The December Solstice arrived in New Zealand at 10:20pm NZDT tonight, meaning that today was the longest day of the year—and they’ll now start getting shorter. There are people who feel that today is the first day of Southern Hemisphere summer, and because of that it’s also known as the start of astronomical summer. As I’ve said many times, though, I’m a meteorological season kind of guy, and noted the start of our summer, as I do, back on December 1. To me, the summer solstice is nearing the end of the first third of the season.
This weekend was predicted to be stormy, and this morning certainly was. Around midday, the rains were torrential, and the winds were surprisingly strong. And then it just faded away and later in the afternoon it became a beautiful sunny day with skies that were blue with puffy clouds. It was even a relatively pleasant 24 degrees (75.2F) today, which is not always the case this time of year.
I recently noticed something that I hadn’t before: In summer, I generate electricity even on cloudy days, sometimes enough to run a hungry appliance—like the dishwasher or the dyer—and still send power to the grid. In winter, a cloudy day usually means too little power is generated for that to be possible. This is probably because of axial tilt, which means the sun is facing the Southern Hemisphere, and that makes just enough difference that more light gets through this time of year.
I noticed this because I went into the garage recently and heard the inverter whirring away. That’s the device that takes the DC electricity from the solar panels, converts it to AC, and then sends that power first to my house, then anything surplus goes to the grid. When the sun is shining brightly in the afternoon, it can be rather loud, and since it’s mounted on the wall separating the garage from the kitchen, I can hear the inverter when I’m standing in the kitchen. The whirring isn’t even almost that loud on a cloudy summer day, but loud enough that I can hear it when I walk into the garage; it's even quieter on a cloudy winter day.
Another benefit of summer settling in is that lawns are definitely growing more slowly, and even starting to brown-off in spots, all of which happens in a typical summer. Speaking of which, I’m trying to not say “normal summer” any more because the weather has become much less predictable, and with severe storms more frequent, than used to be the case. Still, if this summer is becoming more like a typical summer, that’ll mean less mowing, and, to me, that’s a wonderful thing,
Even though I know that the days are now beginning to get shorter, it won’t be noticeable for at least a month, so I can ignore that pesky detail for now. I love summer the most, and I intend to enjoy this one.
Here’s the list of when the solstices and equinoxes arrive in New Zealand next year, provided by TimeAndDate.com:
March Equinox: 10:01pm NZDT on March 20, 2025.
June Solstice: 2:42pm NZST on June 21, 2025. September Equinox: 6:19am NZST on September 23, 2025. December Solstice: 4:03pm NZDT on December 22, 2025
Related:
In New Zealand, Daylight Saving Time starts at 2am on the last Sunday in September, and ends at 3am on the first Sunday in April. This means that our current NZ Daylight Time (NZDT) ends at 3am on Sunday, April 6, 2025, and we resume NZ Standard Time (NZST). Then, at 2am on Sunday, September 28, 2025, NZDT returns again. In both cases, the dates and times are fairly easy to work out, unlike solstices and equinoxes.
I created the graphic above for a post in 2012. I used an image in the public domain and claim no ownership over that image, however, the composition is licensed under my usual Creative Commons license.
Today I begin answering questions in the 2024 “Ask Arthur” series. In past years I started with the first question asked, and then continued more or less in order, sometimes grouping questions with similar subjects/themes together. This year, however, one of the later questions is more time-sensitive than the others, so I’ll begin with that one.
Before I begin, though, anyone can still ask new questions: Leave a comment on this post, or see the other options down below, at the end of this post. I’ll call time on new questions in a later post in the series, but I’ll finish this “Ask Arthur” series by December 31.
So: This year’s first question, as is usually the case, is from my pal Roger Green, who asked:
Hunter Biden pardoned by his dad. Orange said, "What about the J6 hostages?" which is silly because orange can do it himself. Thoughts? And also, who else should Joe pardon?
I Can’t think of anything I care about less than President Biden pardoning his son. I wasn’t the least bit surprised that the Right were—or, more likely pretended to be—freaking out about it. I don’t recall a single one of them whining after 45 pardoned his son-in-law’s dad—or any of the other criminals (or his own co-conspirators) that he pardoned. So, their reaction was largely performative, as it so often is. Some of them were even unintentionally hilarious, like the far-right guy who made an “error-filled” movie about illegal immigration who publicly complained about the pardon—despite getting one from 45. Glass houses, and all that.
What I find extremely tiresome, though, is the hand-wringing and rending of garments from those on the Left, including some I like and respect. One legal commentator went to great lengths to condemn President Biden, declared he’d lied about not pardoning Hunter, that his reputation and legacy was destroyed, and he kept droning on about how the pardon violates norms—even though he’s previously noted how the Orange One has already shattered norms and precedent and will do FAR worse once he’s enthroned in January. A prominent political YouTuber I’ve watched for years declared that “of course Biden shouldn’t have lied”, however, he’s also consistently pointed out the old norms are gone, and the incoming guy will do whatever he wants, whether it’s legal or not, and without regard for the Constitution.
I have NO idea whether or not President Biden “lied” when he said several times that wouldn’t give Hunter a pardon—and neither does anyone else, Right or Left. However, there’s strong evidence supporting the assertion that he didn’t lie. In his statement on the pardon, President Biden said:
No reasonable person who looks at the facts of Hunter’s cases can reach any other conclusion than Hunter was singled out only because he is my son – and that is wrong. There has been an effort to break Hunter – who has been five and a half years sober, even in the face of unrelenting attacks and selective prosecution. In trying to break Hunter, they’ve tried to break me – and there’s no reason to believe it will stop here. Enough is enough.
Indeed, “no reasonable person” (emphasis added), which obviously excludes the Republican politicians whining so loudly about the pardon. If President Biden had not pardoned Hunter, the supplicants the Orange One installs at the FBI and as Attorney General would almost certainly launch phoney “investigations” into Hunter Biden, followed by corrupt indictments (indeed, even after the pardon Republican politicians in Congress declared they’d continue with their own phoney “investigations”, anyway, because, well, politics…). A pardon was the ONLY way to protect Hunter from politically-motivated harassment and persecution. I think Joe Biden did the right thing, and I fully support it.
This brings up the question of “pre-emptive pardons” for folks who haven’t committed any crimes, but who the Orange One considers to be his personal enemies because they dared to hold him to account for his many crimes. He absolutely intends to keep his promise of revenge, a promise he repeated many, many, many times over the past couple years. So, should President Biden protect those the Orange One wants to destroy? I think that depends on the individual.
Many of the folks in question are high-profile politicians who can raise donations to help pay for their legal defence against the partisan attacks from Orange One’s minions and their phoney investigations and fraudulent “indictments” (assuming they can convince grand juries to indict with absolutely no evidence whatsoever of any crimes having been committed). If they do manage to somehow “indict”, there are laws against malicious or corrupt prosecutions, and it’s not inconceivable that they could end up with an unbroken record of hundreds of losses in court—unless they get the right MAGAt judge, and, if so, we can guess what the far-right Republican Supreme Court might then do.
