It is my mum's death-day today.

I remember a really hard day on about the fifth anniversary when Dad had started dating his now-wife and he forgot about it. He had previously taken us to put flowers on her grave every December 14th. I had to go by myself. That made me feel very alone and was a good little illustration of the tensions between old and new.

My mum was a very good woman. She understood my shyness (though she wasn't in the least bit shy herself - she used to shock my brother and I with how brazenly she would strike up conversations with strangers). And she bought me poetry books by British authors when I was little. And she would always make some bits of coconut slice with just chocolate icing (no coconut on top) just for me, 'cause mums know just how you like things. When I was learning to read she wrote a book for me, with pop-up pictures and clues about our house and I had to read it and then go on a treasure hunt until I found my pocket money with the final clue. And I got star stickers for practising the spelling words she'd given me. She was an English teacher too.

Dads are good in their own way, but they're not mums.

23/11

It is my birthday today!

7.50am - Checked Email
I was hoping that today's morning meeting didn't involve me so that I could sleep in. I checked my emails while in bed, but it was bad news. No sleep-in for me! While doing this I noticed a few people had said happy birthday to me on the Facebook.

8.30am - Staff Meeting
I was moaning to the person next to me about having a relief after lunch so that I couldn't go out for a luxurious lunch. She swapped reliefs with me! I got to do a first period art lesson. Art is lovely to relieve! They were sketching each other. I read a chapter of my book and walked around making inane comments because I know nothing about art! It was good.

10am - Email
My Asperger's girl emailed me happy birthday - she'd told me she intended to do this, and by gum, she remembered. That was nice. Her birthday is exactly one week after mine, so I will return that favour.

11am - Stuff Quiz
Even though it's my birthday, I didn't do well on the Stuff quiz today. Our scores today ranged from 3-9, which is fairly low. I got 5.

12.30pm - Lunch
I snuck out for lunch with S. - everyone was teaching Period 4. We meant to go to Monteray, but it is open strange hours. To get out of the wind and rain we just went across the road to Simply Paris. It was delightful! Cosy and very French. I had risotto with free sneaky bread that the waitor brought us. He then snuck us an extra dessert to go - he's my favourite new French person! He even put his finger to his lip and said 'Shhhhh!' as he gave it to us, much like a mime.

2.30pm - No Work
I have no urgent work to do so I am watching one of my free online documentaries. Today I'm watching what the US Army has done in terms of trying to censor the depiction of war in films. It's professional development!

8pm - Kebab
I anticipate having my birthday kebab with Michelle et all between netball games. I will have a mixed vegetarian kebab. After my French chocolate pie pudding (which I am eating now) I don't anticipate being very hungry though.

Saturday - Dinner
And then on Saturday I will have my birthday dinner! At the moment it's all lovely people. That should be nice. And then we get to be sad about the politics and Labour losing everything :( Usually the only happy prospect is that Winston will lose, but even that seems unlikely (especially since he has proven he has the ability to rise zombie-like from the dead). The Stuff quiz tells me he is 66 years old (though I got that one wrong).

National does not really care about education. Not in a way that most teachers I know approve of. They tend to make changes based on what decile 10 parents lobby them about and secretly they'd just like to privitise everything.

You'd think that them announcing they're going to pump a BILLION dollars into education (announced somewhat like Dr Evil) would be a good thing..... that's a lot of money.....

But....

They're funding this through sales of SOEs, so it's a one-off deal (and it means that in the same breath they can brag about getting the goverment back into a surplus within three years).

And it's tagged with the scary phrase 'to transform and modernise education in NZ'. Coming from National that sounds ominous. I'm pretty sure they don't value the Arts or learning for the sake of analysis and higher level thinking..... I'm pretty sure they'd be happy with we produced an army of tech-savvy robots ready for the work-force.

I'm not sure what they have in mind, but I'm pretty sure I won't like it. It will involve more faddish 'self-directed learning' (without lowering student/teacher ratios to allow more time for the necessary individual learning programmes). It will also probably involve something that goes away from NCEA and back towards Bursary (I say that on no authority, just guessing because every year they introduce new ways of 'quantifying' achievement, going against the original philosophy of NCEA). They will obviously be more use of computers - but will they realise that computers are the medium, not the message?

As an English teacher, I can't envision how teaching kids to read and write is going to be revolutionised in the next decade or so. I know it's trendy to buy into all the future-learning buzz, but I'm kinda old school. I like it when they read things, and talk about them, and try to articulate their views using words. Sure they can read it on an ereader, and 'talk' about it using a google-doc or skype, and write about it on a blog...... but that's not really revolutionising the core skills and values of my subject. A lot of teachers have already experimented with those kind of things and decided they're ok

I suspect the revolutionary changes will be loosely based around some research done by NZ academics recently. Remember that it seems that academics and Ministry of Education workers have to justify their own existence by proposing research topics these days (rather than providing teacheres with actual, useful support). We have had a glut of it in recent years. Somebody, in a desperate attempt to save their own job, will have come up with some 'new' philosophy with bangs and whistles on it and made us all fill out a survey about it (bribing us with another 'bagel breakfast').

And the government likes to look like it's 'doing' something, so good old Ann will embrace it without a second thought. When questioned, she will point to the 'evidence' that it worked overseas - look, here's a schooul in some American ghetto school that had great success with this (when they were sponsored by Apple and each kid got a free laptop as bribery). If principals and teachers' unions say it's not actually a great new thing, she will ignore them. What do they know? Teachers always tried to make her feel stupid at school, so she decided at some point to never ever listen to them ever again.

Anyhow.

I am dubious.

And worried.

It may also involve remote-learning via hologram teachers. Actually, that's my best case scenario. I could teach from home and not wear pants (like the newsreaders).

I got my big Amazon package today. Lots of books and one DVD! I have read the first 10 pages of The Help and am liking it so far. Read it at Salvation with a soy latte while my washing was in the drier at the laundromat. Now I have all clean linen.

* * *

I like walking at night in Levin. It has a darkness and stillness you never find in the city. The roads are wide. And lemon-trees hang over the fences.

* * *

Today I was virtuous. I....

• went for a walk up Mt Vic and jogged most of the way down (I came back a windy way down Roseneath and kept seeing tradesmen and having to keep jogging past them so as not to seem unfit, when I really wanted to stop)


• did some dishes


• did my washing and dried it (duvet cover included)


• vacuumed and dusted my room (gave all my furniture a coating of wood polish)


• washed my hair (and dried it properly)


• watched Thor on DVD (and might return it only one day late!)


• payed the bills


• ate veges and nuts for my snack (grapes, baby carrots, almonds, cocktail tomatoes, celery, feta)


• hung up all my ironing (am without a basket of ironing in my room for the first time in ages)


• found a butterfly on the floor (from an earring)


• watched the 'Eat' part of 'Eat Pray Love'


• read a little bit of a book


• had a coffee


• had berries for breakfast (with yoghurt)

* * *

People with small children become very obsessed by their bowel movements.

* * *

The thing I liked watching most with the All Blacks was the bit where the ball was on the ground. In the game against Argentina I liked watching all the forwards standing there ready to pounce on defence. I liked to watch them organise the defensive line and space out.

* * *

My new dress is my Mad Men dress. It has a certain other-era quality about it. And it's orange and garrishly patterned. I don't have enough loud patterns in my wardrobe.

* * *

Even though Labour's policies are all superior, they won't get anywhere in the election. It all feels futile.

* * *

My basketball team has its final this week. We are in the C grade (by choice - we could probably be B grade if we really wanted, but we know that in B grade you end up having to play A grade teams as well and that's no fun).

I think we are statistically one of the best defensive teams in our grade. I take pride in that. I think our defence and our fast breaks are our strengths.

* * *

Levin's new sushi bar was good.

* * *

Me and my friend went for a sneaky beer at the Levin Club. It felt like some kind of secret organisation, hidden down a little side-alley. I didn't know anybody, but he pointed out all the people I should remember (or at least people's dads). I felt like a city spy. I always end up walking around Levin thinking 'I'm from here' in case anyone wonders. Nobody ever does.

Day 1 of Tetris retirement is going well. I did still drive to Queensgate, read my book and play basketball, so my OOS isn't as well rested as it could be. But I have severely limited typing and banned Tetris playing.

I was reading an article in Vanity Fair about the guy who created Zygna. And there was a little throwaway bit of narrative that said all the games required no skill, 'except maybe Tetris'. That made me proud. I like to think that puts me on the top rung of the Facebook games hierarchy.

