AmeriNZ Blog

Persuading myself

2022-07-27T17:22:00.002+12:00

One year ago today, I got my first Covid vaccine jab. So much has happened in the year since (including two more jabs and fourth soon to come), but other, unrelated health things have continued. Maybe those other things will soon improve.

Over the past year, the best indicator of how I was doing at any given time was how I was getting on with projects around the house: If I got projects done, I was doing okay, but if I was stalled, maybe I wasn’t doing okay. I haven’t put it quite like that before, but it’s nevertheless a fact—although, in some cases projects stalled for reasons beyond my control, like lockdowns, unavailability of supplies, and so on.

However, a few months ago I pretty much stalled on all my projects for the house, which, as I’ve said previously, I’m convinced happened because the blood pressure medication I was on made me profoundly tired. Today, I started the new blood pressure medication, and it’s with the most hope I’ve had in a prescription change in nearly four years.

In fairness to me, the bad effects of drugs aren’t always immediately obvious because one’s body takes time to adjust to medications and changes like I experienced don’t happen all at once or suddenly. Also, since we humans are pretty good at adapting, and bad effects accumulate slowly, it often happens without us even noticing. Still, it was eventually obvious even to me that something wasn’t right, even as early as April, so why the f*ck didn’t I do something then?! The truth is that I’m angry at myself for letting the bad situation go on for so long: My life has been hell for three months and maybe I could’ve changed that—maybe.

It’s always been my nature to trust doctors and to “wait and see”—which is, if not my greatest flaw, it’s at least my most dangerous one: Doctors do get it wrong sometimes, what with being human and all. This has been a problem for pretty much my whole adult life.

I also know, though, that if Nigel was alive, he’d have told me in no uncertain terms to talk to the doctor—he could be very “persuasive”—and he’d have done it months ago. I know this in part because I went through the exact same thing a few years ago when doctors put me on beta-blockers, which turned me into a zombie, as Nigel put it when he was persuading my to go to the doctor. He had to persuade me again when the beta-blocker they switched me to was only a bit better. At the time, we were only weeks from heading to Australia, and he told me, “I’m not going to Australia with you if you’re like this!” I was thus persuaded to go back to my doctors who cut my dosage, and I felt quite a bit better after that. When I wrote about that dosage change at the time, I didn’t say why I’d changed my mind and gone back to the doctor early, but it was only because of Nigel’s persuasion. In the end, our trip to Australia was a huge success (apart from him catching norovirus…).

I now have to be my own persuader, and it’s still incredibly difficult for me to do. Even so, it’s something I absolutely must learn to do because my run on this blue ball in space may have 2 or 3 decades left, if I’m lucky (?), and I need to do for myself what Nigel used to do—I need to persuade myself to speak up for myself.

So, today I started the new blood pressure medication, and I’m realistic about it: It might be awesome, it might be far worse, but it also may be merely good enough. Good enough would be good enough—for now.

Another thing that held me back was the fact I knew my doctor wouldn’t believe me that the drug was making me profoundly fatigued, because doctors usually assume less common side effects don’t exist at all. I was right, but he agreed to change my drug, anyway. All my doctors have always done that, too—they’re not monsters!—but this is the firts time I asked for blood pressure medication to be change (doctors changed it twice before this).

Maybe this will be a turning point of sorts, letting me get back to where I was a year ago—or maybe even better? Simply getting back to where I was would be absolutely huge, because I’ve fallen so far behind where I wanted to be with this house by now (and far behind where I thought I’d be). I know that much of that is my own damn fault, and I can’t change that—but I can resolve to not let it ever happen again. I just have to master persuading myself, and that job has proven to be the hardest of all. Maybe that will soon improve, too.

I shared the photo up top on my personal Facebook this morning, only adding the “fingers crossed” emoji, 🤞.

The Super-secret Project: YOMP2

2022-07-19T17:03:00.000+12:00

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been working on what I dubbed my “Super-Secret Project”, one that’s related to several projects, one way or another. Mainly, though, this project is a stand-alone one that’s connected to one other, but is nevertheless a project all on its own: It’s basically YOMP2.

In August of last year, I talked about buying a vintage Macintosh, and I went on to nickname that project “Ye Olde Mac Project” (or, YOMP). I did a couple updates, one on September 2, in which I talked more about the reasons I was doing the project at all, and another later that month about buying a vintage Power Computing Mac keyboard. In that post, I foreshadowed what would become YOMP2. I said:

…in my first YOMP update post, I talked about not being able to access old diskettes. I said that “somehow getting access to a working vintage Macintosh” was an option if I can’t get the Mac Classic working. The jury’s still out on whether that Mac Classic will work or not, but I made progress on the back-up option, something I’ll talk about in a few weeks (those same Covid restrictions are delaying the completion of this mysterious development). But I think it’ll be a good development.

A few days before that post, I’d bought a newer vintage Mac, an LC575 (photo above right), on our online auction site. I was so vague about it because those Covid restrictions at the time meant I couldn’t go to Auckland to pick it up, and I had no idea when I’d would. Then, the restrictions eased a wee bit, but I still couldn’t go there, so my niece was able to pick it up for me. However, even then I still had no idea when I’d be able to get the Mac—and I didn’t even know for sure if it worked (though I knew the screen worked). I didn’t want to talk about it until I knew more.

Then, things got worse: Auckland got locked down until just before Christmas and there was absolutely no way I could go pick it up, or for family to bring it to me. In the meantime, my niece moved to a new place, and that delayed things further.

I finally got it January, and I started it up. The screen showed a question mark in a drawing of a diskette, which means it couldn’t find the operating system. I checked the logic board and it looked fine: The battery hadn’t exploded (less likely than for the Mac Classic) or leaked, and none of the capacitors needed to be replaced. I thought it looked a bit dusty, though, so I bought a can of compressed air, which I mentioned at the time, adding, “It’s for a super-secret project that soon won’t be secret, but dunno whether it’ll turn out super or not (I’m optimistic, though).” And that’s where things stayed.

I don’t have any reasons, or even an explanation, for why I didn’t work on it, apart from having so many (too many, probably…) projects, and then there was that whole fatigue thing to contend with. I do think, though, that I was also afraid that it, too, might be beyond my abilities to get going again.

It wasn’t just a vintage Mac that I bought, it was a vintage bundle: It came with two keyboards, a mouse, and a Colour StyleWriter 2400, a thermal inkjet printer that Apple started making in September 1994, about the same time the LC 575 was made. While ink for the printer is still available, it’s hopelessly out of date: It printed only 3 pages per minute in black and white, and 0.3 in colour. If I was a collector of Apple products—and, by default, I guess I am—it would be a “nice to have”, but not something I needed or sought. Everything else was useful, though.

However, one of the two keyboards was damaged in that move, but that didn’t really matter because if I ever get the Mac Classic (the first vintage Mac I bought) going, I’ll now have a keyboard for it (because I’d already had that Power Computing keyboard). All that’s good, but then it got even better.

The seller later offered to give me some USB Iomega Zip Drives, and some used Zip disks they had. I told them that those drives have value (they can be quite expensive if in working order and good condition), but the seller didn’t want money for them, especially because they knew the Mac was going to someone who really wanted it. That happened after my niece had already collected the Mac for me, so the seller dropped the drives off, which is probably how they got separated from the stuff I’d bought.

I got those drives recently, after my niece found them in a box, and I plugged one into my current Mac and was able to access one of my Zip Disks. I couldn’t get any other disks to read, however, I didn’t know if the drive was faulty or if, like with floppy disks, my current Mac was too new to access the files.

The next step, I decided, was to to see if I could get the LC575 itself running again. My idea was to plug my own SCSI Zip Drive into it. It took a couple goes, but I eventually got the LC575 to boot up; there were a few old-timey things I needed to do (using long forgotten techniques), but the important thing is that it had been so long since it was last used that it took the hard drive some time to start spinning again. Once it did, it was fine.

The first task I took on was checking all those 800K floppy disks I hadn’t been able to read before. Out of the 45 I’d found, I checked 35 (the other 10 had software files on them), and of those, 17 had files I wanted to have (most of the diskettes were either blank or had files I didn’t want, like software updates). I was, right, though, that among those 17 were some of my oldest files—but not all of what I wanted.

I’d discovered that I didn’t have the correct SCSI cable to plug my Zip Drive into the LC575 (I think I still have it somewhere, though), so instead I plugged one of the USB Zip Drives into my old MacBook Pro, and I was right: It was able to access all the files on the disks. By that time, I’d found 11 Zip Disks (I’d found another one since last mentioning them). Two of them were Nigel’s files, and appeared to be Windows updates, but the other nine had files I wanted, including the biggest prize: Our emails to each other from before I came to New Zealand the first time, in September 1995, and from during the time between that visit and when I moved here in November. I still have even larger disks to access, but I can’t do much with them because of the limitations of the LC575.

The problems I face are, first, that the LC575 doesn’t have a network connection. In those days, Macs generally used a networking protocol called AppleTalk (later called LocalTalk), often using phone cables with special connectors. In fact, at my first job in New Zealand I set up and maintained such a network, though that one used coaxial cables. The LC575 had an expansion slot, as most later Macs had, and the LC575 takes a card that plugs into the Processor Direct Slot (PDS) to provide an Ethernet connection, and that’s what my wired home network is.

That matters because I the larger external SCSI storage device I have is called a SyJet, sold by SyQuest Technology, a company that at its height was THE way to transfer large files (or lots of files). The Syjet cartridges held 1.5GB each, and was a competitor to Iomega’s Jaz Drive, the cartridges for which held 1GB. I bought the Syjet Drive not just for the larger capacity cartridges, but also because Jaz Drives were notorious for their failures—the infamous “click of death”. Both companies are long gone, and their products are rare. The advent of CD writers and FTP made the Syquest and Iomega products unnecessary and obsolete.

All of this matters because unless I can connect the LC575 to my ethernet network, it’d be an absolutely HUGE job to transfer files. If one of the Syjet cartridges was full, it would take more than a thousand floppy disks to move all the files, however, because the LC575’s hard drive currently only has around 40MB of available space, I’d have to do lots of small batches over and over and over.

In the interim, I’ll check the Syjet cartridges for any files that I want right now. There may or may not be any files like that—I simply don’t know. But finding what’s on them is at least possible now.

The Super-Secret Project, then, was really just a joking name for a revised version of the original Ye Olde Macintosh Project, and it exists for the exact same reason as the original: To get access to my oldest files. But that’s not where this ends.

I have lots of games from that era, including one of my favourites from that time, like “Marathon” from Bungie software (it was a forerunner of their later “Halo” series). It’ll be fun, in a nostalgic kind of way, to play those games again (although parts one and two of the “Marathon” trilogy were ported to Apple’s iPadOS, I find it too difficult to play without a keyboard). In true Apple fashion, there’s one more thing.

The Macintosh LC575 is the model that Nigel had before I came to New Zealand, and for some time afterward. I brought my own Mac with me, and I have vivid memories of us both sitting in the room we shared as an office, him on his LC575, and me on my Performa 637. We both upgraded many times in the years afterward, going back and forth between Windows machines and Macs, before we both ultimately settled on Macs. Nigel’s LC575, then, was an integral part of making it possible for there to even BE an “us”. I didn’t buy the LC575 because of that—I knew it was a good machine for its era, met all my criteria, and as an all-in-one Mac, and that meant I wouldn’t have to find a vintage monitor or work out how to adapt a newer one to work with a vintage Mac. Even so, the fact it’s an LC575 is definitely a nice bonus.

This project, whether it’s called YOMP or YOMP2, isn’t completely finished and done, but I have accomplished the main driver for this whole project: I now have the old files that were the most important to me, especially those 27-year-old emails. And that feels bloody awesome.

