Nothing much to report except that last night Natalie rang to say she was going back to England tomorrow (today now) so would I like to come out to Denny's and have coffee/dessert with her and Rajneel the Fanimatrix Guy. I had already eaten a woeful amount of food because Tony cooked sixty dollars' worth of fish in Amy's honour, so the banana split I ordered was really a bit of a sad waste (although full marks to the waitress who asked if I would like a doggy-bag for my dish of melting ice-cream).

I invented Coinhenge by standing my change on edge on the table. It looked pretty cool and was surprisingly stable once balanced. Rajneel sang 'Stonehenge' by Spinal Tap in its honour.

Kate is all short-tempered because she needs two 'professional references' for her Camp America application to be processed, but she's only actually had three jobs and her supervisor from the first one has left the company and cannot be traced. She's got a reference from her current employers, in glowing terms, but she doesn't want to contact the woman who hired her in between because she left that job under a cloud, being unable to keep up with the pace of the tasks because of her dyslexia. She is angry with me for pointing out that she needs to ask the Camp America people if any sort of non-professional reference such as one of her university tutors would be acceptable in a pinch, which she has not done despite phoning them to talk about it - and she's accusing me of 'taking out' being angry about 'something to do with the computer' on her, when in fact I am quite cheerful and the computer is fine, but I think she's tackling her problem in the wrong way, and she won't listen when I try to advise her. I mean, hello, who has done this before?

I was pleased to discover the Pirate Name Generator, which asks sensible, get-to-the-bottom-of-it questions like 'Do you like penguins?' Of course I do. My result was,
Your pirate name is:
Calico Mary Flint
Often indecisive, you can't even choose a favorite color. You're apt to follow wherever the wind blows you, just like Calico Jack Rackham, your namesake. Like the rock flint, you're hard and sharp. But, also like flint, you're easily chipped, and sparky. Arr!

Calico Mary sounds like a fun girl, doesn't she? She likes her rum with a little paper umbrella in it, and has a sulphur-crested cockatoo for her shoulderparrot, because they're just cooler.

I do not know why I woke up so early this morning - look at that entry time just below this one. Yes, that's early for me. I went back to bed afterwards and slept a long time, in that sort of highly enjoyable 'I am just asleep but can still feel that I am asleep' state where you find yourself contemplating with wonder and gratitude how soft and smooth your sheets feel and how warm you are without being too sweaty and how little and safe you feel in your big bed. I do like that.

Tonight Amy is coming for dinner and downtime; I expect there will be a lot of ovarian-misfortune bonding between her and Kate. For the record, polycystic ovary syndrome like Kate has, and a large nasty ovarian cyst like Amy had, are two different things and the one does not lead to the other. She also had two ovaries; now she's one down. With the right treatment for her pollies (I made that term up; doesn't it sound friendly and cute?) and endometriosis, I believe the doctor said Kate has a 40% chance of conceiving when/if she wants to. Isn't it weird how there is seemingly no demographic more fertile than unwed schoolgirls with few prospects and little sense of self-preservation, but everyone I know has misfortunes with their feminine plumbing?

But not me. At least, not that I know about. That's the key qualification. It'll be a fun visit to the doctor when I and insert-husband's-name-here go in for our starting-to-try-to-get-pregnant consultation. 'Well, yes, I've a sister with polycystic ovaries and endometriosis, my mother had endometriosis too and had to have a hysterectomy before she was forty, my aunt can tell you a lovely story about the time she filled her shoes with blood, and my paternal grandmother never used contraception that we know of but only had one child, during the Baby Boom period, so make of that what you will. So! Shall I decorate the nursery? I was thinking of red.'

Actually, I would like to decorate a nursery in red. It would be warm and cheerful and stimulating, and it would surely make the baby feel at home. And there's any number of cute red motifs to use - apples, strawberries, ladybirds, roses, Welsh dragons. Yes, this idea pleases me. My husband will submit to it just as he will to the wedding at the zoo and the naming of the firstborn son Bob.

In the Wild: Polar Bears with Ewan McGregot (I had the title slightly wrong in earlier entries) was as charming as I had remembered, although of course as nature documentaries go, it was often compromised by the desire to show Ewan doing cute affable enthusiastic things, like playing a guitar and singing old Proclaimers songs after dinner, or attempting to steer a husky sled ('That way. Watch yourself. Oh shite'), or taking a party of Canadian children trick-or-treating for Hallowe'en. It should really have been 'Ewan McGregor... and some polar bears.' Still, it's not as if I was in it for the polar bears. But did you know they have black skin, under all that white fur? It helps them to keep warm. I did not learn that from Ewan. So I am not just a fair-weather friend to the polar bears, only taking a cursory interest when they may be going to share a frame with an attractive Scotsman.

