I sat my restricted driver licence test yesterday, at the grand old age of 28. The timing though not deliberate, seems apt.

Young guys in their cars statistically die more often between 16 and 25, and I’m past that. Rock stars die at 27, so  I’m free of that obstacle too. In more ways than age.

I was always convinced when younger I’d die in a car accident - my suspicion was it wouldn’t be whilst I was in a car, but cycling or jaywalking, but I figured with accident rates as they are for young guys, my rock star ambitions and the fact I grew up in a car-less family in a flat city, I’d be better off not getting behind the wheel too soon.

Still, there was never any conscious decision to wait this long - I began learning in 2003, with lessons from Rob - as a part of my post-freakout/Aropax, get in line phase - which never got beyond practise drives around Flagstaff. The theory was if we (I) hit anyone, the family would either be nice and rich enough to handle it, or evil and rich enough for us to be doing the universe a favour. Then again, getting to speed where injury was even a possibility was a problem, with my inept gear-changing skills.

I barely touched a steering wheel again till late last year, when Parker’s impending arrival, the realisation I had a real job, being past 27 and Tariqa’s … encouragement, got my motivation back up. 

I ran out of money a couple of times, and had to cancel what I thought would have been my last lesson - driving on busy motorways, lane changes and parallel parking - because Parker decided to arrive a few days earlier than we expected. That night was my first time driving by myself, which despite the disaster of getting completely lost, gave me the confidence I could actually make a car go forwards in the direction I wanted it to, etc.

Now, after spending a couple of months sometimes bussing, sometimes driving to work with the well-rehearsed (in my mind) ‘But officer, I’m 28 - I have a family - I’m not some 15-year-old hoon, I’m just trying to get to work,’ spiel ready to go, I have my restricted licence. The testing guy was a dick (’For the love of god, look out!’ when I was travelling 30km/h down an empty road towards a deserted pedestrian crossing), but gave me a pass, despite not saying a single nice thing about my driving skills from the time we met till the time we parted (where he took care to lock his door, but left the window wide open). 

I was driving home today in heavy lunchtime traffic, and realised, holy shit - I’m an Auckland commuter, in my own car, driving home from work to my family, listening to the Rolling Stones and Floyd on a Friday afternoon with the window down. 

In my defence there are no buses at 4.30am for my morning commute, and even if there were, I’m sure they’d still find a way to take 45 minutes to get to Eden Terrace. And I was listening to Bis and the Talking Heads, which are still cool. Aren’t they?

Mirrored from Radio Over Moscow.

I’m reading a book at the moment (Shock! Horror! But I’ll have you know I used to read like… some kind of reading… machine…), Alex James’ autobiography, Bit of a Blur. It’s entertaining, but worthless if you want any kind of insight into Blur’s songwriting and recording processes.

As a result I’ve been relistening to Blur’s catalague (I’m not so sure about my ‘listen to every song on my iTunes in order of shortest to longest’ idea anymore), and I have to say because I had such crappy stereos and headphones as a kid, I never realised what an awesome bassist Alex is.

It’s easier to read on a bus than it is walking, which is one advantage of living out here in Avondale. The other, I suppose, is that we miss the new motorway by a kilometre or two, give or take.

In other news… Parker did his first tummy-to-back roll today! Then wouldn’t stop doing them.

Mirrored from Radio Over Moscow.

After spending all that time setting up the new Radio Over Moscow website, I was forced to relocate to another server… a few hours’ effort later, and here it is! Wooo. It does mean the posts I made before moving here aren’t here, but they can be found here and here, stored at good ol’ Livejournal.

Home sick from work after being stricken with a flu of sorts, probably resulting from the stress of moving and the crapness of food you tend to eat when things are packed and in the way.

Sister has been up mooching our bandwidth, Parker is good, house is large(r), nose is runny. Not much else to report at this stage…

Mirrored from Radio Over Moscow.

Mirrored from Radio Over Moscow.