Because of all that, and years of partisan harassment and prosecution, some of the folks in the Orange One’s crosshairs may prefer to accept a pardon. I fully understand why they might, and wouldn’t blame them if they do accept one. So far, though, Ive seen that some folks presumed to have targets on their back, like former US Representative Adam Kinzinger and newly-elected US Senator Adam Schiff, have said they don’t need or want a pre-emptive pardon. Will anyone else say they do want one? We know that a Republican House of Representatives “report” “calls for an FBI investigation into [former US Representative Liz] Cheney, accusing her of witness tampering by being in touch with star witness Cassidy Hutchinson, a former White House aide.” The chairman of the committee, Barry Loudermilk (MAGA-Georgia), notoriously gave a tour of the Capital to two insurrectionists right before the January 6 attack, which, whatever Barry might say of it, nevertheless gave the insurrectionists valuable reconnaissance before their attack. Yet, curiously, Barry wasn’t “criminally investigated”.
All we know for sure is that when the Orange One is formally installed in power, he’ll do whatever he wants, rule of law be damned, and that will include pardoning his most obsequious allies—if they’re sufficiently fawning, grovelling, and submissive. Having said all that, I’m not sure he’ll pardon all the people convicted of the crimes they committed on or about January 6, 2021. The Orange One is incapable of censoring or muting himself, and in an interview recently he seemed to equivocate slightly on his earlier promise to pardon them all. Who knows? The guy has never shown that he understands, much less cares about, anything to do with the rule of law or the norms of behaviour for someone in the office he’ll, tragically, soon occupy, and he probably doesn’t understand the seriousness of the crimes so many of those people were convicted of. On the other hand, he wants to be worshipped, so that will probably decide his actions.
The reason that I moved this topic to the top of the list is that last week, some 10 days after Roger asked his question, President Biden pardoned 39 people and commuted the sentences of 1500 others, and there’s no reason to think there won’t be more. I wanted to avoid the Christmas rush. I also delayed publication a couple days so I could tone down my contempt for the Orange One and his party. This post is as dispassionate as I can be—which is precisely why I've avoided writing about US politics.
Thanks to Roger for today’s question!
It’s not too late to ask a question: Simply leave a comment on this post (anonymous comments are allowed). Or, you can email me your question (and you can even tell me to keep your name secret—though, why not pick a nom de question?). You can also ask questions on the AmeriNZ Facebook page, though keep in mind that all Facebook Pages are public, just like this blog. To avoid being public there, you can send me a private message through the AmeriNZ Facebook Page.
All posts in this series are tagged “AAA-24”. All previous posts from every “Ask Arthur” series are tagged, appropriately enough, ”Ask Arthur”.
December is the season for music video mashups, and the two I watch every year were released within a couple days of each other over the past week and a half. As it happens, I saw a Facebook “Memory” today for my blog post on December 17, 2015 in which I shared several mashups in at once, and so, here we are.
Nine years ago, I said “This year, I’m sharing the videos by the same three artists I did last year, but this time they’re all in one post rather than separate ones (even though having the extra posts would have been nice for me…).” All of that’s the same this year, though I still have doubts that I’ll manage 22 posts this month (well, I did say that I was “possibly unrealisticly” optimistic about that goal…).
Be that as it may, this year’s post has two folks I’ve shared in the past, one of whom I also shared nine years ago. The guy who made the other video mashup still available stopped making them many years ago, and the channel of the third has been deleted. These two are likely to be around for awhile.
I’ll have \specific reactions to each video, but, in general, I have a question: Have I finally crossed into the “way to old” category? I recognised individual artists in both videos, but, for the most part, and for the first time ever, I didn’t recognise the vast majority of the videos. I’ll answer my question: I may well be in that category, but by itself this new reality isn’t an example of it.
I used to be so aware of current pop music because I was able to watch music videos on TV, which is barely available anymore, and what is available (one part-time channel) doesn’t necessarily show videos that are even remotely current. Since I don’t listen to the radio, and seldom to any streaming service, the only way I know of a current pop music song is if a snippet is played on a TV programme, in an ad, or the very rare times someone shares something on social media. So, it’s probably not even remotely surprising that I don’t recognise most of the videos or even the songs. Or, maybe I’m just refusing to acknowledge reality.
Here are the two mashups I’m sharing this year, and fist up is “CLUB 2024 | A Year-End Megamix (Mashup of 150+ Songs) // by Adamusic”, released on December 9, 2024:
I think it’s interesting how these mashup artists can draw a theme out of songs in a year, in this case, about beat-driven club music. In this video, I recognised snippets of videos from Beyonce and Teddy Swims, along with several artists, but the vast majority of what was in this video was completely alien to me, like I’d just been dropped into some future year. Honestly, it was kind of a weird experience being so utterly out of touch with so much pop music from the year. Even though I felt perosnally disconnnected form much of the video I nevertheless like Adam’s work (obviously, if I keep sharing it…). Adam doesn’t post a track list as such, but the YouTube description has a link to a Spotify playlist of all the songs.
Next, it’s “United State of Pop 2024 (Blame It on the Whiskey) - DJ Earworm”, released December 11, 2024:
This video is a third the length of the first one, but it’s also a “mashup of the 25 biggest hits in the U.S. during 2024”, according to the YouTube description. This video takes a different direction, focusing on the more country aspects of this year’s music: Different emphasis and vibe, which is nice (I like variety). While the video may have been shorter, I didn’t do any better with recognising most of the videos, though I was more likely to know the artists in them, for whatever that’s worth. One thing I especially like aboutDJ Earworm’s YouTube videos is that he always puts the tracklist in the YouTube description—though in this case, sadly, it just confirmed how many of the artists I was unfamiliar with.
I like both these mashups, even though there were so few music videos that I’ve actually seen. And I also like—well, more like am amused by—the fact that so much of all this was true in my post nine years ago. In fact, back then I summed up what I feel this year:
This means that when I watch/listen to one of these end of year mash-ups, the odds are good (and getting better) that I won’t recognise much. Still, I like them as a nice way to find out what was popular in the preceding year.
Indeed—and very relevant: I recently saw a mention of Hozier’s “Too Sweet”, a song I hadn’t heard. Then, as so often happens these days, I promptly forgot all about it—until I saw his video included, and sought it out (here’e the link if you want to see/hear it—and so I can find it again…).
I guess my theme for these mashups is probably, “plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose”. Once again, it proves the point.
AmeriNZ Podcast episode 416, “Presently”, is now available from the podcast website. There, you can listen or download the episode, or any other episode, and you can subscribe to the podcast.
The five most recent episodes of the podcast are listed on the sidebar on the right side of this blog.
Yesterday I said a symbolic farewell to Flybuys (formerly “Fly Buys”), a customer loyalty programme in New Zealand that was launched in 1996. Nigel and I signed up right away, and mainly because the initial marketing promoted the possibility of earning flights (hence the name…), something that seemed like a good idea for us, a binational couple. Even though none of the early promises—as we understood them—actually amounted to anything, we nevertheless continued on and earned many rewards over the years. All that ends on December 31, and I needed to use up my points before then. I did that yesterday.
We got quite a few “rewards”, as they were called, over the years, and among them is a clock radio I still have and use. I can only list that one thing because it, and a six month subscription to a magazine, were the only things still listed when I checked yesterday. I probably have no hope of remembering anyt earlier rewards.
Technically, my account was an extension of Nigel’s, and he usually chose what we got as “rewards” (like that clock radio—because it can project the time onto the ceiling at night). The only thing I got since Nigel died was that magazine subscription (and a donation of points to a charity). Yesterday was my final chance.
My intention was to buy more than I had points for, which would mean using all my points and paying a bit, too. Basically, I didn’t want to leave any points un-redeemed, and that seemed like the best option. I could’ve bought store vouchers (like for a supermarket), which would be useful, of course, but I’d have had points leftover. So, I decided to buy a bit of tech instead.
