#I don’t want to order online because shipping is STEEP for these tiny things

[chipmunkweirdo]

Does anyone know if Walmart and Target stores in Michigan are getting the Inside Out blind boxes? I have the main five emotions, but I’m looking for the four new ones. (especially anxiety)

So far, our local Target said they were supposed to get them June 16th, but they haven’t shown up yet.

Mom and I will be able to stop at some other Targets and Walmarts around the state on our final couple quilt trips though!

[rhodanum]

misadventures in fandom merch

Guess what I finally managed to get my hands on, after almost two years of yearning for it. The Art of Oban Star Racers! It was an entire adventure, involving everything from packages lost in the mail to a hidden second-hand bookstore right in the heart of my city.

To get the story started, I ordered this artbook and two other books somewhere around Orthodox Easter of this year (late April) after managing to scrounge up some money for them. The Book Depository was my shop of choice, due to their free worldwide shipping (I want to make it clear that this isn't a post bashing on TBD, they've been nothing but fair in their dealings with me. It's just that cheap shipping options + the chronic disaster that is the Romanian Post apparently do not mix). May came and went... and no sign of the books. Same for June, July and August. By September I was sick of waiting (which I'd done only in the hope that the order was just waylaid somewhere and might still arrive, so no point in asking for a replacement). Finally, I contacted TBD customer service at the start of this month and told them everything, including the fact that my local post office had no idea where on earth the package was (no tracking number = no one knows where it is, because shit doesn't get registered on the basis of a name or address when it enters the country. There isn't even any sort of automated sorting of the mail, everything is still done by hand, with people waddling through mountains of packages, trying not to get crushed underneath a parcel avalanche. Astounding, I know). TBD were helpful and offered me a choice between a full refund or re-sending the package and I went with the second option. Yesterday (24th of October) an international order finally arrived. Here's where it gets really wild. On the basis of the invoice inside the package, this might be the initial order I made all the way back in April (that or TBD never updated the date on the second invoice, I don't even know). To make the whole thing even funnier, the two books and their invoice were in the package... but the OSR artbook wasn't (to be fair to TBD, they do say on the invoice itself that if there were more books in the order, they'll arrive in separate packages). At this point I was faced with more waiting for the artbook. So I said "fuck it!" and went online to find it over here as well. The reason I didn't buy it from our sellers in the first place was the steep price, higher than the one in the UK. However, this time there was a speck of luck on my side and I found the artbook among the listings posted by a used bookstore in downtown Bucharest, at an absolute steal of a price (20 RON, so about five USD / EUR). Still thinking it was too good to be true, I reserved it and went down to the shop to pick it up in person. And here it is, after months of anticipation and anxiety. With an external jacket that's a little scuffed and dog-eared in the corners, but at this price, it's entirely worth it, flaws and all. There's a funny story connected to the used bookstore as well, I never knew of its existence. Despite the fact that it's right on the route I used to take when coming and going from university, ten years ago. And this is because the bulk of it is underground, in a former wine cellar converted into a large book-shop. The street-level floor, by comparison, is tiny and utterly unassuming, reason why I never bothered walking in there, until now! Currently reading through the artbook and I'll be posting a couple of excerpts soon, because there are some excellent details in here!

[basshouse]

Donkeys Down Under Part 2

Make sure you start with this blog post, its the first in the series and this is a serial! 

In the first post, I started with How We Got Here.  Next up: 

Where we are. 

We live on Centaurus Road in Hillsborough, Christchurch (not-so-subliminal hint: sending a package will cost you an arm and a leg, but it’ll be worth it to see the smiles on our faces if you include a few packets of Hidden Valley Ranch mix).  

Christchurch is the biggest city on the South Island, with a whopping 375,000 people or so  – pretty big considering the whole country is just under 5 million people, and only about 30% of them live on the South Island at all. You can do your own research on the city’s history and geography if you like. The city is big enough to have good restaurants, bars, craft beer, and various forms of mild entertainment like tennis clubs, live music from time to time, exercise options...more cosmopolitan than we expected but super easy navigate and access to surfing beaches, mountains, rivers, lakes, coasts, bike trails. 

Our house is perched on the Port Hills, a short walk from the renowned Rapaki Track and a 10 minute drive to Sumner Beach (our regular surfing spot). The house has great views, an extra room for guests, and a lot of character – including:

A bathroom with handmade cat tiles and a shower with a strong homemade underwater motif.

A crazy garden full of roses, really loud birds, the odd hedgehog, and a zillion fruit trees that we don’t know how to manage.  Seriously, you should have seen me and Jason and Anily trying to shake down a tree full of plums without any useful protective gear – next time we’ll get out the ski goggles and helmets. 

A small plant growing up through the living room floor.  

A bathroom sink that’s even smaller than the one in our house in Seattle – really! 

Checkerboard linoleum floors. 

Sailboat wallpaper in one room and the ugliest damn curtains you’ve ever seen in others. Like, mauve. And flowered. Sometimes at the same time.

A fantastic sunroom that is the home of our new ping pong table and our surfboard rack.  Thankfully we did not have to get rid of the college dude vibe we had so carefully cultivated with our basement kegerator, Pacman machine and discarded drum set in the last house; we just evolved it a little -- the NZ version has a slightly more active characteristic. At this point Jason and I won’t be the ones playing the drinking games, but as I like to say, the best thing about being a grown up is giving yourself the permission to buy the toys that let you be the grown up you want to be.  Actually, I will probably never say that again because it’s a lot of words, but I’m committed to the philosophy behind it. More on toys and activities and drinking later.

