nishatalitha

Spring has arrived with a triumph of fine weather. I have been in short-sleeves most of the week (still wearing stockings with my skirts, though) and spent most of yesterday afternoon lying in the sun in the lounge or on the deck with a book or the laptop reading. I've spent most of this afternoon in the same way. You can tell it's spring, rather than summer by the recent spate of frosts in the morning and the way the air cools late afternoon, which makes me start thinking that slippers might be a plan.

I am currently resenting the fact that I really need to do some thinking and homework. I have redone my terrible answers to the questions on the Sale of Goods Act 1908 to be handed in. I am currently putting off doing the set of questions on the Insurance Law Reform Acts 1977 and 1985 which I like even less than the Sale of Goods Act. I like the Personal Properties Securities Act 1999 even less than those three, but at least questions on it are usually able to be answered by looking at the Act.

I went to the DCM bookfair yesterday morning with the flatmates and was very restrained - I only bought 13 books and 3 CDs. Of course, five of those books were priced, and the CDs were priced, so while I was under budget, it wasn't by much. I'm rather pleased with some of the purchases - a random biography of Nancy Wake which I've never seen before (I still really want a copy of The White Mouse, Trio - a CD by Dolly Parton, Linda Rondstadt and Emmylou Harris, of which I have Trio II already. It has already been dumped straight on the relaxation playlist for listening to before bed. Also found a copy of The Lost Prince by Frances Hodgson Burnett, which is a book I adored when I was younger.

Got to church this morning for the first time in a month. I know this because the last time I went it was also communion and we only have communion on the first Sunday of each month. It was an interesting sermon on chapter 6 of Galatians, the final in a series on Galatians, which I managed to miss all of. Next week, apparently will be a precursor to the November series on saints and heroes, and all I currently have on next weekend is a haircut and colour, so I should manage to get to that. Church two weeks in a row - won't that be a shocker?

It has been a productive weekend, mostly regarding housework and gardening. We have lots of marigolds coming up between the poppies and daisies, so to give them a better chance at life, I shifted some of them out and found we had more than expected. There are some other things coming up as well which don't look like weeds, so I'll wait until they flower to see what they are.

We also have a Christmas tree, thanks to mashugenah who was wonderful and transported it for us and was very patient when I had a complete mind-blank as to where the Te Aro Community Centre was and thought it was in Aro Valley somewhere... It is a shiny and pretty tree. Very gaudy. We couldn't fit every decoration we owned onto it but we made a good attempt. I feel very strongly that Christmas trees should be radiata pine and have as many decorations on them as one can manage.

Today the three of us had lunch with a retired couple from church. There are various things we have in common, but one of them is gardening. So we now have a couple of baby parsley plants to replace ours, which went to seed, and four geranium clippings for brightly coloured geraniums. The clippings are in the ground, the parsley is yet to be planted.

I also made pesto from a recipe I got off a workmate. While not bad, it does have 1/4c tightly packed mint leaves and the juice of three lemons in it, so it's too minty and lemony for my taste. Don't think I'll use that recipe again. I used Italian parsley as the base (it just said parsley) and I don't think curled leaf parsley would have made any difference. It's nice to be able to make these things from herbs that are in your garden.

At last, it has started to rain. It's still muggy but now there is a breath of fresh cool air through various windows. Which reminds me, I should close the window over the hydranga before I go to sleep. It is the second night on clean high thread count sheets and while the pattern is hideous, they feel wonderful and call me now...

Got to cell group tonight for the first time since I was invited about six weeks ago or so. I knew most of the people there already. tamarillow wasn't there, what with being in Australia and all, but I plan to drag her next fortnight. There was food and good conversation and it was more like hanging out with a group of my friends than any other cell group I've ever been in. I guess that's what happens when you actually have things in common with the people you're talking about God with. They're all around my age, I think and they were nice to spend time with.

One of the women there, as it turns out, stopped playing social grade Ultimate about the same time that I really started playing. She used to play for Young & Beautiful & Steve. Steve being her flatmate. The world just got smaller again, especially when it turns out that another one of the women there grew up at No. 172, right next door to our flat. I think I'm going to invite them up for Sunday lunch one day in the future and they can comment on the changes as much as they want.

Had my performance review this week. It went relatively well and I just need to get the team secretary to sign off on my typed up copy to send to the HR Manager in Auckland. I forgot to take the forms home over the weekend and ended up going in early on Monday morning to write it, my review being after morning tea and the last two days of the month always being insanely busy. It was quite nice being the first one in the office - I caught the 7am bus down so was probably there by half past. And since the traffic was bad, hardly anyone arrived until around eight or so, when I would normally get there.

There was an in-house seminar today given by a Customs offical, the one whom our Litigation lawyers mostly deal with. It was really interesting, not so much the idea of sorting 40 tonnes or so of mail a year, but what they find and the excuses they're given. I've looked for Mr Thank You on our system but there aren't any files.

It's been a long day and I need to go to bed. But I have to make bread first.

It occurs to me that I haven't actually updated for a while. Not that this is necessarily a bad thing - really, it just means I'm either lazy or busy, and it's more likely the former than the latter, although I have done things this week that I really can't be bothered noting.