When Nigel was in his last days, he told me I needed to get a MacBook Pro and a dock so that I could do my work anywhere, and also connect it to a real keyboard and mouse. I did that, and, at the time, I didn’t realise that neither the 2019 Macbook Pro I bought, nor the dock I also bought, had any way to connect to an older external monitor. While the display on my MacBook Pro is excellent quality, it’s also small.
So, yesterday I decided to complete Nigel’s instructions (his intent, if not specific direction) and buy an adapter to allow me to connect an HDMI monitor to my MacBook Pro. I have two HDMI monitors (my own and Nigel’s), but newer Macs have moved to a different standard. I intend to upgrade my Mac Mini in the next year or so, and that’ll mean getting a new HD monitor (something I also want), but thanks to that adapter, I’ll be able to use my old monitor(s) with my MacBook Pro until they stop working. I had to pay an extra roughly $14 to get the adapter, but if I saw that in a shop I wouldn’t have thought twice about spending that much (it’d have been more in a shop…), so, why not?
I spent far too much time scrolling through their website to pick what I wanted, but, in the end, I got something I can use, I used up all my points, and can see the demise of Flybuys while losing nothing. Well, nothing apart from the flights to the USA that Nigel and I originally hoped to get from the programme—they turned out to be nothing. Still we did get some stuff over the years, and that was good. And, at the end of the programme, I got something that Nigel actually had in mind for me in his final days, or that’s in line with those intentions, but also something that I somehow didn’t quite grasp at the time.
Maybe it’s actually true that all’s well that ends well.
Update – December 17, 2024: The adapter arrived today, two business days after I ordered it, complete with a cute little suede-like travel pouch:
This morning, I got a news alert that “The Amazing Kreskin” has died. I vaguely remember him being on TV a lot either side of 1970, but I don’t remember much about his appearances or even what his voice sounded like. I think part of the reason for that is that I was far too young.
The first thing I did think about was “related merchandise”: When I was a kid I was given his game (or whatever it was), “Kreskin’s ESP”. The game was released in 1967, but I have no idea when I was given it: It could’ve been Christmas that year or a later year. However, I didn’t think it was very interesting because it was very easy to manipulate the egg-shaped thing on a chain.
There was another thing about that, though: I don’t remember ever playing with it with a friend, and if it was 1967 or 68, that figures: In 1969 we moved to another town, one where there were a lot of other kids in my neighbourhood, but in the town we moved from, there weren’t. So, up until late 1968, I spent a lot of time by myself, and that could explain why the “Kreskin’s ESP” thing didn’t really stick in my memories.
To be clear, I didn’t hate the game, and I absolutely remember playing with that egg-shaped thing on a chain and the cards that it swung over to supposedly revealed answers to questions. It’s just that it didn’t stick with me, and that might simply be because I was playing with it alone.
I think that my parents gave it to me, and if so, it goes to show that back in those days it wasn’t automatic that preachers rejected all non-Christian supernatural-ish things. However, I do remember my parents being angry about the movie of Rosemary’s Baby, which they said was mocking the Jesus birth story, and they were concerned that “The Exorcist” (the book) might encourage some people to imitate some devilish (literally) behaviour, something that never actually happened. By the late 1970s, they were past that sort of reaction, around the same time the fundamentalists were ramping things up.
Another thing the memory of the game reminded me of is that I later found out it was also easy to manipulate a Ouija board, though that was definitely with friends. Maybe I was born a sceptic. In any case, my parents certainly didn’t prevent the growth of my scepticism, and I think that’s the bigger gift they gave me.
It’s interesting the path one’s mind can meander along, especially, like today, when it’s sent on its journey by a random news alert about someone I barely remember. Being human is pretty weird.
This morning I was casually scrolling through FB, as I do most mornings, and my feed was filled with posts by folks who’d lost their spouses (which isn’t unusual, since I’m in two FB groups for LGBTQ+ widows/widowers). And then I ran across the song in the video above*. “King of the Road” by Roger Miller was once one of Nigel’s go-to karaoke songs at family parties, and in my head I “saw” him singing it.
However, none of that was triggering for me. I’m well used to seeing FB posts from widows/widowers, and my memories of Nigel singing that song also make me remember why he eventually stopped singing it: The bridge is difficult to sing (LYRICS), and a bit annoyingly so. He eventually gave it up largely because of that.
Five years ago, my reactions could well have been very different—no, they definitely would’ve been different. Now, it’s all just part of me, all mooshed together, combined with everything else I am. That’s because of time.
The lesson for me is that all experiences in life, good and bad, are temporary, so we should enjoy the good ones as much as we can, and with all our might, and know that eventually the bad ones won’t hurt as as much as they did at the time. Good and bad, everything, becomes part of the totality of who we are, and with grief in particular, we grow around it and with it, not away from it, and what was once a source of searing pain can become a source of comfort—and strength.
I’m better in every possible way because of my life with Nigel, and he and the life we shared are still a source of strength for me. Sure, sometimes I feel sad, and sometimes thinking about my loss brings tears, something I expect will be true for the rest of my life. But most of the time it just makes me glad to have loved someone and been loved by him enough to sometimes feel sad about losing him—and that now, far more often than not, that gladness makes me smile and even feel happy, not sad.
Seeing others share their pain reminds me of all that, and so does a very specific reminder of something about Nigel at family karaoke. Five years ago, this song could’ve made me cry at the memory of Nigel always singing it. Now, I’m more likely to remember how that bridge frustrated him. Because, for me, remembering the totality of who a lost loved one was is always better than remembering only the pain of having lost them. Time, you see, eventually becomes our ally.
*The YouTube video up top is very similar to the version I saw on Facebook, especially the fact that the original audio was replaced with, it seems, the album version so it had better audio. I had my doubts about whether this video will remain on YouTube long term, which is why I almost didn’t include it. However, it’s at least a moving video (for now?) and that I decided that makes it worthy of sharing.
This post is based on what I posted on my personal Facebook this morning, with a few modifications, including links within the post, and finding a different video to include.
When this year began, I knew it would be challenging for me because of several significant anniversaries over the year. However, not all of them have been negative, and today is one of the better ones.
Five years ago today, my contract to purchase my house went unconditional , and that meant that I’d officially bought the house. That was eleven and a half weeks after Nigel died, and even then it was obvious it was the most important step in building whatever my life would become.
Some things changed before settlement, when I got the keys, starting with the date. Originally, settlement was to be on January 24, which was the anniversary of the civil union ceremony in 2009. Because the house was newly built, the settlement date was originally set to allow time for Hamilton City Council to do the final inspection and issue what’s called a “code compliance certificate” (CCC), which means everything complies with code. The CCC must be issued before a house can be sold.
The CCC came in a little earlier than expected, so I asked to move up the settlement date, and the builder agreed. To be honest, I didn’t need to get into the house earlier, I wanted to.
I was impatient to get to Hamilton to be around family, and getting the house earlier gave me time to get it ready: I had a heat pump installed in my bedroom and data cabling throughout the house. I also met with the company that did the window coverings, something I knew would take several weeks. I got the keys on January 10, 2021.
A couple weeks earlier, I contacted a moving company to move me to Hamilton, and with a professional house staging company to stage the house to help sell it. The move out was on my birthday, and the move in was the following day. And that was the point where my Hamilton adventure began.
Meanwhile, the house I’d moved out of sold some weeks later, and I signed the paperwork to complete the sale on March 19. Settlement for that house was the next day, March 20—six months to the day since Nigel died. The following Wednesday, New Zealand went under the first Covid lockdown, and the very reason I moved to Hamilton—to be able to get together with family—was taken away from me. I wasn’t actually upset about that, though, because that first Lockdown was new and interesting, and, anyway, I had plenty to do around the house.