* * *

I was reminded today that I hate hate hate the staff at Cue (Queensgate) with a vengeance. They are so predictably cloying! I'll grant that they are not as snobby as the Lambton Quay staff, but because their shop isn't as busy they harrass the heck out of you. I dread stepping out of my changing room to check the full length mirror because I know I'll be accosting by staff saying how good the dress looks (regardless of how it actually looks). My obvious signs of disengagements like avoiding eye contact and giving monosyllabic grunts in reply to their questions did not put them off either. I resented the fact that I actually found things I liked and had to buy them off them, just in case they're on comission.

It was not their 'charming' and overattentive service that made me buy the dress and belt. It was the quality of the tailoring! And the work-appropriate length of the hemline! And the fact that the belt matched my shoes! So there.

* * *

Our refs at basketball tonight were s***. I told them so many times throughout the game (without the expletive, but it was implied). The other team were pretty much grabbing our arms any time we caught a ball, so we couldn't even raise it to shoulder height to clear it. Constantly. And we quite politely, at first, told the refs to watch out for this. Then we got angrier. And possibly because of this, they called us for ticky-tack fouls down the other end.

The icing on the cake was at the end of the game when the other team had a freethrow. And on the second shot a ball came rolling in from the sideline (some kid had lost control of it). It rolled right into the key and across the baseline under the hoop. I pointed to it and looked at the ref, yelling something like 'Ball! Ball!'. He saw me. And let the game go on. I couldn't go in for the rebound because the ball on the ground was rolling to right where I would have stepped. So the other team got it, and scored on the put-back.

I was quite livid. I asked him why he didn't stop the game and he said, 'I only have to stop it if players are in danger.' How much more dangerous can it get than a ball rolling into the key as a freethrow goes up and six players are about to run in for a rebound????

So while we won the semi-final (actually reasonably convincingly) we were all pretty pissed off at the end of the game and I came home and ranted to my flatmates some more (I think they were polite but bored after the first minute or so).

A highlight for me was that I blocked a shot with my left hand, kinda instinctively. I never block with my left hand. But a girl was driving past on that side (to be fair I think I thought she was going to pass the ball, so was just putting a hand in the passing lane, then realised it was a shot and jumped). I was kinda suprised that she had the audacity to dare go in for a layup against me.

I blocked a lot of other shots (they were quite a short team) but the rest were with my right hand.

Ahh, Holidays.

I think my Tetris career has given me OOS. I will have to go into early retirement. The Tetris would will miss me - I was top 500 world-wide. Known primarily for my gutsy defensive game and ingenius use of the blue tetrimino.

I have prescribed myself a day of no computering and just video-watching tomorrow (even driving and book-reading hurt a little bit). I have 'Anti-christ', 'The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest', 'The Kids are Alright' and 'North by Northwest' lined up.

* * *

Another lady of leisure day.

9am - took my car in to get warrant and service at my place near the Basin Reserve. I like them. They're friendly shy sorts rather than bolshy car-guys. I have faith in nerdy mechanics.

9.15 - coffee at the Brooklyn Bakery (I prefer it to Cafe L.). Skim read some of the paper.

10-am - bought some socks at Farmers (overheard a tense conversation between employees that indicated some sort of power struggle) and new conditioner at Rodney Wayne.

11am - bought a fang necklace at Madame Fancy Pants.

11.50am - lemon honey drink at Memphis Belle. Actually a really great drink - came in a little glass jug and had good hunks of lemon in there for the 'homemade' feel and really cheap. Read some of my 'Beatles' book while I was there. The guy working there was really friendly and seemed to know most of his customers as regulars. A lot of people in well worn hipstery clothes in there (mainly in plaid shirts).

12pm - Area 51 sale. Got a few things I may or may not regret. Kate Sylvestor dress for $90 and Huffer shirt for $35. The dress is white. That is why I may regret it. It looks a bit nursy and I am bound to stain it quickly. But I tried it on once before and liked it, so it seemed like fate.

1pm - got car from the garage. Two new tyres and a bulb. The tyres were optional as they only just passed the warrant, but I like to be safe. Again I felt reasonably treated by my mechanics. I'll go back again!

1.30pm - popped into school to do some work that couldn't be done at home (just for half an hour). Managed to only have to say hello to the caretaker, who's nice anyway. I like to sneak in and out unseen.

3.30pm - coffee and a fritata at the Roxy cafe. Both really good - and the fritata was only $7.50 for a mini-meal sized portion. Read some more of my book.

3.50pm - watched Senna. Really enjoyed it. Also enjoyed the Roxy Cinema in general - lots of leg room and nice chairs. And the ambiance is just perfect for a cinema experience - nostalgic music, old movie posters down the hall-way.

6pm - watched the news and dissected Senna with my flatmate, who actually knows stuff about Formula 1 racing and had recommended the doco to me highly.

Package #1 has arrived from Amazon. I'm liking it so far - easy to read and well written. Set at the time when the Beatles were awesome (hence it's titled 'Beatles' - from a Norwegian author and translated into English). I sat in the lounge on the couch in a pool of sunshine and read it yesterday a bit.

I will be happy to lend it out at the upcoming Crafternoon/Bookernoon (bring books to borrow and lend - a friendlibrary). I may have read The Help by then (it's in Amazon package #2). Date is undecided - but me and Michelle and Karen were very excited about the idea of a bookernoon when we discussed it over our post-netball kebabs. She hadn't read The Book Thief so I said she must take that on the plane with her. Michelle hoped she could locate it in her crates of books at home. The Book Thief is also in my #2 order. I've read it but I feel it's one of those books you should own.

* * *

I have walked up Mt Vic two days in a row now. How very motivated of me! I am bloody unfit on the way up (there's a path goes up just before the tunnel on the Hataitai side, but it goes straight up) - the way down is a lot more fun.

Lies.

There was no reading of books.

Instead, I watched The History Boys on DVD with my flatmates. We liked it. I thought it was an interesting take of a few things. I found the teacher in me quite in conflict with the rather sensitive portrayal of Hector feeling up his students and the teacher agreeing to go for 'a drink' with his student at the end.

Maybe I'm just a prude. I don't really like any films that portray a romantic relationship between student and teacher (at high school age, anyhow). The power dynamics are just all wrong. And having taught teens for years now, I just fail to see them as emotional equals. So the dynamics are just all wrong. Very wrong. Makes me totally unsympathetic to the teacher-character.

Last Night

I wanted Thai food. A red curry. Or tom yum soup.
The wind was biting and I only had a cardigan over my summer dress,
which I stubbornly still wear.
I dug my hands deep into the pockets and shrugged down into my scarf.

But the Thai shop was closed. No sign or lights.
Disappointment. No other take-aways seemed quite right
last night.
Burgers seemed too bready. Fish and chips too greasy and yellow.
I decided on a saag curry.

Only females waiting in the shop.
Over the road, the men were getting greasy chips.
We sat, legs crossed, reading months old women's mags.
The woman next to me, in shiny maroon heels
tapped her feet in time to the Indian music.
So did I.
The old Indian lady walked out from behind the counter
to give us our food. Neatly stacked and tied up in plastic bags,
puffed out with steam.
I liked her.

To walk home quicker
I counted my footsteps, in multiples of 6.
I stumbled at 78 and 102. But in no time I was home.
And I'd barely thought of the cold.
Only counting up to 120 in time with my steps
over and over again.

Home to a gas heater, bottle transferred from the barbecue.
And my dark green curry, carefully forked onto naan bread.

And Shortland Street.
And cosiness in late April.

* * *

Small Confession

I have been using someone else's shower gel at work. I like the smell of it. I only use a squirt of it each time. I wonder whose it is.

* * *

Weeding through Memory Lane

I have boxes of things from Dad's house in my car. There is nowhere else to put them right now. I unloaded two of them already.

They had stacks of baby clothes knitted by my grandma (knitting for hypothetical great-grand-children she wished for when we were still children ourselves). And puppets sewn by my mum when we were little. And my dad's 7th form year-book. And my brother's teddy-bear. A genuine 1970s fondue cook-book. And a small white crocheted blanket made by my grandma, which I used yesterday while I was reading (after I'd washed it with my newly bought wool detergent). It has holes just big enough to poke your fingers through.

They were packed by my step-mother and have been in her grandson's flat in Petone for a couple of years (long story).

I haven't seen Ellie (my favourite stuffed animal) or my mother's wedding dress yet. But I think they're in there somewhere. Along with a bunch of crap that has followed me for years and needs to be culled.

And which will make me sneeze.

D add 9 - I DEFY YOU!

