tariqa

First things first: I won!


The actual story is nowhere near finished, which is what happens when you don't plan at all and write a bloated, overly long middle section because you don't know where you're going. I may finish it off later, once I've actually thought about what to write. Or I might just leave it to rot.

Secondly, because I love you guys the most, I'll say it here first: I have a bunch of Google Wave invites, so if you want one let me know. I've found it pretty boring so far, but then I only two other people I know are on it which makes it kind of hard to have a party.

I've had to get a replacement Visa card issued because of the Downtown carpark scam (not that any fraudulent transactions have actually taken place on my account, but I used my card there last month so it's assumed to have been compromised), which would be fine if I hadn't decided to get the name on my account changed at the same time. Or, you know, been proactive and actually contacted them about changing my name before the card security issue came to light, but I kind of knew it would be a pain in the arse so I hadn't bothered. Because I was dealing with BankDirect, who have no physical branches and whose contact centre staff are about as clueless as any other contact centre I've had to deal with, it took five working days and an awful lot of mucking around before they could reissue my card (which I have yet to receive). I probably wouldn't care that much, since I don't use it a whole lot, if it weren't for the one-day-only $9 Threadless sale on Friday - I couldn't buy anything because I didn't have the card, so that pissed me off. It really shouldn't be that hard to get something simple like a name change dealt with. I know this because it took less than ten minutes to get it done at each of the other two banks I do business with, which is a far cry from five working days.

/whinge

I'm a little disappointed that New Zealand's first space rocket launch was unsuccessful, but I have to admit I'm not surprised... is that unpatriotic? I'm sure they'll get it up eventually, though.
Edit: It's been launched! Woo.

On Sunday a brass band marched past our apartment. I couldn't be bothered getting up to watch - one marching band is much like another, and I've seen plenty - so I lay in bed wondering why they were out there. My first thought was that it was it might have been a Labour Day parade, but nobody does that, and it was a day too early for that. So I concluded that they must have decided to put on a parade in my honour, since it was my birthday and all... I just wished they'd asked me first, as they'd have had a much better turnout at midday than they did at 9am.

The rest of my birthday was fairly uneventful, and being 27 doesn't feel any different than being 26. I have high hopes for the year ahead though, as I've always been fond of the number 3 and multiples thereof, and 27 is 3³. Most auspicious.

Dan bought a cheap multifunction printer/scanner/fax thingamajig, because he lost the cable for the old one when we moved house and it was cheaper to buy a whole new one than to get a new cable and ink cartridges. It's appallingly wasteful, I know. At the moment he's amusing himself by scanning in handwritten lyric sheets for songs he's written in the past decade, but first he digitised this lovely photograph of me taken when I was 11 years old and even less cool than I currently am.



I remember those pants. They were green denim. I don't even like that colour. I'm only posting this picture because Dan started doing the Bluth family chicken dance when I said I wouldn't.

Going to Mt Maunganui for a slightly delayed two-day mini-honeymoon later this week. I'm not sure exactly when I'm going to fit in any of this NaNoWriMo prep I should be doing, but the fact that I'm thinking about it must count for something, surely!

It's nearly 11pm and there's a large crowd gathering in a street in Henderson, near the drain that a child's body (presumably that of Aisling Symes) was found in. It's very sad, and I understand - kind of - why people are gathering there, but I'm stunned at the number of children I can see on the live tv news crosses, still hanging around outside at this late hour. I'm talking kids under 10 here. It's a school night! Make your children go to bed, people of Pomaria Road!

The past couple of weeks have been a little unusual for me, because I've been a bit busy organising a Civil Union at relatively short notice (nobody's fault but my own, that). This seems to mostly involve a lot of shopping, something I ordinarily have little patience for, but at the moment it is necessary. Just over a week to go now.

I spoke to my mother on the phone a couple of nights ago, which was surprisingly pleasant for once. That may have been because I'd started on my second glass of wine for the evening at the time that she called, of course. I'm such a lightweight these days it's not funny. At least it means I'm a cheap date, I guess.

