Sailing Backwards To Christmas

Happy Thanksgiving, Americans. We don't celebrate it here, and I have to admit I maybe don't completely understand what the hell's going on with this turkey obsession you all seem to have right now, but...whatever floats your boat. Go eat some turkey and have fun.

I do have one thing to be thankful for at the moment - I have a family made of win and awesome and love who have, among about five billion other things, booked me my ticket to Shebangabang New Zealand!

Yes, New Zealand is called Shebangabang now. It's official. The TV said so.

Remembrance Day. You know how this goes, folks.

They were people once. No one deserves to be forgotten, especially not when they're so far from home.

My ipod just exploded. Fan-fucking-tastic.

Don't know how it exploded, but it's now a lovely smoking wreck.

Still not dead.

Just have some things to sort out.

See post title.

Someone - and by 'someone', I mean ME - is going to New Zealand to have adventures!

Courtesy of Accessible NZ, I have scored myself 22 days of glorious rambling fun, with the added bonus of a) one altogether shiny New Years Eve party in Matakana, and b) the certain, happy knowledge that I can get absolutely everywhere I need to go - all the accomodation, all the activities, any and all travelling between Point A and Point B, any help I might need, about half my meals...all the niggly little factors that usually get in the way of the Gimp Brigade's attempts to go off and have Internationally Awesome Backpacking Adventures like all my able-bodied mates have been able to do.

Seriously, check this out.

29 December - Auckland
Fly into Auckland airport. Nice, easy, relaxed day to catch up on some sleep, get over the dreaded jet lag fail, do a spot of sightseeing...maybe (not likely, but maybe) a bungee jump off the Sky Tower.

30 December - Auckland
Harbour cruise. Prep for New Years Eve - maybe a beach somewhere, or a few quiet bevvies at the pub. Maybe head out and check out some night life.

31 December - Matakana
New Years Eve, complete with a ticket to get me into the Highlife NYE Experience. By the looks of it, this is going to be so cool.

1 January - Tauranga/Mt Manganui
Amble up the Coromandel coast. From here until January 3, it's all just nice relaxed beach time. Could go on a fishing charter, have a swim with some dolphins, fit in a spot of kayaking, go out to a gig...

4 January - Rotorua
This'd be the town with all the crazy geysers exploding up every-bloody-where. Nice bit of sightseeing and a meal with the locals. I have no idea what 'hangi' is, but I think I'm going to find out!

5 January - Taupo
Hang out at Te Puia, have a look at Huka Falls...all that good stuff.

6 January - Wellington
Sightseeing and some night life until the 8th.

8 January - Blenheim
Catch the Picton Ferry from North Island to South Island, sit back and relax in what my good mate Sven (AKA Tintin's Kiwi Cousin) assures me is some bloody good surfing territory. He of all people should know - he grew up in Blenheim and his family still lives there.

9 January - Kaikoura/Marlborough
Into Central Otago, which - being serious wine country - would be a really good spot to slot in a wine tour at some place called the Montana vineyard.

10 January - Kaikora Coast
OMG OMG OMG WE'RE GONNA GO WHALE WATCHING.

11 January - Christchurch
Shopping, sightseeing, people watching, a round of Giant Chess. Too bad I can't actually play chess...

12 January - Hokitika
Nice easy day in a quiet little town. Hokitika is apparently where all that beautiful greenstone comes from, so I might end up leaving with a few more shiny trinkets than I had when I arrived!

13 January - Haast
Who's up for a look at Franz Josef Glacier?

14 January - Hawea/Wanaka
Two days of soaking up sun and getting back some energy. I'm probably going to need it, because the next stop is...

16 January - Queenstown
I have no idea what I'm going to do here. Bungee jumping? White water rafting? A whirl on a jetboat? Nice quiet cruise on the original TSS Earnslaw?

18 January - Christchurch
Winding down and a last ditch bit of adventuring before we fly out again on the 19th.

This is going to ROCK LIKE NOTHING HAS EVER ROCKED BEFORE.

We're in the paper!

This is what I do every winter. Looking at the photo that comes with the article, Dan Remenyi might actually be in the swingbo I used to use last year. He's being guided by my brother.

...and yes, they're absolutely right. Once you're out on the slopes, you're equal to anyone else, whether they're able-bodied or not. That makes a huge, huge difference.

liz_marcs is running a discussion about the healthcare kerfuffle that's going on in the United States right now. I'm not especially well versed in the intricacies of American healthcare - one trip the emergency room in a Chicago hospital and a quick look in to check the healing process in Seattle is not enough to call myself knowledgeable - but if what I experienced really is the usual standard of care even considering I did have reasonably good traveller's insurance, if the stories and stats mentioned in that discussion are true...

Jesus Christ. If I were American - but still myself in every other way, gimpy status included - I honestly don't see how I'd have a chance.

Wherever you stand on the issue, the responses to that post are well worth reading.

Two poems. The first one was written in 1917, the second this week, but...they need to be read together.

(  Dulce Et Decorum Est )

( Last Post )

Tim Michin gets more awesome by the minute.

Guess who has the dreaded lurgy?

