Vania Smith

My computer has died. There is a new one coming in about 2 weeks, but I will have very limited interwebby access until then.  Don't count on seeing me for a wee bit! (This also includes email!)

I'm dreading the spam......

-V

Does anyone have a ceramic straightener I could borrow for the duration of my visit? (about 3 weeks)

-Crossposted to Facebook

Thanks :)

-V

*sigh* Someone whined.



*whinewhinewhinewhine*

( What's behind the cut is not so much a spoiler, more of a conformation. )

I am praying that they choose Denver as the location for the Bledisloe Cup Match next year!

Please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please!

Harley-pants is WALKING! :)  Video is on Facebook :)

*bounce*bounce*bounce*

For anyone who is interested, I took a video of our home in Colorado, and have stuck it up on Facebook.

:)

We out for dinner and had fish and chips at a place I found that does British style fish and chips (but I think they were better than the F'n'C I had in England!).  It was absolutely fabulous! *grin*  Almost a reminder of home.


*smiles*

Justin bought me an 'eternity' ring for our 3rd anniversary.  I guess that falls under the crystal/glass/leather catagory! *grin*



Thank you my love :)

xoxo

So we bought a house today :)  We move in gradually from Monday next week :)  And by gradually I mean we'll be buying furniture, having it delivered and we'll hopefully have the necessities by the time we move out of the apartment (6th Sept).  We were given a gift card by our agents which is lovely!  It's for Pottery Barn as there is a chair there I really really really want! :)

We are going to buy a cot this weekend and hopefully a bed, so that, when I'm at the house I have somewhere for Harley to sleep if she wants while I'm setting stuff up and waiting for stuff to arrive.

I got the cot sheets and the cute storage boxes I ordered from Bed Bath & Beyond and The Container Store respectively today and I am most pleased with them.

I have decided that Harley is going to have the bigger of the two spare rooms upstairs and I'll have the smaller one as my study :)  Mine overlooks the lovely big backyard and gets good light so it'll be good for my design work etc.

I get to go shopping for 'stuff' next week (and some of this weekend hopefully) and we are also going car shopping so it's all going according to plan.  And we saved $600 on the downpayment after all the calculations were made so that is very handy too!

Things are going well and mostly as planned, so Vania is a happy person. (though she is missing having people to talk to!)

Ciao for now, and I will post the address on Monday/Tuesday!

-V

We have arrived in the hot climes of  Westminster.

20 hours of flights later and a stop at Taco Bell/KFC (they were combined!  It was odd...very very odd) for tea, we arrived at our furnished apartment in which we will reside for a month.

We are taking possession of our house on the 22nd of August so we are shopping for furniture and as I suspected before we left, I had a feeling I would love Crate and Barrel and Pottery Barn, and oh yes. Yes I do.  *swoon*

We are in the process of sorting out Social Security numbers so we can sit our drivers licenses and then buy the car and get cell phones etc.  There is so much choice with cell phones and plans...the mind does truly boggle!  The woman at the Apple store nearly fell over when we told her the prices for the iPhone in NZ.  It was entertaining to see her face!

I'm still of the mind that we would be silly to move back to NZ.  It is soooooooo much cheaper over here.  Everything is!  Oh the joy of living in a consumer society with the resources to keep the prices down. And it helps that J gets paid a wee bit more over here too! :)

Harley coped really really well with the flights.  I am so proud of her.  :) 

I will update as I go long....

I hope everyone is feeling for us in this hot 35+ heat.... *smirk**grin*

Ciao :)

Well, after a successful trip to the States, (inthat I actually got some sleep on the  plane!) we are home again and organising the rest of our stuff.

