The sibling arrived last Friday. It's been wonderful to see him again; I missed him lots. And it doesn't hurt that I got those lovely words I was hoping for: "It looks like you lost a ton of weight."

I shouldn't need to hear it, since I already knew I had to have lost weight considering the fact all my pants want to fall off if I don't wear a belt, but it's still nice to hear it.

We're heading to Abel Tasman National Park later today, which is actually one of the few places in NZ I wanted to see and hadn't yet. So that'll be cool. Oh, and we went out on a boat yesterday and saw all sort of water birds, seals and a pair of dolphins. Good times, good times...

Flights home are now all booked. Less than two weeks before I'm back in Texas. And I have to say, I'm not really sure how I feel about it; I've been fluctuating between excited and dreading it. No doubt about it, New Zealand has been good to me, and while I want to get back to my dog and my friends, I'll still miss it here. It may not be "home", but it will always have a special place in my heart.

I have two of my three flight segments booked to head back to the States from New Zealand next month. I bought my ticket from LA to Austin several days ago, when I booked my brother's trip here. Tonight I set the date on my open return ticket from Auckland to LA - not only will the sibling be stuck with me on a backpacker tour for 12 days, but he'll be stuck next to me on the 12 1/2 hour flight over the Pacific.

Now I just have to get my flight from Christchurch to Auckland taken care of, and I'll be all set. Bro may manage to get away from me for that short 1 1/2 hour flight - maybe. We'll see.

Bwahahaha....

And I do mean "looks" in the aesthetic sense here.

I've been trying to lighten my bag, since me staying in one place for three months didn't really help me keep my possessions containable in one backpack, large though it be. Even after storing a bag with a friend, getting rid of clothes that I didn't need anymore, sending home a package (good think I love my winter coat, since the package containing it cost me over $100 to send back), and throwing out any bit of packaging, paper or whatnot I could, my backpack still weighs a ton. Not enough to be oversized for the plane, but enough that my back complains whenever I make it haul the sucker.

A sad amount of weight is held in my toiletry bag. Not cosmetics, but moisturizers, facial cleansers, hair product, dental care, contact care, etc. And even that I've gone through and purged what I could bring myself to part with, which admittedly wasn't much.

In an effort to save space and weight, when I ran out of my last bottle of body wash, I decided to go ahead and buy a bar of soap instead. I even spent a bit extra and bought the fancy-schmancy goats' milk soap with aloe vera from a stall at the Arts Centre Market, rather than a plain ol' bar of Dial (or the NZ equivalent, anyway) from the supermarket.

I'm not impressed or pleased.

My poor skin is drying out - even with the application of body lotion once a day, and even more than it would be because of the cold weather. The bar doesn't produce nearly enough lather, and I have to keep resoaping my bath puff. Plus it's made a mess in my bag; I started keeping the soap in a baggie to avoid this, but it's already too late, and it means the bar never really dries out, so there's a bunch of soap residue getting left in the baggie. Plus, I can already tell the bar won't last as long as a bottle of body wash does.

I liked the idea of using something more environmentally friendly and without packaging, but I think it's just not going to work out. So back to the body wash I'll go, and I'll just have to make sure I recycle the packaging. Ah well, at least I tried. *sigh*

So I'm sitting here, waiting from a podcast to finish downloading (and praise be to VH1 for offering Best Week Ever as a free podcast - have to get my pop culture fix somewhere so I don't feel completely cut off from home), and killing time online. I was checking My Yahoo, and just for grins, I decide to look at my horoscope. Believe it or not, I hadn't checked it in ages. Lo and behold, here's what it told me today:

You want to live your life your own, but are you willing to pay the price? Being independent means that sometimes you have to be ready for your reputation to be bruised a little bit -- but wouldn't you rather be known as someone who occasionally breaks the rule than as someone who always does everything they are told to do? Stop making choices based on how it will make you look in the eyes of others. Just go your own way and accept the consequences.