Anyone here watch Outrageous Fortune? No? I guess you wouldn't appreciate me going all OMGWTFBBQ!!! over the season final, then.

I'm going to go to bed now, like all those youngsters should be.

Yesterday I:

• watched news coverage of the earthquake and tsunami in Samoa - fortunately the TERROR WAVE that was supposed to hit our shores was a non-event


• witnessed three traffic accidents - a merging fail, a T-bone and a nose-to-tail (well, nose-to-towbar)


• went grocery shopping at the exact same time as the 200 most annoying people in Auckland


• took Dan to the hospital after he complained of chest pain, waited for a couple of hours while he had tests done following an abnormal ECG, then felt terribly bad that I had to leave him there and take Parker home for dinner


• got stuck in a ridiculously long queue at the hospital carpark, because the automated pay machine was out of order and there was only one cashier


• endured 20 minutes of screaming while bathing Parker and dressing him for bed - anyone would have thought I was skinning him alive


• went back to the hospital to pick Dan up, after the doctors concluded he had nothing wrong with him after all


• queued up again, this time at the service station, behind all the silly people who decided to fill up one last time before the 3c fuel tax increase


• had to double back through the city after taking a wrong turn on the way home from Wendy's (no way was I cooking after all that, and there's no better time for burgers than just after cardiac testing, right?)

Today I stayed home. It's safer that way!

Sunday marked the start of Daylight Savings time, so naturally there was a massive downpour on Monday. I got drenched, but at least my house still has a roof on it, unlike one unlucky household. Usually I hate the start of Daylight Savings, but this year I don't care very much, probably because I no longer have to get up at a set time - I just roll out of bed when I hear Parker's "I'm awake, come and get me!" cry at around daybreak. I was actually quite irrationally pleased on Sunday morning, when the clock read 6am instead of 5; not so much yesterday, when he started up half an hour earlier and my brain kept protesting that it was really four-fucking-thirty and entirely too early to be getting up. And then I got rained on four hours later. It was not a great start to the week, all things considered.

You know how every so often someone claims to have found Jesus' likeness on a Marmite lid, or Elvis in a sweat stain? They're about as crazy as the guy who says he found a kiwi in outer space. Come on, that's an elephant if anything. Or perhaps it's nothing at all. But people see what they choose to see...

Trying to decide whether or not to do NaNoWriMo this year. I know what I'd write, I just don't know if I'll have enough free time to make a proper go of it. I managed it last year, but the result was complete and utter drivel and I have yet to go back and try to revise it. That said, NaNo was an excellent distraction from the crap that was happening at the time - without it I would have spent every spare second obsessively researching fetal ventriculomegaly and convincing myself that I was going to give birth to a retard (that's not very PC, I know). As things turned out I have a perfectly normal baby who, like all babies, is a time vampire, so I'm not sure if I'd be able to bang out 1,667 words a day. I still have over a month to figure that out, I guess.

Waiting rather impatiently for tonight's episode of Outrageous Fortune. The promo makes it look like Ted's going to die, but I'm hoping he just has indigestion or something equally harmless. Maybe Pascalle makes fish pie and it disagrees with him. That's 40-odd minutes of drama right there!

What happened to all of last year's moral outrage about the Boobs on Bikes parade? Did everyone realise that their attempts to have it banned in Auckland merely resulted in free publicity for the parade, and so elected to stay silent this year? I doubt they were that organised, actually, but without all of the fist-waving furore this year it almost slipped under the radar. But one "news" story covering the parade was enough to crash the 3news website... I was just amazed they managed to keep Chelsea Charms' chest in shot. (Link if you're interested... NSFW, obviously. Unless you work on Queen St, in which case you've seen it all before.)

This morning I read a post that made me change my mind about... something. I wasn't keen on this something when the idea was floated some months ago but now I think it is wonderful! Making exciting plans now. That's all I'm saying about that something for the time being, but watch this space.