Next month, then, will mark five years that I’ve been living in this house. And that’s a significant and good one, too. Good things happen all the time, too, after all.
Everyone knows things that we don’t know everything about. This could relate to anything, of course, and a lot of the time it can be annoying when we suddenly realise we don’t know details we think we should. Even about a customary food item.
On Wednesday of last week, one of my errands was to pick up some things from the Woolworths supermarket near The Base, something I mentioned in a post a couple days later. As I was making my way through the shop, I noticed the display in the photo above. I shared the photo on my personal Facebook once I got home and sarcastically wrote, “Does this Woolworths have enough Kiwi Onion Dip ingredients to last until Christmas? [Of course not!] 😁”.
This was essentially a joke for my fellow Kiwis because we all know how “Kiwi Onion Dip” is often a staple at family gatherings, especially at Christmas. And, we also know that supermarkets often run out before Christmas. Obviously my American friends and whānau weren’t in on the joke, though they had little trouble with my joking comment, “I love how some customer left a random bag of chips on the display, like a real-life 'serving suggestion' photo.”
This issue was, as so often happens, cultural differences, but the discussions in the comments over the following couple days ended up leading me to educate myself about something I thought I knew well: Kiwi Onion Dip.
The dip was created by Rosemary Dempsey sometime in the 1950s or 60s in Nestle’s Test Kitchen in New Zealand. They wanted to combine Nestle products to boost sales, and both of the main ingredients were just those sorts of products. The OG recipe is on Nestle’s Maggi website, but it’s only got three ingredients: One 250ml can of Nestle Reduced Cream combined with one packet of Maggi Onion Soup mix, and one tablespoon of lemon juice. Mix thoroughly and put in the fridge to set (even the night before the party).
My variation on the dip is to use white vinegar (around one teaspoon) because it has no real flavour of its own, but still helps reduce the fatty feel like the lemon juice does. I got the idea from the Maggi soup packet itself, which suggests using lemon juice or vinegar. I also add a bit of garlic powder (just because) and a little bit of sugar because the dip, particularly when combined with potato chips, can be very salty, and the sugar helps that a bit.
That sets the stage, but the discussion also included mentions of Americans’ French Onion Dip, and exactly how fatty the reduced cream is.
The dip Americans call French Onion Dip, and basically uses dehydrated French onion soup mix (where the name comes from) mixed with sour cream. Developed by Lipton, it was original known as “Lipton California Dip”. The two main ingredients, though, are a creamy refrigerated dairy product combined with the dry soup mix, which is what makes it so similar to Kiwi Onion Dip. But that’s really all the similarity there is.
Sour cream is a chilled dairy product, while reduced cream is a manufactured product that can be kept at room temperature (what the supermarket industry calls “shelf stable”, though that name isn’t really used in New Zealand). The two soup mixes are quite different, too.
Because of the differences in the ingredients, French Onion Dip and Kiwi Onion Dip don’t taste very similar, which is probably no surprise. I can attest to that having made both dips in their respective homelands.
As we discussed these dips more, I began to wonder about fat content, so I looked it up: Reduced cream (sometimes apparently called “light cream” in the USA) has the same amount of fat by weight (around 21%) as sour cream sold in New Zealand. However, reduced cream has around 38% less fat than actual thickened cream (overseas, actual thickened cream is called heavy cream or heavy whipping cream). Butter in New Zealand is around 81% fat, give or take, by weight.
The nutritional profiles of the two dry soup mixes will vary depending on what soup mix is used, but it’s probably safe to assume they’re high in sodium (the New Zealand versions are). But, then, “chip and dip” is supposed to be a treat, not a main part of anyone’s diet.
The Nestle brand of reduced cream is made in Mexico (a fact I’d forgotten), and so is the Woolworths own-brand version. The Woolworths version is slightly higher in fat than the Nestle version, and the two name-brand sour creams made in New Zealand have a similarly slight difference in fat content. Maggi’s Onion Soup mix is “proudly blended in New Zealand from local and imported ingredients”. Whenever I see that sort of statement on a supermarket product, I always assume that the product is mainly overseas ingredients, with perhaps only the packaging made in New Zealand. It’s hard not to be cynical about corporations these days.
There are some name-brand refrigerated onion dips in New Zealand, but none of them are similar to either the American dip or the New Zealand one. There’s an imported refrigerated “French onion” dip made in Australia, which is at a higher price point than most NZ-made refrigerated dips.
At this point, I realised that my dip into snack food isn’t over quite yet.
Nestle’s Maggi brand includes a “French Onion Soup” mix, and the back of the packet uses the same instructions for making it into dip as for our traditional Kiwi Onion Dip. However, I’m curious how that soup mix combined with sour cream would taste, so this summer I intend to make some to find out. Will it be like what I used to make when I lived in the USA? Or, will it be a bowl of yuck? Stay tuned.
Right now, though, you’ll have to excuse me. For some reason, I’m quite hungry.
Important Note: The names of brands/products/companies listed in this post are all registered trademarks, and are used here for purposes of description and clarity. No company or entity provided any support or payment for this blog post, and all products were purchased by me at normal consumer prices. So, the opinions I expressed are my own genuinely held opinions, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of manufacturers, retailers, or any known human being, alive or dead, real or corporate. Just so we’re clear.
This week forty years ago, on December 8, 1984, a new song went to Number One, and became the penultimate chart topper of the year. That new Number One was ”Out of Touch” (video above) by American duo Daryl Hall & John Oates (generally known colloquially as “Hall and Oates”, though the duo preferred the long name). The song—the duo’s last Number One in the USA—was the lead single from their twelfth studio album, Big Bam Boom. The song, which would stay at the top of the Billboard “Hot 100” for two weeks, was also the duo’s fourteenth consecutive Top 40 hit in the since 1980.
This song was, of course, played on the radio a lot back in the day, so I know it well enough. However, I don’t think I ever bought any of their music directly, just on compilation CDs. There’s no particular reason for that, except that in the mid-1980s, money was often tight, and so, I only bought music that I loved, and while I liked their most of their hits well enough, it’s probably fair to say that I didn’t love their music, or, at least, not enough to buy any when I had to prioritise my purchases.
I only vaguely remembered the music video for “Out of Touch”. Maybe it was edited for TV? It’s a perfectly solid music video for the time, and one of the sort that people can merely listen to rather than watch. As so many were in those days.
Clearly, I wasn’t exactly a super-fan of the group, but neither did I hate their music. I quite liked some of their songs, wasn’t keen on others, and was indifferent to other songs. Not for the first time. Even so, I was kind of sad to find out that the two had a huge falling out last year when Oates sued Hall over selling publishing rights. They both announced that they’d never perform together again, and I’ve read that they won’t even speak to each other. Still, they’re not the first pop music act to fall apart spectacularly, and they’re unlikely to be the last.
”Out of Touch” reached Number 11 in Australia, 4 in Canada (Gold), 27 in New Zealand, 48 in the UK (Silver), as well as Number One on the USA’s Billboard “Hot 100” and their “Dance Club Songs” charts, and was also Number 3 on Cash Box. It didn’t receive any certification in the USA.
The album Big Bam Boom reached Number 20 in Australia, 12 in Canada (2x Platinum), 12 in New Zealand, 28 in the UK (Silver), and 5 on the USA’s “Billboard 200”. It was Certified 2x Platinum in the USA.
