My favourite things ....

Kaitorete Spit and Birdlings Flat

After our quick trip to Nelson to store what is left of our 'stuff', the next weekend (last weekend) we went to Dunedin to visit Nigel's Mum and daughter and his oldest friend from primary school.
Our recent road trips have re-awakened my appreciation for our lovely country, and I started thinking of the things I'll miss, so here's a little list, in no particular order .....
cabbage trees; bellbirds feeding on flax flowers; our snow-capped mountains; rugged West Coast beaches; turquoise lakes; native forests; rata and pohutakawa blooms; the Nina valley; slurping water from wild rivers; the whoop-whoop sound of a wood pigeon flying; the song of the bellbird; Birdlings Flat; the variety of our seasons; Cave Stream.  I've no doubt this is a list I'll keep adding to. I'm hoping that 'up over' they grow feijoas, gold kiwi and tamarillos, and that Marlborough Savignon Blanc is available at reasonable prices!  Do they have chocolate?  ;-)

And, most importantly, family and friends.  We'll keep in touch via phone and Skype, but they haven't yet developed a replacement for a well-shared hug.

This coming weekend is our last in New Zealand for a while and my parents and sister are coming down from Nelson for the weekend. Nigel and I depart next Tuesday evening - six sleeps to go!

If you've left NZ, or can imagine doing so, what did/would you miss?  Please let us know by adding a comment here.

Freedom!

The Lewis Pass

The first - and hardest - step is both making the decision to go and then
actually doing something about it. We ticked that one off before starting this blog.  Now we've completed the next step that really feels like making us free - we've got rid of most of our worldly possessions, getting us down to a backpack each. Not quite as dramatic as setting a match to them, but we packed them up in  a truck and transported them up to Nelson and into a small container. Quite tiring with two 6-hour trips on the weekend as one way required a lot of concentration not to bounce the cargo too much, the other way involved bouncing us continually as that is what empty trucks do!

Now we're down to tying up the loose ends, otherwise known as completing the paperwork. File that tax return, change all those addresses, set everything up to run with minimal intervention from us.

Some tips:

• When packing the truck we made sure to put the items that we might need checked some time in the future (like paperwork) into the back so that they would come out last and end up at the front of the container by the door.
• When packing into a watertight container you have to make sure everything is bone dry, otherwise it will go mouldy. Luckily we could back our truck right up to our garage and just put a tarpaulin over the gap in the roof. We had packed silica sachets in some of the boxes and we also put some "damp-rid" in the container to soak up any moisture in the air.
• Not all storage facilities will be covered by your insurance company. Our one has a list of their "approved" facilities and, luckily, ours was on it. Pays to check first though!
• Insurance may cover your truck when shifting between houses, but it didn't cover our trip into a storage facility.

Some things, some times, just won’t go to plan

We've both been Project Managers.  Large corporations have been known to pay us quite large sums to manage projects and people.  Preparing for our adventure is another project for us - though it does have a much more delightful outcome!  We even have an online project plan on www.zoho.com - you've seen a screen dump on one of Nigel's earlier posts.

 But, no matter how good you are at planning, some things, some times, just won't go to plan.  It’s been a week of those.  Today all three areas of ‘issues’ have reared their difficult heads all in one day, and I’m going to let vent!  I hope you'll see the funny side!

A week ago we decided it was a good idea to upgrade the 250GB C: drive on my laptop.  It had seemed huge when I bought it three years ago.  Anyway, it was down to a spare 50GB, after I did some pruning, and my 80GB of videos have always been stored on an external drive.  So I set my sights on 750GB (wonderful!).  I took it back to the place I’d bought it from (and they shall remain nameless because they’re basically good guys) and paid extra to have the operating system and MS Office reinstalled and my data copied across from my old drive.  That all sounds good, so far!  Well, I went to pick it up and it wasn’t ready, so I went away for an hour and came back to pick it up.  Not too bad.  I got it home and after reinstalling some of the software that they couldn’t install (because they are downloads, not on disk) discovered they’d installed the 32 bit version of Windows 7 instead of the 64 bit version!!  In the morning they convinced me there was no difference.  Hmmm.  Then I discovered that a lot of my data hadn’t been copied across because it was at the top level of the C: drive instead of under my user data.  So, not wanting to wait for them, I restored from backup.  But I wasn’t absolutely certain I’d backed up all my old data to my most recent backup drive, so decided to be cautious and went back to them to get them to fire up the old drive so I could check.  I arrived as arranged (yesterday afternoon) and was told that ‘no’ it wasn’t as simple as that and I’d need to come back in the morning.  I suggested 9am and they agreed.  And I told them about my MS Office programs asking me to accept the user license agreement every time they fired up after a re-boot.  They said they’d need to call Microsoft to fix that one, and “it could take sometime”.  I didn’t like the sound of that so I did a Google search, or two or three, and resolved the issue myself in half an hour.  This morning I arrived late – I hate doing that – at 9:15am and the manager and the tech guy I needed to talk to were not there and I was told they were never in before 9:30am.  I’m embarrassed to say I let rip at the other guy.  Actually, I’m not too embarrassed – I wasn’t violent or rude (no swearing!).  I just said it wasn’t good enough, and that it had been a balls up from the start (oops – that probably does count as swearing, doesn’t it?), and that I was really angry about it.  As I charged out the door I think I even said something (silly) like "I'll be back!".  I don’t think he was very scared, and he was friendly and happy to accept my apology when I returned.  I’ve fired up the laptop but haven’t checked the files yet.  I’m thinking positively.  Everything’s going to be great!!