The house has a fat deck with views of the Southern Alps

A super steep driveway and very slippery stairs (consider this your warning and legal disclaimer). 

You can’t see all the awesome details of the house in the satellite picture, but you can click and then zoom around if you want to see where we’re situated:

Our house is in a great spot.  It’s an easy bike ride to school and work and a short trip to the best grocery store in town, where you can buy a box of Gorilla Munch cereal for $8 and a small bag of Cheetos for $5 – in the international aisle, of course.  I refuse to document what else is in the American section.  I haven’t broken down and paid for the  Cheetos yet, but Anily really likes to eat Gorilla Munch before school, so, yes, this blog DOES contain a shopping list for things you should put in your extra suitcase when you come to visit (see if you can spot them all).  

We feel really lucky to have this house, and there are a few good lessons wrapped up in how we got this place with its weathered wood and tiny sinks and toilets.  One, surely, is not to lean too far for the toilet paper, especially if you can’t count on your core strength.  For not only are the toilets tiny, the seats on them are weak, and butt cheeks can be slippery.  Let’s just say the quality of the toilet seats has been a topic of more than one conversation among the American crew here, and one of us (not saying who) has a story that ends with a minor injury and a full bathroom clean up before coffee.

Anyway, for the real estate buffs out there, here’s how we won the rental house lottery: we landed in CHCH with ZERO idea of where to live and not much of a plan. We’d never been to this city, and luckily we had the sense not to commit to anything in advance.  That’s lesson #2 : it’s just too hard to know the vibe of a place without having feet on the ground, and internet research isn’t reliable for choosing a long-term place to live, so don’t commit if you don’t have to.  Good thing too, since most of what we read online in advance would have had us living on the west side of town, which is pretty much a mall, but of the NZ variety, which – shout out to my SA peeps – is reminiscent of the Central Park Mall in 1987, only without a Spencer’s and sub in a Kmart as the flagship instead of the Jacque Pen-nay’s. 

So we got to town, I went to work, and Jason started with schools.  Like many other places, school attendance is based on where you live, though there are schools that have open enrollment.  We got here at the end of the Seattle school year and basically decided to throw the kids right back in school until the summer break, which is December here.   Nice, right? A whole year of school to go with your whole year of winter, love you!  But honestly, it was the best thing for them to start socializing and acclimating without any academic pressure since they were already bored and missing friends after 20+ hours of plane travel and a couple days of down time.  A public school that we’d read about – Cashmere High – had an open day for potential students literally the day after we landed.  Jason took the kids to it, they liked the school, James sank a couple shots in the gym, we saw that surfing and skiing are on offer as school sports, and we immediately focused our energy on finding a place to live in the Cashmere school zone.

Which brings me to another lesson, the most important one, and something I need remind myself of constantly: don’t make it harder than it has to be.  Take the path that presents itself, make one important choice at a time, follow the clear option, and change direction if you need to once things gets going.  We followed this rule, sometimes unconsciously, throughout the process of getting to NZ and settling in; we took one step at a time, from job interviews to visa applications, to decisions about furniture and packing and pets.  We had no choice, really, it was the only way to handle such a monumental mud slide of hard decisions and logistics, and in the end all the right things happened.  As is the case with the house: once we knew the kids liked the school well enough, we decided to focus energy not on asking more questions or exploring other options, rather we focused on a house search, and in fact this house was the first one we looked at.  Another pro tip?  Show up with 6 months’ worth of rent in cash if you can, and try not to   come off like a criminal, just a decent family who is happy to pull the odd weed out of the navy blue 80s style living room carpet and furnish your own tiny, shockingly expensive fridge.  Because  listen up Americans: here in NZ, the appliances are small and ludicrously expensive, you can negotiate prices in the store, and it’s BYOA to the rental party. I’m not complaining, because that would be some seriously lame 1stworld problem whininess, it’s just something different. 

It took us about a month of AirBnBs to find and move into the house, which was a very cool way to experience other neighborhoods, including a couple beachside communities which would have been our first choice for living but made school and sports and commuting much more complicated (not worth it). 

This isn’t really a story, but it’s  possibly one of the best memories I’ll have in life: the four of us camped out in our living room for almost 6 weeks with literally nothing but an inflatable mattress that deflated progressively and then aggressively at the end, a ping pong table, 4 plastic place settings, a huge (expensive!) television, a few surfboards, and the contents of our duffle bags.  Binge watching “That Seventies Show,” huddling together near the wood burning fire place, waiting for your shipping container to arrive? That’s what brings a family together. 

The day the container arrived was like Christmas, but the one where your kids find out Santa isn’t real: a great day, followed by lots and lots of boxes and paper, the satisfaction of making your kids learn how to construct Ikea furniture, and sadness because once everything is put in order the kids scatter to their own rooms and beds and desks and laptops and you’re not all negotiating  screen time and eating off your ping pong table.  You’ve exited one phase and entered another, and if you’re smart you’ll stay present to them both.  

Just to close this out, here’s a great picture of Jason at one of the AirBnbs we stayed in: 

This is a view from a different one, in Lyttleton: 

Cuties!  XO.