Every once in a while we have a “big” day. A day marked by some new event that redefines the tenor of our life from that point. A perfect example was the day Eric and I left to embark on our Australian adventure. We are forever different and better for those seven years.
In our farewell at our Australian church, I summed up our experience with the following:
“At first I wanted to come to Australia because it is a really cool place. I quickly realized the really cool thing is the people. I am now privileged to consider you all my family and that’s what has made it such a special time.” Because of that one big day, we have more family.
Another one of those days is fast approaching. After 30 years with Boeing – yes 30! Isn’t that mind boggling? – it is time to exit stage left. The end of this month, less than two weeks from now, I’ll walk out the door as a Boeing retiree.
I have to admit I don’t like what “retiree” implies. It somehow seems synonymous with old and I try to pretend that’s not on the horizon. That works pretty well until I get up and find my knees telling me otherwise. Age is not just a number as far as my knees are concerned.
On the other hand, retiree has a nice freedom feeling to it, doesn’t it? In my case it will be a few months of a retirement sampler and then I’ll head back into the fray to do some part-time contracting. Funding retirement travel plans ain’t cheap! During the retirement sampler, Eric and I are heading back to see our Australian family. We can’t wait to hug the heck out of everyone!
I know this is just a toe-dabbling retirement test, but after 30 years, it still feels big. I'm thinking my toe is going to like it so much it'll make it hard to keep from jumping into the deep end. Going to be interesting for sure!
Sunday, November 18, 2018
Saturday, April 8, 2017
Suckered On the Blue Gum Loop Trail
Haven't posted anything in ages. The last year has been interesting for sure with this bi-continental living thing. Every couple months Eric or I head off to visit the other. It makes for fantastic greetings, but tough goodbyes. This living style is due to wind up at the end of June. Or maybe the end of September. As seems to be too often true, I really don't quite know.
I'm trying to get to 30 years with my company, but there are currently no internal jobs for me to return to in Seattle. The company has moved the program I support to Oklahoma City so the Seattle site is laying people off (or in Aussie speak, making them redundant). This has pushed me into staying much longer than planned. Aside from it being hard to be away from family for so long, it's an awfully sweet place to be hanging out at for nearly seven years now. Yes, SEVEN years! Wow.
The last month and a bit has been full of visitors. I'm happy to have them all, but my very favorite one is, of course, Eric! We did quite a number of sightseeing trips both short and longer with our different visitors while they were here. The longest was a long weekend in the outback town of Lightning Ridge. Caught a fantastic sunset and moon view while there, but my favorite part of the trip was spotting wild emus along the way there and back. Wild critters - so awesome!
I'm trying to get to 30 years with my company, but there are currently no internal jobs for me to return to in Seattle. The company has moved the program I support to Oklahoma City so the Seattle site is laying people off (or in Aussie speak, making them redundant). This has pushed me into staying much longer than planned. Aside from it being hard to be away from family for so long, it's an awfully sweet place to be hanging out at for nearly seven years now. Yes, SEVEN years! Wow.
After April 4th, when Eric and I did one of those tough goodbyes, I was down to one visitor left - Ethan. Ethan and I had a 'lowlight' of highlights on our Blue Gum Loop Trail hike yesterday. We had hoped to see cool critters and insects, but failed miserably. Emphasis on miserable.
It all started off well with a brush turkey sighting. He was quite the poser and thought he was entitled to a handout. Not happenin' mate!
We next enjoyed some lovely water scenes and the specialties of a rain forest: huge trees, moss, fungi, mushrooms, and one very unwelcome discovery - leeches. From that point on our hiking turned into some strange form of walking and stretching. The stretching was all about inspecting our shoes and ankles for more leeches.
I missed a critter crossing our path because I was busy removing a leech from my shoe at the time. Those things have ridiculous hanging on abilities! I completely lost count of the number we had to remove from our shoes, but it was definitely in excess of 30 each!
Amazingly, none of those suckers managed to attach themselves to our skin. Our shoes were another matter, but our vigilance in constantly checking was a real big factor in them not getting to the holy grail of skin. I was pretty proud of myself for controlling my "I want to freak out and run the rest of the way" impulses. My conclusion for the day? Critters are cool but leeches suck!