My mother and sister decided to have a go at me this afternoon by coming to my room when I was quietly reading the Listener and sitting on me and plucking at my hair and talking to me as if I were a cat. It was odd, but harmless.

My Master of Arts diploma has finally gone to the framers, although to my vexation the frame manufacturers have pulled a Revlon and discontinued my favourite distressed-wood design. So it is not a matched pair with my BA diploma, although they will have matching blue and gold matting.

Well, regarding Cabin Fever, I will just say that not one person in that movie was using even the 10% of their brain that Scientology will give us credit for. From Henry the Hermit taking about five years to see that his obviously dead dog was obviously dead, and there on out. But I understand why it amused Peter Jackson, particularly Deputy Wilson. He had his own Theme on the soundtrack, you know.

It still doesn't make sense, you know - why Henry's dog was butterflied in half and folded back together. Or why Paul's mercy killing of Karen is effected with a shovel when just seconds before he killed Grim's rabid dog with one clean shot of a rifle. And I won't even get started on kung fu Dennis.

Nadia will feel some obscure vindication to hear that there is something wrong with my cat again. She was looking a bit crappy in the afternoon, with watery eyes, and by the time we got home from the movie they were giving off a gooey white discharge and she was breathing stertorously. As I said to Kate, it's particularly nice to see a movie about horrible contagion and then come home to find the cat looking like that. I wiped her eyes and put her to bed, promising that we would look after her and take her to Uncle Don (the vet) if necessary. However, she looks better this morning and my mother believes it was all just an allergic reaction.

Today was weird, although the weirdness wasn't happening to me, I just kept getting reports. Yesterday or the day before my uncle Denis phoned my father in Wellington on his business trip to propose a weekend sailing trip for them and their wives. Tony said 'That sounds like a nice idea' and didn't understand that Denis took this to mean he was accepting the plan. He does this to my mother, too, says 'That sounds like a nice idea' when she suggests things and then takes umbrage when she acts, saying 'I didn't agree to this!' My mother was in a bit of a state about this because she wanted to be at home to provide moral support for Kate, who is in the doldrums because A) it's not nice to find out you've got polycystic ovaries and endometriosis, and B) having discharged all her responsibilities in applying for next year's nanny training and camp counsellor programmes, she's now in the fretful position of having to wait for them to get back to her. There was all this hoohah about whether the engine on the boat was fixed, whether the toilet on the boat was fixed, whether they would take their two boats or all go on Lynda and Denis' little old cabin cruiser (which my parents don't like as it is not a sailboat), whether they had to get out of the temporarily hired marina berth because the regular tenants were coming back from holiday, whether they were going to unload things from the boat so it would be more convenient to sell or load them on so it would be more comfortable to sail in...

So Kate and I had to get up and help ferry junk to the marina in our cars, and Kate had to go and pick up Lynda and deliver her to her boat, and in all this Denis didn't know Wendy and Tony weren't coming in his boat because he had his cellphone turned off. When my father tried to refill the boat's water tank from the tap on the marina berth, the canvas hose ruptured all along the side and splurged fresh water into the sea, while my father kept calling to me (manning the tap) 'A bit more... a bit more' as no matter how much I opened the faucet, no water actually came out at his end. I'm not sure they in the boat believed me about this; I kept exclaiming 'It's leaking like a bastard' and 'You should see this thing leak!' but it seemingly took them ages to give up on the idea that it could actually convey water from one place to another.

When Kate and I eventually got home (we had never been included in the invitation for the overnight, to our relief) we settled down to a day of hanging about and receiving phone messages from Wendy and Tony detailing what was going wrong with the boats (engine not fixed at all!) and a man called Ken at marina security who had a new berth he wanted to move them to. In the end BOTH boats suffered crucial mechanical failures and they just came home. Tra-la!

Tonight my sister and I are going to see the 9:20 pm show of Cabin Fever, which Kate has already seen but is willing to go to again with me. She originally went to see it, she cheerfully admits, because it stars Rider Strong, on whom she had a crush in his Boy Meets World days. I want to see it because in today's paper the ad for it had an enthusiastic blurb from Peter Jackson, saying it was 'bloody, and I do mean bloody, fantastic.' Nerd cred, right there.