I have been practising the chord that stumped me yesterday (it is a good way to procrastinate intstead of marking essays). While my hand is blurry like The Flash, you can see when I deftly move up the fret bar for the D add 9 bastard chord. I WILL NOT BE DEFEATED!

A Mix of Old and New

I love my new little coffee table, 'Bookworm' (TM). Just right for my laptop and some magazines. I had a full sized coffee table in my bedroom and I was always having to shove it out of the way. I have more bedroom furniture ordered from Nood too. Watch this space! A sideboard. Very grownup.

Other People

My flatmate resigned from her job because it was more stressful than it was worth. She works in the education sector.

I can understand her reasoning.

If you're in education, it's generally 'cause you like the kids. Most people who leave a school will say, 'I'm not leaving because of the kids - they're great and I'll really miss them....' with the underlying message being that they're leaving because of the staff or systems at that school.

Stress is other people.

(And kids don't count as 'people' - it's a rite of passage for them to try and rile me and up and keep me on my toes.) Kids never really upset me. I have never cried because of something a kid has said or done - they're almost always transparently hormonal or testing out the limits. It can be explained away.

I like my job in many ways because I work really autonomously. Within a set of rules, I can do what I like, when I like, as long as I follow the right systems.

When other people don't follow the systems at work and when their projects encroach on my reasonably well-planned autonomy, it's annoying. If I stuff up, I'm totally willing to wear it and fix things and not complain. It annoys me when other people's stuff ups ruin my plans.

I hit my wall at work yesterday. I'd had a week full of people pushing their own things onto me - I was having to use all my non-contacts (and some after-schools) doing 'urgent' admin I'd only just received or found out about.

I used the 'f' word.

That's how annoyed I was.

Other people. Bleh.

I think my patience is a bit thin at the moment. I don't know if my work-place is any worse than any others - people are just people.

Luckily my class's plays were so humorously bad that I had a fun afternoon after my 'f-word' lunch.

One group hadn't properly rehearsed their costume changes, so kept exiting the wrong side and having to crawl 'discretely' across the stage in the middle of a scene. And one girl was left on stage by herself for an awkward amount of time, so she just started laughing manically (kinda in character).

Another girl is a great comedic actress, but unfortunately she was playing a relatively serious role (Viola in 'Twelth Night') so during her rehearsals I'd kept telling her to cut out the over-dramatic acting and remember she was supposed to be a servant ..... so somehow that translated in her mind as 'talk in a monotonous robot voice'.

Ah, the comedy of Shakespeare being done by Year 9s. Just as Shakespeare intended it.

* * *

I'm liking 'The Big C' (the TV show).

* * *

Yay for the Hobbit staying in NZ.

Boo for an odd precedent of corporations negotiating specialist treatment from the government. And boo that I am not studying the film industry this year with my class - would have been exam revision gold!

* * *

My cooking hobby continued with a successful ratatouille experiment. Roll over, pilaf, I have a new favourite dish. The only trouble with this one is that cutting up pumpkin is boring and stink. But it felt really healthy and was tasty.

Again my second attempt was more successful (though the first one was good enough) - I roasted the pumpkin a bit more and the taste and texture was superior. Also I cut the red onion up a bit more chunky.

* * *

I was bored the other weekend so reactivated my profile on a dating site. I haven't had any inspiring messages .... but for the first time ever, I got sent a random mean message.

It was really weird. This guy sent a one sentence message saying he didn't like the expression I had in one of my photos (except in words not so nice as that). It was overtly rude, rather than 'cheeky'.

I was taken aback in that a) this is a site this guy was paying to use (so he wasn't a teenager or anything) and b) why would he feel the need to randomly message a stranger that??? and c) if you're going to insult someone, you'd think you'd at least say something better than 'your expression looks dumb in one of your photos'.

So I had a quick look at his profile and saw that he'd come across as really pretentious and had said he was a 'sophisticated' guy and sent back something like 'Wow, can see your claim to be sophisticated is not false advertising'.

Today he sent back another message saying 'Well, you don't look sophisticated in your picture - you look like a retard'.

Maybe Paul Henry is masquerading as a 30-something year old single Wellingtonian now that he has extra time on his hands, trolling dating sites. Maybe he could be my new boyfriend.

Odd.

Today's Song

Today I am playing this song, one of the ones I found a couple of days ago. Notice I did a fancy 'special effect' so it looks like I'm in the olden days. I had to hum to keep the time properly. That's what the pros do! I also had my screen tilted down to focus the camera-thing on Larry, which meant I couldn't really see the lyrics and chords on screen that good.

The hardest things in this song are
a) The Dadd9 chord - you will note I just ignore this and do D instead :) Dadd9 is on the 6th fret and it just slows me down way too much with my beginner skills.
b) The 'dead or alive' bit at the end - there are three really quick chord changes here on DEAD or A LIVE (C/F/D). I messed up the last chord the first time but got it better the second (right at the end).

This is the only take I could be bothered doing because it is very long. YouTube thought I was playing a banjo! Silly YouTube. I would love to play a banjo, though. That would be ace.

THE END

My New Uke - It's not yellow and its name is Larry

As a footnote, if I ever learn to play 'Tapestry' by Carole King I can retire fulfilled (that sucker has 27 different chords in it - that's the most I've seen in any song by miles).

Retail Therapy

So being on holiday in Wellington leaves me open to the temptation of the retail trail. Other people are going for 'treks' but I prefer short walks with coffee stores and bathrooms nearby. I can handle carrying a few store bags, but not a pack.

So that's my first week of holidays.

Chores and shopping.

Today I had an admirably early hair appointment to start the day. I bought it online as part of my year long experiment to find a new hairdresser. I have tried my local salon and three that had $50 online deals. Today it was one right in the city. I was given the choice of 9am or 10am and I went for the latter. I couldn't quite bare the thought of being on a bus with worker-bees. I am a lady of leisure.

My hairdresser was David. The first ten minutes of the appointment I tried to figure out what part of Europe he was from and whether he was gay. He eventually mentioned having a wife and being from South Africa (ok, my accent detective work is not strong). I have an oddly good record of getting all of the non-gay male hairdressers in Wellington.

He did a full consultation with me about my haircare routine. It was shameful and I did not enjoy it. I had dyed my hair in a rush last night (when I called up and realised they had an appointment for me within 24 hours and my hair had about an inch of grey showing - having got a bargain I was not going to be talked into paying extra for a colour job, as the man on the phone had suggested). While I said I was 'happy' with my colour when he asked, he later commented that whoever had done it didn't do a good job and that 'a lot of natural highlights were showing through'. I thought that was a good thing, but his tone suggested otherwise.

I pretended to use more products than I actually do. It felt heathen-like to admit to how little effort I put into my hair. I do use salon conditioners, but last time the hairdresser criticised my choice of using Redken (it's apparently protein based and dries out the hair) so I was vague about the brands this time. I said I sometimes use a 'serum thingie'.

All the while I was sitting in the chair staring at my hair in the mirror. It was hideous. How could I have been going around with this for so long? To be fair, I had dyed it the day before and hadn't had time to dry it properly, so had worn it up for netball and then had another shower and gone to bed. No products, no hair dryer, no straightening and barely even a brush in the morning. I like to come to the appointment as a blank canvas. But admittedly it did look a little mane-like.

Then he said, 'So what do you want today?' I said very confidently (having rehearsed it on the way to the salon on the bus), 'I would like a shoulder length bob - I would like a lot of the length off.'. They like it when you say you want length off - hairdressers are obsessed with taking 'weight' off your hair.

And he said, 'No.'

He said it would be 'wedge-like', much like my hair was as I looked in the mirror. He said I would have to straighten it every day. He seemed to doubt my ability to be this proactive about physical appearance. I meekly said I'd had one before and had managed..... he didn't believe me.

He went into an elaborate description of what he'd do instead and managed to criticise my previous hairdresser several times in the process.

I was convinced though. I do like an assertive hairdresser. My old favourite was much the same (though he did allow me to have a bob - and it was very good). I figure I know bugger all about hair (as evidenced by what I saw in front of me) and he seemed to have some good theories. It sounded drastic enough to at least be different, which at least makes it feel like it was worth the trip.

He described every product used in great detail (a pet peeve of mine, especially since I was a mystery client at Rodney Wayne that time and realised mentioning each brand was part of their check-list). And he commented on my flaky scalp (even physically pointing out the evidence to me at one stage to which I again, meekly nodded my head and apologised). Apparently this is exacerbated by my horrible habit of going to bed with wet hair.

He showed me a simple way to blow dry my hair without having to use a brush. I appreciated that. I watched with quiet interest.

