Lawn mowing & Espionage

My lawn and I have been engaged in a battle. Lawn nearly won. It all started innocently enough. Lawn was behaving himself, sitting quietly in front of my house as a good lawn should, content with being green. But dark undercurrents of rebellion were stirring within Lawn. The first sign of trouble was the Dandelions. Like an advance party of Special Forces they surreptitiously began moving into position around Lawn, slowly lifting their heads from cover and looking around. I should have acted then… but my Sister had given me an Xbox and I was… busy.

Then things escalated. Lawn began to expand, upwards, fast. A slightly queasy feeling began to grip my stomach. I’d stand in my living room and careful pull one corner of the curtains aside, furtively glancing around at Lawn before quickly retreating back the relative safety of “Need for Speed Underground 2”.

Time for action! The problem is that I don’t own a lawnmower and I don’t fancy my chances with a pair of kitchen scissors. So I call the mercenaries… Lawn decapitators for hire. These guys have the gear to decimate Lawn and to carry away the evidence in a canvas bag. It turns out they aren’t cheap either! Especially as Lawn has now established a beachhead and is I suspect planning an invasion. I decide I can’t afford the mercenaries. An air of disquiet hangs over the neighbourhood. The neatly groomed properties either side of me seem to scream at me every time I drive in. I’d close my eyes except then I’d probably drive over my letterbox.

Plan B. This sees me borrowing a mower from my brother-in-law. I went to the hardware shop and bought a brand new petrol can, stopped at the service station to get some fuel, and headed home. Lawn looked at me defiantly as I walked past. I filled up the mower and rolled it into position, settled my earmuffs securely into position, firmly grasped the mower’s pull cord and… well pulled. Nothing. So I reset and grasped the cord again, took a deep breath and pulled again. The first 200mm of pull went according to plan. But then with a snap the cord broke. My arms kept up their momentum and my fist, still clenched tightly around the handle, smashed into my face. Lawn got a reprieve for another day.

Now to the espionage. While all this was happening it seems that one of my neighbours was giving reports back to my landlord (who lives a few hundred kilometres away). First I know of it is when I receive an email that says, “street report u r making hay on front lawn? lol, plse keep cut, ta”. Aaaah… I’m trying! Now I don’t know about you but there is something creepy about finding out that your landlord has someone watching the place to make sure you’re doing everything right. Not knowing who it is that is watching we are now glaring over the fence at all our neighbours… chances are we’ll eventually glare at the right person. Everyone else will simply think we’ve lost our minds and will warn their kids to stay away from us.

Back to my war with Lawn. The disgraced mower got sent to the repair shop and I was promised that I would get it back in three days. That’s three days where Lawn sat gloating at my failure. Both my neighbours cut their lawns again, just to rub salt in the wound. After three days I rang the repair shop… not ready. The next day… still not ready. Finally after six days I get the mower back. Look out Lawn, your time has come!

So I put on my boots, fix my earmuffs securely to my ears, check the petrol level and roll the mower into position. Then carefully pulling the choke to fully on I grasp the new pull-cord pausing long enough for a deep breath… and pull. It starts! For all of five seconds before spluttering in a death rattle to silence. I think naughty words loudly in my head. After much poking and prodding (and maybe just a bit of kicking) I realise that the fuel valve has been turned off during the repair. A simple thing to fix… and now I’m back in business.

Alas, the end of this story is not too dramatic. I cut the Lawn down. I am victorious. I need a cold drink. Until we meet again my nemesis Lawn!

Soul Survivor part 1

Ok... time to get back to writing. And due to popular demand (well actually two requests) I'll talk a bit about Soul Survivor. If you want to know all the details of what Soul Survivor is, what it's about etc check out the link. This post won't try to explain all of that.

My role for SS was the rather dubiously important sounding "production manager". I think that meant I was supposed to look as if I knew what end of a guitar to plug the cable thingy into and that a speaker is both a person standing at the front of the marquee sharing their wisdom with us and the big black box the sound is coming out of. It's all very technikal.

