You hear that, Mr Andersen?

That's what I want

My subscription to New Scientist runs out soon, and it's about $520 to renew for another two years. On one hand, that's not a lot of money over two years, and I do enjoy reading them; on the other, that's a big chunk of cash to be spending now, and I am about twenty or thirty issues behind at the moment. So... I guess I'll have to make a decision soon. Probably "no", though I don't much like that answer. :(

I've been doing my best to cut back on unnecessary purchases - not buying icecreams and drinks while I'm out and about, that sort of thing. Of course, Sunday was probably typical - I very nearly bought an icecream, and didn't; then nearly bought a drink from Fluid on the way home, and didn't. Then I noticed Farmers was having a sale, and bought two dinner-sets and a biggish flan dish.

Look, it was a sale, all right? :) Besides, the flan dish ended up being less than $5, and the dinner-sets were "buy one, get one free" - and I'm currently tossing up whether to keep them as presents, or to hold on to them until entropy destroys enough of my current dinner-set to justify replacing it.

So... mixed results, savings-wise. I suspect the actual answer is to stay out of temptation's way, and not go into town. Of course, if my current overtime trends continue, that may be pretty easy to do.

***

I'm listening to Chungking, which is one of the many bands that being on the SmokeCDs mailing list has exposed me to. I don't know why, but We Travel Fast is just one of those mellow albums that I can either enjoy in the background while I'm concentrating, or actively listen to. Plus the male singer who occasionally turns up reminds me of a less excitable Bootsy Collins. :) Anyway, I encourage you to listen to the clips and see if it's your sort of thing.

One thing that I'll do once I'm moved is put together a list of the music I own, similar to the book lists. I've been luckier with buying double-ups in music than in literature - there was an extra copy of Bic Runga's Drive and something by St Germain, and that's it, I think. Oh, and there's been a couple of times where I've found a version of an album with bonus stuff, but I already had the basic one - I think Erik may have inherited more than one CD that way.

***

Anyhoo, I guess it's only 14 days until settlement. One nice aspect of the settlement date is that it should be easy to remember - flower delivery services and the like can be relied on to remind me each year about the day before, for a start. :)

Move on up!

I considered quoting M-People, but decided that Curtis Mayfield was a better match. ;)

I have now moved all but 20 or so of my books, as well as all but a handful of CDs. I'm not tracking my CD collection as closely as my books, but there were enough for two large plastic crates, a slightly smaller plastic crate, a big box and two smaller boxes. I always remember that books are heavy in bulk, but for some reason I'm always surprised at the heft of large numbers of CDs. They look like they should be so light...

Adding all my lists of books together, I see that I own a bit over 1,600 books. (This is one of the reasons why I felt it was important to get a head-start on packing.) Oh, and I don't think I'm tracking role-playing books - but they'd only add thirty or forty at most, so they wouldn't make that much of a difference. In case anyone's interested, here's the lists of my fiction, non-fiction & humor, current as of now. As Chuck noted, there are a bunch of obvious gaps, but filling in the holes might have to wait until I've paid off my mortgage; or at least until I've whittled my unread-books pile down a bit. :)

Fiction books (1100+)

Nonfiction and humor books (400+)

This means that the two biggest of my... uh... things-that-are-essentially-similar-groupings are done. The other TTAESGs (clothes, DVDs, and kitchenware) should be much easier; and then it's just a few boxes and bags of random stuff. Oh, and furniture, which I'm dealing with separately.

What's a better name for those groupings? Collections? Agglomerations? Crashes? No, that's rhinos...

***

I was thinking about how it was odd that I was startled by swearing on other people's blogs. I mean, I can swear - I just normally choose not to. I've certainly been teased at work for saying "bother", "argh" and "crap-a-doodle" where others would express things more strongly; but my philosophy is that if you use up all your swears on minor things, then you won't have any left over for when you're inarticulately infurated by the idiocy of whatever you're getting all het up about. One consequence is that cursing is pretty much an all-verbal thing for me.

I should say that I don't mind it, particularly. It'd be pretty difficult to work in IT if I did, the genteel environs of Victoria's CompSci department excepted - there's some sort of "informal == tshirts, jeans and swearing" equation going on. Then again, I don't tend to wear jeans, either. ;)

***

Just booked Cool Moves to come over on the 4th (at 4:15pm) and move my big furniture. I'd've preferred to do it on the weekend, but they're completely booked for Saturday, and aren't working Sunday; they've said they'll give me a call back if they get a Saturday cancellation. So... pretty much done on the whole moving-out thing, except for tidying the garage so that a bunch of my furniture has a place to go. I also got around to paying for the building inspection, so I just have the valuer, the mortgage broker and the lawyer to go, as well as organizing insurance, getting a time to go over to the new place and find out security codes and stuff, and possibly setting up a family trust, wills, powers of attorney, etc.

