i have spent a chunk of the weekend watching twenty years of oprah. i have a lot to be grateful for. the thing about oprah is we are very similar. like me, she was deeply moved by princess diana's life and her passing. and she mentions it at every opportunity. and she asks the hard questions that everyone wants to know the answers to. like how she asked lisa marie if she ever had sex with michael jackson. the answer was a surprising yes.

i've done other stuff besides watch oprah. but i can't really remember it. i'll stick to the highlights:

• chris brown and rihanna at the tsb area. chris brown is cute. rihanna is beautiful. and they both know how to put on a show. i suspect a lot of training and rehersal on their parts. highlight of the night was the encore performance of umbrella, where they dueted. however, this didn't stop me wondering when either chris brown or rihanna were going to kill it like ice cube. it never happened. note to self: buy shares in supre and fake tan. this is what all the girls - and there were thousands - were wearing.
• brideshead revisited. too much of the girl characters, not enough of the boy characters - but still quite a lovely relationship between sebastian and charles. 7/10
• young @ heart - i cried at one point, but basically this documentary about a group of 70+ singers who reinterpret more modern songs had all the character in the world, but as a documentary it wasn't great. worth seeing just for the performances at the end. and for louie. 7/10
• rain of the children - i avoided seeing this until now. the life of puhi, an 80 year old woman from tuhoe, is retraced. and it plays like a love letter from vincent ward to her, twenty eight years after her death. the movie is proof that history repeats. 9/10.
• my nephews are in town. ice cream outside the zoo is my new favourite activity.
• i am going to a ball on tuesday, so had to buy a new dress. think red chiffon. needless to say, i keep pulling it out of my wardrobe just to admire and pet it. i hope i am as much of a hit in real life as i am in my imagination.