Because of this rather weighty responsibility I decided to get up to the site early on the set up day. The site was at Manfield Park in Feilding. Feilding it seems has won awards for being the prettiest place in NZ or something. Not being particularly enthusiastic about pretty gardens it's not a place I have ever been before. The salient fact however is that it is about 2 hours from where I live. And so I dragged myself from bed at 5.30am and was on the road by 6.30am with the intention of being on site at 8.30 in time to watch the marquee being erected.

Everything went according to plan until Levin. I wish to speak no bad things against Levin. You may come from there and love the place for all I know. And to be fair what transpired was not actually the fault of Levin or her inhabitants. I did however think some rather dark and uncharitable things when, just as we were driving out of Levin my van shuddered, sighed and then stopped. Basically the van was knackered with the balance belt in several pieces and bent valves etc. So for me SS started with my van being loaded onto a tow truck and having to be picked up by a kind man with a trailer (many thanks Shane!). By the time I got on site the marquee was up. Good for my ego that… reinforcing the fact that no one actually needed me there!

The rest of the set up went pretty well. Except for the lights. I know next to nothing about lights except that they scorch your retina if you stare into one and that sometimes if you spend lots more money you can get lights that move and can blind more people than the silly static ones. This is the reason why I have people on my team that are lighting guru’s. Unfortunately none of them were with me at SS.

With only about an hour and a half before the first meeting in the marquee I still had no lights working. Well, to be precise, they did work… just not in any logical or useful way. Phone calls were made hastily to Wellington and with the phone clutched to my ear and with a drummer sound checking his kick drum 2 feet from my other ear I knelt on the ground in front of the dimmer pack and tried to explain to lighting guru Daniel what was going on. Finally, with barely an hour to spare and desperate I pulled the power from the lighting, waited a minute and turned it all back on… and it worked! Stupid lights.

Next time I’ll write something a little more deep and meaningful about Soul Survivor.

The box

My life is in a collection of brown cardboard boxes. Some of them are small. Some of them are large. They are all full of my eclectic collection of paraphernalia… junk if you prefer. Maybe I should clarify by saying that I have just moved house, 3 days before Christmas to be exact. The problem was that I have also just been involved in the inaugural Soul Survivor NZ festival and therefore have not spent any concerted effort in getting unpacked.

I’m sure many of you have had the dilemma that I now face… where the heck did I put everything? I’ve lost count of how many times I have needed one small thing and then spent the next 15 minutes opening every single box and rummaging through the contents… then rummaged through them all again because I couldn’t find what I was looking for the first time through.

I have of course unpacked the essentials of life. My 550 CD’s are on the shelf… in alphabetical order no less. My cutlery and crockery is in the cupboards. The TV and computer are all plugged in and working well. I’ve found all the chargers for my phone, camera and ipod. But half my clothes are still in the boxes, My books are on the floor and I’m currently sitting next to box I suspect is full of rice, pasta and various herbs and spices.

So how long before I get sick of clambering around the boxes that are in every room of the house? I think my lethargy can extend a couple more days.

A feeble excuse...

So, the two or three people who read this may have noticed I have not added anything for... um... a while. My feeble (nay, pitiful) excuse is that I have been busy. And I have. But is it an excuse... I'll leave that to you to decide.

Since my last post I have:
a) Done the Christmas at the Park event in Porirua
b) Shifted house
c) Celebrated my Mother's birthday
d) Eaten far too much for Christmas dinner
e) Been a part of Soul Survivor's first ever NZ event
f) Slept nowhere near enough

So now that I have all of that out of the way I will endeavour to write a little about some of those things that have been keeping me busy... as well as finish unpacking all my household items from the multitude of boxes that are stacked in every room of the house and that I trip over at least once a day!

Change

It’s now official... my house has been sold and I need to move. So the scrounge for cardboard boxes begins. That’s cardboard boxes to put my stuff in, not to live in. Just thought I should clarify.

