Here I sit . . .

Hello, good readers. Here I sit, in the dining room, listening to a sudden, pounding (but intermittent) rain as it splatters against our metal roof (this is the most common roofing material in New Zealand, as far as I can tell). Well, all of a sudden, quiet. The afternoon was characterized by immense, powerful, largely white clouds in the West and South, and by even more coverage of the East and North by big grey swatches, so I am not surprised to have the rain - and we can use it. No wonder NZ is so green in most places. The big news of the week is that I have had my last amalgam filling replaced, and no longer have a mouth full of metal crowns, all replaced by porcelain. I struggle to keep still in the dentist chair, and am rewarded by his telling his nurse that I am his best patient - true or not is flattering, and he may have been obliquely referring to the payments I have made which might help him send his kids to the Uni! So far so good. Next week a visit with the doctor in Tauranga who started the whole thing, so I can learn a detox regimen that theoretically will remove mercury remaining in my body. Even if it is not the whole case, I do feel better, more alert and less tinnitus and word finding problems, and better more confident driving, and just happier in general. I have a question: what do the following words have in common? Grand, Hyatt, Sheraton, Oscar, George, Fat Hippo (Fat Hippo???) and Frank. If you guessed they are the name of tents shown in a recent advertisement by a sporting goods store here in Hamilton you win a prize. Many of the ads we see on tv here are funny or clever, and we enjoy that. Emily is back in drama class once a week where she is honing her already prodigous talents, preparing at eight for teenager hood, I suppose, with big ups and downs. Joseph seems to be getting invested more in some of his school projects. I do the odd VNG, and wish I had more because I always feel a little rusty, and doing several in a pretty close row at least shakes some of the cobwebs out! Carrie is working really hard. I am hardly working. Har, har, har - see. Some trees are still blooming, but many are now leafed out as we head toward summer. We will go to the South Island in late December, early January for a Quaker gathering, then have about a week to tour around before coming back. I am sure we will have lots of pictures and we are trying to figure out a way to get more of them into the blog - anybody used the Google Picasa program for this? I am still not very good with it, but then they don't seem to be able to spell, or they are sort of creative with their name? I am trying to take pictures of flowers and tree blossoms, and sometimes, using the autofocus program of the camera get really clear pictures of leaves below the blossom. Oh, well, har, har, har. I am very happy that we get the New Yorker - always something interesting in each issue. Anyone know about the painter Elizabeth Peyton? I weigh in around 180 these days, and at least to me seem to be walking better due to instructions I have received from a lady who is versed in the Alexander Technique. I don't think I have yet completely found my place in this small nation of around 4,000,000 (human) inhabitants (lots more sheep) but am gradually working my way out into the public and maybe for the next year will be more of a tourist, if gasoline prices don't get much higher. I am very sorry about the rough financial times so many seem to be going through recently, and look with some dismay at the latest news from the companies we have invested in, but am hopeful that in the long run things will get better. Last note - Joseph and I watched Breaking Bad, a new tv show for NZ - interesting and will be interesting to see what happens next. Thank you for reading this, and our best wishes to all who do. Manford

A Quiet Week

It has been a quiet week for us - Joseph off to Quaker youth camp in a town pretty far away and Emily in a ymca camp 8:30 - 4:30 Mon - Thurs. Friday the three of us went to a home and garden exposition that had well over 100 booths and displays - I particularly enjoyed watching some of the artists working on stone and wood sculptures, and Emily found a fairy costume for Haloween. The weather has not been delightful, with frequent cloud overlay - big dark ones. Joseph came home yesterday evening. Earlier in the day Emily and I went to see Beverly Hills Chihuahua and enjoyed it. The theatre is in a mall, so she enjoyed a tub of chocolate gelato afterwards from one of the many options in the food court. A daughter of a friend of ours who was in Topeka and moved to California is visiting Australia and New Zealand and we hope to have a chance to meet her sometime this month. I have one more crown to go before all the amalgam is gone. Will bring a bottle of champagne to celebrate! Carrie has been grading papers all weekend. Our latest acquisitions - a waffle iron (somewhat hard to find) and a GPS - fun to listen to it recalculating as I take streets not in its original route! Pretty amazing technology, huh. The kids have one more week of schoobreak - Emily to continue camp, Joseph to continue downloading stuff - his favorite word - stuff. We can get 20 gigs of data a month without penalty - should be enough and more. Cleverest business name we have seen recently - Pasta la Vista - per their brochure - "Traditional Argentinian pasta made fresh . . . every day" and they now deliver in Auckland and are coming to Hamilton. Yesterday we went to a pond on Carrie's Uni campus and fed the ducks stale bread - at one point a mama and four babies came up on land very close to Emily's foot and I tried to get closer and away they went somewhat to the dismay of an oma who pulled out her (previously hidden) bread to feed them while I scared them back into the water not realizing until they were off land that she had bread - ooops. Oh, well. We are heading for warmer weather, with current temps in the 50's, while those in North America, where temperatures are in the 50's, are heading in the opposite direction. We had a time change last weekend so now North America west coast is six hours later, instead of seven. My head spins. Take care, and our best to all who read this.

