Buggerit! I really am working for the man. GE donated $2.58million to the US Republican party since 1999. Yuk. I’m finishing in 2 weeks though, so that’ll stick it to them. Yeah! And I stole about 20 helium balloons today, all printed with GE Money, which is what GE finance is now called in New Zealand. So I’ve made them scared now, I’ll bet.

In other news, there has been much fun and also some sleep had. Since my last post I’ve had two weekends, one which involved a friday night of running around trying to find people to hang out with and eventually giving up and crying myself to sleep. There was also a saturday of going to phil’s house on the North Shore to watch dvds and drink vodka and sleep in a room with only one other person in it! And waking up to peaceful suburban noises like lawnmowers and birds and things instead of the usual building sites. Sunday was driving around the North Shore in the sunshine and then going to see Terry Pratchett who was lovely and amusing and tired and utterly used to squee-ful freaks asking him weird questions.

It must be so crap to write a book, to invest so much of your time and effort into it, to be asked almost immediately after it comes out when the next one will be printed. He’s wisely slowing down his output after his recent heart surgery to one book a year, more or less. Two books in a year!!

And then there was another week, which was supposed to consist of dinner dates and visiting people and swapping books, but was mostly just working and slobbing and usually eating too much.

On friday though, I headed off to the coromandel with Steve “Spewey” Kent and his girlie Paula, for a weekend of camping with steve’s friends. There ended up being 11 of us and I had a marvellous weekend. It was brilliant even for the fact of being outside of Auckland for a while, but the weather was perfect, the people were so friendly and nice, the air was fresh, the food was great and even if i didn’t get any sleep at all on friday due to lack of a ground mat, I was happy just to be there. We went for a nice long tramp around some headlands on saturday and all got utterly exhausted because it was so warm, and then wandered around Coromandel town, which is one of those hicksville places that are also quite arty and touristy. You gotta love it when ice-cream is only a dollar a scoop. MMMMM icecream.

Saturday night was barbequed mussels and snapper steaks and bananas (one at a time, not all together!) and playing Tip the Can, Kick the Can, 20-20 or whatever you call it and collected more words for the perineum (a rather bizarre obsession of mine, more on that another time)

And sunday was the cutest wee railway that you ever did see and the beach.

Today is monday, and there are already plans afoot for next weekend, involving an all you can eat mongolian buffet and a party bus. woohoo!