For the want of a nail

Progress on my Biggest-ever Project had already slowed quite a lot when the whole thing was—briefly—stopped for the want of a nail. Technically, it wasn’t a nail, just a long metal pin that looks a bit like a finishing nail (photo above), but missing just one of them stalled my project. Until it didn’t.

Clearing and organising my garage has been extremely challenging because of what a massive job it truly is: It’s physically tiring and sometimes throws up emotions, too (a particularly apt way to put that…). Because it’s been hard to get through, it’s been easy to distract me from my mission. Even so, I eventually get through any barriers.

The last weekend in July, my main goal was to set up the shelves I talked about at the time, beginning with shelves to put all Nigel’s electronic bits and pieces (and empty boxes) in one place. To do that, I had to move all the shelving parts—the shelves and their legs and horizontal supports—from inside the front of the garage, next to the overhead door, to the side door, which is nearer to the spot I needed them. I couldn’t bring them through the garage because all those broken down empty boxes were in the way, so I took them through the side yard instead.

Once I had everything moved, I counted all the parts and worked out quickly there was a problem: I was missing some of the nail-like pins that hold the upper and lower shelves together, a bit like a slide bolt (they don’t bear any weight, they just keep the halves of the legs from sliding apart; personally, I think it’s a poor design, but it is what it is). I went ahead with the first set of shelves.

Once I moved (lots of) stuff out of the way (and endured a small meltdown I had to push through), the first set of shelves went up quickly and easily (I really am an experienced hand at putting up or installing shelves), and I began bringing in the electronic bits and pieces I’d put into the house earlier, plus two boxes I’d moved into the house to make room for the shelves. There was still a lot of space left, but not much time: It was evening by that point, and I was tired.

The following Monday, I moved the electronic bits and pieces that were stored in my office to the shelves. Next, I started putting things together, like remotes/cables/AC adapters with their devices, and with their empty boxes when I could. In other words, I basically did the first pass of organising all that stuff so I can see what exactly is there so I can work out what to do with it all.

Through this process, I found out that Nigel had at least eleven different boxes to stream Internet content to the TV (not counting the two I’m still using). I wasn’t aware he’d bought so many, just that he kept trying different ones because none were exactly what he wanted. To be clear, I didn’t (and don’t) care how many he bought, but now I have to deal with eleven of them, and this is just one example among many.

Here’s another example: I also found around eight remotes for unknown devices, though a few seem to have been multi-remotes, not for any specific devices. Among the other stuff were a thing or two I think I might be able to use. In fact, one of the multitude of TV streaming boxes may be better for me than what Nigel left me using. There’s also a media server that may work better for me than the re-jig of the two Nigel was using (it’s now just one, but like many a human relationship, mine with that server is complicated). Nigel planned to sell the media server (he even put it back in the box it came in), but never did; now, I’ll evaluate it to see if I’m better off keep it. That’s definitely a future project.

It was then time to put up the second set of shelves, but before I went to all the work and trouble of moving stuff out of the way, I needed figure out what to do about the missing pins. I went to the front of the garage again and tried sweeping out under (more) shelves I have near the front door because I thought the missing pins may have fallen there (the legs were stored right next to those shelves). They weren’t there, but I found three of them in a small plastic box on a shelf, apparently where I’d carefully put them so they wouldn’t get lost. That was awesome—except one was still missing.

The company that makes the shelves doesn't sell spare parts (another design flaw…), so I went to the home centre nearest to my house to buy a variety pack of cotter pins, which I thought would be a good option because they’re thin and pretty strong (a finishing nail would also be good, but they don’t tend to make them long enough with the thin gauge I needed). I brought them home, and they were all too short. The pack also had some R-clips, but they were all too short, too, and the ones I looked at in the shop were all too heavy in gauge if they were long enough, just like finishing nails. Stalled again.

Over the week, I kept working in the garage, emptying boxes, trying to deal with stuff (including putting more of Nigel’s electronic bits and pieces on the shelves), and also slowly clearing out the space where the second shelves would go. All the while, I was scheming in my head how I might come up with a workaround, probably using wire.

On Friday of last week, I suddenly thought that since I couldn’t see under the shelves at the front of the garage, and couldn't reach under them because of stuff that was in the way, I could use my phone to take a photo so I could see if the missing pin was there. I did, and it wasn’t.

On Monday of this week, I decided to look for the pin in my car, and for good reason: When I was bringing the shelves back from our storage unit in Auckland, a pukeko suddenly changed directions and walked in front of my car, forcing me to stop quickly. At that point, I found out that I hadn’t put the shelving parts in the optimal spot in the back of my car, and they came sliding forward toward the dash. Neither shelf parts nor my car (nor the pukeko) were injured in the process.

Because of that, I thought that maybe the missing pin had been part of that calamity and had flown loose in my car. I looked on the floor of the driver’s side, peeled up the floor mat, and looked under the seat. Nothing. I repeated that with the floor of the passenger seat behind the driver, and still nothing. As I walked around the car, I thought to myself it might have hidden itself in some nook or cranny in the cargo space (the back seats were down when I moved the shelves), and if so, how would I ever find it?

I opened the passenger door and was about to peel up the floor mat, but there was the missing pin, right in plain sight, laying on top of the floor mat. This was a little odd: I’ve driven my mother-in-law places many times since the pukeko incident, and her feet go there. She also often put her bag on the floor, pretty much right on top of where I found the pin. Yet I never saw it until that moment. In my defence, the pin is a dark colour, just like the floor mat, and I wasn’t looking for it. Yeah, that’s it.

I put the shelves up on Monday afternoon (quick and easy yet again) and started putting stuff on them. Since then, I’ve unpacked some more boxes and moved bits and pieces around. And all of that’s been extremely challenging, of course.

There’s still so very much to do. At the moment, I’ve emptied the equivalent of 80 boxes, and there are still more to go. The bigger problem—literally—is that I have big stuff blocking me. I can get rid of old appliances and such, but there I have to figure out how to do that, since the place that will take all of it (including an old car battery) is only open Monday through Friday and, apparently, doesn’t do one-off pick-ups.

I plan on ringing the movers next week to pick up the boxes, and if they won’t, I’ll take them to be recycled. Once I get them out of the way I can move the scrap metal stuff to the front of the garage, and that’ll open up a lot of space in there. That’s the plan for next week.

I’m starting clear up the living space in the house, though all the bedrooms still have stuff in them. I don’t intend to move anything else into the living area. I’m allowing myself two weeks more (until August 24) to accomplish what I can in the garage (hopefully moving stuff out of the bedrooms) because I want my house back to normal before Nigel’s birthday that Friday. I’m not planning a party this year like I did last year, but I want to be home that evening, and any friends or family who want to come round will be welcome. All of which is why I don’t want to be surrounded by junk stuff.

After that, I’ll continue to work on the garage until I get it done—still without bringing stuff back into the house. However, spring draws near, so I’ll soon need to pause again while I work on the yard. One way or another, though, I will finish my Biggest-ever Project, just not as quickly as I’d hoped. And that’s okay.

I ended up finding my missing “nail”, but continued finishing my project even while it was missing. So far, nothing’s slowed me all that much. Sometimes stubbornness can be a good and useful thing.

The title of this post is, of course, from a well-known proverb.

Planning to open the door

Today Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced the roadmap for New Zealand re-opening its borders. As with everything else in the NZ Government’s response to Covid-19, it’s measured, cautious, and evidence-driven. The strategy has served us very, very well so far, staying the course is definitely the right thing to do.

The Prime Minster laid out the basics:

The plan announced today is informed by the best available scientific evidence and public health advice. It will allow us to capture the opportunities vaccination brings, while protecting the gains New Zealanders have worked so hard for. Key to this is maintaining our Elimination Strategy. The advice is clear: If we open our borders now we will lose the freedoms and advantages we have achieved so far. If we give up our elimination approach too soon there is no going back, and we could see significant breakouts here like some countries overseas are experiencing who have opened up early in their vaccination rollout.

The first step in the process is to vaccinate as many New Zealanders as possible. To help with that, the government is speeding up the vaccination process (see graphic up top) by making new age bands eligible to register for vaccination each week until September 1, when all New Zealanders aged 16 or over will be eligible for their first vaccine dose (the vaccine has not yet been approved for those under 16, though that seems likely).

