Back

Well, I guess it's been two years. Since my last post, I finished up my study abroad in New Zealand, had another couple of internships, graduated, moved to DC with Americorps, moved back to Austin, signed a deal with a healthcare consulting firm for a gig starting in June, and finished a poetry manuscript for my honors thesis which prompted the poets supervising to suggest an MFA (we'll see). Not noted: much much more.

That's it for now but I intend to write on this sucker more often.

on the road again...

after class this afternoon, i will be heading over to thrifty and renting a car for a road trip across the south island. no hostel bookings yet, but we hope to take care of that in a couple of hours. so much for planning in advance.

sites of interest are the marlborough region, picton, abel tasman national park, motueka, franz jozeph, mt cook, some hot springs, and queenstown (we are going back to flyfish)

i've already packed...well, set out the stuff i'm taking anyways and just need to prepare for class during the next couple of hours. i'm slightly concerned because i have a lot of assignments due the 2 weeks following the break (i've done some of it, but other assignments before the break have kept me from getting as much done as i would have liked).

i don't know what all is on the itinerary exactly, but seakayaking and hiking figure to feature prominently.

fascism

i have been reading historical articles on fascism for the past 10 hours. i have skimmed roughly 20 articles and have about 20 more to go.

although i am excited about the topic i have chosen, it is a bit more work intensive than i planned, which is nerve-wracking because i need to get a good bit of it done before i leave for break (as well as a rather meaty case-study paper and part of a large human resources field consulting project). ECK!

school feels way too much like home right now

i just want to be outside. i'd also like a little mexican food, some sunrise tea from magnolia, and a game of frisbee in pease park.
little things

anyways, kings of leon and bright eyes are both releasing CDs within the next 10 days which is cool, although i won't be able to listen to them until i get back. ryan adams is releasing another in june as well!

so i don't have a lot of music going on besides what i put on my laptop (and though i put about 100 CDs on here, it seems woefully inadequate..i'm pretty sure i've been through most of it multiple times already. it really isn't bad because i like everything on here, i just wish i'd put more on)

the road trip is coming up and i believe we will be renting a toyota camry. taking the van just seems like a bad idea. plus, it gets really terrible mileage (i asked the rental lady about mileage on the telephone and she sat in silence for a moment and then asked what i was talking about...silly more scientifically accurate metric system)

i recently had my plan ii thesis approved and am excited about that - it will be a creative thesis focusing on poetry and short stories i have written/will write. i've never really written out full short stories so i'm particularly excited about that aspect. now i just need to figure out a theme for the project....

i was also inducted into mortar board a few days ago! i'm not exactly sure what all that entails but i know they do a bit of service which i like.

in related news, i lost the election for blazers' chairman. oh well, hopefully i will be elected vice-chair of service (the position i would have run for last year had not been planning on going abroad).

in unrelated news, i saw hot fuzz last night and it is one of the funniest movies i have ever seen. even better than shaun of the dead was. wow. go see it...now

well i need to get back to reading about mussolini, d'annunzio, garibaldi, the risorgimento, and fascism

hope everyone is doing well.

i'll update again before i leave

-keaton

wanaka, the keymaker, and the sprinkler storm of the century!!

this weekend was meant to be a thrifty weekend. a bit of hiking, a bit of lazing down by the lake -- a nature-centered weekend. and it was for the most part. except thrifty, we still dropped over a $100. though i guess that isn't too bad when looked at against queenstown. oh well, it was mostly fun.

the hike we did was gorgeous and walking along the lake was also quite nice. the water is really blue and much of the land is somewhat brown in the area around wanaka, so it makes for a lovely contrast. wanaka is also at the foot of the aspiring mountains (which i believe lead to mt. cook? maybe it isn't the same range but it's definitely due north of wanaka).

some of the most enduring (and comically so) moments of the trip, however, were not so much fun.

night # 1: we pull up to wanaka and try to find a spot to camp. choosing not to listen to morgan and me, the group decides to pull over right off the road and set up two tents next to a golf course. the night was somewhat noisy as a highway was all of 30 feet away. after eventually falling asleep, morgan and i were awakened by someone who's name i have forgotten, but who was the "keeper of the grounds". he ever so politely notified us that the authorities knew we were camping there, would arrive in 5 minutes, and there would be a $500 fine for each us if they found us. most likely the authorities did not know, nevertheless, we cleared that campsite in 4 minutes. it was amazing :)

night 2: kevin and i attempt to open the back door of the van. the lock does not work, so naturally we try harder. this proves to be a bad idea a few hours later... this still fails, so we just use it on the side door and open it from the back. while everyone else heads to the bar, i decide to try to sleep some because i feel an oncoming cold (which i now have, ugh). these 90 minutes are pretty much the only sleep i will get this night. at the end of this time, the group comes back, very loudly as some of them were quite happy to have celebrated st. patrick's day and the others were just in a good mood. they all pile in and as we get ready to head to a camp, the driver notices that the key does not turn in the ignition. several people attempt this feat, all of whom fail. 3 of the members split up to find someone who can help with cars (no luck in this endeavor, though we get a phone number of a locksmith that comes in handy the next day). because we cannot move, we decide to sleep next to the information center in a public park-type area. 4 of us lay our sleeping bags down and go to bed while 2 others remain in the car.