I was at Farmers last weekend and I noticed they have Santa Bears on sale. Santa Bears. It's only September! Christmas merchandise does not belong on sale until after my birthday, thank you very much. I don't care if it's their 100 year anniversary, that's just not right.

As for my birthday, that's a month from tomorrow... yikes. The countdown is on.

The lack of recent updates means my life's been pretty boring of late, even by my standards. I've even found it difficult to care enough about the idiots in the news (Michael Laws being a dickhead, Kyle Sandilands trying his best to get fired, Larry Baldock being an utter twat) and the cool stuff that's been happening (new Muse album, the van-boat conversion and Derren Brown's lotto "prediction" trickery) to say much of anything about them. So yeah, I've been boring, and I'm bored of being boring.

I'm not sure what to do about that though. I'm joining the library book club for something to do, but I think that's still kind of boring. It does mean I'll be reading something other than parenting books, which is a bit of a rut I've found myself in. I've started reading Novel About My Wife, but I'm finding it hard to resist the urge to skip to the end.

That's me, more or less. How are you?

I ended up having two eye exams last week. I went to the local Optometrist last Monday, and after discussing my symptoms (flashing lights in my peripheral vision, difficulty maintaining focus when trying to read, and an increase in floaters in one of my eyes) he referred me to an Opthalmologist who specialises in retinal surgery. Even though I was fairly sure it wasn't serious, I was a little worried about the urgency the Optometrist felt was needed for the follow-up - he got me an appointment for the next day - but it's all fine, more or less. After an intense eye examination which was easily the most uncomfortable experience I've had in the past six months, the Opthalmologist told me I have several weak spots in both of my eyes, but the chances of them developing into retinal tears are quite low.

However, I have to live with the flashes and floaters until they go away. No idea how long that will take, and it's rather annoying - it's a bit like having little strobe lights going off behind my eyes, and when I try to read (especially on a computer screen) the floaters are incredibly distracting - but there's really nothing that can be done about it. And even though there's very little chance that any of the defects in my eyes will get any worse, it's still a bit worrying now that I know they're there. I moped about it for a few days after the second eye exam, but I'm over it now. Everyone has stuff wrong with them, and anyone who claims to be in perfect health is either lying or mistaken.

Other news: I've switched my mobile number over to 2degrees. Goodbye Vodafone! And Geraldine, the girl who nobody but me likes, has invited me to her engagement party. I'd like to go. No reason why I shouldn't, is there?

Parker turned six months old on Monday! I guess you could call that a half-birthday? Since I posted pictures of him as a newborn and at about three months, I'm going to call that a pattern and post a picture for the next quarter. So here he is, hanging out on the floor:



Developmentally he remains boringly normal. He has eczema, which is fairly common at this age and seems to bother me more than it does him. He smiles a lot but will only laugh if you do something really stupid. Unfortunately for me, he doesn't like to nap and wakes up after 40 minutes. How did I produce a child who dislikes long naps? That's even more perplexing than the question of how I produced a child with blond hair.

I have an appointment with an optometrist this afternoon - I've had some visual disturbances over the past few days which are probably nothing to worry about, but might mean I'm about to suddenly go blind, so I panicked and called for an appointment last night. I think I'll have to cancel though, because there's nobody to look after Parker while Dan's at work and I can't very well take him with me, can I? No, I can't. I'll reschedule and try my best not to lose my remaining eyesight before I manage to see somebody.

Someone in South Auckland stole a car like mine and crashed it into a house. This amuses me greatly - not bit about crashing into a kid's bedroom, that's terrible, but the fact that they stole a Nissan Tino for a joyride is amusing to me. It is not a cool car! It's a sluggish family station wagon. Who'd nick that? Well, someone stupid enough to smash into a house the minute a cop starts chasing them, I guess.

Okay, going to call optometrist and do some parenting now! What an awesome way to spend a Saturday morning.

This Friday at 12:34 and 56 seconds, the time and date will be 12:34:56 7/8/9. Unless of course you use the month/day/year format instead, in which case that ship has already sailed.