Work has been work. We had the Black Caps staying with us (see house_monkey, I do occasionally put things of interest to you in), and I cleaned most of their rooms. Some of them were rather messy. I was on different floors the day they all checked out though, which was good. Actually, Thursday was a busy day. Dad was in Wellington that day, and I completely forgot about it! So, around five, my phone buzzes in my pocket, and it's him, and I asked why he was calling me! So we sat and talked in the foyer for a while, and then he went to the airport, and I went home.

Went to see the fourth HP movie at the Embassy on Friday evening with laputain, jessikast, anschee, and darthsappho. It was better than I expected (not hard - I've given up having any sort of high expectations of the HP movies whatsoever), and the guy who played Cedric was really cute! They missed out a lot, like they had to, so I'm not sure how well the details transfer over to someone who hasn't read the books. Thanks to that, and a fic maudlinrose linked me to, I actually feel like rereading OotP and HBP, both of which I've read once. I may regret this impulse.

I also went to see The Lion, the witch and the wardrobe this afternoon with C., and it was quite good. A fairly accurate adaptation, all told, and while there are a couple of things from the book that I missed, there were also gryphons! Decent gryphons! There was one shot that I want a screencap of, and will earnestly work towards finding.

anschee and I put up our Christmas tree this afternoon. It wasn't dusty this year, because I had very carefully wrapped it up in plastic last year. Still got dust from the year before on it, but it didn't need vaccuming, which was nice. Now, if only someone in the flat would do the dishes! I did the last two lots, and I am resisting the idea of doing this lot as well. I may yet surrender, since it seems to be bugging me more than the others. On the other hand, I could distract myself with fic and/or Rurouni Kenshin...

Finished Blade of Tyshalle the other day. It's the first book where I've flipped to the end before I've finished it to check if people survived for quite a while. Normally I try to avoid doing that, since it's a reprehensible habit, but I needed to know. *shakes head* And it's really about the insane LARPers that your parents always warned you about, whose characters and world are more real to them than the world they actually come from. Fortunately, the world they play in is an actual place.

The next new Bujold book comes out in October next year: The Sharing Knife: Beguilement. Irresistable Forces has Winterfair Gifts in it, and will be out mass market paperback in Febuary, or so they say. They said that at the beginning of this year, too.

The most amusing incident for today was actually at church. You might remember me mentioning a certain incident that occured at the Good Friday service earlier this year, involving candles, smoke alarms, and fire engines. Well, at the children's service today, we had a repeat. There were only three candles involved this time, but they must have been positioned directly under the sensor, because shortly after the three advent candles had been lit, most of the way through Hark, the Herald Angels Sing, the smoke alarm went off. Everyone got up, filed out in an orderly fashion, and five minutes later the fire brigade turns up. Seems we don't have much luck with having candles at our services. I'm now vaguely surprised that the alarm didn't go off at the carol service last week, since there were many more candles. They probably weren't right under the sensor, though!

Have spent most of the afternoon reading - well, evening really. I had lunch and hung out with Paul at his shop this afternoon since there wasn't very many people there, and we had a really interesting discussion on religion and the church(es) and spirituality and that sort of stuff. It was all about the church dying out as an institution, and what we should do about it. He's the outsider, why doesn't he say what would appeal to him about church? I must remember to ask him that.

Caught the bus home from Lambton Quay because I was feeling lazy, and wanted to read my book (Foreign Legions, a collection of short stories based off a concept by David Drake), having ordered Paladin of Souls by Lois McMaster Bujold from Whitcoulls, and found Carmel on the bus already. This is the second time in three days. You'd think she was stalking me or something. Anyways, invited her here for tea (drink not dinner), which was very pleasant, and we chatted about books a lot. Loaned her all my Kay Hooper trashy romances, because they're fun.

Since then, I've been reading too much, rather than doing any essay work. So, I finish Cerulean Sins (which I liked better than Narcisuss in Chains - it was gentler or something) and have just come online and discovered that I've lost my course handouts for both 304 and 310. This is deeply disturbing, since a) I've never done this before and b) I'm going to have to admit to the lecturers that I lost them, since I need the handouts to do the essays. Unless, of course, I just photocopy peoples... It's a shame that jessikast isn't doing Epic.

Other than that, I'm okay. For some reason my elbows and my knees keep on hurting. I slept well last night, so my back is feeling better. I am currently assuming all this is from moving. My eyes aren't really bothering me, so I'm in less of a hurry to get them checked out. That can wait until the break. Which will not be too much of a break, however. maudlinrose comes down (unless that's changed, and I haven't been notified yet), Greek essay to write, job hunting to do, spend lots of time with P. and that's just before we go up to Hamilton...

I am assuming the fact that my bed now feels like it slopes towards the center of the room is due to the fact that I now have the other side against the wall, and the wall is on the wrong side, and it's been the other way around for about a year. However, sleeping in it still feels precarious, since I feel like I'm going to fall out.

I should go to bed. Before I do this, I am going to blackboard. Myabe Myth has the essay questions there...