As fate would have it – and fate had a lot this last weekend – I didn’t end up going to Mike’s birthday picnic. I went to ring him up to arrange details, but the only place I had his phone number was stored in my cell phone, and that wasn’t going because the batteries [...]
I’m in Wellington, and things aren’t going according to plan, not that that’s necessarily a bad thing. The flight here was excellent. The inflight snack involved hummus, which was very pleasing. The plane flew over Mt Taranaki, so it was really cool seeing the almost perfect cone shape topped in snow. I arrived at my [...]
My friend Mike’s birthday is on Thursday. Yes, Thursday, September 11. Things used to be sweet for him. He’d say, “it’s my birthday on September 11!” and people would say, “yay! Happy birthday!” But now when he says it the reaction is more likely to be “oh, I’m so sorry.” To help him deal with [...]
From the New Zealand Herald: Teenagers fail to make use of free visits to the dentist because dental care is viewed as uncool, a University of Otago study has found. So, I read that and it seemed a bit strange. Like, I couldn’t quite imagine a 15 year old saying “I don’t go to the [...]
I had a strange encounter today. I was getting into my car, which is parked down the side street next to my flat. I had one leg in the car, the other on the road when a car with a trailer that had been driving down the road in the opposite direction suddenly stopped and [...]
I just happened to flip over to TV one and discovered Brian Edwards in the middle of interviewing sporty girl Sonia Waddell about sport, competing and what drives her. She was talking about the annual cross country running race when she was at primary school, how she’d be up the night before in tears because [...]
When I arrived in Paris I was sick. The week before I left New Zealand I’d caught some sort of bad cold. I was over the worst of it, but I was still tired and snotty and sweaty and had a bad cough. The first sight that greeted me as I emerged from the metro [...]
Yo, I saw “Secretary” today. Movies that feature S/M either treat it lightheartedly (the kooky roommate with the fur-lined handcuffs) or very seriously (the cop drawn into the shadowy underworld). Neither of those types deal with in a way that’s real. I’m not sure, but I think the “Secretary” is the first film (at least [...]
I was reading an article in one of those weekly gossip mags about the excesses of Jennifer Lopez’s lifestyle. Among the tally was the $10,000 she supposedly pays to have her eyebrows plucked, or rather shaped. I refuse to believe that. I totally refuse to believe that anyone would pay $10,000 to have their eyebrows [...]