Oooh, I completely forget to mention in my last missive that we went and saw Cats on Sunday afternoon. It was staged by the local amateur theatre group, but according to those in the know it rated right up there with a professional performance.

All I can say from my limited experience of attending live musicals (I fell asleep in Miss Saigon but managed to stay fully awake through and even enjoy Mama Mia, Blood Brothers and Chicago, so that makes four I’ve seen before this one) is that it was very, very good, particularly the costumes, even though it did take a slight adjustment in mindset to get over the fact that there were grown ups on stage wearing fake-fur ears, tie-dyed tights and stick on tails, pretending to be cats.

And now my taste for musicals has been whetted, I’m definitely keen to take a weekend jaunt down to Auckland, round up a few long-lost mates and check out Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.

So, have you seen many musicals? What’s your favourite? Or would you rather (as Bruvinlaw deftly puts it) have hot, blunt toothpicks shoved under your fingernails?

*Yes, it is actually “Memory”, not “Memories” – a nice bit of smarty-pants trivia to bring up at your next dinner party.

Holy Schmoke, people, I have just realised it has been twelve whole days since I turned on this PC. I could have posted something last Tuesday evening or Wednesday evening, or even Thursday evening for that matter, but when one gets home from work in the cold and the dark and the fire is blazing in the lounge and it’s as cold as a polar bear’s armpit here in the study, the choice?

It is as plain as the nose on Barry Manilow’s face.

So what’s happened since the last post? Well, the whole fam damily made it to Gisborne and back, and yes it was a bloody long way. In fact, at one point I thought we were never going to get there and would be sitting in a twelve seater Transit van, doomed to drive the highways of the east coast of the North Island forever.

Luckily Gisborne did eventually appear on the horizon and we made to the birthday celebrations on Saturday afternoon/evening. There we had a great time reminiscing with various relations and old friends of the family. Miss 7.8 and the nieces had a great time with their second cousins-once-removed (or are the children of my first cousins their third cousins? I can never remember…) and I took lots of photos, which I am still to copy on to CD and post down to my aunt and uncle. That would be due to the fact I haven’t switched on my PC in twelve days.

What else. Oh yes, the dead car incident. Our two year old station-wagon carked it on the way home from town the week before last and the official verdict from the mechanic we had it towed to? Blown head gasket and extremely well cooked engine. Whaaaat? In a two year old car??? There was a lot of w.t.f.-ing, and a slight disagreement with the Ford dealer whom we purchased it from over the status of the warranty (we were 1000 kms over it) but they eventually agreed to pay for a new engine, which is currently sitting in a cargo hold en route from a factory somewhere in the States, where apparently they make brand new Ford Mondeo engines just for this purpose.

So I’m car-less for another two weeks at least, and having to rely on the Other Harf to taxi me back and forth to work, and as he starts work half an hour before me and tends not to finish on the dot of 5pm, my working day has become quite a bit longer.

Which all adds up to me just wanting to get home, slip into my old trackypants, baggy sweatshirt and fluffy slippers, mooch on the sofa in front of the open fire, and not do any blogging whatsoever…

You understand, right?