Okay, maybe I have more to do than I thought.

But only 18 more days to go! :)

And I say hello.

Some of you may have come here from Jenni's blog. For those who don't know me... I'm afraid I'm not a political commentary blog, like No Right Turn, nor do I focus on media or rpgs like Multi-dimensional or Gamester at large; I don't even write mind-blowing short-stories or crazy cartoons like Hitherby Dragons or Overcompensating.

I work for Weta Digital, which is pretty cool; but I generally work from about 8am until at least 6pm, which is not as great as it might be. I'm the database administrator, which makes it harder to have cool war-stories - less Liv Tyler, more FileMaker. "The time we had the outage with the main MySQL server, and switched some of the tools over to the replicas, which made them fall over because of a rogue job on the renderwall" isn't going to get anyone buying me drinks in the hopes that I'll tell them more, I fear. There is some nifty stuff that I get to see, but in general my Non-Disclosure Agreement means that I can't talk about it.

I read a fair amount, and will sometimes write about what I've read - a fair amount of fantasy, SF and crime, but with a scattering of non-fiction and general random stuff thrown in. I've gone on movie-watching binges during the recent Wellinton film festivals (80 movies in 16 days for the last one), though I may decide that I've got to rein it in now that I've bought a house. Oh yeah, and I've just bought a house - I move in on the 15th.

I run and play in the occasional RPG, though not as much as I used to; I've also read a bit about the theory and analysis of RPGs that has gone on in places like rec.games.frp.advocacy and The Forge, though the days when I had time to read the net are, sadly, long gone. People seem to enjoy playing in games I run, for what it's worth.

That's about it. I'm at a computer all day, and work for a company full of people who do the same, so there will hopefully be the occasional nugget of inter-web goodness that I can share with you; but mostly, I keep this updated so that people who know me can keep track of what I'm up to, despite my uselessness when it comes to keeping in touch.

Oh, and it'll hopefully improve my writing, or at least my writing speed. :)

***

A slight side note - I've noticed a whole bunch of "cheating housewives" spam, but nothing about "cheating husbands". As a gesture of friendship to those helpful people who try to tell me where to easily gamble or buy dubious versions of perscription drugs in the comments of month-old posts, I offer you this brilliant idea gratis.

***

Wrote for an hour last night, and was just editing for readability when my machine overheated and rebooted. Since no-one will ever get to read it, let me assure you that it was both witty and profound, and not at all about work or house-buying. :)

But speaking of buying a house - for some reason, the Living Channel has become endlessly fascinating to me. Now, this is not a huge achievement on its part - I'm easily entranced by any movement on a screen, as flatmates and family will attest - but the sight of people wandering flea-markets in search of furniture makes me eager to pop off to the Mary Potter Hospice shop opposite the California Garden center, and start a preemptive strike on my future floorspace. Fortunately, in my mind's ear I can hear the creaking sound of a house filled to the seams with furniture by the kind of crazy old man who has ten dozen cats and bundles of newspaper that he refuses to throw away. (Note, I'm not old - well, not that old, I have no intention to ever own a cat, and New Scientist doesn't count as a newspaper. Besides, they're in stacks, not bundles. Nevertheless, I maintain that it's a valid fear.)

So... while I do have to buy a few items, such as a wardrobe, a desire not to become a Senor Cardgage of my former self should keep me in check. That, and the fact that I probably have plenty of furniture already.

Only 20 days until settlement. That's kinda cool. :)

Games people play.

Went to KapCon this weekend.

Had a fair amount of fun at the post-apocalyptic truckstop LARP - I was one of three monks, all in big matching robes. We were asked a number of times why we had "MKA" on our foreheads, and got a big laugh at the end when we revealed that our order worshipped Mary-Kate and Ashley, and awaited the time when their sundered souls were reborn in one body, bringing to an end the Dark Times that their original birth heralded...