He commented on how quiet I was (another pet peeve - so what if I like to be silent during a haircut? do they all have to small talk? even the men?).

He commented on how it had taken a lot longer to straighten than he thought it would and how it was so thick it made the claw-clip thingie 'groan'. The stubbornness of my hair made me proud.

The end result was ok. I think it'll be good. It certainly is less mane-like. More mullet-like. But mullets are cool now, aren't they?

They tried to book me in for another appointment in eight weeks time (having already told me off for leaving it three months since my last appointment anywhere). I said I'd call them. But then, they have all my details on their peice of paper now, so I'm sure they'll call me first anyway.

I figure if this hair-cut grows in ok I might go back. And if I put a lot of effort into caring for it better he may praise me or pat me on the head or something.

I kinda like an arrogant hairdresser as long as they come through with the goods.

* * *

And then, since my haircut was practially free ($48 - a voucher I'd paid for a few months ago, so it seemed free today) I went shopping.

I bought some more chocolate covered coffee beans from the Kirks sale because they made me feel HAPPY!!!! And I got a new scarf. That may have been a mistake, brought on by the happy beans.

And I got a fat-sweater with birds on it and a demure skirt from Karen Walker. Both under $70 at her sale. They're essentially plain things I could've got from Glassons for all you can see but I feel so much flasher being able to say it's Karen Walker (in my posh voice). Marketing works!

And then I went into Kate Sylvester because she was also having a sale (as was everybody else in town). I like that she has my name. And I like that her things marked 'Large' actually are. I made the mistake of trying on a blazer, just to see what it fit like. It fit real good. Long arms, button in the right place, shiny slip-on lining. So I bought it. Eveyone needs one good blazer, right? The shop lady said I'd wear it all the time. She wouldn't lie to me. It was a little bit on sale. Half price. But half of a very large price. The other things I tried on were under $100. This one wasn't. I hate when you like the most expensive thing you try on.

And that was my shopping day!

Phew. No more shopping for me for a little while.

And I'm off my high horse.



Kids are cute when they just want to silent read. We went to the library today, just to issue the book we're studying as a class. And I told them they weren't to get any more books - just get out the class text and come back to class ('cause we didn't actually have the library booked and I wanted to just pop down quickly to electronically issue them).

And I caught one kid who'd snuck down the fiction end while the rest of the class were queueing at the desk. She'd gotten two more books! BOOKS! For personal reading! She looked so guilty when her friend pointed her rebellion out to me. They were probably about vampires or something.

Getting out extra books is about the weirdest thing I've had to tell a kid off for this week.

Next thing you know, she'll be trying to read it under the desk while she's sposed to be listening to me lecturing! Kids these days.

Maybe I was just using reverse psychology all along. Maybe next lesson I should tell them they are under no cirucumstances allowed to proof read their work. No corrections! No spell-checking!

Partying and Film Festing

I went to a fundraising quiz last night at the police station with my basketball team and some others.

Highlights were
- $5 wines
- unlimited sausage rolls (maybe etiquette was supposed to dictate some kind of limit, but we ignored that)
- I was able to identify Zoe Bell in the picture round - I would not have thought that was one of my trivia talents

The main one, though, is that I won a spot prize. About 50% of the people there did, so the mere fact that I won one is no bragging point. But I was one of the earlier ones.

My table was the 'loud' table (we were called the Jalapeno Hotties) and when the number 39 got drawn I was in the middle of texting someone and didn't hear it. But the girl sitting next to me hit me and yelled, 'That's Becs!' (long story, but that was my name for the night). My table went literally wild and I actually jumped to my feet with both fists in the air.

So I wandered up to the prize table and my eyes went straight to the Smiggles highlighters. Oooooh yeah! Highlighting goodness! I may have already had them in my hot little hand when my eyes glanced at the beauty products hamper. I stopped mid-grab and said, 'Oh, is that one of the choices too?' and yes, it was. Over $150 worth of Trinity products. So I put my $15 pack of highlighters down. What a close call. Toner, moisturiser, cleansing cream and a lip balm! They all want to see me in a few weeks time for an 'after' shot of my skin once I'm using all the fancy schancy stuff.

The next girl at our table who went up chose the $2.49 king size Cadbury's bar (which was not anywhere near the most expensive thing left on the table which still included, for example, big jars of sports supplements or protein powder and bottles of wine). We mocked her a lot. $1.99 on special, even. How much was mine worth? Over $150, is that right?

Then we went to Apartment and one of the girls (the one that hit me) pretended it was her house and everyone there was just visiting. Hours of fun in that premise! We eventually nabbed the bedroom area and lounged on the bed while sipping a yellow version of a rosebud cocktail (more passionfruit and some egg white). Every photo that came up on the flat screen TV she had to pretend was a holiday pic and tell us the story of what was going on. And she kept calling after the wait staff, 'You're doing a great job! Go home early! (That's my maid.)' I'm sure that never gets old with them. Apparently there was at least one All Black there (the one called Israel or Isaiah something).

We ended up at Hope Bros, where I couldn't quite get comfortable. I just kept remembering that girls in my seventh form class had said it was the place that's notorious for letting in under-age clubbers. Everyone there looked about 15. I kept picturing going to the bathroom and running into a gaggle of girls I teach (while still clutching my Trinity products closely). Let me note that out of nine girls in the quiz team I was one of only two white girls. So I was feeling very uncoordinated and gumby already, let alone being surrounded by teenagers on the prowl.

Then J and M's. I only had a small fries, yet the layer of fat they produced coated my mouth and interior organs for the next 12 hours or so. Potent.

And I caught a taxi home and it was only $10 flat! That's the cheapest taxi I've had in years! Go the green lights!

And that was my night.

* * *

Prior to that I had gone with my dad to two Film Fest docos. The first one was on Bobby Fischer (the incredibly flawed genius of the 70s). He's got a fascinating life story. Inspiring and tragic. To be honest, he reminded me a lot of my brother (except for the genius, World Champion bit).

It's always disappointing when you realise someone who is amazing at one thing is actually a douche in every other aspect of their life. Not that it was his fault, to a large extent. From the age of two or so his mother left him and his sister at home alone, no father on the scene, so he started playing chess by himself at the age of six. By sixteen he had told him mother to move out and she (a cold genius herself) hadn't cared one bit. And after he got the title he was so consumed with not losing to anyone that he pulled away from chess, and I guess without that his brain was left to be consumed by other things and some kind of paranoid schizophrenia took over.

I liked the little snippets of Garry Kasparov. He's one of my favourites, I think because he's actually (by all accounts) sane and nice. Fairly rare for a chess genius. My other favourite is Tal who is crazy and was accused of trying to hypnotise opponents (I think that's the one). My dad's is apparently Korschnoi.

I thought there were some good little insights from people who were close to him during the time he was gearing up for the world title match. I'd forgotten how controversy-riddled it was.

The second doco was about the West Indian team of the late 70s and early 80s. The highlight of that was hearing Viv Richards talk. His voice is like velvety chocolate. The doco basically covered the time where they went from being one of the jokes of the cricketing world (the Calypso team - fun to watch, but not to be taken seriously) to a team that was undefeated in test serieses for 15 years.

I thought it was interesting that they had focussed on aggressive fast bowlers in response to having been humiliated by the attack of Lilly and Thomson in Australia (bouncers to the head and body all game). Then the world hated them for it.

It was amazing that back then people didn't wear nearly as much protective gear. Lots of them were facing Michael Holding or Dennis Lilly without even a helmet on. Viv Richards did it intentionally to show how tough he was - he'd get a bouncer to the jaw and just shake it off and stare down the bowler like Is that all you got?

There was one guy got a double fracture in his hand mid series, so it was in a cast, but he kept bowling (and even batting one handed). Awesome! Athletes just don't do that these days. Pansies.

Behind all the stories was the history of racism at the time. The crowds, and even Aussie players, would sledge them with racist comments all game. And even back home the cricket board were all white and basically shafted them in terms of wages. So winning cricket against England was their ultimate up-you to the colonists and slave-masters of the past.

Apparently Viv was good buddies with Bob Marley, so this features a little. One of the Wailers reckons if he wasn't a cricketer he woulda been a dreadlocked rasta himself.

Through all of this my father slept intermittently. He would eventually let out of a louder snore and jolt himself awake. I couldn't help but laugh every time, though I felt bad for anyone around us could have been slightly irritated. I know that when you're super sleepy there's nothing more annoying than someone continually nudging you awake. So I tried not to do that too much. I fed him chocolate and cola but it didn't help much.

