You can guess what he’s famous for…

Well, here I am, reporting back after a fantastic weekend. I went down to see my sister Louise in Queenstown - the adventure capital of the world, and it went a little something like this…

Friday I was planning to leave work at 4pm to start the trip down, so I arrived at work at 7am (as I did the previous day), only to find out at about lunchtime from Blair that there was a certain DVD player on sale at the opening sale of the new Bond & Bond on Moorhouse. (Half price at $150), so I left work just before 4 planning to shoot over there, grab a player, shoot home, drop it off and continue my journey. On arriving there, I stood in a queue for about 15minutes. Considering I was at the front pretty much the whole time, I thought this was a little excessive, but they were having some teething problems with the new tills and everyone was going nuts on the hire purchase, so this was kind of to be expected. Anyway, I started heading out of Christchurch at about 4:35pm, which corresponds almost perfectly with rush hour, so that took a little longer. The rest of the trip was uneventful, stopped at Subway in Ashburton and ate half then and half in the dark at lake Tekapo.

On arrival in Queenstown, I started reading Louise’s directions, which started with “When you get to Queenstown, go right down Shotover street and follow the lake along.” I misinterpreted this somewhat. First question, when have I “got to Queenstown”, Secondly searching for Shotover street on the right doesn’t work when it actually means “Go all the way down Shotover street”, Thirdly, what Lake? It was 11pm at night and there was no lake to be seen. Anyway, after speaking to one Service station attendant with not very good English at Mobil and then another that was much better at explaining where to go at Caltex, I eventually found my way to Louise’s flat, where we proceeded to consume a pizza, and eventually went to bed at about 2:40am

In the morning we went to her hotel for breakfast, which was half price for the buffet. I think Louise ate at least as much, if not more than me, which is quite impressive considering the ~40kg weight difference. I think eating must run in the family or something.

Then we went on the Shotover Jet, which is in fact the world’s most thrilling jetboat ride. I’m sure we came within inches of most of the rocks! (or even centimetres in the metric system) Louise got to go on for free - the benefits of working in the tourism industry, and I got on for a child’s price by association. I splashed out and got the photos too, which I will post right here as soon as they are updated on the website. - and they finally have been, so here they are:

After that I took her to The Warehouse to pick up a few things required in preparation for winter. We then walked up Queenstown hill, which was a solid effort. A nice lady was kind enough to take our picture in the “Basket of Dreams” while we were up there.

The Basket of Dreams…

View from the top of Queenstown hill

Wouldn’t want to mess with her…

We got back down in time for our next half price deal at “Solera Vino”, a flash French restaurant. - They even had snails on the menu. However, I decided to start with the famous Solera french onion soup, followed up with some fantastic Venison, all washed down with a Steinlager, and then Profiteroles for dessert. Honestly one of the best desserts I have ever had. On being presented with the bill, I was very glad that it was half price… There was also a wonderful quote on the wall there, which is going to become my new motto - well it would be if it wasn’t pretty much already.

“Life’s too short to be slim.”

Sunday morning I eventually got up (10am) and we went to the supermarket to obtain the necessary ingredients for pancakes, which we then cooked and ate.

The flat is furnished in the cardboard style…

Including Louise’s bedroom.

Although this is more than made up for by the view from the balcony!

After that we went for a wander through the city centre, taking in all the various end of season sales in the various outdoorsy type shops around the place. We both managed to avoid actually buying anything though. Then Subway for lunch and twas time for goodbye. The drive back was good too, actually better than the drive down for most of it, as I could actually see the amazing scenery in the form of mountains and lakes etc. that I was driving through. I stopped in Ashburton for Subway again and got home in time to watch Men in Black 2, which I hadn’t seen before, but definitely wasn’t as good as the first one, although it did have it’s funny moments.

I returned my old DVD player today, getting a full refund, so I’m not stuck with two DVD players… The new one is awesome. It can play pretty much anything, including Divx video files. Also finally got around to watching last Wednesday’s Simpson’s, Scrubs and Lost tonight, just before I wrote this post.