My brother likes the idea of living in a motor home or caravan. I guess he’s attracted to the romanticism of being able to change address at the turn of your ignition key... of being some kind of nomadic, music writing retro-hippie. Me... I’m not so keen on the idea of doing my ‘business’ into a small chemical filled bucket that I need to empty by hand. Er.... not quite as nice a picture... sorry.

So, it’s time for another change in my life. A change that has been brought on by circumstances beyond my control. A change that honestly I’m not in the mood for. But, what can you do? I could sit around snivelling about it, or I could ‘man-up’ and get on with things. Can I have a minute to decide please?

At the same time I’m beginning to consider my options for employment for next year. I’m no longer sure if where I am now is a good fit. It’s a bit like your favourite pair of old jeans... they’re comfortable and familiar, you’ve had great times in them... but the zipper no longer holds up all the time and colour is wearing a bit thin.

Of course, in my normal style I have no idea what else to do with myself if I were to leave. Any suggestions? Astronaut, cowboy, race car driver, Zorro, meat-pie filling inspector, shark whisperer, spy, reality tv host/contestant/critic, henchman.

There is a plethora of options, I’m sure to hit on something good eventually. In the meantime I think I will shut my eyes, turn up the ipod, and sink into a cola fuelled stupor. Mmmmmmm... stupor.

Dyslexic oven knobs and Chicken finger stir-fry

I’ve been having trouble in the kitchen lately, which is a bit of a problem. I mean, you have to eat don’t you… so I can’t really avoid that room of the house. If I was having trouble with the garden shed I could just shut the door and forget about it. It’s not like I’m really hanging out to do gardening after all. But the kitchen…

The first sign of the trouble ahead was when I went to heat up some milk for a pasta sauce. I carefully put the pot on the right-rear element, scanned the controls for the appropriate knob, and turned it to high. There is a saying, “a watched kettle never boils”. I have another saying, “a pot on the wrong element never even has a chance of boiling”. Here I am staring at the calm surface of the milk in the pot, wondering why there is no steam, no little bubbles that show that something is happening… wondering why my left hand is starting to get hot! Instead of the right-rear it seems I’ve turned on the left-rear element.

“So what”, I hear you say.

“We’ve all accidentally turned on the wrong element”.

Yes… well… how do you explain that I did the same thing three more times this week?! And I was really concentrating too! I take my time, confirm which element the pot is on, check the knob, re-check the pot, re-check the knob, slightly less confidently turn it on, wait… dammit!

I think I’m seriously losing my mind! How hard can it be to turn the correct knob?

Last night I had a different problem while cooking at my parent’s house (they are away so my brother and I have been eating dinner there to check on the place and make it look like someone is still living there). I was chopping an onion for use in a chicken stir-fry. As I was cutting I thought to myself, “be careful Andrew… slow down… sharp knife”. Why don’t I listen to myself I wonder? I had nearly finished my chopping when the knife slipped off the onion and on to… no prizes for guessing… my middle finger. A quick exclamation followed by a profusion of the red stuff from the end of my finger. I washed it out while yelling to my brother to go find a bandage, and being a skilled first-aid practitioner (yeah right) put pressure over the surprisingly deep wound.

Mark goes bounding up the stairs to the bathroom to look for medical supplies and I can hear him banging around. Cupboard doors are crashing, drawers are opening and shutting at a furious rate. I’m bleeding everywhere. Then I hear him come back down the stairs… with the bandage? No… he’s now in the guest bathroom. Crash! Bang! Thump! Silence… this time… here he comes. No. He’s going back upstairs again. I’m still bleeding. More loud noises before he comes back with some ridiculous gauze pad that I have to tie on my finger with some equally ridiculous gauze bandage… apparently no sticky band-aids in the circa 1970 first aid kit.

For those that are interested… the stir-fry, although considerably delayed in it’s delivery, was very tasty.

We had takeaway tonight.