And that was my Film Fest experience.

The End.

I am Sick Today

You may not want to read on. This is just me feeling sorry for myself and being gross.

1. Got home from a family-do yesterday, and hours after finishing my gorging on finger foods my tummy felt a bit 'funny'. Much like it does when I've had too much to drink. I ran through all the things I'd eaten that could've given me an upset tummy (mince nachos, chicken wings, saveloys....).

2. Induced vomitting to try to ease the quese. Three times. But it didn't go away. That was around 11pm.

3. Actual spontaneous vomitting started about midnight. Three times I ran to the bathroom. After that I just got a basin and stayed in bed. Seemed easier. And by then I was just bringing up the few mouthfuls of water I'd sipped since previous episode.

4. Vomitting continued pretty much on the half hour to an hour until 6am or so.

5. I stayed in bed sipping water until 2pm, when I thought I'd better get up and go to school to set some relief. Emailed my dad and he found out that a kid at the party might have been a tummy-bug carrier.

6. I got up, felt ok til I got to the bathroom, then had sudden cold sweats and woke up sitting on the toilet with my head resting against the wall, wondering vaguely where I was.

7. Sucked it up and went to the kitchen to get my day's supplies of water, smoothie in a bottle, yoghurt and brown bread.

8. Went back to bed nibbling on bread.

9. Have stayed in bed for four more hours. No more vomitting. But my limbs feel a bit like they're made of lead. And while I'd really like a lemonade iceblock still, I don't want to move.

10. Tummy bugs suck! This is the first one I've had as a grownup. It's no fun having to clean up your own sickness.

11. I will stay home tomorrow and keep my contagiousness to myself.

A Basketball Spectacle

Tonight I witnessed what many are calling the game of the season.

Jon's team got their first (and possibly only) win! (It's Morgan's team too, but mainly Jon's). They had apparently both skipped netball because they'd scouted the draw and seen this game was actually winnable, so they had to have all hands on deck and they had to be fresh.

Me and Michelle and Sam turned up to lend our support, post-and-pre-netball, and were treated to the Jon Show.

After he was fouled he got two shots. I called that he would make one and miss one, Sam thought he'd make both and Michelle wasn't listening, but I told her she got to have two makes as her bet. I won. I think it's pretty common to miss the first and adjust on the second shot. Money! Jon is my puppet.

Then Jon got two little fall-away baseline shots. Sweet. That's at least 5 points for the game.

There was rapturous applause at the final buzzer.

* * *

Had parent interviews. They were good. Nice parents. Got my cup of tea (they often miss me out 'cause I talk so much). Couple of parents said they love my subject and like meeee.

* * *

I liked wearing my purple dress today. It is swishy.

I have a lot of shoe-envy at the moment. People are buying nice boots.

* * *

The ukulele band is back on track. We are still name-less.

* * *

I eat crappy during term-time. Except for the mandarins.

* * *

I am planning a big night in on Friday to watch The Bachelor. Enough of this socialising malarky.

* * *

TK is still my favourite hunk on Shortland St. I would marry him if I was fictional. A student said I reminded her of Sarah Potts once.

* * *

Pinot Gris seems very popular at the minute. When did that happen? It's the new pinot noir.

* * *

I have bought new conditioner. Phew. The shampoo/conditioner combo I was using was amazingly bad. It made my hair knotty and boofy. Now my hair is silkier :)

My mistrust in salespeople has been softened. It was a good recommendation.

* * *

And I liked this headline:

Barefoot man shouldn't be approached - police

You don't need to tell me twice. I'm always cautious around bare-foot people.

Crafternoon Project

Finished. Three circular notice-boards. Fabric covering easily changed. I likes em.

1. Tetris Discussions Were Held

Damon explained some of the algo-thingies behind the Battle Tetris programme. It was interesting. It may help my game.

2. Walks were Had

Me and Mishell had our fifth Sunday walk in a row. We are determined! This time we went from Seatoun 'round to Scorchorama and beyond, along the precarious verges of the road. We estimate 4.5km each way for a total of one and half hours. It's always a bit further than we anticipate. We blame our agility and speed of walking.

In theory it would be pretty cool to walk around every single coast-line in the Wellington City region (the ones with footpaths, anyhow). We have done both sides of Island Bay now (from Red Rocks to Lyall Bay), from Freyberg Pool around to almost Greta Point and now Seatoun.

Coming up may be a walk from Miramar to the new Chocolate Fish, so we can finish up the Maupuia coast.

It is a good mission! And today was a lovely walking day. While it threatened to rain city-way with big looming clouds, Seatoun was glorious and sunny with blue skies. A good strategic choice! We think we identified Peter Jackson's house.

3. Hush

I got some black Hush Puppies court shoes. I like saying I have 'court shoes'. It sounds American. I figure with my newly tight Archilles tendons I should buy sensible brands of work-wear shoes, but I will not go down to Kumfs. Not yet.

4. American Idol

Bleh. All the good people are gone.

5. Labour

I like the new slogans. 'Don't blame me - I voted Labour'. I feel like I've been saying it for almost six years now.

My So-Called Life is still so good. Thanks to Rich for lending it to me.

Though we both find we associate more with the parents now than we used to. Teens are so wild and crazy!

Jordan Catalano is still so hot. So very very vacant, but very hot. I think most teenagers have that boy with the floppy hair that we found so so cute. The quiet mysterious guy.

I still have a soft spot for Brian too.

And the Mum is great.

Good times!

* * *

Me and Miss Shellvis went for our FOURTH walk in a row. We're doing a very good job of not piking.

Today

1. I marked six essays and recorded the grades on google docs. I am a google docs convert - they're useful.

2. I visited the Asian supermarket and went a bit crazy on miso soup packets and husked sunflower seeds. Miso is going to be my work-snack of the season.

3. I told two kids off about shoes. High top sneakers, even if they ARE black and they ARE leather.... do not count as school shoes. And she knows it! (Yes - I am THAT teacher! With my form class, anyhow.)

4. I threw a paper dart in a competition and came the closest to winning.

5. I watched Mean Girls at least twice. But only the first 53 minutes or so. On none of those occasions did I realise that the annoying girl from Party of Five was in it (the theme song for which, incidentally, was one of the questions at the movie quiz).

6. I wished Shortland St wasn't two hours (I don't care about the evil plot to oust Callum or Murray's affair - bleh to both plots!).

7. I came THIS CLOSE to buying $1 Wendy's ice creams off an Internet site.

8. I sat patiently with my Asperger's girl and discouraged her from writing an essay mainly about alliteration and rhyme.

9. I wore my cowboy/peasant shirt.

10. I ate weevil-muesli.

11. I talked about the Osama thing with people at lunch time. Good philosophical arguments were had. Was it ok to kill an unarmed man rather than take him into custody? Did it make it a special case in that it was fairly certain future loss of life could be avoided by taking him out immediately? Was it that act or the celebratory coverage of his death that was more concerning? Etc.

12. I came 6th equal out of 13 teams at movie quiz. Only 5 points off a placing - not bad for a small team of all-girls. Did I mention my dart? And the fact that I knew Eric Clapton's nickname?

And that was pretty much my day.

The end.

And I played some Battle Tetris to make my brain quiet.

Typo with Consequences

Yesterday my students had a big assignment due in, worth credits.

I had a student email me during the day saying 'All the work I did this morning didn't save! Can I have until tomorrow night to finish it please?'

I chuckled to myself in a Jabba the Hutt kinda way, good try, kid! I emailed back, 'You only lost an hour or so's work - you will have to hand in what you've done and maybe resubmit later. I can't give you a day and a half extension for losing an hour's work.'

She didn't hand anything in, so I figured she'd given up and hadn't really had enough work - her problem, given they've had a month to think about it.

Then today she emails me 'Oh thanks so much Miss!'

And I go, 'Huh? Thanks for what?'

I reread the email and instead of typing CAN'T, I'd written CAN. Oops! So it said 'You can have a day and a half extension.' Didn't really make sense in the context of the other stuff I'd written.... but I can't really argue her handing it in today....

FOILED! Damned internet. Had she asked me face to face my 'NO' would have been much clearer. Now I have to accept her late work - that hurts my badass teacher pride.

Next time a kid sends me a last minute email like that I will just type 'NO NO NO!' Much clearer.

Breakers Bandwagon

Me and Miss Shell watched the Breakers game tonight. Chon and Morgan were doing wussie stuff with plays and babies.

The first three quarters of the game were fairly boring. The Breakers looked ugly on offence - clanging lots of long shots, not really working the ball around much. The orange team looked marginally better, but the whole thing was ugly-ball with lots of silly fouls and turn-overs.

