The big move

So this last week has been a whirlwind: Monday crashing on a couple of projects, Monday afternoon flying to San Francisco, Tuesday company leadership team meetings in which the CEO resigns, tours of beautiful Architectural Digest worthy homes, Wednesday the realization that Technology delivery is completely in my hands, Thursday a day of canceled meetings in San Francisco, then flying directly to Washington, DC on the red-eye to pack and move our household to Hartsdale. Phew, what a week!

So Thursday night, I manage to get a (what I thought was) great seat on the red-eye. Forward of the wing, it was a middle seat, but I figured it’d be ok. What I didn’t know was that 9B on a 757 is the row before the exit row. And hence I fly red-eye to NYC without being able to recline the fricking seat! This was the beginning of doing my back in … much more to come.

Friday dawns a clear, warm day in Rockville, MD. Town & Country Movers arrive early to begin the packing. T and his crew are great. It turns out T played for the South African under 21 A squad, almost made the national team. We talked rugby for a while before they settled into moving the thousands of boxes that Sharine (mainly) and I had packed. The team worked quickly, quietly, they were happy, and courteous all day. By 4pm it was all done and the truck drove off. Sharine and I packed up the kids and drove to New York City. We were tired, exhausted even (me from the red-eye, Sharine from the stress). I had to relinquish control of the vehicle around the Maryland border (something I would typically never do) as I was so tired I couldn’t focus. I tried to sleep in the minivan, to no avail, the seats were horribly uncomfortable, and don’t support your upper back (the next stage of doing my back in)!

Saturday morning, early, we arrive in Hartsdale/Scarsdale at our new house, awaiting our truckload of belongings. A new crew (still led by T) arrives and they proceed to quickly, efficiently, and politely unpack everything. Re-assembling our furniture, scarfing down our coffee and bagels for energy they work so fast they were done by 1.30pm.

There we were, moved in to our new home. Boxes everywhere. Kylie playing minuet and trio on the piano, Hunter riding his bike around the driveway, Dean reviewing estiamtes for large content management system builds, Sharine bustling around the house with a vacuum cleaner. The picture of domesticated bliss. The new place even has a pool table. Once I had lifted off the table tennis table cover, there is was in all its glory, a pool table! Oh, and this was the final straw that really put my back out!

It felt odd, to be both in NY and yet not in NY. We will not actually be living in the house for another month. The kids and Sharine will see the last month of the school year out in Maryland at a friends house. I will remain in Manhattan (why add a commute) for the next 4 weeks.

Exhausted, Sharine and I crash into a lazy evening complete with champagne and a lazy bublegum for the brain movie to watch … roll on low stress summers!

Filed under: kids, nyc , hartsdale, maryland, moving, nyc, rockville

Super dad

So this weekend I headed down to DC after a long drought of not seeing the family. It had been 3 weekend since I saw Sharine & the kids. We were all pretty strung out. I took the Vamoose bus again. It’s been nothing but great to me so far, but this time we hit traffic. They closed the New Jersey turnpike and our HUGE bus had to take a 4 mile detour through winding NJ side streets, twas quite the site.

So I arrived home late to discover that my loverly wife had arranged to rent our house: lease, renters, meetings, all taken care of! Not to mention my plan for the weekend. I took Hunter and Kylie riding along the Potomac, I went to Bruce’s 50th (good grief half a century) and rock climbing with Kylie on Sunday. Yes, rock climbing. About a year ago Kylie had been enthralled with the climbing wall at Dicks Sporting Goods in Rockvile. It’s about 60 feet high and she was certain she could climb all the way up. Dick’s provides harnesses, shoes, and a belay person to make sure its safe to we went looking to see if Kylie could go. Last year she was an inch too short. This year, she was an inch above the line that says “you must be taller than this line to climb the wall”. So away we went! She started scampering up the wall like a little monkey, made it a good 35′ off the ground before her poor wee arms gave out. Then she sailed down on the belayed harness, like she was flying! She was soooo pumped, she loved it!

