Ack!

Woke up this morning to 130 km/hr (80mph) winds. It was BLOWING. I thought for sure that the concert tonight at the bottom of my hill for Fat Freddy's Drop would be cancelled, so I didn't bother ordering tickets. A friend invited me to see the movie, Somewhere, at a cute movie theatre that I've been wanting to go to for awhile, so I went there instead. Basically, the movie sucked donkey balls. I did however learn that gingerbread and lemonade is the best combination ever. While a lot of small movie theatres in New Zealand don't sell popcorn, they do sell wine and yummy baked goods, which is an okay trade by me.

Went home to drop off some library items and go grocery shopping-- the town was dead. Deader than usual. And to top it off, it was perfect weather and you could hear the concert from the library, from the video store, from the supermarket, and from my front yard-- ACK! Made the wrong decision there.

New Zealand Film Festival around here

I slept better than I thought I would last night. Yay for independence! Went on an organization rampage, poor B, he's gone only a few days and I'm getting rid of massive quantities of paperwork.

Watched "Heavenly Creatures," that movie is crazy.


Also saw "The Piano," for the first time.


I'm trying to make my way through a whole list of New Zealand movies that I've collected over the past year and a half. Also saw, "The Fastest Indian," (good), and "Angel at my Door" (ick) earlier this week.

Anti-Santa movie

Saw "Rare Export" tonight at the Petone Lighthouse movie theatre. You can get a nice glass of wine here and sip it throughout the show. I saw the Banksy movie here a few months ago; looks like they've kept the advertisements although they're not showing the movie anymore.

"Rare Export" is a pretty neat but sorta weird Finnish flick. It was strange to watch a movie set in cold Finland and walk out to muggy, stormy New Zealand.

Queen's Birthday

Although it's not celebrated in England, the Queen's Birthday is a holiday here. I had been playing around with the idea of going away for the long weekend (not much to do in NZ-- rainy, cold, and no snow in the mountains yet). Fiji, Samoa, Tasmania, Vanuatu,-- all ideas were nixed in order to save money for a future trip to Australia. Turns out that we lucked out on Fiji; apparently they have a typhoid outbreak right now.

Unfortunately, I woke up today sick and slept through most of the day. I managed to meet up with friends to watch Sex and the City 2-- the movie was pretty bad and too long, but we were expecting that so I wasn't disappointed. I definitely cringed at a lot of parts and many scenes played out pretty awkwardly-- but the ultra critical reviews I read seemed over hyped.

Thanksgiving in May

Met up with friends at Cafe Vella today in Plimmerton. I love coffee art.


I finally got to try the pancakes with pears and chocolate ganache that I had been eyeing several weeks ago. Off to the Lighthouse movie theatre to see Ironman-- not a bad movie.

We decided on a whim to have Thanksgiving today, so a couple friends helped us cook and eat. There was mashed potatoes, chicken (no turkeys to be found after checking 2 supermarkets), cranberry sauce, sweet potatoes with marshmallows, biscuits, shallots and mushroom stuffing, gravy (made by Doug), and pumpkin pie with whip cream for dessert. Doug and Laura loved the biscuits and pumpkin pie, which was awesome as they had had neither before. I learned that shallots are pronounced "shall LOTS."

Laura and I also had hibiscus & champagne cocktails--