More on the Mac LC575: It was available February 1994 to April 1995 (the one I bought was manufactured in August 1994). It has a Motorola 68LC040 33MHz processor; the “LC” in the processor name means it had no Floating Point Unit, which affects graphics, and the same processor with an FPU would be labelled 68040. The LC versions of processors were used in Performa Macs and in LC models. It could run up to MacOS 8.1, and shipped with System 7.1. They started with an 80MB hard drive (the one I have has a 250MB hard drive), and had 4MB built-in memory, expandable to a 68MB maximum. They had a built-in 14-inch Trinitron colour CRT monitor, a 2x CD-ROM drive (read only), and a SuperDrive for floppy disks. It originally cost US$1,699. In today’s money, adjusted for inflation, that would be about US$3,049. The 2022 US amount would be around NZ$4993 in today’s dollars, which can be compared to current models: The new Mac Studio with an M1 Ultra chipset would cost NZ$3,999, but without a monitor, and the more comparable 24-inch iMac with maximum memory and internal hard drive would be NZ$2499. Modern Macintoshes are definitely a LOT more affordable now, even if it sometimes doesn’t feel like it.

Cooking from the cupboard

2022-07-18T13:41:00.001+12:00

One of the cooking challenges I enjoy the most is making something new using, and using only what I have on hand makes it even more of an interesting challenge for me. Saturday night, I did exactly that. It was very inexpensive, meatless—and far too much work.

The dish (photo above) was Kūmara gnocchi with Garlic Cream Sauce. I made the gnocchi myself, from scratch—I’d never done that before. I mention that first because, frankly, doing that was the most important part of it to me, and the motivator for trying the recipe.

The meal is adapted from a recipe from New World’s YouTube Channel (WATCH), however, theirs had a garlic cream sauce, with pesto sauce as a sort of garnishy thing (and that was supposed to be homemade, too, but, yeah, nah, that wasn’t going to happen). Instead of that, I combined store bought pesto with the cream sauce. The result was okay, I thought, and the original would’ve been okay, too (though I think the original should’ve included some onion, based on similar sauces I’ve made or had).

However: This recipe was waaaaaay too time-consuming: It took an hour and a half all up, so I won’t be making it again. I’m also highly unlikely to make gnocchi from scratch again, or, at least, I’d only make ordinary gnocchi, not the kūmara one (it was okay, but nothing special). Supermarkets sell really nice pre-made gnocchi, after all. still, I don’t regret making it—it was just too much trouble for not enough payoff. IMHO.

When I sat down to cost out the recipe, I realised I’d accidentally left out the 1/2 cup of parmesan cheese. Oops. The costs are probably more or less the same, though, because I used store-bought pesto. Your mileage may vary. The costs were:

Kūmara – orange: $4.00/kg, 500g used: $1.06. Plain flour: $1.33/kg, 1 cup (120g) used: $0.16 $2.50/250g jar, approx 10g used: $0.10. Cream: $3.6/250ml box, 1 used: $3.60. Grated parmesan cheese: $34.10/kg, approx 45g in the recipe: $1.53. Olive oil (panty staple): $10.70 per 1 litre bottle, approx 15 millilitres used: $0.16.

This means it came to a total of $6.55 for the entire meal (today, around US$4.04). This means it’d be $3.28 per person (today, around US$2.02) if two people were fed, $2.18 per person (today, around US$1.34) if three people were fed, and $1.64 per person (today, around US$1.01) per person if four people were fed.

It’d be fine for two people, definitely, and most likely okay for three, but I don’t think it makes enough for four people. Adding chicken would definitely make enough to feed four people, or the recipe could be increased—at additional cost, of course.

Thinking about it the next day, I thought the meal would’ve been better with the garlic cream sauce that the original recipe used, or, maybe if I’d included the parmesan cheese I would’ve liked it better. Regardless, neither of those changes the fact that making the gnocchi from scratch was too much work—and far too messy—to justify the effort when it’s just for me. I might do that if I was making it for the family, or if I’d made it for me and Nigel, but, yeah, it’s a lot of work. And that’s why if I make it again, it’ll definitely be with store-bought gnocchi. And maybe chicken.

Still, as it was, this recipe was cheap to make, meatless, and, for a change, used only stuff I had on hand, and that means it’s something I could, theoretically, make at any time. Yes, well, nice in theory.

A day better than expected

2022-07-10T20:06:00.002+12:00

Every once in a while, days turn out differently than we expected at the start. When it’s a better than expected day, it can be pretty great. Like yesterday, for example.

Yesterday ended up being a good day because of lots of unusual things. I caught up with my cousin-in-law, which is unusual because of all the plague and winter illnesses (on top of ordinary busy-ness) have meant the family hasn’t had much chance to get together over the past few months.

Next, I looked through some boxes of my own stuff, packed away for years, to look for something I need for the Super-Secret Project. Didn’t find that, but found lots of personal treasures I thought were lost in the sands of time. I was surprised, but also happy to find those things, relics of my life from decades ago.

I made my awesome dinner, fed Leo, and that was followed by the most unusual thing of all: I took Leo for a little walk.

The back story is that walking three dogs alone was impossible, but Jake was arthritic and couldn’t go on walks, Sunny always pulled on the lead (then her health started to fail), and Leo couldn’t walk far, so I always ended up having to carry him home. Plus, I have a large fenced yard and the dogs could run around as much as they wanted to, though Leo was the only one who actually ran.

On top of that, I’ve had that ongoing issue with often deep fatigue, so I wasn’t up to walks. Leo and I play The Chase Game all the time, though: He has me chase him around the house, sometimes he chases me, and he clearly loves it. He especially likes it because he gets far better grip on the carpet than he gets outside, and he can change directions quickly (important for the game). I haven’t been up to playing the game with him as much or for as long as I was last year, and I’m pretty sure the medication I was changed to late last year is the culprit (a few days ago, I talked about the new medication I hope will help this problem, and that starts in about two weeks).

So, why a walk last night? The neighbours over the back fence were having a small party, sitting outside in their covered area (I presume they have some sort of patio heater…), and Leo does NOT like people on the other side of his fence! If they’re talking and laughing, he hates it even more. Just before dark, I had to go outside because he was barking at them through the fence, and then I had to make him walk back into the house. He just kind of glared at me when I gave him a verbal command, so I had to herd him into the house. I knew he’d run right back there if I let him out into the yard, and that’s something I always do after he eats his dinner.

So, the only solution was to take him for a walk. Thing is, Nigel and I only walked him once or twice, and I haven’t since I’ve been in this house, so he doesn’t quite get the concept: He never sniffed the spots other dogs had visited, and he never, um, emptied his tanks (which was the whole point).

We walked down to the end of the street, and then someone from the area walked their dog toward us a young (>2 years?) black Lab sort of dog who was on lead, of course, but a little rambunctious (I wasn’t sure whether the guy had complete control). I picked Leo up, and he was NOT happy about that: He did his high-pitched bark/whine thing, which seemed to echo; I was a bit worried that neighbours might think he was hurt.

I carried him part of the way back to our house, and he squirmed. I put him back down (I still hoped he might empty his tanks…), but he wanted to go find that other dog, and I was afraid be might wriggle out of his harness (he’s done that before), and I’d have no hope of catching him if he did that.

I picked him up again, walked a bit further uphill toward home, and put him down again. We got to our house, but he wanted to keep going. I walked him onto our front lawn (which he again never sniffed), and still wasn’t keen on going back inside. I, however, had reached the end of my energy reserves.

The walk was short, but apparently enough to tire him out: He usually plays with his toys in the evening, but yesterday evening he mostly slept. In the end, he didn’t wee in the house, and preventing that was the whole reason I took him on that short walk. Maybe he was too tired?

We were lucky that it wasn’t raining at the time (it’s been raining a lot in recent days), but we’d have been luckier if I’d had the stamina to walk him farther/longer. Hopefully one day we’ll both get to have longer walks. But last night, we got a little one. And Leo got to have his very own good and unusual thing his day, too.

Sometimes, unusual things can make a day turn out better than expected. Yesterday was just another example of that.

Further meal experiments

2022-07-10T16:27:00.004+12:00

"Yesterday evening, I tried another meal experiment, one that was a bit unusual because I got the recipe from a YouTube video, and it was similar to a recipe I’d tried a week ago that I got from a different YouTube video. I felt the first attempt needed changes, and when I saw the second video, I knew it would be much better. It turned out I was right. If nothing else, this experimentation is showing me that I’m becoming able to pretty accurately anticipate what a recipe will be like.

The first recipe, the one I thought was “alright, I guess…”, came from a YouTube video posted by a New Zealand supermarket chain. I originally subscribed to their channel so I could more easily find their TV commercials to share here on the blog—but they seldom post the ads any more, and it’s now mostly just about recipes. This one was the first I thought I’d like to try making.

I’ve never actually cooked red lentils before (only brown), and I didn’t realise that they can turn mushy when they’re cooked. I thought about adding a can of chickpeas to bulk it up, but added a can of brown lentils instead. The results was okay, but not awesome. I also served it on basmati rice, which wasn’t really necessary.

I was thinking about how to change it to improve it, when I saw a video by a British YouTubers I subscribe to, Luke Catleugh. I watch all his videos, but that particular one caught my attention because of the title: “MEALS FOR UNDER £1”. I’ve been fascinated lately by trying to make yummy, nutritious meals (especially meatless ones) for as little money as possible. This particular recipe stood out for me because it seemed to fix all the problems I felt the first recipe had—and I was right (the video is at the bottom of this post, queued for this recipe, or you can watch it on YouTube).

The first difference was the use of chickpeas—I should’ve followed my instincts with the first recipe! The spice blend was also somewhat different (a lot less ginger for example), and the blend that Luke used suited my tastes better. My only real variation was that I used dried chilli flakes instead of fresh chilli, something I’ve never cooked with and am leery of because I don’t like food to me too hot.

Repeating what I did when I talked about my homemade chicken soup, here’s what’s in the recipe, the unit cost, and the amount used, and actual cost:

Dried red lentils: $2.70/375g bag, 90g used: $0.16. 1 can chopped tomatoes: $1.20. 1 can coconut milk: $3.00. 1 red onion: $4/1.5kg bag, 150g used: $0.40. One low-salt vegetable stock cube: $3.90/box of 10: $0.39. Various spices (pantry staple): approx $0.25. Olive oil (panty staple): $10.70 per 1 litre bottle, approx 15 millilitres used: $0.16.

This time, I included the cost of pantry staples, mostly because I happened to need a new bottle of olive oil, so I had the current price available; I don’t know that I’ll always do that. In any case, with all the things I could cost out, it came to a total of $6.05 for the entire meal (today, around US$3.75, or £3.12—I mention the prices in pounds sterling because Luke originally priced it in that currency). This means it’d be $3.03 per person (today, around US$1.56 or £1.88) if two people were fed, $2.02 per person (today, around US$1.25 or £1.04) if three people were fed, and $1.51 per person (today, around US$0.94 or £0.78) per person if four people were fed.

In my opinion, the amount the recipe as presented (and as I made it) makes would probably suit two to three people, unless, maybe it was extended with a salad, naan or other bread, etc., which would add to the cost, of course. However, doubling the recipe to have larger portions, to feed more people, or even just to have leftovers would still be quite inexpensive. In fact, it would be pretty comparable in cost to my homemade chicken soup, and arguably heartier.

I really liked this meal, so I’m adding it to my list of meals to make several times a year; the only real barrier to making it with any kind of frequency is that I don’t normally have coconut milk in my pantry. Maybe I can make it whenever coconut milk is on special (or stock up so I have it in the pantry when I want to make this).

All of this is part of my effort to live more frugally/sustainably, while still eating well and more healthily. I’m enjoying the challenge of doing all three at once, and this recipe is definitely one to help me achieve my food goals.