Monday, April 25, 2016
Those Pesky Road Forks
There's nothing like announcing you're moving back to the States to initiate important discussions at work. Discussions that would have best been done before said announcement because now I look like an idiot or someone who has no clue what they're doing. Um, well, probably true on both counts, but that's not worth writing about.
The summary of the work discussions was essentially, "Would you consider staying a bit longer for reason blah, blah, and blah?" and then "Okay, I'll think about it." The next thing I know I'm staring at this fork in the road. I'd already decided which fork I was taking (agonizingly, I might add) so why was I even rethinking it? Suddenly the no clue what I'm doing thing comes to mind, but I did just say I wasn't going to write about that.
After much prayer, debate, and a few accommodations from work to make it doable, we came to a new conclusion. Eric will still be repatriating in late May, but I'll be staying at least another year or so to continue working here. Trying to explain the rationale behind all this both spiritually and logically would be about as interesting to you as watching paint dry, I'm sure. I'll skip it for your mental health, but it has been quite a journey for us.
We have no idea how this living apart thing is going to work, but we're going to give it a shot by more visits in both directions and for me, increasing my visit time in Seattle by adding a couple weeks of work to the vacation time. It will always be too short, but Skype, FaceTime, etc. will just have to fill in the gaps.
For now, we'll enjoy this last month together. Ethan will be visiting for a few weeks of that time and we're so looking forward to seeing him and having some good times together. Can't wait to go critter hunting; maybe we'll find something I haven't seen yet. Oh boy, good times a' coming! That's awesome, because I don't want to think about what's after that yet.
The summary of the work discussions was essentially, "Would you consider staying a bit longer for reason blah, blah, and blah?" and then "Okay, I'll think about it." The next thing I know I'm staring at this fork in the road. I'd already decided which fork I was taking (agonizingly, I might add) so why was I even rethinking it? Suddenly the no clue what I'm doing thing comes to mind, but I did just say I wasn't going to write about that.
After much prayer, debate, and a few accommodations from work to make it doable, we came to a new conclusion. Eric will still be repatriating in late May, but I'll be staying at least another year or so to continue working here. Trying to explain the rationale behind all this both spiritually and logically would be about as interesting to you as watching paint dry, I'm sure. I'll skip it for your mental health, but it has been quite a journey for us.
We have no idea how this living apart thing is going to work, but we're going to give it a shot by more visits in both directions and for me, increasing my visit time in Seattle by adding a couple weeks of work to the vacation time. It will always be too short, but Skype, FaceTime, etc. will just have to fill in the gaps.
For now, we'll enjoy this last month together. Ethan will be visiting for a few weeks of that time and we're so looking forward to seeing him and having some good times together. Can't wait to go critter hunting; maybe we'll find something I haven't seen yet. Oh boy, good times a' coming! That's awesome, because I don't want to think about what's after that yet.
Saturday, February 13, 2016
From Zee to Zed and Back Again
Pardon the upcoming soppy sentiments, but sometimes you gotta just go with it. I haven’t posted
a blog in ages. And ages. I still find so
many things here marvelous and a stinkin’ cute overload. Like the echidna that decided to cross the
road in front of me on my way to work recently.
Who knew they were early risers?
I didn’t, and finding one at that hour to encounter was super-cool – especially
since I started my commute headachy, tired, and trending toward grumpy. One echidna later and I’m headachy and
happy! Can’t have it all sometimes, but
perspective is pretty darn important!
 |
| Not my early riser echidna. This one I saw in Adelaide in 2009. |
So, what caused this spate of emotions and sentimentality? Well, soon we will be saying ‘Zee’ instead of
‘Zed’. Or afternoon instead of
arvo. Or writing dates as 2/13/16
instead of 13/2/16. And the list goes
on. Yes, after going on six years here, we’ve made the decision to
repatriate! That it was a hard decision
is a massive understatement.
I am full of joy at the thought of being closer to my stateside
family and friends. I am at the same
time devastated and gutted about leaving my ‘Straya family. Sheesh, I am a wreck.