The post on the final Number One of 1984 will be published on December 22, though there’s likely to be a finale post a day or two later.
Previously in the “Weekend Diversion – 1984” series:
New Zealand's Christmas TV advertising has been a bit odd this year. The first one I saw (Number 1 below) was aired on or about October 25—around a week before Halloween. That sort of early start to Christmas TV ads isn’t unusual—for example, the first ad I saw last year also started airing before Halloween. I still think that’s far too early for any Christmas ads, however, the economy’s been horrible, so I expected an avalanche of Christmas ads—and then nothing happened.
Other ads started (very) slowly popping up, but there have been very few ads specifically for Christmas, and several that are (more or less…) haven’t been uploaded to YouTube, at least not yet. The key thing is that the ads must be on the company’s official website, because I learned when I made 2022’s playlist that ads that aren’t posted to official YouTube Channels are more likely be deleted (that happened to ad number 7 that year). However, even official videos can be removed or made private (as happened to Number 2 on last year’s playlist). Whenever an ad is removed/unlisted, I have to remove it from the playlist or the playback of the playlist will stop when it gets to that point, which I think is pretty dumb, actually. In any case, I just delete the removed ad from the playlist and it plays normally—and I don’t get the big black “Video unavailable” box where a video once was, as happened frequently when I used to post individual ads. Sure, playlists are a bit more work, and sometimes, like this year, posting a playlist may be delayed while I wait for ads to be posted on official YouTube channels (if they are…), but despite all that, I still think it’s the best option.
As always, I compiled this year’s Christmas ad playlist in the order that I first saw the ads on TV, and if any of the other ads posted later on, I’ll add them to the playlist and the descriptions below. And, of course, if any are deleted, I’ll update the playlist and this post.
The criteria: Ads must must be airing on New Zealand television (not merely online or on social media or whatever). Second, they have to be New Zealand companies, or companies that are connected to New Zealand. This is because international ads might be seen in many countries, though our ads aren’t necessarily seen elsewhere. Finally, as I said, the ads must be on an official YouTube Channel, not one belonging to third parties.
A warning: Just like in past years, the annotations below include spoilers, which I mention in case you want to watch the videos first. All that out of the way, here’s a bit more about the videos, all of which are, as I said, in the order I first saw them on TV:
1. “Give a Gift That Unleashes Theirs | Spark Christmas 2024” – Spark NZ. This ad is for Spark NZ, one of the largest mobile phone (etc…) companies in New Zealand. When I first saw this ad around October 25 (!), I didn’t realise it was a Christmas ad. I was making dinner, and that's a time I don’t pay close attention to ads if I see them at all: Many nights I only hear ads because I’m busy in the kitchen. I suppose I should’ve realised what it was right away, since the first scene has a woman wrapping a present, but the surreal animation (which reminded me of the work of artist Peter Max) kind of threw me off—until I actually paid attention to the ad. This ad is much more subtle than other Christmas ads from the company, but I kind of like the laid-back vibe. [Full disclosure: At the moment, I’m a Spark NZ customer.]
2. “New World Christmas 2024 - 30” – New World. This ad is one of my two favourite Christmas ads this year. New World is owned by one of two supermarket companies in New Zealand, and the only one that’s New Zealand-owned (each store is individually owned, and together they’re part of a cooperative). This year’s ad is part of their “find your wonderful” series of ads, and I think it hits all the right emotions for Christmas, and is a truly heartwarming ad. I think it works especially well because it’s not centred on folks shopping in their supermarket, but instead focuses on the human connection to the food (and each other) that the supermarket helps facilitate. It creates subtle positive vibes about New World without smacking viewers in the face with “Buy! Buy! Buy!” messaging, and this year's approach is actually more likely to make viewers feel good about shopping there because who doesn’t want to feel a connection with our loved ones? A very well done ad.
A bit of trivia: The theme song used ad series (that’s played in the background in part of the ad), is sung by a young woman who actually worked at New World and was picked when the company was looking for a singer to record the song. [Full disclosure: I shop at both New World and Australian-owned Woolworths.]
3. “Feels like Christmas at Woolworths” – Woolworths NZ. This is an ad for Australian-owned supermarket chain Woolworths (formerly called Countdown in New Zealand, but since rebranded to match the branding in Australia). This ad is part of their “Fresh food feeling” series of ads, many of which highlight New Zealand farm-grown produce sold by Woolworths, and the centring of this ad on a farm is in keeping with that, as is the shot of a Woolworths truck leaving the farm. However, the down-home wholesome family farm feeling is a slight departure for the company’s ads—and I think it’s extremely well done. The ad is cute, reinforces the other ads in the series, and in particular the “Fresh food feeling” message. Most import for a Christmas ad, it has an actual connection to the holiday, one that’s appropriate for the business Countdown is in. What I said about New World’s Christmas ad (Second on this year’s list), is equally true about this ad, that it’s “not centred on folks shopping in their supermarket, but instead focuses on the human connection to the food (and each other) that the supermarket helps facilitate.” All of which is why this is my other favourite for this year. [Full disclosure: I shop at both Woolworths and New Zealand-owned New World.]
A bit of trivia: The central North Island town of Ohakune is known colloquially as “the carrot capital of New Zealand”, and the town features a giant carrot, which, the Wikipedia article on the town says, “is reputedly the world's largest model carrot”. When I think of carrots, I really do associate them with Ohakune.
4. “Let the Magic Find You This Christmas #AirNZXmas” – Air New Zealand. Air New Zealand starts their Christmas TV advertising a little later than many others (usually somewhere around the beginning of December), and that’s fine with me! This year’s ad is more focused on the airline as an airline than some other years have been, and I think the surreal magic taking place aboard the plane is, well, magical—as a good Christmas should be. I bet “certain people” will be saying “Bah! Humbug!” when they see the Christmas ornament emblazoned with “Meri Kirihimete”, but one can hope that their grinchy hearts might grow three sizes (metaphorically speaking) that day, and that they can, ya know, get over it.
This isn’t exactly trivia, but a bit of a fact check for other kinds of “certain people”. The kid's seat back screen shows that the magical flight is from San Francisco to Auckland, and the date of arrival is listed as “Dec 26”, which is why the mother says to the son, “I promise we won’t miss Christmas next year,” and the flight attendant sees the sad boy, and the cabin crew launches into magic making—with all of them waiting until it officially becomes December 25 on board, meaning the plane took off on December 24. So, they lost a day? YES! It happened to me: When I flew to New Zealand to live, I took off on October 31, 1995 and arrived on November 2, 1995—I had NO November 1, 1995 (something I wrote about back in 2012). So, while the ad depicts a magical trip, that doesn’t include magically altering time. However, people doubting that the passengers would ever all be asleep at the same time do have a point—it’s magic!
Some possible trivia: In the past, Air New Zealand always used actual employees in ads and safety videos. I don’t know if that’s true for this ad, but I think it’s kind of nice to think it might be. [Full disclosure: I personally prefer to fly Air New Zealand over any other airline.]
🎅🏻 🎅🏻 🎅🏻 🎅🏻 🎅🏻
As always, there are more NZ Christmas ads I’ve seen on TV, but they're not on the retailers’ official YouTube Channels. Among those ads is one for The Warehouse that’s a Christmas instalment in their current series of odd ads that show a family doing autotuned singing of new lyrics to Lou Bega’s 1999 global Number One hit, “Mambo No. 5 (A Little bit of…)” [WATCH/LISTEN] as they shop in store, filling the trolley to overflowing. I can’t recall seeing any Christmas ads for Michael Hill Jeweller this year, and most other retailers’ ads are just promotions for specific products on special, much as they might run for any special promotion tied to any holiday. If any of those ads were online, they might create a dilemma for me, because they’re not Christmas ads as such. Maybe I need to tighten my criteria?
