For the 'only in America' file

Someone at work brought this story to my attention this week: From New Zealand's news website, Stuff:

Buy Hummer, get free shotgun

By MATT CAMPBELL - SMH

An American Hummer dealership is sending the Hummer off with a bang, giving away a free shotgun with every new car.

An American Hummer dealership will give away a Browning Citori White Lightning shotgun, worth $2,000, with every new Hummer they sell.

Lynch Hummer in Chesterfield, Missouri is one of the highest selling Hummer dealerships in America, and last year they decided to add guns to their showroom.

With the recent ‘wind-down’ announcement from GM (the makers of Hummer) the dealership’s owner, Jim Lynch, says that he wants his Hummers to go out with a bang.

"There is now real reason to believe that the current inventory on hand at dealers may be the last of the new Hummers, we wanted to send them off with something memorable," he says.

"Browning and Hummer are prestigious brands and American Icons - bringing them together is a natural fit.

"The guns have been a huge hit with our Hummer customers and now we are taking the 'Guns and Hummers' concept one step further," says Lynch.

Not everyone who ends up behind the wheel of a Hummer will also get their finger on a Browning trigger, though - buyers will be bound by the same legal requirements as any gun purchaser before they get their gun.

The free guns are only available while stocks last, and a gun rack isn’t included in the purchase price.

It's no wonder New Zealanders think Americans are gun-crazed maniacs!

Bump update

We have rounded a bend and are now in the final stretch - 31 weeks down, 9 to go. At my last midwife visit, she said the boy's head was 1/5 into my pelvis already. He's making his way for the exit!

We had a small meltdown at 30 weeks when we realised how much we still have to do to prepare for the boy's arrival. So we made a list (we're list people). Now we have a long list to look at and freak out about. Gareth suggested we make a smaller list from the list. The smaller list would include things we need to buy, separate from the list of things we need to do. This might make both lists seem more manageable. We could probably spend the next 9 weeks discussing and organising the list(s).

Let's focus on what we have done. The boy's room is painted a nice shade of green now. The hideous light fixture the previous owners left in the room has been replaced with one we like much better. The boy has a cot (crib) and it's fully assembled. He also has a toy box, which maybe was not essential at this stage, but the place selling the cots had nice toy boxes, and we got a deal by buying them together... We have lots of clothes for the boy to wear, thanks to hand-me-downs and the packages of adorable tiny things arriving weekly from my mom in America.

We've bought a buggy (stroller), but we don't have it yet. This is New Zealand, and sometimes you have to wait for stuff. Small economy and all. We wanted the green and black version of the Urban Jungle by Mountain Buggy, but it wasn't in stock, so we ordered one and we now wait for it. It should be arriving any day now. We also ordered the 'carry cot' connection, which will double as a bassinet in the early days.

I break into a cold sweat whenever I think about car seats, so we haven't got one of those yet. But need to do it. Need to do it soon.

We're still planning to do a home birth, so there's lots of extra preparation we need to do for that. Our midwife gave us a list (another list!) of supplies we should have on hand for the birth, which is a little daunting. Towels, wash clothes, hot water bottles, buckets, a container for the placenta... oh yes. We're also going to rent a birthing pool and really should start looking into that very soon. And Gareth has been gathering supplies to make a 'birthing mat' for me to labour/sweat/bleed on. That's true love.

Soon we start our antenatal classes with Parents Centre. These are free. They're 2-hour classes once a week for 8 weeks. The last one is the day before our due date, so if the boy comes early, we might miss out on the last class or two. We're really hoping they front-load the important information...

Avalanche peak

Yesterday Gareth took part in the Avalanche Peak Adventure Race - a 22km running race up to the top of Avalanche Peak in Arthur's Pass national park and back down again, along a long rocky river bed. I'm really glad he took the camera so that I could see what he saw up there - I never would have been able to get there without a helicopter. The climb is 1,178 metres high (3,864 feet), which wouldn't be so bad, except that you have to climb that in just 3km (1.86 miles). Gareth says, "Brutal!"

You don't need a helicopter or legs of steel though. We bring you the goods right here:

(Those are 2 keas - alpine parrots - hanging out in the mountain mist.)

In this last photo, you can just see the specks of runners coming down the river bed. This photo was taken from the finish line, which was cruelly located on top of a hill.

Trading on Trade Me

America has eBay and Craig's List; New Zealand has Trade Me. We sold a few things on Craig's List before moving, but always found the experience to be a little less than satisfactory. It seemed everyone who was interested in buying our stuff was really flaky. Maybe our stuff just attracted flaky people.

