New Year 2004

Catching up... BTW: seem to have lost one I thought I did around November 2003... when I had the sheep sheared again, a by now routine operation hampered this time by the presence of another family & their dog.

The sheep were utterly spooked by the audience & kept escaping from the pen as we tried to close them in (not helped by the fact it's a bit ramshackle). At one stage I was face to face with a big wether thinking to myself "You're not coming through here". But he came over the gate instead, then under me, and tossed me up in the air like I was running the sheep in Pamplona. Everyone thought I was going to be hospitalised I fell so heavily.

But man I was pissed off! Leapt up, ordered everybody AND their dogs out of the paddock! Alan the shearer was threatening to go get his daughter again (something I still don't quite understand & must ask him about sometime...).

Other news is that the neighbour at the back got bulldozers in, took out all the box thorn between me & him & then built a really nice iron boundary fence. He didn't even as us to contribute. Brought us a big bag of tomatoes even. So now I have the forest sheep-shape. Four paddocks to rotate them around.

but anyway... here's the actual update from the New Year

Hope you all had a good one - I spent nearly 3 weeks in Sunny O, felling trees, stacking an awesome woodpile (I likes my woodpiles), building the first bay of a 3 bayed compost area ("bin" doesn't come close) and having the neighbour deliver trailer loads of horse-poo & sawdust. And entertaining family, friends & inlaws yadda yadda. BTW: I recommend the instant Bloody Mary mix you can get from Living & Giving in town - just add vodka - apparently a concoction of tomato juice, spices & seasonings & Bay clam water (ewww..... but hey, I don't think it was Moa Point). I'm considering one of their buckets of instant Marguerita slush next (just add tequila & freeze).

Had the deck extended by the same two locals who sanded down our walls. They hadn't quite finished it by Xmas, but it was complete enough for us to use (note from the future: It looks damned fine now). Will post a picture as soon as I download it from the camera.

By now you'll all have seen the movie? And you'll be quite aware that
Smeagol does indeed die?

Didn't it rock! Can't wait for part 4! Wasn't it cool when the Otto-chick hacked the head of the beast off - wouldn't you just love to help her remove her armour at the after-battle function?

BTW: For those who have wondered about the eagles, and why they just didn't give one of them the ring & have him fly to Mt Doom & drop it in... well the answer is here, in the talkback to the aintitcoolnews.com review.

I will summarise the argument thus: "Just because. OK?"

Over the period we also took in the Two Towers extended dance mix - the extra scenes do make a difference. We discover for instance, that Aragorn in 87 years old (well why not - Frodo is supposed to be 55 but they don't mention that), and we see a lot of the Denethor/Faramir/Boromir backstory, so a bit more makes sense.

And we watched Charlie's Angels Full Throttle.... no more explanation is necessary, Matrix Revolutions - ho hum... and X 2, the X-Men part deux - this is really good & surprisingly brutal in parts. Recommended.

Now we're back in town & preparing to shift homes. To South of France (as someone else put it). Very South of France actually, like half a kilometre down the road from where we are now. It's a long story & has to do with being nosy & checking out an open home down the road (yes, the same road we're in now), and life turning upside down shortly afterwards when we decided it'd be a nicer place to live. Anyhow... these things happen (hopefully never again), and so we're likely to be spending less weekends in Sunny O for a couple of months while we unpack & sort out what is essentially a 1915 residence in pretty much completely original (but good, fortunately) condition - it even has a "safe" in the kitchen still, so if anyone's interested in renting the Otaki Love Shack (for very reasonable mates rates etc) and checking on the sheep & piles of horse-poo for me... and of course enjoying the nearby beach, and onsite forest & field.... instructions for cleaning out the sheep troughs will be supplied, if you do it right the first time, I'll supply rubber gloves.