At any rate, these are the only ads available at the moment, though if more NZ Christmas TV ads do become available on an official YouTube Channel I’ll (probably?) add the videos to the Playlist and annotations to this post, and then post an announcement on the blog that the playlist is updated. However, you can also follow the direct link the YouTube Playlist if you’d rather skip my comments, or even just to share the playlist.
AmeriNZ Podcast episode 415, “Not present”, is now available from the podcast website. There, you can listen, download or subscribe to the podcast episode, along with any other episode. Will I manage to do another episode this year?
The five most recent episodes of the podcast are listed on the sidebar on the right side of this blog.
I’ve been crazy busy this week, part of which flowed on from other recent events. All of which is on top of many other things I need, or want, to do. It’s that time of year, I guess.
I mowed my lawns on Tuesday, something I mentioned wanting to do in my post about mowing this past Saturday. It went better than the mowing expedition I talked about in that post, if for no other reason than the fact that I got it all done in one day.
After I was done, I posted about all this on my personal Facebook and included some of what I said in my blog post. On Facebook, I talked about hiring a service to take care of the front lawn (the only part the neighbours can see), and I also said, “Feeling like I might die—literally—while mowing isn’t something I want to continue to experience.” I also added:
I’ve known for a while now that this decision was rapidly approaching, and I knew it’d feel like defeat, and it does. I hate that my life is increasingly being dominated by thoughts about what I can’t do anymore, what I shouldn’t do, and what will soon be in one of those categories. When Nigel died, I said that I felt like it aged me ten years, and I’m beginning to think that was literally true.
Since I wrote that, I have, of course, been thinking about it. I can’t quite shake the feeling that I’m giving up too easily, that my problem is more that I’m unfit than it is I’m getting older. That could also explain some of my ongoing issues with feeling tired. Put another way, I feel like maybe I haven’t done all I can do to improve my physical state, and that’s making things harder than they “should” be at my age.
On the other hand, as I also said this past Tuesday on Facebook,
When I was mowing the back lawn just now (after the battery was recharged), I thought, “If I was given months or a year to live, would I insist on mowing the lawn?” Obviously, the answer was, “hell no!” (though said more profanely…). I’m keenly aware that none of us knows when our days will run out, so to hell with stubbornly carrying on with mowing when it makes me feel so physically awful at least once every two weeks. I’ve got far better things to spend my time and energy on.
That’s definitely all true, too. What I said Saturday was exactly the crux of the issue: “This period in my aging has been confusing as hell, and trying to work out what I can or should do myself, and what I should pay others to do for me, has been exhausting.” In so very many ways, too.
At any rate, the main reason the mowing itself went better was that the weeds’ flower stalks were much shorter than a week and a half earlier. The two photos up top shows the some of those stalks, the left photo was right after I mowed part of the lawn. I also got the rest the edges in the back done while the mower battery recharged, and I should’ve done the edges out front, too, but, yeah, no. I skipped it this time which means I’ll have to do them next time. On the other hand, with summer weather seeming to settle in, it’s possible that the lawn will slow down and dry out now.
On Wednesday, I ran errands: I went to The Base and got a haircut, popped into The Warehouse to pick up a few things, and even got petrol on my way home. What I didn’t know until today, though, was that I did those three exact things exactly one year earlier, and Facebook “Memories” let me know that. I said recently on Facebook that those FB “Memories” show me how often my life repeats itself, though this time it was an almost exact match. Maybe we really are living inside a computer simulation or game?
There were two things that were different and notable—well, I think so, anyway. The first is that I also went to the supermarket, which I doubt I did last year because at the time I was trying a delivery service subscription. The other is that when I went to get petrol I got an extra two cents off per litre because I loaded my Super Gold Card into the App, which I use so I can pay at the pump, and not have to go into the shop. I began doing that in the Covid days, but now I enjoy the speed and convenience. Wednesday is a day when they offer a six cents per litre for anyone signed up for the scheme, and I got two cents per litre more.
On Wednesday, I paid at $2.527 per litre, which is US$5.71366169 per US gallon. Approximately. My discounts brought the cost down to around $2.48 per litre, and my saving amounted to a huge $4.98—which won’t buy a whole lot these days. Still, a penny saved is a penny earned, and all that.
Apart from that, I’ve been doing a lot of household chores over the past couple day (three loads of washing washed and dried today, among other routine stuff). I have a lot of other stuff to catch up on, including this blog among other things.
Right now, though, I have something else I want to get done. Stay tuned. [I was vaguely hinting, because I hadn't done it yet, but a new podcast episode is now available]
Maybe it’s a good sign, but I’ve already started planning and preparing for next year's blogging, something that begins less than a month from now. That planning process meant taking a look back, too, of course. None of this is even remotely new—one way or another it’s something I do every year. And yet, the fact I’m doing it after a difficult year gives me hope for the year to come.
One of the easiest ways to see that this has been a difficult year for me is to look at how much I produced for this blog and my podcast, and that can be summed up by the simple phrase, “very little”. November ended up in a three-way tie for my least productive months of 2024, but unlike the other two, I at least know what was behind the lack of output in November: The disastrous US election. I just didn’t feel like doing anything even remotely creative for at least the first two weeks after the disaster, and for the past week or so I’ve been busy in an entirely ordinary way.
My posts right before and after the US elections were both in my Weekend Diversion: 1984 series, but I wrote both of them right before they were published—I didn’t write them in advance, and, in fact, I think only one or two in the entire series were. It would be another week and a half before I’d post again, and that was the call for questions in this year’s Ask Arthur series, also written right before publication—around a week later than I wanted to publish it.
My last two posts in November were also delayed, though only by days. In fact, the only reason they got published at all was that I wanted to make sure that November wasn’t the least-productive month of the year. Motivation is motivation, I suppose.
So now it’s December and, including this post, so far I’ve managed an average of one post per day! That amuses me because when I thought about the rest of this year, I realised that I only needed 22 posts over 31 days to ensure that 2024 isn’t my worst-ever year for blogging. I know only too well how what in the past I would have always seen as an achievable target is now something that can easily evaporate. So… who knows?
Here’s what I do know: The Weekend Diversion: 1984 series has two more posts, so that takes the total needed down to 20. I’ve already published the first of three other posts I’d planned for this month, and if I publish the other two of the three, that leaves 17 posts needed. This year’s “Ask Arthur” series will take up some of those (I don’t know how many yet), and there are a whole bunch of unfinished posts I’ve been wanting to do this year, so I think I’m (possibly unrealistically) optimistic that over the next 29 days I can achieve that remaining goal of 17 posts I hadn’t specifically planned for.
All of which leads to an inevitable question: Why do I care at all? I’ve certainly asked myself that question a lot this year, especially when there were so often many days between posts. The first reason is that overall, I still enjoy it, despite everything, and because it’s my only writing outlet, something that matters to me (and I’ve noticed I’ve become a bit rusty due to lack of practice).