My PO Box was up for renewal last week, and I decided to close it instead of paying for another year. After having my mail stolen, intercepted and opened from at least two of the places I've lived in the last six years, I'm a little nervous about having everything delivered to my house, but there have been no signs of mail theft... yet. All the stuff I was expecting to receive at home in the last four months has arrived, but none of that was particularly interesting. If my contact lenses, 2degrees sim card and Threadless order don't turn up I will be extremely pissed off.

Anyone else think the decision to pre-record the writing awards at this year's Emmys to make more time available for "entertaining" segments is bullshit? If they want to "edit down the standing and the hugging and the walking down the aisle" then why aren't the pre-recording the whole thing? What makes watching an actor walk up to the stage fascinating, and watching a writer do the same thing boring? Seriously, the actors wouldn't even be there if it weren't for the writers' efforts, so why are they being cut out of the live broadcast? (I think I know the answer to that question, but I'm just putting it out there anyway.)

2degrees will finally release details on pricing and handsets tomorrow... after all the hype, it'd better be good. I've been a Vodafone customer for ten years now but am thinking of changing once my contract expires at the end of the year... I'm not all that keen on re-signing with them at any rate. But if I switch networks, I'll port my number over. The one promise I made to myself in my youth* that I've actually managed to keep is that I'd never change my mobile phone number. I like the idea that people I haven't talked to in a decade might still have my number, I guess.

I've been trying to get in contact with Paula for a couple of weeks but haven't had any luck. Her landline number has been disconnected, or something, and when I call her mobile nobody answers it. I've had to resort to sending one of her sons a message on Facebook to try and get a hold of her, which felt really weird.

I really wish I'd known Threadless was about to have a sale before I placed that order a couple of weeks ago. The stuff I ordered wasn't even for me, but still.

Dan bought a 750GB external hard drive on the weekend to back stuff up, so now I'm going to go and back stuff up. Consolidating the contents of three computers sounds like a fun thing to do on a Monday night.

* Because I'm so old now.

There's this Building Code requirement that says bedrooms must have a source of natural light, which sounds quite reasonable in theory but doesn't always work well in practice. It certainly doesn't work in my apartment at any rate. The bedrooms each have a massive skylight and a window into the lounge, facing towards the only external windows in the apartment. The windows into the rooms basically mean that there's no privacy, because anyone in the lounge can see into the bedrooms, but you can put up curtains so that's solved without too much hassle. But the skylights... they're so bloody impractical. When it rains, you can't hear yourself think because it's so bloody loud. Condensation forms on the inside of the skylight on cold nights, which then drips down onto the bed and on my face (which is weird, because the last time I lived in an apartment with skylights I never had that happen). In theory you can open and close the skylights to get fresh air, but you'd have to have arms that are three metres long to be able to reach the latch. Also, Dan works shifts and Parker has three naps a day, and it's a bit hard to sleep during daylight hours when there's a great big window to the sky in your face.

So after trying a couple of different methods to block the light and water, we've now stapled some big black rubbish bags to the ceiling. No more drips, and no more light... just a bloody ugly black square stuck to the ceiling. Our bedroom is practically pitch black all the time now - that's why there's a regulation in the Building Code about natural light, I guess - but at least we have the option to turn the lights on if we need to, now that we've blocked off the sun.

I discovered yesterday that the 9th Doctor and Mr Eko are both in G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra. I... almost want to see it now. And Bruce Boxleitner is reprising the role of Tron in Tron Legacy, which seems a bit ridiculous. I mean, he's now old enough to be playing people's fathers (he was Awesome's dad in Chuck), and Tron came out the year I was born... how are they going to explain that a computer program aged? Or are they going to do some crazy digital de-aging stuff in the film? Not that I care about Tron that much... but the trailer does look pretty much awesome.