Wins all around!

Here’s the full video, queued to start with the recipe I followed:

Another attempt. Again.

2022-07-07T17:05:00.002+12:00

About 3 weeks ago, I had an “incident” and said I was going to change my blood pressure medication. That was a bit cheeky, since I hadn't yet said anything to my GP. It's now official, and, as per my request, I'll be changing to a different drug at my next prescription renewal, in a couple weeks. This is, in fact, the first time I've ever asked to change BP drugs.

The new drug is called Losartan, and is an “angiotensin II receptor antagonist”. Like (nearly?) all medications used to treat hypertension, this one has other uses, too. It’s often used for people who can’t tolerate ACE inhibitors, and both my current drug and the discontinued one before that are that type.

I could've predicted that my GP would be sceptical that the current BP medication is causing my ongoing (but not constant), excessive, tiredness, because doctors are always sceptical whenever I suggest a problem with a medication—even when it turned out I was right. I'm used to it. Still, if I report that I don’t feel right, it’s worth trying other options.

This will be the third BP medication I've been on. The first two didn't seem to cause excessive tiredness, but when I was overly tired, they were combined with other drugs that could’ve had that effect, either alone or in combination, so, maybe they did? I was on the second drug from when I got my stent, and only changed because it was discontinued. The tiredness is definitely greater now than it was under my previous drug, though I was tired then, too.

Obviously, I can’t know if this change will help or not, or whether I’ll experience any side effects. Honestly, though, even a small improvement would mean a big improvement in the quality of my life. I’ve learned how to ration my energy, after all, and if there’s more energy to ration, then I’ll be able to get a lot more done, and that, in turn, will help me get moving—in every sense.

If this doesn’t help, then I’ll just have to keep pushing until a solution is found. It could well turn out that there is no good solution, just one that’s less bad than others. Pushing and trying is the only way I’ll ever know, or have a chance to move forward again.

Important note: This is about my own personal health journey. My experiences are my own, and shouldn’t be taken as indicative for anyone else. Similarly, other people may have completely different reactions to the same medications I take—better or worse. I share my experiences because others may have the same or similar experiences, and I want them to know that they’re not alone. But, as always, discuss your situation and how you’re feeling openly, honestly, and clearly with your own doctor, and always feel free to seek a second opinion from another doctor.

An unusual thing happened

2022-07-05T22:07:00.001+12:00

This morning I had an unusual thing happen, something with plenty of rational explanations, all equally plausible. But it’s the implausible, impossible to prove or refute that gripped me: It felt like I got a visitation from Nigel.

It was about an hour or so before my target time to get up, I was lightly asleep, deep enough to not be aware of my surroundings or to have conscious awareness of dreams, and also not awake enough to have any sort of self-directed dream. In fact, at the time, it didn’t seem like I was dreaming at all.

So, I was in that thick fog that lies on either side of the border between sleep and wakefulness, and I heard Nigel’s voice saying clearly and distinctly, “Are you there?” There were no visuals of any kind, just the sound, and it startled me awake. I felt kind of frightened, to be honest, for no rational reason, except, maybe, that it sounded so real, and that’s physically impossible.

When I dream, the people in them don’t sound much like they do/did in real life—they sound kind of muffled, mumbling, often kind of vague (all of that’s also actually true for “characters”, people who don’t seem to be anyone I actually know). What I heard was nothing like that: It was totally clear, distinct, and left no doubt about who was saying it.

Here’s the thing. People often assume that I don’t believe in anything supernatural (including any of the thousands of gods and goddesses that humans have believed in over the millennia), and some even assume I reject all of that. The truth is more complicated, as it always is: My core belief is that, based on the evidence, there’s probably nothing beyond the physical world. The important words there are “probably” and “evidence”: I won’t take someone else’s beliefs or feelings or hunches as a reason to believe something, but verifiable, reproduceable evidence that doesn’t require metaphysical interpretation would convince me, and although that’s never happened, I’m happy to have my mind changed.

I know plenty of people who have had dreams they believe were visitations from Nigel—in fact, I think there were probably many I was never told about because people know about my scepticism. However: I don’t for one second doubt that those people feel they had a visitation; the issue for me is that I wasn’t the recipient, so how can I have a personal feeling about the experiences of others? I take what they tell me at face value and accept it as a possibility that I simply have no way to prove or disprove on my own.

The difficulty for me is that I’ve never had anything I’d interpret as a visitation from anyone who’s died—never. Or, have I? Certainly no one has ever appeared to me in a dream and delivered a message, but there was a time at least seven years ago when there was one particular weird thing that happened, a tale I haven’t talked about before.

This was at our house on Auckland’s North Shore, and I think it was before my stent. Whatever was going on that particular night, I wasn’t asleep yet, but not far from it. My eyes were closed, but through my closed eyes I “saw” my mother walk up along the side of the bed, reach over, and then I felt her stroke my hair. She didn’t say a word, and when I opened my eyes, she wasn’t there. Of course. But it definitely felt real, both physically and in that sort of ethereal way we feel when we’re physically close to someone with whom we have a strong connection.

Rational me can list all the ways this can be explained, such as, random brain cells firing, that it was possibly a replaying a real scene from my childhood, that it was my mind trying to make sense of/cope with some worry. Or, maybe it was exactly what it seemed like—after all, I can neither prove nor disprove that.

Which brings me back to Nigel. He and I had very similar beliefs about such things, and I would have told him about my experience. His attitude would have been similar to my own: It was whatever it was.

When Nigel was in his last week, we were talking about death, and I said to him that if there was anything after this corporeal life, he had to find a way to let me know. I also told him it had to be clear, unequivocal, and not need any interpretation. I’ve never had any sort of sign or whatsoever, though after he died I thought of something that only he and I knew about that he could tell someone in a dream, and if they then told me, I’d know it was the evidence. But no one has ever told me that thing, or anything else that only he and I knew about.

A simple clear message directly to me would be nice, but even if it’s possible, that doesn’t mean it’d be likely. The closest I ever felt to a visitation from Nigel was one night in this house, and again through my closed eyes, where I “saw” a dark, cloud-like shadow near the ceiling above the bed. That ethereal feeling was kind of like Nigel, but it was weak, so I didn’t think it was a visit from him, and, of course, when I opened my eyes, there was nothing there but the ceiling.

There’s another bit of background to what happened. Yesterday I read a post on one of the LGBT+ widows groups I’m on from someone who said (I think—there were a lot of typos) that they were an empath and had a message for someone in the group that their partner had been trying to reach them and couldn’t. It’s fair to say that I’m especially sceptical of such things: They remind me of horoscopes, where there are enough partial, kinda, sorta relevant details that someone can convince themselves, without any rational reason, that the message is really about them.

That post, though, reminded me that I’ve never had a visitation or message or whatever from Nigel, and there have been times I thought to myself that maybe he just hadn’t been able to get through. That post could well be the actual reason for what I “heard” this morning, and it wouldn’t be the first time that something a I read online or saw on TV popped up in a dream.

And yet, it definitely didn’t feel like a dream, and it “sounded” just like real life, which doesn’t happen with my dreams. On the other, other hand, the specific words are what someone might say when trying to establish communication, like in that post. On the third hand, it’s also something Nigel would’ve actually said to me.

There are cultures around the world, and have been throughout time, who believe the dividing line between the corporeal world and the non-corporeal world (“spirits”, if you prefer) is at night, and connection between the two is easiest through dreams. There’s absolutely no possible way to prove either one, and, obviously they can’t be disproven, either. I often wonder, what if they’re right? However unlikely it may seem to rational me, that same rational me also knows it’s not necessarily impossible, either.

So maybe it really was Nigel, maybe it was inspired by something I read online, maybe it was some combination, or even none of that. I don’t have any way to be certain, so, as with everything else that some people consider metaphysical, supernatural, spiritual, or whatever they call it, I remain sceptical, but with an open mind.

And yet: “Hearing” Nigel speak, without me having to play an old recording, made me happy. Even if it was nothing more than random brain cells firing, it meant something to me. Seeing/hearing doesn’t always mean believing, but it also doesn’t have to. Rational me knows that, too.

This morning, an unusual thing happened. I don’t care what anyone else thinks about it, because I don’t know what I think about it. But I’m open to finding out. And so is rational me.

AmeriNZ Podcast episode 366 is now available

2022-06-30T21:10:00.001+12:00

AmeriNZ Podcast episode 366, “Expected results”, 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 chicken soup surprise

2022-06-26T23:12:00.013+12:00

Everything’s expensive these days, including things that are vital, like, food. Obviously, how expensive things are, and how much rising costs affect us will vary depending on our situation. Recently, I decided to look a little more deeply into my own food costs. It never hurts to be armed with knowledge.

On Monday of last week, made chicken soup again (photo at left), something I’m getting pretty good at. I talked about the soup I make back in October, and I really had no reason to talk about it again—apart from the whole “yes, but it’s content” thing. That changed when I decided to work out how much the meal costs me to make. I honestly don’t know why I don’t do that all the time, especially if I’m sharing a recipe.

In my post last year, I gave the bare-bones (so to speak…) recipe, although, in fact, it’s more a method than a specific recipe. So, I decided to quantify what I put into my latest effort (admittedly, some of it was merely a guess) so that I could price the ingredients on the supermarket website that I typically order groceries from. I was surprised.

Here’s what’s in the recipe, the unit cost, and the amount used, and actual cost:

Fresh chicken drumsticks: $6/kg, 1.2kg used: $7.20. Frozen Peas & Corn: $4.30/500g bag, 200g used: $0.86. Frozen Spinach: $2.30/500g bag, 50g used: $0.23. Fresh Carrots: $3/1.5kg bag, 200g used: $0.40. Egg Noodles: $3 per packet, half the packet used: $1.50.

That’s a total of $10.19 (today, around US$6.45), and would mean it’d be $3.40 per person if three people were fed, or $2.55 per person if four people were fed. I admit I ate quite a lot the first night, and still had quite a lot leftover for the next day’s lunch, so it could easily feed four people, especially if two of them were children (in which case there might even still be leftovers). I had no idea the meal was so inexpensive to make.

If I was going to make a larger batch—well, I’d need a bigger pot first, but if I got one, then I could feed a large number of people for not much more. For example, I could buy low-salt chicken stock from the supermarket (1 litre packs range from $3.50 for the store’s own brand up to $4 or $5.30 for name brands). Or, I could buy a few more chicken legs, or I could add more vegetables and noodles, since they’re cheaper than chicken.

The point is, there are are options I could use to stretch the meal inexpensively. In reality, if I had the family round, I wouldn’t be skimping, however, if I wanted to make my own food dollars go farther, it’s certainly something I could do.

And that was the lesson I took from this: Like most people, I need to be frugal with my spending, including on food, but to do that I first need to know how much things cost. That led me to a realisation: If I’m going to be talking on this blog about food recipes I’m trying out, why not include costs? That’s really for me, to be honest, because some dishes would probably be cheaper (and possibly better…) to buy ready-made from takeaway shops (like Indian food, for example) than to make it at home. I can’t know that, though, if I don’t work out the costs.

One drawback is that the prices will change over time, but that’ll at least give some idea of how cost-effective it is to make a particular recipe (and changing the unit price would make it easy enough to re-calculate). It never hurts to be armed with knowledge, especially these days.

That, and I enjoy a bit of chicken soup every now and then. Saving money is a nice bonus, though.

Was it worth it?

2022-06-25T16:39:00.000+12:00

The solar power system at my house has now been running for 12 full months. That leads to an obvious question: After a year living with the system, was installing it worth it? The short answer is, “yes, absolutely,” but the story, and why I say that, is complicated. It’s so complicated, in fact, that it’s taken me quite a long time to get this post completed.