To make sure that as many people as possible get their first doses, the government is increasing the time between jabs to six weeks from the current three. The goal is to get New Zealanders at least partially vaccinated as soon as possible because that provides at least some protection. Those who already have their second jab scheduled (like me) will still get their second jab at the three-week mark, though they can re-schedule if they want to.

This is sort of a bridging strategy, moving from the current policy of elimination to one in which opening the borders could become possible. The more people that are vaccinated, the better able New Zealand will be when a case of the Delta Variant arrives here through a port or the airport. That’s about keeping the country safe right now.

Related to that, and learning the lessons from the major outbreak in Sydney (See also, “What went wrong in New South Wales” – The Spinoff), yesterday the Minister for Covid-19 Response, Chris Hipkins, announced a change to the way lockdowns might be handled if the Delta Variant is found in New Zealand. He said:

It is more likely that we would end up with a short, sharp move to Covid-19 alert level 4 for either the affected area or the whole country, depending on the circumstances, in the event that we saw a case of Covid-19 emerge. As we know from our own experience, the best public health response is also the best economic response. We don’t want to spend a drawn-out period of time with restrictions in place, and a short, sharp lockdown is more likely to be successful in the current context than a longer, more drawn-out lower-level response.

In sum, NZ could jump to complete lockdown if the Delta Variant gets here, but what’s certain is that the government wants to rapidly vaccinate as many New Zealanders as possible. The first is to keep us safe, as is the second, but that’s also about opening the borders.

Beginning in October, New Zealand will a run pilot programme allowing vaccinated workers to isolate at home when they return to New Zealand, rather than spend time in an MIQ facility. There are details to be worked out, and one suggestion has been to require those self-isolating to wear ankle bracelets like prisoners on home detention do. This is because there has to be some easy way to verify that folks isolating at home are at home isolating, which is vital to keep us all safe.

If all goes well, in the first quarter of 2022 vaccinated New Zealanders will be able to travel to countries the NZ government considers to be “low risk” and then return home quarantine free. At the moment, the only country New Zealanders can travel to/from without quarantine is the Cook Islands (it used to exist for Australia, too, but that’s been suspended).

Vaccinated people who travel to “medium risk” countries will be required to isolate at home upon their return, have a shorter stay at an MIQ facility, or maybe something else. If at home, they’ll only be allowed to isolate with people who they travelled with. All of that will depend in part on how the pilot programme goes.

Anyone returning from a “high risk” country would be required to stay in managed isolation for 14 days and return a negative Covid-19 test, regardless of whether or not they were vaccinated. This is the current policy for everyone entering New Zealand.

In every case, what matters is where the traveller spent the fourteen days before returning to New Zealand. And, as with the Australian travel bubble, it could all stop suddenly if there’s an outbreak and travellers could be stranded overseas. As before, it’s “traveller beware”.

Right now, it’s absolutely impossible to know what countries might be on which list six months or more from now, because we can’t know what the course of countries’ outbreaks or vaccination rates will be. However, it seems at least possible that the United States and the United Kingdom will both be on the “high risk” list, and Australia could be back on the “low risk list”. (See also, “Covid-19 travel: Which overseas destinations could Kiwis visit in 2022?” – Stuff).

There’s one more thing that will impact this: Proof of vaccination. At the moment, there’s no verifiable way to prove one has been vaccinated. New Zealanders can get a statement from the Ministry of Health, but that would only be usable when arriving back in New Zealand. The travel industry is working on an electronic system, and my guess is that this is more likely to happen than some sort of international standard, particularly because of political opposition in some countries. Verifiable proof of vaccination will be mandatory, obviously, for any foreigners wanting to travel here, and they’ll need to comply with any isolation/quarantine requirements in force at the time.

For me personally, I still think the risk is too great for me to even consider travelling overseas. I have to have someone look after my furbabies while I’m away, so if I got stuck in another country for, say, four weeks longer than I planned to stay there, that would be huge a problem. More immediately, I’m going ahead with my second jab next week because my health conditions mean that I’m at potentially greater risk of serious illness if I catch the virus, and being fully vaccinated will make that less likely. I’m aware that there’s some research that suggests that a longer time between jabs may actually improve the immune response, but at the moment I think that the immediate risk is greater than the potential benefit of waiting, especially because new variants may erase whatever advantage that waiting another three weeks might give me.

It’s a given that we can’t have the borders completely closed forever, and I think the government’s cautious approach is the right one. "Our plan to reopen our borders both protects the gains we have won, while setting us up to safely reconnect New Zealanders and business with the world and seize the opportunities created by our Covid success,” Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said. I think she's right. First things first, though: We need far more people to be fully vaccinated.

Projected life

Right now, my life seems to be all about projects. That’s a good thing, actually: It keeps me focused on moving forward, and it keeps me busy. It may be tiring and a lot of work, but what matters is that I keep going. I get busy enough, though, that sometimes I forget to mention a project.

Three weeks ago today, I began my biggest-ever project, and the day before, July 19, I did a smaller project. Technically, I suppose, that one-day project was the final part of my kitchen shelf project (apart from filling the shelves, which has been postponed by my biggest-ever project). It was also among the easiest projects I’ve done yet.

The gist of the project was that I wanted to take the three mirrors that used to be on the kitchen wall where the shelves went, and hang them vertically in my entryway (before and after photo above). That meant taking down the wall-hung coat rack, fixing the wall, re-doing the mirrors to hang vertically again, and adding a traditional coat tree. Have I mentioned how easy it was? Well, relatively speaking, anyway.

The first step was actually finding a coat tree I liked. Back in June of last year, I found one I really liked—for $425. Clearly that wasn’t going to happen. So, I got something else I liked, a plastic rack that hung on the wall. It was designed to look like a city skyline in silhouette, and pulling down on the tall buildings revealed a hook for the coats (see photo at the bottom of this post).

Much as I liked the rack, I wasn’t happy with it: I had a lot of trouble hanging it: It was somewhat off-centre, which annoyed me, and it was slightly off level (mainly because I didn’t have a good spirit level at the time). I also thought it wasn’t big enough for the wall space.

When I took the mirrors down from the kitchen wall, I knew I’d re-use them, but wasn’t sure where. I thought about several different places in the house, but in the end I decided I liked the idea of hanging them vertically in the entryway. I felt they’d fill the space better, and would probably reflect light from the sidelight window by the front door into the house.

The next step was to find a coat tree I liked. I had trouble finding anything that I liked, because most of them were cheaply made, too short, too old-fashioned, faux antique, or in some other way not appropriate for the style of my house. I looked again at what had been my favourite last year: It was up to $525. It was even more not going to happen.

I ended up buying a black metal semi-modern one from Kmart—but online. A little digression is necessary: Kmart in New Zealand is owned by Kmart Australia, itself a wholly-owned subsidiary of an Australian company called Wesfarmers. The company was briefly very popular for its “on trend” home accessories at affordable prices, but: Every time I’ve gone into the Kmart nearest my house, I’ve walked about without buying anything. That’s because they have never had what I was in there to get, even when their website said that location had it. In addition, they had nothing but self-checkouts, and I don’t like them, and hate them when they’re the only option (I was told recently that they added some with check out operators, but I wouldn’t know: I always walk out empty-handed). I ordered online to make sure I could actually get what I wanted, and so I could avoid the store.

I ordered on the weekend, and the order arrived Monday morning (apart from one item that was coming from another part of the country). I decided to assemble the coat tree, and I have to admit: I was surprised at how robust it was and also how good the quality was. It cost me $22. Bit of a savings, that.

Next, I took down the wall-hung coat rack (I'll re-use it in the main bathroom), and then removed the wall anchors. I next patched the holes (which I’ve become pretty good at, to be honest). A magic eraser cleaned up the remaining marks on the wall from my dubious installation work last year.

While the wall dried, I turned my attention to the mirrors. When I hung them in the kitchen, I had to install horizontal wires on them, but I left the original picture wire anchors in case I ever wanted to hang them vertically again. I got my picture hanging supplies, installed the wire, measuring the slack in the wire to make sure they’d hang at the same height.

I got out my biggest spirit level, and after I found the centre point in the wall, I drew a level line. I marked the evenly spaced spots where the picture hooks would go, and hung the mirrors. I checked them for level and stood back. They didn’t look quite right.

The wood frames of each mirror are somewhat warped, and not in the same ways, which meant it would be very difficult to get them all perfect. Instead, I moved one of the picture hooks (apparently I hadn’t measured the slack in the wire quite right), re-hung the mirror, and decided that it was close enough for three mirrors with somewhat warped frames.

