Cat Stevens

1. It's annoying how lots of great acts only come to Auckland and Christchurch. Stupid Wellington stadiums.

2. Would he be playing his cool old stuff or his weird new stuff?

Cheaters

I was reading through a class set of essays that count for internal credits. I found two that had cheated and copied hunks out of essays they'd found online. Idiots. At first I was thinking 'Wow - nicely put - we didn't cover that in class'.... and eventually that turned into 'Hmmm - come to think of it, that's not actually addressing the right topic, and I don't remember her draft being that good.'

Nice to know I can confidently pick a cheat (the two I was suspicious about quickly turned up as essays in google searches) and that our internal checking systems work.

But not nice that two pretty decent kids thought that was their best option. Those won't be fun conversations tomorrow. They coulda just been like the rest of the class and written mediocre essays full of errors that failed for solid and ethically sound reasons. That would've taken minimal effort.

Busy Weekend

I feel like I've been busy this weekend. I haven't had time to do my down-time stuff like shuffling around the mess in my room and watching stuff I taped on MySky. Not good! And I'm super-tired tonight.

All brought upon by myself, mind you. And a lot of my current lethargy is to do with eating crappy but yummy food while socialising. Bready goodness and pizza and pancakes and caramel slice.

I might go and eat a carrot right now. The fact that I didn't brush my teeth properly this morning because someone was in the bathroom when I got up isn't helping either.

Crafting

I should think more deeply about the act of crafting. We had a loosely defined craft afternoon yesterday. It was fun. Though, for my own sense of pride I have, when in the company of manly-men, referred to it as a Project Group rather than a Craft Circle.

My step-mother belongs to a group called Yack and Tack, which is a bunch of ladies who get together and quilt and gossip and stuff. They drank one of my dad's best bottles of wine once. It has become a thing of legend through its retelling.

People did things from baking scones to building model planes (guess who) or making jewelry or putting photos in a photo album. I made a ladder for leprachauns (a wall hanging ladder thingie that I haven't fully decided what I'll do with yet).

Is it the comfortable atmosphere of people in their own little zones, ocassionally chatting to each other, but focussed on their own projects as well that makes it a less demanding social interaction?

Or is it that people doing creative things are inherently happier?

Something about them is just nice. I like it when a social event has a tangible outcome.

Taking Short Cuts

Rewind Time, Please. Give me back my hair!

I often leave the hairdressers with great trepidation. I am an 'adventurous' hair client in that I often let my hairdresser do what he likes. I'll give him a basic length I'm willing to go to and he goes nuts from there.

Sometimes it works out great.

Sometimes I get a little worried.

Today I'm a little worried.

Maybe it'll grow in and look better when it's a little longer.....

I'm looking back at photos from my road trip earlier this week wistfully.... so much glorious hair.... no fringe...... why didn't I just ask for a trim this time?

Sigh.

* * *

.... to Cheer Myself Up....

I got some nice clothes today. That cheers me up. Yay for sales at Rex Royale and Andrea Moore! Bring on American Idol tonight. I got something called a 'rosebud' skirt. I like it. It kinda has petal folds at the front.

I'm loving yogurt at the moment.

* * *

Local Loyalty

For consistency and taste you really can't beat my local cafe, Salvation. I had a salmon bagel in town at Ernesto's and it was by far inferior to my local. My local toasts it and has capers to make it taste yummier.

* * *

Medial Mystery - Modern Society's Perils on Sensitive Skin

I have this patch of eczema on my hand. It's kinda down palm-side by my little finger on my right hand. My googling skills has diagnosed it as 'pompholyx' eczema.

It's a certain type of eczema that has little blistery bubbles under the skin. It can get quite sore.

I've noticed that when I go on holiday somewhere it mostly goes away.

I'm trying to figure out what it is in my daily life that irritates it. The website says it can be irritated by chemicals or cleaners or contact with nickel. Where would I find nickel in my everyday life???

I have a few theories. I seem to have a lot of things that rub against that part of my hand during the course of the day that are plastic or rubber, and it doesn't seem to like this.

Mostly it's my laptop. When I use the mousepad bit and tend to rest my right hand on the edge of the laptop. I've been trying to retrain myself to stop doing this.

Then there's my tooth brush. Sometimes in the morning after I've held my rubber padded toothbrush I start to feel a stinging on my hand. But I use this on holidays, so it mustn't be a major irritant.

Then there's the steering wheel of my car. I mostly use my right hand, which again would explain it only being on my right hand and not my left (as would the others).

Then there are little things, like the rubber grip bit on the Sky remote, which nestles right into that part of my palm. And there's the rubber handle on the kettle.

Why is the world filled with so many rubber things that you hold????

I'm thinking of getting a little fingerless glove to wear on that hand when I'm using my laptop or driving. I already use one rubber glove when I'm doing cleaning around the house.