I am also happy because tomorrow at noon TV One is repeating the nature documentary from a few years ago, In the Wild: Ewan McGregor and Polar Bears. As I'll say to anyone who'll listen, until some genius pitches In the Wild: Billy Boyd and Pygmy Marmosets, that's some of the cutest television you'll see.

I was in a bad mood, wasn't I? I'm feeling more cheerful now. I had a swim. I like to smell gently of chlorine. We're going to have fish and chips for dinner. 'The Fellowship of the Ring' is on TV tonight, but I don't really feel like watching it, which will be difficult to explain to my father, who is back from Wellington and all excited about it - I've just seen it too recently, and DVDs have seriously spoiled me for watching movies that I love on TV. If it's something a bit rubbishy I don't mind, but if it's The Fifth Element or Sleepy Hollow or whatever, naah. I need the fancies.

Maybe tomorrow I will go to a bookshop and get The Queen's Fool by Philippa Gregory. I just fancy it.

Also, if you find silly words for private parts killingly funny, go to http://www.rathergood.com and see the naughty rude hedgehog song. I nearly cried laughing. It's not even the rude words that make it so great. It's the way the hedgehogs' little limbs wag in time, and the way the camera zooms in on the lead hedgehog when he sings 'Ooh.'

God, I'm bored. I can't expect to find a job, and school doesn't start till March. I have already started putting things in my schoolbag, like a weiner. Wait. That could make you think there is a weiner in my schoolbag. No. There is an empty Merry and Pippin pencil box and a little foldy plastic thing of Post-Its and sticky flags that I am looking forward to using to mark up my textbooks. Soon I will put some pens and pencils in the hobbit box! Won't that be exciting.

It is probably symptomatic of my lack of mental frouf that I have been obsessively adding to a very odd round-robin sort of thing that started a while ago on Nekomusumia. Innocently enough, olethros posted about some jocks sitting behind him when he went to see Return of the King who were roundly disgusted by the affectionate and tearful goodbye scene at the end, saying 'those hobbits shoulda just hugged like men and left.' People bantered back and forth on this for a while, raising such points as a) we hate jocks and b) why should hobbits hug like Men? They're a whole nother culture. Then somehow the thing hit critical mass and has turned into an ongoing story-in-dialogue written by myself and jigglykat and crossing over with Pirates of the Caribbean. Jack Sparrow and Legolas are cohabitating, Pippin has found a vocation as a namer of ship's cats, and Merry is close to punching Mr Gibbs. It is all tremendously odd. I think it's all good fun but I get annoyed with myself for how eagerly I wait for jiggly to write her next part so I can write another part - often, if she doesn't get back for a few hours, I just double-post and go on. This really isn't good manners on my part. Making up stories back and forth like this is one of my favourite things in the world to do, although it never results in anything that can stand alone, but I fear I'm going to spoil it with my lack of restraint. And I don't want to be the one who is more into it than anyone else, in an uncool way.

I have also discovered that it is more painful to have a crush on Billy Boyd than on Orlando Bloom, because Orlando Bloom is so clearly out of everyone in the world's league that he is really only a pretty ideal, like having a crush on an anime character. Billy Boyd is the type of man one might conceivably meet, like and be rejected by, and the ghost of this potential disappointment overcasts one's enjoyment of his adorability. Every now and again I discover a whole new way in which I am weird and lame.

Today we are having lunch with my grandmother and shifting crap off Beatrice Boat at the marina. Nothing much else to look forward to. Whenever my family are all at home I am instantly absorbed as a child. Fortunately, my father is back at work and in Wellington or he and I would be getting on each other's nerves constantly.

Summarising today briefly, it turns out my sister does have polycystic ovaries and probably endometriosis (although the gynaecologist did say she has 'gorgeous blood pressure'); I managed to get sunburned in Auckland when I didn't in the Bay of Islands; Amy Downey's coming to visit; little cousins Molly and Sarah might be coming up; my aunt Lynda told us a story about one time she had a period emergency and filled her shoes with blood; my cold is gradually dying although I am still a bit stuffy-nosed; I'm going back to the routine of cleaning Jannie's house tomorrow; everyone keeps saying how I could have polycystic ovaries and endometriosis as well because they're hereditary but I tell you what, I don't think I do. Everything runs like clockwork in my plumbing. I am thankful for this small mercy. But then again, according to the leaflet they got not all polycystic ovaries produce noticeable symptoms, so I might have them and never know it. I would certainly hope that was the case. The NEVER KNOW IT part.

