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Sunday, 1 January 2017 - Slowing down
A new year, and a new direction for this website: I'm not quitting cold turkey, but I am slowing it down. For the last 11+ years that this site has been live, it's been all about my travels and explorations. Now that life is settling down from all that (and taking a new direction itself), so too will this site. I'll continue to update it from time to time, especially with any other trips I take and major events etc., but for the most part I'm hanging up my camera. Kristina and I plan to spend our retirement (all going to plan) traveling the world until we're no longer able, but (hopefully) with time and money on our side. So hey, in 25-30 years from now this site might be back in earnest hehe, but in the meantime, thanks for watching :)

Thursday, 29 December 2016 - Leaves

 
 
At the start of December, the two big trees in our front yard still had all of their leaves, and all of them were green (gotta love these long Texas summers!). Fast forward four weeks and all but the final few have finally fallen.
 
I should have taken a before photo, but imagine a thick carpet of leaves with barely any grass visible and you'll get the idea. A few hours and two very full wheelie bins later, we're looking respectable again. Incidentally, I seem to be the only person on the street who has discovered the best way to deal with these bastards is to suck them up with the lawn mower. Our neighbors on both sides and across the street were also out there this afternoon, leaf rakes in hand and punishing their backs. Leaf blower and lawn mower - sorted!

Sunday, 25 December 2016 - Merry Texas Christmas

 

Thursday, 22 December 2016 - Winter sunsets

 
The usual sunset view from our front door. Nice!
 

Tuesday, 20 December 2016 - That was a good one

The apartment that we just moved out of was in a new building, which replaced an identical building that burned to the ground after some clown in one of the second-story apartments started cooking something in the middle of the night and then fell asleep (probably drunk). At least that's the story I was told. Anyway, I just happened to be looking at the Austin Fire Department's Twitter feed tonight (long story), and immediately recognized their cover photo as our apartment building hahaha! Our apartment was on the far end of the building on the top floor, right below that massive flame. Good thing we weren't living in there at the time!

Monday, 19 December 2016 - Let it go

 
 
The Bryant Park water fountain in New York...
 
The water fountain in our backyard hehe. This arctic blast is due to bugger off tomorrow, and we'll get back to typical Texas temperatures (t-shirt temperatures).

Sunday, 18 December 2016 - Winter is here

 
Well, autumn didn't last long. The whole country, Texas included, has been hit by another one of these big arctic blasts that used to punish us in New York. Temperatures plummeted to below freezing last night which is rare for Texas, and this is the result hahaha! These two were both perky and upright just yesterday. Oh well.

Friday, 16 December 2016 - Autumn is here

 
While we've had a few falling leaves here and there, the trees in our front yard are finally starting to turn orange and lose their leaves in bulk, just a few days before the shortest day of the year. And the temperature today: a balmy 77F (25C). Tough times in the south ;)
 

Thursday, 15 December 2016 - He's coming

 
 
Just ten days to go until the fat man comes, and we actually have a chimney for him this year for the first time ever, so he shouldn't have any trouble :)

Wednesday, 7 December 2016 - Work in progress

 
We started with this...
 
...and after several weeks we now have this. Still a work in progress, but most of the way there.
 
 
Much of the house has had a good make over from top to bottom, and we were able to set up some of our living room furniture for the first time tonight (more than a month after moving in). We still can't park the cars in the garage though - the contractors are using it as a makeshift work room and making a bloody great mess.
 
There are still several things outstanding, and we're hoping to have it all done before the end of the year. More photos to come :)

Monday, 28 November 2016 - Aaron vs. the plumbing

 
 
This here is our master shower - probably quite impressive when it was installed over a decade ago but not really our cup of tea. We can't afford to replace it right now, but we do have to deal with the fact that the temperature knob doesn't change the water temperature, and the main valve is leaking everywhere.
 
The previous owner of our house was a plumber, ironically, and has determined the valve is buggered and needs to be replaced. I can't help but feel it was buggered before we bought the place and he knew it, but oh well. So I set about demolishing the surrounding tile tonight in preparation for its replacement. I'm sure the next-door neighbor, whose bedroom I think is right across from our bathroom, was happy about that at 11pm.

Thursday, 24 November 2016 - Turkeys

 
 
Thanksgiving Day here in 'Murica today, which means a trip to meet up with my 'Murican family in San Antonio to consume an excessive amount of food and booze, and a visit to this house in the next neighborhood to admire their seasonal display. They go overboard with Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter, etc., and it's always rather amusing. I don't think we'll be doing the same at our house :)

Tuesday, 22 November 2016 - Aaron vs. Google

 
 
First I had the ants tearing up my yard, and now Google are having a go. Google Fiber, offering 1 Gbit/s internet speeds (if that means anything to anyone) and cable television, is slowly being rolled out in Austin and my neighborhood. Everybody came home one day a couple weeks ago to find a big hole in their front yard surrounded by a temporary barrier.
 