We’ve been feeling the pull to head back for some time. Increasingly, as we went on our annual Home
Leaves for a visit, the unlived-life called to us. The relationships we couldn’t do
justice. The house projects needing
doing everywhere we turned. The sense
that what was is just a memory now.
It’s true, in many ways we have to start over. We are different, and in some ways profoundly
different. We want to go forward living
differently. Much more like life here,
but how does one do that when living in a large metropolitan area steeped in
the US culture? Most of our US friends have
understandably moved on to new circles of friendships or the other side of the
country! In that case, surely, avoiding
us would have been easier! Ha!
How to live differently is a question we discuss often. Like how to translate the specialness of here
to there. What we have here are very close
and meaningful relationships with many people spanning all ages who are as much
our family as any blood relative. The
climate and life here make it easy to have spur-of-the-moment get-togethers
which are common here and part of the specialness. We want that in Seattle, but know the weather
won’t cooperate! We plan on prevailing
in spite of that!
We have about three months left here to crystallize our
strategies. That, and soak up as much
more of this great life as we can. I
will miss it heaps and am trying hard to only think about the arriving part and
not the leaving part. Thinking about the
leaving part only ends in tears. I do
trust we will see our Aussie family from time to time. I fully expect and hope for a procession of
down under dwellers visiting us in the years to come. That, and à la Terminator, “We’ll be back!” is
a statement we hope to make come true down the track. Who knows what God has in store for us? All I know is it will be better than I could
have hoped or imagined!
Part of our Aussie church’s mission statement is “Love God,
Love People, Love Life”. That’s who and
how I want to be wherever I am. That’s
how I’ve always wanted to be, but now I “get” it more. So, look out Seattle, here we come!
Sunday, June 8, 2014
Sheepish in Merriwa
How does one spend a great Queen’s Birthday long weekend? Checking out the Festival of the Fleeces in Merriwa, that’s how! We left straightaway after work Friday to start the three day weekend and toward Denman where we would spend the night.
Denman is a small Aussie town a ways inland and apparently so full of really nice people that’s all we ran across. Eric was thoroughly chatted up by the friendly couple from the Denman Motor Inn on check-in. Based on his interaction with them it seemed prudent to follow their advice on the best place to eat in town. Truly they were right and Gerard’s Place was scrumptious. They even provided an awesome local couple at the next table who very generously shared their wine with Eric. I should add it was wine that they grew and produced and Eric thought quite yummy. We spent the meal talking about their recent trip to Europe and about life – our views and our hopes and worries for our kids and their and everyone’s futures. It was sheer delight and we could have talked all night.
After a night’s sleep for Eric and a herculean sheep-counting effort by me, we did the hour’s drive to Merriwa and found the festival in full-swing. We hoofed it over to the main drag and investigated the booths and displays. We found a little bit of everything as you do at these kinds of events. Well, everything to do with sheep: shearing demonstrations, sheepherding dogs, and wool in every form.
We next chose our spot for the parade because we so did not want to miss the running of the sheep. They dress the sheep for this event in red socks. I ruminated on why a bit, but just don’t know except they do look cooler that way. Clearly, sheep that look cool are much more entertaining to watch. I enjoyed the running of the sheep with every fiber of my being. They kept trying to flock together because just maybe they don’t see lots of parade spectators in their normal everyday grazing.
We enjoyed the rest of the parade and watched a little bit of the dog jumping competition before we hightailed it out of town. We headed to some friends’ property that’s something like 20 kilometers of gravel road, 16 cow/sheep grates, and one water crossing from the main road. It's a nice part of the Aussie bush and they've made a fair number of improvements to the property. We originally planned to spend the night, but I was not at my best so we only stayed a couple hours before heading back home.
On the way home, Eric finally got the pleasure of an RBT stop. That’s Random Breath Testing in case you were wondering. I’d been stopped a couple years ago so now we can both say we’ve had the “experience” of the test.
