One fat cat and a broken window later

It's been a trying few days, as Billy can attest. As soon as we'd get a cabinet built he had to give it the nap test. Yup, that one passed. At least we got all the cabinet bases assembled with only a few mysterious parts left over :0. Unfortunately a window in the shop had to give it's life for the metal cabinet bracket. Oh, well, maybe the new owners won't notice. The sink and lights all went in with only minor cursing, and Kyle's mom has arrived from Connecticut to lend a hand (I mean look for a house in Austin).

I keep pestering the floral shops in Auckland for a job, and most actually write me back, tho none with a job offer. The owner of a particularly good one has asked me to send my CV (resume), and I realized I would have to get one designed and back to him. One more thing to do in the Sisyphian task of moving continents.

Our newly textured couch...

Welcome to our new kitchen! ...Ahem, I mean... Welcome to the Ikea catalog page that our new kitchen will resemble! So it's all been ordered and will be arriving in Houston in 2-3 weeks (expecting it to be longer, with our luck).

Anyway, Kyle has happily been texturing away to obliterate all signs of the hideousness that was there before. He asks me as he's spraying, "Am I getting any on the couch?". I laugh, as the couch is a good 15 feet away, then realize the beams on the ceiling and the refrigerator are both nicely speckled.... "Oh, crap." Twenty minutes of scrubbing with wet rags later, and it's almost like a new couch. It needed a good going-over anyway.

Then our neighbor, who's a professional contractor, stopped by, and gave us a bunch of tips. The look on his face when we told him our timeframe for completing the project was priceless. Oh, well, maybe we'll see some you for Christmas this year!

Kyle's still pining away for good surf, I'll see how long I can keep him on-task. ;)

Stuck in Molasses

Hey everyone,

This is us, Brooke and Kyle, for people who may not know us yet. We're well on our way to moving across the ocean to New Zealand to live, explore and otherwise turn our normal lives upside down.

We decided to tackle this adventure while on our honeymoon in Aug/Sept 2005- against the advice that one should never move to a place based on a vacation experience. The night we returned to the US, Kyle sat up in the middle of the night and proclaimed that he felt more at home in NZ than in Austin, TX, and that we would be crazy not to follow our intuitions. Since then we have tried to educate ourselves, from half a world away, about what it would be like to move and live there.

We have plenty that we'll miss in Austin- our friends and family (new and old), our house, my business (www.pollenfloralart.com), all the wonderful things that Austin has to offer. But we've lived here, and we can always return if we need to...

So it's been a long wait, what with Immigration, then the Kitties, now the house renovation and sale. It looks like we won't be able to ship out until Dec. '06. Ack. Our 2-year visas start ticking this month, so the race is on. It's a weird sensation of being on a bullet train, and stuck in molasses at the same time.

We'll keep you posted :)