I got an additional surprise however, which I happened to notice only by chance. The construction crew stuck one of their barrier stakes right through one of our underground irrigation pipes, so it now spews gallons of water (which we pay for) when the irrigation is running. The shot above was taken 30 seconds after turning the irrigation on; within five minutes half the damn street is flooded! If it's not one thing it's another.

Friday, 18 November 2016 - Aaron vs. the ants

 
 
A couple weeks ago I discovered a big ant hill being formed in the back yard. Several online sources suggested dropping a little gasoline on the hill to kill off the ants. Well that ended up killing my grass too.
 
Last weekend I then discovered another one in the front yard, which I blew away with my new pressure washer. Problem solved. Now they're at it again, this time in the cracks of the pathway leading to the front door. As they excavate into the ground they bring it all back up and dump it at the entrance, creating potentially huge hills over time.
 
When you kick or run your fingers over the hill, literally hundreds of ants come swarming our in defense of the colony. Little shits. Meanwhile, the renovations on our house are still creeping along, slowly but surely. We're hoping to get our kitchen back by next weekend so we can at least start to cook our dinners again; we're getting sick of soup hehe.

Monday, 14 November 2016 - Supermoon

 
 

Sunday, 13 November 2016 - He we go again

 
 
Virtually all of New Zealand was awoken a few minutes after midnight on Monday local time by a 7.5-magnitude monster of an earthquake, once again turning our roads into those commonly found in the United Kingdom. It was centered 60 miles (100km) north of my home city of Christchurch and was apparently two quakes in one, lasting a combined two minutes, causing a tsunami, and leaving the usual damage (estimated to be in the billions of dollars) and heartache in its wake. Hundreds of aftershocks have followed, but only two fatalities have been confirmed which is pretty remarkable.

 
The coastal and very touristy city of Kaikoura has been completely cut off by road and rail due to landslides. Likewise for these cows. This is all very upsetting just when things were starting to calm down after the last batch of quakes that demolished my city (which came out quite unscathed this time), but what's scary is the big one is yet to come. The Alpine Fault, running almost the entire length of the South Island, is long overdue for a major rupture based on historical data. And when it does, it's gonna suck.

Wednesday, 9 November 2016 - Election hangover

 

First Brexit, and now Trump. What a year of international upsets 2016 has proven to be.

US elections are especially divisive under normal circumstances, but this particular election cycle has been an altogether different beast. On the one hand, we had a candidate who, if elected, would be the first woman president of the United States, on the back of having just had the first black president of the United States - both a very big deal in this country. Furthermore, she has spent the last 30-something years of her life on the political front lines, having been first lady to President Clinton during the 90's, then a senator for the state of Arkansas, and, most recently, Secretary of State under President Obama. On the other hand, we had a candidate who is the very definition of a political outsider: a real estate mogul cum reality TV star with absolutely no first-hand experience of politics.

The political insider versus the political outsider was a defining theme of this election. A lot of people in this country are simply fed up with the apparent ineffectiveness of Washington D.C. (the US capital), and feel they have been left behind while their issues and concerns fall on deaf ears. These politicians talk the talk, but all too often fail to walk the walk. When Donald Trump started preaching about this very point, he immediately struck a chord with a lot of Americans. One of his key arguments against Hillary Clinton was her failure during her 30-year political tenure to bring about real change. This is all a gross oversimplification of reality of course, but the message nonetheless worked.

Be that as it may, both candidates were generally disliked, which made for some tough decision-making for voters. For Hillary Clinton, 30 years in the public spotlight is inevitably going to include controversy. The 2012 attack on US government facilities in Benghazi during her time as Secretary of State, and her use of a private email server for classified correspondence were most notable. For Donald Trump, a long history of offensive comments aimed particularly at women and immigrants, accusations of sexual assault against multiple women who recently came forward, questions around his taxes and ulterior motives for being president, and even more offensive comments aimed at one group or another during this campaign have all provided some juicy headlines. Ultimately, some people voted for a candidate because they liked them, some people voted against a candidate because they didn't like them, while others refused to vote at all.

One source of Trump's past remarks were his many candid interviews on the Howard Stern Show (of which I'm an avid listener). Howard, still in regular contact with Trump, questioned on many occasions why Trump would want this unnecessary aggravation in his otherwise awesome life. What are his motives? Many others have asked the same question. Is it ego? Is this a publicity stunt that has gone too far? Was he motivated by his many business interests? Or, more simply, does he actually genuinely want this? Whatever the reasons, Trump was grossly underestimated from the beginning, by me included. I figured that if he won the Republican nomination, being as controversial and disliked as he was (even by his own party), it would ultimately hand Clinton the presidency. All of the many polls taken throughout the year seemed to agree. But they were all wrong. There was something of a social stigma attached to saying you were voting for Trump which may explain why the polls were off, but regardless, I don't think even the Trump campaign expected him to do so well last night, let alone actually win.