I put the coat rack in the entry, hung my coats and a hat on it, tidied a little bit and took a photo. The job was done. The whole thing took me maybe four or five hours.

I’ve been happy with the results of the project. The mirrors do reflect light, as I’d hoped: In the before photo above, the curtains on the opposite wall were wide open, but they were closed when I took the after photo, yet the after has nearly as much light as the before shot. The difference is even more noticeable when the curtains are open. Mainly, though, it visually expands the space, which is actually the main thing I wanted, aside from reflected light (Side note: I had to take the after photo from a different angle to avoid being in the reflection of the mirrors; I hadn’t considered that when I took the before photo).

So, that’s another project done, one I took on because I’d finished the kitchen shelf project, and the mirrors I took out of there, I realised, would be best used by the front door. In fact, they look better there than they ever did in the kitchen. In my opinion—which is the point of all of this, of course.

The next day, I began my biggest-ever project, which I keep plugging away at. I’m giving the main part of the project two more weeks, after which I want the main part of my house back to normal, even if the garage isn’t actually finished. But a real update on that project will have to wait for another day.

Sometimes I may forget to mention a project, especially a small one like this. What matters about all of them, though, is that they keep me focused on moving forward, and busy. All of which is good.

So far, my projects have all turned out good, too.

Suddenly powerless

It was a cold winter evening last night, around 2 degrees (35.6F) here in Hamilton, and it was predicted that the temperature would drop to -1 (30.2F). I was sitting in my chair watching TV, a warm blanket on me, and Leo lying asleep on my lap. Around ten to eight, everything went black.

My first thought was that someone had crashed into a power poll, and it would take only a few minutes before power was restored. A couple minutes passed, and no power.

It was very dark in my house, and my eyes just weren’t adjusting, so I decided to get up and get the torch from the kitchen. Leo didn’t want to move—even though dogs can see in the dark better than humans, possibly because they need some light to see, and there was none.

So, I picked Leo up and walked to the nearby sofa, and, after feeling around to find out at which end Jake lay, I sat down at let Leo jump onto the sofa. I separated a couple blades of the blinds and peered outside and saw there were no streetlights on, something that usually indicates a major power failure. Curiously, there were lights on at the AirB&B house across the street from me; I have no idea why or how, because they were the only ones in the entire area, as far as I could see.

It was still too dark for me to see anything, so I decided to use the torch on my phone so I could see to get to the actual torch. I knew I’d put my phone on the table next to my chair, as I always do, however, I couldn’t see a thing. I felt my way over there, and then the stuff on the table, the TV remotes, some papers, a glass I'd been drinking from, and so on until I found my phone and turned on the torch.

Once in the kitchen, I turned on the real torch, then reached into the cabinet above the fridge for a couple battery operated lantern things I had up there. I turned the first one on, but as soon as I picked up the second one, I realised it didn’t have any batteries in it. I put the batteries in, put it on it’s brightest setting, then carried it to the table by the front door, knowing it would reflect light into the house as well as light up the sidelight window by the front door (making it clear someone was home). I left the other lantern on the kitchen bench.

I had no idea how to find out what was going on: At our last house, I knew who the power supplier was (not the company we bought the power from, but the one that maintains the infrastructure). They had an app that allowed people to check network status, time until outages would be repaired, etc. I had no idea where to start.

I did what most people do these days: I turned to Facebook (my phone was nearly fully charged and I had plenty of data available). The community page for our development had people posting, as I expected, and someone had gone to the local infrastructure company’s FB Page and posted a screenshot  of their post (Side note: if I hadn’t been put so off-kilter by the sudden loss of power, I would’ve known who handled the power infrastructure here because they came to my house to swap out the electricity meter).

The company said that Transpower, which handles sending electricity around the country, had declared a power emergency and urgently told power companies to reduce demand. At that point, the local infrastructure company threw the switch. Their FB Post made it sound like the power would be out for four hours, but what they apparently actually meant was that the rolling blackouts would be going on for about four hours. Yet another case of a company not using a communications professional to write clear information for the public.

With nothing much to do, and not wanting to use up my phone battery, I thought about just going to bed. It would, I thought, be around midnight before the power would be back on, and it was already getting cold in my house. I thought about reading a book or magazine using one of my battery powered book lights. I imagined myself putting on extra clothes and another blanket, and snuggling up with Leo and Jake to keep warm.

That’s when my power came back on, around 45-50 minutes after it had gone off. I found out that some areas were off for a few minutes, and I also found out that other companies in other areas merely used the “ripple” function to switch off electric hot water heaters while leaving the lights on. I guess we just got extra special treatment.

No one was happy about this, not those of us sitting in the dark on one of the coldest nights of the winter, and not the government. This morning, the Minister of Energy, Megan Woods, demanded answers by 2pm today. It turns out it was the result of "commercial decisions" and bad judgement.

Yesterday morning, Transpower warned of heavy demand that evening. This was due to the cable that carries electricity from the South Island to the North Island only operating at 50% capacity, with demand expected to be high due to the cold weather. No one told the public about this, as far as I know. Genesis Power, which runs the Huntly power station (not far from Hamilton), decided not to fire up the third gas-coal fired turbine, which takes several hours to do, because, they claim, they didn’t think it would be necessary.

Then, gale force winds drove weeds into the intakes of a dam in the Central North Island, forcing them to shut it down. At around that point, winds suddenly died completely at a windfarm in the Central North Island, and that’s when Transpower issued an emergency order to power suppliers, directing them to reduce demand (and apparently they took out far more demand than they needed to). No one warned the public about the impending blackouts.

The Minster of Energy said this afternoon that she has made sure that there will be adequate power generated tonight so we don’t have a repeat of last night’s fun. I would expect that there also will be changes in how the system is administered in the future.

Naturally, the Opposition couldn’t resist the opportunity to try to play yet more political games. The National Party continues to deliberately mislead New Zealanders, blaming the blackouts on the government banning new oil and gas exploration permits in 2018, but, as the Leader of the Opposition knows full well, it was only NEW leases that were banned, and the ones granted prior to 2018 are still usable.

She also knows, or should, that no new natural gas has been found since 2000, so the odds of anyone finding any were already slim to none, but, even if they had found some, it wouldn’t be available yet, and she must know full well that the problem wasn’t fuel, it was generating capacity, something that couldn’t have been helped by the National Party’s imaginary natural gas (that doesn’t actually exist).

When I saw the Opposition Leader say, “this Labour government virtue signals but can’t deliver”, it was obvious why she was being so disingenuous: SHE was “virtue signalling” to her base: “Look at me! I’m for burning fossil fuels!“ which plays well with the climate change deniers in her party (a curious tactic given how many of her party actually want action on climate change). Her party’s only solution to any of this was to “partially” privatise the electricity industry so their Holy Free Market™ could (not) take care of everything. And that is precisely how the planet got into this climate mess.

There’s room and a need for honest, good-faith debate about how we should move forward, what our renewable energy future should look like, and how we're going to deliver it, but the National Party is being dishonest and acting in bad faith. They need to clean up their own house first if they want to become part of the solution—for a change.

Update: There are allegations that the "commercial decisions" made by Genesis Energy to not turn on the third boiler was due to the company wanting to make more money from a shortage or electricity, something that Energy Minister Woods is particularly interested in getting an answer to. I would guess that the company did/will deny they did that, but Transpower is definitely investigating. At the moment, all we know for certain is that Genesis apparently decided to second-guess Transpower, and then ignore emergency orders. The questions are, why did they do that, and, more importantly, how can we make sure it never happens again?

Update 2 – May 8, 2023: Today, Transpower was fined $150,000 for its role in the 2021 power cut. The Electricity Authority found that the warnings Transpower made earlier in the day were inadequate, and then that evening they made a major miscalculation, telling some companies that they needed to reduce their electricity load far more than was necessary. Those two mistakes led to the regional blackout. The fine is largely symbolic: Transpower is what's called a "state-owned enterprise", and it's wholly-owned by the Crown. So, the money to pay the fine levied by the government on a government-owned company will be paid to the government. On the other hand, changes made after the blackout have led to electricity demand being managed much more successfully, without blackouts, and with far better warning to the public. These things are far more important than the fine.

Five years ago today, I lived

Five years ago today, I could’ve died, but didn’t. I talked about that 2016 day 2016 in a blog post one year later, and also about what happened because of it and why I survived it all. What I’m struck by reading that old post now is the central role that Nigel played in the story, including things I didn’t say directly, even minor things.