No, not the music festival - it’s the direction we’re moving in sometime in the next few weeks. Yep, we score d a nice new place that I think qualifies being described as ‘nice’ ’cause it has carpet, is relatively new, open-plan, roomy and as far from the noisy neighbours as possible without being in West or South Auckland.

Well, I hope. I delivered the notice to our property manager today, and her first words were ‘but they’re moving out!’ and I replied, ‘well, so are we…’

Too little, too late I suppose. But really, we do need a much larger place - I can’t see Parker learning to walk when within one metre in any direction is a table, a chair, a bucket, a pile of shoes, etc. It’ll be warmer, quieter (I asked about the soundproofing, in a subtle yet sly way of working out if I’d be able to record vocals there), cleaner, etc etc.

I’d be 100% excited if it weren’t for two things: firstly, and least importantly I suppose, I’m afraid I’ll damage my wrist again packing/moving. Physio costs too much, even with a piddly bit of ACC, to keep going back. And secondly, most sadly, we have to give up the cats.

The place’s front door shares a corridoor with other building tenants, and the landlord owns all the apartments, so there’s no chance of smuggling. It’s sad to let them go, but it’s for the best of us humans, particularly Parker.

So if you know anyone cool who wants an awesome cat… let me know. We need to find good homes for them before we move, which will be in the next two weeks most likely. They are really awesome cats, and make good LOLs. Would be good if they went to someone we knew.

Mirrored from Radio Over Moscow.

So, on Tuesday I was about two hours late to work, my alarm having failed and my boss (who was in at 5am, when I should have been) calling the wrong Dan. No one seemed to mind, and I didn't take a break till about 10.50am. The timing was perfect though, cause I got back to my desk to find an email from Tariqa saying her waters had broke, and it was showtime...

My boss dropped me off home, and we made sure we had everything on the list - Tariqa had most of it together, but he wasn't supposed to come till Friday, so we were taken a little off guard. Still, we got it all sorted and left for the hospital. 

We got there just before 12.30pm, and we assigned a room where she had her first contraction - it was definitely on today it seemed. Midwives and doctors looked at things, etc etc, and decided we should go home and come back after rush hour or at the very latest, 5am the following morning. We weren't keen, but they're doctors and we're not, so we started shuffling down the corridoor - where Tariqa let out a massive yell, and we quickly turned around and told them we were staying. 

Just as well too, cause a quick check showed she was almost halfway to giving birth...

In the birthing room (or whatever it's called), there was this machine that had a button that needed to pressed every 15 minutes or so, it would... beep. Not quite Lost's 'saving the world', but hey. And one of the doctors looked like Libby.

He came at 7.27pm, about ten minutes after the midwife who'd helped us through the past few hours had left - she returned though to see him, along with a bunch of paediatricians who did some checks and things, including one where they test his reactions by standing him up and briefly letting him go, which I wasn't prepared for and thought, shit... he was purple and really smooth, like he was made of leather, and was sleeping. He went to sleep in the womb and woke up under a light with a bunch of people sticking things in his mouth and wiping him down, which must've been pretty... bizarre.

After that, I had to get home, so drove by myself for the first time ever - at night, in the rain, getting completely lost and driving on streets I'd never seen before. When I left, I realised I had my L plates on, which would attract attention, so pulled over in what I thought was a parking bay to remove them - but it had no parking lines - turns out it wasn't a parking bay, but a turn off for ambulances. Oops. Hill start, couple of stalls and I was back in traffic, eventually taking a U-turn on Great North road to be about 45 min late home.

So yeah, that's an edited highlights. Since then he's slept a lot, and we've had trouble getting him awake and feeding - pretty much the opposite problem I thought people had with babies. We've discovered tonight he's quite partial to the bottle, which is handy as a backup.

Umm, yeah. Really tired. Not a lot of sleep. 

 I've got a CD of Beatles tunes done by little kids, Dark Side of the Moon & Sgt Peppers posters on the wall, a couple of keyboards lying around and he's half named after Ryan Adams, so Parker should be cranking out some classic music by the time he's five! WOOOO!

I promise I'll post a blow-by-blow story soon.