Then it got interesting towards the end. There were some really clutch shots from both teams. Just when you thought one team had stuck the dagger in, the other team would answer. I personally hated the Braswell threees (clutch, yes but if they'd missed you woulda said 'Stupid option!' both times). The Dorsal-fin guy's ones were better - he had to take the shots, was waaay out of range both times and nailed them both.

I thought Penney was just getting into his groove in the over-times, working the ball around really well and either drawing the foul or dishing the ball off to someone inside..... but then Braswell and Brunton kept hiffing up one-on-one three pointers rather than actually running an offence. The same shots had kept them in the game earlier on, but at that point in the game we'd just gotten a few great inside baskets and it kinda ruined our momentum. I didn't like it anyhow.

Me and Michelle thought they were both hunguses.

Chewbacca was pretty clutch for his team. Gotta like a player who takes the ball to the rim hard.

Phil Jones and Penney were both veeery quiet all game. Maybe they'll come out blazing in Game 3? I hope so. I prefer Penney to be in charge of the offence - he seems to make decent decisions.

My favourite Breaker of the game was Abercrombie and Fitch. Vercona was active, which I liked, but did a couple of silly things as well.

And that is my take on the game.

I'm sad now because the royal wedding is on at the same time as the deciding game. And I'm already committed to watching that.

I was secretly hoping the Breakers wouldn't win Game 2 because it's way more exciting to have a deciding game (plus they really didn't deserve to win that game - it was ugly most of the way).

* * *

I got new boots. They're swell. They match my bag too. I like to coordinate.

* * *

My favourite thing at the moment: playing Battle Tetris was Florence and the Machine's 'Dog Days' playing. It makes me even better.

* * *

I washed the car today. Inside and out. Including the black stuff on the hub caps. I did this all in my new Kate Sylvester dress and new boots. And didn't get a stain on either one! That's either really stupid or really clever..... not sure which one.......

1.

I had to renew my driver licence today. The eye test seemed a lot harder than last time. Either my peripheral vision isn't that good or they put a few 'dummy' ones in there that I just couldn't see..... that's mean of them, if they did.... I think I got a 'K' wrong on line two of the sight test - I said H or N... wasn't sure if you were allowed take-backs......

[Pretty sure my photo was weird - I was consciously thinking 'Don't smile - do something that would look good as a mug-shot' - maybe not a good strategy.]

Having driven for six months on an expired licence (five of which were accidental and oblivious) I just couldn't wait for a good hair day to do it. I settled for a reasonably-clean hair day instead.

I am such a conscientious citizen that while I drove to VTNZ, I did park down the street so that nobody in the building would realise I had driven on my expired licence - it just seemed unethical.

2.

I agreed to take Cassie to the airport today (offered, even).

Then she told me I had to be up by 8am. On a holiday day.

I got so much done before midday. Hung out a load of laundry and watched 'Law Abiding Citizen'.

3.

My dad missed out some apostrophes on his blog. I scolded him for it. To be fair, they were tricky ones ('its' and 'lets').

4.

My ankle is still swollen. Things take so long to heal once you're over 30. I can feel my skin cells degenerating as I type. I may have to start wearing shoes that have actual support in them. At least Kumfs have a trendy new label these days..... and Hush Puppies have always been kinda cool in my books (they were my dad's favourite shoes growing up).

5.

My new vacuum sounds like a jet engine. And it is bagless. I have spoken of the wonder of this to many people already. Cleaning is so much better when there are tangible results (a container full of dust to inspect and measure).

It's so strong that I almost had to wrestle it off when it started sucking up my cardigan.

6.

I had a pastrami and pickled onion sandwhich for lunch.

7.

So prezi.com is the new cool thing for teachers to use. Me and a colleague made this prezi - http://prezi.com/b-kgkjxkdcjr/war-poetry-year-12/ . It's on good old WW1 Poetry. If you go to the section with poems by our class, you can see some Miss J poems. We had to take two of the poems we'd studied and blend them into a new poem. A lot of kids took it literally (plus I only gave them 10 minutes to do it - that's all the time we have for non-essential fun in MY class!). My ones are pretty awesome.

Just because I haven't posted any photos of injuries this month. This is my twisted ankle. It got twisted in the dying moments of the indoor netball game last week - we were up by two, the other team had the ball and under a minute to go. I tangled ankles with someone (probably Walter) and turned it... but I soldiered on. Then they got a two pointer in and tied the game. Stink.

My ankle was satisfyingly swollen the next day - very localised to the ankle bone bit, so not actually painful to walk on, but still impressive to show people. Now I have nice bruising coming up too. Jolly good.

(I cut the bit out that was hairy - need to wax my legs.)

* * *

We may be close to finding a new flatmate (to replace Colleen, who's moving to Denmark to get married). We have an offer on the go and an interested second choice if that falls through.

* * *

Shocked by last night's Idol elimination. Nobody picked that in the flat betting pool.

* * *

Had a great night out on Saturday. Bunch of people from work went to see a band (plus Sam). Band gigs are very noisy, though. I do like that I work with lovely people this year - very un-wanky and friendly types. Sam said it was an interesting comparison to the staff at Upper Hutt :) I think the word 'cultured' might have been used - though that may have been a euphemism for something less flattering.

* * *

And that is all for now. Oh, went to an awesome sale at Area 51. I got Kate Sylvester and Huffer stuff for around $60 a piece - bargains! Love a good sale. If it's still there (just a few doors down from actual store on Dixon St) have a look. I think it might've finished on Saturday, though.

1.

I accidentally infected my school computer with a killer virus the other day. I lost a bunch of stuff from the c-drive that I'd been working on.

Luckily I'd just had an upgrade and had transferred everything onto an external drive, so only lost about a week's worth of work. It was still hours and hours of stuff though :( It made me sad.

2.

I infected myself with a virus too. I have a cold and feel very poorly. Today was the wet-cough phase. By my afternoon classes I was sneezing and spluttering quite a lot.

I had to play basketball anyhow. Firstly cause I knew we didn't have many players tonight (six in total), secondly cause I wagged last week to do work.

I played ok.

The team I'm in plays 'properly', which is a bit of a shock to the system. My old team just play a loosely organised style. This team plays strict high-low post offence. No deviating. And man-to-man defence.

I may have mentioned this before.

Tonight during a time out the player/coach emphasised that I had to cut any time the other post got the ball, and it didn't matter at all if I got it... I was just making space for other people. And I found this really freeing.

So I moved more than usual... and did a few good things. I even did a 'move', where I dribbled through a couple of people and got a layup in. If there had been a crowd, they would have gone crazy (in my mind).

Anyhow. My theory is always that you should try and sweat a cold out.

I went and bought some Coldral after that.

I feel miserable now.

My chest hurts.

And my nose is sore from all the sniffing and blowing.

Luckily tomorrow is mid-term break day. So I can be miserable in bed for as long as I like.

For those non-teachers out there, I hope you are aware that the term dates have been purposely changed to fit around the Rugby World Cup. This strikes a lot of us as being really really stupid. It's basically just for Auckland traffic issues, they say. But it means we have longer-than-usual Term 1 and 2s.

The Rugby World Cup sucks.

But mid term break rules.

3.

I'm watching the politican-I-went-to-school-with's scandal in the news with interest. He's been a bit of a golden boy for a while, so it'll be interesting to see how this plays out. He'd be pretty heart-broken if he had to quit politics over it.

Normal Programming Will Now Resume

Today is the first day that neither the Christchurch or Japanese earthquake has been the lead story on Stuff. I was watching with vague interest, just to see how long each had currency.

The Christchurch quake held the title until the Japanese one, and now it's something about Peter Jackson having lost weight..... Back to normal.

* * *

I am now Level 17 - 'veteran'. I was in the zone tonight - no compromising, waiting for the perfect pieces. It all fell into place.

I was beating Level 16 players easily - it's like they gave away the 'expert' label. Maybe you can use that tetris money they give away to buy credentials. I'm earning it old school.

Rotate, rotate... hard drop..... Line piece.... TETRIS!

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

Girly Stuff from my stocktake

I have roughly this many necklaces (a few more not in shot). And this many bracelets.

They are bought mainly from: Pixel Ink, Madame Fancy Pants, Iko Iko, Magnolia, various markets, Wanda Harland and Goodness.

Only two of the ones pictures were presents from other people. The rest were presents from myself. Lots of birds. No bling.

In the Charlie Sheen madness.....

... there is surely the next name for our indoor netball team.