Which of Henry VIII's wives are you?
this quiz was made by the groovtastic ghouls at Spookbot

Man, I'm such a wimp. I wanted to be Katherine Parr, but without the cheating final husband and puerperal fever. Or maybe I could be Katherine of Aragorn, which involves a lot more butt-kicking and pipe-smoking and not washing your hair.

But according to this quiz, I'm

Hey, I specifically answered the how many fingers question with ten. Still, at least I'm not Catherine 'Slut-o-Rama' Howard.

And, randomly:

Which Zoological Mystery Are You?
this, and other fine quizolas was made by the chicks @ Spookbot

You are so twee, you're the Cottingley Faeries!
You know the Druid names for all the holidays, and you insist on spelling words like COLOR with a u. You giggle alot and you sign your letters =^ ^=. Nobody can really stand you, but they're afraid that if they said so, you'd lock yourself in the bathroom and threaten to commit suicide. You are the person most likely to die from glitter poisoning.

Actually, I spell the word COLOUR with a u because I'm a British citizen. But okay, whatever. I thought the Cottingley fairies were more of a photographic mystery than a zoological one...

What I specially like about the spookbot site is that the main chick who seems to write there says her favourite king is Henry VIII. Mine too. Not because he was nice, but because he was always lively and interesting, shook a lot of people up, and made being horribly fat a fashion statement. When I was visiting Windsor Castle, I was just standing around idly looking at stuff in the Chapel of Saint George when I looked down and discovered I was standing on the grave of Henry VIII. I had to smother a squeal. I like knowing I'm not the only person who has a favourite king.

Today was mostly spent coughing and legitimately reading The Lovely Bones when Kate had finished it. (She thinks I read it unusually fast even for me. I just won't tell her I read a third of it yesterday.) I have given her Glen David Gold's Carter Beats the Devil to read - its length may be a bit daunting for her, but I sort of like the idea of reading the husband's book after the wife's. And it's just SUCH a good book - the kind that I can revisit every couple of years and enjoy just as much.

Hopefully tomorrow I will start to feel properly better. There is a plan afoot to have a picnic lunch in Cornwall Park before my mother takes my sister to the gynaecologist to find out if she has endometriosis or what. Kate had a very strange attack of cramps this afternoon while Wendy was at the dentist's getting drilled, and needed me to look after her; to tell the truth I was a bit unnerved and wondered if she was going to need medical attention, but it calmed down with the administration of some Panadol and the application of a warm wheat bag.

Wend has a temporary filling and spent much of this evening with an amusing lisp due to the jaw anaesthetic gradually wearing off.

I wrote a long paragraph about a pimple here and then deleted it on the grounds that no-one is ever going to want to marry me at this rate.

My mother (laughing just a trace hysterically): 'Oh, come and look, girls. Daddy's dressed himself again.'

Now he is singing himself a song 'Poor little Tony, everybody's mean to him,' because we told him he couldn't wear two different plaids in one outfit.

I am doing something I'm really not supposed to and reading a book by stealth. My sister has The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold and reads much slower than me (as earlier revealed in this blog, my normal reading speed is 500 words per minute. Hers is 202) and so I read a big chunk of it around her bookmark while she was out at the shops with my mother. She has come home with a Thunderbirds calendar and a new Baby-G watch which I quite admire. The Lovely Bones is a tremendously good read. I was even more interested in it when I found, in the about the author blurb, that Ms Sebold is married to Glen David Gold, because I love his book Carter Beats the Devil, and wrote him a letter about it, and many months later he really, truly wrote back and apologised for taking so long but said it was because when he was busy he had to put the letters that deserved a good reply aside until he had more time to write it. What a nice man. Ms Sebold must be an unusual woman to be married to; besides being clever and literary she has survived being raped, and wrote a book about that too, called Lucky. (The title is a bit ironic: she was told after the assault that she was lucky because another girl had been killed in the same place not so long ago.)

Tonight we are supposed to go to my grandmother's for dinner. I wish I could beg off, and maybe if I'm really lucky I can - I am still leaking snot and coughing a lot. I had to huff some Ventolin this afternoon.