For example, in the post I said, “I’m told that my colour immediately improved after the procedure was done.” That was actually one of the first things Nigel said to me after they wheeled me back to my hospital room after the procedure. There are plenty of other examples, too, because Nigel was always part of the story.

So, when I say that not having Nigel at my side when I face something to do with my health challenges is one of the things I find the hardest to deal with as a widower, I’m actually downplaying the reality, because I can’t possibly express how hard it is without using every curse word in the English language to underscore the point. So, let’s just say it’s still rather difficult, shall we?

But I’ll let you in on a secret: Nigel is still the reason I fight so hard. He was there for me every second I needed him, but I can no longer tell him how much that meant—and still means—to me. I can no longer tell him how much I love him. So, instead, I symbolically tell the world all that by working as hard as I can to live (even if I sometimes annoy doctors…), and by trying to find my way forward in life without him.

I just feel that now the only way I can ever truly thank Nigel for being there for me, the only way I can show my love for him, and the only way I can honour him and the life we had together is by continuing to exist. What we had, the love he gave me, and the inner strength he helped me find within myself, all power me forward and fuel my determination. In a sense, he’s still there with me. Five years ago today, my story could’ve ended, but it didn’t. I’m determined to ensure it doesn’t end before time. Nigel helped me then, and he’s still part of my story by giving me a focus of sorts. Thing is, I’m really honouring us both.

But, yeah, it’s still often rather difficult.

Necessary delay

If there’s been one consistent theme in my health journey over the past few years, it’s been that I want to feel better, less tired. Nigel’s death added new anxieties over facing changes alone, but the underlying goal hasn’t changed. Even so, I decided that slowing things down a little is a really good idea.

I’ve talked a few times about the anti-coagulant the cardiologist wanted to put me on, rivaroxaban, and how I was frightened about it because of the risk of severe bleeding. However, I also said last month:

I was willing to give it a go anyway, though, because I’ve had enough of the side effects of dabigatran, but especially because of the fact that I’m far more frightened about having a stroke, and that outweighs everything else, even the fear that this drug may go too far in thinning my blood.

A couple weeks ago I started taking the rivaroxaban, and, so far, the unpleasant side effects of dabigatran seem to be gone. I say “seem” because I’m naturally sceptical it’ll last, or that new side effects won’t emerge. The worst side effects of dabigatran didn’t appear for maybe a few weeks. So, early days, but promising.

I thought I’d make the switch to the other drugs a week later—this week—but I decided to delay it. It was again potential side effects I was concerned about.

My new blood pressure medication (because my current one is being discontinued) is an ACE inhibitor called enalapril. I read the details on Wikipedia first, as is my custom, because it gives me basic information quickly. After that, I always look up the “Consumer Medicine Information” (CMI) sheet from the NZ Government agency, Medsafe. There’s actually not necessarily any significant differences in the details provided by the two sites most of the time. In this case, though, Medsafe’s CMI [the PDF is available on their site] included this:

Be careful when drinking alcohol while you are taking this medicine. If you drink alcohol, dizziness and light-headedness may be worse. [bold type in the original]

This caught my attention because I’d already read up on the other drug the cardiologist put me on, a diuretic called bendroflumethiazide. Wikiepdia said:

Bendroflumethiazide is known to have an adverse interaction with alcohol. It is advised that those using this diuretic should abstain from alcohol consumption during use, as it is possible to experience a sudden drop in blood pressure, especially if standing up…

I note that Wikipedia editors pointed out there was no citation given for whoever “advised” that, so I my next stop was the Medsafe’s CMI [the PDF is available on their site], which said this:

Do not drink large amounts of alcohol. Use of ARROW-BENDROFLUAZIDE with alcohol will increase your chances of getting dehydrated and a hangover.

Neither the cardiologist nor the chemist warned me about that, and if I hadn’t read it myself, I might have gotten myself into trouble. The problem here is apparently two-fold: Alcohol may cause a drop in blood pressure which may cause dizziness (Medsafe CMI for enalapril), and that seems to be what the Wikipedia page was talking about when they talked about bendroflumethiazide. The Medsafe CMI on that drug only really talks about possible bad hangovers if one consumes “large amounts of alcohol”.

The larger point here isn’t about alcohol—I totally abstained from alcohol for the entire 19 months I was on amiodarone, after all, so I can obviously abstain now, too. Instead, what concerns me is that I had to research risks myself. Time was, CMI sheets were given whenever I got a new prescription for the first time, but that hasn’t happened in a very long time—years, probably.

The reason I delayed starting the new drugs had absolutely nothing to do with alcohol (although, coincidentally, I bought a bottle of wine the same day I filled the prescriptions; I didn't know any better yet). Instead, it was one possible side effect in particular: Fatigue.

I’ve been complaining about sometimes profound fatigue for some four years now, and as extremely unpleasant as that’s been, I at least know, more or less, how to manage it, how to pace myself, and how to ration my energy to get stuff done. The new drugs may—and hopefully will!—make me feel much better, however, they may not. I have so much more physical work to do in the garage right now that I just can’t risk feeling even more tired than I already do. Next week I hope I’ll have made enough progress that if I stall, at least I won’t have stuff literally everywhere in my house.

One other potential side effect could also halt my garage work: Bendroflumethiazide can possibly cause gout attacks. They’re not pleasant at any time, but it would make me physically unable to work on the garage, even if I felt more energetic.

The rest of the common potential side effects are pretty standard for hypertension medication (like the warning to stand up slowly), the possibility of a dry cough, that sort of thing. My sister-in-law, who is a nurse, warned me to make sure I drink plenty of water while I’m on bendroflumethiazide, another thing no doctor or chemist warned me about.

All of this has made me think about the future—a lot. When I see the cardiologist I’m going to ask him if there’s a path forward that could reduce the number of drugs I’m on. I’m particularly unhappy about being on two drugs for hypertension, especially the diuretic. If there is a way, I’d like the cardiologist to suggest a roadmap for my GP to monitor (I don’t even know what his target for my blood pressure is). Basically, if there are some changes or whatever that I can do now, I want to do that because the longer this goes on, the more likely ageing and mobility issues could make things worse. I don’t like feeling that all of this is out of my control, at least, not when no one has said to me that that’s the case.

Apparently, the theme of this journey is changing. Sure, I still want to feel better and less tired, but now I also want more control. That, I think, is part of my my other journey, the one out of grief, because I find that more and more I want to determine for myself how my life proceeds and what my future holds. In a way, they’re both about my health. And that’s the biggest reason why I decided to slow things down a little: It’s my life, my choices and decisions, and on my timeline. That, too, is healthy, in my opinion.

Important note: This is about my own personal health journey. My experiences are my own, and shouldn’t be taken as indicative for anyone else. Similarly, other people may have completely different reactions to the same medications I take—better or worse. I share my experiences because others may have the same or similar experiences, and I want them to know that they’re not alone. But, as always, discuss your situation and how you’re feeling openly, honestly, and clearly with your own doctor, and always feel free to seek a second opinion from another doctor.

Stupid games should fool no one

A bill to ban anti-LGBTQ “conversion therapy” used against minors passed its first reading in Parliament Thursday, no thanks to the New Zealand National Party. The party’s leaders claim to support the ban, but want changes. Seriously. Do they think we’re stupid, or are they?

In case it’s the latter, here’s a brief reminder for their MPs, who perhaps don’t understand how Parliament works: The first reading of a bill is only the start of the legislative process. If a party supports what the bill is for, they vote in favour of it at the first reading so it can go to select committee where hearings are held, feedback given, and amendments are considered. THAT is where MPs dig in their heels if they think a bill they genuinely support in most respects needs to be changed, not at the first reading.

I don’t seriously think they’re too stupid to know that’s how Parliament works—they’re just playing political games. We know this because ALL the political parties in Parliament, regardless of ideology, supported the first reading except National. They knew their votes were irrelevant and the bill would pass the first reading without them, and that gave them a good opportunity to wage more of their divisive culture war bullshit, which is what their stunt was really all about.

Simon Bridges, who was dumped as party leader well before the last election, is now their “justice” spokesperson. He used his speech [Read: Full transcript of the debate] to spread disinformation to present the sort of typical rightwing nonsense arguments against a ban that have been used in other countries—despite the fact that his disinformation was also completely irrelevant to a ban on conversion therapy. Worse, he also flat out lied.

