It’s been over two months since Tania and I moved in to our first home, and as expected it is taking up a lot of our time. Due to the previous owner’s expansionist tendencies quite a few of our weekends have been spent under the house digging a trench into which new foundations can be poured. Together with a bit of help from my brother we shifted 9 cubic meters of dirt and now the builder has set out the boxing to shape the concrete. It’s a long process, only working on weekends, but we’re planning to be in this house for a long time so we want to do it right so we can live in it, not just palm it off to the next person.
Along side that we’ve each taken on little tasks around the house to make it more our own. Tania has got the vegetable patch started, I’ve removed some tree stumps. Tania made a pin board and hotwater bottle covers, I’ve made some shelves and installed network cables to my hidden backup harddrive. Together we made a photo wall. All in all it’s been a very productive time, but I’m still looking forward to summer. Due to my northern hemisphere trips over the last two years I’ve managed to miss winter since the beginning of 2007 so the constant rain and cold that has been hitting Auckland shocked me. If I wasn’t kept busy with little projects I’d have gone stir crazy. At gathering of people just made redundant from my previous employer I was asked about my next adventure. I’ve got some things I’m interested in doing but so long as I have this mortgage I won’t be taking six months off to walk across another country, or the Okavango Delta . In the meantime I do intend to update this blog more often with some little things we’re doing to personalise our house. Starting with the floating shelves I made.

In just over 24 hours I expect to be picking up the keys to my first house. I expect it will be my only house for the next couple of decades. Not only is selling/buying houses expensive, it can also be extremely frustrating when solicitors forget to tell you things or print out vital documents that means taking the afternoon off work was a complete waste of time.
But come tomorrow that’ll all be over and Tania and I will be moving our belongings to the suburb of Birkdale where a number of friends have already bought houses. While we’ve been living in Point Chevalier with our friends Peter and Andy, Tania has been doing a lot of gardening. So it was by happy coincidence that while looking at a cardboard laptop stand I stumbled upon an excellent system for growing plants in reclaimed gutters along the side of a house devised by Suzanne Forsling. I’ve come up with an addition that’ll save some water and time. A bit of old piping laid along behind the gutter with holes drilled down the length of it would disperse water better than just watering one end of the plants, and if that pipe were fed from the downpipe of the roof-top guttering then it’d mean the system pretty much takes care of itself.
I’ve continued browsing the web for DIY projects and found lots onLifeHacker.com and GreenUpgrader.com.

A few of my favourites are:

• Carboard laptop stand
• Gutter Garden
• Make your own gummies
• The Enter Key
• Business card iPod stand
• Floating book case

I don’t generally forward on chain emails, let alone post them on my site, but I really like this one.

 

I work, they pay me. I pay my taxes and the government distributes my taxes as it sees fit.

In order to earn that pay cheque, I work on a rig for a drilling contractor.
I am required to pass a random urine test, with which I have no problem.

What I do have a problem with is the distribution of my taxes to people who don’t have to pass a urine test. Shouldn’t one have to pass a urine test to get a welfare cheque because I have to pass one to earn it for them?

Please understand that I have no problem with helping people get back on their feet. I do on the other hand have a problem with helping someone sit on their ass drinking beer and smoking dope.

 

 

Could you imagine how much money the government would save if people had to pass a urine test to get a welfare cheque?