Very little to relate except that the sore throat part of this cold has died, giving way to the coughing and heavy, heavy mucus production.

I'm germy.

Cold Report: Still not very well, thank you! Dosing myself with Lemsip Max. My father has gone to a cricket game with his little friend Greg. It's a blue, sunny day with a lot of cicada noise. I am reading the Pope Joan novel from the Lizzard. It is a good read, although mostly in terms of plot rather than character study. I had an unfortunate moment of snarf during the battle of Fontenoy, in which there was apparently a real, live military commander called Pippin. There is something wrong with my brain which makes me read the pope's name 'Sergius' but hear it in my head as 'Sergei.'

Okay, home again. This trip was a very mixed bag. For the few days prior to it, my sister was going through the disagreeable process of a summer cold, but I didn't seem to be catching it. So guess when I came down with it and felt really dreadful? At the Party concert, with no pass-outs, nowhere to go to be comfortable, and no-one to comfort me, especially as I got very, very depressed. I ended up sitting on the ground hugging my knees with my head down not exactly crying, just leaking tears. I needed someone to hug me and rub my back and say it was going to be all right. No-one did that, although my sister did call me a taxi so I could go back to the motel, although that didn't come and I ended up hitching a lift on a for-donations shuttle service being run by two enterprising local lads with a van. But really, that was the only bad thing. Once I got back to the 'tourist flat' at the motel/campground I was able to make myself more comfortable, and the depression really lifted. I just don't think it was a good situation for me. I became horribly conscious of how everyone I could see was with a happy group of friends, and I'd come with my sister and her friend who I didn't know too well, and they wanted to do things like drink beer and go in the mosh pit that I just don't enjoy. (I really, really tried to drink a can of beer to make my sister happy, but I didn't quite get through half of it. So nasty.) I needed a picnic blanket to sit on and a boyf to lean up against. It made me feel lonelier still because since RotK I have had the theme of best friends very much in mind. My Pippin needs a Merry, or vice versa. I have come to the conclusion that I never have any luck trying to celebrate New Year's Eve. And the actual fun of the occasion is almost in inverse proportion to how much effort I make. From now on I will just go to bed at a normal time and say happy New Year to people when I wake up in the morning.

The next day things got better; there was swimming and sunning at Waitangi beach, where I astonishingly did NOT get sunburnt (although Rebecca caught a doozy of a burn between the top and bottom of her tankini - a livid red stripe across her stomach). Today after we left Paihia we came home via the Kawiti glowworm caves, which were quite beautiful and agreeably cool. I have been feeling pretty sick but the heat and the sea air seemed to do me some good. I have a spiderwebby-feeling sore throat, which sometimes makes me cough, some sinus congestion and pain in my ears. I think I was feverish last night, judging by how weird my head felt and the cycles of too-hot-too-cold I went through. W00t.

I have some new reading material, since the Lizzard kindly sent me two books about Pope Joan for Christmas, and after that I'm going to try to lay hands on The Queen's Fool by Philippa Gregory, which Rebecca bought in the Paihia bookshop and let me read the start of while she was driving us home. So far I like it even better than The Other Boleyn Girl. Let's face it, Mary Boleyn was a tiny bit of a sap. Hannah Verde/Green has a bit more spunk to her. It does seem to me that the book's characterisation of Elizabeth is going to be fairly unsympathetic. From what I know of the case, I always thought she was more sinned against than sinning in the Admiral Seymour business. You have to hold a grown man more responsible than a teenage girl. But I haven't read far enough to know whether it will turn out as I'm expecting.

I need to get a new miniature of gin to be my handbag talisman, as I forgot I was carrying the old one and had to surrender it at the gates of the concert. Boo!

I have little appetite at the moment. Sometimes I sit down and eat a foolishly large amount (like last night when I felt I had to finish off the cheerios) but a lot of the time I just don't want anything at mealtimes. This is sort of left over from the stomach bug before Christmas. I ate quite a lot at Christmastime because there were so many of my favourite things, but frankly, that made me feel a little ill where normally there would not have been a bother on me. Eh. I'm going weird.

New Year's Resolutions
- I will not give up.
- I will qualify as a secondary school teacher and get marks I can be proud of.
- I will do my best to make some friends, the kind I can actually see. (Being friends with sub-atomic particles sucks.)
- I will not dye my hair.