I really haven’t had a lot of luck with games lately. Syberia crashed right at the start and now Splinter Cell:Chaos Theory is failing it’s CD check. Disturbingly, someone on a forum said reinstalling windows fixed the problem “as well as sorting out some installshield issues” - I have those issues and I’m starting to think I may have to do the same.

I started the CD check, which pretty much slowed my computer to a halt and then pishhhheeeewwwwww… everything did grind to a halt as the power went out. So I lit some candles, played my guitar for a bit, watched Peter hang up a clock in the dark in Merodie’s room and then went back and tried again when the power came back - still no luck. The dreaded Windows re-install is drawing ever closer.

Well, I’m going to do it, I’m going to re-install Windows. This in itself is not generally that difficult a task. The reason I have been avoiding it is the 60GB of games that I have to reinstall along with it, which again would not be an issue if I actually finished games and didn’t have to worry about savegames and the like. However, having already put this off for far to long, I’m going to take the plunge and risk having to replay some games from the start.

Currently downloading the latest video drivers etc. to ease the process. I have already managed to locate my windows CD. - now just service pack 2 left to find. Incidentally, it has been about a year and a half since I last installed Windows, which was when I got my computer.

I re-installed Windows, and barring a few glitches and random reboots that I had to sort out (driver conflicts/problems) everything went smoothly. Now I’ve re-installed Splinter Cell and it started up first time and went perfectly. Haven’t had much of a chance to play it yet. Had a quick go at the first level, but I’m going to start again, because I haven’t really got the hang of it yet. I did have time to notice the Airwaves gum product placement in the cutscene before the first level though…

Also went round to Adam’s for tea last night, which was yum steak and wedges with some probably much needed frozen vegetables… (well, they weren’t frozen when we ate them.) Also helped him remove the radiator from his car after we figured out the water wasn’t coming from the radiator hose…

And now a handy tip for all you people who have lost their whole posts due to something going wrong with Blogger… If it happens, click on “new post” again and look just above the top left of the text box under the bold/italic/etc icons for the magical words “Recover post”. It worked quite well with this one - twice. and then thrice and then quadriplegic.

**edit** I just found out that that recover post function is new today!

It’s funny how that sentence is always followed by a “but” as it will be in this case - you see, I actually do like to brag… I am now outright first on our work Oztips Super 12 ladder by one point.

In other news, I got a new hoodie today, which is somewhat subtly, albeit completely irretrievably geeky. Here’s a picture:

The world of computers can eat your time deceptively quickly. I thought I’d do a quick blog post with a photo of my new hoodie, then found that the only editing software on my new windows install is MSpaint. I then thought to myself, lets go check if there is a new version of The GIMP, rather than installing from an old installer that I have lying around. It turns out that a new version has just been released, but has yet to have the Windows binary installer package created, so I’m going to hold off till that’s done. Then I decide to install antivirus software, which has PDF documentation, so I have to download Acrobat reader (new version of that also), and decide to see if Steam is still working after the reinstall which takes time also. - Somehow HalfLife 2 and CS source have become uninstalled, althought it says they will use local files (including save games) to reinstall, but apparently the Steam servers are too busy. Anyway, still no photo. Ok, all done now, finally, photo is in. It’s weird, whenever I try to take a photo of myself with the camera on timer, it never looks like I’m actually looking at the camera.

Adam rang me up after work today and asked if I’d like to come around for “a bit of a supper” he was having, so I went along. Turns out it was his birthday… Happy Birthday Adam! Lots and lots of food and now he is as old as me again

Big day tomorrow! Merodie comes back from Indonesia, and lots of people - Merodie, Jo and Adam are graduating and, last but definitely not least, it’s my brother Tony’s birthday. In honour of this auspicious occasion, I think I should post a photo… This is Tony - I’m sure he’ll love me for this

Another fun weekend has just passed, although I am somewhat feeling the effects now.

On Friday, Merodie got home from Indonesia, so the place is a lot more lively again. Mike made an awesome tea on Friday night. Chicken with peaches and peppers wrapped in bacon with roast potatoes and pumpkin. Merodie was watering at the mouth as she got ready to go out to the Park Royal for tea.