First, though, a reminder of why I did this at all.

When I had the system installed, my motivation was simple: I wanted to tread more lightly on the planet, especially so that the technology I use and love wouldn’t take electricity from the national power grid. This reflects the values that Nigel and I shared, though for this particular one he wanted to use a wind turbine, something I knew was too problematic in the urban environment where I now live. At the time he died, Nigel was researching how to build a battery powerwall, which he definitely could’ve done, and we were planning to move somewhat more rural so we could have a wind turbine. In my new reality, it was clear that solar power was the best solution for me. All of that—and especially the fact that installing the system matched the values and goals that Nigel and I shared—is why I can say that yes, absolutely, installing it was worth it.

Next, some background: While the system itself included items the installer offered at special prices, it wasn’t subsidised in any way whatsoever: There were no tax breaks, and no power company offered any subsidy (none of them ever have). However, as part of the installation package, I switched to an electricity provider that gave me larger credits per kWh of electricity that I generate and send to the power grid (every other other company at that time paid less, sometimes dramatically so). In a sense, that’s a kind of subsidy, however, even at that higher rate, the electricity company still sells the power they “buy” from me at a much higher rate than what they credit my account with (they don’t actually pay me any money). Also, I have no ongoing costs, like loan servicing or anything else. So, the system was installed, switched on, and that was that. The last part of the system was installed in late May 2021, and so, the entire systems wasn’t up and running until the June 2021 billing month.

With all that out of the way, it’s time to talk money. The most common way that people look at the financial cost/benefit of such systems is to compare apples to apples: What would my power bill be if I didn’t have solar panels on the roof? That’s easy to see through the bills, but it's not even almost the complete story. Still, it’s a good place to start.

Over the first 12 months that the completed system was installed, I would've paid at least (I’ll come back to the “at least” part soon) $1,677.48 if I didn’t have the solar panels. However, my account received $746.97 in credits for the electricity my panels sent to the power grid, which was roughly 44% of the total I’d have paid without the panels. Looking at that another way, without the solar panels, my electricity bill would’ve averaged out at 139.79 per month, as opposed to the $77.54 that the monthly bills actually averaged out to (in reality, some winter months were much higher than the average, and summer months were much lower).

From a purely financial perspective, then, it would seem that the panels don’t create a large, obvious financial return. After all, at that rate it would take some 19 years before I’d break even (ignoring depreciation). However, appearances are deceiving.

Much—even most—of the positive financial aspect is invisible, and here’s why: The bills from the electricity company contain charges for the amount of electricity I buy from them, minus credit for the electricity I send to them, and that’s what I’ve just been discussing. However, the power from the solar panels that I use as it’s made is free—no one charges me for that.

This means that the credits I get from the electricity company for the electricity I send to them are for what’s leftover after I’ve used solar power to run the house. None of that power (called “self-consumption”, which sounds weird…) is tracked by the power company, of course, but I can look at charts produced by the “smart inverter” that runs the solar power system. On a sunny day, the power I need to run my house comes entirely from the solar power system AND I send some to the electricity company. In summer, when the weather is usually sunny and there are more daylight hours, that can mean sending a substantial amount of electricity to the power company on top of what I use. At night, it’s the opposite, and on dark, rainy, or heavily cloudy days, especially in winter, it’s mixed. When all of my household power needs are supplied by my solar power system, as it is on every sunny day and many cloudy ones, I’m 100% self-sufficient.

This self-consumption is the part that some people often overlook when calculating the true financial benefit from a solar power system. The electricity company charges me 27.35¢ per kWh for the power I buy from them, but they only credit me at 16¢ per kWh for the power I send to the grid. So, every kWh of self-consumed power saves me the equivalent of 11.35¢ per kWh. That hidden financial benefit is significant.

Let’s put some numbers into that. Normally, I’d get the actual production data from the smart inverter, but I can’t: There was a problem with it last year, and it didn’t report data from late June 2021 to late November 2021 (there were Covid Lockdowns in that period and, frankly, I was busy and just didn’t notice for a long time), so a LOT of the data is missing. Also, the inverter records data by calendar month, while my electricity is billed around the 22nd of the month—not a perfect match, in other words, but if I had data for the full 12 months I could work out the annual financial benefit from self-consumption.

Here’s what I DO know: I know for sure that that I saved $487.16 through self-consumption in the seven months of November 2021 through May 2022, and that’s money that I would’ve paid to the electricity company if I didn’t have the solar power system—remember, that self-consumption is power I actually used and would’ve used with or without the solar panels. That works out to an average savings of $69.59 a month for those seven months. If I use that amount for the whole 12 months, it would mean a savings of more than $800 for those 12 months—more than the credits I got on my power bill. In fact, using power through self-consumption while still sending some to the grid means that it’s at least possible, and probably likely, that my true savings on power over the first 12 months was actually at least as much as what I actually paid. Let me say that again: Using as much of the power I’m generating as I can, and sending the rest to the power grid, means my actual power costs without the solar power system would have been roughly double what I actually paid: $1,677.48 (before credits) for the year is way better than paying some $3200! It also means that I’ll reach the break-even point (again, ignoring depreciation) in half the amount of time.

This is difficult to grasp—it has been for me, anyway. I understand that I’m billed for the electricity I buy from the power company, an amount reduced by the power I send to the grid. The solar power that I use to run my house—the largely hidden savings from self-consumption—is power that I would otherwise buy from the power company, but I don’t need to, and until I started work on this analysis, it never occurred to me to account for it. And that’s why the actual savings are much better than what it looks like when looking only at power bills, as I always used to do.

Obviously I’d say that yes, absolutely, it was worth it to install the solar power system, because that would’ve been true regardless of the financials: This was always mainly about living my values. However, when you look at the totality of those financials, it makes financial sense for me, too. Living our values doesn’t have to mean losing money in the process.

This post has been about my own experience with solar power, something I did as a values-based decision and not a money-based one. The are ways to make the financial side better (or worse…), but for me, being able to live my values while also getting any financial benefit at all? Yes, definitely worth it.

Little project, big surprise

2022-06-21T15:57:00.001+12:00

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been working on a project that seems small, one that’s not terribly interesting—or it could even seem boring to some, especially if I start explaining what I’ve been working on. I also can’t take photos of any results to show what I’ve been doing. Basically, this is not the sort of thing that works well for social media. Until now.

The project is this: I’ve been going through all Nigel’s music files that were on his server, combining them with my own music files, and then organising them. We had a lot of the same music because we ripped all our CDs to audio digital files, however, I had some he didn’t and he had some that I didn’t. In many cases that was because we bought digital music, but much if it was because I either didn’t have all the tracks from the CDs we ripped (no idea why not), and sometimes he’d re-reripped a CD at a higher bitrate (better quality). So, it’s wasn’t a case of simply copying the files over.

This is part of a larger project: I’m going through all the files on his server, transferring any I want to keep so I can shut down his server and erase the hard drives. Then, I’ll do the same with his computer itself. I simply couldn’t bring myself to do any of that until recently.

To be completely honest, this has been thoroughly boring work (mainly because I had to methodically check everything, and get it properly organised. Still, it requires very little physical energy, and that meant it was a good option for something to work on.

I finished copying all the files I’d found (at that point—there are more files in various places), and the next step was to start organising the many miscellaneous files. And then I made a big discovery: I discovered that Nigel had kept recordings of all (I think?) of the “The Third Colony” streaming radio shows we did a bit more than ten years ago. Most of the recordings are two hours long, and they’re radio shows, so more music than talk, BUT, there’s plenty of banter between us, and that gave me the warm fuzzies.

Today, I found one more broadcast recording on his computer. I think that there could be recordings of shows we did on his “Farpoint Radio” streaming station, something he started up after “The Third Colony” ended. If he kept the recordings of the one, it seems unlikely he’d have discarded the others. Finger crossed, and all that.

I can’t share the recordings of those shows because they have copyrighted music; they were streamed using appropriate licensing, however, I don’t have a license to share those recordings in any way. And, in any case, the recordings were never intended for sharing: They’re created automatically by the software that connects to the streaming server. I have plenty of my own from the live podcasts I used to do on Pride 48.

Actually, because of my podcast, I already had some of my own recordings of Nigel, ones that can be shared. He was a guest on my AmeriNZ Podcast several times, and I re-shared and talked about his first two guest slots in two blog posts last year. The first the end of January, followed by the second in a couple weeks later. I always intended on doing a longer post about about all of his appearances, most of which were on live shows and often quite long, but I kind of forgot about that until I found the radio sho recordings.

I suppose one could argue that the recordings of those streaming shows won’t be all that “useful” to me: They radio shows, with only some talking. But those were fun to do, and it’ll be fun for me to hear them again. I think they’d be good to play in the background while I work on something else, like one of my more physical projects. Same with the live episodes of my podcast, actually—they were quite long, too. But that’s not really the point. What matters about this is that whenever I want to, I can listen to Nigel talk, laugh, and joke, and to me, that’s more awesome and valuable than I could possibly express.

I have lots of projects on the go, big, small, and in between. Everyone once in awhile, though, one of my projects will produce something extraordinary, and this one did exactly that. The project may not be sort of thing that works well for social media, but the reason that it matters so much to me certainly is.

Thursday throttling

2022-06-19T16:44:00.003+12:00

This past Thursday provided to be a challenge, but that evening/night even more so. It made me more determined than ever to make changes.

This past Thursday, I had a dental hygienist appointment. I knew it was in June, “the twenty-somethingth”, but hadn’t remembered specifically until I got the reminder text from the dental practice. As I said on my personal Facebook, that morning, “I’m not even remotely into it.” I knew I couldn’t cancel the appointment because that I wouldn’t be able to get a new one for at least six months—maybe as much as eight—which would only make matters worse. As I half-jokingly put it on Facebook:

That’d be too long, especially since I’m sure she’ll need the industrial-grade scrapers and grinders as it is. No doubt mining drills would be needed if I put it off that long.

The issue is, as it has been for quite some time, the extreme fatigue I’ve been dealing with for the past several months, something I talked about a little a month ago today. Because of that, I sometimes simply didn’t have enough energy to use the small interdental brushes I’m supposed to use every night (in addition to ordinary brushing). I felt certain that there’d be a lot of cleaning needed, and it was that I was dreading the most (the discomfort mainly, but the hygienist is so nice that I also felt a little guilty about not doing my part).

It turned out that it wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought it would be—maybe my diligence using those tiny brushes before the fatigue set in made a difference? In any event, it went well, and I made my next appointment for six months and also an appointment for my annual check up with my dentist, one right after the other, so only one trip, which is a bonus.

After that, I went and ran a couple errands, and headed back home. And that’s when everything changed.

About an hour or so after I got home, I started feeling yucky, with a bit of a headache and “flulike symptoms”, and no, it wasn’t the plague: Thursday was the first time I’d been out and about in around two or three weeks, and one doesn’t catch Covid and develop symptoms all within a couple hours, anyway. I thought to myself that all that picking and scraping and grinding at and below my gum line probably released a bunch of bacteria into my system. Still, the paracetamol I took helped. I took some more before I went to bed.

Around 4:30am, I woke up and felt absolutely awful. I got up to pee and to take some more paracetamol. I started shivering like nothing I’ve experienced for many, many years. I felt so very cold, and I put on a pair of track pants, a sweatshirt, and threw an extra blanket on the bed. Leo snuggled up close, too. I gradually warmed up.

Any problem with my health always gives me pause, because I’m alone (although, Leo really did help that night). However, I knew that having been a “hermit” for a some weeks meant I couldn’t have caught anything, and, anyway, if I went to get checked out I’d have to wait around 8 hours (or more—due to extra long waiting times) to be seen, so I felt staying home and trying to sleep was the best option. I was right. I slept a lot, and felt better in the morning, though tired all day because of the ordeal.

