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

Once again we tried to fill our weekend with fun round-the-city adventures. Saturday afternoon we went over to the City Gallery to look at a set of exhibitions by local artists. One (whose name now escapes me of course) had all these wacky paintings done in red, black and white, which are traditional Maori colors for art work, with a fused modern/traditional/christian theme. I would have probably gotten more out of them if I knew Maori, as most of the paintings were covered with words I could not understand. My favorite pieces were highly stylized, where the Maori traditional art looked almost Celtic in its twisty curls and interlocks.

Saturday we were going to do archery, but it was raining again. So we decided to sleep in an go to fight practice that afternoon instead. It was a nice walk up to Mt Cook and the Price of Wales park, a part of the city I had not been up to before. The park is a few hundred meters long, and we were not sure exactly where to go. So we walked along, listening. Then in the distance we heard the crack of a sword on a shield, and knew we were heading in the right direction! Turned out that everyone there was doing steel weapons, so we gave it a try. I found it a bit vexing and counter-intuitive to my normal fighting style, while Tam had a grand old time. Minimum armor requirements is helmet and gauntlets- a bit less than I am used to! All the people were very nice, and one young woman when she heard we were SCA-types pulled out her cell phone and called one of the SCA locals, who promptly came over. The SCA here in Wellington is very active, and very small. They apparently have three (count ‘em- three!) regular heavy list fighters. And only about 12 regular members. And yet they manage a weekly fight practice, a weekly dance practice, and a weekly A&S night. That is a devoted dozen! No fighters were there this week because one was sick, and another was moving. When you have only three, the absence of two kind of kills it. Richard who came over was quite excited at having a fourth fighter move into town. Apparently the “big” fighting event every year is held down in Christchurch where they get 20 or 30 fighters! Oooh! It made me think a great deal about the whole pond and fish size ratio, especially after going to Pennsic two months ago. When we told them we were Mongols Richard commented “yeah, we had one down in Christchurch a few years ago… I think his name was Ethan?” Ha! Small world!

Today Tamara is off to the airport to fly to Australia for 4 days of Peoplesoft training. Later this week I go and meet with the people who are giving us our mortgage, and I have to start calling contractors. We want to have a solar hot water system installed in the house, so I have to start exploring my options in terms of price, efficiency, appearance, and how quickly they can get it all installed. Our goal is to have everything dramatic we want done to the house done before we move it. Looks like we will have a magic week when we have both house and apartment, now to get all the work scheduled and done. 5.5 weeks to the new house. Woo!!