A little miscellany . . .

The rest of us are happy that Carrie is feeling much better. I have been having some really feeling swell, too. Partly the lovely, clear blue sky's fault perhaps, or who knows? Just enjoy it without too much intellectualizing. Emily is getting pretty good at igpay atinlay and seems to enjoy it. I was listening to some of the music I loaded on my MP3 player shortly before we left Topeka, and for some reason it brought to mind how much I like smiles - the big goofy kind you get from little babies involving their whole face when you smile or make goo goo at/to them. The loving smiles of family members. The pleasant smile of strangers responding to yours. And I was very fortunate at work that both Kay and Shawn, Shawn and Kay, had great smiles and lucky for me they were very tolerant of my sillinesses that popped out from time to time. We are currently blessed with lovely flowers and tree blossoms of many colors and configurations. It was only in the 70's today, but in the afternoon I got hot with my long pants so switched to gym shorts and whew felt better. My nephew, his wife and son may be visiting later this year, possibly in December - it is hard to make the change to it being Summer down here in that month. I did a VNG today and was pleased to remember how to do it, it having been quite a number of months since I did the last one before. And also did basic balance platform measurements. I am feeling more confident, less afraid, when I drive - and am trying hard to not get overconfident - looking twice, etc, trying to stay alert and focused. I believe my father at times was able to drive in a way that caused his passengers some alarm, but he was protected I believe, since he never had a serious wreck - though he did drive the riding mower into the pool one time. Well, keep smiling, and have a good week. Manford

I'm back!

I'm sorry I've been so silent of late--my only excuse is supersitition, as it seemed like every time I told someone I was getting better, I got much worse, so I couldn't come here and write that I was getting better, and I didn't want to when I was getting worse...anyway, I am now officially much, much better, and our trip to Sydney was very therapeutic (we got to walk on, and near, the beach), and I had my check-up at the pnuemonia clinic just before we went, and the child doctor (he may have been a med student--or a resident, which they call "registrar" here) said "it's nice to do a physical on someone who is relatively healthy"--which made me feel very good. I guess they see a lot of very decrepit people. But I am feeling ecstatically healthy right now, able to climb whole staircases without a second thought.

And it is spring--we planted some tomatoes yesterday, and carrot seeds, and the strawberries we planted a few weeks ago are blooming very promisingly. Yesterday we went to Hamilton Gardens--very pretty park--and saw several batches of very cute ducklings, some swimming perilously close to some menacing-looking eels, but no tragedy transpired. Good thing, because Emily was very emotionally involved with those ducklings.

And now I had better get back to too many student papers...I was excited and inspired by the conference in Sydney (on perinatal mental health) and hope to get some more research started soon, and maybe go back next year to Melbourne, when the conference is jointly between perinatal mental health and infant mental health societies--not to mention Pittsburgh, in 2010. Could 2010 be nearly here?

Carrie

Things we did not . . .

Hi, everybody. Here are some places I did not go, things I did not do, and things I did not buy: GO - Chinatown, Chinese Garden of Friendship, Sydney Fish Market, Star City Casino, harbour cruise, bush walk north of town, nude or partly nude beaches, Aboriginal Art venues (several of these), Justice and Peace Museum, Museum of Sydney, Ocean World (you can swim with sharks there), Sydney Aquarium. . .DO - attend any plays, operas, concerts, street fairs, kite days at Bondi beach, revisit King Street, hike on the beach at night, listen to the radio (we saw quite a bit of Australian Football on TV and watched part of the New Zealand All Blacks win a rugby game over their Australian counterparts), play any CDs (I bought one). . . BUY - clothes (I got one t-shirt with aboriginal art on it), (not very many) books, opals, diamonds, other jewelery, authentic Aboriginal art, shoes, boots, short pants, fancy backpack (got one for me for $30.00 Au), hiking or camping gear, a meal with kangaroo meat, fancy Swedish ice cream at $5.00 a pop (we did find a Baskins-Robins outlet and ate some of that, and I spotted a Krispy Cream franchise at the airport but alas, alack could not locate one in the departure area), silly or cute or funny postcards, table mats, table runners, exhibition catalogs (just one), hats (I got a new cap to replace my favorite, but somewhat bedraggled one), soap, toothpaste, (just a little chocolate to tide us over), etc... What kind of things have you not done, seen, bought in your travels. So far I have no regrets about what we did not. . . hope the same for you. Sincerely, Manford

