I love it!

It appears that Ireland's official entry to the Eurovision Song Contest 2008, is to be Dustin The Turkey performing Irlande Douze Points :)
I so love it... not the song (haven't listened to that) but the fact that we're literally entering a turkey. I can't wait to see the reaction of audience and voting at that auspicious event.
More info on Dustin available at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dustin_the_turkey

The weather...

We had a lovely week of weather here in Wellington for the working week just past. Guaranteed, each lunch I grabbed a sambo and was out in the sun; particularly on Thursday when I was so tired (those tiresome rubbish collectors woke me at 4:15am again and unfortunately this time I couldn't get back to sleep). Only downside (apart from fact that I had to spend work day in office!) was that forecast for this weekend really didn't look good. Overcast and wet it seemed it would be. And that is it what it is in Rotorua, but not here in Wellington. Instead today has been a beautiful surprise with lots of sun and and it was sooo warm! I had lovely stroll (still no joy in finding a dress for the wedding (the one in a fortnights time!!)) and then headed down to sea front for some yummy passionfruit gelato. I love the gelato this place does... I've stood in huge queues there just for their gelato. Yummy :)

Rest of day has been, well, relaxing :) Bit of cleaning this morning, skype chat to the sis in Philadelphia (the Big Freeze arrived last night apparently), phone chats, emails, etc etc. All very chilled. Oh, and booked myself in for 45 min manicure tomorrow :) Guess I should start thinking about what clothes I need to bring pack to bring for next week! And shoes. And of course must leave enough space for the purchases that I hope I'll be making while I'm back.

Oh, and I'm off to Melbourne for the weekend at the end of April... really looking forward to that. Such a great city and apparently a number of excellent veggie restaurants! Needless to say it's important that I had something lined up to look forward to on my return from Ireland... I mean I know that there's the Bush Craft course the weekend before Melbourne but not sure that that's in the same category :)

Cricket, Sausages and a few Salads...

Today I attended a cricket match and I have to admit that, as I suspect, cricket is not really what I'd consider a spectator sport! It wasn't actually the Blackcaps -v- England that I was watching but rather the two teams were made up with my work team mates :) I wasn't playing, instead being one of the official supporters... there were quite a few of us in that role - always important. It wasn't the sunniest day ever but it was still relatively warm so rather pleasant.

We'd all been invited to a BBQ in a colleague's house, where were told there'd be "sausages and a few salads". It was a while before we got to eat but as we sat there munching on our salads, sausages, burgers (veggie for us veggies), pasta and fresh potato salad, somebody rightly pointed out that if this was "sausages and a few salads" then she looked forward to being invited to a slap up dinner. Seriously, it was great. Freshly made guacamole on arrival with a glass of some lovely Astrolabe (white savvie) and lots of good conversation and then a lovely meal. Our car departed with a slice of vegan chocolate cake for me and a slice of carrot cake for the driver. The front seat passenger managed to resist the temptation to take any cake!

Karori Wildlife Sanctuary

Today is Waitangi Day here in New Zealand which basically means we got the day off work. A bit odd having a day off in the middle of the week but that doesn't mean that it wasn't greatly enjoyed :)
We headed out to Karori Wildlife Sanctuary which was fantastic. We got a talk from one of the volunteer workers at the start which was fairly interesting. I think what interested me most was the testing that they did with fence before installing it... all 8.6km of it. Basically by placing it near a dump they were able to determine how high it had to be, how much roof on it was required and how much floor (if that's the word to use) was required. All this to to stop cats, possums, weasels, mice from jumping and climbing over and rabbits from burrowing under.



There are loads of trails throughout throughout though we stuck to the easiest as I rather sillily had worn my birkenstocks rather than trainers. But next time :) Speaking of next time it won't even cost anything to get in now for the next year as annual membership is only $42! Great value if you ask me.

Go Dustin!!

It's not often that I really care who represents Ireland in that bastion of new singing talent, the Eurovision, but today I saw an article on ireland.com that Dustin the Turkey is Dublin's entrant. Go Dustin!!!

Brr...

Lovely weather here this weekend. I'm just getting in to this warm, sunny, not too much (never say never when talking about wind in Wellington) wind weather. That was yesterday. Today it's grey and windy and cold. Looking at metservice.org.nz it's 14 degrees celcius (nothing to write home about in the middle of summer) but observed wind chill makes it feel like 11 degrees. Damn cold walking home work. Not sure it'll be much better tomorrow but looks like it might be picking up after that. Fingers crossed!

So many ads...

Lying on floor here during yet another ad break in Harry Potter - The Goblet of Fire. According to imdb.com this movie is 157 mins long. Here it started at 7:30pm and won't finish until 10:45pm... that's 195 mins! That's almost 20 mins of advertisements during one movie. Oh well, at least there are some totally unreal ads to amuse myself with (though most of rubbish... hence this blog entry).
Having said that that beats last week attempt - 3 hrs to show The Prison of Azkaban which is only 140 mins long!!