Plans are already being laid for next year's LARP. Bwah-hah-hah. :)

I felt a bit weird getting the Highest Rated Individual Game, since it was InSpectres, which means you get to lean pretty heavily on the creativity and awesomeness of the players. I was actually a little worried after the game - I didn't have as much in the way of handouts and soundtrack as I originally intended, and I wasn't sure that I'd spread the spotlight time well enough between the six players (though the system helps a lot with that). I'm glad everyone had fun, and kudos to my players, and to Matt (who told me to run something), and Hix (who ran the first InSpectres game I played). Oh, and to Morgue, for having various big roleplaying events at his house - the game I ran was losely based on a Call of Cthulhu adventure I ran at one of those, many moons ago.

For those who might be curious - rather than the standard set-up of a Ghostbusters-style franchise, the players were 1950s American soldiers investigating various pulp-supernatural situations. The first part was a subantarctic island full of Nazi zombies, where they were betrayed by "civilian contractor" Mr Smith and accidentally damaged a very personal part of their lieutenant with an ill-judged mortar round. The second part was the same group on a formerly Japanese-held Pacific island, where they fell down latrines and battled flying, fire-breathing croco-bears and mecha-sumo. Oh, and one of them was possessed by a grey alien.

Actually, now that I think about it, I remember trying to wrap things up after their back-up party nearly blew them up with a grenade -- but the players insisted that this wasn't the end, and that there must be more to this secret underground lair. If they won't let you stop running the game, I guess you're doing something right.

***

Just insane day at work this morning - things breaking all over the show. (Not because of the work I had to do on Sunday, by the way.) It did force me to build some useful tools that I'd been considering, so not all bad, but pretty stressful at the time.

The air conditioner deciding to spazz out and start dripping all over the place was, I think, just to make sure we didn't get too complacent in the afternoon.

***

Off home to do some packing. I quite like this extended, leisurly packing regime; but by golly, I'm looking forward to not having to pack for a good long time. :)

All is on...

Just a quick note, to say that despite a disturbed sleep last night, and the lender leaving it until 3:30pm to contact my lawyer to confirm that the house was acceptable (when the deadline to get stuff to the seller's lawyer was 5pm), everything is confirmed, and I will definitely be taking possession of the house.

Thank goodness. And a special shout out to Alan, who had to deal with the, "I know there's not a lot you can do, but..." calls - your support was appreciated.

Settlement is on the 15th. It's a little while a way, but not that far...

***

Oh, and I forgot that I had to put 10% of the purchase price into an account held by the estate agent, but they were very understanding. Got to do that Monday. No, wait, Tuesday - Monday is a public holiday. That's one of the reasons why there was a bit of a rush - we wanted five working days, they didn't want to wait that long. Thank goodness I didn't try for three days.

***

I've been moving stuff that I never unpacked from the flat back to the parent's house - auxiliary crockery and glassware, boxes of unread books, unplugged heaters, stuff like that. (This should make the move at the end of the lease much less stressful - ideally, I just have movers come and shift the heavy stuff, and then I'm done.) One of the consequences of this has been that I've found a bunch of books that I'd never gotten around to unpacking sitting under my bed - which explains why I hadn't been able to find them to lend them to people. Ah, sweet house-ownership, where you never, ever have to move again... ;)

I haven't let myself think too much about where things will go, since I didn't want to have too much emotional investment if things went horribly, horribly wrong. But now, I can mentally place things to my heart's content - and the awesome property inspection even has a floor-plan of the house, both as it was in the 1920s, and as it is now! Here's the current floorplan:

And in just a few short weeks, those of you in Wellington will be able to take a stroll around in person! :)

Falling into place

I don't want to say that everything's going smoothly, since that seems like it's tempting fate. But the valuer came back, and said that the property was worth $370k, plus $5k chattles - since I was worried that I'd offered way to much, this was a relief. (I'm paying $371k, for those who are interested.) Apparently, it would be more, but having a fish & chip shop right next door is a slightly higher fire risk, and adds to the noise. (Mum was worried about the smell, but the valuer was there during the day, and apparently noticed nothing - so that's one thing I'm not going to worry about any more.)

For those who might be curious, here's a picture culled from the estate agent's page, taken from just behind the garage, looking at the house:

I kinda want to restore the stained glass windows that are so obviously meant to be up the top - you know, the red rose with the green leaves that are always there in this kind of house? I think I'll resist the urge, at least until I've paid off a significant chunk of the mortgage. Redoing the garden, on the other hand, seems like a more managable task...