Funny, but for the last couple of days I've been contemplating what role I was willing to have certain people play in my (quite possibly new-and-improved) life once I get back home. Some changes will get made, some radical, some minor, but changes nonetheless. So this is one of those times where the horoscope actually speaks to me - admittedly, while being wonderful and general. But I think it's sound advice regardless of when you were born.

And all it takes is a bit of wind and water to wreck them. Though, to be fair, I didn't have any really solid plans for the rest of my trip, other than having my brother join me in late October for a bit, and that's still happening. But since Ike apparently did a number on my roof, I can't come home skint (or broke, for those who don't speak Brit/Kiwi) like I was pretty much planning to.

So, no running off to Australia for a couple of weeks like I had planned. No checking to see how much it would cost to hop through Fiji on the way back to the US. And no guided Milford Track walk. And instead of maybe staying until early December, I'll head back with my brother.

Funny thing is, while I can't claim to be thrilled about changing my plans, I'm sort of relieved, too. I've been ready to go home for a couple of months, off and on, so I'm sort of glad to have a reason outside myself to head back. Besides, it's more than past time for me to start being better about my money, so this is a good exercise in being a bit more frugal. (And I had just had this conversation with myself yesterday while hiking up to the observatory just down the road, where I was promptly tempted to buy a lovely replica astrolabe - which I had to forcibly remind myself I had no need of, and the money would pay for several meals, which I will need. But I was still sorely tempted. Some habits will take a while to break, methinks.)

I needed to learn the lessons I have here, and I'm sure some of them are still processing. But I'm ready to get back and get on with the rest of my life - and until I do, I'm just sort of in a holding pattern. It's time to move forward, and I'm actually excited to do so. And it's actually been a long time since I've felt that way.

If you've been around long enough, you may (or may not) recall that, while I tend not to be terribly vain about much, I am vain about my hands. I have a thing about hands anyway, and I really think mine are attractive. My fingers are long without looking freakishly so, my nails are a good shape, and overall, I just like them and try to take care of them.

Well, I knew when I started the housekeeping job that the nails would have to go, which was fine. I had managed to break two of them just hauling my backpack off and on the bus when I left Christchurch, so they were going to have to get cut down anyway. But oh, little did I know...

Even though they're short, my nails are still suffering. I haven't had them peel in ages, ever since I discovered that a bit of petroleum jelly on the cuticles each night does wonders. But they're peeling now, and looking all kinds of scuffed. My cuticles have gotten ridiculously dry, even with said petroleum jelly each night and using hand cream like it's going out of style. But starting last week, we changed how we wash the bathtubs - and the scrub brushes came out.

You see, we would just spray on and wipe off the cleaner before - I'd still ding myself every once in a while, but not too badly. And while I know the scrub brushes do a much better job cleaning, I have no managed to seriously bang up my knuckles. Like, all of them are now missing at least a little skin. Both the ones at the middles of the fingers and at the bases of the hands. And because if I can get a bruise, I will, the dings all have their own bruising around them, too. So not only are they red, they're also blueish-purple, too. I've actually had to start knocking on doors using the small knuckles at the tops of my fingers, because it hurts when I knock normally.

At least we've gotten some new brushes in that have longer handles, with which I don't do myself quite so much damage, but my hand vanity is still suffering like you wouldn't believe. Only three and a half more weeks to go or so, and then this will all be over. At least until I get home and have to seriously clean my house that hasn't been cleaned in, oh, five months and a bit right now...

Sadly, this will probably be a recurring theme around here for the next four weeks or so. But there are bits here and there that I just have to share.

Quick warning, the following is suitable for mature adult audiences only:

Back on my first or second day, the assistant manager came to me and the person I was working with because she'd had to pull a bedspread from one of the beds and wanted us to be the ones to remake the bed once it had finished in the wash.

"It looked like someone had come all over it," she says. "And by come, I mean..."

