this past weekend: what is the single biggest worry when you're hosting a party? that's right, that noone will come. i have a new way to deal with this: only semi host a party. that is let your friends hold a party at your place. if they have enough friends that you adore then you get most of the benefits of hosting a party but at the end you don't have to clean up.

monday: my landlord's wellington representative came over(thank god for the post party cleanup). she probably didn't suspect a thing, but this means that she thinks my flattie and i are alcoholics judging by the liquor bottles in our recycling this week.

tuesday: i had a hell day at work. and just wanted to go home and sleeeeeep. but the arctic monkeys were playing and i had tickets so had to go. thank god i did, cos it was a much better way to spend the evening that hitting refresh on facebook status updates. for more, read this.

wednesday: i was supposed to take annual leave. but went to work for an important meeting and took a long lunch break. i went to my new favourite city eatery. and i am so reluctant to tell you about it because i don't want everyone to go.... but i'm going to anyway: picnic. and after the walk up the hill you deserve a friggen chocolate milkshake. and maybe a breakfast burrito. but beware the birds. they've got brave, which is unfortunate because they are two wings away from being mice. and you should all know by know i equate mice with the devil.

thurday: the world sale. ie the most important fashion date on my calendar. i didn't go exactly nuts there (two tops, both awesome) but i was so jubilant that on the way back to work i accidentally bought two pairs of shoes, a clutch purse and a fascinator. can anyone say 'economic crisis'? anyway from tomorrow i'm starting my next 101 in 1001 days task: no clothes purchases for three months. i will not know what to do with my time!

how come i've never read a confederacy of dunces before? don't worry though. i am making up for the oversight by reading it obsessively.

and as a result i'm progressing nicely on the 1001 books to read before you die challenge. i may have even caught up to the one book a month target after i finally finished the motivation sapping eva trout, and read the delightful miss peddigrew lives a day.

this week has been fierce. some weeks are. a election has been called, which of course is a highlight. for the first time in years i'm interested. i think the last time i was five and i wrote a story about how my mother was going to vote for david lange. my school principal gave me a smiley face stamp on my hand for that one. i have also voted in the stv vs fpp city council poll. i'm such a citizen right now.

i also did some dancing at a ball on friday night, which is perhaps the real reason i spent yesterday reading confederacy of dunces and not going to atomic. ie i needed to recover. the ball itself was fine, but low key. i wore sixty dollars of equip jewels and pulled out my disco moves once again. turns out i actually prefer dancing by myself though, so i kept moving away from my partners so i could twirl alone. anyway after the ball i drank whiskey in the holiday inn hotel lobby until two am while some soccer team ate sandwiches. as an aside, they weren't as hot as i had anticipated.

i also got pretty cultured this week. i went to see the rita angus exhibition at te papa. seeing the island bay boats in real life, and not in a faded poster in someone's living room, was like a pilgrimage for my island bay bred self. and like most great art works, it was smaller in real life. but still fierce. that same night i ate coq au vin at hippotamus. food was like a 9 out of ten. views were great. but music was random and i think the glass food by the entrance could do with a dusting. anyway, i'll be back. i also ate at plate at the holiday inn. food was pretty good. maybe a seven and a half. and i ate at the koru club and about a hundred times at my work cafe. i also went to dorkland this week. for all of about two hours.

this week i also have two new favourite songs. one is mase's feel so good. and the other is this one.



i thought i hated this song because it was on a grey's anatomy like that terrible song. how to save a life. by the fray. but then this weekend i listened to it again and decided actually it is the greatest song of all time.

anyway, i can't believe i have spent this long not reading confederacy. better get back in to it...

so even though i knew i was going to a movie billed as csi:reykjavik in my head i imagined jarhead and jake.

instead i got a movie that made me feel cold and that took me through the murder of this shady character who may or may not have been a rapist in the 1970s but who definitely had some kind of genetic defect.

obviously, i'm totally spontaneous. as was my decision to see jar city tonight.

it was a good decision. 7.5/10. it would have scored higher but for the scenes with rats and sheep.

also, as an aside, i felt like chocolate pudding tonight too. so went to strawberry fare. it reminded me of being fifteen. except that unlike 1995 the place was empty. luckily some things never change, like the menu. the berry drenched chocolate pudding was just what i wanted. and the service was prompt and polite. 8/10.

some days i just sit around and think about ray liotta. and how one time he was in an awesome movie called corrina, corrina. the one with whoopie goldberg and the ever delightful tina majorino. i say she's ever delightful because it is true. one glance at napoleon dynamite and you'd be with me.

anyway tina majorino is the link in this chain. because she has been on big love. and so has amanda sayfried. and amanda sayfried is in the best movie since high school musical hit the small screen....

mamma mia.

basically you should see it. because it is awesome (10/10). but if i have to make the appeal that bit sweeter i'd say pierce brosnan pulls off the white pant look and plays his role with conviction. and colin firth gets his kit off. sort of. amanda sayfried though, is bland and maybe 12 years old. plus she's offended the gays. to quote someone quoted on imdb " A source tells the publication, "Outrageous! How can (Seyfried) diss (disrespect) the gays like that? This is our movie!"". tut tut.

i saw it at the embassy. where i nearly got a nose bleed from the shitty seats even though almost noone was there. then i ate pizza at one red dog (the place never changes, 6.5/10)and caught and environmentally taxi home. great night out. i wonder what ray liotta was doing tonight? is he in a csi spinoff yet. that man was MADE for that kind of role.

