, something I kept putting off: I wanted to get supplies for certain creative things I wanted to do.

The photo up top was my second attempt to capture the “haul”, after I worked out there were two very separate “hauls”, both with stuff with different stories. This post is about the more important of the two (the other will follow tomorrow).

Of the stuff in the photo, the item standing in the back is the most general: It’s an A2-size cutting mat, something I use whenever I use a razor or craft knife to cut things out of paper, like when I make labels for storage containers in my pantry, but I’ve used cutting mats for all sorts of creative projects over the years. I already have one cutting mat that’s smaller than a sheet of office paper, and I’ve had it for 20+ years. I also have one that’s A3 (similar to 11x17 in US paper size, and the A2 one is like two of those side-by-side vertically). The small one is often too small (even WAY too small), and right now I have no idea where the larger one is, or even if I still have it (I think I do…). This new cutting mat is big enough for everything I need/want to do, which is why I’ve wanted one like it for so long.

At the right-hand side, and leaning against the mat, is a pad of paper suitable for use with acrylic paints, and on the ground in front of it is a set of acrylic paints. To its left, in the centre on the floor, is a set of mixed media brushes. To its left (the left side on the floor) is a pad of watercolour paper. I already have a set of watercolour paints that I bought a couple years ago and never used because I didn’t have the right paper. The final part of the painting supplies is standing up on the left-most side: A pad of palette paper for use with the acrylic paints. Together, all of those supplies were the real point of my shopping excursion.

Both my parents occasionally painted, mostly using oil paints, so I grew up with the (occasional) smell of oil paints, linseed oil, and turpentine, and to me, it smelled like art. A decade and a bit later, I was in high school and found myself with long blocks in “study hall”, which was boring. So, I added a basic art class. The next semester I took a painting class. After high school, I continued to paint in oil and water colours, but stopped—for absolutely no reason—before I was 20.

In the decades since, I often thought about picking it up again, and in the Covid Era I even ordered a basic set of water colours, which is what I referring to earlier. A couple years ago, I went with my brother-in-law and his partner to Raglan, a bohemian beachside community on New Zealand’s Tasman coast, west of Hamilton, and it has a lot of artists’ galleries of various kinds. We were walking through one gallery when I said offhandedly that sometimes I thought about taking up painting again, and my brother-in-law said, “why don’t you?” In a rare moment of clarity I said, “Because the last thing I need is yet another thing I’m NOT doing.” And there it stayed.

Three weeks before my shopping trip, I went to Warehouse Stationery and looked at the stuff I’d need (all of which is in the photo), but bought nothing. The first Tuesday of every month is “Gold Card” day, which gives us cardholders (folks 65+) a 5% discount, and while that’s not much, it’s also not nothing. But, why this month, and not any of the previous “Gold Card” days over the past few years? It was because I came to a realisation.

There are many things I want to do that I’ve felt I couldn’t do for one reason or another. For example, I can’t work on furniture because there’s no room in the garage, and because that was the case, I felt I couldn’t do anything about any of the other creative things I’ve wanted to do, either, and that obviously included painting. I also realised that there were specific barriers, such as, I didn’t have any of the things in the photo. Buying them wasn’t horribly expensive, and getting them means that I can paint, regardless of whether I actually do. The barriers are now removed, and the rest is up to me—and inspiration.

I have no illusions that I’ll ever be objectively “good” at painting—though, how can I ever find out if I never try? However, the reality is that the main reason I started focusing my visual creativity on photography was that it was the first time I managed to capture what my mind saw. At least now I have what I need to find out if painting is for me—assuming I choose to try.

There’s one more thing I bought for creative reasons: In the centre of the things standing and leaning against the cutting mat are some house-shaped cookie cutters. I saw them by chance when I was looking for something else, and they’re perfect for a craft project I’ll work on later this year, which I’ll talk about then—also assuming I actually do that, of course. However, I’ll also use them for making cookies, so even if the craft project doesn’t work out, I’ll still get use out of them—which is honestly more than I can say about anything else in the photo, apart from the cutting mat, which will get a lot of use.

Part of my motivation for acting was that I got 5% off everything I bought, which, as I said, isn’t much, but it’s also not nothing. But everything I bought—in this “creative haul” and the one I’ll talk about tomorrow—was something to me, regardless of whether I use the creative stuff or not. The biggest thing, though, wasn’t the stuff I bought, nor what ultimately happens with them, it was that I decided to start removing barriers that have kept me from doing the things I want to do, the things that might actually finally help me build whatever my life is going to become. Actually, that’s precisely why I created my latest plan to change my house, as I discussed last Friday.

In the end, my hope is that all of this barrier removal so far will lead me to remove even more barriers. If that happens, it’ll be a bargain at any price. Discount not required.

Weekend Diversion: 1986, Part 15

2026-07-19T22:33:52.329+12:00

This week forty years ago, a former guest in these “Weekend Diversion” posts was back for another of 1986’s one-week Number One hits on the Billboard “Hot 100”. On July 19, 1986 “Invisible Touch” (video up top) by English rock band Genesis reached Number One. While this was the first Genesis song in my “Weekend Diversion” posts, lead singer Phil Collins has been included several times.

“Invisible Touch” was released on May 19, 1986, and was the first single from the band’s 1986 studio album of the same name, their thirteenth studio album. By the time this single-album was released, I thought that Phil Collins and Genesis were the same thing, probably because they mainly were. While I was familiar with Genisis before Collins became the lead, his era was when I first paid serious attention, and I even bought a couple of the band’s albums—but I never bought any of Phil Collins’ albums. That probably says something, but at the time it absolutely wasn’t a deliberate choice, except, maybe, that none of Collins’ albums enticed me to part with some of the few dollars I had at the time to buy one of them. That doesn’t mean I didn’t like his music, nor does the fact I bought Genesis albums mean I liked them better. Instead, it was the result of very specific times, and what I could afford at that time, and nothing more. Just so we’re clear.

