s e v e n i s a j o u r n e y

Right, so half of the groceries are still sitting on the kitchen floor, but I’ve got Stephen’s desk put together, with my computer on it, and the ADSL modem all hooked up and happy.

Although it was nearly sixty degrees yesterday, there’s supposedly a record-setting Southerly on the way — Chris & Natasha may get snow up in the Hutt Valley — so I went out on my lunch hour and bought myself a heater. As I think I mentioned, most places here don’t have anything like central heat or radiators or anything like that. People either have some kind of wood-burner, or they’ve got stand-alone plug-in heaters of one sort or another (or a gas heater or fireplace — C&N have one of the latter, in addition to several different electric ones).

Electric heat comes in a variety of flavors, the most common of which are:
– fan heaters — basically, a heating element with a fan in front. These are like the little portable heaters you’d get for, say, your office or something.
– convection heaters — what you probably think of when you think of an electric heater, except with more variety.
– oil heaters — these are like radiators on casters, except instead of water, they’re filled with this special oil that’s really efficient at holding heat. These are slower to heat a room, but they’re more energy efficient, because the oil keeps radiating heat for a long while after the current has switched off.

I got an oil heater, and I sprang for one with a timer, so I could have it switch on before I get up to take the chill off the place. The way the apartment is laid out, it should be able to heat just about everything but the little bedroom, which is pretty cozy anyway.

In other news, C&N&I went out to Johnsonville to watch the FotR extended version on Chris’ friend Trevor’s gi-normous flat/wide-screen uber-high-definition TV with surround sound, etc., etc. Wow. It was cool to get to see so much detail in the props and costuming and sets and stuff — a lot of things you just couldn’t see either on the big screen or on a regular TV. Verra nice. Plus, the story has all these new little depths that I can pick up on now that I’ve read the Silmarillion (and am almost done with Unfinished Tales). Neato keen.

I did discover that I must be geek-interaction-starved. I took one look at Trevor’s action figure/statuette and DVD collections, and I just started babbling. “Did you see this ? What did you think of that ? I heard this other thing was X…” Man, I hope I didn’t make a complete ass of myself. Next thing you know, I’m going to stagger crazy-eyed into the comic shop on Cuba Street and start blathering pathetically at the poor yutz behind the counter about various comics and movies and stuff. Wouldn’t that be the deepest irony ?