We're having much better success with Trade Me. Trade Me is huge here - it seems everyone is a member and everyone is using it. You can find anything, even things that you might have thought were garbage. We actually bought an old rubbish bin (garbage can) on Trade Me for $1 shortly after we arrived to use as a compost barrel. That means someone took the time to take a photo of their old rubbish bin, go online, post a description of it along with the photo, let an auction take place, and then arrange for the winner of the auction (me) to come to the house and pick up the rubbish bin. All that for $1. Well, less than a dollar actually, since Trade Me takes a small cut of the proceeds.

I'm not sure why people bother, but they do. It might have something to do with the reduce/reuse/recycle mentality that seems to prevail here. Nothing is trash - everything can be re-purposed.

If we were in America, we probably would have just thrown away the horrible curtains that were hanging in our bedroom when we moved in. But we're in New Zealand now, and so we know that someone, somewhere can make good use of them. So we listed them on Trade Me with this photo:

We had 2 sets of them - the one shown in the photo and a matching set hanging over the sliding glass door that connects our bedroom to the patio. We listed the whole lot together for a reserve price of $1. We sat back and waited for the bids to pour in, wondering who would want these curtains.

We received 7 questions from interested parties. In the end, only 2 people bid on them, but there was a mini-bidding war between them that went back and forth 20 times. We ended up getting $35 for them. The winner will be coming round today to retrieve her new curtains. Coming all the way from Timaru even. We get 35 bucks, the lady from Timaru gets a great deal on hideous curtains. Everyone's happy!

We've also been able to sell a bread box ($8.50), a set of vertical blinds ($47), and some net curtains ($2 - we left the curtains outside, he left a $2 coin on our door step).

You really can find anything on Trade Me. Right now there's a guy selling a giant inflatable cow.

In case you're interested, here's a link. But be quick, auction closes in less than 6 hours. The current bid is $1,503. !! Payment by bank deposit only, says the seller. That means if you win the auction, he'll give you his bank account number and you can have your bank directly transfer money into his bank. Often you can do it online. A lot of people here transfer money this way - another thing that's new to us but that we've taken to pretty quickly.

Yesterday I drove to the other side of town to retrieve our new dining room light from a Trade Me seller ($26). Gareth installed it yesterday and it looks great. The old light is listed on Trade Me right now, waiting for its new home.

Veggie patch: the beginning

When we first decided to put an offer in on this house, one of the biggest selling points was all the room in back for us to grow vegetables. A lot of the space is taken up with bushes and flowering things right now, but there's room to add some veggies. And we're not opposed to getting rid of some of the less useful vegetation. Although I'm liking the rose bushes. They can stay.

Over the weekend, Gareth cleared an area near the back fence that just had a few plants growing in it. He added some compost and raked it in with the existing dirt. We went to the garden centre (thanks for the gift card mom!) and bought ourselves some seedlings. Although it's late summer, there are still some veggies that we can plant. We've gone with lettuce, broccoli, spinach, chard, and kale.

Behind our veggie plot, you can see the potting shed. It comes complete with running water. Gareth plans to be doing lots of pottering around in the potting shed.

Look at our adorable little seedlings! Hopefully they will take nicely to their new home and flourish. Just like we are :)

Crusaders horsemen

Last night was the first home match for the Canterbury Crusaders. The game was good (we won - woot) but I'm really only going to talk about the opening bit. It was low-budget and fantastic at the same time. I loved it.

First, they start playing this eerie music. With some searching this morning I discovered it's called Conquest of Paradise by Vangelis. It sends chills up and down my spine.

Then a man rides in on horseback through some make-shift castle gates they've put up in one corner of the field. He's all in black and holding up a sword. He's a Crusader! He does a lap of the field. Mad applause. He exits.

Then seven more horsemen enter the field through the castle gate. They're in red, the horses are draped in red, and they're holding up swords (the men, not the horses). They swing their swords around menacingly as they gallop around the field. When the horsemen come to our section, we clap and cheer. They do a few laps. They stop in front of each section and point their swords at the crowd. We love it and clap like giddy children. It doesn't get old at all - we cheer just as much every time they come to us. After a few minutes, they ride back out the castle gates.

In case you're having a hard time imagining it, I found some You Tube video. (Isn't it great how you can find anything on You Tube??) But keep in mind it's better when you're there live...

In this video, there's a Crusaders' sword in the middle of the field, pulled in by a tractor. A nice combination of symbols there - the viciousness of the Crusaders, a nod to the farming roots of the Canterbury plains people.

I suppose since last night was the season opener, they decided to do something more dramatic than the sword. There was no sword. A military helicopter did a pass over the stadium, which was kind of cool on its own, but then it came back and hovered high over the middle of the field. They threw out 4 ropes weighted with sandbags. Then 4 dudes in military fatigues jumped out, rappelling down the ropes. Once on the ground, they gave the 'all okay' symbol and then the helicopter flew away again. The four guys just gathered up their ropes and got off the field. Gareth said, "there goes all of New Zealand's air force..."

