New Stuff!

Holly’s very subtle comment about tumbleweeds brought to my attention the fact that I have not blogged in a month and a half.  So, my friends, here are some things that are new in my life:

New Phone:
My trusty, cheapo nokia has finally kicked the bucket.  I dropped it many a time, and it once had a very exciting adventure caught between my bike wheel and the bike frame, due to which it bears (bore?) a thrilling scar.  Tuesday night I dropped it for the last time and it refused to be revived.  So it’s been shipped off to Starship Children’s Hospital, who recycle/refurbish cellphones and use whatever profit as a donation to its cause (an excellent one).  Wednesday morning I got on the 2degrees website and ordered a new one, nokia again, and again the cheapest one on offer (seems to be a winning formula; certainly they’re nigh indestructible).  It arrived yesterday (Thursday), which I’m pretty stoked with, since I don’t exactly live in the most accessible corner of the world, and, through the magic of the interwebs, I’ve been able to bring my old number over to my new phone.  Sadly my contacts were irretrievable, but facebook is proving handy!

New House:
I am beyond stoked with this development.  You may remember me mentioning that my flatmate Lochie moved out in early March.  She was probably the ideal first flattie – sure she didn’t clean very often, but she kept things my level of tidy, cooked, did the dishes, vacuumed when it was needed, and was around just the right amount for my social/loner balance.  Plus she’s one of my best friends, so it was pretty easy to forgive her for anything that might have bugged me (and the same for her, I guess!), and we were each other’s ‘person’, I guess, when we were having a shit time.
After she moved out, I had about a month of living in my house by myself, which coincided with the advent of me Having A Boyfriend.  Long story short, I got pretty used to having the place to myself.
Enter new flatmate.  There were actually two of my friends who wanted the other room, but I got brainwashed by my boss (who has something against Friend A, for no reason I can discern) into choosing Friend B, who my intuition was already telling me was not the right choice.
Friend A is lovely.  She is kind, and generous, and really sweet in general.  She is also incredibly messy, very rarely takes initiative to do anything in the cleaning genre, and has a boyfriend who is Obnoxious in Large Doses.  And he is Always.  At.  My.  House.  Despite living right next door.  Both of them also have the same days off as me, so basically I never got any space to myself, which is pretty necessary to me staying sane.
When my friend Mara left work, her house was left empty, and I asked my boss if I could move in.  It took him a while, but on Tuesday he told me I could.  Wednesday I moved in.  It’s a one-bedroom place, so I have nothing to fear in terms of potential flatmates.  Downstairs is living kitchen bathroom, upstairs mezzanine-type thing is bedroom.  Is amazing.
Thursday I went to town with Nigella and bought Things For My House.  Between me and the house, I already had most stuff, but a notable exception was plates and bowls, which I found on special at the Warehouse.  Also topped up my food (since I can actually fit stuff in my freezer now – no ice build-up due to people leaving the door open, and half of my fridge no longer freezes whatever’s in it) and – magic buy of the day – a chest of drawers from a second-hand shop for $25.  They need sanding because they have apparently been owned by a small child at some point, but otherwise they’re pretty perfect.  I am nesting, and I am loving it.

New Boyfriend:
Only joking!  Samson and I are all good.
Possibly even disgustingly cute (or so I’m told).  We had one conversation the other week where he thought he was being told off (he wasn’t), but that’s about it in terms of conflict.  Did I mention we go to Shakespeare Reading Group?  There’s a few of us (S and I are the youngest by at least ten years) who meet once a month or so and read a Shakespeare play.  We did Troilus and Cressida last time, and he and I got to play the titular characters.  This meant we got to fall in love, then I got swapped for another prisoner by my countrymen, then cheated on him with a soldier, then he got to call me a whore.  All in all it was a good night!
I do think he needs a new blog name though.  I came up with Samson one day when he was sitting around with his shirt off and he has a wee bit of a beard going on and he looked a bit biblical, so I picked Samson, but I’ve gone off it.  Any suggestions?  Holly, I’m looking at you here

News:
* Team V has shrunk alarmingly in recent weeks.  We had eight members back in April, now we have four.  The most recent departure was Juno (although she is coming back for the summer), whose leaving date was a well-kept secret.  Already wasn’t having a good day that day, and it threw me off balance a little bit, but Samson helped me out with my trip and all was fine.  I went to her boot and told her she was amazing.  She told me I was too, but this was after the boot and quite a bit more beer besides lol.
* Girls’ trip to Wanaka for skiing next month.  Am looking ridiculously forward to it, despite the fact that I haven’t skied since I was about 15 and I wasn’t that great at it then either!
* Team V training day on Tuesday.  One of the bosses is taking us four for training.  I think Juno might have pushed for this, the boys get pushed forward for training all the time, but us girls kind of get patted on the head and given the slow groups, with not much emphasis on upping our Grade level.  So we’re flying in to the Heli-hike site, doing route-selection and hazard-elimination training, and walking back down the glacier through two icefalls.  The only thing that could make this better is if Juno was the one training us!