So where does this leave us? Well many celebrities claimed they would leave the country if Trump won, and in fact the Canadian immigration website crashed overnight so clearly a lot of folk feel the same way hahaha! Trump has vowed to be tough on immigration and deport all illegal immigrants. The people that Kristina and I contracted to renovate our house are all Mexicans, and only one of them turned up to work today hehe. I think more than anything though, a lot of folk are genuinely scared about our future under a Trump presidency (especially that dude up there on the right), in much the same way the UK is after the Brexit vote. Trump is completely untested, completely lacking in intimate knowledge of United States foreign policy (which was clearly evident during the early debates and media interviews), and possesses a disconcerting temperament (also clearly evident). On the other hand, a lot of other folk are genuinely hopeful over a shakeup of Washington, and see Trump's business acumen and success as a sign of things to come for the US economy and our international trade.

As for me, I have a more micro view of life. As long as I have a good-paying job and a nice roof over my head, I'm happy. And come what may, the United States won't crash and burn - we have checks and balances in place to keep the president's power under control (some would say too many, which is largely why Washington is perceived as being ineffective and unable to get things done). Spare a thought for Hillary Clinton though. She lost to Barack Obama in the 2008 Democratic primary to be their nominee for president, and despite winning the popular vote last night, she's now lost the presidential election. Ouch.

Saturday, 5 November 2016 - Over the threshold

 
I hate moving, and I swear I'm never doing it again. So for hopefully the final time, Kristina and I once again packed up our crap, and stuffed it in the back of a truck.

 
 
I'd be awesome at jigsaw puzzles, if I could be bothered with them.
 
Despite owning the house for nearly two months already, it is now officially our home sweet home! The renovations that started in earnest two weeks ago still have a ways to go, after which I'll put up some shots of the finished product.

Monday, 31 October 2016 - News headlines

 
'Murica!
 

Saturday, 29 October 2016 - New man-toys

 
Renovations on our house finally got underway earlier this week, and with just one week to go before we move in, the contractors have their work cut out for them.

 
 
While they take care of the inside, I put my new man-toys to use and took care of the outside. The lawn got a much-needed haircut...
 
Then I made the edges all beautiful, like my car...
 
And I fixed the neighbor's fence, which was falling into our yard hehe.

Sunday, 23 October 2016 - Scrubbing up

Kristina's twin brother Zach tied the knot this weekend down in San Antonio, and yours truly (towards the right) was one of his groomsmen. I usually get roped into taking a ton of photos at these things, but I had a good excuse not to this time. I think I scrubbed up pretty well in my (rented) tuxedo, so I might put some more photos up when the actual photographer gets around to releasing them.

Tuesday, 18 October 2016 - A year later

 
A year ago today our phenomenal road trip around the United States and Canada came to end when we arrived in Texas after almost four months on the road. I've been following it on almost a daily basis, reading back on what I spent ages putting together each and every day (and what a good read it is ;) There hasn't really been any travelling since then however since we've spent much of the last year saving our pennies towards buying a house. Now that we've done that, we might start paying more attention to the random deals that land in Kristina's inbox as a travel agent. Tahiti and a cruise around the Caribbean are a couple of examples that we've had to pass up, but we'll see what happens next year.

Wednesday, 12 October 2016 - Blank slate

 
The sellers are finally out, we have the keys, and we'll be moving in at the start of next month. Between now and then, we're arranging to have some minor work done throughout the interior to patch up and repair a few things, and add our own little touches here and there. It won't cover everything we would ideally like to have done (including a kitchen and master bathroom overhaul), but that will have to wait until we have more pennies in the bank.

Sunday, 9 October 2016 - Gloves off

 
The second of three presidential debates was held tonight ahead of the general election in four weeks, and it was another entertaining affair of insults and a lack of substance from Trump, compared to a more presidential-like performance by Clinton. Questions were asked by the debate moderators and members of the audience, and while Clinton seemed to answer them in convincing detail with policy plans and so forth, Trump's answers came across as vague and disjointed, at least to me. All of that aside, the debate was overshadowed by a video that was leaked two days ago of Trump in a private conversation (but with an open microphone) 11 years ago describing sexual assaults against women, and other such derogatory remarks. Among other things in the video, Trump claimed you can "Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything.", and bragged "When you're a star, they let you do it." News article and the video itself here. Ironically, one of the people in that conversation is a first cousin of President Bush hahaha! It was noted that Trump skulked around the stage during the debate while Clinton was addressing members of the audience and lurked awkwardly behind her (shot on the right). I started to wonder if he was going to grab her by the pussy.

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