So Monday rolls around, St Patricks Day and all and I then discover that Sharine has organized movers to come in, and move our house at the end of April. It is all starting to come together. We have our house leased, movers organized, now we just need to sign the lease on a place in Scarsdale and the family will be back together again all in one place, all by June!

This weekend promises to be a hoot with the family coming up to NYC and the annual New York pillow fight scheduled for Saturday. i think I’ll at least go and watch! See you all there!

Oh and some design humor that tickled my funny bone.

Filed under: house hunting, kids , dad, dc, house hunting, kids, nyc, scarsdale

The fleeting nature of digital memories

Well it happened: we ALMOST lost ALL our photos from before Hunter was born … in other words the first 2 years of Kylie’s life. Close to 3GB of digital memories. It turns out that several years ago when I built a new computer I didn’t have enough disk space, so I archived the first 2 years off onto CD (didn’t have a DVD burner at the time). My wife noticed that we didn’t have those photos anymore … I panicked … I searched every CD I had ever burnt. I even had to ask my mum (who I think is the only subscriber to this blog) if she still had copies. Anyway, thankfully Sharine had kept the CDs in a “safe place” and we found them. But this bring up an interesting point about archiving in the digital age. Here I am a tech consultant with more tech skills than the average bear and yet here I go almost kissing goodbye to things like Kylie’s first steps, and solid food …

So now I am rethinking my digital archiving strategy. We have > 35GB of photos of Hunter and Kylie already, I replicate the photos across two different life cycle disks (one old 160GB and one new 250GB disk). I think the chance of losing both is low. But I think I’ll have to buy an external hard disk for storage given that CD’s and DVDs have a lifespan of only a 4-10 years. The question is how big? How safe? Should I use an online service? What does the world think?

Filed under: digital archiving, family photos, happenings, kids, techno-junk

Heading home

Wow, seems like only yesterday we were flying over to NZ for my sisters wedding. Now we are slowly packing up, cleaning the house, crossing off things on Nana’s “honey do” list and generally getting ready to go. Dunedin has showed us fine weather up until today, where we hit the traditional 11degC/50degF rainy Dunedin day. This is the weather I remember and quite appropriate for the final day here in New Zealand’s mainland.

Tomorrow it’s off to Auckland at 10am, we lay over for 8 hours in Auckland and Sharine’s friend May will visit with her new wee baby (Elaine). Then on the big plane back to SFO. It has been quite the whirlwind tour but we have loved every minute of it.

I have a whole nest of story ideas on my way back, I’m going to start a blog post series on “What’s Wrong with NZ” and “What’s Wrong with the US” as a point/counterpoint on what an expat Kiwi thinks about the differences between the two countries. With any luck, some rich billionaire will read it, think its a great plan, buy my an island nation and set me up as ruler of my own kingdom … hah!

We’ll miss Nana and Great Poppa a lot back in the States … and I’m not really looking forward to having to get back into the groove of work and life in the snow and ice of a Washington winter. Well, see you all soon, back in the US of A …

Filed under: New Zealand, happenings, kids

A Wee Trip Away

So after a quiet day or two, Sharine & I are planning a trip up to Christchurch, hoping to stay with my old dive buddy Wayne, shop a little and head over to Mount Cook and Lake Tekapo for a night staying at a “homestay” or bed and breakfast place. We’ll be leaving the kids with nana and great poppa so it’ll be nice to really get away!

Big drama after the wedding from the place that Jan & Doug held the reception: they were very particular about who could go where and we had several issues (mostly minor) regarding how they served the wine and the lack of access for elderly wedding guests. However, they just rang Jan, yelled at her, then rang nana and complained at her as well. Accusing Jan of not paying the bill, Jan has every intention of paying, she just wanted to air some of her complaints. Very unprofessional behavior from Stoneridge Estate.

Filed under: New Zealand, kids

A Day Out with Thomas

Well we jumped in the minivan and ran out to Western Maryland Scenic Railroad to visit Thomas the Tank Engine this weekend. Hunter had the best time, although all in all it was a little disappointing. Thomas was great, but the ride was about 15 minutes up and back along a mountain railroad. We sat on the hill side of the car and there was nought much to see! It wasn’t too busy and visiting Cumberland, MD was quaint and certainly interesting. It reminded me of Dunedin a lot, particularly the “Exchange” area of Dunners. Anyway, you can check out the photos at this link.