Random RotK thought: When Sam and Frodo escape from the Orcs' guardtower and disguise themselves in armour three sizes too large for them, they resemble nothing so much as a pair of Brian Froud goblins who have had the misfortune to stray from the Labyrinth.

Especially with that silly beak on Frodo's helmet. I just wanted to get that out in the open. Okay, this is probably the last thing I'll write before I go to Paihia. I shall be incommunicado until the second of January unless something very odd happens. I wish all my friends a happy New Year.

Went to the shops with Kate, paid my vehicle registration renewal fee (7.05! Fortunately it came out of my dole savings) and got a paperback for the trip. Nothing really jumped out at me, but I have heard good things about The No.1 Ladies' Detective Agency so I will give it a try.

My hair is starting to grow out to a satisfactory degree, although it will still not all stay in a ponytail or bunches. I bought some very large stainless-steel snap clips for it today, so oversized that they look cartoony, which pleases me oddly. They hold the sides back well. I intend to stop Lumia-ing it and see how it goes. Now that I am back in New Zealand it should not turn ginger mouse again. Something about the quality or quantity of English sunlight and/or water changed the colour quite markedly over there, but I think it is back to normal and don't really want to be a slave to Garnier.

I hope I will be comfortable on this trip. I am a bit dubious about the arrangements at the concert itself. For one thing, once you are admitted to the grounds there is no having your hand stamped to pop out and come back in, so you have to bring in everything you will need, and I don't know what the facilities will be like. My sister will give me shit for wanting to carry a bag with me, I expect, but I am just not a person who feels comfortable without favourite things like my cellphone, my hairbrush and my sunglasses handy. People mock me a lot, but when they want a wet-wipe for their sticky hands or a safety-pin for their busted knicker elastic, THERE I AM WITH THE GOODS. There are liquor bans in Paihia, and at the concert itself I know only that you can buy beer only from the official tent within the grounds. So what about people who don't like to drink beer? Oh, that's right, we don't exist. I hope I can at least get a Coke, even if something more civilised like the better RTDs is not available.

I should probably look up the concert website, shouldn't I? How nice, they provide a 'survival guide'. Dearie, dearie me. The toilets sound lethal. Fortunately I am an expert at the hovering style referred to as the 'expert skier's gamble.' Yes, it does rely on strong thigh muscles, and while mine are padded by Gamgee (this is my new word for the sort of fat you have when you're not FAT but healthy yet slightly plump - it makes you nicer to hug but harder to shop for) they are certainly equal to the task of holding me out of disgust range of a communal toilet seat, with barely a tremble. The key really is to make sure that your upper body is bent well forward. I think most people who have trouble with this position don't know that. Thank goodness I have a new pack of wet-wipes to take along.

I think this will be an occasion for the South Park backpack - it's small but surprisingly capacious.

Sooooo, today the new dishwasher and washing machine come. I'm supposed to help my father get the old washing machine out of its niche so Wendy can vacuum in there before a new one is ensconced. (Can you be ensconced in a niche, or does it have to be a sconce? What exactly is the difference? Sconces hold candles and lamps, don't they? But can't you put those in niches as well? Am I spelling 'sconce' right? I can't tell as it has stopped looking like a word. This happened to me with 'precious' the other night, and oddly, not in a Gollum context; a Labyrinth context, as in 'How you turned my world, you precious thing/ You starve and near exhaust me.') After that the day is pretty much free except for the necessity of packing for Paihia. We will be away three nights, because we are going to sleep at Becks' tonight (I don't actually know how she spells her nickname, Becs, Becks, Beks, Bex) in order to make an early departure in the morning. Kate says five AM. I say good luck.

So let's see, what will I need?
- Swimming togs and towel
- Shower towel (one must have alternating towels, it is no good waiting for one to dry)
- Sleeping bag, poss. home pillow (we are staying in a 'tourist flat' at a campground, so there's no knowing what the amenities will be)
- Four pairs of knickers (I always pack one more than I expect to need, because some days you fall in a puddle)
- Two days of nice and comfortable clothes, including something partyish for the concert.

Kate has forbidden me to bring more than one book, and says that has to be a paperback.

For anyone who needs to know: I ought to be back on the second of January.

