Friday, December 29, 2006

Tomorrow

Tomorrow i go back to Timaru. I am not entirely sure how I will be able to leave and what i will think of myself when i do.

Fox is my very good friend and we have had a very tough year where we relied on each other a lot at different times. I am positive that he will miss me very much as I know he enjoys my company as I do his.

I have been so proud of his bravery over the last two days. He coped so well with the long car journey and he has met everything at the new house with an admirable attitude. He is truely a role model for me and I shall honor him by meeting my new experiences with bravery.

Being here is the best option for him right now as the grounds here are awesome and just what I have been promising him for a few years and he will have company during the day which he does not get with me and increasingly now he has not had my company in the evenings either.

Of course he does not know all this. He will just know I have gone and that he needs to stay.

i do not know how I will be able to walk into the house in Timaru tomorrow night…i will need to be brave.

Thursday, December 28, 2006

Nelson

Nelson is sunny.

Nelson has a new cat and no Craig.

Will be home in a few days and I will tell you all about riding around on a flash fast bike and the fact that xmas went from just another day ending in y to something magical!

Friday, December 22, 2006

Where Has Shine Been?

It has been a hectic time - I have had to make some heart rending decisions lately and i also finished up work (last day was SAD!) now I have a few days to get busy packing… except I have another distraction.

This whole try something new thing has kicked in full force in the most perfect way!

I am seeing someone. Someone REAL - not an imaginary online person who is not here and I use my imagination to fill in the blanks of who they are - a REAL person, who is actually here and I can see his facial expressions and feel his touches and understand his meanings and such. it is a new thing for me and it is all delightfully easy and relaxing.

He is gentle and calm. He is caring and handsome. He is funny and sweet. He is supportive, emotionally strong and knows how to handle me. He is a great daddy. He likes salt and vinegar chips. He likes fly fishing. He likes to communicate. He likes me.

I am not at all sure what this is all about for either of us but it is truely lovely.

Wednesday, December 13, 2006

Reading the Newspaper

In my classroom we get the newspaper every day. I don’t usually get time to read it. A few mornigns ago I read the frotn page.

Tourist bashed on Saturday night down at the Bay (about two mins walk from my house). Apparently two teens jumped a guy form behind and bashed him and he ended up in hospital. The two teens then moved onto bash another man from behind ON MY STREET.

This made me pretty uncomfortable as you can imagine…

Then the next day their names were in the paper…guess who…

*sad*

Monday, December 11, 2006

Did I mention

JONNY WON!!!!!!!!!
And not just a win…
a DOUBLE WIN!
Indonesia Win a1gp
It really was a GREAT and exciting race and I am not just saying that coz I am obviously now thinking this is the BEST A1GP race I ever saw…
There was lots of action - passing, great passing, spinning off track, the worst rain ever, two tyre changes, main players droppign out and JONNY LEADING and being passed by NICO and then having to go in and change tyres then and passing Jonny again… SO THRILLING! Needless to say I DID stay up til after one and it was worth every second!
I am so proud of Jonny and so excited for him! Amazing amazing!!
Podium Indonesia a1gp
Congrats to the Black Beauty team and I am even more excited about the next race which is here in NZ - on my NEW island!
Oh, and as an aside… playing on the flying fox on the adventure playground with the class when you haven’t done it since you were a kid is not a good idea if you plan on having the use of your arms for the rest of the day…

Sunday, December 10, 2006

Indonesia Quals A1GP

Running commentary as I watch this half hour quals highlights…
Just watching the quals now - Jonny is up again this week and I just heard he hasn’t had much time in the car due to the fact one of our rookies (Chris) CRASHED our car during practise!!! (repairs keeping Jonny outta the car …)
At this stage of the quals Jonny doesn’t even feature - I don’t think he has been out at all yet.
ok, Jonny comes out.
And already Jonny has pulled a good time lol! (2nd GBR i think) If he’s on fire there is NO way I am going to bed at a reasonable time for work tomorrow! (coverage here between 1030pm and 1 am heeheh)
Ads! grrrrrrrhehhihihihhgrrrrr It’s ok, i can use this time to try and find a pic of the crash!
Ok, back on, no pic of crash yet and here’s Jonny. He’s on used tyres. Right out and clipping the grass on that pesky turn four.
While Jonny is zooming about Alex Young has spun off the track.
Lap time for Jonny - second still and Germany liek 7th. Hmmmm - he’s doing another lap now on new tyres so let’s see how he goes (while he is going around NZ comes back out).
Ok this is more liek it… he’s fastest by a fraction.
Hmm, I am suspicious that the race is actually finished I better be careful looking for pics on the site in case I see something I really shouldn’t see yet!
WOW, Jonny is 3/4 of a sec up on Germany at the split this round! But he lost time on the last segment - if he keeps on liek this he will get pole again loL!
ooo Mexico up to third.
Here’s Jonny again..*watches intently*
He’s ahead at the spilt again!
GOOOOOOOOOOOO YES!!!!! And fastest indivdual lap too! (third race in a row he’s set fastest individual lap in quals…)
France is still out but he is not in a good position to take pole off us - my bet is he can’t but he will leap some places by the looks.
Germany is out now, he’s keen, slipping corners a tad! and he stays in second.
GBR now and Robbie Kerr could move up from his current third position! GOOOOOO Robbie (good luck! seems to be over driving a bit in his keeness - OH! he got second pole!
let’s hope Jonny can take it all the way tonight! I AM SO EXCITED NOW!!!! Not long until Taupo too - I wonder who gets the honours there, Matt or Jonny? and WHERE WILL I BE?!! coz that Friday, Sat and Sunday we get LIVE coverage on channel three!!
A1 Team New Zealand’s Jonny Reid has snatched pole position for the Gudang Garam A1GP Sentul, Indonesia Sprint race with a last-gasp flying lap in the dying minutes of Qualifying. Reid’s aggregate time was just 0.034secs quicker than Great Britain’s Robbie Kerr, who also moved up in the last minute to secure second position from Germany’s Nico Hülkenberg for Sunday’s 15-lap race.
Source
A1GP Indonesia Sprint grid

