Ok, maybe not terrorists per se, but something at least as frightening – kitchenware! Don’t laugh, it’s true. Claire had a birthday yesterday, and one of the gifts I gave her was a microplane grater. If you haven’t used one you won’t understand, it’s not just sharp… It’s completely insanely sharp. The things it does to… things… it… Has no remorse. It has no pity. It just doesn’t care what previously hard lumps it turns into clouds of fluffy stuff.
Seriously, it’s an unbelivably fantastic grater. I live in fear of ever slipping with the parmesan and taking off hundreds of ultra fine slivers of skin from my hands. Gah! It gives me the creeps thinking about it.
Other less terrifying gifts include a cast iron frying pan (we’ve been collecting decent cast iron stuff for a few years, we love it). And, well nothing else.
That’s right, I gave my gorgeous and loving partner of 5’ish years a grater and a frying pan. For her birthday.
(She was really stoked.)
We had several birthday dinners in her honour, the best fun one was at Tanuki’s on Queen St, where we had 10 or so of our friends out for a delightful meal, including edamame beans, which I’d only had maybe once before – they’re remarkably moreish. And what else? Well, chicken teryaki, steamed broccoli, swordfish, salmon… Etc. It was great fun, but maybe that was the scotch talking, or the cocktails, or maybe the wine. Ok, it was all of those things. And good conversation with friends.
The weekend before, the girl and I headed off to celebrate the birthday of someone who was completely unaware that it was his birthday, or that he was at the zoo, but that’s fine ‘cos I crawled through a tunnel to see meerkats, and watched a depressed orang sit around and wonder how she could get hermself out of the mess she found herself in. Zoos are pretty suck, in many many ways. I vote that Auckland Zoo should be allowed to take over all of Western Springs Park, fence it all in, take over all of the grounds of Western Springs College, bash down all the buildings (build the school somewhere else, sure) and MOTAT2, and even Seddon Fields, and just build a big giant super zoo, with wonderfully super-sized enclosures for the animals that want them. I think that’d be great. They could have little scooters for people to get around on, and the orangs could have at least a couple of acres for themselves. And maybe whatever birds or reptiles could peacefully co-exist with them. One of the other things less nice about the zoo was the reality of feeding time in one of the snake (or was he a lizard, I no longer recall) habitats, i.e. a live mouse wondering where the hell he was, then sniffing something scary and running off to the other end of the place, and discovering it wasn’t actually that much further away from the maw’o’doom that he’d been skurred of in the first place. Sproull was… very interested. He could hardly peel himself away from the spectacle. I found it much easier. I don’t like death. (But I do eat meat, so meh, I’m a hypocrite.)
The Telecom story I promised isn’t going up today, it’s time to hit the sack (and I’m not talking about my balls) and watch some Invasion, or possibly some more of The Prisoner. I might get something about that up tomorrow.
Please allow me to summarise: Telecom are a pack of lying idiots who are hurting the internet in New Zealand in a misguided attempt to maximise their profit.
Be seeing you.