Urgh...

Just for future reference, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is the TRIPPIEST MOVIE EVER if you walk in on it and start watching halfway through.

I didn't fall off the edge of the internet.

No, really. I just...went quiet for a bit. It was one of those big long stretches where you - or at least I - keep having things happen, think I should probably write that down and then other things happen that get in the way.

Of course, now I'm back here I can't actually remember any of the things I've spent most of the last month reminding myself to write down.

I spent the day wandering up and down the length of a room in my underwear, being manhandled into all sorts of intriguing positions by an absurdly hot young bloke named Joel, getting impressively rumpled and bench-pressing quite a lot more than I thought I could.

H - who will know who they are when they see this, though it's not my place to drop names - would be impressed, and might possibly try to pounce on me (lovingly) through the internet!

Okay, so it's not quite what it sounds like.

I was back at the Gait Lab, being tested. I've been a medical guinea pig all my life - first kid to have Botox injections in my hamstrings and calves, first kid to have some of my surgeries and very early on the list to have most of the rest, they used me and my wonky walking to calibrate all the machines in this particular Gait Lab when it was built - so honestly, if I'm going to be paid and get some decent strength training out of it, one more round of guinea-piggery won't do me any harm.

The thing is, though...I really don't like going to the Gait Lab. I know it's necessary. I know why it's necessary. It doesn't hurt until I have to rip the tape off, nothing bad happens to me while I'm there, the people are nice to me 95% of the time. I've done it heaps of times.

I just don't like it all that much. There's something about all those numbers that strips me down. Reduced to a string of stats about degrees of flexion, surrounded by a whole pile of medical mumbo-jumbo I don't have a hope of being able to understand...I stop being me and start being that.

I'm suddenly very aware of the hundred and one little things I've always known don't work for me the way they do for everyone else, and I hate that. I can't really explain why.

I console myself with thoughts of my new Robot Leg. There's a little machine taped to the top of my thigh, and it goes VRRT VRRT VRRT as I walk.

Nothing to see here. Just pimping a movie.

If you haven't already seen it, go forth and watch.

Just got back from having a good long chat with Dane. He taught me back when I was in first year, indulged all my fangirling about poets and authors - did a bit of his own, too! - encouraged my writing (especially the poetry) and showed me cool new things to try.

Man, I missed him when he was gone.

So yeah.

I can has Dreamwidth account.

I'm fizzylizard at LJ still, but I've decided to be a bit daring and call myself vasco_pyjama for Dreamwidth purposes.

Anyone who wants to, start inspecting.

Went to the Dawn Service this morning, as always. I'll do it properly one of these days, make the trip to Turkey or France and say hello. Might put some gum leaves on the headstones if I can get them in through customs. The poor sods are a hell of a long way from home. They might like that.

I'm going to see Cirque de Soleil tonight.

There are NO WORDS to fully express my glee.

I could be writing about any number of serious things.

The sheer amount of fail that is Amazon would be a good place to start...but there are already umpteen thousand other people busily blogging and tweeting about that, and most of them have been a good deal more eloquent than I am. I can spare a bit of sympathy for the poor sales reps manning the phones, though - they're apparently being swamped by THE ENTIRE INTERNET making furious calls, and the dumber bits of company policy really aren't their fault.

Or I could get a bit deeper have a go at talking about all the bad shit that's going on around the world. Brand new military dictatorship on the rise in Fiji, and they've just kicked out every foreign journalist they can find. Riots in Thailand. War everywhere you look. People hit by floods in southern Africa, right across Angola, Namibia, Botswana and Zambia, plus that earthquake in Italy. Pretty much all of them could use a bit of generosity, so I suggest looking up your local Red Cross on Google and seeing if they've got a donations page running.

I could be saying any of that...but I won't, because I've found a new song that makes my wee little niece laugh her head off. Having sung The Wheels On The Bus roughly 688796453386797 times between Friday afternoon and now - and made up enough new lyrics for the bus in question to come with seventeen vandals and a pony - I'm thrilled.

( The Gasman Cometh )

Picture this, boys and girls.

I'm listening to the 10th Anniversary Concert cast recording of Les Miserables, because I am an enormous dork. There's a thing at the very end of the TAC where they get seventeen different Jean Valjeans - all of them pulled from different professional productions, in about thirteen different languages - all belting out Do You Hear The People Sing? at the same time.

It's very cool, in an utterly geeky way.

First thing I notice, Australian Valjean is Rob Guest. Very, very sad, since he's now dead and he had an almighty voice. Second thing I notice - because I am an enormous dork who has the casting notes stashed somewhere in the depths of my iPod - is that Japanese Valjean is down as Takeshi Kaga.

Head to Youtube just to be sure...

OH MY LORD. JEAN VALJEAN IS CHAIRMAN KAGA FROM IRON CHEF.




SEE?!

OH CHAIRMAN KAGA, WHY ARE YOU SO AWESOME?

On a less capslock note, happy Easter to those who celebrate it. I know there are a handful of people reading this who would rather mark Passover, so chag pesach to them. Those of you who want nothing to do with any of it, peace out.