Ahh, but it was a good one, wasn’t it?

Started off looking like the weather might be shabby, but that was only a third right.

Friday night featured an abortive attempt at having dinner over at
Dylan & Smellanoodles place, the less said about that the better.

Saturday night we went out for a wonderful evening of conversation and
turkish food with David & Laura, we met up down in Three Lamps and
hopped into a booth at Turkish Cafe, had the same gigantic friendly
waiter guy as last time (when we went down there with Karl &
Louise), and the service was… Strange?.. Hopeless?..
Comical? I’m not sure how best to describe it, let me just say,
the food is pretty bloody good, but the service is close enough to
hopeless that we probably won’t bother again for a while. Another
thing: previously when we’ve gone there, the place has been packed, it
wasn’t packed on Saturday night, I think a lot of people are coming to
the same conclusion we have. Decided we didn’t want to stay there
for desser, so we all rocked on over to Parnell for some slightly
underwhelming Movenpick. My own fault, I’m sure. I should
have gone with something fruitier, but for some reason I just went with
chocolate. Oh, and I don’t like icecream cones that are so greasy
they make the serviette transparent, and your skin all shiny and
glistening – though it was delicious to crunch down on.

Sunday we headed down to Armageddon. It’s really too much of a
dork festival for me, so while Claire and I have been the last three
years, we’ve never actually had to pay. Indeed, let me put
it this way, if I had to pay, I wouldn’t pay.  There’s just not
that much there for me. I’m not interested in CosPlay, or comics,
or wrestling, or anime. I’m not particularly interested in the
computer gaming stuff either, even though I like playing games, I don’t
like the presentation. I’m not interested in watching a bunch of
kids play games.

Oh, I was given a sweet black & white ‘Grand Theft Auto : San
Andreas’ bandanna, which George *loves*, doggy style, if you know what
I mean.

The only reason I bothered going at all was the Stargate Atlantis
panel, I’ve been kind-of enjoying watching it, and continue to, uhh,
time(and space) shift episodes from the states. It was pretty
cool, with Tori Higginson, who, if you’ve watched any of the series,
you’ll know is kind of a hard-ass, but of course in person she had to
be completely different, and was very smiley and girly and
bubbly. I still think she’s channeling Siggourney Weaver, but
after having ‘met’ her (I didn’t meet her, but what better term is
there?) I have more respect for her acting. And some guy from Stargate
SG1 who I’ve never even heard of (I’ve kind of lost interest in that
series) who plays Baal, and who was very entertaining, and almost made
me want to watch more of SG1. And probably my favourite of the actors
who appeared Rainbow Sun Francks, oh boy, that voice. It wouldn’t
be accurate to say he’d turn me gay, but it’d be close. Seemed to
be a nice guy, but who knows with actors? These three could have
been the biggest group of egomaniacal fuckwads on the planet, and
through the clever use of, well, lying… and subterfuge… you’d think
they’d actually just been really nice, and can’t understand what those
who actually have to work with them say. “Why are they all so
mean, he’s so nice and genuine!”

Anyway, I enjoyed it. Tori Higginson seemed completely obsessed
with vibrators, but you know, I can forgive her that fault.

Wish the questions had been more interesting or insightful, but I
didn’t want to put my hand up for a microphone, so I have only myself
to blame that it was such a dork festival on the microphone.

Oh, before the Stargate panel, we sat through Gates McFadden (Dr
Beverly Crusher from Star Trek : The Next Generation), she was pretty
good considering she did it by herself, and again the questions were
often pretty stupid. I was half tempted to ask her a couple of
questions about Wil Wheaton, but you know. Classic Kiwi reserve,
and all that.

Sunday night was BBQ night, we had Adam & Sandra over, and managed
to find a gap in Francois & Kate’s schedule at the last minute and
convinced them to come on down too (they only live 5 minutes away now,
but with a young baby and all). So that was really great, the new
outside table is proving itself, the old one, as anyone who tried to
use it will recall, was scary, small, and ugly. The new one is none of
these things. Dinner was, I thought, great. The standouts
being different for each person, I liked the lamb and chorizo, Claire
liked the (incredibly expensive) tuna steak, Adam liked his bloody
steak and Sandra liked her well done steak. Everyone, I think,
liked the huge mountain of asparagus that Kate & Francois rustled
up, yummo. Kate & Francois had to leave before dessert, so
the rest of us had huge piles of strawberries to get through, I’m not
sure how we managed it, but through an act of heroism, we did.

Monday saw Claire out and about while I stayed at home, opened up
the french doors from the lounge and kicked back on a bean bag with a
laptop, eating chips, and working on a few things (including trying to
get a new gallery system which integrates with the new CMS properly,
and doing some minute work for a client) – when the girl finally got
home again it turned out she’d bought THREE new pairs of shoes.

Finally, on Monday night we had Dylan & Melanie over for
dinner, didn’t feel like a full on BBQ this time, but I had some more
nice chorizo in the fridge, and we had some pasta with olive oil, lemon
juice & parmesan, salad, and the aforementioned sausages. Then a
game of rummikub, which Melanie
won, of course – she’s pretty good. Bet I could defeat her in a
fist-fight though, and I have a feeling we’ll find out if she keeps
winning rummikub. And that’s a threat you can bank on, Melanie, I
know you’re reading this, you cheating cheater!!!