Filed under: happenings, kids

Coal-fired engines

On Saturday we scooted out to the Otago Model Engineering Society to let Hunter and kylie ride on the trains. What I had forgotten was that it was an engineering society. These guys actually do metal work, stoke coal engines and create real steam engines at about 1/6 scale for real. Hunter had a blast riding on the trains and looking at the remote controlle ships and boats. Unfortunately, like typical McRobies we forgot our camera! Doh!

Filed under: New Zealand, happenings, kids

Fush n chups

As many of you know the New Zealand proper pronounciation of “Fish and Chips” is “fush n chups”. It’s been striking me over the last few days as my kiwi accent reasserts itself, how different I sound when talking about work versus home life here in NZ. I had lunch with a good family friend and mentor yesterday and (after a free golf lesson, he’s quite the player) we chatted about being a small business man and working for yourself. When I spoke about what I do I lapsed into a heavy north east american accent. Bill just laughed at me!

Last night we were over at Bill & Ngaire’s house for beef fillet, good old kiwi barbeque and some loverly wine. We had a Penfolds Tawny port that was quite outstanding and ate our fill of delicious Kiwi ice cream and berries.

Filed under: New Zealand, happenings, kids

Nana’s Party

Phew, what a Sunday! We had a big(ish) get together on Sunday for Nana’s (shhhh 60th) Birthday. Ngaire & Bill, Kevin & Jessie, Jan & Doug, Dean & Sharine, Nana, Great Poppa, Kylie & Hunter, Debbie & Neil and even Jan’s friend Loranne dropped by. It was pandemoneum! I cooked a great chocolate mud cake and made lavash bread, while Jan made salads and Nana marinated steak, lamb, venison burgers, and of course good old kiwi sausages!

Plenty of fun revolving around the kids and having a blast. Nana thoroughly enjoyed herself, we played a little gentile crocket on the lawn, barbequed, and cracked rude and un-PC jokes all over. Much good New Zealand wine was drunk and many a vodka and gin was had by all. Grill-master Deano cooked some pretty good lamb and the venison burgers were a little over done, but the rest was wonderful.

Gifts galore: Nana got a bunch of neat things some nice wine glasses, a nice serving plate and a new digital camera from Sharine, the kids and I with a huge 2.5″ LCD so she can actually read it! We had a blast taking photos and wee movies. The camera has a 512MB card, so she can take more than 300 good quality photos. Nana laughed as when I was in college/university I had a habit of taking photos then leaving the film in my camera for years (often because I lost the camera). Now Nana can take months before she uploads them just like I did!

Filed under: New Zealand, happenings, kids

The faint sound of bagpipes

So you’ll all laugh at this, we just raced back from the beach to get out of a thunder storm and arrived home to the faint sound of bagpipes. You don’t hear bagpipes in the states, well not in your home anyways. Brings back memories of addressing the haggis, the poet Robbie Burns, and long slow Dunedin winters.

Anyway before that we raced off to Brighton beach down south of Dunedin. We packed a yummy picnic of ham sandwiches and fruit and while the wind off the south pacific was a little cold it was a glorious 24degC on the beach out of the wind. The kids had a blast running in and out of the water, Sharine almost got swept into the sea trying to get a shot of the kids faces! She was standing on a wee rock out in the surf and a quite large wave crashed right around her! Poor honey, I tried to save her but got shooed off!

The kids built sand castles, ran and played in the water but it was cold! Unlike the water in summer in the States, the south pacific water around Dunedin doesn’t get much above 12degC!

Anyways off to the High Tide restaurant with my sister Jan and her fiance Doug tonight to celebrate us all being in one place, and tomorrow is Nana’s 60th celebration (although her real birthday isn’t until the 16th).

There’s a bunch more beach photos over on flickr.

Filed under: New Zealand, happenings, kids