Wintertime

It feels a little less strange to shiver in July, now, but I still have trouble knowing intuitively what month it is. We had a Fourth of July party (on the fifth here, fourth there) last week, hosted by our friend Joy Rising, with some other Americans, as well as several Kiwis, one Japanese, and one South African friend. It was convenient that it was dark by 6:00, so we could see the sparklers (hoarded from Guy Fawkes day). I have been very slack as a blogger, and time has been slipping by. Joseph leaves in three weeks. He is going to Digipen Institute of Technology, outside Seattle, to study video game design. It became clear in talking with him, as he tried to agonise over the decision, that he has had his heart set on this for years. I was comforted by the fact that they now have some student housing, so he is going to a furnished apartment wiht several other new students. Before he goes to school at the end of August, he will be visiting friends in Kansas and going to some game conference in Indianapolis. In the interim, he has had a life apprenticeship as our house boy, picking up Emily from school, shopping, cooking, and doing laundry. He is getting good at stir fry and baking something that is oddly called "homemade pop tarts". Emily is in her last year at Southwell School, thinking about high school next year, which I find hard to think about. She is on the young side, and will be 12 when she starts (most are 13 here, and have five years of high school). Emily and I went to Queenstown, a tourist mecca in the South Island, last month, and she went snow boarding. It was beautiful, and genuinely cold. This week I was trying hard to track down my half-sister, Kay, and finally signed up for Facebook, thinking I might find her there. I didn't (my nephew, Ross, found her with serious detective work, and LinkedIn), but I did find an bewildering array of old friends all over the world. We'll see if this is a good thing as I see if I can resist distraction and get things done when the computer is turned on. Stay cool, or warm, depending on where you are.