Lost and found

Sing along now, you know the tune...

Oh bring back, bring back, bring back my suitcase to me, to me
Bring back, bring back, oh bring back my suitcase to meeeeeeeeee...

If you liked that little number, here's a few other fun numbers to consider:

25: The number of days since I've seen my suitcase

20: Days left to make a claim against the original carrier for lost luggage

15: Days remaining until my next trip, when I'm gonna need that suitcase (and those clothes)

Dancing in the rain

On Wednesday the call went out: We need dancers!

One of GapFiller's many projects, the Dance-o-mat, was about to be filmed as part of a project by/for Gehl Architects. Gehl have been involved in our central city rebuild plan, and are helping to make people-friendly cities around the world. Our little Dance-o-mat was to be featured as part of... well, to be honest, I'm not exactly sure what the topic/story of this film is, but it was a good excuse to get off my arse and check out the Dance-o-mat. Especially when they said there'd be free champagne ;)

A week of it

 ...or perhaps, a week without it.


A week without earthquakes, a week without Kiwi accents.
A week without decent coffee, and a week without my luggage.

Yes, in yet another demonstration of the perversity of the universe, when I arrived in the USA on March 3rd en-route to my conference in Orlando, my luggage was nowhere to be seen. This situation was not entirely unexpected however, as it had not been a smooth trip from the beginning.

The trouble started when my very first flight from C-city to Auckland was delayed, and I missed my flight from there to LA. No worries, I thought to myself. This is why I book complicated trips through a travel agent, so that it's all one continuous journey, and issues like this have to be resolved by the carrier that stuffed it up (*cough* AirNZ). After calls to my travel agent, followed by multiple presentations at various customer service desks and check-in counters, I had done everything I could to make sure my travel was sorted and my luggage was re-tagged & ready to follow me on my new flight path via San Francisco.

Are we there yet?

Green/yellow, aka T.C.2

Is better than being green/blue

But the headaches it brings

Over all sorts of things

Makes it an equally unfortunate hue

10 Simple Steps to Rebuilding in Shakeytown

Step 1: Arrange for an earthquake or ten (thousand) to render your existing home uninhabitable.

Step 2: Wait a few months for a decision from your insurance company. Go through more major earthquakes, and wait a few more months for insurance company to deal with the sudden deluge of new claims.

Step 3: Ponder your future, your navel, your sanity. And then do it for a while longer until you finally get confirmation of demolition from insurance company.

On yer bike: PMT, PCS & SOS

It's two-for-the-price-of-one time... two (or maybe more) different topics being squished into one post thanks to the general chaos & busyness that is life in Shakeytown. Well, my life anyway - I can't claim to speak on anyone else's behalf.

But no matter how much is going on, it's important that we remember to make time to stop and smell the roses. Even here in the land of the empty lot, there are events taking place that are worth making an effort to get to. One such gig was the recent Cycle Powered Cinema, another Gapfiller project making use of empty space to fill up our empty time.

Clowning around

I nearly didn't go to the protest on February 1st at the CCC. By the time protest-day was drawing near, Mr M had sort-of handed back his payrise and the government had announced a glorified babysitter would be sitting at the council table in an effort to make everyone get along. Whether this appointment has any legal standing or not is debatable, but then again, what point is there in quibbling over details when it could probably be quickly & easily written into the CERA legislation somewhere. Who knows what's already covered in there... some of the councillors don't seem to have a clue.

The little gig that could

I called in to see hubby at C4 last Wednesday...

"See that woman sitting with the laptop down the back?"
I nodded.
"That's Amanda Palmer, lead singer for the Dresden Dolls. She's got tattoed eyebrows, likes strong coffee, and..." He leaned over the counter with a glint in his eye and a huge grin on his face.
"...she's married to Neil Gaiman."

Now that was indeed cool. My inner book geek squeed with delight, while my outer self retained (I hope) its calm facade. I'd heard of the Dresden Dolls, and had read that Amanda Palmer was doing a gig for the Occupy Christchurch camp while in town, but Neil Gaiman needed no introduction, he's someone whose work we've both enjoyed many times over.

I thought nothing more of it until I got home from uni, when hubby announced that he'd got chatting with Ms Palmer later on that afternoon, and she'd put his name on the door for the gig that night.