Having said all that, 40 years ago, I liked this song well enough, and the fact that I didn’t see any real difference between Phil Collins and Genesis by that time didn’t make me like or dislike the song. The music video for the song wasn’t unique, or maybe even all that interesting, but seeing it again after all these years, I was struck by the opening in which Phil plays around with an 8mm film camera. These days, he’d be holding a smartphone, or maybe a vlogging camera, neither of which existed in 1986, and wouldn’t for more than two decades. Trendsetting?

“Invisible Touch” reached Number 3 in Australia, 6 in Canada, 8 in New Zealand (Platinum), 15 in the UK (Platinum), and Number One on the USA’s “Billboard Hot 100”, 3 of their “US Adult Contemporary” chart, and Number One on their “US Mainstream Rock” chart. I didn’t receive a certiciation in the USA.

The album Invisible Touch reached Number 3 in Australia (3x Platinum), Number One in Canada, New Zealand (4x Platinum), and the UK (4x Platinum), and Number 3 on the USA’s ”Billboard 200”. The album was certified 6x Platinum in the USA.

This series will return in next week, on July 26, with the last one-week Number One song from July 1986. And, August? It’ll be less work for me.

Previously in the “Weekend Diversion – 1986” series:

Weekend Diversion: 1986, Part 1 – January 18, 2026
Weekend Diversion: 1986, Part 2 – February 15, 2026
Weekend Diversion: 1986, Part 3 – March 1, 2026
Weekend Diversion: 1986, Part 4 – March 15, 2026
Weekend Diversion: 1986, Part 5 – March 22, 2026
Weekend Diversion: 1986, Part 6 – March 29, 2026
Weekend Diversion: 1986, Part 7 – April 19, 2026
Weekend Diversion: 1986, Part 8 – May 3, 2026
Weekend Diversion: 1986, Part 9 – May 10, 2026
Weekend Diversion: 1986, Part 10 – May 17, 2026
Weekend Diversion: 1986, Part 11 – June 7, 2026
Weekend Diversion: 1986, Part 12 – June 14, 2026
Weekend Diversion: 1986, Part 13 – July 5, 2026
Weekend Diversion: 1986, Part 14 – July 12, 2026

The next phase

2026-07-17T15:20:00.000+12:00

I have a plan. It’s no longer theoretical, or merely possible, but actually already in progress. I entirely skipped over the concepts of a plan stage, though, obviously, no sensible person would ever think that was actually a thing. Of course. Instead, I’ve made actual plans, and they’re now beginning.

This all relates to what’s essentially the last remaining work on the inside of my house, and I’m starting inside for good reason: It’s literally the middle of winter here in Aotearoa-New Zealand, and that means that it’s not pleasant to be doing stuff outside (or in the garage), though I do make sure I mow the back lawn every other week. It’s cold and damp outside most days, and while neither would my choice of weather to work in, it also a lot rains this time of year, and so, outside work isn’t happening right now.

A month ago, I wrote about sending piles of clothes and bedding off to a charity shop, something that took me a couple months to finish because I constantly kept finding more stuff to donate. On that last day, when the stuff left my house, I already had a vision for what was next.

As I said last month, my priority is the inside of my house because “I want it to be my sanctuary”. I decided to start with what seemed to me to be the “easiest” room, the living area. The stuff headed for the charity shop had been piled up in the living area of my house all that time, and after helping me get it all packed and ready leave, family members then helped me tidy and clean up the living area, something I definitely neglected during the sorting phase. Since then, I’ve focused on keeping it tidy, and that includes vacuuming a couple times a week (and I’m very glad I bought my stick vacuum last September.)

The next phase is to finish decluttering the living area, because there are three spots that have some excess stuff. However. This work will be interspersed with a different room, the guest room.

Work on the guest room isn’t about decluttering as such because the room doesn’t have unnecessary stuff in it. However, the room’s wardrobe has become a sort of storage cupboard, and one that’s not well-organised. So, I’m going to finally install the wardrobe system I bought for the guest room wardrobe. That project will mean I first have to do some wall repairs, then prime and then re-paint the inside of the wardrobe. While those repairs are drying, I’ll work on finishing the living area. I emptied that wardrobe today so I can start working on that wardrobe tomorrow morning.

I’m pretty sure that I’ll finish the decluttering in the living area before I’m done installing the wardrobe system, so if I still have down time on that wardrobe project, I’ll use it to work on tidying my bedroom. I’d almost completed work on my bedroom (not including the wardrobe) quite awhile ago, but when family was staying with me for a time recently, I needed to empty out the guest room and its wardrobe, and some of that stuff ended up in my bedroom, back where there hadn’t been any clutter since last year.

Finishing my bedroom’s not a big job, so I can do it in small doses, like when I’m waiting for paint to dry in the guest room wardrobe. Installing a new wardrobe system in my bedroom’s walk-in wardrobe will be sometihng I’lll do much later on, mainly because the decluttering of clothes gave me a lot more space to hang things, and so, the reorganisation of that wardrobe isn’t a priority any more. My final inside project will be completely re-doing my office, which is so overrun with stuff that doesn’t belong in there that I very rarely actually use the room. I’ll talk about that more when I get to that stage.

I also have a number of relatively small projects for every room that are related more to decorating than mere decluttering and reorganising. Much of this will also be work I’ll do concurrently, and not entirely separately, so I’ll mostly talk about each room separately because it’ll be easier to understand what I’m talking about. There will be photos, of course.