This afternoon, for reasons which were a little mysterious even to us, my family went to Freaky Friday. It is bizarre how different a movie adaptation can be from the book and still go by the same title. I mean, just for starters, I do believe Freaky Friday the book is set in New York. So of course the movie (this incarnation, anyway) is set in Los Angeles. And it just goes on from there. It's not a bad movie, in a fluffy way, but jeez. Part of my problem here is that I love the book, even though the moral of it is basically 'your mother really does know better than you and could probably improve your haircut, sweetie.' And I do think that an adolescent girl trying to get through an unglamorous day in the life of an upper middle class housewife is funnier than an adolescent girl trying to get through 'wacky' situations like seeing neurotic psychiatric patients and appearing on a talk show to promote a book she is supposed to have written but hasn't read. I also think the movie's plot is weakened by the fact that Anna and Tess each know the other has been switched and consult on the fact; in the book the daughter has to bluff her way through Friday with absolutely no input from her mother, who is smugly enjoying the swap and is in no way discommoded or flustered by it (in fact, if memory serves, was responsible for it, rather than there being a 'wacky' old Chinese lady interfering with 'Asian voodoo'). A couple of things, like the unnatural evil of that one girl in school and the English teacher, just didn't make any sense. (A teacher simply can't work that way. Their work is subject to review like anyone else's and a personal grading vendetta against a student would swiftly be detected and squelched. Teachers who really have an unprofessional, bordering on psychotic grudge against a student tend to express it with less 'wacky' methods like physical and mental abuse. It's the sort of idea that you can't really use in a light movie like this if your audience are going to think about it at all. Spot the girl who's not in the target audience!)

The whole thing was redeemed for me by the fact that, gee, Lindsay Lohan is a fox. I like her freckles. I like her witchy eyebrows. I like her pretty little teeth. I like the fact that, with this and the remake of The Parent Trap, she is clearly attempting to establish a niche as Hollywood's first covers actress. Should we look for her in Peter Jackson's forthcoming King Kong? Ehhhh... maybe not.

There was a bunch of stuff in this movie that just felt like unnecessary updating. The blended family plot. The mother's high-powered job. Because otherwise it's not relevant for now, because everyone knows there are no more at-home mothers and no more married couples who are still together when their firstborn has reached her teens. You just can't write a story about those kind of people, no-one would believe it.

People like that don't have any innate moral superiority or make a guaranteed better contribution to society, as some commentators would make out. I just mean... they're still out there. And they can still be funny or interesting.

One thing you might know if you know me is that my sister and I have this ritual/joke where, upon any sighting of Joaquin Phoenix or Orlando Bloom in any medium, we must say, in the Margarine Pudding Voice, 'Orlando Bloom/Joaquin Phoenix, my/your future husband.' (Orlando's mine, Joaquin's hers.) However, today Kate told me there was something she feared I needed to know: she had heard a story that did not reflect well on my fiancé (if he but knew he is my fiancé) at all. Kate's friend's friend's sister worked in the makeup department of LotR (nearly everyone in New Zealand has this kind of Six Degrees connection to the trilogy) and one evening she met Orlando Bloom at some kind of event in a pub and he made a boorish remark to her, possibly meant to be a joke but really not funny, about her giving him a blowjob. Kate says that since hearing this story she has experienced some disquiet whenever I pulled the 'future husband' line and she thought it was best that I knew, even if it hurt me.

Currently I am in 'benefit of the doubt' mode, for these reasons. One, it could have been an aberration, quite likely said in drink. That doesn't make it okay, but does mean it might not be representative of his normal idea of conversation with girls. Two, he is still young and can be retrained. Three, it's a story from a friend of a friend's sister and could have become quite distorted in transmission. Unless I heard some corroborating stories from plausible sources, I would leave the case open. It is true, though, that I have been thinking for a while that Orlando might be a bit callow and shallow for me. I increasingly think I would be happier marrying a man who was a little older than me (not by lots, I mean up to five years or so). Perhaps it's for the best that this issue came up before we really committed ourselves. *^.^* <- obligatory smiley so you don't think I am in earnest and batshit insane

The sad thing is, when you're Orlando Bloom people will want to give you blowjobs... but you can screw that right up for yourself by appearing to take it for granted. Still asking nicely even when you know it's a sure thing is one of the marks of a gentleman.