Paula Bennett has made headlines again, this time for releasing personal details of two beneficiaries who criticised the Government for changing the eligibility criteria for the Training Incentive Allowance. Some people think it was a brilliant move, and some think it's disgusting abuse of power. One person I know is apparently planning a march on her house (pitchforks optional). I'm just concerned about the message she's sending - that if you question the Government, they will dig up dirt and try their best to publicly humiliate you. Bennett says that it won't become standard practice to release beneficiaries' incomes, but she also said she would do it again if someone speaks out and isn't telling the "full story". Right.

Personally I'm not overly bothered about the changes to the Training Incentive Allowance - of course a National-led Government would make cuts to welfare spending, as large and as soon as they are able to. What concerns me is that a Government Minister released this information, claiming that by going to the media with their complaints they've given "implied consent" to have their private details publicised. Their weekly income has no relevance to their complaints about the TIA cutbacks, and those people who think they are bludgers are completely missing the point - these women are attempting to gain qualifications (in nursing and early childhood education) in order to get off the benefit and into paid employment. Instead of assisting them and other beneficiaries in this goal, Bennett is hindering their progress by revoking the TIA, and trying to bully them into silence by publicising their private details. Bennett herself wasn't best pleased when her own dirty laundry (in the form of a gang member living at her house) was aired earlier this year, and in the past she was a recipient of the TIA, so her reaction to these two women appears hypocritical and immature.

If you read that little rant you clearly have too much time on your hands, so if you've got another 80-odd minutes to spare, check out Another Brick in the Wall-E. It's Wall-E synched to Pink Floyd's The Wall, and it actually seems to work. Or if you haven't got that long, you should totally check out the weird safety video that's been doing the rounds, Will You Be Here Tomorrow? - five minutes of unintentionally hilarious carnage, with not a single safety tip. Just when you think the people in the video should quit maiming themselves in the warehouse and get desk jobs, it demonstrates that sitting at a desk is no safer than stepping in front of a bus. It's brilliant.

Things I have pondered this week:

• People aren't too bothered when s169 of the Crimes Act is used as a defence against murder charges when the victims are elderly homosexual males killed by younger heterosexual men, but when the victim's a young female killed by her older ex-boyfriend, all of a sudden there's a public outcry about the provocation defence. Not that I think we should retain the partial defence of provocation - it's nonsense, really, as no "ordinary person" would lose control and kill somebody - it's just that nobody seemed to care about closing that legal loophole until Sophie Elliott's killer went to trial, even though the Law Commission recommended it be scrapped two years ago.
• Relatedly, Clayton Weatherston is a douchebag.
• Surf City are also douchebags.
• New Zealanders don't use the term "douchebag" very often. It's a bit of an insult to the vagina, really.

I had a flu jab last week - Parker was getting his 5-month immunisations, so I decided I'd get one in solidarity - and I've been feeling a bit crappy since then. Days of fatigue and general malaise, and the last couple of days I've had a sore throat. I'm not quite sick enough to get sympathy from anyone, though, so I can only hope that I'll be feeling better soon.

There's this French newspaper, La Tribune, which I recently discovered has an English version of its website. Well, sort of. A few of the articles appear to have been translated by an actual person, but most of them are just converted by some kind of automated translation service that provides some really bewildering translations. They're just... nonsense, and it's actually kind of funny. Current headlines include "The moral one of the French households sets out again downwards" and "The broken down British growth dries", and the header for their "most read articles" section says "items the most seen". I quite like this poll they're running at the moment (though, like most everything on the site, I'm not quite sure what it's about):

Check it out, it's good for a laugh.

Also worth checking out is the debut album from Radio Over Moscow! It is called Battletech and it is very good! The guy who made the music is really cool! (He is also the father of my child, but this does not change my opinion of his music in any way.) You should listen to the album, and if you like it, buy it! You will sleep well at night knowing that you have helped a starving artist and his family.

Right then, as you were.

Forgive me friends, for I have slacked off. It has been four weeks since my last post. I'd say I had nothing to talk about but I suppose that would be a lie. I should really just make more of an effort. Tonight, though, bullet points will have to do. Meaty bullet points.