There’s another reason it matters to me, though, one that, once again, relates to the US election disaster. One of the main features of that disaster was how shockingly awful the legacy news media was in covering the campaign. That’s a big topic in itself, obviously, but I think it’s important that people who can should call out the inevitable bad and anti-democracy behaviour of the incoming regime. There was a time when my posts on politics were by far my most-read, and while I’m absolutely not suggesting I’m some sort of sage or oracle—or even any good at discussing politics—I nevertheless have a platform of sorts, and maybe it’s time for me to use it again to speak my truth. That may not be useful to anyone, anywhere, but if it helps even one person feel for one moment that they’re not alone in being alarmed by the incoming regime, then that’s enough.
There’s quite a lot I still want to talk about, and that’s the biggest reason of all that I care about my productivity (and, of course, pretty much all of this is also relevant to my audio podcast, too, something that’s been neglected even more than this blog). What all of this really means is that in 2025 this blog will probably be more like it used to be: Still about lots of things, but also different from what it has been in that I’ll again talk about political topics, too.
Much as I do try to think about what a reader might get out of my small efforts here, the fact is that it's what I think about this blog that matters the most. I think that if I keep that in mind, it’ll be a good place to begin building a new version of what I once loved so much about this whole project. Like I said at the end of my first-ever blog post: “So pour yourself a cuppa, relax, and let’s see where this leads.” Yeah, that—once again.
December 1 is the start of our Meteorological Summer for 2024-25, and so, what we consider the start of the summer season. I’ve talked about this many times over the years, but the one underlying truth is that summer is my favourite season. Especially this year.
I last talked about meteorological v. astronomical seasons in September, at the start of Spring. I said:
I suppose I should restate that I couldn’t possibly care less which date one chooses for the start of seasons—meteorological or astronomical—however, I’ll continue to use the meteorological dates because the first of the relevant month is always the first, whereas solstices and equinoxes change dates and times with every visit… [snip] I think most of us find remembering the first of the relevant month is pretty easy to do, and since the weather is so variable until well into each season, picking either date is equally valid if a change in the weather is what we think of (or maybe hope for) at the start of a season: We have pretty much the same chance to be thrilled or disappointed.
It doesn’t matter at all what date people choose to mark as the start of seasons—except when it does, and that’s all about us personally. I loathe winter, with its shorter, darker, wetter, and colder days, the exact opposite of summer (obviously). In summer, I get plenty of free electricity to use, and the excess power I produce reduces the amount I pay to buy electricity. In winter, I generate less, and so, pay more, by midwinter, a lot more.
Life isn’t about money and costs alone, of course, but both are things we have to deal with, and they often unfairly constrain us. The bigger issue for most of us is what we might call quality of life: How does daily life feel? I always feel better and, well, brighter in the longer, warmer days of summer than I do in shorter, colder days of winter. Spring and Autumn are often mixed bags because the seasons are.
So, while the timing of the start of summer doesn’t really matter, many of us nevertheless notice the seasonal changes in weather, and we probably associate the start of seasons with particular dates. For me, it’s definitely the meteorological dates which are usually closer to when the weather is noticeably different (to me, the solstices and equinoxes seem to arrive well after the weather has started to change). Even for me, though, there’s a lot more to it than the date.
This has been a very difficult year for me, and I welcome the warmer, brighter, longer days because I know from a lifetime’s experience that I thrive in summer—and I really need that right now. While I may not care what date others choose for the start of seasons, I need summer right now, so it’s fortunate that I embrace meteorological seasons. And, that money I save over summer is another nice thing about the season. In fact, since summer in Hamilton is often hot and dry, that could mean less frequent lawn mowing this summer, and that'd be nice, too.
There’s no way of knowing what sort of summer we’ll have, though NIWA is predicting warmer than average says for all of New Zealand. NIWA meteorologist Chris Brandolino told RNZ’s Morning Report that "Overall, the theme will be that we'll see warm days will outweigh the cool days, and warm will certainly be a theme over the next three months." NIWA also expects a La Niña weather pattern to develop later in the summer.
In any summer, tropical cyclones are a potential threat, and back in October, NIWA said that “tropical cyclone activity for the coming season indicates normal to below normal activity”, but also that they were expecting “normal or elevated activity” for northern New Zealand. Most years, we don’t get a direct hit from tropical cyclones, just the remnants, if anything, but sometimes those remnants can be almost as bad as a cyclone. The normal tropical cyclone season runs from November through April, but they can occur out of season.
I’m hoping for a normal summer—warm, dry days with plenty of sunshine, and no cyclones. But, really, the weather will be whatever it’ll be. It’ll be summer, regardless.
The graphic up top is what I posted on my personal Facebook Page today.
A week ago, I was in the midst of mowing adventures. It took me three days to mow all the lawns, and that made me reconsider—well, a lot of things, really. In the end, the lawns were tidy, but I’m not sure my mind was.
There was a lot of rainy weather after my most recent mowing, and that was bad for a couple reasons. First, as always, it delayed the mowing because I needed the lawns to dry out a bit—and then it would rain again. At the same time, warmer temperatures, when combined with that rain, caused the weeds to run amok.
It’s not unusual for that to happen this time of year—it’s actually what Spring is like an a normal year. This time of year, then, the lawns are filled with the flower spikes from the weeds, and the leaves of the weeds grow more quickly, too, making the whole lawn thicker, from the machine’s perspective, than it actually is.
So, a week ago Friday I went out to start using the line trimmer on the edges out front (because it’s what everyone sees). That was fairly uneventful. The mowing, however, went slowly because the lawn was still pretty damp, and because I often had to go back and forth over some patches to be able to cut off the flower spikes at ground level (also not unusual for this time of year).
That was difficult, but the front lawn is also a gentle slope from the house down to the footpath, and at the side, it’s even a little steeper. As I was finishing up, on that steeper side, I was absolutely miserable: Tired, sweaty, and totally over it. I thought, yet again, about getting a service to mow the front lawn so I don’t have to deal with it—and that, in turn, led me to think about how these days I think about all the things that I no longer seem to be able to cope with doing by myself, and how that seems to have picked up speed since I turned 65.
I knew there wasn’t much battery left in the mower after it struggled out front, so I only mowed a very little bit of the side yard. I also did some of the edges—until the line trimmer’s filament rand out. That, I decided, was a good place to pause.
I sat down to rest and cool off, and to let the mower battery cool enough to recharge it. Unfortunately, I realised too late that I’d forgotten to do that, and there wasn’t enough time to charge it and mow the back, and that meant I’d have to finish on Saturday.
The next day, Saturday, despite totally not feeling it, I went out to do the back lawn, starting with the edges. First, I opened the spool because I couldn’t feed new line into it, and found out that the old line had someone gotten stuck, and some was still wrapped around the head. I cleaned it out, fed in the new line, and began trimming.
I hadn’t gotten very far when the line trimmer stopped: The battery was dead. I went and grabbed another one, but the trimmer wouldn’t go, so I checked the power level (the manufaturer calls it a "fuel gauge") and found out it was empty: I hadn’t recharged it the last time I used the line trimmer because I put it were recharged batteries go. Oops.
I decided to start mowing, anyway, and got a lot of the lawn done—until the battery was again fully drained without the mowing being done. The problem is that the back lawn, which is mostly weeds, grows much faster and thicker than the front lawn does, and so, the mower had to work much harder than at other times of year.
I thought I’d finish mowing on the next mostly sunny day, which was projected to be Monday or Tuesday, and for a very personal reason: I like to avoid making any noise on Sundays. My rationale is that people who work Monday through Friday generally do noisy outside chores on Saturday, not Sunday. Maybe they like the idea of one quiet weekend day, too? At any rate, I normally avoid making noise outside on Sundays unless I have no choice.