The final inside project is The Garage Of No Return, and I hope to begin that in early spring, when it’s no longer bloody cold in there, but before it gets hot. That’s also the time I’ll start working on outside projects, too, so that when spring actually arrives I’ll be ready for it. As with the projects for each room, the garden is a subject all on its own, and I’ll talk about that when I get to it.

And that’s the entire plan: It’s not linear, but it’s definitely about methodically working on the things I need to, and in the ways that work best for me. I expect it’ll be quite a ride. I planned for that, too.

Weekend Diversion: 1986, Part 14

2026-07-12T23:14:39.380+12:00

This week forty years ago saw the second July 1986 one-week Number One on the Billboard “Hot 100”. On July 12, 1986 “Holding Back the Years” (video up top) by English pop and soul band Simply Red reached Number One. Released on November 4, 1985, the song was the third of five singles from the band’s debut studio album, Picture Book, which was released on October 11, 1985. The song was written by Simply Red’s lead singer, Mick Hucknall, and Neil Reid.

I remember that when “Holding Back the Years” came out I thought it was one of the most interesting songs I’d heard in ages. I can’t remember for sure, but I think I may have had the album Picture Book, but since my albums didn’t make it to New Zealand when I moved here 30+ years ago, I can’t remember for sure (as I recall, I had a couple hundred vinyl albums when I left Chicago).

However, if I liked Simply Red, it was nothing compared to Nigel, who really liked them. While I don’t remember what he had before we met, I know that we ended up with five of their CDs (including Picture Book, which we got very inexpensively at discount store The Warehouse, where Nigel and I bought a lot of inexpensive CDs and some DVDs). We also bought the band’s 1998 DVD, Simply Red Live In London. I still have all of those, and Simply Red is still among the most-represented acts in our collection. There were times during which Nigel would play little else (something he did with plenty of other artists, too, like Nina Simone, for example). All of which means that, for me, “Holding Back the Years” was one of many Simply Red songs in the soundtrack of my life with Nigel.

“Holding Back the Years” reached Number 16 in Australia, 6 in Canada, 40 in New Zealand (Platinum), 2 in the UK (Gold), and Number One on the USA’s “Billboard Hot 100”, 4 of their “US Adult Contemporary” chart, and 29 on their “US Hot Black Singles” chart. It also reached Number 4 on the Cash Box “Top 100” chart.

The album Picture Book reached Number 6 in Australia (2x Platinum), 7 in Canada, 9 in New Zealand (Platinum), 2 in the UK (5x Platinum), and Number 16 on the USA’s ”Billboard 200”. The album was certified Platinum in the USA.

This series will return in next week, on July 19, with the next Number One song from July 1986.

Previously in the “Weekend Diversion – 1986” series:

Weekend Diversion: 1986, Part 1 – January 18, 2026
Weekend Diversion: 1986, Part 2 – February 15, 2026
Weekend Diversion: 1986, Part 3 – March 1, 2026
Weekend Diversion: 1986, Part 4 – March 15, 2026
Weekend Diversion: 1986, Part 5 – March 22, 2026
Weekend Diversion: 1986, Part 6 – March 29, 2026
Weekend Diversion: 1986, Part 7 – April 19, 2026
Weekend Diversion: 1986, Part 8 – May 3, 2026
Weekend Diversion: 1986, Part 9 – May 10, 2026
Weekend Diversion: 1986, Part 10 – May 17, 2026
Weekend Diversion: 1986, Part 11 – June 7, 2026
Weekend Diversion: 1986, Part 12 – June 14, 2026
Weekend Diversion: 1986, Part 13 – July 5, 2026

Successful return to the past

2026-07-07T12:18:09.149+12:00

Yesterday morning I did something I haven’t done for nearly 60 years: I made scrambled eggs in a cast iron pan. That sentence raises so many eyebrows (even for me), that there’s only one logical solution: A blog post. And here we are.

When I was a young boy, my mother used cast iron pans—a larger-sized one, a medium one, and a small one. She also had a large deep-sided pan with a cast iron lid that she called a Dutch oven, but, to modern day me, it was like a very deep fry pan with a lid, though the use is what matters. Her pots, on the other hand, were all aluminium.

At some point around 1970, my parents got an aluminium fry pan with a Teflon coating, and that’s what I used after that—and nearly all my fry pans from that point were also aluminium with a nonstick coating right up until very recently. Some years back, I became aware of the research showing evidence of the potential toxicity of PFAS, the chemicals that are the artificial chemicals that are used in nonstick coating for cookware, but also in flame retardants, waterproofing treatments, carpets, yoga mats, wall paint, adhesives, and lots of other stuff. The stuff stay around in the environment for such an incredibly long time that they’re commonly known as “forever chemicals”. Some PFAS are carcinogens or endocrine disruptors and have been linked to all sorts of health problems. I wanted to move away from non-stick cookware to avoid PFAS.

Sometime between 15 and 20 years ago, Nigel bought us a set of stainless steel pots and pans from an online liquidation auction company, and I still have them all. He later got us a set of name-brand non-stick pots and pans that were all in a line carrying the name of a famous British chef and TV cooking show presenter (the brand and names aren’t relevant to my point). Nigel preferred the non-stick pots and pans, and for a time I was indifferent—though the nonstick frypans were undeniably easier to clean than the stainless steel one we also had.

Around 2015, give or take, I’d started becoming increasingly concerned about the proliferation of chemicals in everyday life—but I still used the non-stick cookware. That all changed after Nigel died and I moved to Hamilton: The hob (cooktop) in my new house was induction and incompatible with the non-stick cookware, apart from the two frypans, which had a steel plate in their bases for better heat capabilities (the pots’ metal were all exclusively aluminium). I gave the pots away, and kept the frypans.