• Have I mentioned before that my father's neighbour was killed in December 2007? The killer (who was as near to getting caught red-handed as you can get without being arrested while actively bludgeoning someone) went with a homosexual panic defence and was found guilty of manslaughter, not murder. I always thought manslaughter was when you accidentally run someone over, not when you beat a pensioner to death and ram the neck of a banjo down his throat (or stab your ex 216 times), but I guess I was mistaken.
• Dan's 15-year-old sister Kyla came to stay for a few days last week. During the last evening of her stay Dan suggested that I talk to Kyla "about boys and things", which seemed like a rather silly thing to ask me to do. One, Kyla and I aren't that close. Two, I've always been pretty hopeless when it comes to boys and things. Three, she reads magazines, watches Shortland Street and attends Fairfield College, so I think the subject's pretty much covered already. Isn't 15 a bit late for that kind of a chat, anyway?
• Parker is teething, and it's not pretty. He's a cranky little fountain of spew and drool. I think putting up with that while she was here was enough to make sure Kyla keeps out of trouble.
• One thing's been bugging me since watching the last episode of Outrageous Fortune: Loretta has a key to Hayden's place. This strikes me as a very bad idea on Hayden's part, given that Loretta burned down his house when they broke up roughly two years ago. Surely whoever looks after the show's continuity would have picked that up? It would have made more sense to have her fish the key out from under the doormat instead. But no, the key was right there on her bloody keyring. How sloppy. Having said that, it was great to see Loretta acting responsibly and looking out for Baby Jane - that was even more surprising than her abrupt transformation from scruffy teenaged Loretta into the scheming vixen "Lo-Rita" last season.
• And I can't talk about a TV show without then going on to say something about Torchwood, though I don't really want to. On the one hand, critics loved it and it was a huge rating success, and rightly so. On the other, RTD going to have to dispose of many, many sacks of hate mail. Good television is not kittens and rainbows and happy endings for all, but it doesn't have to be unremittingly bleak either. I'm of two minds about the series at the moment. Also, Ianto's nephew's name is David Davies - no parents would do that to their child, surely?

Time to catch some sleep... I'm hoping for at least a solid four hours.

After the car issues last month, we decided to upgrade to a newer car. Something bigger, because baby gear takes up a ridiculous amount of room. So after a couple of weeks of near-obsessive researching and Trade Me watching, we bought a Nissan Tino on Friday. I nicknamed it Santino because it amuses me (though my mother named all of her cars - I'm not turning into her, am I?). It's half the age of our old car and a fair bit larger. Driving it is taking a bit of getting used to - after years of driving shitty old cars, it feels strange driving a CVT auto with power steering and airbags and a decent stereo, instead of something that smells like wet carpet and has a clunky manual transmission. It almost feels too easy to drive, although it's not without its drawbacks. Parking is a bit of a bitch, because it's larger than what I'm used to, and the sloping bonnet means you can't actually see the nose of the car from the driver's seat. But I'll get used to it.

I spent yesterday afternoon counting the advance votes in the Mt Albert By-Election. It only took just over an hour to complete the count, because there had been less advance votes cast than anticipated and we were spectacularly efficient... or (more likely) the head office overestimated how long it would take because By-Elections don't happen that often, so they didn't know how long it would take to complete a single count as opposed to General Elections - polling places have to count at least four sets of votes on Election Night (2x General and 2x Maori, plus some polling places near the borders of two electorates take votes for both, so they have six counts to complete), plus Specials. So we started counting at 4pm, were finished just after 5pm, and then had to sit around making small talk for nearly two hours because we weren't allowed to leave or communicate with anyone outside our locked room until the polling places closed at 7pm. There was even a uniformed security guard standing watch to make sure we didn't do anything dodgy - the poor guy must have been bored out of his mind.

