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Thanks Iona!

Luckily Iona reads my comments to myself and told me where to find the log-in page! :) So online once again I am.

Well I moved in to my new place on Thursday. It's quite funky although, being an old house, the ceilings are very high and the windows very large, so it's quite cold. The bathroom door continues to amuse me - it's about a third of the size of a normal door, more like a cupboard than a room!

I managed to get a whole bunch of cheap furniture and bedding from the Sallie Army, which is really lucky since I didn't have a bed or anything, and this place has no storage except for in the kitchen. It's furniture in the indestructible genre, which basically means built in Soviet Russia in the 30's and very, very heavy. The Sallies very nicely delivered and unloaded it... in the common area. Which meant I had to drag a couch/bed, wardrobe and table about 50 metres (it felt like more, ok!) around to my door. Much sweat and swearing.

Then the couch got stuck in the doorway - three of them. And about half-way through the delicate trying-to-keep-it-upright-while-tugging-like-fury operation, the damn thing decided to metamorphose from a couch to a bed. When I finally wrestled the thing through the third doorway (after enlisting Mel to assist in removing it from the kitchen, where I had wedged it) I realised that it was physically impossible to get it into the bedroom (another door that is less than standard width!). At this point I decided that the living room would become a bedsit, and the bedroom a gigantic cupboard.

You know something I've never seen before but wish I had? Power Manager. It's like this little box that sits on the wall, and you get cards similar to a phone card from Meridian Energy. Then you take the card into the service station or supermarket and put it into the Power Manager machine. Then you can load money through cash or eftpos onto the card, take it home and swipe the card through the box on the wall. It then displays your credit balance and starts counting it down. Bizarre! But so much less stressful than waiting for a power bill and not knowing how much it will be. So - is this a system that's available in Wellington and I've somehow remained ignorant of it in the last 6 years of flatting? Or is this another ingenious Christchurch scheme, like free inner-city shuttles and first-hour-free carparking?

Christchurch is neat in that way - I guess because it is so student focussed. Buses are amazing - they don't have sections, it's just a flat rate of $2. And, if you take another bus trip within 2 hours of the first, it's free on the same ticket. So you can get about 80 minutes of travel for $2! Another thing I really like is the extent of the bike lane system - right throughout the inner city, and on main arterial roads right throughout the suburbs. It really encourages cyclists because it means they're not having the fight with cars in the same way - it always looked pretty hairy riding a bike in Welly!

I am covered in itchy dots, which is driving me up the wall! Imagine having about 100 flea bites all over your body... all over. Even on my head! The ones on my nipples and under my armpits are exquisitely dementingly irritating. SO VERY ITCHY! But I don't think it's bugs - partly cos they're too small, partly because they're too liberally distributed, and partly cos I got the dots before I changed bedding, clothes, furniture etc. Is this what hives are? I alway imagined hives as being very large, but that's only because of the association with bees. The only thing I can put it down to is stress. Stress or the plague. I shall start rubbing my socks with garlic, just to hedge my bets.

I shall try to get online again over the weekend or on Monday - I have hopes of arranging with Mel to go to her house and use her phone line and hot water etc while she's at work during the day in return for some money towards her bill.

Have a good weekend guys...

Posted by phreq at August 7, 2004 11:28 AM | TrackBack