The smaller of the two frypans (the oldest one, which Nigel bought separately) began to lose its non-stickiness, and I knew I needed a replacement. I decided to go back to my roots and buy a NZ-made cast iron fry pan, which I did in 2022. I didn’t mention that here at the time, but I did in 2024 when bought the same company's cast iron dutch oven to replace our older one that was also incompatible with my induction hob.

Cast iron has to be “seasoned” to be used, and over time it develops a natural non-stick surface. However, I only recently started using that pan reasonably often, so I didn’t know if it was non-stick enough. But it was becoming more urgent that I use it because a similarly sized ceramic-coated pan I was using was losing its non-stickability, and I needed an alternative.

It turned out that the cast-iron pan performed very well, with only a little sticking at the edges, where the base meets the wall, which is acceptable to me. It was, in fact, better than either the failed nonstick pan or the ceramic one, and the scrambled eggs stayed together, which is what I was after that day. My next attempt will be to try making fried eggs, and if that’s acceptable I’ll no longer need either the ceramic pan or the last remaining nonstick pan I have, although that one I’ll need to replace regatless because it’s slowly losing its non-stickability, and its surface is starting to get pits in it, which means it’s time for it to go).

I’m still mastering (re-mastering?) the use of cast iron cookware, a lifetime after I last regularly used that kind, but I feel good about this change—actually, it’s not a change as much as it’s going back to my roots. Apparently, this really is a successful return to my past from decades ago, but one that’s been in the works, one way or another, for many years. It’s about time. And patience. And the right cookware.

Weekend Diversion: 1986, Part 13

2026-07-05T21:46:52.394+12:00

A new month and a new song reached Number One on the Billboard “Hot 100” forty years ago today. Today’s song was the first of four one-week Number One songs in July 1985—a new Number One every week that month. On July 5, 1986 “There'll Be Sad Songs (To Make You Cry)” (video up top) by Trinidadian-British singer and songwriter Billy Ocean (the stage name of Leslie Sebastian Charles) reached Number One. Released on January 22, 1986, the song was the second of four singles from Ocean’s sixth studio album, Love Zone, which was released on May 6, 1986. It was written and produced by Wayne Brathwaite and Barry Eastmond, with Ocean also reciveing a co-writing credit. The song was also reportedly the 600 th song to reach Number One on the Billboard chart.

I liked “There'll Be Sad Songs (To Make You Cry)”, but in researching this post I realised that I had a variety of reactions to his songs. The first of his songs that I was aware of was 1976’s "Love Really Hurts Without You”, a song that I liked because it had a classic-era Motown vibe to it. I don’t recall being aware of another of his songs until 1984’s "Caribbean Queen (No More Love on the Run)", a song I didn’t particularly like, though I also didn’t hate it. The following year, "Suddenly" was a hit, and I liked it. However, in 1986, the first single from Ocean’s album Love Zone was "When the Going Gets Tough, the Tough Get Going", and I absolutely loathed that song, and I still don’t like it, even if my negative reaction has mellowed with time.

The thing is, my dislike of both "Caribbean Queen” and "When the Going Gets Tough” was at the front of my mind when I saw what this week’s Number One was. Even so, that was a memory of disliking two earlier songs, and I was aware that I liked this week’s song. I looked at his singles discography and saw that up to and including this week’s Number One, there were songs that I both liked and didn’t like, and that’s something that has happened often over the years: The fact I dislike one song by an artist doesn’t (usually) prevent me from liking a different song by that artist, or vice versa. I presume that’s true for most people, but this is the first time I ever noticed that pattern in my own pop music journey. Learning or understanding new things is one of my favourite things about these “Weekend Diversion” posts.

“There'll Be Sad Songs (To Make You Cry)” reached Number 10 in Australia, Number One in Canada, 8 in New Zealand, 12 in the UK (Silver), and Number One on the USA’s “Billboard Hot 100”, “US Adult Contemporary”, and “US Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs” charts. It also reached Number One on the Cash Box “Top 100” chart and Number 3 on their “US Black Contemporary Singles” chart. No information on certification for the single was included in the Wikipedia article liked above.

The album Love Zone reached Number 8 in Australia, 3 in Canada, 8 in New Zealand, and 2 in the UK (Gold), as well as reaching Number 6 on the USA’s ”Billboard 200” and Number One on their “US Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums” charts. Love Zone was certified 2x Platinum in the USA.

This series will return in next week, on July 12, with a new Number One song from July 1986. It’s a similar story for each of the following two weeks, but not for August.

Previously in the “Weekend Diversion – 1986” series:

Weekend Diversion: 1986, Part 1 – January 18, 2026
Weekend Diversion: 1986, Part 2 – February 15, 2026
Weekend Diversion: 1986, Part 3 – March 1, 2026
Weekend Diversion: 1986, Part 4 – March 15, 2026
Weekend Diversion: 1986, Part 5 – March 22, 2026
Weekend Diversion: 1986, Part 6 – March 29, 2026
Weekend Diversion: 1986, Part 7 – April 19, 2026
Weekend Diversion: 1986, Part 8 – May 3, 2026
Weekend Diversion: 1986, Part 9 – May 10, 2026
Weekend Diversion: 1986, Part 10 – May 17, 2026
Weekend Diversion: 1986, Part 11 – June 7, 2026
Weekend Diversion: 1986, Part 12 – June 14, 2026

Before the later salty tale

2026-06-30T23:26:45.080+12:00

Sometimes stories have extra dimensions. I recently saw that reality in a story where I hadn’t seen it before—until someone else’s reaction reminded me. That’s a good thing.