One of the things that I hadn't really thought about was all the incidental costs - the mortgage broker's fee, the lawyer's fee, the valuer's fee, the property inspection fee... all up, it'll probably be several thousand dollars. I don't begrudge any of these people the money - it's just not something I'd really thought about in a way that directly related to my current account. :)

***

Read a bit about the Uncanny Valley - basically, when a depiction is close enough to human that the things wrong with it make the depiction really creepy. I was pointed to this paper by someone describing what they disliked about The Polar Express, which I haven't seen; but this problem is going to become more and more of an issue as CG becomes more and more common. I guess that's the irony - because you can try things too complicated for practical effects, you're more likely to fall in the Uncanny Valley with CG.

***

Someone asked me if the "beau" referenced in my Taupo trip was mine. Unfortunately, no - though PH is a nice guy, he's not really my type. The "beau" was in reference to Puggle, not me. (Or "knot" me, if I'm going to make a poor pun. ;) One day my ambiguous grammar will no doubt get me in serious trouble, or at least result in people running in and out of doors across a long corridor.

***

We recently got upgraded to flat-panel monitors. Or rather, they recently reclaimed all the CRT monitors that can be colour-calibrated for artist use, so they had to give us something to work on. I like the crispness of the screen, but I've already got one dead pixel; I wonder how long these displays are going to last? I wouldn't go back, though - I really like being able to set my font size to "almost indecipherably tiny", so that I can fit as much information on the screen as possible. The much smaller footprint is also handy, though not as big a bonus as you might think - it's offset by the fact that it's a lot harder to put things on the top of the monitor without them falling off. (Dogbert has been exiled to guarding my documentation.)

***

More on the house tomorrow, almost certainly.

White picket fences

My offer on a house has been accepted.

Jinkies.

***

I'm meant to just be starting to look. I'd arranged to see Alan on Sunday to get the paperwork ball rolling (which makes me think of a paper-mache boulder, a la Indiana Jones). We were also going to look at an open home - the ugly 70s house, as a matter of fact. As I expected, it wasn't really suitable for me; it had a lot of work that needed to be done, both outside and in, and the piles looked a bit... um... exciting. So far, so good. Then Dad encourages me to go and have a look at a place in Coutts St, which is having an Open Home.

So, I go along with Mum to have a look... and it's nice. Like, really quite nice. It has plenty of power points in each room, the bathroom and kitchen look in good condition, the water pressure is good, it's got polished floors, the 3 bedrooms are all decently sized, it has a big single garage as well as a carpad big enough for a couple of cars... and there are lots and lots of people looking. My general attitude is slightly depressed - it's a really good location (handy to the bus to work, handy to supermarkets et al.), and they're wanting buyer enquiries at basically the limit of where I'm looking, so it seems very likely that I won't be able to bid enough.

But I talk it over with Mum, and I chat to the agent (who turns out to have gone skiing with my father's family when she was a teenager - small world!), and later that evening I ring her and say that I'd like to make an offer. She arranges to come and meet me this morning; I talk to Alan, and he comes in slightly earlier. The offer is discussed, we add a clause saying that the bank has to be happy with the valuation too, and then we send it off to be considered with the other offer at 2pm.

I get a ring at about 3pm to say that the owner is considering both offers, and talking it over with friends; the agent will get back to me at about 5pm.

And then - I get a call at 5pm, saying that my offer has been accepted, pending a couple of small changes. (They wanted to move the settlement date from the 4th to the 15th - a bit of a pain, since I'll have to rent storage for a bit, but liveable-with.) The agent said that the two offers were very close, with very similar clauses (so the other guy must be a first-time buyer as well), but they went with mine because I offered a bit more, and they didn't want to spend the time going through another round of bidding. They're going overseas soon, so I can understand why they want everything done lickety-split - but it means I'll be confirmed one way or the other by Friday 5pm.

***

There's still a bunch of stuff to go - the builder's report, for example. And I still haven't contacted my parents lawyers to check whether they're willing to act as my conveyancers. And I'm in the middle of "did I do the right thing" throes now.

(For example, there's a fish and chip shop right next door - what about the smell? And Rongotai college is just over the road, so there's potentially bored kids hanging around right outside, which can be a recipe for trouble. And a friend of a friend who lived nearby apparently had their house robbed twice - while there is a security system, I've asked the building inspector to make any suggestions that he thinks is wise about making the property more secure.)