What was weird about it, aside from how it seemed to have come out of nowhere, is that my temperature was normal: I didn’t have a fever (I checked, of course). The shivering could have been caused by my body attempting to raise its temperature in order to fight off infection, including from bacteria.

Whatever that was all about, it passed nearly as quickly as it showed up. I think I may have been more susceptible to such things because of that constant deep fatigue I’ve been dealing with, something I think is being caused by the blood pressure medication I was changed to (because the manufacturer of my old drug discontinued it). I’ll be switching to a different prescription next month, something I’m hoping will fix the problem. If not, there are plenty more to try.

I began the new blood pressure medicine in August, and the first few days were utter hell. I started another drug, a diuretic, at the same time, and that drug definitely caused problems of its own. The thing is, what I was feeling and experiencing in the time after that was confused and conflated because there were several different, recently-changed prescription drugs, and things kept changing with Covid Lockdowns and other things. So, in a sense, I never really had a chance to work out what was happening or what the cause was.

We’ve now had months with little change, and no change to the prescriptions. It was early April when my energy levels crashed, and they never came back. My diet is pretty much the same, Leo is well, I (mostly) stay home by choice, not requirement, and am healthy, even if I don’t feel great. By process of elimination, the mostly likely culprit is the blood pressure medication. In the past, doctors have noted my complaints of fatigue, but haven’t really done much to deal with that. Now that it seems to be the cause of my fatigue, maybe they will? In any case, it’s also given me a dry cough, and that’s reason enough for them to try giving me a different drug.

The important thing, then, is that this has been an issue I’ve been dealing with for months, and it’s made my life difficult—but no more: I’m going to push and keep pushing until I find a solution that helps me feel better. Maybe the weirdness last week was the push I needed, a bit of steel to reinforce the strength of my resolve. I don’t know where this is heading, but, frankly, even a small change would be a huge change.

Important note: This is about my own personal health journey. My experiences are my own, and shouldn’t be taken as indicative for anyone else. Similarly, other people may have completely different reactions to the same medications I take—better or worse. I share my experiences because others may have the same or similar experiences, and I want them to know that they’re not alone. But, as always, discuss your situation and how you’re feeling openly, honestly, and clearly with your own doctor, and always feel free to seek a second opinion from another doctor.

20 years a citizen

2022-06-11T13:37:00.016+12:00

Twenty years ago yesterday, on June 10, 2002, I became a citizen of New Zealand (the graphic above is what I shared on my personal Facebook yesterday). This one of those anniversaries that recall significant events in my life, but that I seldom talk about. Two decades demands some sort of acknowledgement, though, so here we are.

I first talked in some detail about that 2002 day back in 2014, and about a lot of related issues in other posts (a list is at the bottom of this post). I feel that I’ve pretty much said all I need to, but there’s one more aspect, the future, specifically, What now?!

In the time since Nigel died, I realised that I don’t feel “at home” anywhere: He was my home in an existential sort of sense. In a physical sense, however, I’ve lived in New Zealand so long now—it’ll be 27 years in around five months—that this place is quite literally home. The reality is that after so many years away from the USA, the land of my birth feels like a foreign country—actually, far too often it seems like an alien planet.

Over the past couple years, especially with all that time on my hands during various Covid Lockdowns, I thought, more or less idly, about moving back to the USA. I wondered what I would do, how I would fit in as, essentially, an immigrant in my own native land. I even scrolled a real estate website to see what I could buy in Chicago if I sold up everything here.

Obviously, it was never serious thinking, nor was I even remotely considering it. I was simply thinking through various “what ifs”, and this one was no more serious than, say, “what if I’d been born into royalty?” I knew the fundamental truth, namely, that as Nigel put it shortly before he died, I make a better a Kiwi than I do an American. Too much time has passed, and too much has changed, including me.

That means, then, that I expect to live the rest of the years of my life here in New Zealand because I belong here. That implies, of course, that I’m no longer part of the USA, which is, at the very least, literally true: I haven’t been “part of” the USA physically since 1995 (which is precisely why it feels so foreign to me now). But as we grow apart, as I grow older, and as events there make my homeland utterly unrecognisable to me, I suspect there may well come a day when I could be permanently separated, particularly if a more hostile regime comes to power in the future—and how could I possibly rule out that prospect when I can no longer say it’d be impossible?

The last time I talked about this particular anniversary, back in 2017, I said, “For the first time in my life, I’m profoundly grateful that I have a second passport.” That’s even truer now: If the USA really does collapse, I’m safe here and also have an already well-established life. However, that’s also true even if the USA manages to shake off the disease it caught in 2016 and repair itself.

These are all things I think about nowadays as I try to work out who and what I am in this strange and unexpected life I now find myself moving through. It’s actually quite exhausting. However, while I may not yet know where and how I fit in now or in the future, 20 years ago I cemented my place in New Zealand. So, whatever my future holds, and regardless of what happens (or doesn’t happen), this place is clearly home.

And that’s really why this anniversary is still so important.

Some photos from the evening of June 10, 2002:

In this photo, I’m shaking the hand of George Wood, then the Mayor of the former North Shore City (now part of Auckland), and next I’d shake the hand of Diane Hale, who was Deputy Mayor of North Shore City.

Nigel took this photo of me right after the ceremony. I’m flanked by George Wood and Diane Hale. The two military people at either end are Warrant Officers from the Royal New Zealand Navy, who formed the honour guard.

Related posts:

Changing policies and lives (2011) – the background on me becoming a permanent resident
Everything changed (2013) – all the details about the day I became I permanent resident
12 Years a Citizen (2014) – the day I became a New Zealand citizen
15 Years a NZ Citizen (2017) – with some reflections on what changed between 2002 and 2017
Getting to stay (2018) – talking about my June anniversaries

Leo is five

2022-06-01T23:55:00.031+12:00

Today isn’t just the first day of meteorological winter in the Southern Hemisphere, it’s also something far more important: Today is Leo’s fifth birthday. This year is yet another first birthday without a family member, and now it’s the fourth in a row: 2019 was his first birthday without his sister, Bella, 2020 was his first birthday since we lost his other daddy, 2021 was his first birthday since we lost his sister, Sunny, and this year it’s the first since we lost Jake. I can’t even guess whether he’s aware of any of that, but he does still sniff the collars that Sunny and Jake wore, just not necessarily every day any more.

Today, Leo wasn’t really into having an official birthday portrait taken, so I grabbed what I could, and the two photos are up top. The left photo is was passed for an official photo, and the second one is of him under the table next to my chair, a place he often likes to sleep in the evening while I’m watching TV.

Before his birthday festivities (like special meals and extra treats), there was something to be taken care of: He desperately needed a haircut, just like back in 2020, but this time I managed to get him groomed before his birthday: Yesterday I took him to a groomer (before and after photos are at the bottom of this post). It took months to get this organised, mostly because of delays of various kinds—especially not being able to find a groomer. However, I also was very uneasy about the whole thing precisely because of all the loss over the past three years. Naturally, everything was fine.

Leo’s still such a happy little guy, although every time he gets groomed he’s manic, and a bit neurotic, for several days afterward, I have no idea why, but this has been the case ever since he came to liove with us. I hoping that I’ll be able to keep his fur under control so maybe he won’t have to have traumatic grooming experiences, or, not as often, at least.

He also still loves to sleep on my lap, and he’s been doing it since we got home yesterday, so he seems to have forgiven me for taking him to the groomer. Well, maybe he’s just forgiven me a bit.

He’s really a good companion, and certainly keeps me entertained much of the time. He really is a good boy—most of the time—and that’s an old family joke that Nigel and I would say about many of our furbabies over the years. Some things don’t change, after all.

Happy Fifth Birthday, Leo!

Related:

Leo is three – 2021
Leo is three – 2020
Leo is two – 2019
Leo is one year old – 2018
Another new addition
All blog posts tagged “Leo” – All the posts I’ve talked about him

Left: Before we left for his haircut, and back in the car afterward, right.

My 5 favourite home changes

2022-05-31T22:58:00.002+12:00

It’s the end of the month, which makes it as good a time as any to reflect on the five changes I’ve made to my house that are (currently) my favourites (for now)? Here we go:

1. The solar electricity system: This is probably obvious, not the least because I’ve talked about it more than any other change I’ve made to the house, or any projects I’ve taken on. I was thinking about this recently because of my impending review of the first twelve full months since the completed system was up and running, and it made me think about everything else I’ve done to improve the house. Still, this is definitely my favourite thing because it matches my values, long-held goals, and saves me some money operating the house. But, more about all that soon; right now I just wanted to acknowledge it’s first on my list. More to come…

2. The Solatube skylight in the kitchen: When I moved into this house, my kitchen was extremely dark. In fact, when I first saw the house, the dark kitchen was the thing I liked the least. So, in March of last year, I had a Solatube skylight sort of thing installed, and it did exactly what I wanted: It brought daylight into my kitchen. I’ve noticed that when I walk out to the living area (lounge/kitchen/dining) on a sunny morning, the area is filled with daylight (the sun is also shining on the front window at the time, and the light leaks in from there, too). The result is that it makes the place feel cheerful and welcoming, especially because I don’t need to switch on a light to make my coffee or give Leo his morning treat. On rainy mornings, it’s still brighter than it would’ve been without this change, however, in the depths of winter, when the sun is slow to rise and lazy about turning on its light, the effect isn’t nearly as dramatic or welcoming. Still, that’s only roughly 3-4 months out of the year, so most of the year I get the light first thing in the morning.

3. Window coverings: This was the first thing I did to the house after I moved in, but it, too needed revisions. In January 2020, I ordered window coverings for the living area and the bedrooms, and they were installed in February, and it turned out, I was extremely lucky: The following month, New Zealand went under its first Covid Lockdown. Maybe it was all that time sitting at home during the Lockdown, but as soon as July of that year, I realised I’d made a mistake with the window coverings in the two bedrooms, and that mistake was fixed a few weeks later. Then, March of this year, I added net curtains to the stacker doors in the living area, and that completes that project. Having said that, I still have to hang the other roller blind in the garage (due to boxes stacked in front of one window, the installer couldn’t get to one window when he fixed my error). I also want to put blinds in the windows of the toilet, bathroom, and en suite, the latter is because there are now houses on all sides of my house, and so, there’s less privacy than there was (even though the windows are frosted), The main reason I want to do this, though, is that none of those rooms are heated and they get cold in the winter, especially at night, and the cold en suite affects me every single winter morning and night (and it also gets hot in the afternoon in summer, with the sun hitting that window).

4. The ventilation system: When I bought this house, it had a split-unit (heat pump) air conditioner in the living area, and that was it. I had another one installed in the master bedroom, too (and a good thing that was, too), but I knew that wouldn’t help the other two bedrooms. If I’d had the cash before I moved in, I would’ve had ducted air conditioning installed, but I didn’t, so I concentrated on what I could do. As time passed, I realised that I had to do something, and in December 2020, I had an HRV system installed to provide some ventilation to the house. What I found out is that in summer the system switches on at night because the air in the attic is cooler than in the house (although, it didn’t switch on as much this past summer as it did last year; the nights were warmer this year, so the attic was warmer than the house). In cooler weather, it switches on in the morning, once the attic temperature gets higher that the house temperature (if the house temp is cooler than whatever I have it set for). This year, in late Autumn, I noticed that the house was quite cool in the morning when I got up (because the heat pumps were shut off; they’re on now), but when the HRV switched on, it pretty quickly heated up the house to a comfortable temperature. There are times in the year when it doesn’t help much, like in summer when the nights are too warm, or in winter when the sun doesn’t rise high enough to heat the attic until some hours after I get up. But there are other months of the year when it helps a lot, and when it does, it also equalises the temperature in the house. I still need to come up with a heating and cooling solution for the two smaller bedrooms, but that won’t be any time soon. I have a heater I can put in my office on cold days, and a fan for hot summer days. For now, anyway. However, if I could make one change, I would have insisted that a ducted vent be put in the hallway. The hallway gets very little air movement, and would definitely have benefited from a vent.