We made it home without any unfortunate roo encounters (they tend to be on the move around dusk and they’re none too bright about crossing roads). I was disappointed that we didn’t see any lambs, but since it’s not springtime, it wasn’t really surprising. All in all, Festival of the Fleeces was a great slice of Aussie life. pictures here
Denman is a small Aussie town a ways inland and apparently so full of really nice people that’s all we ran across. Eric was thoroughly chatted up by the friendly couple from the Denman Motor Inn on check-in. Based on his interaction with them it seemed prudent to follow their advice on the best place to eat in town. Truly they were right and Gerard’s Place was scrumptious. They even provided an awesome local couple at the next table who very generously shared their wine with Eric. I should add it was wine that they grew and produced and Eric thought quite yummy. We spent the meal talking about their recent trip to Europe and about life – our views and our hopes and worries for our kids and their and everyone’s futures. It was sheer delight and we could have talked all night.
After a night’s sleep for Eric and a herculean sheep-counting effort by me, we did the hour’s drive to Merriwa and found the festival in full-swing. We hoofed it over to the main drag and investigated the booths and displays. We found a little bit of everything as you do at these kinds of events. Well, everything to do with sheep: shearing demonstrations, sheepherding dogs, and wool in every form.
We next chose our spot for the parade because we so did not want to miss the running of the sheep. They dress the sheep for this event in red socks. I ruminated on why a bit, but just don’t know except they do look cooler that way. Clearly, sheep that look cool are much more entertaining to watch. I enjoyed the running of the sheep with every fiber of my being. They kept trying to flock together because just maybe they don’t see lots of parade spectators in their normal everyday grazing.
We enjoyed the rest of the parade and watched a little bit of the dog jumping competition before we hightailed it out of town. We headed to some friends’ property that’s something like 20 kilometers of gravel road, 16 cow/sheep grates, and one water crossing from the main road. It's a nice part of the Aussie bush and they've made a fair number of improvements to the property. We originally planned to spend the night, but I was not at my best so we only stayed a couple hours before heading back home.
On the way home, Eric finally got the pleasure of an RBT stop. That’s Random Breath Testing in case you were wondering. I’d been stopped a couple years ago so now we can both say we’ve had the “experience” of the test.
We made it home without any unfortunate roo encounters (they tend to be on the move around dusk and they’re none too bright about crossing roads). I was disappointed that we didn’t see any lambs, but since it’s not springtime, it wasn’t really surprising. All in all, Festival of the Fleeces was a great slice of Aussie life. pictures here
Sunday, November 10, 2013
New Zealand - Invercargill (Curio Bay's Petrified Forest and Yellow-Eyed Penguins)
What a day! I got to satisfy my not-so-secret penguin fetish, see a petrified forest, and find some tessellated pavement. Yes, tessellated. Tessellated. Giggle! I do love saying tessellated so was pretty excited to have a good excuse to start saying it again since it's been a long time since our Tasmania trip.
It was a rather long drive to Invercargill as we first had to go over the Cardrona Range, past Queenstown, drive south along a long, long arm of Lake Wakatipu, and then keep driving south seemingly forever until we hit Invercargill. From there, we had to head towards Fortrose and then Curio Bay is past that "a ways". Unfortunately the sign to Fortrose in Invercargill (or any other burg in that direction) seemed to be missing so we powered right on by the road towards Fortrose. The map we had was not too terribly good in the detail department which was working decidedly to our disadvantage. We got to where we could see what we thought was Bluff in the distance and realized we had to have missed the turn somewhere. Bleah! It was a long enough drive without adding any extra kilometers to it. So much for being in the information age because we sure didn't have enough of it.
After we righted our ship and topped off with petrol, we found the right road and headed that way. We had an appointment with some penguins and we were not going to miss it! The last umpti-ump kilometers of the drive were gravel, but I didn't mind because we were heading toward penguins. There was, however, a voice in the back of my head saying something about "not being happy if there aren't any penguins". Oh wait, that was not in my head. That was behind my head. It was A.J., and others in the car were adding their agreement. Oh please let there be penguins because, apparently, petrified forests do not qualify as awesome enough to justify hours of driving!
We finally got to Curio Bay, jumped out of the car, and headed for the beach. When we got to the shore we discovered it was quite nippy; not at all like our beach at home. We wandered around enjoying the petrified forest, the tessellated pavement (well, maybe that was just me), and the beauty of the ruggedness there. Definitely a very cool place, but the thing on all our minds was no surprise... penguins.