But at least finding tenants for the other two rooms should be no problem - I'd prefer to flat with friends, but one of the advantages of working at Weta is that they're always desperate to find accomodation for arriving artists. :)

So - within the week, I should be able to stop blogging about house mortgages and househunting, and get down the much more interesting topics of home furnishings and flatmate-hunting.

(Still freeeeeaking out a bit, by the way.)

Fast as lightning

Those of you who read Slumbering Lungfish will have seen this already, but for those who like cute cartoons with rabbits, cats and Korean ska could well enjoy:

http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/ddautta.php

***

This seems a nice segue into all the St Valentine's Day advertising that seems to have sprung up recently. Not that I have anything against St Valentine's Day, (though it seems very little is known about the three saints of that name). But more than a whole month of reminding single people that that they are, in fact, still single seems a bit excessive - unless they're charitably trying for desensitization. Ah well; by the time the day actually rolls around, I'll be at my parents house, probably elbow-deep in trying to indenture myself to the bank for the priviledge of paying rates.

I promise, by the way, that the mortgage references will drop off as soon as it becomes less of a looming iceburg in my life. :)

***

If I start reading when I get home, and let myself keep reading until one or two am, I'm finding that I get through about a novel a night. Of course, reading until 1am is a bad, bad idea, since I pay for it at work the next day; but reading half a novel seems to let me get to sleep at a more reasonable hour, so I'm doing my best to aim for that.

What have I been reading recently? Well, a bunch of books by an Australian writer, Sean McMullen - The Centurion's Empire, Souls in the Great Machine and Voyage of the Shadowmoon. All fun, and the last two are first books in series. (I'd actually already read The Miocene Arrow, which is the book after SitGM.) The first has a premise with echoes of Vernor Vinge's Across Realtime, though restricted in scope from just after the death of Christ to the near future. The second looks at a post-apocalyptic world where killer satellites destroy any electronics, and steam engines are banned by all major religions - nice alternate tech stuff. And the third is a fairly straighforward fantasy romp, but possibly the most fun.

I also read Robin McKinley's Sunshine - the setting would make a nice alternate background for a Buffy campaign, being an interesting take on the modern world where magic is an accepted but minor part of daily life. The plot, I'd agree, isn't particularly groundbreaking, but I found it very enjoyable nevertheless. A bit darker and more racey than her previous outings.

***

Off to see The Magnificent Butcher with Hix. I have high hopes for it. :)

Daidle deedle daidle dum

When I get my mortgage set up, I may change from National bank.

I was in Kilbirnie anyway this lunchtime, so I thought I'd pop in and get a printout of 3 months of my current accounts, and 6 months of my savings accounts (for mortgage-based purposes). I was told that printing out what would normally be sent to me was free, but it would cost $4 for stuff that wasn't current. At first, I thought that they meant $4 for everything, which is a bit stiff, but reasonable. Then I thought that they wanted $4 per account - which was pretty much at the edge of my comfort zone, in terms of "money I'm prepared to spend to avoid the drudgery of finding a whole lot of pieces of paper".

But no - because my savings account gets a monthly mail (and I'd just been sent one), they wanted $24 for six months of savings records. (Plus $4 for current account, which I get every 3 months or so.)

Now, if they were using letterhead paper, or there was some complicated and esoteric procedure, I can see how that... no, even with letterhead paper, I've probably only had 10 lines worth of transactions a month in my savings account, and I wasn't willing to pay $24 for less than a minutes worth of typing and a printout of a few pages. So... I have to photocopy the originals that they sent to me, wasting half a dozen pages or more (since I can't condense it down).

So... if I get a National Bank mortgage, I probably won't bother moving; but if not, I'll be doing a bunch of stuff to my accounts anyway, so I figure it's as good a time as any to move.

***

Have been feeling pretty ill the last couple of days - annoyingly, this started just before a large amount of free food. (Giffy & Puggle's mum was celebrating the end of her degree.) I was able to stay, but unable to eat - a most frustrating combination. Monday wasn't much better, being a "free pastry" day; I had every intention of leaving early, as I was feeling even worse, but there was always one more urgent thing to do... and so I ended up working through my lunch break, and leaving at my regular time. Bah.

There was a nice surprise waiting at home, though - Sok had decided to make spaghetti! I had a bit, and it was very nice.

***

Had a big chat to my house-owning brother about the costs of things like doing up bathrooms. (I had a quick look on the web, and most sites seem to be "look at how pretty things could be" rather than "here's a vague idea of how much things might cost".) His guestimate was $10-15k to do up a bathroom, which is a useful kind of figure to keep in the back of my mind.