5. Data cabling: This is something I never blogged about in detail, but before I moved in to this house, and in addition to the master bedroom air conditioner, I had data cabling installed. I knew I was having my computer servers installed in the garage, so I had power points added to the spot where it was going, and also ethernet cabling run from that spot to all three bedrooms and also to the living area (there are three in that area). That’s because wired networking is faster than wifi, and the data it transmits can’t be intercepted as easily as it can be on wifi. This is something I use every single day: My computer uses the ethernet network, not the wifi, and my TV and its connected devices also use ethernet, as does the VOIP telephone system: They all benefit from the faster wired connection. I also had the same guy come back and install a UF aerial and wires leading to the jackpoints that were already in the living room (two of those) and the one in the master bedroom, and they’re still in use, of course.

Those are my current favourite changes to the house, and they’re technically the only actual changes: Everything else is mainly decorative. There will be more changes, of course, and many of them I’ll be doing myself or delaying (or both). But most of my projects this year will be more about clearing and decorating, because neither of those are done yet. And so it goes.

Jacinda Ardern delivers 2022 Harvard Commencement Address

2022-05-27T15:14:00.005+12:00

The video below is the official video of Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s address, provided by Harvard, and it’s well worth watching. I chose this version because it’s unfiltered—no commentary before or after, just the speech.

And, of course, I’m reminded yet again how glad I am she’s our Prime Minister.

Meanwhile…

2022-05-27T11:10:00.001+12:00

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern was on the USA’s CBS “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” recently, and guns partly dominated the discussion, as they have on her entire trip. The Prime Minister did very well, and even still managed to do her main goal, promoting tourism to New Zealand. It’s her second time on the show, and both times were casual and relaxed. I think she did very well.

The interview is in three separate videos on YouTube (I watched them mere hours after the show aired in the USA), so I decided to post them here in order so no one else has to work out what order they go in (they were out of order in the YouTube App for my TV that I used to watch them.

That cleaning project

2022-05-24T13:57:00.001+12:00

Last Thursday, I picked up something for a cleaning project, and on Sunday I finally got the chance to do it. The photo at left is the item I picked up on Thursday. This, then, is the why and how of that story.

Before getting into that, a note to be completely clear: I was not compensated in any way whatsoever for buying/trying that particular carpet cleaner (pictured at left), and I paid normal retail prices. I chose it after reading recommendations on the website of Consumer NZ (and I am a member of that organisation). There was only one retailer that sold that model, and that’s the reason I went to that particular store—again, there was no compensation of any kind. That out of the way…

This entire cleaning project was related to Leo: He is, I think I’ve made clear, the mostest bestest companion, however, he does have two flaws. Sometimes he barks a bit too much, and sometimes he pees in the house, always in the hallway leading to the bedrooms, bathroom, toilet, and garage (where the laundry is). It was this particular flaw that was the problem.

My carpets are all a mix of grays and blacks that make it a (very) dark charcoal sort of colour, and that means that I can’t usually see any wet spots. On the other hand, a “scuff mark” may look wet, and the only way for me to be sure is to touch the carpet. If it’s wet, I have a carpet cleaning machine Nigel and I bought many years ago—maybe 10? It has a hand-held nozzle at the end of a hose, and you press the trigger to spray water (with or without cleaning solution) on the spot, then release the trigger to then suck the water out of the carpet. It works well, but it’s intended mainly for treating spots, and I have to get down on my hands and knees, something that’s not as easy as it used to be. Well, it’s the getting back up that’s the issue, really.

The full problem here is, first, because I can’t see wet spots in the carpet, I don’t necessarily know Leo peed inside, so the spots dry, and that’s a problem because it makes the hallway smell (and it encourages him to hit the same spot again). Then there’s the problem of having to get down on the floor to clean it.

To deal with all this properly, I decided to get an upright carpet cleaner that has an agitator brush so I can thoroughly clean the carpets. I could rent such a machine for $50 a day (plus cleaning solution), but I think it may be too heavy for me to lift into and out of my car by myself. Having my own machine would be a better option, I thought, and it’ll pay for itself in a little more than 5 uses.

I looked on the Consumer NZ website and found the machines they liked best. There was the home version of the supermarket one, but it was quite expensive. So, too was their top recommendation (at around $700), a machine that also has handheld functionality, something I didn’t need since I already have a spot cleaner. My choice was the “also recommended” model, which was just an upright carpet cleaner—and less than half the price of the top recommended one.

On Sunday, after a rest day on Saturday, I used the machine, and I thought it went well.

I’d already thoroughly vacuumed the carpet, so all I had to to was put the machine together (no tools—just slot the handle in, really). Then, I filled the water tank with water and the included cleaning solution, and I was ready to go.

I downloaded and read the manual before I placed my order, so I knew how to use it—and I took on board their advice. How it works is that you turn the machine on and the brush in front starts spinning. You squeeze the trigger to spray the water/solution mix onto the carpet and the brush massages it in and then starts to suck the dirty water out of the carpet. You then release the trigger and pull the machine back towards you, and it sucks out more water. The manual recommended again pushing the machine forward and then pulling it back (without the trigger used) to suck up even more water, and that’s what I did.

The machine was easy to use, and not at all heavy to use or move. It was loud, as such machines tend to be, but I didn’t think it was horrible (I have far noisier machines). I did have a little trouble keeping the power cord out of the way, mainly because the power point is in the middle of the hallway. Ideally, I think, the power point should be behind the user who moves away from it, not toward it.

The whole cleaning process was easy, not strenuous, and not very time consuming, however, I had a tendency to move too quickly: It needs time to clean and, especially, to suck up the used water. I’m sure I’ll get used to it because I got better as time went on—as long as I paid attention to what I was doing.

The carpet was reasonably dry—well, only moist—in around 45 minutes. To help that, I put a fan on the floor at the doorway to my bedroom, which is at one end of the hallway. The fan kept air moving along the floor, which helped the carpet try. In the early evening, I moved the far into the bathroom doorway because the little bit of hallway that connects the bathroom and toilet to the main hallway gets little air circulation. I turned the fan off before going to bed.

The next morning, the carpet seemed dry, though I admit I didn’t crawl around to feel it all—maybe I should’ve to know for sure? I noticed that the “rows” left by the leaning machine were obvious, in much the same way that deep-pile carpeting shows vacuum marks after its cleaned. The machine’s manual also suggested vacuuming the carpet once it was thoroughly dry to make the carpet pile normal again. I didn’t do that because I was lazy, but I know it would’ve taken care of that problem.

When I dumped out the used water, it was very dirty, which didn’t surprise me at all: I walk up and down that hallway many times every day, to get from the front of the house to the ensuite when nature calls, to carry washing to and from the garage, to get to my office—for lots of things. Leo often trots along, too. I have what I call my “house shoes”, basically lightweight shoes that I only ever wear in the house (wearing slippers all day is a little too casual for me).

I don’t know how many tradespeople were traipsing over the carpet before the house was finished and put on the market, but in New Zealand, prospective purchasers always remove their shoes before looking at a house that’s for sale (unless the house is a wreck being sold “as is” for renovation, which isn’t all that common). Since I bought the house, I’ve had tradespeople install one thing or another, but even most of them take off their shoes.

All of which means that I have no idea how much of the dirty water—which, of course, is stuff that my pretty strong vacuum cleaner didn’t remove—was from the 28 months I’ve lived in this house, so I don’t necessarily blame Leo and me. Besides, carpet cleaners typically remove far more dirt than vacuum cleaners can, and the used water is almost always filthy, no matter how “clean” a household is or how often the carpets are vacuumed. I know all that, but it’s also a little reassurance that I’m not as useless at keeping the house clean as that waste water could make me feel.

And that’s the big cleaning project I took on this weekend. It went well, and definitely do it again—but how often? I read that people usually rent machines from supermarkets once or twice a year, though I wondered how they know that. In any case, a house with small children or pets (especially if there are both!) would be at least that. Doing it every season seems a big extreme, but maybe three times a year? We’ll see. And the next time that Leo leaves me a little surprise spot on the carpet, I may try using the carpet cleaner rather than the get-down-on-the-floor-and-back-up-again machine. All of that’s for another day.

A footnote:

In case you're wondering, Leo gets to go outside pretty much as often and for as long as he wants. I say “pretty much” because if he’s stuck in barking mode, I have to bring him inside so he doesn’t piss-off the neighbours (especially if they’re the objects of his barking). Also, in the heat of summer and cold of winter, I can’t leave the doors open all day. If the doors are closed, he may “ask” me to let him outside, and I usually hear him—though he’s really quiet. Our set routine is that I always let him out first thing in the morning, around midday, and again after his dinner. I try to always be consistent with those so that he’s used to it (I read somewhere that dogs thrive on routine—most people do, too, actually…), but I also let him out other times during the day, including if he asks to be let outside. If it’s raining, though, he’s far more likely to use the hallway carpet than he is on a sunny day, even if the doors are open. So, all my best efforts can be undone by the weather. He’s just being a dog, after all—and the mostest bestest companion—so I can’t expect him to understand and act rationally. The best I can do is create an environment for him to do natural dog stuff outside, rather than on the carpet, and to have back-up plans for when that doesn’t happen. That’s just me being a dog’s dad.

Egging myself on

2022-05-23T14:09:00.003+12:00

It turns out, using determination to help us power us through the list of things we need or want to do can actually work—just not always, and maybe not for everything. That’s what I found out this weekend.

On Thursday of last week, I talked about how on that day and the day before, determination helped me to get stuff done. In that post, I wondered whether it would continue to help the next day, and, by implication, days after that. The answer: Sort of.

Friday has always been my cleaning day, though in recent months it’s been a bit haphazard and incomplete. This past Friday, however, I was determined to be more thorough, in part because I needed to get the house ready for the cleaning project I mentioned on Thursday (that will be a post of its own). I accomplished most of what I wanted to do, and even cleared away the last few boxes that had been stored in my hallway for many months—maybe since shortly after I abandoned the garage project. It was nice to again have the hallway empty, even if in a couple cases that basically meant putting the boxes somewhere else. Unfortunately, that was pretty much it for me on Friday—close to to getting everything done, but not completely done.

The next morning, Saturday, I was exhausted, so I only managed to make some eggs benedict for my lunch (photo up top). Still, that was something, right? Actually, it was: As I said when I shared the photo on my personal Facebook, “It was the best poached eggs I’ve made yet,” and that was absolutely true.

There was one thing I didn’t like, though: I bought the same New Zealand brand of bacon I’ve bought for years. It says “NZ Made” on the front, right under the “window” where you look at the bacon itself. When I took it out of the fridge on Saturday, I read the smaller print (under the “nutrition” label) for the first time ever. It said:

“Made in New Zealand with pork raised in any one of the following countries: Finland, Denmark, Poland, Germany, Spain plus other local and imported ingredients.”

I have no problem with the fact it had imported pork, but I think putting “NZ Made” in big letters is deceptive, even though it’s literally true: The bacon is made in NZ, but from pigs that weren’t. I buy bacon only a couple times in a year (at most), but if I buy any again, it won’t be that brand. I also learned that I should bring a magnifying glass with me when I go to the supermarket so that I can read labels closely before I buy stuff like that bacon, just to make sure it’s NZ made in every sense.