Flushed Away

aka No Slugs were a-salted during this film
it occurred to me yesterday that OF COURSE I had to go and see this film even though all the trailers and stuff I have seen about it haven’t made me want to.
I HAD to go - it’s Aardman!
And having now seen it I have to say the only two things that is wrong with it are that it did not hook me into the characters at the start and at the start there was what I consider to be a big continuity issue. it wasn’t ’til half way through that I actually started to enjoy it - which is a shame as it is really quite good, kinda.
It has great animation and is put together well. it is also kinda weird in a way I have not experienced before - or perhaps this was just the underlying concept that I was watching rats in a sewer and i was quite wary that I woudl see a big poop floating about at any moment. it certainly takes toilet humour in a totally literal direction!
I am wondering if Aardman has an NZ somehow connected to this film as there was a weird appearance of a New Zealand map at one point that had me perplexed coz I couldn’t figure out WHY there would be a NZ map with connections to the anatomy of a  squirrel (I think it was a squirrel, I was distracted by the bizarre  appearance of a NZ map) at this point (or any other actually) of this film.
The film is riddled with visual sound effects  gags - which in themselves are hilarious and blend well with the Aardman tradition for the teeniest of detail that makes their films stand up well under repeat viewings. There is also a lot of slapstick - which I couldn’t help but laugh at.
There are also some pop culture references which flash by in almost bizarre ways so keep your eyes peeled.
I really enjoyed Jean Reno as Le Frog - I have a long standing connection with his acting and voice since he appeared in a film I have been fond of for too many years to remember now! Andy Serkis did a good job as Spike.
Overall the story just didn’t grip me - I am not sure if I was in the wrong mood or if I just got off to a bad viewing start with the continuity and the non connection with the chars. Not sure what it was really as it did seem to have all the elements that should have made it a good film. I couldn’t get an idea of it’s kid appeal as I was in a practically empty cinema (as I liek it).
I’d love to hear what others think. It’s certainly no Wallace and Gromit but then I am definitely biased in that regard - it is uniquely Aardman however and has many of the trademark Aardman delights. It’s good to see them trying something different and I hope this works out for them. As much as I LOVE the stopmotion - it’s going to be increasingly difficult for them to make it pay off for them with the nature of that medium and until they can figure out a way around that ( and cross fingers that SOMEONE does) they need to get their bucks somehow coz the alternative is to pack up shop and split up I guess…
flushed away

Saturday, December 9, 2006

Unconditional Love

if you love something
set it free

if it comes back,
it’s yours

if it doesn’t
it never was…

Walk Away

CRP (Cheese Related Post)

HEY! Who finally got some of this for my local store and didn’t tell me!?!
CHEESE!
CHEESE!

Friday, December 8, 2006

Indonesia A1GP (yes, it’s that time again!)

Indonesia this weekend - looks liek some of the drivers have been out having a little bit of quad bike fun!
Jonny Reiod A1GP Indonesia
A group of drivers including championship leader Nico Hülkenberg, New Zealand’s Jonny Reid and Great Britain’s Oliver Jarvis, were taken out to a plantation in the Sukabumi area south of the circuit for a quad bike ride through the jungle.
What was supposed to be a slow ride to enjoy the scenery and give the drivers a taste of the beautiful Indonesian landscape quickly, and perhaps inevitably, degenerated into a fast sprint. Drivers tried to get their all-terrain vehicles to leap over the jumps, balance on two wheels and arrive at the finish first.
Check out our exclusive photo gallery to get the inside line on the activity. We must stress that no drivers were harmed in the making of this film.