Dunedins must have calves like watermelons

I'm still alive... I've been printing up a storm, plus planning and setting. I'm now working on two posters simultaneously, letting one layer dry while I print the other, and vice versa.

Donald-the-Special-Collections-Librarian has been contacting lots of people and telling them about me and my work, so I thought it would be a good idea to put a more formal post about my project up on my website. That way, he can send them that link and they don't have to trawl through my personal shite to read about my printing.

Like this:



That's a happy used massage table, taken by a happy massaged me. An hour for NZ$30! Never underestimate the goodness of student masseurs. I'm going back again next week.

Also, this is the view from the 6th floor of the Dunedin Polytechnic (like our TAFE):



Note the low-lying cloud. This was a day that was supposed to be 18 degrees, but never got there. Being a smallish island, and being a coastal city, this area gets the most variable weather, and at the moment it seems to rain nearly every day. Isn't it pretty, though? This is looking back at the uni, and you can probably see the back of my college, next to the two high buildings on the left. Nearly all the houses you can see are student 'flats' (they don't call them group houses).

Speaking of views, check out this one:



When Dunedin people say 'I live just up the hill', they say 'just' to get you up there. Sue Wootton invited me to a night of pizza and wine at her place, but I had to walk there because her car is bung. She lives up past this amazing-looking boy's school, up and up and up. It nearly killed me, because while I've been walking all over the place, I've only been walking, I realise, on the flat bits. Dun is like a big cone, hills all around funnelling down to the flat city area, which is why the Waters of Leith rise so fast when it rains. So I walked up and got there very hot and sweaty and damp, because of course it was raining. Thank goodness for my new raincoat!

Once I was there the evening was wonderful, all homemade pizza and lovely wine and good people to talk to and amazingly beautiful house and a CAT to stroke. Absolute bliss. And a lift home.

On Saturday night I went to another gorgeous house for dinner, the home of a senior librarian who is a fabulous cook as well. More good people to talk to, and the hint of a cat but she didn't show :(

That was meant to be 'just' a walk up another hill too, and after friday night's experience I was getting a bit nervous about it, but Gillian, Donald-TSCL's best friend, dropped by the library and picked me up at the last minute, and for that she gets my utmost blessings.

So I'm being looked after admirably. I also rang Best Beloved and said

If we sold our crappy shoebox house in Canberra, we could buy a gorgeous Victorian villa in Dunedin and still have change for renovations...

And he said he'd look at the employment pages when he got here! It won't happen (don't have a heart attack, Colonel Duck) but the fact that he said it without hesitation made me fall for him all over again. I'm thinking this is a better place to come when we're old than Tasmania. At least there are good health services here, being a medical university town and all. Sigh.

I keep thinking of things to write but not when I'm writing them. It's time to go to work now, I have to print a sunset-pink underlayer today. I got blisters on my hands on Sunday from doing a grey-green underlayer using one heavy roller at high speed, so I'm going to be kinder on my hands today.

Wow, I can hear a flock of seagulls from my window, the real kind, not the ones who ran. Boom-tish! Also, disconcertingly, I think the student upstairs is having sex with someone, from the sound of the bedsprings through the ceiling. It's 8:40am. Lucky them!

Ok, must go. Things to be getting on with. Ciao.