Wonder

I’ve been reading a lot of science fiction lately. Not for any particular reason… it’s just what I feel like reading at the moment. In the last 6 weeks I’ve read about 8 books from some of the masters; Arthur C Clarke, Philip K Dick and Isaac Asimov.

The thing I keep reminding myself as I read these books is the age in which they were written. These days we live in a time where the moon landings were nearly 40 years ago and television and movies have dulled our wonderment of space travel. But some of the books I’ve been reading were written in the 1950’s, a time when man knew little about what was really ‘out there’ and I’m amazed at how accurate these writers were!

It seems that we’re not surprised by anything technologically new these days… I can almost believe in anything being possible. But I think about the changes that happened in my grandfather’s lifetime (1913 – 2004) and the absolute wonder he must have felt about the pace of change in the world around him. Just think… the first airplane flew a mere 10 years before he was born and yet by the end of his life inter-continental flight is common place, and we’re on the verge of commercial flights into space.

But what I will remain in a state of open mouthed wonder about is the amazing scale and detail of creation. I was looking at a book full of photos from NASA which included some pictures from the Hubble telescope, and I came across a photo of the Orion Nebula, 1500 light years away from earth and visible to the naked eye. Here’s the thing, this one feature is 30 light years across! To be geeky… light travels at 1,079,252,848.8 km/h… which means light will travel around the earth approx 7 times in 1 second… but light would take 30 years to get from one side of the nebula to the other! All I can say is wow! None of the science fiction in the world can match the reality of God’s creation.

Movin'

I’m going to have to move house soon… again. My landlord has decided that he needs to sell the house. Admittedly it’s for a valid reason – his elderly parents are sick and he needs to buy a place close to them to look after them – but it doesn’t make it any easier on us.

So the drama at the moment is the stream of real estate people traipsing through our abode, accompanied by curious onlookers… potential buyers. I feel like we are part of an urban zoo.

“Come see the habitat of the reclusive ginger haired Androo”, says the tour guide, gently straightening their red sports jacket and flashing a smile to their wide-eyed entourage.

“Look how he casts off his old socks like a snake shedding his skin”.

A mother quietly draws her child a little closer and glances nervously around. “He’s not lurking here somewhere is he?”

There is quite a bit of pressure keeping the place perfectly clean all the time. We never know when we will get the phone call from the real estate people wanting access. They’ve been pretty good at giving a few hours notice… but often I’ve already left for work when the call comes. So every morning I make the rounds, making sure everything is put away, the dishes are done, the carpet is vacuumed.

As a thanks for us being so lovely to deal with the agent left us a gift the other day… a six pack of fancy expensive beer. I appreciate the gift, but really… is leaving beer for us the best way to ensure our continued good behaviour? They might bring the next lot of unsuspecting onlookers around to our humble zoo to find us in our underwear, singing the theme song to Spongebob.

Technical

I am a techie. No… not a “Treckie”. I have no close fitting lycra top with the Star Federation emblom emblazoned on my chest. I don’t go to conventions and speak Klingon or discuss why episode 23 was a revolutionary moment in my life and how I’ve now committed my life to the warrior code.

No…. I am a techie, a technical person. You can keep your fantasy conventions, give me large amplifiers and stacks of speakers and throw in a huge video projector while you are at it.

At the end of this week I will be running a large “Christmas at the Park” concert for around 10,000 people. With clipboard in hand and a communication headset firmly attached to my head I will direct my team to a flawless performance…. hopefully. I say hopefully because I know it won’t be that easy. A stage that big, with that many performers and instruments leaves plenty of room for disaster.

Last year it was the wind that was nearly our undoing. The large scaffold tower that held a projection screen was pounded by the wind and during the afternoon we noticed that the back was beginning to lift out of the ground and the tower was starting to lean out over the stage! Needless to say there was a quick phone call made to get the scaffold riggers back to fix their work.

At another gig recently one of our young video crew was so engrossed in the shots he was getting of the band performing that he stepped backwards off the stage. To his credit and the ongoing respect of his peers, he managed to keep the band in focus until the moment he hit the ground!