There was one other thing that wasn’t quite right: The hollandaise sauce. I used the same recipe I always do, the same one Nigel always used, but this time I forgot that I don’t use as much salt as the recipe calls for (I actually don’t normally put any in because the bacon is already salty, something else I forgot). I also nuked it just a little bit too long—we’re talking mere seconds—and that left the sauce “less than ideal”. And this is why I never even mentioned the sauce when I shared the photo on FB and Instagram.

The thing is, when I make poached eggs normally, I just put mayo on them if I put anything at all (other than S&P). To be honest, eggs benny is a lot of work for not all that much payoff. I think that in future I’ll probably mostly stick to making poached eggs on toast rather than full-on eggs benny.

There’s a side note here: I was recently watching a vlog from one of the YouTubers I subscribe to, and he often includes a short cooking segment. There are also frequently brief scenes showing him making poached eggs on toast to illustrate the start to his day. But in this particular vlog, he mentioned how he likes tomato sauce (ketchup) on his poached eggs. Now, I couldn’t possibly care less what someone chooses to put on their eggs, but what struck me about that is that he’s never once shown that in a video of his poached eggs. That made me wonder if I’ve ever done that with food photos I’ve shared—have I ever not included something that I think someone may not approve of? Maybe? Probably? I know that I’ve sometimes not shared photos of something I made because the photo of the dish made it look less appetising than it looked in real life, so maybe that counts? At any rate, watching that vlog made me want to be extra careful to make sure that when I share a photo of food I’ve made, it’s as close to reality as I can make it. Having said that, though, I felt that the photo up top of my eggs benny, even with the incomplete success of the hollandaise sauce, was one of my better food photos—and, yes, the photo showed exactly as I ate it. FWIW.

Obviously, I’m well aware that making poached eggs isn’t exactly a momentous accomplishment, and it wouldn’t have been even if I’d also made perfect hollandaise sauce. However, I’ve been feeling so flat for so long now that this is remarkable simply for being something that I accomplished. Is this the start of a new phase? Of new energy levels? Could it be—and this could jinx everything—the beginning of moving onward and upward again?

Time will tell, but at the moment the signs are encouraging—and so was the success of my poached eggs themselves. I think it’s important to always celebrate the little successes, because sometimes they need as much determination as the bigger efforts do. Fortunately, I’ve also had some successes with those lately, but they’re tales of their own. I’m determined to share those tales, too.

This post includes brief bits I included when I posted the above photo on social media.

Maybe sometimes determination is enough

2022-05-19T22:43:00.003+12:00

Sometimes, things are just different, for whatever reason, and sometimes determination is enough. Like today.

For the past several weeks, I’ve dealt with extreme fatigue, bad enough that I haven’t felt like doing much of anything—including blogging or podcasting, obviously. While I try to force myself to get things done, for the most part those efforts failed. But sometimes things go differently, and it began yesterday evening.

I went to my mother-in-law’s for dinner, yesterday evening and also fixed her Kindle (and, of course, Nigel would’ve been surprised (mostly joking). On the way home, I stopped at the New World supermarket to pick up a few bits and pieces. It was interesting.

There were a lot of prices throughout the store that were obviously higher (like a bottle of cooking oil that was on special at a higher price than it’s regular price only a few months ago). But a lot of store specials brought the prices much closer to what they had been—still higher, but not as bad as they’d be otherwise. On the other hand, all the most affordable items (including things on the chain’s “price freeze” list) were really low or sold out.

Today I was planning on going to The Base shopping centre to run errands, so I thought I’d go to the nearby Countdown supermarket on the way home so I could see for myself what their prices are like. It turned out that today’s errands were 2/3 successful. I’m absolutely fine with that.

First up was my much-delayed haircut: I’ve probably needed one for “some time now”, but lately people have been fleeing in terror at the sight of my unruly locks, and pitchforks and torches were being readied. The threat to the mob is now sorted. Bonus points, today I got the young guy, and he was really interesting to chat with. The older guys I’ve had usually talk about sport, work, very superficial stuff. But today we talked about, among other things, how making YouTube videos because it’s what you want to do is more important than monetising them, unless that’s a business you’re running (seriously!).

My next stop was a nearby shop to pick-up something I ordered through click ‘n collect. There’s a story there, but it’s involved and includes a cleaning project I’m doing on Saturday (more about that afterward). However, as I walked back to my car with my purchases, the skies opened up and I was completely drenched. I changed my plans and went directly home, much to Leo’s delight. I didn’t need to go to the supermarket, anyway, so it’s no loss, but today’s soaking made me think that maybe I should keep an old towel in the car. It rains a lot in winter, after all.

While all of that is perfectly ordinary stuff, for a guy who’s had a lot of trouble getting stuff done, it’s a lot of activity in a short period of time. I don’t know that it suggests any sort of change or improvement or anything, but a good patch is always welcome, whether it hangs around or not.

Maybe tomorrow will bring more extraordinary-yet-ordinary stuff. Maybe sometimes determination really is enough?

This is revised and expanded from two posts I made to my personal Facebook. Because sometimes ya gotta do what ya gotta do, especially, for me, these days.

AmeriNZ Podcast episode 365 is now available

2022-05-10T20:36:00.000+12:00

AmeriNZ Podcast episode 365, “So, anyway…”, 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.

Hidden stories

2022-04-27T10:21:00.002+12:00

Photos aren’t always what they seem, with hidden or unspoken stories behind them. Maybe the stories are revealed, or maybe they’re not, but the story remains there either way. The photo above is an example of that.

The photo of Leo up top is something I posted to my personal Facebook a week ago last night. I wrote, “Watching YouTube videos, as one does, and Leo says, “Oy, what about ME?!” And so it is.” While the specific motivation was that he looked cute, which isn’t unusual for him, of course, but there’s a story I never mentioned at the time—or in the week since. This post, then, is about the missing story.

Tuesday of last week was an awful day for me (because, reasons), so by the evening all I wanted to do was to watch some TV, then catch up on the YouTube Channels I subscribe to. I decided to watch the fourth season premier of a New Zealand-made reality show called “The Casketeers”, which is about Tipene Funerals (the series is on Netflix now, apparently). I’ve watched the show from the beginning because it’s just plain nice, and not merely entertaining.

What I’ve particularly liked about the series is the kindness and respect shown by the Tipenes and their staff, like, for example, they always talk of the deceased person as being in their care. I’ve learned so much about rituals and practices of Pacific peoples in particular, and I also learned more about Māori beliefs and practices, all wrapped up with their kindness and respect for the families, as well as a gentle, respectful way of teaching the rest of us. It’s extremely well done—and, I should add, it’s often very funny, especially because Francis Tipene (the husband) is a character, and the dynamic with his wife, Kaiora, is as entertaining as you’ll find on any general light entertainment reality show—and that’s a good thing, by the way.

I admit, I wasn’t sure I could still watch the series after Nigel died, for obvious reasons, but it turned out that I could, and it was actually oddly comforting. I definitely see or react to some things in the show differently now than before, but the feels have always been good—until that night.

One of the people in their care was brought to a Baptist church in Auckland for her funeral, and they first brought her into a side chapel so that the family could have some private time to say goodbye. Off camera, they removed the lid and put it aside, and later the camera showed the lid, which was plain MDF (may have been an unlined underside, I don’t know). The family had written all sorts of messages on it, which was one of the things Nigel told me he wanted for his funeral (in his case, it was all over the outside).

When I saw that scene, I fucking lost it. I positively wailed, something that hasn’t happened to me in I don’t know how long—a very long time, though. Leo was out of my sight at the time, but he heard me, came near me and looked at me with a kind of puzzled look that dogs sometimes get. He trotted off to the back of the house where he’d left his toy bone, trotted back to me, jumped up in my lap, and started gnawing on the toy. He’d stop every now and then, look back at me, and he’d flop against me. I heard somewhere that when a dog leans into a person, it’s their version of a hug. At that moment, it certainly felt like one.

Leo’s never really paid all that much attention to me when I cried, but this time he did. Maybe he’d sensed that I was feeling off that day, maybe it’s because it’s been a long time since I had a breakdown, I don’t know, but this time, when it did the most good, he was there.

He stayed near me the rest of the evening, and later on, when I was watching YouTube videos, he jumped onto the sofa, which is next to my chair, and played with his toys, stopping sometimes to just watch me. He looked so adorable that I had to take the photo above.

That night, he slept laying against me all night long, something he hadn’t done for a few weeks (lately, he’s been laying against me in the mornings rather than all night). It could’ve just been coincidence, but I was glad all the same.

I have no idea why that one brief scene in a TV show that I like set me off like an emotional rocket, but it did. Maybe it was because I’d had such a shitty day, maybe it was just something that was overdue and bound to happen sooner or later, anyway—and I did feel better afterward.

I’ve often said that kindness toward others ought to be our default position because we can never know what someone else may be going through silently. I definitely try to practice what I preach, but sometimes the best way to reinforce my message is to share an example of what I’m talking about. That night last week, I shared a cute photo of Leo, but there was a then-secret reason why I took that photo, and it’s exactly the sort of hidden thing I’m talking about.

That night I had a bad patch (for whatever reason), and Leo was especially cute and lovable, possibly because of it, but appreciated regardless. I’m fine now, of course—I was fine after the “storm” ended. But I’m happy to report that Leo is still cute and lovable every day, if maybe a bit less attentive overall than he was that night.

This is was a story that was hidden in a photo of Leo, one not so very different from lots of photos I’ve taken of him, or of any of the other furbabies over the years. Even so, the hidden story is precisely what made it different from so many of those earlier photos. Not for the first time, no one would know the truth if I didn’t say something, but withholding truth isn’t how I’ve approached this whole journey up until now; I see no reason to change that.

Photos aren’t always what they seem, nor is what people convey and project in person. There may be hidden or unspoken stories behind them, and I believe we ought to be mindful and act with kindness toward others. Maybe the hidden stories are revealed, or maybe they’re not, but what happens may be influenced in part on how we treat those with hidden stories. The photo above is a simple example of how that works in real life, and this post supplies the hidden story.

Unusually, it seems, this post began life as something that I never posted to Facebook: I wrote the first draft a week ago today, intending to post it to my personal Facebook, but I changed my mind and decided it would be better as a blog post—again, “because, reasons”. And yes, there’s a hidden story there, too. Maybe that’s for another day.

Catching up on the little there is

2022-04-22T14:40:00.000+12:00

This will come as a shocking revelation, I know, and I apologise for that, but openness is important, so, here goes: I’ve had a lot of trouble blogging lately. Technically, it’s not trouble with blogging as such—after all, in recent weeks I’ve posted several things on my personal Facebook that are, essentially, blog posts. In fact, my two most recent blogs posts (“Puzzle pieces”, and the one before that, “A mini-adventure”) began that way. Plenty of others over the past couple months were at least sparked by something I posted on Facebook.

This has come about, not for the first time, because of a sort of generalised ennui and malaise, which is also nothing new. I can’t point to a specific reason, though at one point I thought I might’ve caught the plague (I didn’t), but it affects me in precisely the way it has before: If I don’t write and publish a post in the daytime, it’s usually unlikely to happen that day.

This mainly means that there are a lot of things that I may talk about on Facebook, but not here, but it really means that there are a lot of things that I may talk about at all. I have some more Facebook-birthed posts I may get around to re-doing for the blog (as always, maybe…), but there are relevant things to talk about in the meantime, starting with updates on what I’m doing, or not doing, as the case may be.

This past weekend was the four-day Easter holiday weekend in New Zealand, and that included two of three and a half days a year when most shops must close: Good Friday and Easter Sunday. The shopping ban is why I went on my mini-adventure, but it otherwise doesn’t usually affect me much.

Still, I planned around the bans, and didn’t plan on going anywhere that weekend. Because I didn’t have any special plans, I thought it would be a great time to work on stuff in the house, especially clearing out/organising my office, something I’ve nicknamed “The Project From Hell”. As so often happens, things didn’t quite work out that way.