He said that the bill would mean “that good parenting will be criminalised”, and he added that a parent advising their trans child not to take puberty blockers could be prosecuted. It seems to me that he was either deliberately lying or else he doesn’t understand what “conversion therapy” actually is.

Do Bridges and National seriously mean to suggest that a “good parent” is one who would subject their child to electric shock treatment, forced fasting, sleep deprivation, drugs, psychological manipulation, and the other extreme techniques often used in “conversion therapy”? By definition, a real good parent would never subject their child to such harm, and so, they would never face prosecution. Ever. But even bad parents who would choose “conversion therapy” wouldn’t face prosecution unless they were also practitioners who conducted the sessions themselves. From what Bridges actually said in Parliament, apparently any parents willing to personally effectively torture their own children would be what National thinks are “good parents”.

Also worrying is that the party’s youth wing, the Young Nationals, had urged the party’s caucus to support the bill, and when the entire caucus failed to do so, the Young Nationals said they were “very disappointed” in their own party’s caucus. Maybe the National Party just doesn’t care about the views of young people, even when they’re stalwart supporters of the party?

The National Party has become more and more disgusting in recent months. They had a disastrous loss in 2020, and they’ve apparently decided their salvation lies in divisiveness, like rightwing populists around the world. Their leader has been spouting rank racist rhetoric, like the other day when the National Party Leader said there should be a taxpayer-funded referendum on banning the use of New Zealand’s Māori name, Aotearoa, by government agencies. That came a day after one of her MPs floated the idea of banning it.

The reality for me is that I have problems with, and criticisms of, every party in Parliament, without exception. That’s perfectly normal in a democracy. But when a party’s behaviour becomes so disgusting that it becomes an object of contempt, that’s not normal—and it’s definitely not okay. National’s problems go beyond their leader and senior MPs: For example, they apparently may be about to dump their party president. If the National Party doesn’t reverse its slide into rightwing, racist, culture warrior populism, they’ll deserve to lose in another landslide at the next election.

This is a revised and greatly expanded version of something I posted to my personal Facebook yesterday,

Overall, it was a good day

The image above is a “Facebook Memory” served up to me today, and is from this date back in 2015. When I shared it to my personal Facebook, I told the story behind it, and why that all matters: It had a tale to tell.

Nigel had an appointment in Takapuna that particular day six years ago, so I went with him and wandered down to the beach where I shot video I later posted to my YouTube Channel (at the bottom of this post), and also some photos, like this one (a better version of this photo was in that video). Afterward, Nigel and I headed back to Birkenhead where we had an early dinner (which I know because it also popped up in my FB Memories today…).

It was a good day—and yet it wasn’t. This was about a year before I got my cardiac stent, so I wasn’t in great health. And that appointment Nigel had was with an acupuncturist he was seeing to try and deal with gall bladder problems; it didn’t work, of course, because nearly 22 months later we’d be at North Shore Hospital (not very far away from this spot) where Nigel had a day procedure to remove his gall bladder.

Nigel often tried unusual/unproven things to try to fix health issues rather than surgery or prescriptions. He wasn’t opposed to such things, of course, but they gave him anxiety, probably because of dealing with the medical problems of his partner before me, Gary, as he got sicker and eventually died.

For awhile, I wondered if in his last year or two Nigel hid health concerns from me—after all, I was dealing with my own health issues. The answer is, absolutely not. There was never a time I didn’t know he was feeling unwell because he told me. He could be a bit of a hypochondriac sometimes (which he freely admitted), assuming a minor complaint was serious or deadly—so much so it became a running joke for us. For example, if one of us had a sore shoulder, we’d say, “It’s probably shoulder cancer.” That seemed really funny to us at the time.

It’s natural for us all to want to wish away health problems, or to try what we perceive as an easier path. Nigel and I both did that, and we both turned reasonably promptly to science-based medicine when our “easier path” didn’t produce results.

So, I know for certain that if Nigel had any health concerns before what turned out to be his final battle, I’d have known because I would’ve seen his usual pattern, and because he definitely would have told me he wasn’t feeling well, just as he always had.

I know one more thing for certain: A good day, like this one six years ago, may have things going on under the surface that aren’t good, that maybe even completely undermine everything, at least to some extent. But that doesn’t change the fact that, overall, the day WAS a good one. It’s worth holding onto that fact so that in the future when we look back on photos or the memories of a good day, we’ll smile. Inevitably, all those good days will run out, so we really, really need to focus on them while we can.

The truth is, I didn’t understand all that six years ago today. I do now. I think—hope?—that I’ll remember that for however many (thousands of) days I have left. For today, though, I know it, and right now, that’s enough.

A few days after that visit to Takapuna, I posted the video I referred to above and talked about it here on this blog. Here’s the video:



This post is an expanded version of what I posted to my personal Facebook today.

The spirit is somewhat willing

This blog has become something of a burden, or mission, at least, and my podcast has become kind of an impossibility. I don’t know if this is permanent or yet another bout of weltschmerz, but either way, there ain’t much likely to change.

I’m not entirely sure why this situation has come about, apart from things I’ve already blogged about—like my distress last May, or any number of things related to my health journey. More recently, I added more stress from my latest project, but none of that really explains things. On the other hand, I really have been very busy in recent weeks with projects around the house, and lack of time definitely is a factor.

Maybe this is just another of my periodic times of disconnect, when what I want to do and feel able to do are completely detached from one another. Happens frequently.

Overall, I think this is a case of everything feeling disconnected, incomplete, and disjointed, something my latest big project is merely reminding me of. At the same time, though, until I get my house in some semblance of order, I can’t possibly begin to focus on what I want. I mean, how can I with so very much left to deal with?

It’s a well-established fact that people surrounded by clutter are unhappier, even more depressed, than are people who don’t have to deal with mounds of stuff. It would be arrogant to think I’d be immune to forces that affect so many others.

So here I am, surrounded by mountains of stuff—most of it having nothing to do with me personally. Therein lies the other problem: In dealing with this mountain of stuff—Nigel’s stuff—I’m in many ways saying goodbye again and again and again. Is it any wonder this has been so difficult?

And because this has been so difficult, it’s also little wonder that I have so little time/space for things like blogging and podcasting: I don’t have it in me, because I simply don’t have enough space—literally or figuratively.

And yet, I persist. I’m determined to finish this once and for all, and as I go—frustrations notwithstanding—I can see where I want to get to, and so, things I’d like to do. Some day. I’m just not there yet. Until I make progress on all I have to complete, there ain’t much likely to change.

And so it goes.

The biggest project of all

This post is mainly for friends and family who have been to my house, but this is also about a very important project for my future, something I’ll explain more later on, but this post is basically the introduction to what is a really big topic.

Here we go: on Tuesday of last week, I began what‘s absolutely the biggest, most exhausting project I’ve done in my house since I moved in 18 months ago: I began working on clearing out and organising my garage.

I hesitated to say anything before now because I’ve been acutely embarrassed by the overrun, overstuffed, overwhelming garage—“the garage of no return”, I called it. At the same time, though, I also truly didn’t care about it. The difference between caring and not caring came when I had to go in there and had to manoeuvre through too-skinny walkways. That and when I felt like other people felt I should care—that’s when I felt embarrassed.

The other reason I didn’t want to say anything is because to me it looks only slightly better. In my mind, I could imagine someone looking inside the garage right now and innocently asking, “So: When are you going to start?” because I have so much more to do.

What have I visibly accomplished? Well, I removed all the boxes stacked in front of one of the windows, for one thing. It’s the first time since I moved in 18 months ago that light pours in. Even on the dark, rainy afternoons over the past week’s time, the light was surprisingly good (and will be for my eventual projects when I’m done organising).

The main headline, though, is that I’ve emptied the equivalent of 59 boxes over 7 days (44 in the first four days), but the reality is a bit more complicated because some boxes were huge, others just big, and some were ordinary size. So, to make it easier to track, I estimated the equivalent volume, which would be 59 ordinary boxes. Of those, three had nothing but newsprint in them, but they’re broken down now, too.

My specific motivator was that there are things I’ve been looking for since I moved in, and it’s gotten to the point it’s annoying. Even more specifically, I know Nigel had several audio mixers (which he originally got for his radio shows), and I happen to need one for a non-public project. I also haven’t seen his microphone since we moved to South Auckland in Feb 2017, and it’s a good one.