Last Sunday I published “A salty story peppered with more”, which was just a simple story about salt and pepper grinders—until I was reminded it wasn’t. My pal Roger Green left a comment on that post:

I had never HEARD of a salt grinder. A pepper grinder I use regularly.

As I said in my reply, “actually, I’d never heard of one until well after I moved to New Zealand.” Naturally, there’s a story there, too.

When I first arrived in New Zealand in 1995, Nigel had the sort of salt container that was common at the time, as well as a supermarket pepper shaker. The photo above shows both, along with a salt pig (stay tuned…). Nigel and I replaced the salt container several times, but what I noticed about it was that there were two settings: Pour a lot, or, maybe, somewhat less: There was no shaker. I found it very difficult to work out how to use the thing (to “sprinkle” salt, I had to make the opening as small as possible). Eventually we switched to salt grinders, something I’ve used ever since.

The pepper shaker is many years old, and I still use it—however, I don’t use it unless I’m mixing a spice blend that requires a certain amount of ground pepper: It’s far easier to use that shaker than to grind pepper and then try to measure it. When it does run out some day, whatever will I do? Probably buy another.

Now, the salt pig: It's a wonderful thing. A salt pig (in New Zealand) is usually an earthenware pot that contains salt. There’s usually a spoon, often wood (as in the photo of mine above), to help dispense the salt. The idea is that salt is always available when cooking, which is useful plenty of times. However, I personally use mine mostly when making pasta (I salt the water once it’s boiling to help keep the pasta from sticking; contrary to popular belief, salting the water before it boils doesn’t make it boil faster—it’s the opposite, actually—but it does, apparently, help prevent the pasta from clumping and sticking together, or, it seems to do so for me).

Nigel wanted a salt pig for a long time, even though they were kind of old fashioned. When we were out and about one day, we saw and bought the one in the photo. I’m pretty sure it was at our last house together (though it could’ve been the house before that), but I have absolutely no memory of where or when we bought it. At the time, it just seemed like a perfectly ordinary thing to do, not worthy of note—so now I have no idea how or when it came into our lives. Even so, I use it all the time.

What this addendum is about, really, is that every story has annexes and anterooms, some of which lead to whatever our current story is. This is one of those times.

When I posted last Sunday, I thought it was a very specific story about very specific things. Roger reminded me that it was actually bigger than that, and, in fact, there was an origin story behind it. I think it’s good to think more broadly about our own stories, even the salty ones. This has been one of those times.

AmeriNZ Podcast episode 426 is now available

2026-06-26T15:31:52.630+12:00

AmeriNZ Podcast episode 426, “Success story”, is now available from the podcast website. There, you can listen, download or subscribe to the podcast episode, along with any other episode.

The five most recent episodes of the podcast are listed on the sidebar on the right side of this blog.

The fruit of my labour

2026-06-23T17:47:47.247+12:00

Behold the fruit of my labour! The photograph is of my tomato harvest for this year. While I did grow the tomato, this wasn’t actually the only one, just the biggest. But in away it was most of the harvest. As always, there’s a story to that.

Back in November, after the Labour weekend at the end of October had passed, I bought a 6-cell tray of little beefsteak tomato plants. I put them on my kitchen bench, under the Solatube skylight, and left them there—for months. By the time I was finally ready to plant them, only two survived (yes, I watered them, and I also rotated them periodically to make sure they grew well). There are a lot of reasons I didn’t get to them planted earlier, only some of which are kind of lame, but all of that’s kind of beside the point: It was simply the reality of what happened.

I planted to the two remaining plants in pots. As I have in previous years, but one of them didn’t survive the transplant. The one that did flourished and started producing—but time was running out. I was turning into autumn as the plant grew, and while we had a very mild autumn, it was still autumn. I left the plants to grow as long as I dared, but when nighttime temperatures started to get close to freezing, I picked the tomatoes green and put them in my fruit bowl with some store-bought tomatoes that weren’t quite ripe.

The tomato in the photo was the first to start growing, and was the biggest of the harvest (there were five in total), and it was also the first to start turning red. I had the first one over the weekend, and the others are all now ready, too.

The crop, small though it was, was quite good—sweeter than other varieties of tomato, and nice. Unlike the previous years I grew tomatoes here in Hamilton, I had no issue with blossom-end rot. That may be because of a change I made this year.

After the second year with blighted tomatoes, I did some research and read somewhere that calcium deficiency can cause or aggravate the problem. I also read that ground eggshells mixed into tomato soil increases calcium for the plants, so, I ground up egg shells in a mortar and pestle and mixed it that into the soil before planting the seedlings. I can’t know if that made the difference, but I do know the plant that survived was quite healthy and the tomatoes were as they’re supposed to be (unlike previous years), so when I next grow tomatoes, I’ll again mix ground-up egg shells into the soil.

The economics of this year’s harvest were not ideal, as Kiwis put it in their understated way. Each tomato that I harvested was more expensive than supermarket tomatoes in season—but they were also much better in every way. I like to think of this year’s tomato crop as being “Premium Tomatoes”. My garden, my rules!

For the next season, I plan on doing what I’ve wanted to do every year, but never have: Plan the next growing season while it’s still winter. That way, I’ll know what I’m going to do well before time, down to starting seeds so that the seedlings are ready to be planted-out when it’s warm enough (that method is also cheaper than buying plants…). That’s the plan, and maybe overly optimistic, but this year was an unusual deviation from even my worst years of gardening, so I think some optimism is warranted.

That’s the tale of my mini-harvest of tomatoes this year. All things considered, yes, it wasn’t ideal, but I still learned things, which is always a plus because I always like to keep growing. I just hope that my garden will next season, too.

