Social Butterfly

I forgot to tell you about a lesson that we learned yesterday: always top off your tank once it gets to half-full. We had a close call, with the gauge suddenly plummeting from a quarter-tank to empty when we were miles from civilization. All turned out well, but I was anxious.

Who would have thought I’d have fun last night. We got to this B&B around 6:00 and I thought, “What am I going to with all these empty hours?” What I did was sat around talking to Syd, a really nice young woman from Texas named Deja, her Texan boyfriend (y’all), and an Australian Afghanistan vet (mate). The boys talked trout and tied flies. The Aussie talked about chopping wood with a tomahawk, which we figured out is a hatchet. I sat by the fire in my hat and made reservations for the next three nights–two outside of Wellington and one in Nelson–and for the ferry between the two islands. Syd went out for a walk and brought me a big bag of my favorite kind of potato chips and a bag of Alison’s Gummy Rockets! I ate them all, and also some popcorn and apples. I learned about a Maori/Kiwi idiom: adjective + as to indicate an extreme state. I might say, “I’m tired as an alpha dog surrounded by girl-dogs in heat.” [This just auto-corrected to “bitches, but I changed it back.] I wouldn’t say that, ever. But if I had, it would have taken me some time to think of the analogy. Here, the Kiwis are more efficient, perhaps. So, it’s just “I’m tired as.” Or “Bro, you’re ugly as.” We watched a video that, they said, captures this South Island idiom. Check it out: http://m.youtube.com/#/watch?v=ZdVHZwI8pcA&feature=em-share_video_user&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DZdVHZwI8pcA%26feature%3Dem-share_video_user. [I can’t get it to insert as a proper link.]

I really wish I’d start sleeping better. Every night I get up a couple times and can’t get back to sleep. Annoying.

I am a woman of two hats, one for outdoors and one for indoors. Here is the latter.

I’m still anxious about the car, both as driver as passenger: less so about staying on the right part of the road, but more about navigation. Our GPS shouts one set of commands while road signs indicate another, with traffic whizzing like shooting stars. Also, the weather will get increasingly funky as we move south. Snow is forecast for today and the sky looks like it. In an hour or so we’ll head toward Wellington which is at sea level, so perhaps there will be only rain there.

I am such a bonehead about geography. I confidently told all assembled last night that I wanted to go to Stewart Island, off the south coast of the South Island, because of the warm weather there. I soon learned that that’s the coldest spot yet, due to its proximity to the South Pole. I should look at a world map sometime.