I was talking to him about this stuff because Mum pointed me at a house that would obviously need quite a bit done to it - this one, which is the one that I pointed at in the last comment. Looking at the WCC GV site (a very useful resource), the next G.V. is $320k - which isn't a small amount, but it is a three bedroom place with a garage. Of course, I have no idea how much competition there would be for a place like this, nor how much they're expecting - even though a bunch of work needs to be done, I can easily imagine someone renting it out to a bunch of students as-is.

The fact that the G.V. for this property has jumped from $285k to $320k is certainly sobering - I've got some idea why the property market is crazy, but I guess I hadn't realised just how crazy.

***

"We do not inherit the world from the creatures who prey on us," says Martin. "We borrow it from the things we prey upon." -- Hitherby Dragons

Glisten like a pearl.

Okay, I'm starting this at ten to eleven, so don't expect too much in the way of a detailed entry. :)

As I (and others) have mentioned, we had an Austrian backpacker staying with us for a while. (I met her in Cornwall; she mentioned she was coming to NZ, and I gave her my email address and the offer of a couch.) While I hadn't anticipated that bringing her to Christmas dinner would make one of my uncles jump to the conclusion that we were engaged, she seemed to be amused rather than annoyed. It was fun having her around while I had my break, and ensured that I got up to a lot of touristy things that you hardly do when you live in a place, like visit Te Papa, or go up to the Mt Vic lookout, or wander around the Botanic Gardens, or visit the Karori Wildlife Sanctuary. I also got to see a bunch of my DVDs in the evenings. (Casablanca was only slightly marred by my work ringing me just as people were getting on the plane - this was at 8:30pm on the 23rd of December. I watched the rest of the movie before ringing them back and troubleshooting their FileMaker problem over the phone.)

Christmas was very good, by the way - I seem to have chosen pretty well for gifts this year, and I was diligent and gave Mum a useful list of stuff I might want. Also, the family gift giving went really quickly this year, since only four kids and one partner were able to be there. Or perhaps it just meant it was stretched out for longer - the family who were at dinner on Christmas Eve exchanged gifts with my brother and his wife before they zoomed off to have Christmas day with the wife's family, and we had yet more presents the day after Boxing Day in Foxton, with the other brother/wife combo.

While our Austrian visitor was in Wellington, a friend she's had since before primary school arrived, who was travelling with a Swiss girl. They had been travelling down the North Island for three weeks in a rental car - which they had also been sleeping in. The night before they arrived, they'd slept on Foxton beach, so I was really glad we were able to give them somewhere to sleep, and let them have a proper shower and a proper meal. (I did a roast lamb, on the principle that it was the most traditional dish I could whip up in a hurry. :) They stayed with us for a couple of nights, and then got me to drop them off at the airport at about 10pm, so they could be there in time for their check-in at 4am. I tried to convince them that it made more sense to stay at our flat and order a cab for 3:30am, or to wake me up and get me to take them (though I didn't argue very strongly for that solution), but they were adamant - so I left them with a couple of Almond Gold bars and half a bag of nut brittle to help pass the night. (The other half of the nut brittle we'd eaten that day at the Botanic Gardens.)

Our guest got on well with Giffy, who's arranged some further places to stay in the South Island. In fact, she went with Giffy and my brother up north to spend New Years with them and a bunch of their friends. I was planning to go out, but ended up watching DVDs with my remaining flatmate instead. (One upside of this was that I finished the cream that had been lurking in the fridge by making us toblerones. Since someone asked for the recipe, the book I used suggested 75ml cream, 15ml kahluha, 15ml Baileys, 30ml Frangelico and a spoonful of honey; I doubled the mixture for each of us (to use up the cream), and added a scoop of vanilla icecream.)