This time, I thought that I’d better not count on good weather the following week, so I did go out and finish the mowing on Sunday, something that only took maybe 20 minutes (at most) to do. It turned out I definitely made the right choice: Parts of Monday and Tuesday had rain.
My plan was do the lawns again after about a week—basically, now—to try and get it under control before the next big blooming of the weeds. Today has been a rainy day, and tomorrow is expected to be one, too. Monday through Wednesday are expected to have at least some sun, so they look like my best shot, earlier than I’d normally do them, but later than I’d have liked. I’ve noticed some flower spikes are already pushing up,
That mowing adventure was unusually arduous, but my thinking around it was not unusual. I’ve spoken before about how often I’ve thought about hiring a service to mow out front, but they only use petrol-powered equipment, and mine a use batteries recharged with electricity from the sun. Giving up feels like going backward.
At the same time, part of the problem is that I now only have one battery, so I usually can’t mow both lawns on one day. Worse, my current battery is probably nearing the end of its life (the warranty is only for three years), and when it dies, a new battery will cost me between $379 and $579 (today, around US$221 to US$338) for a new one (depending on the capacity—which basically means how long it’ll go before it runs out of charge). Is it really worth buying a new battery, or should I just give it all up at that point?
This gets back to the things that I no longer seem to be able to cope with doing. Mowing is my major form of physical exercise, and, I always told myself, that’s precisely why I find it so difficult to do: I’m not fit enough. But, what if this is at least related to my aging body, or even just that aging is making things harder regardless of my fitness level?
Yesterday, the company that installed my ventilation system sent a technician to change the filters, something they do every two years. Last time, I found non-branded filters of a similar spec that cost less than half the price of what it cost me to have the company do it. However, that would mean going up in the attic to do it, something I think is a terrible idea, not just because I’m getting older, but also because I live alone, and if I fell through the ceiling, no one would be here to help me. To be fair, the company also checks to make sure everything including airflow rates are within specification, so it’s more than just changing a filter. Even so, 20 years ago I’d absolutely have gone up there to do it myself.
All up, this period in my aging has been confusing as hell, and trying to work out what I can or should do myself, and what I should pay others to do for me, has been exhausting. Whether it’s mowing my lawns or changing filters in the attic, the first step is to be sure of my own realistic and sensible limits, something thats not always easy to do
Last week, I had unexpectedly fraught and lengthy mowing adventures. There are likely to be many pivot points over the next five and ten years, times where I’ll have to accept my limitations beginning to exceed, or, at least, restrict, my abilities for doing things myself.
There’s one more thing I know for certain: All of this is exponentially more difficult because Nigel’s not here to figure all this out with. On the other hand, if this really is the beginning of my physical decline, then I’m kind of glad he didn’t have to see it, because I know how hard that would’ve been on him.
No wonder I’m lost in the weeds.
The photo up top is of Leo in the weeds this past Sunday, November 24, just before I began to finish the mowing. By the time this mowing adventure began the previous Friday, the weed stalks out back were at twice his height (more in some places). I took this photo kneeling on the ground, so the view is basically at flower height.
A dozen years ago, I was pleased to see that this blog reached 150,000 page views, roughly six years into its existence. This was kind of a big deal to me at the time (the graphic up top is my Facebook post from that time), even though I knew it was a pretty meaningless number. “Engagement” is a more important statistic (or “metric” in the jargon) because it includes more than just the folks (or bots and web crawlers) that happen to briefly visit a web page. Still, I did like “big numbers”.
Google explains a “pageview” and how it compares to a “unique pageview” this way:
A pageview is defined as a view of a page on your site that is being tracked by the Analytics tracking code. If a user clicks reload after reaching the page, this is counted as an additional pageview. If a user navigates to a different page and then returns to the original page, a second pageview is recorded as well.
A unique pageview… aggregates pageviews that are generated by the same user during the same session. A unique pageview represents the number of sessions during which that page was viewed one or more times.
The huh?! factor in such descriptions is largely why I eventually stopped paying any attention to the “metrics” for any of my sites. I never fully understood what they were talking about, but, more importantly, I realised it had no relationship to what I was doing: The whole point of my blog was to write about whatever I wanted to, not what the “metrics” suggested would bring eyes to the page. All of which is also probably why this blog only ever achieved a relatively small audience.
Nowadays, old-timey blogs like mine are relics. There are many successful descendants on places like Substack, often available only by paid subscription. I won’t be doing a subscription thing like that because it would require way too much of a commitment that I’m clearly not up to at the moment—that and subscription fees are potentially taxable in two countries, so what’s the point? Actually, all of that’s arguably true for my audio-only podcast, too, except that paid subscriptions for them aren’t as common as it is for the descendants of blogs like mine.
Everything’s changed since then (including my commitment to blogging), but at this point in November 2012, achieveing 150,000 pageviews was still a big deal. Twelve years later, my old-timey blog’s current total page views (also since 2006) is 3,439,541 (at the time I wrote this). I may not care about such “metrics” like I did a dozen years ago, but I still like big numbers—especially when they become bigger numbers. That much is still the same.
Another year is drawing to a close, so that must means it’s time for another go at my end of year series of “Ask Arthur” blog posts. The series has been about giving readers the chance to ask questions about—well pretty much anything, apparently. As I put it in the 2022 series’s introduction post:
The “Ask Arthur” series of posts is a chance for people to ask me nearly anything, and I try to answer whatever I’m asked. I’ve never had a question about a topic that was “off limits”, however, I’ve always said that if I couldn’t answer a question for any reason, I’d say so. It turned out that I've never had a question that I wouldn’t answer. It also turned out that I haven’t yet met a topic I don’t have an opinion on. Who’d have guessed that?
Last year I answered my own question: “Yes, who could or would have guessed that there doesn’t seem to be any topic on which I don’t have an opinion?” In fairness, having opinions is pretty much a top requirement for any blogger, otherwise there wouldn’t be much point. Still, it seems to help if I mention the kinds of things people typically ask me. In past years, I’ve been sent questions about me, my personal history, about life in New Zealand (mine or in general), or perhaps more specifically about being an expat. Questions about my opinion on topics or events in the news, including politics, have also featured in the past. The possibilities really do seem to be endless.
Still, I’m sure that there will come a time when there won’t be any questions. Written blogs aren’t anywhere near as popular as they were in the early years of my own blogging, and my commitment to the work has wavered (and, yes, I’m good at stating the bloody obvious). What this really means is that I’m quite relaxed about whether I get any questions or not. Everything changes, and nothing lasts forever, after all,
However, there may well be questions this year. To ask one, simply leave a comment on this post (anonymous comments are allowed). Or, you can email me your question (and you can even tell me to keep your name secret, although, why not pick a nom du question?). You can also ask questions on the AmeriNZ Facebook page, however, please keep in mind that all Facebook Pages are public, just like this blog, and anyone can read what you wrote. If you want to avoid being public, the best solution is to email me, or you can also send me a private message through the AmeriNZ Facebook Page.
Finally, being the gracious thief blogger that I am, I always note that this idea is stolen from inspired by Roger Green’s “Ask Roger Anything” (“ARA”) posts. After all, imitation is the sincerest form of thievery flattery.
So, over to you: Ask your question whatever way works best for you, and I’ll do my best to answer. And if you don’t want to ask anything, don't worry: We’re still good.
All posts in this series will be tagged “AAA-25”. All previous posts from every “Ask Arthur” series are tagged, appropriately enough, ”Ask Arthur”.