Tiger blood?
Rock stars from Mars?
Fools and Trolls?
Fire of 1000 Suns?
Firey Death?
Adonis DNA?
Bi-Winning?

Sobering

1.

I was in Whitcoull's tonight trying to buy a frivolous magazine. All of the women's gossip magazines from NZ had pictures of NZ celebs telling their Chirstchurch stories on the cover.

I couldn't quite bare it to buy one of those. I've had enough of those kind of stories. Not in a heartless way, but in the sense that I am saturated emotionally.

I have taught the concept that media texts that are far removed from the actual mood of the era are great for escapism (such as comedies and musicals in the 40s).

At that moment, veering for the Kim Kardashian magazine instead of the Christchurch survivor stories one, I understood that concept.

2.

We have at least four Chch students enrolling, at least temporarily, at our school.

I feel bad that they've had a decent earthquake on their arrival to Wellington tonight, where they've come to escape.

My heart was beating a little faster than normal during a 4 or 5 earth-quake and I did jump up to run for a door, which I never usually do. I usually just lie in bed and freeze, looking up blankly (like a deer in the headlights) until the quake subsides.

If my reaction has changed considerably to a small quake, I can only imagine what that must have felt like to someone from Chch who had come up here to get away from the constant after-shocks. It must be horrifying.

There is also the changed reaction now that you do immediately think 'I hope that wasn't in Christchurch'. I woke up for the original quake last year, and thought nothing of it until I got up the next morning. So the next time I was woken up by a quake, in January or so, the first thing I did was to turn on the radio and hope that it hadn't happened again.

3.

There aren't many moments in your life that you will remember vividly where you were when you heard the news.

For me, the news of this quake arrived on my way to teach my after-lunch class.

I heard the techie walking past me mumbling something about 'another quake' and said, 'Huh, what's this?'

He, rather unhelpfully, said Christchurch had been basically 'wiped off the map' this time. The Cathedral no longer existed, according to his report. Obliterated.

I passed one other teacher after that, on my way down the stairs. I told him what I'd heard and he said at the moment it was just rumours from twitter. Someone said there was damage to the Cathedral but it could just be minor - you never know. Could just be smashed glass.

He agreed that he'd heard there would be injuries and loss of life this time.

I told my class there'd been another quake. They weren't terribly moved or interested on the outside.

I did feel a bit odd. Spaced out in a small way.

During the next lesson I felt a shaking while we were watching a movie. I said, pretty calmly, 'That might be an after-shock.... is that an earthquake?'. The girl behind me admitted she'd just been jiggling her leg. I was embarrassed.

I arrived back to the staffroom and several members of my department were texting family members down there. I hadn't even thought about that - it seems so far away to me - I have no relatives down there.

Luckily some of them had already heard back and their people were fine. Others hadn't and were visibly shaken. One was talking about something class related and suddenly burst out, '.... I haven't heard from her.... I just want to know if she's ok....' and started crying, right in the middle of a conversation. She was taken to the lounge for a cup of tea.

I feel like an outsider to this disaster.

4.

It's been a week since then. It seems like longer.

5.

One of the awful stories I watched was on the Channel 3 show, 60 Minutes (?). They followed the story of a man who had heard from his wife, trapped in the CTV building. He was standing vigil outside. At first he spoke willingly, but increasingly he was annoyed by the cameras. They eventually announced they were abandoning rescue efforts at that site. We all knew his wife was inside. And she had been alive. This man was (unwillingly) showing us the most awful hours of his life.

Usually in the media these stories have happy endings.

I felt uncomfortable watching. Sometimes I don't like the media. Grief should be allowed to be private.

6.

The night of the earthquake I went to see 127 Hours with Richard. It felt weird looking around Courtenay Place and it being normal for a Tuesday night. People were in Starbucks and going to movies. It didn't seem fair. But what else do you do?

There was that strange sense of camaraderie you feel after a disaster. At the noodle house everyone had chosen tables where they could see the TV. The waitress turned it up to full volume so we could hear the reports.

I said to Richard, 'Once they get a death toll, they're going to go crazy with it.' And they did. 65 deaths was scrolled across the screen and repeated as often as possible once it was announced.

I wonder what it is about actually have a figure that makes it more 'newsworthy'. I guess it's logical - you get a sense of scale. But why is '65 officially confirmed dead' better news than 'Hundreds missing, possibly dead'? I bet it was at that moment that the BBC and CCN started salivating over the story.

Sometimes my job is cool.

I brought this and this into my lesson today and made both 'relevant' to the media theory we were talking about (the spoon one was more of a stretch, but still demonstrated the social interaction use of a media text because they were all laughing together and talking about it as they walked out of the classroom!).

* * *

I saw True Grit tonight. I really liked it. It's another good Coen Brothers one. The end does go rather quickly after much, much buildup. But I enjoyed the whole thing and the main characters were all great (particularly the Jeff Bridges one and the young heroine). I kinda like that she went the whole hog, against convention (the bit just before the snake-pit).

Much more humour than No Country for Old Men (which I also really liked).

I turned my computer on to look at the latest world happening on Stuff.

And got English teacher rage.

So school is back

I'm at work again.

It's good.

It's nice having a 'career'. Every year I feel more senior and sagely. We have three new department members, so I feel even more sagely than usual. I am a fountain of knowledge and tips. My self-importancy overfloweth.

My classes seem pretty good so far.

I am in about ten class-rooms. That's yuck. It makes me about 10 minutes late to every lesson by the time I've fought my way across the school (sometimes going to the wrong room), set up my laptop again (then realised some vital chord is missing or broken, and given up) and gone back to the staffroom to get the stuff I forgot to bring. I took for granted how awesome it was having a home-base with functioning IT equipment other years.

I'm teaching Media the old-school style with me and a white board marker. No fancy 'technology'. Bleh. I will teach them film noir by re-enacting the key scenes with accents and props. You should hear my Bogart impression.

Apparently the timetabler is working on solutions. Until then I'll be the teacher rushing around carrying a Nood basket full of everything I might ever need (today it was nail polish remover, 20 diaries, a hole punch, a stack of A3 paper, my laptop, a bag full of about 50 pens, and some other stuff).

After bringing nail polish remover from home only one kid in my form class had offending nails. I was almost disappointed. My rants must be sinking in or something. Phase two is taking on the nose rings!

More of my excess

I have no whiteboards at home. But I have over 30 whiteboard markers for some reason. Mostly taken from school. Accidentally.

1. Ants

Why are there ants on my laptop moniter? I keep killing them but they keep coming back. Just two at a time. No trail. Stealth.

I love that ants die so easily.

2. Frisbee

The season has started again. We had a 20-9 loss, which may sound bad but was actually ok.

We're usually playing teams that can pass the Frisbee the length of the field whereas we take a whole bunch of little passes. It's kinda like when you play an awesome 2 point shooting team in netball but pretty much stay with them (just scoring half the points cause you're only getting ones). We grafted pretty hard for our points and I'm sure there were lots of little mistakes we'll weed out as we get used to it again.

Having said that, I'm not implying that we stayed with them really. They were fitter, taller, more experienced and better. But I think they layed off us a bit of defence (either that or they're a pretty lazy team) so we got some passes strung together. We're all much, much better catchers than we used to be :)

Was nice to see Lew and Amelia again. And Mash gave us a bit of control on offence and a long-pass option (which led to a beautiful run by Lew for a point).

I had fun. I didn't like it too much when I had to chase the little red-shirt girl all over the field. But other than that it was fun. My body is built and conditioned to run exactly the length of a basketball court (and then rest for a minute). The field is twice that length. I wanted to stop half-way but the red-shirt girl kept running. Cruel. Bring on basketball season with dimensions I can handle at a sprint (or fast jog, at least).

I try to play by the motto 'rest on offence' but I just really can't keep up with those fit 'uns no matter how hard I try. Especially in current post-summer shape. Especially!

3. Nesting

I've started thinking more seriously about buying a house. I even went and got a pre-approved mortgage and stuff. I just have to be patient and wait for the right houses to come on the market. My heart in currently set on some kind of two bedroom cottage in Petone for under $400,000. I've seen a few such houses around in the last year or so of passively looking, so hopefully a few more come on the market soon.

In the mean-time I've started spending my disposable income on house stuff. I figure I could do that instead of buying dresses for a bit. I've just had two flatmates move out which has left a few things the flat needed. I usually resent buying stuff like that, but since it's stuff I'll have to buy anyhow it feels less painful to buy some now rather than have to spend thousands all at once when I buy a house. If I can do it bit by bit from my cheque account it will mean my deposit is bigger! I'll put off buying stuff that wears out quickly or needs to be the right size for the house (new manchester and couch).

