Mmmm, it does go well with the Chicken...

I know. It's been a long time. More than a month, even. I don't need to hear it. I get it. "I never call anymore." "What happened to us?" Blah, blah, blah.

Save it. I've been busy. Busy doing things that I can write about in the blog and show you pictures of. But the harsh irony is that the more busy I am doing blog-worthy things, the less time I have to actually blogisize them. That's right, I said blogisize. It's a word. Shut up.

On to the blogisizing. So then came March. Yet another whirlwind of activity. It started off with a little weekender up north. A group of 9 of us drove up to the Tongariro National Park on Friday afternoon. We stayed the night in a local Backpackers lodge (actually a pretty classy joint for your average backpacker accommodation). Bright and early the next morning we set off on a 17 km hike that we were allotted 8 and a half hours to complete. The reason the time limit is even a consideration is, not only because it's good to have a schedule seeing as the sun setting while one is hiking in the wilderness is not exactly awesome, but because the hike begins and ends in a different location. You are dropped of by a shuttle at the beginning, and are told to be at the end in 8.5 hours, or find another ride home. The trick is, there is no other ride home. And cell phones don't work. And you are in the middle of nowhere. Point being, you get there in time.

The hike, known as the Tongariro Crossing, is labeled as the greatest one day hike in New Zealand. The word greatest can be interpreted many ways: best, biggest, most beautiful. But after having done the Crossing, i think what they were going for was most memorable, or most impressive. The hike is just plain tough. Some parts are flat out painful. But the sense of accomplishment on every single leg of it are greater than I have had with any other hike I've done.

But to our surprise, the toil of the hike took us by surprise, and we soon realized it was going to be very close making our time limit. And one hiker in our group had a knee problem that flared up within the first half of the hike, making the rugged terrain rather difficult. So in a decision that at the time seemed like the best idea to a few of us, but in hind-sight seems as if it was a rather cold choice, 3 of us trudged on ahead to try and catch the shuttle as the other 6 stayed back and worked through the hike at a slower pace, helping out the injured hiker. Our thinking had been to get to the shuttle so they at least knew what was happening with our group, and perhaps could arrange transport for the rest of the group. In the end, everything worked out, and the rest of the group hopped on with a shuttle a few hours later. But let's just say the 3 of us who took the lead were not looked upon as shining heroes by the rest.

On our drive home the next day, since we were in the area, we stopped y one of the locations from The Two Towers. It was the stream in which Sam and Frodo are walking while Gollum is flailing through the water chasing a fish. Location just so happens to be at the very edge of an extremely high waterfall. Very cool to see (if you are a dork like me). So naturally all of us dorks took turns reenacting Gollum's part in the stream. Sometimes you just have to let the dork within take over.

The following weekend, My flatmate Mark and I had our house warming party (finally). We had a pretty good turnout. And what had been planned as a typical gathering turned into an as to be expected trampoline extravaganza. And there are lots of pictures to prove it. No surprises there. And while on this new trampoline kick, a friend of ours came up with a brilliant idea the following weekend. On a lazy Saturday, Tom showed up at our place with a skateboard deck and a bicycle inner tube. What ensued was hours of fun (well, hours is a figure of speech, because jumping on the trampoline can only be done in at most 2-3 minute stints, before one must take a good 10 minutes to catch their breath). I like to call it Skate Tramp. But it's the closest thing to being good at snowboarding and skateboarding without actually being good at it. Choice!


Next up was a visit from an old friend from high school. Julie Hurst came to Wellington from San Diego for a week and we kicked things off the Saturday she arrived with a feast at our place. About 20 friends came over for what has been dubbed "Iron Chef NZ" in which everyone who can brings their favorite dish. What we ended up with was a smorgasbord of good food that dwarfed most Thanksgiving meals. We decided right then and there to make it a regular occurrence. It was a good time and hopefully as nice introduction for Julie to some of the many Weta folks. The following day a group of 8 of us headed up for some wine tasting in Martinborough, the local wine country just an hour outside of Wellington. Fortunately Julie had found a package deal that included train up and back, a shuttle to 4 wineries, and lunch, because you don't want to have to drive when you are going wine tasting. And 8 bottles of wine later (not including the tastings), we had proven to ourselves and to others around us precisely why foreigners can't stand Americans on vacation. I wouldn't have had it any other way. During the work week, which coincidentally turned out to be my busiest since I have been here, Julie pretty much fended for herself, headed down to the South Island for a few days, saw downtown Welly, etc. And then after a brief birthday party on Friday night, she was off back to the States.

Then came Spookers. What's Spookers, you ask? Well, it's one of New Zealand's versions of a haunted house. Why in mid March? Because they don't do Halloween here, and it's getting to be Fall, so I guess that means time to get scared. Plus it's a haunted house, or rather a haunted corn field, that Weta Workshop assisted in creating. And there so go. On Saturday evening someone from Weta Workshop organized a bus for a group of about 40 of us to head up north to a corn field about 3 hours outside of Wellington. After watching "The Descent" on the way up in the bus (my contribution), we were good and ready to be spooked, I guess. After a brief introduction and then a starter 3D haunted maze, we were ready for the main event: a nearly 1 hour maze through a cornfield with no lights (which is why we were told to each bring a "torch", or a flashlight to the non-Kiwis). And the entire time people are jumping out of the corn stalks with knives, axes, chainsaws, the works. It was a pretty fun time if you let yourself get caught up in it, which I am pretty sure most of us did. Here are some pics courtesy of Derrick. He even has links to some video, seeing as he recorded the entire thing. Some of it is entertaining, but you have to dig through a lot of girl screams, none of which were produced from the vocal chords of a female (I certainly contributed my fair share).

This last weekend brought about what might, or might not, become a new standard. To celebrate the release of Guitar Hero II on Xbox, we held the aptly named Beer-O-Rock at our house on Friday night, immediately following the event that it borrowed most if it's name from, Beer-O-Clock. Everyone seemed to have a good time, and just about everybody took a couple turns at the guitar. And naturally the people who really took a liking to the game stayed with us till the wee hours of the morning jamming out to some serious face-melters. And as we might have expected, we received a lovely Easter note from the neighbors, asking us to kindly keep our "Nintendo" volume down. Oops.

And to top it all off, Lori held the second installment of Iron Chef NZ on Easter Sunday. This feast completely put our first one to shame, due to the fact that Lori is one of the most kick-ass hosts, and an ever kick-asser cook, plus everyone's dishes and desserts were so far above and beyond what one might come to expect at a typical "potluck" style gathering. And combined with loads of wine and candy, how can you possibly go wrong Needless to say, it was a pretty sweet-as Easter feast. And this combined with Beer-O-Rock on Friday made for a pretty eventful weekend, punctuated by the fact that Kiwi's really take their Easter and Good Friday seriously, as everything was shut down on Friday, Sunday, and Monday. Never seen a place so hard core about Easter weekend, but I think it comes from the desire to just have anther excuse to go on vacation, and not from strong religious convictions.

So that's that. If you made it this far, you care waaaay to much about what I'm up to. I think I even put myself to sleep.