In 'Oh thank God' news my parents have bought the new dishwasher, and at the same time a new washing machine because the old one was starting to leak distressingly and walk across the floor. They will be brought round and installed by the nice Magness Benrow men tomorrow. I like the name 'Magness Benrow.' The first part says, 'One of my ancestors wasn't too clear on how you spell "Magnus".' And the second half says... who the hell is called Benrow? Is that a name? The dishwasher model is called the Nautilus. The next one down the line is called the Nemo. I think that's swell. Whiteware manufacturers don't go with a Jules Verne theme anywhere near often enough. Or give you an excuse to say 'Hurrah! I've found Nemo!' any time you go into the kitchen. Or pretend the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen are cleaning your cutlery. This is really a gift to nerds with dirty dishes everywhere. Thank you, Fisher & Paykel.

I figured out something else at the movies: my need to pee during a movie is directly proportionate to how much I am enjoying it. Freaky Friday or Underworld I can bask through slurping on a frozen Coke with not the slightest urinary distress. Bring a director like Peter Jackson or Hayao Miyazaki into the equation (note that it's not about the length of the film, or I wouldn't keep getting this during animated features), and I should really be catheterised during the trailers, and save everyone a lot of trouble. Now that I have formed this thought, if I'm ever actually introduced to Mr Jackson I'm probably going to blurt out 'Your movies are so great. They make me want to pee a lot.'

Which will have the side effect of making Orlando Bloom's conversational efforts look urbane and charming. But if you were getting to meet the Rings cast, you wouldn't really want to spend the evening chatting to Orlando, would you? If you were out for a fun and intelligent conversation you'd be asking Sean Astin what he's read lately, or trying to get Billy Boyd to tell you a story.

Hell hath no fury like a woman indirectly scorned *^.^* You've got to admit, he was always the weakest link in the cast commentary tracks.

My cat is licking the seat cushion of the computer chair that I normally use. She has licked a wet spot. My cat is the biggest freaking pervert in this house.

Happy Monday! With any luck, my parents will be buying a new dishwasher today, although it's anyone's guess how long it will take to get it plumbed in.

I was interested to observe that today's forum-mockery on SomethingAwful.com targeted the Gaia Online forums, specifically as a haunt of awful anime fans. One the one hand, this is getting a little close to home. Every now and again when we're being extraspecially silly in Nekomusumia I look around and think 'What if a Forum Goon is watching?' I mean, our fora mascot is a catgirl. They'd be all over that shit. We sit around talking about how dreamy anime guys are and planning our Evil Lairs (with monkeys) and Photoshipping Cap'n Jack Sparrow and Pippin Took. That's pretty risible, to an unsympathetic eye. On the other hand, we should be relatively safe because we are, bluntly, nowhere near as rock-stupid as the Gaia people whose posts were singled out by SA.com. We have had one brief invasion by people of that mentality, but managed to repel it pretty quickly. There's a crucial difference between silly and stupid. (It's close to that fine line Spinal Tap were on about.)

You know what? I think the whole of Gaia Online is pretty stupid. Yes, the avatars and the little costume pieces you can collect for them are very cute. But the site blatantly encourages stupid and vapid posting by giving you no other way to earn 'gold' points. Absolutely no quality control, and the acquisition of gold becomes merely an index of how much crap a person is prepared to talk, rather than a combination of luck and skill as with Neopoints. I'm not saying Neopets is a work of genius, but it offers a satisfying/challenging variety of ways to earn or win Neopoints, what with multiple games, competitions, shops, a primitive stock market even, and is a pretty good welcome-to-capitalism primer for kids. It should be noted that I have never gone near a Neopets forum or engaged in role-playing there. I just feed my little cow and penguin on omelettes and wheel and deal in a very low-key way. Actually, I hardly deal at all, but I wheel daily.

A real puzzle for me in Neopets is the emotional state of my penguin, AdiposeBruce. His 'mood' status does vary a little, but it's only among the options 'miserable,' 'very unhappy' and 'depressed.' What has got the penguin so down? Anastamosis is always happy. I feed and play with them both equally but it seems like nothing can get Bruce out of his funk. Perhaps there is some activity he needs to engage in, but Lordy knows I'm not wasting my time in the Battledome. Sullen little brute.

I think a little, little bit of my creativity is coming back. I managed to make a new front page design, even if it's nothing super-clever, and I'm starting to lose my mental block for forum avatars, having come up with two in the last couple of days ('Princess Deborah' from Heavenly Creatures and Sarah from Labyrinth). I even uploaded a short, not terribly inspired but fairly enjoyable to write Samurai Jack story to fanfiction.net - here it is. I hope 2004 will be a year in which I feel both inspired and competent.