Ultra slow ultra runner; Election loser; Eating contest winner; Doting father; Sometime: Podcaster; Filmmaker; Biz starter.
The woman mentioned earlier, presumably the owner of the car, has finally admitted to the police that she was the driver. They’re still trying to find out why she didn’t stop (I’m guessing she was drink driving) and exactly which charges will be laid.
I’m very happy they got her.
I’m delighted to report that she was in her twenties, so we know I got that much right at least. Now to find out if she has mid-length blonde or light brown hair, and so forth.
It appears the police have found the car used in the hit and run, and the driver, it turns out, might have been a woman.
My first thought, while I was watching the car drive off, was that it was a guy, I got a quick look at the side of the head, and I saw the hair and such (which was mid length, so fairly long for most guys) but I guess my built in prejudice for who is most likely to do a hit-and-run might have tricked me into thinking it must be a guy.
If you don’t recall, this is what I said in my first post on the matter:
But the reality is that, as far as I know, the only person who said the driver was a woman right from the beginning was, tada, Claire – she said the driver sat like a woman.
But me? I always thought it was a man, and only had real doubts after Claire said what she thought, and after that – I was really full of the doubt. (If you watched my brief appearance on 3 News, you’ll have noticed I didn’t say it was a man or woman, that’s how unsure I was.)
As long as they get the driver, right?
So it turns out if you decide to have a wine or two with dinner, and then decide to have another couple, and don’t bother with a glass, and then finish the bottle. Well… It turns out you get mean looks and unkind words.
So, I’m in trouble again.
A long time ago, when we lived on Fourth Ave in Kingsland, we used to get kebabs from Great Northern Kebabs, and they were super good, I had a great relationship with the owner, he was a good guy, who always seemed to be fathering more and more children, anyway, he was a cool, nice, genuine guy, and he made the nicest lamb on rice, and really super nice spinach borek, and for a long time he made moussaka and it was really really good, but then the price of aubergine went up, and he stopped. Blah blah, So he sold the place to some other guy, and he’s also friendly and nice, but I never really bothered to talk to him too much as we moved, and I stopped going there every week. We went there tonight, just on a quest to find something different, and it was ok I guess. It tastes clean and fresh, but it also tasted really bland. Claire ended up having to get out the sweet chilli from the fridge, and I liberally coated mine with tomato sauce. Still, nice fresh tasting bland stuff is better than nasty-ass cheap ‘ol sick making rotten d-cert hygiene rating stuff.
They just had a Macleans toothbrush advert on TV and I got in trouble again, some big tall basketball player comes over and helps a short girl get stuff out of her up-high mailbox and the voiceover says "now with Macleans whatever the fuck, no place is hard to get to," so I said "are they talking about her vagina?" and claire stabbed me in the hand with a pen. Ouchie.
What was I saying? Oh yeah, don’t drink a bottle of $7 wine. You’ll get in trouble, then write a seemingly endless website update, then get in trouble and stabbed with a pen, then write even more on your website, then start talking about The 4400.
So, the 4400, is it good? I’m still not sure. Some of the characters are cool, I like the skinny black guy, but I can’t remember his eerie power, I seem to have some recollection of it being awesome fighty toughness, but his power might be the power to be really vulnerable like any other human man
There don’t seem to be many of the 4400 with the power of exploding the fuck out of your body, which is disappointing, maybe that’ll happen if ratings flag.
Would you watch that?
Be even more impressive than the power to make your ears sting. Or the power to make fruit ripe. Oooooh, ripe fruit
I’d better go now. Thanks.
Again with the Trident? How very gastropedestrian. Trident Spicy Thai Coconut Chicken.
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!!!
More noodles, Trident again – but this time Chown Mein soft noodles.
Well, I suppose they’re not new, not really. Not even just new to me. But I guess they’re probably new to the internets. If you know what I mean. Trident Singapore Soft Noodles. That’s right, they taste like oppression and brutality! Delicious!
I guess people have probably got the wrong idea about the sort of food I eat on a daily basis since I put up that weird greasy carnitarian delight the Diagnosis : Chronic Cardiac Disease, or whatever the hell I called it, today I’m going to do nothing to dispell this mistaken idea.
With… Hotdogs.
Would you like some sausage with your sauce? Well, yes, three sausages, actually.
Please don’t tell my girlfriend, she doesn’t have time to deal with things like: hospital visits; waiting around during futile last gasp surgeries, and of course funerals. But who has time for funerals, after all?
Maybe I should update my will with a clause along the lines of: If my death is clearly caused by the consumption of a certain foodstuff or beverage, this food or beverage must be served at my wake.
Actually, I won’t update my will, I don’t have one to change, but if you all remember I requested this, can you please arrange for it to happen?
I mean, it’s inevitable, just look at me.
The police came back after the media were done, blocked off the road again, and started taking measurements of all the debris, taking photos and such.
I pointed out where the blood was on the road (it still hadn’t been marked) and the nice young lady officer duly marked and noted it, measuring it relative to the other debris.
We’ve been gardening a lot today, we’re having some more friends over for dinner tonight, so we’ve been able to watch everyone going by, it’s quite funny how so many of the parents with children are being really obviously careful, one woman with her daughter looking left and right and left and right and left and right then crossing by the police car, even though the road was closed and she was crossing by road cones and a police car.
I caught this lady having trouble getting her son to adhere to her new road safety regime, he was not keen on having his hand held, she sorted him out in the end.
That’s Garth, the little boy’s grandfather, by the senior sergeant.
After last nights hit and run incident, our little corner of suburbia has turned into a popular place for journalists and gawkers, the (really nice and professional and gigantic) senior officer from last night did a standup in front of the kid’s house this afternoon, TV3 were there before I noticed anyone else, TVNZ came last, even after the radio and newspaper journos, and left first. I think if TVNZ wants to know why their news viewership is dropping, they should think carefully about what being last on scene and first to leave means.
Claire gave a quick interview to a nice young woman from Radio Live (which I think is Radio Pacific in drag, but who can be certain), then I did a standup with Alastair Wilkinson from TV3, unfortunately the format of television news meant I wasn’t able to be compelling or entertaining, and he kept having to ask me the same question and emphasised that I be as succinct as possible. It turns out I’m not great at being both succinct and interesting, but as far as I saw I was the only witness willing to be interviewed, so I guess I’ll probably be on 3 News tonight.
It sounds like the police don’t have a super lot to go on, there must be hundreds, if not thousands of grey eighties four doors on Auckland’s roads, and how many white people do you think are driving them? With any luck, one of the bastards semi-friends will see the damage on his car and do the right thing.
We spoke to the little boys grandfather, Garth, and he was very grateful that we were able to comfort his little boy last night, I told him I did what I could. And it really wasn’t much, all I could do was stop people trying to move the boy and talk to him, so that’s what I did. Dylan took his pulse ‘cos he could do that. There were a lot of people on the street, many of them just watching, but a lot were helping, trying to make traffic go around us carefully, and so forth.
I guess the police missed the blood stains when they were marking out all the impact debris last night, I don’t really know how they use what they’ve got to recreate the accident, what they circled with spray paint just seems to arbitrary, why circle this bit of glass and not that bit? And was the bit you circled moved by the throng of people on the road before you arrived?
