Officially, winter begins here a little before summer does up there -- June 1 as opposed to 21. Which is all right by me, since as far as I was concerned, it has been here for some time.
which is not to say the weather is particularly bad - cold days, some blustery, some clear; cold nights, in a house which is a bit old and cold even by new Zealand standards (they are more tolerant of such things than the Americans I've heard comment); frosty mornings, walking down the road to meet my ride to work.

It's become a fairly normal life, which partially explains the lack of comment on my part. My knees have fully recovered, in case anyone was wondering still; I've managed to spring something near the bottom of my rib-cage, which is about a month into the healing process now, feeling much better, but my best advice is it'll be about another month of careful healing until I stop noticing it altogether.

I itch to get back into the full swing of things. So instead of giving up aikido for the interim, I'm down to two classes per week (from six), and excuse myself from certain techniques which seem most likely to thump my ribs in unmitigatable ways.

It is heartening to feel the rest of my body respond to the stretches and movement, and to feel that I haven't lost the memory of how to do things, even though more of the practice is mental and less physical than before. So I continue.

Work continues to be ... well, workable. On breaks, sometimes I bother the half-dozen Chinese and Taiwanese women on my crew for words and phrases, and can now count to 10 as long as you don't mind how I pronounce 7 and/or 8. Sheh-sheh (thank you) seems to bring a smile most of the time.

In addition to my main job, I'm now teaching the art class I mentioned on Friday afternoons. Two sessions so far, on with seven participants and one with one. Hope that's not a trend. But it's a pleasure to be thinking of art again, anyway; whether I'm doing or teaching, it focuses my attention on all the things in the world that I love the looks of, like clouds and trees and people and interesting corners I hadn't noticed before. So I wind up collecting leaves, and visions, and whether I can share them adequately with my little class or not, at least it's a pleasure to try.

Warren and I drove down to Dunedin for the long weekend. In honor of the Queen's birthday. They had adds on the radio beforehand, a refined feminine Voice admonishing her subjects for offering needless human sacrifices to celebrate her birthday, and then a radio jockey annoucing it's "Try Not to Die" Weekend: Let's see if, for the first time, we can all make it to Tuesday.
And, later in the weekend, a much sadder announcement that the record has not been broken; there had already been a traffic fatality, as on every holiday weekend in recorded history here... thanks and keep it up to all those who've been driving carefully.

That's one of the things I particularly notice here: not that the social issues are any different, but I notice a lot more well-targeted, sincere, and even witty public service announcements trying to steer people in the right direction. Back home, such public-service ads as I remember were kind of random, like "take time for kids". Good, but ...? Here, there seems to be more, and more targeted, public interest advertising, like safe-sex ads during prime time, safe-driving ads on roads and holidays...etc.

....
I guess I'll write more about Dunedin itself, which was lovely, some other time. In case I forget:
Castle
Albatrosses
Gables
Rain
Brewery tour
Trenchcoats.

Not necessarily in that order.

-E