We’d planned to go to Laura’s birthday in the city on Friday, then drive down to Whakapapa early on Saturday morning for a nice afternoon of skiing (and ski fighting, perhaps even in a shiny car) then a full Sunday of exhausting skiing, followed by a nighttime drive back to the city on Sunday evening.

It turned out that we’d gotten our wires crossed, and Laura’s thing wasn’t on Friday at all, it was on Saturday, so we apologised and begged a rain check, and only then did the weather report take pity on us and threaten gale force winds for Saturday (and rain on Sunday), so we canned that idea in favour of … not wasting a bunch of money and time on a pointless trip to a town that is pretty boring when the weather isn’t cooperating.

Laura’s thing was at Mezze on Durham Lane, I parked next to Albert Park, and we strolled through the grounds arriving at the restaurant just after 7pm, Claire took pity on a glass of Rabbit Ranch pinot noir, I grabbed a ginger beer – they only had Phoenix, which is actually a bit of an inferior drop, certainly nothing compared to the now pretty long in the tooth Bundaburg.  David was there, of course, as well as Laura’s brother and his new wife Reiko, and a couple of her other friends, it was pretty fun, even if I couldn’t hear everything that was said – it can be a bit noisy in there.  We ordered 4 or 5 tapas, the others mostly got main size dishes.

Claire took pity on a bottle of the Rabbit Ranch (it’s pretty nice, quite light, quite lovely).

I was quite suspicious of their dessert board, favouring going to David & Laura’s place, but luckily the others didn’t agree, and only then did I discover that their cake selection actually contained a couple of great looking things, I got a big slice of delicious lemon tart and whipped cream and ice cream.  Claire got the sticky date pudding (same one she got last time we were there with Karl & Louise).  Both wonderful, but I ended up feeling so full that on the walk back up through Albert Park I almost felt asthmatic.  I blame all the water I was drinking, trying to match Claire’s wine consumption.

This morning I finished off my book (‘A Quantum Murder’ the second part of the Greg Mandel trilogy by Peter F. Hamilton) then rolled out of bed and made breakfast-in-bed for Claire, before watching the latest episodes of Stargate SG1, and Stargate Atlantis.  Then I pulled on some dirty old pants and my most crappy pair of shoes, before getting the big line trimmer out of the garden shed and whipping the back yard into shape.  We left it to go fallow over winter, and it was way too long for a normal mowing.  Makes for easy going having such a big over powered piece of equipment.  I’m not sure why we got such a big one, but, you know, sometimes it’s nice to have more gun than you need.

(Congratulations, you just read about me doing the lawn.  You’re officially a big fat internet addicted time waster.  Welcome to the club.)