New Years day I picked Puggle up from work, and then scooted up to Taupo with new beau in tow. I spent the next couple of days tramping and swimming with those two, Giffy, brother and guest. I have to admit that the Tongariro Crossing was a fair bit more demanding than I had remembered - I think I would have been a bit more hesitant about going with a fairly fit person who was ten years younger than me if I'd known. (Or at least, I would have pushed harder for one of the other people who were closer to my level of unfitness to come; unfortunately, no-one else seemed keen to get up at 6:30am on a holiday.) The walk was a steady stream of people, and seeing their figures diminishing into the distance made the walk all the more daunting. There were a number of times where our Austrian visitor got plenty of time to photograph the landscape and wander off on side-trips, while I did my best to recover enough for the next assault. Even so, and despite the pain in my legs and the slight sunburn, I'm glad that I went - it really was pretty spectacular. And we had the novelty of having our bus egged while driving around Turangi (thankfully, the relevant windows were closed), though sitting waiting for half an hour while the bus company worked out whether someone had been left stranded on the mountain wasn't much fun - especially when all you want to do is go to the lake and have a cool, refreshing swim.

(One useful tip I can relate, which is obvious in hindsight - if you put a carbonated beverage into a thermos, then start walking up a mountain, you might find it hard to open at your first break; but then, if you've loosened it a bit, it may open itself for you while still in your bag. Atmospheric pressure is a wonderful, magical, and slightly sticky thing.)

Anyway, we managed to get home okay - the second half of the journey was an epic game of "Tennis, Elbow, Foot" - and Giffy took our guest to the ferry terminal on the 5th, as I headed back to work.

***

I would try to proofread more, and to work in my cousin-in-law's visit (and the wacky misinterpretation her sister had of our visitor), but it's nearly midnight, so I've got to wind things up. In closing, I'm going to point out that I do remember the visitor's name - I'm deliberately choosing not to use it, since I didn't ask her permission. :)

Next entry, I might talk a bit about some of the books I've manged to read over the break.

[Movie] Ocean's Twelve

I went and saw Ocean's Twelve during my holiday; I quite enjoyed it, though there were a number of thing that I thought weren't done as well as in the first one. But before I say more (and get into spoiler territory) I'll move into the "Extended Entry" zone.

The main flaw, I felt, was that the majority of the characters didn't have very much to do. This was especially noticable because they all get a "where are they now" moment at the beginning of the movie - but when we move to the meat of the action, many of them end up feeling like flunkies. I can recall when each of the characters was given a moment to shine by themselves in the first movie, but it's much harder to recall corresponding moments in the second.

From what I've seen, ensemble movies and shows are very difficult to pull off well. I felt that Ocean's Eleven did it well, despite the fact that it was clear who the "main character" was; perhaps the reason it was less well done in the second one was there were two or three "main characters", and correspondingly less time for the minor characters to shine.

I also ended up expecting more from Matt Damon's character - it felt like he was being set up for some development, but in the end he seemed to be very much where he started. Once we started finding out what was going on, I was hoping that his character would turn out to be the Night Fox, and that he would be scamming the others into doing something because he didn't think that they'd listen to him if he approached them directly, since they'd shown him repeatedly that they think of him as just being a kid. This would have made the scene with Robbie Coltrane's character much more interesting - the three experienced cons are pulling a joke on the newbie, but all the while the newbie is scamming them. Of course, this would have required a number of changes to the main plot, but I think that much of it could have been salvaged.

All that said, there were lots of things I liked about this movie. Some of the references back to the first movie were a bit clumsily done, but there were some nice moments, too. For example, in the first movie we meet Brad Pitt's character teaching poker to a bunch of minor (but recognisable) movie actors, playing themselves; in the second, Bruce Willis plays himself. What's more, I liked how they played with the unstated assumption that the actors in the movie either don't exist or look different in the movie world, by making Julia Roberts play a character pretending to be Julia Roberts. If the "real" Julia Roberts had confronted the character, would it be cooler to have Julia Roberts play herself, or a fairly good impersonator? :)

So despite it's flaws, I'd say it's worth watching if you liked the original - though I don't think there's anything in it that demands being seen on the big screen.

[Minute Waltz]

Really really quick entry to assure people that I am not dead - merely mildly sunburnt. Have inflicted two Austrian backpackers and a Swiss girl on my ever-tolerant flatmates, which turned out fairly well. Back at work today, and didn't get enough done owing to tiredness (combination of external factors and my own fault), and trying to do too many things at once (including, unfortunately, failing to stop myself from catching up on various non-work-related web pages).

I think I've mostly caught up on other people's journals, apart from a non-public one that I have no link for at home. I still have my home email account to go through, though my work email was a lot less painful than I thought it would be.

I failed to win Lotto, and thus won't be buying the lovely house with two stories worth of built-in bookshelves (plus ladder!) in Thorndon that my mother picked out for me.

Anyway, more later - for now, I've got to resist reading another book, and get some sleep.