It seemed so simple at the time

In which Carrie and Manford have further adventures - the last shall be first . . .We had gotten to airport parking just fine, making some right turns then three in a row left but when we got back from Sydney (more in a moment) failure to turn left led us to unknown territory going, it turned out, away from Hamilton rather than toward it but with some exciting interchanges between husband and wife managed after not too much time to get turned around and on the right road. Whew! Our flight to Sydney was fine - we even got a movie and some not too bad chow on Air New Zealand. Customs went rapidly, and we were solicited by a guy in a cowboy hat to let him take us to the ferry terminal for only ten bucks a head - cheapest airport transportation by far - and since he had corraled others we felt no fear - at least until he started driving - then I think his insanity took control, or perhaps memories of his experiences when taking the New York City school of cab driving course kicked in, and I closed my eyes from time to time and Carrie uttered expressions of wonderment that we did not crash, run over anybody or become mated to vehicles in front or behind us as he smoothly zipped in and out of traffic lanes and got so close to those in front of him that were he any closer he would be in their back pocket. But we survived, and probably got our heart rate up for the day with no exercise. We were actually booked for Carrie's conference in Manly, a Sydney suburb - about 30 minutes away via a ferry - a lovely ride with great views of the Sydney Opera House and the Harbor Bridge (Harbour?). We settled in for the night and for the next three days Manford explored while Carrie conventioned - learning a lot - each of us did (per Yoda talk). In my time I had a tour of the Opera House - it had the most beautiful and best sounding concert hall I had ever been in! I then went to the Australian museum and enjoyed a wonderful collection of Aboriginal art - and had a lunch of something soft with potatoes in it, and some cheese, I think. At some point I bravely took a train to Newtown, a really cool shopping area on King street - reminded me of Berkley California. I had purchased a 3 day Sydney pass that allowed me to ride on city busses, trains, monorail, ferries, and two different Explorer bus lines you can get off and on at any time and they cover a large part of the city. Went to Bondi (pronounced Bondeye) beach, a big beach with quite a few people flying kites (there was, nearby, a nude beach, I believe but I didn't scope it our or participate for I had no wish to depress people as would have happened when they gazed upon my beautiful body) and the beach right across the road from our hotel in Manly was much cooler anyway but like some other things in life I felt I should see it once, and now I have. Just a funny karma there - I guess it, like much else, was taken from the Aborigonal tribes at some point. Sunday Carrie and I visited the really nice maratime museum - they had a fascinating exhibit of several hundreds of French, mostly, toy boats (can you say toy boat four times in a row real fast?) that ranged in size from a few inches (centimeters) to five or six feet (nearly a couple of meters?) - well displayed. And we saw a sailboat made of beer cans - apparently there is a race in some town anually for boats made like that. And some other interesting displays related to sailing. We went to an area called The Rocks, and they had a large outdoor market where we purchased this and that - including something special for Carrie's mom and some other gifts. We agreed that Aussies like their coffee for there were approximately a bazillion coffe shops - and ditto for ice cream (around five bucks a pop) and gelato joints, plus a plethora of good restaurants - all kinds of neat names, such as Thai me up and eat me Sushi - some serving kangaroo which we did not eat. I found a couple of neat used book stores and a great tea store on my King street adventure. The weather was good while Carrie was conferencing and rain came a little on Sunday but we did not get caught in any of the several downpoors. There was a gent all painted up like an Aboriginy (spell) playing a digaderoo (I am sure that is spelled wrong) the tube thing that makes interesting sounds and I bought a CD from him for only ten bucks. Sydney must have really strict noise laws - we never heard a horn honk, and for some reason (my excellent driving skills could not be the cause) I often hear horns close by in Hamilton. Overall, a great trip, except for the little bump related to finding our way home at the end. Perhaps a GPS would obviate that difficulty in the future? We were glad to be home - the children were happy to get away from their slave labor camps and Charlie seemed happy to escape his prison. Well, take care and thanks. Manford

How quickly . . .

How quickly time passes (at leas sometimes) perhaps due to relativity (an hour at work seems to be like a day, a day at the beach seems like an hour). I guess in part I haven't written is I haven't had any remarkable experiences recently. However I did get a call asking me to do a VNG test on a patient near the end of this month. change topic. We have a broadband plan for the internet that allows us broadband speed as long as downloads don't exceed 10 gigabytes - somehow we managed to hit that landmark around August 24 or so, and suffered from the company then switching us over to dial up speed - though they don't charge any more when we do exceed our limit. CHANGE TOPIC - The magnolias are on the cusp of their peaking, with many dropped petals and somewhat dessicated blossoms on the tress but are stll in their glory - with pinks, whites and possibly some other color my color blindness does not recognize. I do have a new porcelain crown on a back tooth, replacing the metal one that was covering up an amalgam filling, so had that out and replaced with white stuff. One to go. Beautiful weather this week (topic change) with clear skies at night. I wonder what the Kansas current governer will do when her term is up since she did not get picked for the Veep post? And am I right that Slattery is challenging Roberts? change - there were hundreds of kids and parents and officials camped in our local park - playing soccer in what has become an annual spring event, turning our two way street into a one lane alley with cars parked on either side, some on the grass between the street and sidewalk, some not. I had to take Emily to her Saturday science class so backed up part way down the drive then turned right and drove over the grass that is between my drive and the neighbor's and then right again so at least I was facing out before pulling out, rather than pulling my neck out of joing trying to see while backing up. Joseph wants to see Hellboy2 - has anybody seen it? I have been trying to photograph some of the flowers in our area and if the pictures come out pretty good I will try and post them on this blog. Take care, all of you, and let me hear your news. Thanks. Manford