1-2 hours later (around 1:30 am, prior to daylight savings time giving us an extra hour), what appears to be a strange sounding rain begins to fall (though i cannot see it as i decided to put a rain fly around my sleeping bag because the forecast had a chance of rain). this drags on for an hour before i decided to stick my head out. the scene: two of the party had deserted, there was a geyser going up in front of the van, and a massive sprinkler system was in full swing. kevin, the other person to have remained outside, and i begin to laugh at the sheer ridiculousness of the situation. i put my head back in, zip the rain fly tight, and continue to sit (i have still not fallen asleep since the nap in the van). an hour later the sprinkler storm finally subsides. i doze a little bit, but not much. a real rain begins to fall for the next 45 minutes. and the clocks have just fallen back, ensuring that we had even more time to experience the wonders of wanaka this night. several hours later, we call the locksmith, have him explain that we need the ignition re-fit to the key itself, and have him jury-rig it so we can get home. woo!

despite being sick and getting no sleep at all, it was a really funny night.

i hope everyone had a good night of sleep last night and a good spring break.
-keaton

PS - while i wrote this, my head felt like i was in a space shuttle getting ready to blast off (ie at 90 degrees), crazy. it reminds of puzzling world (an attraction we went to today which i will post about later)

photos

blogger is somewhat difficult to post pictures with so check facebook. for those of you without facebook, i will attempt to put a few up at a time starting later today

apologies

so i'm pretty worthless at updating this thing. i feared that might happen.

over the past week we had the internet set up in the apartment so hopefully i will be more active in keeping everyone up to date with all the goings on here.

this weekend i'm headed to wanaka. we've added 3 new people to the crew, none of which i've previously met...i'm assured that they are cool, however. wanaka is supposed to be a less touristy, more fun, and even more outdoorsy queenstown. i think we are going to do a bit of hiking. the weather has cooled some and gotten wet, so we are all renting tents from the school. i hear it's cheap..

school has actually started: i'm in the midst of preparing to write two papers due april 2nd (which is arriving with surprising rapidity). one is about the challenges and opportunities of e-learning for my (human resources development class) and the other i haven't totally decided upon, but i'm leaning towards the "unintended completion of the risorgimento: three nationalist heroes and the marches that led italy to fascism" (for my history class...it's about giuseppe garribaldi, gabrielle d'annunzio, and benito mussolini). i was going to write about d'annunzio and the fiume incident as precursors and enablers to mussolini, but i think that is already fairly established....so. anyways, i'm kind of interested in this paper.

spring break is coming up on april 6. we will be planning out the "manventure 2007" roadtrip shortly. already on the agenda: flyfishing, the fiorlands (probably a two day kayaking trip of doubtful sound, which you should google images of), some hot springs, franz joseph glacier, mt cook, and some place called able tasman which i don't know anything about

hope everyone is having a good spring break

-keaton

ginger beer and "kiwi chocolate"

the aforementioned soda and candy are AMAZING.

ginger beer is probably my new favorite soda (having surpassed root beer). it's much better than, and totally different from, ginger ale.

the chocolate has little pieces of kiwi in the center of a dark chocolate bar.

i received both articles on my birthday before heading off to the beach to have a small bonfire. we were going to try to go bouldering but it was too dark by the time we got there. still, it was a lot of fun and a good birthday.

thanks everyone for all the well wishes and facebook comments.

take care



oh, and it's kind of strange to be 21.

queenstown

this past weekend was spent living out of a van by a large water tank and storage shed that i found when i pulled off the road. first time too - great luck. my back, it seems, was the only party not completely satisfied with my find.

billed as the adventure capital of the world, the array of activities offered is pretty phenomenal. everything from paragliding to rifver surfing to jetboating to bungy etc etc etc. it goes on for a while. one piece of advice - if you have ever been on a jetski, don't do the jetboat, it is the lamest use of $100 i have ever made. i think i'd rather have blown it on skittles and i don't even like skittles. the river surfing was fun though. the rapids we went down were situated in a really beautiful area and it was a good time. we also got pizza at the end.

queenstown itself is touristy but quite nice. they have built it into a cooler version of most colorado ski towns. the nights we were (2 of 3) there we spent on the wharf in a little town square type of area. each night had live music which was pretty good (especially the violin/acousitc guitar/and single drum combo that seemed to be playing irish folk tunes).

my two best meals in nz so far came from a burger joint called fergburger. they only serve hamburgers and they are fantastic. i also got ice cream from the same place on two consecutive nights and it was fantastic. i don't think i had tried dark chocolate and chili ice cream previously (though i've had it in chocolate bars and it is wonderful) but it is my new favorite. wow.

didn't go a whole lot of hiking but we did do a 1 hour hike to the top of a hill where they run the gondola. it was pretty nice and much more scenic than had we only taken the gondola.

there are a couple of things i would still like to do there but i think i will wait until later in the semester.

the drive to queenstown was a bit long (a bit over 4 hours, some of this time added by the slowness of the van) but beautiful. i drove the entire trip so i didn't have a whole lot of time for looking around but what i saw was phenomenal, especially an area i believe is called the fruitlands in the southern center of the south island. this is my favorite area thus far. though the landscape isn't so severe here, i think its gentle beauty is by far the most appealing part i have seen. it consists primarily of a series of large hills on either side of the road with wide, sloping and uneven valleys in between. the grass varied from a vibrant green to a dry amber that reminded me a bit of texas. interspersed throughout are large ponds, a lake, and some creeks and rivers. as you move further along towards dunedin, you come across large orchards where you can pick your own fruit.

though it was a fun weekend i was pretty glad to come back to a decent bed (e.g. not hardpacked dirt) and a shower (not the sink of a shopping mall).

-keaton