Seasons changing in the right direction

2026-06-21T21:00:00.000+12:00

The June Solstice arrived in New Zealand at 8:49pm this evening, and I’m celebrating that fact. The days will start to get longer beginning tomorrow, and, in 72 days, we’ll see Spring return. And, yes, I’m being seasonally consistent.

I’ve often talked about how in this part of the world we say a season begins on the first of the month (December, March, June, and September), and not on the solstices or equinoxes. However, those astronomical dates are very relevant to one particular thing: Hours of sunlight. For me, the related season is kind of beside the point.

Hours of sunshine dramatically affects how much I have to pay for electricity: The more sunshine, the less I pay, thanks to my solar panels. This is something I’ve talked about before, and especially about how the winter months (and the month either side) electricity generally costs me much more than in the summer months (and the month either side). That’s because the longer days of summer, combined with the higher aspect of the sun, means I generate much more electricity than in the shorter days with lower sun angle. The angle of the sun matters because in winter afternoon it dips behind neighbouring houses much earlier than in the summer months, making already short days even shorter for power generation.

I have a special device that prioritises my solar power going to the electric hot water heater if my panels are producing enough electricity. In the winter months the days are shorter and often overcast or rainy, and that means I may not generate enough power to heat the water. When that happens, I can push the “boost” (as it’s called) button on that special device to take electricity from the grid to power the hot water heater, which it does for an hour. I usually do that after 10pm, when the rates are lower.

Every winter I have a couple mornings or so in which my shower is, at best, quite warm, rather than hot in any sense, so I push the button. Recently, though, I had a couple family members staying with me for awhile, and because of the shorter, rainier days and three adults using hot water, I had to push the “boost” button several times. As always, I did that after 10pm, however, during a rainy spell I also hit the boost button in the evening, too, to give us a fighting change of having hot water for showers in the morning.

Had I been able to afford batteries when I had the panels installed, this possibly wouldn’t be a problem because I could use the stored power to heat the water, however, that still only applies of there’s enough sunshine to generate enough electricity to charge the batteries. So, I might still need to use that boost button, though possibly not as often.

I plan on looking into adding batteries, and also adding a few more panels, which, I think, should go on the roof toward the back of the house, which gets sunshine later into the afternoon, even in winter. We’ll see: None of that is cheap.

In the meantime, winter means that I use the boost button when necessary, and, whether I use it or not, I pay more for electricity. And that’s why I’m celebrating the June Solstice: As winter fades, sunlight hours increase, and so does my power generation, which, in turn, means my power bill will decrease, too. So, of course I celebrate the June Solstice!

The next of these events I’ll celebrate will be the arrival of Spring on September 1 (for me, one of only a few goods thing about that month…). The September Equinox will be on September 23 at 12:05pm NZST. We’ll see if I notice that, but I won’t be surprised if I ignore it.

The image of the sun in the photo up up top is from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (NASA ID: PIA26681). It was taken on September 10, 2025.

A salty story peppered with more

2026-06-21T14:05:00.000+12:00

Not all the stories in our lives are deep and meaningful, or, often, even worth telling—unless one is a blogger (or similar…), in which case they're "content". In those cases, even small stories may take on a larger roll. Even when they’re "just" about food products.

Many—many—years ago, we bought a salt grinder and a pepper grinder at a supermarket then called Countdown (now called Woolworths New Zealand to align its imagery and marketing with its Australian owner). At the time, one of the store’s own brands was called “Signature Range,” and the salt grinder with that branding is at the right side of the photo at right. Even that has a story.

When I lived in Chicago (roughly 1983 to 1995), I did a lot of my grocery shopping at a supermarket chain called Jewel (or “da Jewels” as some native Chicagoans said it), which is now owned by big US company Albertsons. Jewel started selling a line of Canadian products called ”President’s Choice”. Fast forward some 30 years later and Countdown’s “Signature Range” immediately made me think of the old brand, probably because of the sort of signature-like logo. Countdown began phasing out “Signature Range” and other own brand product names to consolidate their own products lines between 2016 and 2018.

We used the two grinders for many years, refilling them whenever we needed to, which seemed to be fairly often because they were what we used both for cooking and at the table. Over time, we bought other, fancier grinders that would grind both salt and pepper (from different chambers), but we still had and used the Signature Range ones, too, until the pepper grinder broke.

After I moved to Hamilton, I realised that the fancy salt/pepper grinders we had weren’t working as well as they once did, though the Signature Range salt grinder was still going strong. Because I wanted a pepper grinder, I decided to see if Woolworths still sold the grinders, and they do! Well, sort of.

The current Woolworths brand salt and pepper grinders are at the left and centre of the photo above, and they’re different from the old brand: Smaller and noticeably much less well-made. I have a feeling they won’t last very long, certainly nowhere even close to the one or two decades that Signature Range salt grinder has lasted. Still they should last a while, anyway, before I need to find a more permanent solution.

Meanwhile, the veteran salt grinder is now by the hob (cooktop) because, as I recently learned when researching something only barely related to to this story, many chefs prefer courser salt (like that produced by a grinder). Those chefs say that ordinary table salt (like from a shaker) overwhelms dishes with saltiness because it’s finely ground, and so, courser salt is better (some table salt also has additives to prevent caking, among other things, which can affect flavour, too). It turns out that I think those chefs are right, though it hadn’t occurred to me before.

This story is a perfectly ordinary tale about me needing to replace a perfectly ordinary thing, and, as so often happens, that resulted in me remembering things from the past, and also learning new things related to my ordinary tale. Ordinary, yes, but so much of life is “ordinary”. I think that finding the adventure in the ordinary, and also learning new things along the way, makes every day better. That’s my ordinary belief, anyway. Season to taste.