that gorilla from my last post continues to be hilarious. i have become the most frequent visitor to my own blog. just to get my three times a day dose of the gorilla going phil collins on the drums. i might get fired for excessive internet use at work.

speaking of work, i wore a suit this weekend. which is almost as hilarious as the gorilla given that i refuse to wear suits at work. i went to a hospital themed party as a bureaucrat. complete with post it notes and red tape. and a great opening line for any hot doctors i came across. something about tying them up in red tape for months. anyway, i didn't use it.

i did get stabbed in the head though.


today i went to see shetland ponies at the most awesome museum slash farm slash cafe that i've ever been to in my life. just to be clear i am only linking it so that you know for sure that YOU ARE NEVER ALLOWED TO GO THERE WITHOUT ME BECAUSE I WOULD DIE OF JEALOUSY. we went there for ryles's birthday. that's right: the most choice two year old just became the most choice three year old. his treat was going to see the model railway and feeding the shetland ponies. but he was more interested in pretending the disability access toilet cubicle was a spaceship. we ate chocolate mud cake too.

and by the way i can't believe ryles is three. because it seems like just yesterday i was in the hospital arguing with nurses and worrying about the pipe things coming out of his teeny tiny nose.
and now he's singing happy birthday and blowing out three candles without any help. he's such a show off.

this ad helps me to remember my spirit.



it also helps me to remember phil collins who is hilarious on every level.

tonight i watched tele. it was awesome. i began my night, however, with panic calls to people at work and a reception for all blacks at parliament. but because of the already mentioned phone calls i arrived at the all blacks party late and as a result have not started a high profile affair with a sports star. rugby players are dull and not actually that attractive. but if i want a husband before i'm thirty i really have to keep my eye on the prize.

dejected, i went home via cafe laz for a chicken iskender. take away. which was brilliant as always. plus i convinced myself that with the beetroot and carrot and all that it was health food. so i got baklava as well. i also needed the sweet relief of baklava to help me get over the fact that saigon cafe is no more. no more walking down memory lane vietnamese style in newtown. just as well newtown new world sell 59 cent packets of pho noodles. in the international food section. chicken is the best.

plus i'd timed my return home just in time for PRIME ROCKS ELTON JOHN. which was the craziest doco ever. because of the way it told me nothing and involved lots of whizzy effects where a clip art rocket was flown over vegas and where freddy mercury and all of elton's famous 'friends' joined him on stage. but it brought to mind the elton john concert where i nearly got into a fight over my backpack and where some woman couldn't deal with how i can sing 'i guess that's why they call it the blues' like noone is listening.

then i messed around, watching more tele, and GREAT GORILLA ADS, before the euphoria of my electric blanket. which of course reminds me of the other way i remember my spirit... through sleep.

too tired to be original, i'll begin by repeating my facebook status update... "[i] can't remember being warm". i am being quite literal.

i am in bed because i once watched a movie at school on the evils of tramping and the voiceover said that if you were getting hypothermic you should get in your sleeping bag. i figure getting in to bed with your electric blanket on full would be the same thing. but actually as i type i am wondering if i will get frostbite on my fingers. plus even with the trusty leckie blankie, and thermals, i wouldn't say that i was warm exactly.

you know who else has been cold? ernest henry shackleton.

hello, i'm sir ernest henry shackleton. trying to cross the antarctic on foot was COLD.

i know this because i've seen an episode of shackleton the tv show. he and i have another thing in common too - we are both explorers. for shackleton, it was polar exploration. for me, it is the following....

• board games. this week i played settlers with the ships and something or other extender pack. not all explorations are successful, but like shackleton it is how i recover that sets me apart from my peers. in other words, i lost big time. but i'll bounce back.
• parties. i went to the matariki ball at te papa on friday night. if you went to law school with me you were probably there. everyone else was. it was a bit lame though. so the big discovery was it isn't only in highschool where balls fail to deliver.
• baked potatoes at midnight espresso. friggen delicious, even if at the time i was disappointed because i wanted them to reopen the kitchen to make me a ham, cheese and onion toasted sandwich.
  
• dancing to interpol. so, yeah, i've done this before. but at 24 hour party people on saturday night i may have even beaten my own record of awesomeness in interpol dancing. also i co-discovered the new best male dancer at 24hrpp... yellow pants. that's our nickname for him anyway. as john travolta to disco, so yellow pants to brit pop. basically.
• pineapple fritters and red bean jelly at dragons yum char. both were too sweet. but both were new and exciting. dragons yum char was just so efficiently run too. apart from no mango jelly it was the near perfect 24hrpp recovery breakfast.
• bagladeshi cinema. i went to see bricklane tonight. so sure, it was from the UK, but you get what i mean. i needed to go to the bathroom from half way through. which may have reduced my enjoyment somewhat. pretty good. maybe 6/10. if slow moving pieces that make comment on the crazy times post 9-11 this could be your cup of tea so you'd probably rate it higher. what stopped me rating it higher was the weird flashbacks and arty shots and not enough screen time for the younger male lead REOW.
  

see, shackleton and me, not too dissimilar. and actually, after starting with my facebook status, i now might have to end by changing my facebook status line. because i'm starting to defrost and i no longer fear frost bite. i knew the leckie blanket wouldn't let me down. i'm sorry i ever doubted it.