As it started teetering towards dusk, we found our penguin lookout on a very conveniently located rock formation. I like how one of those two is always watching the water. We hadn't been at that post very long at all before we spotted one. Yippee!!! I had the most wonderful time watching the penguins. We ended up watching three before we called it a day. I took lots and lots of shots of these guys although somehow I managed to miss getting a shot of an epic penguin fail pulled off by penguin #2. He tried to hop up a ledge that was a bit too high for him and then fell over backwards onto his back. He immediately got back up, shook himself off, and successfully tried a ledge that wasn't quite so tall. At no time did I see him looking around to see if any other penguins had seen his gaffe like so many of us humans would do. I guess maybe penguins are secure enough in themselves that they don't care what other penguins think of them.
The penguins we were seeing were the pretty rare yellow-eyed penguins. They only live in New Zealand and they are just plain awesome! They come into shore after a hard day at work with take-home pay of whatever they can fit into their stomach. They're greeted by their mate who has stayed home all day to guard the chicks and then the breadwinner of the day feeds their little ones from their "take-home pay". The next day the parents reverse roles and do it all over again. This goes on for six weeks until the chicks are old enough to babysit themselves. After that it takes both parents "working outside the home" to keep their teenagers fed (sound familiar?).
I delighted in watching them waddle up towards their rookery and taking some pretty seriously big hops up the ledges. They're much better hopper-uppers than I would have thought. About halfway there, he/she started doing the "Honey, I'm home." call. Yes, this all was way up there on the happiness scale for me.
I eventually tore myself away, but it was admittedly hard. I wanted to stay and watch penguins arrive all evening, but if had, I'd have been walking to our next destination. We had planned Milford Sound next so we were heading to Te Anau to spend the night and then launch for Milford Sound from there. That would be assuming the road to it was open and hadn't encountered a landslide like it had a day or two before.
We had quite a day for sure. To add to all those amazing things, it was also the farthest south any of us have ever been. I had mistakenly thought I'd never get any farther south than we were in Tasmania, but I was definitely wrong. We beat it by a few degrees even. Curio Bay is at about 46 degrees, 39 minutes, and 43.2 seconds south for those who want the nitty-gritty numbers.
It was a rather long drive to Invercargill as we first had to go over the Cardrona Range, past Queenstown, drive south along a long, long arm of Lake Wakatipu, and then keep driving south seemingly forever until we hit Invercargill. From there, we had to head towards Fortrose and then Curio Bay is past that "a ways". Unfortunately the sign to Fortrose in Invercargill (or any other burg in that direction) seemed to be missing so we powered right on by the road towards Fortrose. The map we had was not too terribly good in the detail department which was working decidedly to our disadvantage. We got to where we could see what we thought was Bluff in the distance and realized we had to have missed the turn somewhere. Bleah! It was a long enough drive without adding any extra kilometers to it. So much for being in the information age because we sure didn't have enough of it.
After we righted our ship and topped off with petrol, we found the right road and headed that way. We had an appointment with some penguins and we were not going to miss it! The last umpti-ump kilometers of the drive were gravel, but I didn't mind because we were heading toward penguins. There was, however, a voice in the back of my head saying something about "not being happy if there aren't any penguins". Oh wait, that was not in my head. That was behind my head. It was A.J., and others in the car were adding their agreement. Oh please let there be penguins because, apparently, petrified forests do not qualify as awesome enough to justify hours of driving!
As it started teetering towards dusk, we found our penguin lookout on a very conveniently located rock formation. I like how one of those two is always watching the water. We hadn't been at that post very long at all before we spotted one. Yippee!!! I had the most wonderful time watching the penguins. We ended up watching three before we called it a day. I took lots and lots of shots of these guys although somehow I managed to miss getting a shot of an epic penguin fail pulled off by penguin #2. He tried to hop up a ledge that was a bit too high for him and then fell over backwards onto his back. He immediately got back up, shook himself off, and successfully tried a ledge that wasn't quite so tall. At no time did I see him looking around to see if any other penguins had seen his gaffe like so many of us humans would do. I guess maybe penguins are secure enough in themselves that they don't care what other penguins think of them.