Added on to that is the fact that I finally decided I didn’t care if the lounge was overrun with stuff for awhile, something that had always been a barrier before because everything I unpack has to go somewhere, but there hasn’t been a “somewhere” to put it.

I’m putting all Nigel’s electronic bits and pieces, along with various empty boxes for various electronic bits and pieces, in one spot. Then, I’ll put them together on some shelves in the garage so I can properly sort through it all (I have more stored in my office, and I’ll be able to put them together with the others, giving me more space in my office, too).

My priority for boxes has been all the ones that came from the movers, and I think I only have at most a couple more of them to go. Early next week, things going well, I’ll ring the movers to come and collect the empty boxes (which they said they’d do whenever I was ready).

After that, I’ll organise a skip (dumpster) for all the junk that’s of no use to anyone, stuff that can’t be given away, sold, re-used, or recycled (this doesn’t include e-waste of course; I’ll get rid of that appropriately).

When I started this project, I had very little room to move in the garage, and things kept falling over. That was annoying. But it seemed like nearly every box I opened had more and more of Nigel’s electronic bits and pieces or parts from various projects—what he called his “toys”. I got grumpy with Nigel because of how hard all that was. And then I got grumpy with myself.

After he was diagnosed, Nigel said he wanted to go through all his “toys” so I wouldn’t have to. I know he said that to others, too, and that near the end he said how sorry he was he wouldn’t get the chance. So, I know that if it was possible for anyone to feel bad after they died, Nigel would be miserable that he left me with such a mammoth job to do, and if he could, he’d tell me how sorry he was.

So, I wasn’t actually angry with Nigel, just tired and grumpy over how much physically difficult and tiring work it‘s been, and is, and will be. Besides, I’d gladly work to find places for ten times that much of stuff—a billion times more—if it meant I could have my life with Nigel back. Things don’t work that way.

There’s far more to this story, like about how much of it feels like I’m stepping into someone else’s life, including Nigel’s partner before me, Gary, who died about two years before Nigel and I met in real life. That’s a topic for another day, but right now I’ll say this: that’s been the most emotionally challenging aspect of this whole project, and I’ve shed more than a few tears. Some might say I care too much, but I wonder, why don’t others care as much? But, all that’s for another day. Promise.

I got very little done on Tuesday of this week (“First Jab Day”), and nothing much on Wednesday, Thursday, or yesterday, either. There were extenuating circumstances.

I have specific plans for this weekend, but no matter how well it goes, I think I’ve got at least another week before I’ll be done. For the first time in 18 months, though, I’m truly, and completely, okay with that.

Scan=Love

The video above is an ad that starting running on New Zealand TV recently. It’s intended to encourage people to use NZ’s Covid Tracer App to scan the QR code on the special “Unite against Covid-19” posters all businesses and public venues are required to display. Previous TV ads have often promoted scanning in a more or less matter-of-fact fashion, apart from the “Make Summer Unstoppable” campaign that began late last year. While an informational approach delivers the basics, it doesn’t give anyone a specific reason to scan, something the “Unstoppable” campaign tried to do. This ad takes a similar, but less complicated approach by getting to the heart of the matter: “Scanning protects what you love.”

This is a particularly good message because it gives people a personal, everyday reason to act, and it does so in simple terms. The video uses a heart as the unifying image, and also includes some images and patterns commonly associated with New Zealand, or just with life. A QR code is repeated frequently among the images in the montage, further linking the heart and the code. The first shot in the ad says “I ❤️ NZ”, which, of course, is based on the famous “I Love New York” logo that’s been adapted the world over since it debuted in 1977, much to the often litigious displeasure of the copyright owner, the New York State Department of Economic Development.

The version that first appears in the ad has a sort of gold-coloured heart, using is the main colour of the “Unite against Covid-19” campaign (which is also why the colour pops up so much in the ad). In the third to last and final shot, the heart is replaced with a QR code, once again symbolically linking love and scanning.

I think it’s a fair bet that the vast majority of people won’t think about all that, and probably won’t even notice, but as someone who’s spent my adult life engaged in delivering messaging, one way or another, I always look at how a message is delivered as much as what the message itself is. In advertising, especially ads in the public interest, how the message is conveyed is often at least as important as the content of the message, and sometimes more so.

In this particular case, New Zealanders have become quite slack in scanning QR codes. The Government has tried to encourage people through ordinary messaging, especially how scanning can help keep New Zealand safe from major community outbreaks by making it easier for the government to rapidly enclose an outbreak through contact tracing before the outbreak gets out of control, as it recently did in Sydney. Yet interest in scanning the code only seems to rise when we have a community outbreak, as Auckland and Wellington have both had.

So, if people get complacent about scanning the code—except when they perceive a possible direct personal threat—then maybe one approach to change their behaviour could be this one: Help them see that scanning helps protect what they love.

Still, as good as I think the ad is, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s effective. As I’ve mentioned many times, when I go to a business—supermarket, petrol station, whatever—I’m often (usually?) the only one around me who scans the code. I’d like to say it’s about me trying to protect the things I love, but it’s more selfish than that: If some infected person goes into a shop right before me, making me a casual contact—or close contact, in the case of the Delta Variant—then I want to make it as easy as possible for the Ministry of Health to contact me as fast as possible. Even when I’m fully vaccinated, I’ll remain cautious for my own safety, and if I’m exposed at some point, I need to know so doctors can better monitor me. The reason I care about that is that as someone with a pre-existing condition, I’m at higher risk if I become a breakthrough case, something that will have a higher possibility of happening as new variants appear.

I don’t think that a “scan to protect yourself” thing would make a good marketing campaign mainly because it “others” the people around us, making us see those people as threats to be suspicious of. Instead, I prefer more positive messages like the current “Scanning protects what you love” and last summer’s “Make Summer Unstoppable”. But I guess this also shows that different messages are probably needed because they provide different motivations.

I just want people to scan the damn code!

First jab done

Today I went and had my first jab of the Covid-19 vaccine. It felt like I’d been waiting forever, but in the end it all happened quickly. I’m very happy about it all.

The plan had been to have everyone 65+, along with those (like me) with certain pre-existing health conditions, get their jabs in July. I avoided getting an annual flu jab because, at the time, advice was that we’d have to wait 31 days before getting the Covid jab, and I didn’t want to do anything to jeopardise or delay that.

Things didn’t go as quickly as I’d planned. I don’t know what the problem was, whether it was some sort of disorganisation at the Waikato District Health Board (my local health authority), or whether it was the lingering problems caused by the ransomware attack, but whatever the cause, as the month dragged on it was looking unlikely I’d get my jab in July.

However, this past Friday, July 23, the Ministry of Health announced that from that day, people in Group 3 (like me) who hadn’t received an invitation to book a vaccine (again, like me) could ring a new 0800 number to book an appointment. I did that on Friday.

I was very, very impressed with the phone booking service: My call was answered pretty quickly, and the friendly and helpful person got me all set up in only a few minutes. It turned out that I could have had an appointment the next day, Sunday, but I had a family birthday lunch to go to that day. So, my appointment was two days later—today—which was such a long time to wait… My appointment for the second jab is on August 17, exactly three weeks later, which is the Ministry of Health’s preferred target timeframe.

The vaccination centre I was going to was located in Te Awa, the mall at The Base shopping centre, which is about a 15 minute drive from my house. Since I wasn’t completely sure where, precisely, the location was in the mall, I was there early.

I walked into the mall (after scanning the QR code with the Covid Tracer App, of course), and worked out quickly it was where I thought it was: Upstairs on the second level, one of the few things on that level (a topic for another day).

I walked into the centre (after scanning the QR code with my Covid Tracer App, of course), and a friendly helpful lady gave me a clipboard, pen, and a number (22), along with an information sheet and a consent form I needed to fill out. The waiting area was packed—there were a few seats, and there was clearly pretty quick turnover, and that really impressed me.

It didn’t take me long to fill out the paperwork, so I had time to calm down and just relax a bit. Around fifteen minutes after I arrived, my number was called and I was summoned to go to the consent area. The friendly, helpful lady took my information and gave me the little car where the vaccinator would record the relevant details of my jab.

Next, I was ushered into another crowded waiting area where people were being called up by name. It was roughly 35 minutes before I was ushered in for my jab, and since there were at least 10 vaccinators that I know of, that’s a pretty good indicator of how many people were there waiting.

