A Croc-ing we will go

After yesterday's meterological violence, today Wellington was fine and calm, and ended the day looking like this:

Earlier in the day Fi, Kate, Kirsten, Charlotte and I spent some time hanging out on the waterfront. We played tourist in our own town by ambling around in a hire-croc. They are more fun than they look, although since the helmsman is more used to pedalling something a bit more agile, if you had a near miss with a croc today it was probably us...

Along the way Charlotte had to be reminded that she can't swim, and jumping off the wharf to look at the stuff floating in the water wouldn't be wise.

Kate explained to Charlotte how towers work:

And Charlotte learned that pigeons really don't want to be her friend:

Who makes the best impromptu play-doh dinosaurs?

Listening to: Friendly Fires - Friendly Fires dual disc deluxe edition disc 2 (2009).

We do Beatches! Because we know shit about dinosaurs y'all!

Physical challenge at the pub quiz tonight: make the best Stegosaurus out of play-doh. My friend Di did the back plates and tail spikes and I did the body and legs. Since we are both down with our dinosaurs our little sauropod came together quickly with no muss and no fuss. About 5 inches long and ten minutes work.
Since it was the most awesome (and anatomically accurate, a point noted by at least one discerning judge) it won easily.

Prize was a box of chocolate treats. We only finished sixth out of 18 teams which considering it was only the two of us for half the quiz wasn't bad, although down from a previous 2nd place effort. The chocolate made us feel better about missing out on a placing even with a score of 80/105 (the winners got 97 or so).

So you see, knowing stuff = chocolate. Stay in school kids!

'Twas a good lash*

There was sunshine,There were pretty buildings,

There were well dressed men,

There were even more well dressed women,

There were heaps of other people too,

There was food and drink,

There was dancing,

Oh and two really nice people got hitched as well.....

Congrats M+C.

Thanks for the occasion, a whole lot of good times, and letting us be a part of it all.

* Quoting a cousin of mine referring to my own wedding

Awesomeness

Listening to: an assortment of stuff off the hard drive. Lately though I have had "The wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" stuck on high rotate in my head. Meh, there are worse songs.

Awesome I

All the cool lightning last week. E.g. from Thursday night:

Normally you would be able to see the lights of Wellington in that photo. Its out there somewhere.......

Awesome II
Super Saturday for the NZ sports people. For the overseas readers slideshow linky here, story linky here, and here

Going from no Olympic medals to five in a few hours, and I saw every one live as it happened. The twins performance was legendary, only outdone by Mahe Drysdale being an absolute and utter legend, destroying himself for a bronze, when he probably should have been in a hospital bed. Valerie Vili destroying her opposition in the shot put. And the AB's smoked the South Africans too. Also cool was Bolt's 100 metre win. Starts slowing down after 80 m, and still breaks the world record. How cool is that? And Phelps becoming the greatest was kinda fun to watch. Loving the Olympics.

Awesome III
More awesomer than all of the above, Senor Twotrees got hitched to the lovely Ms West End on Saturday. Wish I could have been there to celebrate like D3vo and Morgue.

Chur chur and a toast for absent friends to you both.

Marshmallows and Mushrooms

Listening to: Shihad-Beautiful Machine

Roasting marshmallows at D3vo's last night:
Two of the patch of gimungous big mushrooms that have sprung up around a tree in our front yard:

Absent friends

Did I say tomorrow?



I meant today.



I don't feel like a long soliloquy tonight, so I'll just throw a couple of links at you instead.



The Hokio Beach New years video, seen here being made in a behind the scenes exclusive photograph (which, weirdly, is visible being taken):

This video makes me smile and laugh and be warm and fuzzy, great work D3vo! There are lots of cool people in it, including almost all of my oldest and favourite friends (excepting the of course the ones who were absent). Oh and that is our newish car (the blue wagon) in the background if you are interested Lauren!

And for no other reason than I think the sequence of photographs at the bottom of the page is really impressive, a meteorological analysis of a summer storm a few years back (Rich, if you remember we took Irish Nic on a driving tour of the south coast the next day and saw the aftermath of the waves breaking on roads and other shenanigans. The waves themselves were still pretty big at the time too).

Roadtrip post in 'actually posted' shock

(Music: A day away-Shihad)
So anyway, as Fishy and Not-Kate, and Morgue have related, some of us Hutt types plus an honorary ‘Hutt person for a day’ (yes Not-Kate I am talking about you!) went on a roadtrip of sorts to celebrate the Queens Birthday holiday. I confess it was my idea. I thought, rather than just laze around on my day off, why not do something. I decided to go to the Wairarapa, despite my publicly stated disdain for the region, to check out a few things. Like maybe the Stonehenge. Or Cape Palliser. “Hang on a minute!” I can hear my army of readers cry, “The Wairarapa is not the Horowhenua. It is not as the others described it. It has no windmill. It has no fox town. It certainly has no Levin!” And they would be right.
I decided to go to the Wairarapa midweek. I sent out a shout out to the regular crew to see if anyone wanted to come with. I was pleasantly surprised to find a lot of people did. A plan was tentatively planned. By Saturday it was altering as bad weather loomed, by Monday it was ditched as bad weather arrived. It came to consist of one word: ‘north’. And lo we did venture north on a cold winter’s day.
The others have covered the guts of it pretty well. I’ll delve into the stuff they left out. Like why, as we approached El Rancho, was a police car leaving? Apart from that, the place was pretty much as I remembered it from the 80’s. Due to the number of people, we were in two cars. Those in the fishtank got the ambience of glorious company; those in my ride got the better stereo. Morgue was stoked to hear the ‘new’ Nirvana single a couple of years late, which up to that point he had not heard. We made plans at Waikanae. A seat rotation was established to swap people between cars. Not Kate resolved to show us the delights of her hometropolis Levin. The backroads of Waikanae were aimlessly explored. SH 1 was rejoined in a glorious wheelspinning drag launch for D3vo’s benefit, after which we stopped to let the others catch up. Which they very quickly did, so quickly we didn’t notice. We caught up at Otaki, where the outlet shops were also aimlessly explored. Levinotron was decided on as a venue for lunch. After exploring the slightly sinister statue (I don’t know why he is sinister, he just is. What is he cultivating? Why is his hoe so shiny? Why is he so tall?) of the market gardener. Then we tried to have lunch. Morgue was unenthused, Anna was confused, D3vo was forgotten, and then mistaken for someone else, and I got ripped off. Fishy alone had a proper dining experience, even if only in the sense that she got what she ordered on time. Leaving the chaos behind, and quickly visiting the windmill, we went to Foxton beach to commit science. And science was committed. It wasn’t the spectacular erupting science we had hoped for, but it was fun science. After the science we arsed around for a bit in the bitter cold. Sticks were thrown at other sticks. Larger sticks were hurled. Litter was killed. Delicate and at times perilous balancing acts were performed. Stuff was written in the sand.
Returning to Levin, we were taken to Not-Kate’s Dads place, and treated to coffee and biscuits by her stepmum. Finally, as the day was waning , we had accomplished all we sought out to do, and we had other places to be, home was sought, via a brief post sunset soiree at the Paekakariki Hill lookout.
Words for pictures
Top left: The fishtank warps out of Otaki
Lower left: Market Gardeners. Sinister
Right: Crew arrives at Foxton Beach, science on their minds. Colder than it looks.
Bottom: This science brought to you by Diet Coke and Mentos

roadtrippin with my five favourite allies.....

Still writing in my head. Have some of the photos back. One or two will be used for publication. Muahahaha