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Nine days after getting back from NZ, I finally have heat back in my home. After a couple days of jury-rigging, the furnace gave up the ghost on Saturday. I spent Sunday coming up with ways to keep the pipes from freezing, and now I’ve got a brand-new furnace installed. All it took was a few days of suffering with the cold (and several thousand dollars)!

In other news, I’m having a little trouble with FrontPage’s FTP, so I can’t send up the first few days of the NZ slideshow. But it’ll be up soon, and then you can wade through pix of the most beautiful place on earth.

In today’s Washington Post, Everett Ehrlich writes a great piece about the way the Internet (and accompanying information revolution) has changed politics. He writes about it much better than I did, back in November.

Thanks to Mickey Kaus for pointing this one out.

My buddy Adam woke me up after 4 hours of sleep (I was crashed out on his living-room sofa), following a drunken Saturday night in NYC, to let me know that Saddam Hussein got nabbed by the U.S.

He’s calling all his friends & family now. Here’s a great quote:

Adam: “Turn on the news . . . No, Brent, it’s not about Nomar!”

It was great to see the reactions of the Iraqi press at the conference. They must be partying like it’s 1999 out in Baghdad. Wonder if the BBC’s going to refer to it as the “kidnapping” of Saddam.

Adam’s hoping that the guy at the press conference who they keep showing making the “first down” sign gets a job in the NFL. He just handed me a glass of champagne.

My furnace is working again. My filling is repaired. My fridge now has spicy Thai chicken sausages. My magazine’s big issue is almost wrapped up.

(My New Zealand pix via Flickr)

Are you a fan of the films of Hal Hartley? Well, Hal’s a fan of Paul West’s The Immensity of the Here and Now: a novel of 9.11 (which I recently published)! Here’s what Hal had to say about the book:

“It’s a beautiful and penetrating evocation of the confused emotions and intellectual turmoil the whole 9.11 event brought into being, a mood I had no name for.”

So do me (and yourself) a favor and buy the darn book.

Home at last: 10,000 miles in 24 hours, with 19 hours of flight time.

I landed with a busted filling and terrible weather, and when I walked in the door I discovered that the furnace had shut off days ago. This meant the house was around 40-45 degrees (5-7 degrees C to my metric buddies). I’ve spent the last two days trying to get it up and running. I think it’s working now, but even the repair guys who showed up today (responding to my “emergency” call Saturday night) were befuddled by the inability of the pilot light to stay lit.

I’ve been optimizing images from the trip, and hope to have a slideshow set up by this weekend.

I’m sitting in LAX right now, waiting about 90 minutes for my flight back to Newark. This follows 2 hours from Queenstown to Auckland, and 12 hours from Auckland to LA. I’m one tired little zombie, I tellsya.

Moreover, after all my macho adventures of the past two weeks, I busted a tooth eating a muffin during breakfast on the Auckland flight. I mean, seriously: helicopters, bungee-jumps, mountain hikes, drunken Australians, and I get my ass kicked by a blueberry muffin?

Good thing I’m a new man…

Sure, I’ve taken a helicopter ride up the side of a glacier, climbed a mile-high mountain, jetboated the Shotover canyon, and bungee-jumped off a 155-foot platform, but nothing prepared me for the experience of my last night in New Zealand: drinking with a bunch of Australian guys.

I have a newfound respect (and fear) for that country…

(My New Zealand pix via Flickr)

Just finished the Ben Lomond Summit hike: about 11km, going up a peak over a mile high.

In the last hour, the wind was ferocious. The gusts blew me sideways on the rocks. It was like the whispers of the creator.

I’ve never felt so drained nor so filled.

(My New Zealand pix via Flickr)

The tour wrapped up last night. Now I have two days in Queenstown, during which time I’ll take a lengthy hike, sit out by the water (Lake Wakatipu), and not drink. I’ve consumed more beer in the last 10 days than I have in the previous two years. That’s what you get for hanging out with Australian guys…

(My New Zealand pix via Flickr)