I'll either look like Madonna, Michael Jackson or a professional ten-pin bowler. I can't lose!

On the Road Again

What if Pac Man was real.... like something from Saw.

Roadies

I find road trips are useful mainly for forming opinions about your home town. I tripped around the North Island and constantly compared things from the weather to banana bread with how they are in Wellington.

Turns out Wellington kinda sucks on lots of fronts. But it's still home.

I'm not a Taupo fan. Have never really seen the appeal, maybe because I don't fish or do a lot of adventure tourism. I go to Auckland infrequently enough that it tends to pleasantly surprise me. I liked what I saw of Whangarei, which I've never been to before. To be fair, I mainly saw the backpackers (which is very plush for a backpackers - the queen stayed there back in the day - $40 each for a double room with a fancy tiled ensuite with bath) and the marina. And they put out a great little magazine about Northland that I picked up and read in a few cafes.

Cass is a great person to road trip with. It's a hard dynamic to get right, but we managed it well. Four nights away and the most stressful bits were when we were driving around Auckland, but we'd gone off the map and couldn't find a motel in peak hour traffic on a Friday night. There was a bit of delerium there but we made it through.

We played it all by ear, booking nothing in advance and changing our plans as we went with no real agenda. Cass is my photo buddy, so we took lots of those along the way. And drank a lot of coffee. And rocked out to cheesy music from the 90s. Sweet.

Weirdos and Backpackers

The weirdest night was in Taupo, at the dodgey backpackers. We decided to give a dorm room a go (since everything else was booked out at both places we'd tried and we, at that point, were determined to do things cheap).

Not realising that it was a room was above a night club. I was on the top bunk and I could still feel the room vibrating til about 1am. Soon after that someone started dumping and smashing crates full of bottles right outside out window as they packed up for the night (and some other truck came to pick them up at dawn, with more noisy smashing). So we figured we might as well sit outside and eat our Doritos and drink wine for a bit, since there was no chance of sleep. Plus we didn't want to have to share with our foreign roomies.

And two creepy guys came up to us. One of them was a Wellingtonian on his own road trip (having recently been made redundant) and the other was the old guy who managed the place. The older guy tried to 'enlighten us' (not that we'd asked him to) and lectured Cassie about various overly personal issues for about an hour. He then turned to me and accused me of thinking he was a loon.

I did think he was a loon, but I euphemistically said, 'Oh, I'm just quite cynical.' He then said he was cynical too and listed lots of conspiracy theories he had heard about (as some kind of illogical evidence that he wasn't a loon). Seeing I was still unconvinced, he said that if he held a person's hand he could tell an amazing amount about them. It was his gift.

My hand stayed firmly under my blanket (it was cold outside, so I had my argyle throw rug on).

He then said, 'Let me guess some things about you.' I didn't really agree but he started anyway.

'You're from a private school.' Cassie actually guffawed at this. I shook my head and smugly said, 'You're wrong.' Undefeated, he went on to guess that my parents had wanted me to go to private school. Again, Cassie guffawed. She has heard about the liberal Judges. Two strikes. He gave up at this point. I was glad I had bummed him out. The guy was weirdly arrogant and annoying. And just plain yuck.

Cassie reckons it was my argyle blanket that put his psychic powers off. Made me look preppy.

After that guy finally left (with the parting comment that 'You should never lend your chainsaw or your girlfriend to a mate - because they'll both come back f***ed') it was just us and the Wellington guy, who by comparison seemed quite sane.

He had in the meantime left and come back with more Harvest cider (all class). He admitted that he'd driven to the super market on his bike. Drunk driving - sexy. He said he'd scored some pot and offered us some. We declined. He said that he knew where a great hot pool was that we could go to on Spa Road. We declined.

Because I was polite (and really because we had nowhere else to go because of the disco going on below our sleeping beds) he seemed to think we liked him. When he found out Cass was married he actually said, 'Well, no use sitting here then' and moved across to sit beside me. Eventually he asked me out to dinner once we were back in Wellington. I made some kind of uncommital noise and changed the subject.

When he could tell we were ready to leave because it was so cold outside we had no feeling left in our lower limbs, he bravely asked for my number.

I gave it to him. Not because I liked him at all. I didn't. I'm just really rubbish at turning people down in those situations. And I even gave him the right number, because I hate lying. I won't actually go on a date with him though. I can be crueler when it's not to his face! But the guy was an unemployed pot-head who drives drunk..... he surely doesn't think those are selling points to a private school girl like myself......

The next morning, after two of our room mates got up at the crack of dawn and woke us up too... I leaned down to Cassie's bed and whispered, 'Let's get the hell out of Dodge - before the crazy people wake up and find us again....' and we high tailed it out of there.