The friendly, helpful vaccinator explained everything to me, including possible reactions/side effects, and gave me advice on what to do if I had any (so far, I haven’t), and also advice like to drink lots of water afterward, and to actually use the arm I got the jab in. I had her jab the arm that I don’t sleep on very much, following the advice a friend gave me, and the vaccinator thought that was a great idea. She gave me my jab, and after about five minutes total, I was away—to the next waiting area.

I gave my paperwork to the friendly, helpful guy there, who pointed out the water, and told me the nurse would let me know when I could leave after about 20 minutes, which was to make sure I didn’t have a severe reaction. I got myself a cup of water and sat down to post on Facebook that I’d had my first jab. After my 20 minutes was up, they called out my name, and I left.

I took my selfie (photo up top), and heard the rain absolutely hosing down on the roof. Although I’d brought an umbrella in case that happened, it sounded especially fierce, so I went to a department store in the mall to pick up a couple things I needed, then decided to have an early dinner in the foodcourt.

When I left, the sun was back out—and the temperature had dropped five degrees, according to my watch. I drove directly home and got back here around 5pm.

Three weeks from today, I’ll be fully vaccinated. And very, very happy about it.

Update 29 July – Jab aftermath: I had no reaction Tuesday night, but did for awhile Wednesday.

Tuesday night, I had nothing, and then had a good night’s sleep (though longer than usual). I felt fine when I got up Wednesday morning.

Around midday-ish Wednesday, I started to feel a bit yucky, and also got a bit of a headache, so I took parecetomol (as directed by the nurse yesterday). That helped, but I started to feel yuckier still, and when I started to get scratchy with the dogs, I decided to go lay down. I dozed a bit, and definitely felt better when I got up again.

But I also felt really tired, which is funny because when they said tiredness was a possible reaction, I thought to myself, “how would I know?”, what with my chronic tiredness from medication. Turns out, I couldn’t miss it.

Still, 24 hours-ish after the jab, the reactions started to diminish, and by Wednesday evening I felt normal, and that continued today. As "reactions" go, what I had is hardly worth the name.

Eighteen months homed

Eighteen months ago today, I moved into my house in Hamilton. I’ve made a lot of changes to it over that time, and I have many more planned. In fact, I’ve been particularly busy the past couple weeks with various projects that I’m doing myself—and I really like doing stuff myself, and always have.

Two things. As houses go, this is a good one—certainly not perfect, but good (and it has a really big yard by modern standards, something the dogs and I all like). I think I don’t say positive things about it often enough, and that may make some folks think I don’t like my house, but that’s not the case at all. However, that leads me to the other thing: There is no such thing as a house that I would love, no matter how nearly perfect it might be, because I can’t share it with Nigel. That’s just reality. In practice, it means it’s not that I’m not happy with/in this house, it’s that I wouldn’t be happy in any house without Nigel. I expect that will change over time as I change things about this house and make it as I want it to be.

This really is a good house that meets my current needs, and I’m just working to make it truly mine. That’s been difficult and challenging because for 24 years I always did that with Nigel (who didn’t always get his way…). It’s not been as fun as it used to be.

If I seem to dislike my house, if I seem to complain about it, it’s only because there are things that annoy me, and I’m working on changing those things. This has taken me longer than I expected because I learned early on that rushing things often leads to mistakes, and simply by slowing down and thinking about it, I inevitably make better choices. And, as I continue to make choices and changes I like, this house becomes more “me” than it was 18 months ago, which, in turn, makes me like it more, too.

So, it’s a good house, and it’s a good place for me and the dogs. I just wish it had never been necessary. Obviously. Still, one day, quite possibly before my second anniversary here, I may actually like it a lot. Right now, though, I need to get back to my current project to make that possibility a likelihood.

‘Porch light’ posts

All of us find ways to make it through our days, encountering and, hopefully, conquering challenges. When people share their strategies for meeting life’s challenges, they may call them “lifehacks”, even though they’re usually just quick shortcuts or helpful hints. Sometimes, though, they can be somewhat more hidden, as well as simpler. That doesn’t make it any less effective, though. My aunt taught me that.

My aunt—my father’s sister-in-law—moved into a retirement home after her husband (my father’s brother) died. She had her own physical challenges, and wanted to not worry about her health and safety, which I think is a reasonable thing for any older person.

She told me that one of the things the residents were required to do was to turn on the light outside their unit (house) at night, then turn it off in the morning, then repeating it in a cycle. That way, staff could tell there might be a problem: If the light wasn’t on at night, or wasn’t switched off in the morning, they knew to check to make sure resident was okay. I thought that was a clever way for staff to keep an eye on the welfare of residents without watching too closely or intruding too much into their privacy.

I forgot about that years ago, certainly by the time she died, but some months back I suddenly remembered it. It was all because of Facebook.

I’ve written several times that after Nigel died, I had fears that I might die, too. That fear subsided over time, but there was one thing that my mind stubbornly refused to let go of: What if I did die? I live alone with the dogs, and if I died it could take days—even a week or more—for anyone to realise something was wrong, or to find me.

I joked to a family member, in the crass, take-no-prisoners macabre way I often do, that if I did die, the dogs would’ve begun eating me before anyone found me. Just because I was joking, though, doesn’t mean there wasn’t truth in it.

However, sometime before that, another family member commented that they always knew I was alright because they’d see I posted stuff on Facebook. That, too, was said in a jocular way, but it, too, carried an element of truth: If I was posting stuff on Facebook, I must be doing okay (as in, “not dead yet”).

And then it hit me: Posting stuff on Facebook was the equivalent of my aunt’s porch light.

When I post stuff on Facebook, friends and family alike know that I’m still alive and kicking without having to ring/text/message me to find that out (nor do I have to ring/text/message them, for that matter). This suits all of us, to be honest, because we’re all busy in our own ways, and also because even though we love each other, we don’t want to live in each others’ pockets.

Since that realisation hit me, I’ve made a point of posting something to Facebook at least once a day. Sometimes I just share a Facebook Memory, other times I might share a sort of slice of life post, usually about something that’s not important (nor even necessarily very interesting…), like maybe a meal I cooked, or a photo of one for the dogs doing something cute. An example of such a post is the one I posted to Facebook one Monday a couple weeks ago, and then adapted for a blog post, “A good, cold, subdued day”, the following day.

What all of this means in practice is that I’m actually sending a “secret” message to friends and family when I post to Facebook, whether they know it or not: I’m metaphorically turning the porch light on and off. For them, just like the staff at my aunt’s retirement village, as long as I do “porch light posts” on Facebook, no one has to wonder if I’m okay (it’s not as straightforward with blog posts, because I can put them in a queue to publish without doing anything else; such posts won't be automatically shared to the AmeriNZ Facebook Page, though).

Much of what I’ve needed to do since Nigel died has revolved around me feeling secure being alone: No one is here to see that something’s wrong and to do something about it. Neither porch light posts nor any of the other measures I’ve taken make up even slightly for not having Nigel here, but they do help me feel a little better. Maybe the porch light posts help others worry a bit less, too.

I have no idea whether the insecure feeling I have, as if the earth itself has no form or mass, will ever go away, but at least I’m finding ways to cope with it. Porch light posts may seem like a small, even silly, solution, but I think that anything I can do to feel a bit more secure makes it more likely that I can continue to move forward.

Hopefully I’ll eventually find whatever my new life is to become, and if I do, even small measures like porch light posts will have helped me get there. They’re certainly a simple solution, and were probably a bit hidden (until I mentioned them), but they’re also effective. My aunt taught me that.

The photo above is my actual outside light—my own "porch light".

Shelving a project

This week I finally finished a project that should have taken maybe a few hours. Instead, it took more than a week, for various reasons. The important thing, though, is that I’m happy with the results—and that I did it myself.

A few months ago, I had a Solatube skylight installed in the kitchen, something I talked about at the time. I said in that post that “poor light in the kitchen was the thing I disliked the most”, so my first solution had been to hang some mirrors horizontally on the back wall of the kitchen. I hoped it would reflect light from the stacker doors across the room, but it didn’t really help. I think that was because the mirrors pointed at the wall next to a stacker door, so there wasn’t really much light to reflect.

The space where I hung them was a big white, blank space and needed something there. I didn’t want to put artwork there, and I absolutely loathe, to the very core of my being, those big fancy word signs, the sort that say “EAT” or “Love” or whatever. I’ve never seen one I thought was tolerable, let alone one I actually liked. In decor, as with so much else, Arthur’s Law applies: To each their own.

