While Drea's away

Apologies that I haven't written in the blog for a while. I was a long way behind until this week and I've been playing catchup. For those who weren't aware, we recently made a quick trip back to the states to visit with family. Hopefully I'll be able to put together a post of our trip as soon as Drea returns with the camera.

Drea seems to have the uncanny ability to magically extend vacations beyond all normal expectations. Last year she managed to get a weeklong visit in boston on only 2 vacation days. This year she's worked an even more impressive deal. It just so happened that the end of our trip coincided with a physics conference in Denver a couple weeks later. Which also just so happened to coincide with her best friend Merritt's road trip from Connecticutt to SF to start residency at UCSF. So instead of coming back to sunny Dunedin with me (Sunrise 8:20 ...sunset 4:59, ugh) she got to stay on in the states for nearly an extra month on a road trip through the Southeastern US and is currently at a physics conference in Colorado Springs.

Meanwhile, It has been fuh-reezing here. My first morning back at the house I was greeted with this...

That's not snow... It's hail!
Lot's of hail!

The next week we got a somewhat rare snowstorm down at sea level. It doesn't look like much but it was enough to stop the busses from running, cause a mess of accidents in town and pretty much shut the whole town down. But I have to say that despite the cold it was really pretty out. Here's a pic of the chicken coop the morning after..

I've also been eating well since Drea left me to fend for myself. Here's one of my less than inspired dinners. Mom, you must be so proud. All those lessons on presentation. In my defense it was a long day and I didn't feel like cooking. ;-)

mmmm, can!

But one of the cool things that goes on in Dunedin over the winter is the midwinter carnival. To celebrate the longest night of the year there's a lantern festival and fireworks show in the center of town. This year's theme was flowers and there were some very creative floral lanterns in the procession along with dancers, drummers, bands and stiltwalkers...

One of our favorite local bands was playing (but they looked cold!)

A very cool little event. And it's nice to think that every day gets a little bit brighter from here on out.

But most of all these last couple weeks, I am missing Andrea very much. I'm looking forward to having her come home.

Dave

Dea's visit!

Our good friend Dea from the bay area stopped into Dunedin on part of her around the world journeys. We had a great time showing her around and loved loved loved that she baked us cookies. mmmm cookies. It is also clear from the pics that Drea and Dea were separated at birth...They even bought matching shirts together.

Thanks for visiting us Dea, hope your having a great time back on the East coast! When are you coming back?

Cheers,
Dave and Andrea

Chowdafest with Jan and Teresa

Our neighbors Jan and Teresa invited us out the other weekend for a day of fishing and cockle hunting out near Aramoana. We first went out onto one of the estuaries at low low tide to gather our cockles. We were a little late getting out there and the tide had just started covering the cockle beds. But we were able to fill our buckets and get back to the beach before it got too deep.

From the beach we drove over to the Aramoana mole to try our hand at fishing to supplement our catch of southern clams. Here's me pulling in the big one...

This "rock" fish was massive

I was actually able to pull in one keeper during our time out on the mole but unfortunately Jan and Teresa didn't have any luck. Andrea decided to skip the fishing and spent her time checking out the local wildlife. Here's a couple of the seals from the colony that lives at the end of the mole.

As we all gathered in our catch someone suggested clam chowder for dinner. This was shortly followed by the idea of competitive clam chowder. Yes! Chowdafest is on!

On the way back after giving most of our weights and hooks to the seaweed.

We got back to the house and started working up our respective chowders. Once everything was set we wandered over to their place for a fantastic wine and chowder dinner. We both went with fairly classic new england clam chowder and they were both delicious. We decided to call it a draw and celebrated with more wine.

Chowder makes good neighbors.

Best to all,
Dave and Andrea

ask a ninja - birthday

Drea's nephew, Luke, had a birthday a few weeks ago and about the time we started thinking about what to do for his birthday we had been watching a lot of "ask a ninja" episodes. So we said, "Let's make a ninja video and send it to Luke for his birthday."

If you haven't ever seen ask-a-ninja i suggest you take a look before watching the video. Click here We had a great time making it but in retrospect maybe we shouldn't have tried to sing the theme song. Apologies in advance. In my opinion the best part is andrea's sweet ninja chicken stalking ability. She's got mad skills.

best to all,

NZ ninja's Dave and Andrea