Orange is not a colour, it's a state of mind

So to finish of the year the wind dropped, The  Mister cooked steak (not often cooked at our place and he said it was the best steak he’d had in a long time), the clouds moved along and we sat out on the balcony on top of Wellington for dinner as the birds came to roost in the trees below. Happy times.

It’s New Year’s Eve. I don’t really have anything profound to say and am not doing anything out of the ordinary although today I am wearing my singlet on the outside and have some strange idea that I will work like the wind up until midnight to get all those things done on my To Do list that have been lingering for what feels like the last year so as to not carry them forward into the next.

This year has pretty much been more of the same for us, trapped in the routine of long hours at work and feeling too tired to spend time with family and friends or try anything new. Our choice, and one that I’m sure said family and friends don’t understand but apart from often asking ‘when will it be over?’, seem to accept. Same old same old which probably strengthened our resolve to make our move to New York next year – not a permanent one – but 4 of the most looked forward to months of my life. It’s been a strange year of living part of my life even more publicly than this blog with the adoption of Twitter all the while keeping other stuff completely inside. New York will be the welcome shift in life I need as I realise I’m about half way through mine.

I just scanned back through this blog at the last year’s worth of entries, all 35 pages of them. Some classic one-liners, great food, precious family times, unexpected trip to New York and lots of date scones, coffee and orange – reading it made me smile many times and it still intrigues me that I find so much non-work stuff to drivvle about!

God, this post isn’t supposed to be depressing, just a reflection. I was just thinking about the year as I came across the Mayfly Project – where in this culture of brevity we should be conscious that our snippets give us a very full life of lots and lots of things rather than reducing it to something like the tiny bio of the mayfly that only lives for 24 hours … “born, eat, shag, die”. So as part of this project where you reduce your year to 24 words, you actually realise that there’s way more to your life than this as you think of your 24 words. Actually I didn’t think very hard at all – in manner of often hitting exactly 140 characters on Twitter I walked out of the front door of our apartment building this morning and this phrase came into my head. Strangely, right on 24 words!

2009 was long hours for Xero, no salt, New York plans, Blenheim trips, date scones; spiked with MRI, first conference speech and Webby Awards.

Right, I’m off for a walk to meet The Mister and eat our sandwiches outside in the sun somewhere.

Even in an apartment without a real Christmas tree you can have the smell of Christmas with a few branches of pine …. mmmmm! Although it does look like some kind of triffid!

Spotted my first full red tree on the way to Nikau today – they really are pretty amazing.

And a couple more spotted when walking around town after Christmas – this one on Oriental Parade

And this one right in the city on Taranaki Street

Went over to Martinborough for our Christmas party yesterday – we went on the train and toured 2 wineries and an olive grove before ending up at Murdoch James for more tasting and dinner. It was a pretty cool afternoon – can’t remember laste time I went on  train locally and the trip to Featherston went by pretty quickly.

It was really windy in Martinborough but it was cool hanging around chatting with everyone. At Palliser ,

And wandering through the olive grove at Olivo.

Train got us back into town by 10pm so all in all a good afternoon and a nice break from the city.

Man, it’s been a real Susie-Homemaker weekend! Today after going into the office all morning I spent the afternoon baking and ‘gardening’!

Made the first batch of Christmas mince pies for this year. I didn’t make fruit mince earlier in October as I have 2 jars left from last year – I got Mother to sniff it when they were here in October to make sure it was still OK and her verdict was good … mind you the amount of brandy I ‘whoops’ when measuring (Christmas baking or tiramisu!) is probably enough to ferment anything!

Then out into the increasing wind on the balcony to plant this year’s basil. Good stiff breeze to blow away any nasties in the potting mix though.

However since planting it about 3 hours ago I’ve watched out the window in horror as Wellington delivered stronger and stronger wind (gusting up to 74km/hr according to wunderground.com) battering around the poor tiny plants! Oh well, they’ve got to get used to it!!

Yep – the tall building research in Wellington continues even at the weekend – yesterday it was the Plimmer Towers. Although we’ve had the contract through for our 29th floor apartment in New York so it’s a bit late to back out now!

I didn’t think I’d be able to get into Plimmer Towers and certainly not at the weekend – however the glass doors opened when I approached them so there was no stopping me. The Mister followed with trepidation muttering that he’d never been in there before and how would we know where to go?  I just hissed that we should act as though we knew what we were doing for the benefit of the security cameras so I followed the sound of the ‘ding’ the lift made when the person who we’d tail-gated into the building called it and (thankfully the doors closed on her before we got there) punched the call button. Lift arrived, got in, noted the number of floors, got out and left the building as swiftly as we’d come.

31 floors.

This has got to be a classic New Zealand shot – Christmas trees leaning up out the front of the petrol station. It’s truly Christmas time. These in Miramar yesterday.

What a big Saturday! We knew it would be and planned for it to be. It was our Christmas shopping day – chilled the champagne for wrapping later, wrote out the list in order of where in town we had to go and set off early. I also had a very lofty goal of making shorty PJ’s as requested by my niece for Christmas. Hmm, all that in one day? And me sew a whole outfit, not just shorten some jeans or run up a pair of PJ pants for myself? We’ll see.

It was pretty cool walking down Cuba Street – loads of people out and about and enjoying coffee in the sun.

List ticked off, home to make the PJ’s. I’d cut out the material on Friday night after work – thankful for yoga at this point – I could be Gollum!

The Mister was a bit snap-happy with the camera – I don’t think he could quite believe that I could sew what I’d shown him in the picture, so I’m posting the whole afternoon/evening’s-worth of photos I’m afraid!

Ironing the teeny tiny fiddly neck hem.

Sewing like I drive apparently – heavy on the pedal! What!?

Time for the champagne and present-wrapping tradition with a Christmas movie (‘Home Alone’ if you must know Jif!), except I hand-gathered the ruffles while The Mister wrapped.

And at the end of the night we were both completely amazed that after all these years, I can still sew, that I’d done it all in a day and they looked really great! God I hope she likes them. And that they fit!!

Looks pretty tall from the outside, obviously couldn’t get into the lifts as it’s in the office block tower, but my best count from the outside is that it’s about 17 floors. So a pipsqueak really.