I have to say, I'm astonished at how many people out there fail to follow the very simple instructions on the ballot paper. It tells you at the top of the paper to put a tick in the circle beside the name of the candidate you choose. How bloody hard is that? Just a tick in the circle before their name. Not in the space between their name and the party name. Not next to (or in one case I saw, through) the party logo. It's a tick in the circle, not a cross. Don't completely colour in the circle, and continue drawing until the ink bleeds through to the other side of the paper. There's no need to cross out the names of all the other candidates who you don't wish to vote for. Just put a tick in the effing circle. But please don't make the tick so big that the tail extends up over the names of the two candidates above the one you're voting for. Smiley faces next to the candidate's name are unnecessary, but I suppose they are a nice touch.

I saw all of those things more times than I can count, but at least you can work out who they wanted to vote for - it just takes a couple of extra seconds. It interrupts our flow, you could say, but we still work out what the voter's intention was. But there are people out there who screw it up so badly that nobody can work out who they wanted to vote for. I can kind of understand that in the hospital votes, because those voters might not have been totally with it at the time, but the other advance voters actually had to put some thought into the whole process before totally screwing it up. They had the presence of mind to realise that they wouldn't be able to make it to a polling place on Election Day, so they went to the effort of seeking out an advance polling place sometime in the two weeks before the By-Election, indicating they really want to make sure their opinion counts... and then they put a tick in the white space at the bottom of the paper, or selected three candidates, or just drew a squiggle in the middle of the page. Why? Why, why, why?

Okay, rant over (at least until the 2011 Election). Now that's out of my system I can write a Trade Me ad to sell the old car... fingers crossed there's someone out there willing to buy it.

No doubt everyone who cares already knows that David Bain was found not guilty of murdering his family 15 years ago. I'm not sure why the 3 News camera was focused solely on Joe Karam when the verdict was read, though. At least he's finally free.

Pissed off that Christobelle won NZNTM. I knew she had it as soon as Trelise Cooper commented on Laura's mottled legs. I highly doubt anyone outside New Zealand would actually book Christobelle, what with the receding hairline and the wonky face, plus I never felt she really wanted to be a model. She said last week that if she didn't win, she wouldn't model because there isn't enough money in it.... yeah.

Since the Budget was released last week, I've been meaning to write something about what a bad idea suspending contributions to the Superannuation Fund is, but I'm afraid months of sleep deprivation have impaired my ability to write anything coherent, let alone interesting (as if you couldn't already tell from the calibre of last month's entries). Besides, I generally find that if you wait a few days, one or more of the Public Address bloggers will say exactly what I'm thinking. So I point you in the direction of Keith Ng's thoughts on the matter - he's done the sums and everything.

Waiting for more information on the Police investigation that prompted Richard Worth's resignation as a Minister, but details have not been forthcoming... I suppose that means it's a probably a pretty big deal, as no one is willing to speculate in case they get it wrong. I've no doubt he would have had to go sooner or later, given the poor judgement he's shown during the few months he's been a minister, but I thought he'd be fired for just being a buffoon. I guess it's now just up to Paula Bennett to embarrass the Nats every once in a while.

In brighter news, apparently New Zealand is the most peaceful nation in the world at the moment. I guess I'll stay here, then.

We've made it to the end of the month, which relieves me to no end. This year's quest to update my journal every day for the month of May has felt a lot more difficult than usual, although it's hard to be sure when it's something I only do once a year. At least I managed to stick to it for the month, regardless.

The problem this time is that I have no life to speak of at the moment. Granted, I didn't have a particularly exciting life to begin with, but now I have close to zero interaction with people outside of my household in my day-to-day life, and I suppose I'm starting to feel a bit isolated. That's the one thing I miss about going to work - being a fairly introverted person I don't seek out other people's company, but I do still miss interacting with people. No man is an island and all that.

Next month I might play around on Ficly a bit. Maybe.

Made the trip to Hamilton and back today. It's not a particularly long journey, but I was glad that I can finally share driving duties with Dan now. Saved me from falling asleep at the wheel on the way home.

Saw this video of a (rather malnourished looking) Pygmy Jerboa. It's the strangest looking creature I've ever seen.


Only one more day until the end of the month... this year's quest to update every day in May has been a pretty hard slog.