I have bought

• a big wooden chopping board (one of those checkerboard ones 60% off at Nood)
• a few sharp knives
• a pots and pans set (60% off at Briscoes, bless them)
• a spice rack (one of those awesome magnetised ones)
• a pot-holder
• more giant plastic storage boxes with wheels and lids (to clean out my linen cupboard of crap)
• a rack to put letters, take-away menus etc in
• a dvd player for the lounge ($30 - can't be bothered buying a flash one til they come down in price)
• an iron ($19 from Briscoes down from $70)

I still have to buy the big lounge TV but I'll do that some time this week.

It's quite satisfying! My sharp utility knife is awesome. It cut through a pineapple like it was butter.

4. My Favourite Things

Right now I am loving soda water with lemon and lime cordial. And vanilla-custard flavoured yoghurt. And I'm looking forward to the Fashion Police Golden Globes special. Watching Fashion Police is one of my guilty pleasures.

5. Reading

I just finished reading 'Mister Pip'. It wasn't at all what I expected. It was very easy to read. I thought it was gonna be convoluted for some reason.

Now I have to re-read stuff I'm going to teach. And start planning and stuff. No more reading for leisure!

I have enjoyed using the Michelle Library and will be going back some time though. I don't think I've ever borrowed and returned books this quickly. It's a record.

No more pizzas please.

Me, Michelle and Janine all got multiple vouchers for $6 pizzas at the Craftsman. Great deal - but it really hasn't helped my post-Christmas healthy eat idea. I spose I could've just not eaten any of them (or maybe not the full half of the pizza that I consumed) .... but they were practically free! I can't say no to free food.

Today me and Janine went there for lunch. While we had our chicken, cranberry and camenbert, we played Scrabble.

She won.

I could've won but made a dumb move at the end. She also let me have 'quin' which may or may not be a 'real' word. But it got me lots of points!

* * *

TV Advice

After that she helped me go TV shopping. With Reidun moving, we'll be TV-less again.

I figure I'll buy a 32 incher. They seem to be around $600 to $900 which is all I want to spend.

Does anyone have any advice about what to look for? I went around four shops today taking notes. Here are my questions:

1. What brands are best? The first guy said he wouldn't get a Samsung, but the other two guys I asked said they were fine. LG, Panasonic and Sony seemed to be the other main ones. I don't think I'd go down to a super-cheap brand I'd never heard of.

2. Would you bother getting full HD? I couldn't see heaps of difference on some of the sets, but maybe a little. I'm tempted to get the 50Hz HD maybe.

3. LCD, LED or plasma? I figure I'll get LCD probably. If I stretched my budget to a 42 incher I'd have to decide though. The sales guy estimated that if I watch a lot of TV it might be up to $6 a week more power to have a plasma.

4. Any other features to look for? The first guy pointed out that some brands have USB ports that you can watch movies from - that sounds good. They all seem to be Freeview ready. To be honest, I'm not a super fancy TV watcher. I just wanna do the basics. But a TV that could watch movies from my laptop or external hard-drive really easily would be a bonus. I just bought an external hard-drive today so I'm gonna steal movies off people now.

* * *

For those of you who try to keep up with who my flatmates are (it can be confusing at times).... Reidun is moving out tomorrow having had a whirlwind job offer yesterday for a school up north. And Anthony moved in today. He seems nice. He's sporty so I may be able to make him fill in for our various teams. If he is worthy.

The changes are ringing! I'm gonna take the opportunity to do a bit of spring cleaning. Over the years lots of flatmates have left bits and pieces behind and I've never known if they were Reidun's or theirs. Now I'll be able to throw away pretty much anything that I don't want since Colleen doesn't have much stuff in the common areas and the new guy hasn't had time to spread out there yet either.

Might have to do a car-load to the dump, even. I've never done that!

If anyone is looking for a 'rustic' sleepout (no fancy stuff like bathrooms or kitchens, but it has electricity!) for $85 plus expenses... let me know :)

* * *

Indoor Land

First indoor netball game of 2011 played. We won. That was good because the other team had two players from Michelle's outdoor team (which I played a season of twilight with at the end of last year). We like beating her outdoor teammates especially. We were losing the first quarter so had to make a wee comeback, too.

I got quite tired trying to defend the crafty little Attack guy (the one Morgan has made 'friends' with so he has to be nice to him on court). He used his elbows and other body parts craftily so that you practically have to lean on him the whole game. I don't enjoy that kind of intimacy with non love interests.

I had to make Michelle swap positions after two quarters of it. Tactically that wasn't a great move 'cause me and Ben had finally figured out his game and were double teaming him pretty well, but I felt happier down in the land of Attack. Me and Brad tend to make it like a comedy show down there.

Defence is intense! Attack is slack!

* * *

And by the way, I have now added 'Cassie the Lap Bandit' to my blog list. It's my friend Cassie (who most of you know) and her blog about her lap band operation. She hasn't had it yet, so it's still build up (was supposed to have it, but it all went terribly wrong on the theatre table).

It's all kinda fascinating. She's also already lost 21kg just with the pre-op diets - legendary!

Grindhouse

I just watched the double feature of Death Proof and Planet Terror with Janine.

I liked them.

But you know how after you watch stuff like that, you end up kinda feeling like you're in the movie for the first few minutes afterwards... like you're in some kind of hyper reality? Death Proof is not a good movie to watch just before you have to drive home at 1am.

Me Plans

I'm officially getting my head into the zone where I'm ready to buy a house. It's taken a while.

The past year I've been looking on TradeMe religiously to get a feel for how much house you can get for your money in different suburbs.

But I haven't gone beyond that yet. I think I've been happy enough flatting where I am. My flatmates have been stable and nice and I like watching my money grow. I know when I buy a house it won't be nearly as close to the city, my bedroom won't be as sunny or massive and I'll be way, way poorer and will have to make an effort to not turn into a hermit. There will be compromises to make.

But now I'm ready to be a poor hermit. Most of my friends are already anyhow :) I think cheap, suburban fun is the name of the game in your mid-30s.

I've been talking to house-savvy friends to get advice on where to start and what to ask about. And next week I might actually go to the bank and get one of them pre-approved things so I have a proper budget.

I think I'll be aiming way under what they'll actually loan me anyway, so it won't be a problem. I want to pay somewhere under $400 a week mortgage. That's about what I've been saving, plus I've been paying rent on top of that. I think, according to the online mortgage calculators, I'll be looking for somewhere in the $350,000 to $400,000 range.

My dream house would be a two bedroom cottage in Petone. 90m square (or so). With a garage (off street park could suffice if it's not near the beach). Small backyard, but low maintenance (enough to sit outside or have a BBQ and a tiny vege and herb garden but not much more). Neutral and fresh interior. Not expecting anything flash for my budget - just tidy and not too outdated. Don't wanna have to do any work on it urgently. Character would be a bonus.

I want the second bedroom to be just for visitors or people who need a short-term crash-pad. Don't really want a permanent flatmate. I want it to just be Kate Land. Everything chosen, arranged and cleaned by me. No negotiation, compromises or walking on egg-shells. No feeling guilty for using up band-width watching YouTube videos or keeping my heater on because it's cold or leaving dishes on the bench for a day or two (though, am very keen to get another house with a dish-washer - they're essential!). White with splashes of red and other warm colours. Clean lines. Culture and pretty things dotted around on walls and bookshelves. Quirky and colourful cushions. Somewhere to hang coats. Coffee tables you can put your feet up on.

I'll need to buy a few new things straight away (maybe beforehand, depending on current flatmates dispersing):

• big TV
• washing machine and dryer
• vacuum (mine just broke)

Then there'll be other things I realise I need, but which aren't urgent such as:

• toaster and kettle
• a decent set of pots and pans
• bed for spare room
• new lounge suite (I've wanted this for a year or so but figure I'll wait to see what kind of space I have to work with - rather than accidentally get something that ends up being too big or the wrong colour)
• a robot dog

My mind-set has totally changed, though. I am getting excited rather than anxious about the prospect of buying a house. I am going to start stockpiling kitchen appliances I'll need at Briscoes sales and the like (just bought a spice rack and some knives today which I don't really need in current flatting situation, but I felt like 'nesting' 'cause I'd just had a two hour long lunch with Julie, talking about how to buy a house and stuff).
Who knows if it will take a month or a year. That's the scary bit.
I'm going to my first open home with Cassie along for emotional support on Sunday.