We, in 4.5 days: 

- bought a house, 
- checked out the car we are going to purchase, 
- scouted out furniture stores and settled on a few pieces to purchase upon our return, 
- had the house inspected by a super cool guy called Charlie who is a Vietnam Vet,  (They should have the same level of house inspections here!  It would be soooo good.), 
- did some clothes shopping, (and literally for the first time that I actually remember had a fabulous time clothes shopping!), 
- opened a bank account and transferred smegloads of dosh into it, 
- and visited Super Target, like 10 times! *grin* (only because it was across the road from the hotel, honest! :) )

The estate agents we had working for us, were really impressed that we could achieve all that, but obviously they don't know me /that/ well! ;)

Buying a house in the States is interesting.  Lots of different rules and names for the different processes and the contracts!  Lord the contracts! *grin*  It is fun though, even if you do need 20% deposit in most areas of the US now before a lender will look at you.  I'm just glad that we had a mortgage offered to us by the company doing the transfer, it's made it sooo much easier!

Now to the sad bit.  Even though there is no quaratine requirement for the cats, there is no way I would take Tabitha.  She is getting old now, 13 years this November. The flights are gruelling and I don't know that she would cope that well.  She loves travelling but I just don't think its fair on her.  Because of her age and the fact I can't find anyone to take her I may well have to put her down and that is killing me.  She is too old to give to anyone and expect them to pay vet bills and so on.  I will miss my TabbyCat.  She has been with me a looong time.  But she has had a good life and she is a good girl.  I'm going to miss her terribly.  

Ciao.

If you are absolutely dying for me to have your email address so I can potentially email you with riveting updates of my new scintillating life States-side (though I firmly reserve the right to not do that because I can't be arsed... and apathy will win...) please leave a comment.

Obviously the comments will be screened, so I guess you could also profess your undying love for me too... however innappropriate it may be! *grin*

As we are leaving the country, we are having a drinkies thing.  Nibbles will be provided.

Address:

238b Edgeware Road (hills road end, down the driveway (no parking down the driveway is available), house on right, gate will be open)
Contact phone number: 385 0170

Date: Saturday 2nd August 
Time: 8pm onwards

All welcome.

Ciao.

And off we go :) 


Passports - Check
Grandparent to look after Baby Girl - Check
Tickets - Coming.

House hunting trip, here we come :)  *grin*

*bounce**bounce**bounce**bounce**bounce**bounce**bounce**bounce**bounce**bounce**bounce**bounce**bounce**bounce**bounce**bounce**bounce**bounce**bounce**bounce**bounce**bounce**bounce**bounce**bounce**bounce**bounce**bounce**bounce**bounce**bounce**bounce**bounce**bounce**bounce**bounce**bounce**bounce**bounce**bounce**bounce**bounce**bounce**bounce**bounce**bounce**bounce**bounce**bounce**bounce**bounce**bounce**bounce**bounce**bounce**bounce**bounce**bounce**bounce**bounce**bounce**bounce**bounce**bounce**bounce**bounce**bounce**bounce*

 

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 The Harry Potter Series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Consulate appointment on the 27th..... and so it begins.

I got one of these :)

http://www.hasbrotoyshop.com/ProductsByBrand.htm?BR=495&SBR=601






I got Boba Fett!  He is was cool....in fact he is "100% recycled awesome"!  I'm going to collect them all!

And it's going to be much easier when we get to America!  (assuming things go according to plan! :) :) )

And we took Harley swimming again this morning.  Very much fun!  And now Liv and I are going to take Mum out to Lunch in Lyttleton :)

Wicked day :)

Baby Girl is 10 months old today!  10 Months!  Where does it go! :)



My, arent we happy to see Mummy?!  And where has your sock gone young lady?!

I love the Peel P50!  It's frickin' awesome!!!!  :)



FRICKIN' AWESOME!!!

Perfect Creature is an f***in' awesome flick.  I highly recommend it.

Set in an alternate 60's in New Zealand.  Cinematography is tres cool!

Right, now proceed with your regulary scheduled programming.


-V

The new "street view" option on Google maps is frinkin awesome!  

Go! Look!...kill some time!