Entries from November 2004 ↓

Thought I’d come across a doozy of a spelling mistake/made up word on a website recently … ‘certificated’. However, a bit of investigation on dictionary.com has educated me that it is actually a word, subtly different from ‘certified’ which is what I thought it was being confused with in the first place.

certificated – to furnish with, testify to, or authorise by a certificate
certified – endorsed authoritatively as having met certain requirements

Never has good old Vogels sounded so posh! As much as I enjoy hot Vogels toast with peanut butter I must say it is a tad disappointing to order ‘5 grain toast with preservers’ at $4.50 off a cafe menu only to be delivered Vogels. However, it happened this morning at Arabica but several snaps as well: 1) they had peanut butter, 2) the butter was at perfect spreading consistency and 3) the latte (Supreme) was really good. Also the cafe was lovely and toasty warm on this really strange freezing day in the middle of what’s been a fairly warm month.

The other day while I was driving to the petrol station I heard a segment on the radio about things that women just cannot do. They had 3 women in the studio and they challenged at least one of them to say ‘yes’ to the things they listed. They were stating things like: can’t sit in a room for 10 minutes without saying “I’m cold”, can’t let their partners sleep off a hangover, can’t walk by a shoe shop without looking in the window. One thing I thought they did miss off the list, in my personal experience, is to get the fiddley little lock engaged on the petrol pump handle so that you don’t have to stand there with an aching hand manually filling. Particularly appropriate as I was just pulling into the petrol station. However, perhaps spurred on by that thought I sauntered up to the pump, grabbed the handle, shoved it in the gas tank and LOCKED IT! Then wondered what to do with myself … tried to stand all cool by the car as though I’d done this a thousand times before instead of for the first time in my life!

Yesterday I moved down to the other end of the floor to sit with the team I now work with. Love the lovely harbour view.

Saw BJD2 over the weekend, even splashed out for big seats in honour of the much awaited sequel to the first fantastic movie. However, it did not live up to my expectations. It was a good movie and I’ll probably watch it again and probably get the DVD but it was certainly nowhere near as good as the first. I guess as with a lot of sequels the character development in the first one was what really made it and by the second one you knew everyone so the story was basically limited to which guy she was going to fall for.

Yes, it’s often the simple things that you never think about that turn out to be the most delightful discoveries. From our balcony we look down onto a row of large fluffy green trees – the kind that kids usually draw – and at 7.30 at night it’s amazing to see the green becoming dotted with black as hundreds and hundreds of birds come to roost. There’s lots of sqwaking and jumping from branch to branch as they settle into groups and pairs or find space for themselves. They puff up their feathers until they’re almost round and tuck their heads down under their wings.

Strange perhaps for a grown adult to find this so fascinating but having not lived directly above a tree before I never gave much thought to what was going on when hearing chirping and rustling in the trees at dusk.

Well I’m proud/ashamed to say, I had my first visit to eBay today. How I’ve kept away for this long who knows – perhaps it has something to do with my you-can’t-be-a-real-girl aversion to shopping.

Anyway, as with having the entire Internet at your fingers, what’s a novice to do when faced with such an enormous selection – search for stuff that’s orange of course. Typical – 8005 categories and 35043 gallery items – I have yet to figure out what this schema means however.

As with all eBay newbies I am indeed staggered by what is sold on the site: to name a few … thousands of single precious orange gems, a piece of live orange coral, an orange office chair, orange dog shoes (!?), orange traffic cones, orange keyboard and retractable mini-mouse … And some very cool things for a Paul Frank freak like an all orange Julius watch.

Season 4 finale next week and just read that the show is finishing after Season 5.

meet.talk.eat – again in this technological age is it wrong to wonder if this strap line to a Wellington restaurant doubles as it’s URL? Pod, meet DOT talk DOT eat

Snaps to the Sunday Star Times for publishing a story in their magazine on being childfree by choice. It’s written by Sarah-Kate Lynch (I actually have her very good novel ‘By Bread Alone’) and it addresses the taboo subject of choosing not to have children. Not for medical, selfish, safe, financial, or career reasons but by CHOICE. Society still frowns upon those who choose not to have children and feels it has the right to question the choice and label those making it. No-one questions and labels those who do. Sarah-Kate’s article does pinpoint typically painful child behaviour and the limited conversation topics of parents as examples of why one would choose not to have children which perhaps doesn’t send the entire message but it’s a jolly good start. People who are childfree by choice are just as much a legitimate part of our rich societal mix as anyone else but do often suffer the treatment of a minority group.