Weekend Diversion: 1986, Part 12

2026-06-14T21:00:00.000+12:00

A new song reached Number One on the Billboard “Hot 100” forty years ago today, and it was there for a total of three weeks. On June 14, 1986 “On My Own” (video up top) a duet by American singers Patti LaBelle and Michael McDonald reached Number One. The song was the lead single from LaBelle’s eighth studio album, Winner in You, which was released on April 28, 1986. It was written and produced by Burt Bacharach and his then-wife Carole Bayer Sager. It was originally recorded by Dionne Warwick for her 1985 album, Friends.

In the mid-1980s, there were a bunch of slower songs that were hits, but often not with me, and this song was one of them. However, I didn’t actively dislike the song, either—it was a sort of somewhat negative neutrality. In those days, the song’s pace was far too slow for me, and that was the main thing. However, a bigger issue for me was that I was never a fan of Michael McDonald and I didn’t like his sound. While I liked LaBelle’s sound, I never bought any of her records, so I guess it was a kind of a passive appreciation of her work. Actually, that’s something that’s always been true for me back as far as I can remember. So, consistency, I guess.

“On My Own” reached Number 12 in Australia, 2 in Canada, 4 in New Zealand, 2 in the UK (Silver), and Number One on the USA’s “Billboard Hot 100”, “US Dance Singles Sales”, and “US Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs{ charts. It was also Number One on the Cash Box “Top 100” and “US Black Contemporary Singles” charts. The song was certified Gold in the USA.

The album Winner in You reached Number 72 in Australia, 10 in New Zealand, and 30 in the UK, as well as reaching Number One on the USA’s ”Billboard 200” and “US Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums” charts. It also reached Number 2 on the Cash Box “Top 100 Albums” chart, and was certified Platinum in the USA. The album didn’t chart in Canada, but it did achieve Platinum status.

This series will return in three weeks, on July 5, with the next new Number One from 1986. That song will begin a run of four one-week hits in a row.

Previously in the “Weekend Diversion – 1986” series:

Weekend Diversion: 1986, Part 1 – January 18, 2026
Weekend Diversion: 1986, Part 2 – February 15, 2026
Weekend Diversion: 1986, Part 3 – March 1, 2026
Weekend Diversion: 1986, Part 4 – March 15, 2026
Weekend Diversion: 1986, Part 5 – March 22, 2026
Weekend Diversion: 1986, Part 6 – March 29, 2026
Weekend Diversion: 1986, Part 7 – April 19, 2026
Weekend Diversion: 1986, Part 8 – May 3, 2026
Weekend Diversion: 1986, Part 9 – May 10, 2026
Weekend Diversion: 1986, Part 10 – May 17, 2026
Weekend Diversion: 1986, Part 11 – June 7, 2026

Resetting the house, part one

2026-06-14T17:50:14.150+12:00

This photo might not look significant, but what it represents is huge: Four large rubbish bags, one ordinary one, a shopping bag, and a box, all filled with stuff that I was donating. This is an ongoing story.

In late February, I started going through clothes and continued off and on until last week (I kept realising there were more drawers or boxes to sort through). It’s a mix of stuff that was mine, Nigel’s, and Nigel’s partner before me, Gary (who died a couple years before Nigel and I became a couple). On Friday, as my final sorting before the donation, I gathered all the bedding I don’t want or need anymore, mostly duvet cover sets and some sheet sets for a bed I no longer have.

Friday evening, one of the family and I finished sorting and folding the clothes, and then Saturday morning another family member packed it all up and took it to the op shop (aka charity shop or thrift store). The photo is of the stuff’s last stop before leaving the house.

Getting rid of the clothes, etc., wasn’t even remotely emotionally challenging for me, though I did keep three things of Nigel’s for purely sentimental reasons (two shirts and a jacket). However, most things had memories or stories attached to them, and remembering them can actually be more tiring than the sorting itself—tiring, but not even remotely painful.

I still have a lot more stuff in the house to go through, like, for example, Nigel and I had lots of stuff for big family get-togethers, and I don’t need all of it anymore. That’ll be a big job, too, but it’ll free up a lot of space for the stuff I DO need or want.

Then, of course, there’s still the garage to declutter/clear out, but I don’t actually care about that: My top priority is to free the house itself of excess stuff, and then take on the garage. The reason is simple: I don’t go into the garage often, but I’m inside my house every day (obviously…) and I want it to be my sanctuary. First things first, in other words.

I first mentioned this decluttering in a post back in April, when I described as a project “neither planned nor even intended”. Technically, it’s actually a “sub-project” because it’s really one part of my “Operation Re-invent My House” project—or maybe “mega project” is more accurate? Anyway, this particular part was done in small bits, mainly because I kept sorting through more stuff until I decided to stop for the time being simply because I wanted to get the massive piles of stuff I’d set aside to donate out of the house. There will definitely be a lot more.

So, yesterday what felt to me like a massive amount of stuff left my house, and that was just the beginning. Suddenly this long and difficult journey I’ve been on felt a little bit shorter and easier, and, yet again, the family helped me get there. Now, on to the next goal! It feels a bit more achievable now.

Weekend Diversion: 1986, Part 11

2026-06-07T22:57:22.305+12:00

A new month and a new song reached Number One on the Billboard “Hot 100”: On June 7, 1986 “Live to Tell” (video up top) by American singer Madonna went to Number One. The song was the first single from her third studio album, True Blue, which was released on June 30, 1986. The song was a re-working of what had been an instrumental to make something suitable for the film At Close Range, which starred her then-husband Sean Penn.