I was extremely tired already when the weekend began, but when I looked out my front window, I saw that the weeds were again sending up their seed stalks: The lawns needed to by mowed again. That became my main project for Sunday, and I did nothing on The Project From Hell that day.

To be clear, I have made progress on the project, just not nearly as much as I would’ve liked: It “should” have been finished by now. I found out, first, that a lot of the stuff in my office actually belongs in it, and wasn’t just stuff I dumped there as I thought when I mentioned the project in a post at the start of this month. The fact that the stuff actually mostly belongs in my office means that I have to find somewhere to put it (after reaffirming that I still actually want/need it), and that made it into a bigger project than I expected.

I went through and reorganised boxes, repacking what I really wanted to keep, recycling some stuff, putting aside some stuff to be shredded, and throwing away the tiny amount that couldn’t be recycled or shredded. This is a subject in itself, too, but the thing that’s relevant to this post is that the work’s very slow, time consuming, and unbelievably boring.

Once I finally finish all that sorting/evaluation/pretending it doesn’t exist and doing other things, the actual reorganising of my office wardrobe will begin. To do that, I’ve long planned on putting a wardrobe organising system in the wardrobe (and the wardrobe of my guest bedroom), like I’ve done in the two houses Nigel and I shared before I moved to this one. It’s basically like the shelves I put in the kitchen, except with wire shelves instead of solid ones (for air flow), and it has a rod for hanging clothes. I bought two sets of shelving using reward points (and some cash), choosing a different system than I put in the kitchen because I had some spare shelves from the set I put in the master wardrobe in our house before the last one.

That’s a straightforward and fairly easy project for me, however, that doesn’t mean it’s simple.

The builder put in one single shelf in each of the two wardrobes, and they’re screwed to some wood attached to the walls on three sides. The hanging rods are all heaving metal pipes in brackets. To get a shelf out, I first have to remove the screws, all of which have been painted over. Then, I have to figure out how the wood shelf supports are attached to the walls, and then I need to remove them. This will almost certainly damage the walls, which I’m certain weren’t painted before the wood and shelves were installed.

Once I get the old shelves and their support out, I’ll need to patch the walls, prime those repairs, and then paint. I have everything I need to do all that—though finding the patching compound did delay this awhile, because, once again, I’d put it “somewhere safe, where I can find it”. However, the paint I have may not precisely match the white of the existing paint, so I’ll paint the entire inside of the wardrobes, which will (or, should…) make any imprecise colour match pretty much unnoticeable.

THEN I can install the new shelving systems. Sigh.

So: Take the tediousness of going through everything, the extra work I’ll have to do to prepare the wardrobe before I can install the new shelving, mix in that generalised ennui and malaise, and season generously with IDGAF, and the result is that not much has happened with The Project From Hell, and it’s also basically why nothing much us happening with this blog, either (I kinda don't want to even go in my office). Even so, some progress has definitely been made on the project, and I have posted some things here on the blog.

This weekend is another holiday weekend: The Anzac Day public holiday is on Monday, and up until 1pm is the half-day trading ban. Again, that doesn't really affect me, not the least because I don’t have anything planned for that trading ban public holiday, either. Maybe I can squeeze in some attention for things I want to work on. For a change.

There are other bits and pieces I could’ve mentioned, of course, including some more Facebook-born stuff, and maybe I’ll get to that. For now, though, that’s me catching up on the little there is that’s been going on.

Puzzle pieces

2022-04-18T12:59:00.002+12:00

For the past month, most of my FB “Memories” have been about the original Covid Lockdown, or other things about Covid. This makes sense: It’s certainly dominated the news over the past two years, and especially this time in 2020. So, it was nice to see a FB “Memory” about ordinary life, as I did a couple days ago (image above).

The “Memory” is basically about enjoying the fact that Nigel was taking his annual leave, and we would’ve spent it at home. We seldom went away on holiday, except maybe for a weekend to visit family. Mostly, Nigel just preferred to stay home, what Americans nicknamed a “staycation”, because he just wanted to relax and decompress from his intense, stressful job. The furbabies and I loved having him home.

Nigel and I spent nearly all of our spare time together, and he started working from home (like me) more and more as the years passed. We both loved having the other one around, and no, for Nigel it wasn’t just so I could make him cups of tea! At least, I don’t think it was…

What was so great about the “staycation” thing is that we’d go out for lunch, maybe wander around the shops a bit, or maybe go for drive. Or, we might just watch a movie at home. Just nice, relaxing stuff done together.

People think that mourning the death of a spouse is about missing them being around, but that’s only one part of it. It’s also about losing the shared way of life, the day-to-day ordinariness, our shared past, and everything that could’ve been our future, together. Mourning the death of a spouse is an enormous thing precisely because it’s so enormous.

Little memories, like the one FB served up today, are, by themselves, just nice, sweet memories of good times. But they’re also a piece of the puzzle that is our life, a puzzle that now has too many missing pieces to ever be completed in a way that even remotely resembles the picture on the metaphorical box, the image we had of what our lives were going to look like.

But we all change our lives all the time, don’t we? When I was a little boy, I was sure I was going to be a preacher like my dad and his dad, then some years later I was going to be an archeologist, then, a few years later still, a politician—all of which is hilarious to me now. Instead, I constantly revised my path to take advantage of opportunities, to achieve goals, and then to build a life with Nigel in a different country located far away and in the two opposite hemispheres from everything I’d ever known. That wasn’t merely the biggest decision I’ve ever made, though, it was also the direct and logical result of literally everything that happened in my life leading up to the point at which I made my choice. The pieces of the puzzle of my life, it turned out, connected seamlessly with Nigel’s own puzzle.

These days, I’m in a state of flux, once again revising my path to take advantage of opportunities, to achieve goals, and to again build a life, one without Nigel. I make lots of mistakes, I frustrate or disappoint myself all the time, and sometimes I even make myself angry at myself—exactly like I did all those years ago.

My original path led me to the best life, better than I could possibly have imagined. Maybe that’ll happen again, maybe it won’t, but as I work to assemble the new puzzle, I keep finding pieces from the old one, and it turns out that they all fit into this new one. I don’t know what this puzzle’s going to look like because the metaphorical box has no picture—and I now realise, it never did.

Funny the things a thirteen year old memory can spark, like seeing the entire puzzle, and not just the areas where nothing seems to fit. This piece did fit, though, and that’s how puzzles are completed: One piece at a time.

Those staycations were truly awesome, though.

This is a revised and expanded version of something I posted to my personal Facebook on April 16.

A mini-adventure

2022-04-15T13:08:00.001+12:00

I went on a mini-adventure yesterday: I went to a neighbourhood shopping area a relatively short drive from my house, closer than the big name places I normally go to, and with far less traffic and congestion on the roads—even at the end of the school day, it turned out. I didn’t know all that because I’d never spent any time in that area before. It proved educational in a lot of ways.

It all started because I wanted to pick up some chicken for tonight (I’m making my own-style chicken stir fry; “own-style” means not a recipe as such, just a bit of this, a bit of that, whatever I have that I feel like putting in it). I could’ve gone to a supermarket, but the Thursday before Easter is usually crazy busy (the shops are all closed on Good Friday and Easter Sunday, as they are every year, and yet somehow masses of people manage to forget that—every year—and mob supermarkets).

It made me wonder if there was butcher shop near me, since all I wanted was chicken, and it turned out there’s a fairly large one in an area of Hamilton called Nawton. I didn’t know there were many shops in that area (because I hadn’t been there), but I knew it wasn’t exactly an upmarket part of town. Still, I don’t let that stop me (not in daylight, anyway), so off I went.

It was really well-stocked with diverse cuts, including cheaper things like bacon bones, brisket, and large bags of frozen chicken drumsticks, for example. The prices seemed pretty good, but I wasn’t certain because prices for meat and vegetables have soared in recent weeks, and I no longer have any idea what supermarkets charge for the same things. However, I noticed that they seemed to pack most things into packages priced at $15, and some packs were marked as “bargain packs” at $13.99 (same use by date). Personally, I’d find that easy for budgeting. As A result, I bought a little more than I’d intended. [I later did a price comparison, which is at the bottom of this post]

The same little shopping area has some food places (like a sushi shop), a branch of a Waikato-based bottle shop (“liquor store” in Americanese), a pub/cafe-ish looking place (it had a “gaming lounge”, which might influence the clientele they get), and it also had the Nawton branch of Countdown (I forgot there was one), and a small independent food store (“supermarket” doesn’t seem like the best term for it).

I plan to go back again, on a less busy day, at least to go back to the butchers, but I’d also like to look around the Nawton Countdown, too (the one I usually go to sometimes tries my patience…). So, when I need my next supermarket trip (next week or the week after), I think I’ll go there, maybe have some sushi for lunch, too. I like supporting local businesses, especially independent ones, so I’m willing to give it a go.

I guess more mini-adventures await.

A footnote: Price comparisons

Today, I decided to compare the prices I paid at the butcher with what two supermarkets charge, so I went to the websites for both Countdown and New World and tried to match same to same. The short version is that in every case, I paid less at the butcher than the current non-discounted prices at the two supermarkets [Important note: Supermarket prices were accurate at the time I checked, but they may change quickly. Also, in the case of some prices for Countdown, I had to work out the unit price because the supermarket didn’t provide that information, displaying only the price for a small pack. I may have made errors in those calculations, but I doubt it]. One kilogram (kg) = 2.2 US pounds, and today 1 NZ dollar equals around 68 US cents.

Chicken: I bought boneless/skinless chicken breasts and thighs, and both were free range. At the butcher, the breasts were $13.99 per kilogram, at Countdown it was $18/kg, and New World charged $24.99/kg. The thighs were $17.99/kg at the butcher, 25/kg at Countdown, and $22.48/kg at New World.

Premium Beef Mince: This is the top-of-the-line sort of beef mince (“ground beef” in Americanese), with the lowest percentage of fat. I paid $19.78/kg at the butcher. Countdown didn’t have premium beef mince available on its site, but New World charged $24.99/kg.

All three suppliers sold basic versions of the meats (in this case, meaning non-freerange), though I had to look at the butcher’s website to find out their price for ordinary versions. Chicken breast: $13.99/kg at the butcher, $12.90/kg at Countdown, and $11.99/kg at New World (the price listed at the butcher is the same as free range chicken breast—maybe that’s all they offered at the moment?). Chicken thigh: $16.99/kg at the butcher, $22/kg at Countdown, and $22.99/kg at New World. Beef mince: $13.99/kg at the butcher, $14.90/kg at Countdown, and $14.99/kg at New World.

All up, the directly comparable products were usually considerably less expensive at the butcher, and, with the possible exception of chicken breast, the prices for non-freerange products were also cheaper at the butcher. It’s important to note, however, that supermarket specials, promotions, and package deals (like Countdown’s “3 for $20” offerings) can make supermarket prices competitive with the butcher’s prices (putting aside issues of personal preference).

The lesson I take from this is that if I’m not making a special trip, it probably makes sense for me to buy meat from the butcher, but it would probably erase all or most of the savings if I wasn’t buying other things at that shopping centre, too, especially because I eat very little meat. If I was feeding a family—or even two people—it would make more sense to make a special trip. Still, other shops in that shopping area may provide the rest of what I need in a routine shopping trip, and, if so, it could be worth stopping at the butcher, maybe stocking up and freezing stuff.

As it happens, I’ve been researching budgeting for food as a single person, and that’ll be the subject of an upcoming blog post. This turned out to help with that research. Not bad for an unplanned mini-adventure.

This post began life as something I posted to my personal Facebook yesterday, but this blog post is greatly expanded from that, including the price comparisons.