Then on Saturday we played our first game of soccer of the season, which I am still feeling the effects from. Then in the evening Adam invited me out to a buffet dinner at Sequoia 88 to celebrate his graduation, at which I ate quite a lot and twas excellent.

Sunday after church, Jo came round which was cool and we had a BBQ. Then we had our Navs small group leaders meeting and then a bunch of us talked late into the night. Then I got up early to make the girls breakfast in bed (Waffles and Coffee). Check out the morning faces…

On the tipping front, another perfect week This coming week seems a lot more difficult though, lots of possible upsets.

Well, after many months of not updating, The life and times of PaulieB have been snuffed out… Now I’m going to have to replace my sidebar link “Paul (+links from there)” with actual links. No, wait, I can just shift the “(+links from there)” to Kelly’s. Excellent.

I thought I’d post now, because I was a bit lazy last week, and because it’s a long weekend and I’ll probably have forgotten everything. Friday night we spent the evening together as a flat after another fantastic Pizza a la Mike (I take no responsibility for blatant ruining of the French language), just talking over a few drinks. Quite a good bonding time really. Have I mentioned before that we have an awesome flat?

Yesterday was quite lazy. I went and got Croissants for breakfast from the bakery, which went down quite well. Eventually I convinced Merodie to be lazy and we sat down and watched a movie (Anchorman), after which we both fell asleep.

The afternoon was not completely lazy though. We did stew a whole bag of apples, and another one of pears.

Then we had a late takeaway tea with Nick and Will and a movie (Wimbledon). Just after the movie finished we heard things hitting our window and found that it was Cameron egging the place. Unfortunately for him, Mike caught him, and he ended up covered in his own eggs.

Just after Cam left, large quantities of large hail started pelting down, along with lots of lightning and thunder - I’m guessing every few seconds for the lightning, which was quite unusual. I had to drop Nick and Will home, and the roads were still covered in hail, but I resisted the sliding temptation.

Well, I think half birthdays stop being interesting as soon as you stop wanting to be older, but I am 23 and a half today. Mark, Andy and Amal turned up at work today just to celebrate. Well, actually, they probably didn’t even realise, but they are back from their trip.

Not much else to report, or I’m just too sleepy to think, one of the two. Have been reading a couple of reasonably interesting articles sent to me by a friend about school. The first is the acceptance speech by 1990 New York teacher of the year. The second is another article (more recent) by the same guy.

I especially liked this bit in the second article, and yes, I am all about the hugs.

“So far I’ve asked you to consider three aspects of modern American life we all have been accustomed to think really matter: the space program, our well-funded government schooling, and state-of-the-art technology. On close inspection all seem to me the obsessions of madmen more than essential parts of a good life or a good society. How did they come to matter when many things that really matter (like getting hugged a lot) are overlooked?”

Just some food for thought if you’re bored.

In the previous post, it was in fact the “too sleepy to think” option rather than the “nothing to report” option.

We were planning to go tramping on Sunday, but due to inclement weather, we nipped that idea in the bud in the nascent stages of planning. Merodie and me went into town and played pool instead, after going for a run in the rain in Hagley park in the morning. Well, it was supposed to be a run, but my shin splints decided otherwise, although I did still run a significant distance. After pool, we got Subway. I decided on a Turkey, ham and bacon melt with double meat, which surprisingly turned out to be quite a lot of meat.

Then we went round to Merodie’s parent’s house in search of warmth, before going home for a roast dinner, which was yum, but a bit of a struggle after my mammoth sub.

Went to Spreydon Baptist Church after that, where the guy who headed up World Vision’s relief effort in Sri Lanka after the tsunami was speaking, which was excellent.

Then came home and watched Love Actually (one of Merodie’s imported VCDs)

Monday was another lazy day. Gah, now I’m trying to remember if we actually went running on Monday… We went and watched Mike’s rugby game in the afternoon, which his team (Old boys div 1) won 42-15 over Marist-Albion, which was a very good win. We were a little worried at the start when Marist scored the first try, but everything came right.

Incidentally, I’m going to attempt to incorporate the word of the day into my posts somewhere - although that doesn’t necessarily mean I will post every day.

Oh, and I got all my Oztips Super 12 picks right again. I just can’t help myself.

An entertaining read… Find it here.