Mahalo – Dec 2019 Update
Kia Ora!
December has been a whirlwind of activities and a great end to the year 2019. We said our last goodbyes to our St. Louis friends and family at the beginning of the month, Dagmar quit her job, we moved out of our apartment, visited our parents in Ohio and Oregon, and spent New Year’s in Honolulu.
Saying goodbyes
I had lived in St. Louis for 6 years and have been blessed with being in a close community of friends and family over that period. This included my sister and her kids, my coworkers, old college friends, and my tennis pals. Part of the idea of writing this blog is to kind of take them all with me, in a sense. They’ve all welcomed me into their lives and have shown great support for our new adventures in New Zealand. I would be so lucky to find such an awesome community like this wherever Stefan and I end up!
Moving out
One of the most eye-opening experiences I’ve had to date was getting rid of my ‘crap’ while packing up for our trip. We had only lived in our small apartment in St. Louis for 1.5 years and yet I had about 3 carloads of crap to give away to Goodwill. Even more embarrassing was the fact that 90% of that crap was mine and not Stefan’s. Needless to say, one of my goals for 2020 was not buying so much crap which shouldn’t be so hard, given that I will be living out of a suitcase and a backpack for the entire year!
I was also lucky to sell my car in such a short notice. It was a Ford Focus hatchback with a broken driver’s side door handle (someone tried to break in to it years ago and I never got it fixed) and 130K miles on it. It wasn’t a desirable car, but I was lucky to find someone who was willing to buy it anyways! I named this car Penny and it fit her when I eventually came to the terms that she was worth a penny for all the times she broke down. Even then, it was of sentimental value to me because she had been with me since undergrad so naturally I took a photo with her.
Visiting our parents
After leaving St. Louis, we drove to Ohio to visit my parents. They were so happy to greet us, especially when they noticed we had more of our ‘crap’ for them to keep while we were gone. We had a great time hitting with my dad’s robot ping pong machine, a cool contraption which feeds you endless balls.
From there, we took a plane over to Portland, Oregon, where Stefan’s parents picked us up to take us to their place. Unfortunately, I had come down with a cold and stomach issues for a couple of days, probably due to the stress of moving – but it was nothing a binge-watching session of “You” on Netflix couldn’t fix! After that, though, Stefan and I had a great time meeting up with a couple of his college mates, playing Scrabble with his parents, hiking, and eating lots of yummy traditional German food made by Stefan’s mom. We also had a great time skiing on Christmas day. This was only my third time skiing, and I felt it when I got to the top of Marshmallow Slope and almost soiled myself with fear of going down it. I think my fear never really subsided throughout the day, unfortunately, but I think it just means that I need to go skiing more often? With that said, we were downright spoiled those last few weeks of the year from both of our moms’ cooking and just told ourselves that we needed to “fuel up” for our rough year ahead!
Visiting Hawaii
From Portland, Oregon we flew to Honolulu, Hawaii where we had the best luck with the weather. We only had 24 hours for our layover to New Zealand, but we were able to walk along the beach, eat some poke bowls close to the pier, and experience the best shaved ice of my life. The next morning, we took some bikes to the Diamond Trailhead where we hiked to the top of the trail. The photos don’t do the place justice and Stefan and I are already thinking of making our next layover through there again!
As a farewell to 2019, I am listing off our top 7 favorite things from the year:
1. No more long distance!
Stefan and I had been doing the long distance thing for almost 4 years and it was getting to be old! Anytime anybody mentions long-distance I tend to get into a sour mood because of how bad it was for me at times but now it’s all worth it. I am so looking forward to doing all of our adventures together instead of apart 🙂
2. Joey.
Joey is my friend Dot’s dog. I first dogsat him when he was a puppy and he was such a cute one too. We also dogsat him a couple of times when Stefan was here and even though he pooped everywhere and barked at everything, he was such a fun addition while we had him (don’t listen to Stefan’s opinion on that last part). We also do our own “Joey” voice as if he is still with us because he just does the funniest things sometimes like stockpile tennis balls under the bed like a prepper getting ready for the apocalypse.
I found bullet journaling while skimming through Barne’s and Noble notebook section and I am so glad I did! At the time, I was going through a stressful period at work and needed a method of organizing my to-do lists and thoughts in a manner that fit me — and normal agendas didn’t seem to do it. I’ll try to write a post about how I set up my “bujo” for 2020 in hopes that it will help others organize their thoughts as much as it did for me!
4. SheFit and ThirdLove Bras (cause happy Dagmar is happy Stefan)
I’ve always had trouble finding good bras and it caused me discomfort and even back pain at times, especially when doing high-impact exercises. These bras have literally changed my life!
5. Kerbal Space Program
Stefan’s version:
Stefan has gotten really into the commercial spaceflight revolution this year. This included burning through multiple non-fiction books, writing articles for The Mars Society, a non-profit dedicated to promoting the exploration and colonization of Mars (you can find a list of the articles he’s written here), attending a conference for that same organization, and gobbling up all the information put out about the 50th anniversary of the moon landing (his favorites were the BBC’s 13 Minutes to the Moon and a live stream of the Apollo 11 capcom radio which played in real time uninterrupted over the course of several days). All of this was secondary to the time he spent playing Kerbal Space Program, however. This is a video game where you take the role of little green frogmen and their space agency in order to design, build, and fly rockets. It’s all very much based on real science, and Stefan about as much time playing the game as he did reading about the details of actual rocket science in order to figure out how the heck to design his ships such that they wouldn’t spiral out of control and explode every time he flew them. Before playing this game, he had never really thought about how you take something from the ground on Earth and put it on the ground of another celestial body. But now he can talk your ear off with all kinds of technical mumbo jumbo like “delta-V,” “specific impulse,” “apoapsis/periapsis,” and more!
TLDR: This is Stefan’s thing. All I know is that it is a computer game based on building space shuttles and sending them to other planets 😛
6. Detective Grimoire – Tangle Tower
Stefan and I have recently been playing point-and-click computer games and stumbled upon the Detective Grimoire series. It is created by two UK brothers who are part of SFB Games. I was so impressed with the characters and animation that I had to put it on this list.
7. Hawaii
We only spent 24 hours in Hawaii, but man did it make an impression on us! The beaches are so incredibly beautiful and the weather was not so bad either. We are wanting to visit some not-so-touristy spots sometime so if you have any suggestions on where to visit, let us know!
Till next time!