weekend report

On Friday, I handed in the report (Coleridge poem) I’ve been working on all semester, which translates to “spending four days furiously trying to patch together the pages of notes from all the research”. Added to a week of late nights (e.g. going to see Robert sing with the Boyband at 10pm on a Monday night… etc), meant I was exhausted by Friday afternoon, but still had the final proofreading to complete. Ended up that I needed to do a whole heap of proofreading, and I handed the report in at 4:15pm. I hadn’t eaten since an early breakfast with Jeremy and A.J., so I was feeling a bit dizzy. Managed to make it home on the scooter, ate a chocolate chip biscuit, had a shower (to scrub away that awful wrung-out completed-an-essay feeling I always get), then lay almost comatose on the couch until Jeremy came home. We had a pizza from the Mediterranean Food Warehouse, and I went to bed at 7:30pm. I woke up after an hour, and we decided to play a board game to keep me awake for a bit longer, so that I’d go (back) to bed around the normal time, and hopefully have a proper night’s sleep. So we ended up playing Ludo in bed, in our pyjamas. Not the best place to play, let it be noted – Ludo requires a rather solid and steady surface.

We had planned on sleeping in on Saturday, but of course we woke up at 7:30 (which is a sleep in really, the alarm usually goes off at 6:30), so we got up, ate breakfast, and Jeremy went to get a haircut for the air force band show he was doing that night. I had to get some books from the Uni library for my next essay (due this week), and then we went along to the Karori Festival, the main attraction of which was a “multicultural food fair” – read, two curry stands, a Malaysian food stand, hot dog stall, candy floss, gelato, fudge, and hot donuts. We shared a pakora, a samosa, and some curry, and then I had candy floss on a stick (only $1!!) and Jeremy had a hotdog. The cloud of candy floss was as big as my head, and as I neared the end it was basically all over my face and hands - just like old times at the Easter Show. Jeremy used my phone to take a picture of me with the floss; I’ll try and upload it somehow.
We took a walk in the afternoon, then after a quick dinner, Jeremy had to play at an NZDF ball. He managed to sneak home some nice orange juice for me, thank you NZ tax-payer! We have a plethora of things to drink at the moment, come to think of it; on a supermarket trip last week we saw that Coca Cola have re-released “Mello Yello” – what a trip back to nostalgia that was! It’s like Lift, only sweeter. That was a fun discovery. Anyway, while Jeremy was out on Saturday night, I made more toasted muesli, enough to fill two ice-cream containers actually! But it tastes great, and definitely fills you up in the mornings. And while I was busy making that, I was half-watching the interview with Terri Irwin - my gosh, it was sad. I even cried a little.

On Sunday morning we went to the vegetable markets next to Waitangi Park, and boy oh boy did we strike some good deals! I spied one stall selling ginger for $2.99/kilo, when all the other stalls around were offering it at $7.99/kilo! It was at a stall we usually bypass, because they are a bit more expensive than everyone else. (My theory is that it is because they have a marquee set up over the produce, so you are paying more for the convenience of not getting so wet). I managed to get a nice piece of ginger (e.g. not half-mouldy as most of it seemed to be, hence cheap price), and it cost 9 cents. At another stall, we found a mesclun lettuce mix for $1.99/kilo, which usually costs $19.99/kilo in the supermarket! (And lettuce weighs almost nothing - imagine how big a 1 kilo mesclun would be!) I’ve never seen such lettuce sold in such a way at the markets before, but I shall be looking out for it from now on. Other goodies include delicious braeburn apples, and some amazingly sweet NZ tomatoes, which have been featuring large in our salads since then. So a very cheap and rewarding trip. Afterwards, we ate bagels and read books in the sun on a patch of grass by the waterfront, because it had not only stopped raining, but the sun was out and there was hardly any wind. I even felt warm enough to take off all my jumpers down to my t-shirt, an amazing accomplishment for someone who routinely wears about five layers just to go to get the mail from the letterbox. Jeremy had a music practise so I went to Olive Café and drank an iced chocolate in the sun, reading a book, sitting next to a couple playing Scrabble. They had an interesting argument over whether “max” was allowed as a word – I agreed with the arguments of both sides, so didn’t feel qualified to offer my thoughts. A brief bit of shopping; Jeremy and I went home and did chores; we played Anti-Monopoly, a new game I bought off Trade Me, which is basically the same as Monopoly but you can play as either a Competitor or a Monopolist, and there are different sets of rules for each - quite fun, and makes you think too! Then Jeremy went out for dinner with his family, and I worked on my research proposal for my next essay.

So. Not a very wild weekend, but I enjoyed it. I like just 'hanging out' with Jeremy. He is my best friend. We talk about strange things. We like to quietly read books together. We like to play board games. Aren't those nice things to do with best friends?