Anyway, only a few days to go and so far disaster is nowhere in sight. Maybe the large (and very expensive) LED wall mounted on a truck that we have hired will suddenly burst into flames and engulf the crowd in a blazing inferno. Maybe the stage will suddenly tilt up and send the band into a tangled heap of limbs, trumpets and plywood. I’ll keep you posted.

love and paint

Some of the guys I work with had a gunfight today. Not something reminiscent of the old west with two adversaries facing one another, bow legged, across a dusty street, with their triggers fingers twitching in anticipation over their pearl handled six-shooters. Nor was it a scene from South Central LA with warring gangs popping caps in the asses of their enemies. No, this was a fun morning of paint-ball.

The primal urges of man percolate to the surface at times like this. Caring, sensible individuals are reduced to salivating hunters.

The funniest thing to do to a friend is to convince him that he’s on your team and then ambush him and let loose with a torrent of paint balls aimed at soft parts of his body. The bumps, bruises and broken skin is to be displayed later as a badge of friendship… “look how much my mates care about me… they shot me in the groin!”

Damn… I wish I could have gone with them!

meth lab

My nose is itchy and my eyes are watering. I have Hayfever and I’m not enjoying it one bit. I try to avoid taking pills, tablets or sprays as much as possible and some years I manage to get away with it…. but not this year. This year I’m suffering.

So I decided today to go to the Pharmacy and get something to relieve the symptoms. It was with trepidation however that I made my way to the counter to ask for those little white pills, with last year’s experience still fresh in my mind.

I had casually sauntered up to the Pharmacist, carefree and relatively happy, and placed my order for one nasal spray and one box of 10 tablets. Then the questioning began… why did I need them? Was I sure I needed them? Why was I asking for this particular brand? It seems that Pharmacists had been getting pressured by Police and government about the supply of certain drugs over the counter that could be turned into Class A party drugs. Maybe I was a drug maker with a meth lab in my kitchen!

It seems ridiculous when you consider that the products I was asking for don’t contain the critical ingredients anyway and I was buying such an insignificant amount. Some party it would be, even if I knew how to manufacture the stuff! Even so, I was transfixed in the steely glare of the woman behind the counter as I was forced to write my details into her little notebook. Honest as I was, it never occurred to me that I could have written a false name in the book with no one being any the wiser.

So today I was wondering if I was going to once again be treated like a criminal, a shady underworld corrupter of youth. But today was different… no questions at all, just took my money and wrapped my two little boxes in a white paper bag.

Today’s paper has a story of the police intercepting a quarter of a million pseudoephedrine pills hidden inside furniture from China. My one box of hayfever pills doesn’t really measure up does it. Unless…. my bank card details are right now being traced and….

the return

My cat came back… but unlike the old song, it wasn’t “the very next day”.

I recently moved house and took my cat with me. It seems however that he wasn’t as taken with the idea of a move as I was and at his first opportunity he disappeared. That was three months ago and I’d assumed that he had either taken up with a more caring and less transitory owner or… he was fertilizer.

So it was with surprise that I received a phone call last week to tell me that my cat had turned up at the old house alive and well. He was a bit skinny. I guess birds and mice or whatever else he’d scavenged weren’t as nutritious as his normal fare.

Back into the cat box he went and back to the new house. One can only wonder what thoughts passed through his feline mind when the box opened and he found himself back in the house he’d escaped from! Three months of deprivation and hardship for nothing!

On a more scientific note… if a cat weighs approximately 4kg after an epic journey, eats normal food for 24 hours afterwards and then, um, evacuates his stomach contents on the kitchen floor… repeatedly…. Is it possible for these gastric expulsions to weigh more than the cat? Ripley’s may be interested… such a little cat, such a lot of mess.

Some people get to party at night, some people engage in intellectual musings with their peers. On my knees on the kitchen floor in the stench of cat vomit, I envy those people.