"Yeah, I know what you mean," says I, quickly interrupting her. I already had far more of a mental picture than I wanted at that point.

This exchange struck me as sad for a couple of reasons. Firstly, let's face it, there's really only one way she could have meant what she said - we're in a hotel, after all. Secondly, she saw this when she was checking the rooms after the room attendants had finished cleaning. So this means the other girls didn't have a problem leaving the bedspread in that state for the next check-in to use.

Can you say "Eww..."?

Though to be fair, I saw their room after they moved out. They really may not have seen a problem with the state of the bed. The room was pretty vile, as were the dirty dishes stacked in a corner from at least a week and a half prior. It's sad when the worst room to clean belongs to another housekeeper.

Anyway, next time I have intimate relations in a hotel, I won't be doing so on the bedspread. Not that I was particularly likely to do so before this, but I sure as heck wouldn't now.

(And don't ask, I won't be telling where I'm working. At least, not while I'm still here... But on the plus side, as I said, the cleaners in question have since moved on to frighten a whole new geographical demographic.)

Okay, there was also a certain lack of fitness involved, but mostly it was because I just wasn't willing to get myself hurt for a game.

Who knew cleaning could be such a dangerous activity? (Well, summerhawk probably did, but I didn't.) After a week and a half of doing hotel housekeeping, this is the state of my knees and shins.

To be fair, the big bruise is from me tripping and falling on the (raised) sidewalk when going to do my own laundry, but there were bruises on my knees even before I made them worse. Oh, and it's been almost a week since I fell, BTW. The bruises make shaving my legs all kinds of fun, let me tell you.

Should be interesting to see what I manage to look like after I go skiing - which should be a week from Saturday, assuming I can get the weekend off. A friend is coming down from Christchurch and is willing to join me on the bunny slopes. Should be fun! Besides, if I do damage myself, there will be someone who can contact my brother for me.

A quick update:

I left Christchurch about a week and a half ago, and now I'm in a wee alpine village working as a housekeeper in a hotel. While the pay isn't all that spectacular, on the plus side, I do a lot more physical activity than I usually do in my sedentary office jobs, so I'm hoping this will help me get in shape. The in-house gym helps, too; I've already been twice in the last week. (I know it's not that impressive, but since I can't recall the last time I went to the gym, that's a good record for me.)

And today I discovered that a demi-bra isn't the best choice when you have to do a lot of bending over to make beds. Do with that little nugget of info what you will.

I've also been doing a decent amount of afternoon strolls, which was part of why I wanted to come here. I'm hoping it'll be good practice for the Milford Track that I want to do before I head back to the US. I haven't gone every day, but most of them. I started out today, but then realized I was just beat. (Last night was one of the gym visits, and I had to move rooms earlier in the day, so there was a lot of hauling and stair climbing involved.) But I still did about a hour or so - not great, but better than nothing.

The biggest challenge has been boredom. There's not a lot to do around here, though I am hoping to try my hand - err, legs may be the better body part to use here - at skiing. I need to do it quick, though, since season will be over the end of next month. There's a good field for beginners near here, though, so I have high hopes.

Speaking of, hope all is well with you all. I have occasionally checked in, but I've been quite the slacker when it comes to comments. Sorry about that!

Sorry to be scarce lately - I got a rather nasty surprise in the last phone bill on the internet charges, so I've been minimizing my surfing at home as much as I can. But I am still alive, even if I did jump off a bridge. I've got about two weeks in Christchurch, then I'm off to somewhere else. I'm still trying to decide where that somewhere else is going to be, though. I do still need to work for a while longer, so it'll depend on where I can grab a job. But I'll figure it out - I've done most of this trip by the seat of my pants, but I've been settled long enough here that I've kind of forgotten how liberating it was to travel without having a plan.

So, I haven't been checking in because I don't care - I haven't been checking in because I'm cheap. Hope everyone is well, and I'll hop on the free Wi-Fi at the library later in the week and get caught up. Cheers, guys!