At twilight, the Christmas tree and the full moon shine brightest.

I have a big collection of books about Mars, but only a couple of movies. Actually, until last week I only had one movie, but then I saw Santa Claus Conquers the Martians for $1 and so here we are. Although it’s something of a cult favorite, I’d never heard of it before.

We watched it last night.

Why, oh why does the red planet attract such bad filmmaking?

New Zealand exports a small but steady crop of collegiate athletes. So it’s not a huge surprise to see a commemorative license plate from the University of Tulsa, but still was worth a double take.

I haven’t actually been to Tulsa, but it strikes me as somewhere that a shiny black pickup would fit right in. And so again not a huge surprise to see that license plate on this Ford Ranger, which is one of the largest pickup trucks (known as ‘utes’ here) you can easily buy.

As the truck scowls imposingly at passers-by, across the street from Pizza Hut, I’m reminded just how pervasive the American influence is.

If you get a New Zealand Christmas card or postcard or calendar or placemats or really anything, it will have a pohutukawa on it like this one. That’s the colour of the flowers. The sky and the water will have those particular hues of blue and green.

If I hadn’t seen it for myself I would have said it was cheap printing, or over saturated for effect, or something. But no, this is what it looks like.

And I’m good with that.

Yay artichokes from our very own plant!

Today we wake up to the new COVID Protection Framework, which replaces the Alert Levels that have governed our lives these last 20 months.

In the new system, there’s traffic light levels. We start out in Red. Nearly all businesses can reopen (with masks and other restrictions), but staff and patrons all have to be vaccinated and show proof. When we move to Yellow, some of the limits are removed, and if we ever get to Green, life will be essentially like it was.

Vaccinations in Aotearoa New Zealand started a couple months late and were rolled out slowly compared to other OECD countries, but we’re now hitting 90% or more for adults and can expect the same thing for kids when they become eligible in January. Bam! Score one (more) for the Government.

We’re seeing 100+ new COVID cases per day in Auckland, although hospitalizations and deaths are really low. Apparently the vaccine works! We still can’t leave the metro area for another couple of weeks, while the recently vaccinated build antibodies and the outlying areas continue their vax drives. But it looks like the Christmas break… NZ pretty much shuts down and goes to the beach for a few weeks… will proceed. Big events like music festivals are still being postponed or canceled but otherwise it’s game on.

All of this is a fantastic result for those of us who believe in vaccination. Sadly for them, the un-vaxed will be (as of today) a new underclass, excluded from lots of societal benefits and actively discriminated against. They’ll be huddled out behind buildings, standing 2 metres away from the smokers I guess.

We continued our NZ tradition of sharing Thanksgiving with a few expats. New friends Brian and Emily joined less new friends Neil and Dan on Saturday for a traditional menu dinner. It was nice to be in our own home surrounded by our own pictures and stuff this year.

It’s actually easier to cook the meal here because we’re all nostalgic for the basics… so no need to research the latest twist on dressing or cranberry relish.

The turkey came out looking beautiful but was sadly a little tough. There was plenty of gravy to make it all work.

Much to be thankful for even as we worry about whether the new omicron variant will derail the impending arrival of a new normal.

One of the things we had shipped across the world was my Concept2 rowing machine. Part of me cringed at the expense, since it’s relatively big and heavy. But I’ve priced them here and they’re crazy expensive if you can even get one.

So now it lives in “my” room, which houses my office, the clarinet area, and now a workout area. But I don’t want to sweat all over the carpet so I got a hunk of garage carpeting (Google New Zealand carpeted garage… it’s a thing) to put underneath. It’s sitting there folded up because we had the carpets shampooed yesterday.

And so a cat perch is born. When she first got up there we both had some fun with her riding the sliding seat, but that was tiring and she just sort of passed out.

One of the main reasons for shipping all our stuff from the US was to get our pictures back. Nothing of any particular monetary value, but lots of memories.

This grouping over the couch took a lot of measuring and re-measuring and finally came out pretty much as planned. It was good to have help during the layout phase…

People in Auckland are ready for summer and have had enough of lockdown. A few are protesting, but many more are just sort of going about their business. Friday night at the beach clearly had household bubbles mixing more closely than the public health authorities would want. And a fair few pizzas were enjoyed, obviously.

But on Saturday morning as I headed into the water everything was tidied up waiting for collection. And by the time I got out it was all gone, ready for another day.

Our little corner of the world seems to be receiving lots of infrastructure attention from the powers that be. It’s all to the good as far as we’re concerned. After all, it takes a lot of walking trails and improved storm drains and laser level playing fields to sustain the high price of housing around here!

These red-billed gulls are super common around Auckland. They’re smaller and sleeker than the seagull archetype herring gulls (which we also have).

The red-billed gulls always seem like grumpy old men to me. They stand around and squawk. They’ll steal food off your picnic table, but somehow manage to make you feel guilty about it.

Beautiful swim today.

On yesterday morning’s walk, I took advantage of low tide and a dry week to clamber down off the perfectly good footpath and cross on the silty foreshore. I got this nice shot of the old navigation marker or whatever that thing is from a new vantage point, yay!

Quite a lot of the bay is like this… naturally shallow, and silted in even more thanks to 100+ years of logging, farming, and building.

But silty mud is tricky… you’re walking along on slippery but solid ground and then “shloop!” you’re in up to the top of your shoes. Ah, the sacrifices we make for our art.