I eventually tore myself away, but it was admittedly hard. I wanted to stay and watch penguins arrive all evening, but if had, I'd have been walking to our next destination. We had planned Milford Sound next so we were heading to Te Anau to spend the night and then launch for Milford Sound from there. That would be assuming the road to it was open and hadn't encountered a landslide like it had a day or two before.
We had quite a day for sure. To add to all those amazing things, it was also the farthest south any of us have ever been. I had mistakenly thought I'd never get any farther south than we were in Tasmania, but I was definitely wrong. We beat it by a few degrees even. Curio Bay is at about 46 degrees, 39 minutes, and 43.2 seconds south for those who want the nitty-gritty numbers.
Saturday, November 9, 2013
New Zealand - Mount Cook and Clay Cliffs
The weather was supposed to be clearing up for the 27th so we thought we'd make the drive to Mount Cook. Mount Cook is the highest peak in New Zealand at 12,316 feet and, while we weren't going to climb it (heaven forbid!), we could at least take some close-ups of the monster. We took Highway 8 over the what's-its-name pass (there are a lot of them) and then made the turn toward Mount Cook. This road goes along Lake Pukaki for a very long way until it turns and runs along the massive moraine area. Lake Pukaki is beautiful, a stunning shade of aquamarine, and, by employing my keen sense of deduction, clearly quite cold. The pictures definitely don't do it justice. 
As we got closer to Mount Cook Village we noticed that it wasn't clearing up at all. It was, in fact, starting to snow. Oh well, at least we weren't washed out again. I'm not too sure how being snowed out is any better, though. We decided to enjoy some fine beverages at the cafe and admire the view of an obscured Mount Cook. I took a picture of it, but you have to use your imagination (or find one on the internet that doesn't have 12km of snowfall between you and it).
The only problem was, when I got back home and had access to the internet, I found out that I was not even aimed in the direction of Mount Cook when I snapped the shot. It was more like Mount Sefton. Ooops! No matter, we're using our imagination anyway so it's all good.
It was snowing noticeably more by the time we left the cafe. Snow is a funny thing. We could have taken the road to Hooker Lake which is right at the end of one of the glaciers coming off Mount Cook so I could have taken an even better white-out shot of Mount Cook. But, the nagging plausibility of not getting out of there unleashed its magnetism on us and we were inexorably pulled towards the road back.
Lake Pukaki was still beautiful driving by it in the other direction. I'll definitely give New Zealand credit for an inordinately large number of massive and scenic lakes.
We stopped at the Clay Cliffs on the way back. The entry fee to the Clay Cliffs is $5 since they're on private property and it's completely on the honour system. You're just supposed to stop at the iStore and pay which is exactly what we did.
The Clay Cliffs are comprised of some cool rock formations, but we didn't contemplate them too terribly long as it was darn nippy out there with some wind thrown in as an added bonus. I was too busy snapping pictures to let the coldness get to me so I was the last one back to the car. On the way back to the car I had a look at the view away from the cliffs. It reminded me strongly of Scotland and the climate's about right, too.
Things didn't go quite the way we planned, but it was still another very picturesque day.
As we got closer to Mount Cook Village we noticed that it wasn't clearing up at all. It was, in fact, starting to snow. Oh well, at least we weren't washed out again. I'm not too sure how being snowed out is any better, though. We decided to enjoy some fine beverages at the cafe and admire the view of an obscured Mount Cook. I took a picture of it, but you have to use your imagination (or find one on the internet that doesn't have 12km of snowfall between you and it).
It was snowing noticeably more by the time we left the cafe. Snow is a funny thing. We could have taken the road to Hooker Lake which is right at the end of one of the glaciers coming off Mount Cook so I could have taken an even better white-out shot of Mount Cook. But, the nagging plausibility of not getting out of there unleashed its magnetism on us and we were inexorably pulled towards the road back.
Lake Pukaki was still beautiful driving by it in the other direction. I'll definitely give New Zealand credit for an inordinately large number of massive and scenic lakes.
We stopped at the Clay Cliffs on the way back. The entry fee to the Clay Cliffs is $5 since they're on private property and it's completely on the honour system. You're just supposed to stop at the iStore and pay which is exactly what we did.
Things didn't go quite the way we planned, but it was still another very picturesque day.
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