We thoroughly enjoyed the pre-game entertainment. But of course being immigrants, we can't help but compare the show to Arizona's professional sports games. The Arizona Diamondbacks had fireworks displays and sometimes, after the national anthem, F-16 fighter jets flew overhead in formation. The Crusaders don't have room in the budget for F-16's (does New Zealand even own any fighter jets?), but we think they do pretty well working with what they've got.

We have moved! Again!

In December 2008, we moved out of our house in Phoenix and into a 1-bedroom apartment to wait for our visas. In March 2009, we moved out of our apartment, putting everything onto a ship bound for New Zealand. In June 2009, we moved into our apartment in Christchurch. Now, we've moved into our first house in New Zealand. Hooray!

Hear this: we are done with moving. We don't care if our new neighbors turn out to be gang members or satanists. We're staying.

Moving was actually no big drama though - maybe because we're pros now. But also because we had a really nice moving company. Also our friends loaned us all the boxes and packing materials we needed, and everyone we dealt with to move our utilities was friendly. It was as hassle-free as a move can be, really.

The movers were fantastic. They were just two young guys and a truck. Somehow, when we had two guys and a truck to move us out of our apartment in Phoenix, it took ALL day, from 9 til 5 - and that was just to move stuff out of our apartment and out of my aunt's house where we had things stored. Actually, they did some packing too, but not very much. All they had to do was pack a few things from the small apartment and put it into a truck, and it took them all day. These Kiwi movers moved all the same stuff out of one place and INTO another place in less than half that time. Impressive. Especially considering we were paying them by the hour, so they had every motivation to move slow.

One of the movers was was fascinated with America. You can find out what people think of America by the questions they ask. This guy wanted to know if Christchurch seemed really small to me compared to American cities. I told him no, it seems like a decent sized city to me, and that there were lots of towns in America smaller than Christchurch. "Really??" He seemed to think all Americans live in New York or L.A. I don't think this misconception is common - it may have just been this one guy.

He also wanted to know about guns. Everyone associates America with guns (thanks, NRA). No, I don't have any guns. Yes, I did hear gunfire sometimes. There was a drive-by shooting just a few blocks from our house once. His reaction: "wo!" and then "stuff that!" I think what he meant was, no thank you, I'd rather live in New Zealand where the most dangerous weapon I might be confronted with is a Swiss army knife.

The mover also asked if I'd ever met 50 Cent. In New Zealand, the population is so small that it is entirely possible to meet famous people, so in context his question isn't that bizarre I guess. I suppose you can meet famous people in America too - we ran into Mike Tyson on an airplane once and Gareth shook his hand - but it's by no means commonplace. At least not in my experience. The moving guy seemed to think that he only had to go to America to party with 50 Cent. I let him down gently. "No, I haven't met Kanye or TI either."

The Telecom guy who came to activate our phone line asked me about my pregnancy and told me about his 5 children. Three girls, 2 boys. When I told Gareth about this, he said, "that's so Kiwi!" Of course there are friendly workmen everywhere, but we're finding there is something more genuine in the friendliness of the people we encounter here. It's hard to explain.

So, the move is done, the utilities are connected, the furniture is (mostly) where it needs to go. The grandma smell left by the former owners has pretty much dissipated. We've made a list of all the things in the house that we want to change/update. It's a long list. We spent $400 at Bunnings (like Home Depot) yesterday. Ahh, welcome back to home ownership!

The very best thing about our house is not in the house at all - it's the hill behind the house. When we look out our living room patio doors, or sit out back, we see this:

This morning I was taking the washing off the line and actually heard cows moo in the distance. Gareth is out running in those hills right now. We love being right by the hills. There are actually a few gigantic houses on the hill behind us that you can see if you look from a different angle (blocked by trees in this photo). They take away some of the country charm, but oh well. We'll just have to position our patio furniture - when we get some - to block them out.

We were also pleased to discover that we have fruit trees!

This apple tree was hiding in the back of our yard by the fence. I see apple pie in our futures... We also discovered there were plums all over the ground in one spot, and for a second thought, "where are all these plums coming from??" before the lightbulb went on and we noticed our new plum tree for the first time.

We've also got a fruiting lemon tree in front by the garage. Once Gareth gets our veggie patch going, we will nearly be self-sufficient... nearly.

We've also got lots of flowering plants, including roses and daisies. And we have these things which look like dancing ladies (and might actually be called that)-

And we have this mystery plant. Some in the front and more in the back. Bonus points for anyone who gets in touch with us and tells us what the heck these things are.