However, my very first idea was actually to put in some floating shelves, maybe made of reclaimed timber. The next idea was those mirrors. Nigel and I got them for our house on Auckland’s North Shore (it was my idea, I might add…), and we hung them vertically at the end of a hallway to make it brighter and seem longer. I had to add new picture wire and holders on the back to hang them horizontally, and for quite awhile I was happy with them, even if they didn’t reflect the light as I’d hoped.

Still, light—or the lack of it—is what kept me from being completely satisfied with the mirrors. I thought about having wall-hung (upper) cabinets installed, which would add storage as well as give me the chance to have under-cabinet lights. I decided against it because I was afraid it would make the kitchen even darker than it already was, and because one day I’ll probably upgrade the kitchen, anyway, so it would be a pretty big expense that would be wasted.

I was then back to shelves. I again thought about floating shelves, but I have no real experience with them, so I ruled them out. By that time, I was absolutely determined to do the shelves myself—it became really important to me.

I researched options for shelving brackets and shelves, and I planned on putting in three at roughly where the tops of each mirror was. This idea had several problems. First, I wanted timber shelves that I’d lightly stain, but timber shelves of that length—1.8 metres—were around $75 each (today, roughly US$53). MDF shelves, which I’d prime and paint (and I already have both) were about $15 each (US$10). So, three timber shelves would be around $225, while the MDF ones would be $45. I’d also need the wall brackets for either option on top of that, say, maybe another $100-150, and the stain and polyurethane for the timber shelves, probably another $150-200. It was all adding up.

However, it wasn’t cost that changed my thinking, it was aesthetics.

It turned out that the studs in that area weren’t evenly spaced/centred in the wall space. That meant that it would look like I hung some brackets in the wrong place—and that would’ve driven me nuts (I know myself quite well, you see).

I learned this because I used a new, fancy stud finder I bought for the project (because the simpler one that Nigel and I bought many, many years ago just wasn’t working right any more). Because I did that, I realised what I should have known all along: The power distribution for the house—the circuit breakers and all the connections for the solar electricity—were also in that wall. That meant I couldn’t drill willy-nilly to use wall anchors in the plasterboard.

While researching options on a home centre’s website, a “suggested product” was a wall-hung shelving system, the sort I’ve installed in wardrobes in the last two houses Nigel and I shared, and that I also plan to install here. So, I’m very familiar—and experienced—with the systems. I realised that this was the perfect option for me.

The systems have a bar that hangs on the wall at the top, and this is anchored in the studs and also with wall anchors for the plasterboard. Vertical brackets hang on that strip, and are also anchored either by screwing them into studs, or by using wall anchors. The spacing between those vertical brackets is set—roughly 60cm—so they would be evenly spaced—and as long as I centred the whole system in space, there’d be no aesthetic weirdness annoying me every time I looked at the shelves.

The plan was set, so a week ago Friday I headed out to the home centre to get the parts I needed.

The shelves are available in kits for wardrobes, but those use wire shelves, and I wanted solid shelves (which also use a different type of shelf support bracket). So, I bought the horizontal bar, and the four vertical brackets I’d need, then gathered the shelf supports, too. I got them all in white (they’re also available in black) because I wanted it to reflect light.

Then, the shelves: I looked at the wood-look ones and thought they might look nice, so I got four 900cm shelves that were the depth I wanted (25cm), but they only had five in stock, so I got two 900cm long shelves that were 30cm deep, plus brackets for them. I also looked at under-cabinet lights, but didn’t buy any.

I took everything home and put it near the kitchen so I could start in the morning. It didn’t work out that way.

Saturday morning I woke up, but didn’t feel like working on the project. Something was bothering me: The wood-look shelves seemed a little too brown compared to the actual wood furniture I had in the room. I thought about it, but decided to just go with it, anyway—though not that day. I worked on other stuff, instead.

Sunday morning presented another problem.

I got up and headed toward the toilet, as one does. As soon as I walked back into my bedroom to lead the dogs out for their morning treat, it suddenly hit me: “Those shelves will never work,” I said to myself. The problem was that I got the shelves 900 long, each one half the span of the space. However, the spaces between the vertical strips—and so, the shelf supports—were 600 apart. If I used the 900 wide shelves, there would have been no support in the middle.

So, I gathered up the shelves and headed back to the home centre to return them. They didn’t have enough of the wood-look in the correct sizes (which had to be either nine 600 wide shelves, or else three of them and three 1200 long, the option I chose—and in white). I also picked up some under-cabinet lights I’d looked at on the previous Friday.

I didn’t have enough time to work on the shelves that afternoon, because I was going out for an early family dinner. Instead, I installed one of my security cameras so it was looking down on my car.

Early Monday afternoon, I finally began. I cleared the bench under the shelves, removed the mirrors, and then hung the horizontal bar at the top, putting screws into the studs as well as into wall anchors. That took a lot out of me, partly because it was working above my head, and also because I was kneeling on the benchtop. I hung the vertical supports, but didn’t attach them to the wall because of yet another problem: The screws I had weren’t long enough.

The next day, Tuesday, I went back to the home centre and got the screws I needed, and then worked on attaching the vertical supports using wall anchors—with the correct length screws. It required a lot of effort, and was often at awkward angles. I had to stop and rest a few times. When I was done, I put in the shelf supports and then put the shelves on them. I tried several arrangements, but I just didn’t like any of them. I decided I needed four shelves, not three.

The next day, Wednesday, I had lunch with with some of the family, and on the way home I went back to the home centre again. I got one 600cm white shelf and the last of the shelf supports for that size shelf. I also got a different under-cabinet light system.

As it happens, I already had a 1200 cm white shelf, and it’s already been on this blog: I used it to try out a monitor support on my desk back in March this year. As I said in a footnote to a post the following week, “I'll use that shelf elsewhere, so it won't go to waste.” And now I have.

The lights were a little odder. The first ones I bought were battery operated (good) LED lights, but they have clear plastic, which means the bulbs are reflected in the shiny bench-top below. I decided to get a more expensive LED system that runs off a power adapter because it had a translucent white plastic cover, and because they’re very flat—they can’t really be seen from the side (the rejected lights will be good for wardrobes).

The next day I did some staging of the shelves because one of my sisters-in-law was bringing my mother-in-law around for lunch, and I wanted them to get a better idea what it’d look like when they were all done (I still needed to attach some special clips where the 600 and 1200 shelves met, so they could both sit on the same shelf support without slipping).

Today I attached those clips, and the under-cabinet lights, and the shelving system is now done—except for the top shelf. The home centre was sold out of the white shelf supports for the 250 deep shelves, so right now I’m using the longer shelf supports I originally got for the 300 deep shelves.

This project probably evolved more than any other that I’ve done at this house, and I didn’t try to rush it (not the least because I didn’t want to accidentally hit the electric wires running through that wall). In the end, I got what I wanted, and so far other people seem to like it.

The shelves will mainly be decorative—displaying things I do sometimes use, but that were either chucked in a cupboard somewhere or taking up space on the bench-top. I plan on putting my full espresso machine on the bench because the capsules used in the Nespresso machine make me uncomfortable: While they’re technically recyclable, in all practicality, they’re not, plus they also don’t make a large enough cup of coffee for me unless I use two capsules.

In this process, especially after clearing off the bench-top so I could work on the shelves, I realised that it’s the widest section of bench-top in the kitchen. There’s another part, on the peninsula, that’s deeper, but sometimes I need more space to do stuff with things next to each other. If I keep that bench-top as empty as practical, it’ll be easy for me to clear stuff away when I need the workspace.

There was one more aspect to this project, something that in many ways was the actual driver of the whole thing: As I said earlier in this post, I was absolutely determined to do this myself, and that became really important to me. That’s related to what I was talking about a post back in March: ”To err is human, the choice is mine”. I chose not to tell anyone what I was up to until it was already in process, and even then I was vague. I knew some folks might try to talk me out of it, or urge me to hire someone, but after running into so many obstacles trying to do other projects on my own, I simply had to do this project. Besides, I’d done basically the same thing so many times by then that I had complete confidence in my abilities.

In the end, this project may have been a bit more fraught than I anticipated, but I’m happy with the results, and especially that I did it myself. Now it’s time to pick another project I can do myself.

In the photo: The top shot is the before, with the mirrors in place. The middle is when I was wrapping up, and the bottom one is how I partially staged them on Thursday.