Tunnel

I was walking home at 2am on Christmas night through the Mt Vic Tunnel. (About four Rosebuds and four Mojitos and a fruit cocktail and a wine.... )

It was so quiet. Probably the whole time I walked through only half a dozen vehicles came (and that's a 6 minute walk or so). I liked it. Oddly peaceful. And I had on my comfy sneakers and my summer dress that swishes as I walk. What is usually the nosiest place in town was the quietest.

I could actually hear noises in there I'd never heard before. Trickling water and a humming noise. I saw a plastic bag floating very American Beauty-esquely down the empty road below.

Three fire engines sped through, no sirens but flashing lights. I wondered where they were going. I suppose it was to the gymnasium fire at Rongotai (as I heard on the radio the next morning).

Today I was walking through again, just after lunch and it was was noisy. I tried singing, really loudly (The Lion Sleeps Tonight, for some reason), and I could barely even hear myself. Kinda liberating singing at the top of your lungs in public without anyone hearing a note of it.

Quite a contrast though. Christmas day is the eeriest time in Wellington city.

It's like the whole populace have had a mass exodus back to their turangawaewae (or at least to the Hutt). Back to their secret home towns that their new urban identities have tried to hide away from public view.... where their labels mean nothing......

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Today is one of those days where I like my friends. Not that I don't always like them, I just had a really nice time with two separate bunches of people. All fairly spontaneously planned. Nice.

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And I won Trivial Pursuits (with Fishy). The point is that we beat Sam. It is worth noting any time we do that. My knowledge of mid-90s All Blacks trivia was surprising, given I couldn't name more than three players in the team nowadays.

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My friends are smart. That's the way I like them.

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Nice to see Charlotte using presents I gave her as a babe. Hungry Caterpillar DVD (and 'Catch the Moon' - cute). I liked that a lot because Roger McGough was the narrator, I think.

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And a music box thingie that I thought would break after a day or so is still going strong. Woohoo!

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I tried to explain to her that I'd bought them for her last year, but her 2 year old mind did not comprehend that and she looked at me like I was a crazy person and she snatched them back off me, saying 'Charlotte's!' emphatically.

I Heart Basketball

I knew from the moment a kid at school (the star player on our basketball team) said, 'Hey Miss - that team you're playing tonight is the Wellington Under 17 rep team - I'm in it!' that tonight's game would be a whupping.

But it was still fun. Basketball rules. Netball is for weeners.

I have a weird feeling that I didn't miss any shots tonight - got four from four in. That's a tidy contribution (considering we got 24 points in total). And they were all good shots - two rolling to the basket on a cut, one off a lob when my defender was fronting me, and one that was a couple of dribbles penetration pull-up jumper (ok - that was one a fluke, banked in pretty hard).

Dangling My Feet into Saturday

[totally ripped off a student there - she did a great poem about what it feels like on Friday afternoon, waiting for the clock to hit 3.30pm at school]

So, Friday was ok. Period 1 I was with my Year 13s, trying to model how to propose a topic for a feature article. I'd had two Year 12 girls come in the day before for us to interview and we were seeing what we'd do with them. One is in the Wellington wrestling league (that's WWF styles - no kidding!). She was really interesting to talk to. The other one has started writing and singing her own songs.

Then I had one of my Year 9s, and quite of few of them were away so it was a cute little class. We did jigsaw-poems where they get a jumbled up list of words and have to make a poem out of them (much like fridge-poetry magnets). They were so nicely behaved that I sat down and figured out a few poems of my own (one about a lady sitting by her husband's ashes and another about a man giving a scarlet orchid in a box to a crush, and then getting rejected and smashing it up). The pesky childrens kept coming up to my desk proudly to show me their poems and interupting my creative flow though....

Then I had a non-contact and had two intersting phone messages to reply to. The first one was from some Health Dept looking into whether the indoor netball teams that played on Sunday had the same virus that a bunch of kids had gotten from the playground downstairs (and subsequently been shut down over). The second was from a TV reporter, from 20/20 or 60 Minutes (I forget which one) whose daughter is in my Media class and who volunteered to come in and talk to us about journalism. Sweet! I'm all for high profile guest speakers.

Then, lunch-time was Film Club. My two leaders have instigated a tradition of having turns bringing snacks. One of them secretly revealed to me that she was bringing afghans. She has this kinda unselfconscious enthusiasm and the way she whispered the word with this wide-eyed look made it seem like you couldn't ask for a more magical snack. And they were good. She promised to bring me an especially big one... which she did. I jokingly said to put a giant 'K' on it with cornflakes or something, so she did. Though, she improved my idea by making it 'KJ' and doing it out of silver balls. It was episode two of 'Donnie Darko'. We're having to watch in installations.

Then..... a fairly standard Media 200 class then watching 'A Bridge to Terabithia' on DVD with my class last period. Sweet end to the day!

As usual on a Friday, a small crew of English-ish teachers headed to the Tasting Room. Then, it was back to school for basketball duties. The Senior B lost but the Senior A won handily (they are 3-1, and in the top division so that bodes well).

Got home about 9.30pm and watched the tail end of American Idol with Reidun and Kyle. Then we watched that show where they have answered lie-detector questions.... we are becoming slightly addicted to that.

Today me and Reidun went up the coast to kite fly on Raumati Beach. It was fun.


I bought this brooch at a second-hand store. I like the curvy swirly bits.

I bought these two wee limited edition prints at a craft shop in Raumati. It had a bunch of little prints I would have loved to buy. Some with insects sketched, some with native trees sketched.... This is a makaka and a fucshia.

The End.

End of the Line.

I coulda had class. I coulda been a contender. I coulda been somebody, instead of a bum, which is what I am, let's face it.

Brendon was (rightly) eliminated tonight. We did well - my predictions always had us being a final three competitor, but nothing more. Frankly he didn't have the talent to make it further. Ange was very critical of his top-line and posture tonight (she knows her terminology well - a passionate armchair critic).

Despite the lack of talent on his part, I'm going to blame some kind of conspiracy on us getting eliminated. Perhaps it was that Suzanne and Megan's previous fan-base was built on the kind of gullible morons who actually ring up or text in response to things on TV, be it a massage pillow or pop-idol-band. Brendon had a tougher crowd to please - the sporting fan is not used to having to actually vote for their team to win. We are used to just letting the work show on the dance-floor and having that be the end of it. I notice that there's an inconsistency in my argument there somewhere..... I will work on that. It's late.

There were tears tonight as Suzanne had a wardrobe malfunction - our hearts went out to her. Yet again the judges surprised us with some of their comments. They seem to love the boring dances - the ones with have very little pizazz but are probably very technically competent. We didn't think much of Megan's cha-cha (the one she performed at school today) but she got 10's for it. Go figure.

Hayley has the hell-good abs. Many men will be sorry to see her go.

I will ceremoniously do something with my Brendon mask soon.

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My new tshirt arrived from America. I love internet shopping!