Then there’s the rental property in Dunedin.  Did we mention we’re getting it re-roofed and a few repairs done (like windows replaced) hopefully before we depart.  Email’s been great for keeping a record of everything, but getting the quotes sorted and managing the two companies doing the work has not always been a smooth process - a process that started at the beginning of March.  Three weeks ago I explicitly followed the roofers instructions to phone the power company to get the power cables wrapped so the roofers and builders wouldn’t get electrocuted while they were working on the house.  Sounds fair to me.  In the quote they go so far as to give the phone number to call and the exact words to say – they’ve obviously worked out that most of their clients are not familiar with the terms used to describe the electricity services we usually take for granted.  So the power company goes out and checks and comes back to say it’s not necessary, they’re already double insulated.  All good.  Except that today the roofer's come back to say that they’ve spoken to the power company; it’s the road cables that need to be wrapped and I need to approve the $650+gst fee for getting them wrapped.  So I’ve spoken to the power company guy – he says he’s confused too and he’s going out to the property.  I responded to the roofers and suggested they make a small improvement to their explicit instructions.  I really was very polite about it.  Promise!

I called our insurers the other day to let them know about the work being done on the rental.  I phoned the local office, where the insurance was arranged, and they said I needed to speak to the Dunedin office, so they transferred me.   Very pleasant and helpful Rob in the Dunedin office said he highly recommended we take out construction insurance because if things went wrong the builder's and roofer’s insurance would protect them, but not necessarily us, and I had to go into our local office to organise that and to take along copies of the quotes for the work, and I needed to know when the work would start and when it would end because it would cost a lot more to extend the insurance once it had started and if the insurance ended before the work ended we wouldn’t be covered for that period. Phew!  So, this morning, while I seethed about being ‘stood-up’ by the computer guys, I dashed off to the insurance company.  And there I was told they don’t do construction insurance in Christchurch (because of the earthquakes) and have no staff qualified to offer it for other locations.  They gave me the name of the best person to speak to in the Dunedin office.  Have you guessed the name yet?  Yes – Rob!!

Yes - I know it was supposed to be three gripes - but another opportunity has arisen, a WTF moment - and if you don't know what that stands for, I'm not going to tell you - it contains a rude word!  We're selling the Honda.  We've already had one scammer email us through the Buy, Sell Exchange ad.  Now I've received this corker from Trademe:
Hi there i am very interested in the Honda number plate surrounds/frames. I have the new edition ones i can give you on exchange if you're interested? I'm happy to pay for them also, and i will give you these new ones too. Regards Jackie
We're selling a car, for goodness sake!  Why in the world would we want to start pulling bits off it?  We didn't list it under 'Car parts and accessories'.  I'm astounded.  And will resist any temptation I may have had to respond.

So now I've listed my gripes, I'll also take a moment to remember that we had a fantastic garage sale last Saturday, the Mazda sold and went to a new, loving home on Wednesday, and various bits of furniture and other bits have been walking out the door in exchange for money all week.  And friends and family still love us.  Happy days!

Garage sales and Trademe

We've made one giant leap forward today. 

We had a garage sale!  We've had them before, but never quite as successful as this one.  We only made $350 - let's not talk or think about what the 'stuff' cost us in the first place - but even the cash is far out-weighed by the relief of getting rid of most of it.  We had planned to have two garage sales - the second is no longer necessary.  Most of the 'stuff' had been carted from one house to the next over the last several years, and most of it had been useful at one time or another, but it no longer fitted with our plans for the future - not that we can be certain about those for more than about six months!  All the unsold items will fit in the boot of the car and go to the City Mission, or similar, and some will simply be thrown out.  While all of this stuff has passed its 'use by' date for us, it's been great to know that for some people it will become new treasure - or at least useful.

Nigel's had great success on Trademe too and much of our furniture has gone for more than we had thought possible, especially where little bidding wars have erupted. Prices for second hand goods in Christchurch had been low, but with many workers coming into Christchurch for the rebuild there seem to be a lot of people setting up fully self-contained houses and flats as rentals and this seems to have pushed prices up again.

Our biggest concern at the moment is our cars.  We haven't had any interest in them so far, which must mean our prices are too high, but they seem to compare favourably with other cars listed, so we're a bit confused .... and concerned.  I even tried listing them in the Buy, Sell, Exchange paper, but have received no calls from there either.  Darn it.

In only two weeks time we will have packed up the hire truck, driven to Nelson, and off-loaded all the belongings we are keeping into half a twenty-foot storage container - just a third, and maybe a quarter, of the space we would have required had we instead kept all the 'stuff' we've sold and are selling.  The rest of our belongings will be in our packs, on our backs.

Cripes!  :-)

Should I mention some of the drawbacks?  Well, Izzie's sleeping on the couch because we sold her bed, and the spare bed.  And she had to clear out her chest of drawers last night so we could put it in the garage sale.  Tomorrow the dining suite goes to a new home, so we'll be eating ... somewhere. We'll work it out.  The big flat-screen telly's on a (strong) cardboard box because the entertainment unit's been sold.  The lounge suite goes next weekend, so Izzie then sleeps on .... ummmmm..... Luckily, a friend's buying the whitewear to set up a rental, so we can keep that until the last minute .... about the same time that we move into her house for our last three weeks in Christchurch!