I liked Madonna in this era of her career, and I liked this particular song well-enough, even though it was a bit slower than I typically liked at the time, but I didn’t necessarily like it as much as some of her other songs in that era. However, I was never a super-fan: I never saw her in concert, and I never bought one of her albums, as far as I can remember, though I think I bought a single or two. However, when I arrived in New Zealand in 1995, I found that Nigel had her 1990 compilation album, The Immaculate Collection, which isn’t really relevant to this blog post except that this week’s song is on it. Of course.

As the years when on, I continued to like some of Madonna’s songs, and others not as much. Once again, something that’s not unusual for me. However, forty years ago it was stereotypical for young gay men to be presumed to be big fans of Madonna, and, like most stereotypes, it was exaggerated. Nevertheless, I was 27 when this song and its album were released, and that made me a bit too old to be included in the stereotype, but also, as it turned out, a bit too old to understand why the stereotype existed. Maybe it was my first “kids these days” moment?

“Live to Tell” reached Number 7 in Australia, Number One and Canada, Number 6 in New Zealand, 2 in the UK (Silver), and Number One on the USA’s “Billboard Hot 100” and on their “Adult Contemporary” charts. It was also Number One on the Cash Box “Top 100”. The song wasn’t certified in the USA.

The album True Blue reached Number One in Australia (4x Platinum), Canada (Diamond), New Zealand (5x Platinum), and the UK (7x Platinum), as well as reaching Number One on the USA’s ”Billboard 200” chart and on the Cash Box “Top 100 Albums” chart. It was certified 7x Platinum in the USA.

Since I mentioned it, the 1990 album The Immaculate Collection reached Number One in Australia (14x Platinum) and Canada (7x Platinum), 3 in New Zealand (7x Platinum), Number One in the UK (13x Platinum), and also reached Number 2 on the USA’s ”Billboard 200” chart. It was certified 11x Platinum in the USA.

This series will return in next week, on June 14, with the next new Number One from 1986. Unlike this week, that one wasn’t a one-week hit.

Previously in the “Weekend Diversion – 1986” series:

Weekend Diversion: 1986, Part 1 – January 18, 2026
Weekend Diversion: 1986, Part 2 – February 15, 2026
Weekend Diversion: 1986, Part 3 – March 1, 2026
Weekend Diversion: 1986, Part 4 – March 15, 2026
Weekend Diversion: 1986, Part 5 – March 22, 2026
Weekend Diversion: 1986, Part 6 – March 29, 2026
Weekend Diversion: 1986, Part 7 – April 19, 2026
Weekend Diversion: 1986, Part 8 – May 3, 2026
Weekend Diversion: 1986, Part 9 – May 10, 2026
Weekend Diversion: 1986, Part 10 – May 17, 2026

Leo is nine

2026-06-01T23:27:58.102+12:00

Today isn’t merely the first day of winter in this part of the word, nor is it merely the King’s Birthday public holiday in New Zealand, no, the MOST important thing is that today is my little boy Leo’s ninth birthday!

Leo came to live with us shortly before his first birthday, and was such a gentle, loving soul that Nigel said, "we're besotted with him,” and he was right. I still am enough for both of us.

I've written several times about the how he and I are the only survivors of the family he joined back in 2018, and how how he's on of the main reasons I'm still here to talk about it—and no, I'm not talking about anything dire that might have happened, but, rather, simply that he gave me a reason and focus to keep moving forward. In other words, Leo was with me during every loss, and that's made me feel incredibly lucky to have had him with me.

As has often happened in past years, he needs to be groomed, but unlike in the past, he's been allowing me to trim his fur and we're making progress. Hopefully he doesn't change his mind before we finish. Today, however, was a day off for him. Of course.

Happy Ninth Birthday, Leo!

(Also I don’t think he’s intentionally giving me side eye in his birthday portrait…)

Related:

Leo is eight – 2025
Leo is seven – 2024
Leo is six – 2023
Leo is five – 2022
Leo is four – 2021
Leo is three – 2020
Leo is two – 2019
Leo is one year old – 2018
Another new addition – The post in which I announced Leo joined our family
All blog posts tagged “Leo” – All the posts in which I’ve talked about him

AmeriNZ Podcast episode 425 is now available

2026-06-01T22:45:00.000+12:00

AmeriNZ Podcast episode 425, “The persisting podcast”, is now available from the podcast website. There, you can listen, download or subscribe to the podcast episode, along with any other episode.

The five most recent episodes of the podcast are listed on the sidebar on the right side of this blog.

A busy time to end the month

2026-05-30T22:35:00.000+12:00

I’ve been busy lately, in a good way. Today I went to the birthday lunch for one of my sisters-in-law, one of the biggest gatherings of the extended family in a long time. Then, I went over to their house to join the family in further celebrations, including karaoke, though I mercifully spared everyone from enduring what surely would’ve been a shocking sonic assault coming from me. At the end of the night, I dropped a visiting sister- and brother-in-law at their motel, which, conveniently was on my way home. Travel advice from another brother-in-law (the birthday girl’s husband) worked a treat.

This past Thursday I got a hair cut at a barber I haven’t been to before. After my recent unfortunate experience at the one I’ve been going to since I shifted to Kirikiriroa-Hamilton (which I mentioned here on the blog at the time), I’m looking for a new option. The one I chose was better, but an incomplete success (not the least because it was a 75% increase in price for a haircut I still wasn’t happy with). The search continues.

This coming week will be busy, too. We have a public holiday on Monday (King’s Birthday), which is also the first day of winter in the Southern Hemisphere. On Wednesday I’ll go to my mother-in-law’s for my weekly visit with her, and then on Thursday I have my annual visit with my doctor and my annual flu vaccination. Oh, and I also have my biannual bowel cancer screening poop test to do at some point.

Busy days. And nights, apparently.