You can guess what he’s famous for…

Since last update: Had a poker night. I was one of three people to come away with winnings. Twas Mike’s birthday on Friday. There was a bbq and singstar. Also did a fair bit of exercise in the weekend just been. I won’t bore you with the details. Mainly because I’m a little tired and don’t feel like writing any. Current projects that have been fighting for attention are blender (3d modelling) tutorials, Swedish language course, A bit of programming, and exercise. With all of this the blog gets pushed into the background. The competition finished today. I ended up on 76.9kg, which I thought was quite a good effort.  I am considering posting before and after photos, but the before photos are possibly too disturbing and I don’t have a suitable after photo as yet.  To celebrate we went out to Drexels for breakfast and ate lots of delicious food. Somehow today became an eating day with cake day at 10:30 (baileys cheesecake) and a fantastic bbq dinner. I also had about 7 coffees over the course of the day (including 4 at breakfast). I did bike to the bbq and back which offset things a little, but I can’t see days like that being a regular occurence for the new Luuk. I’m not going to format this post into paragraphs.

Life keeps moving. I’ve been to work for another week and a couple of weekends have passed. It never actually seems like that long between updates. The first weekend out of the two was Rachel’s 21st which was spent up in the Porter’s/Arthur’s pass region at a lodge. Merodie, Mike and Me went for a walk up Temple Basin and did some scree running while we were up there. Lots of fun. I still don’t like heights and sharp ridges though. Fantastic bbq dinner and cooked breakfast too. My plans to bike back were scuttled by the weather forecast, which resulted in me leaving my bike in Christchurch. Turns out the weather would have been perfect. However, after the 3-4 hour walk on the Saturday I wasn’t too disappointed.

On Monday was my Mum’s birthday, Happy Birthday! Then on Wednesday we went out for tea to celebrate Anna’s birthday which was on Tuesday. It appears to be a birthday week. We also went out and played some pool afterwards, which was great once I found some form. On Friday night we went to see Walk the Line. I want to see it again! I thought it was great and came home and listened to Johnny Cash. Then on Saturday evening, a group of us went bowling and then watched Maverick. Then last night we watched Stickmen. I went to church in the morning and then church lunch, which I eventually returned from around 3pm.

Acquisitions since last post. There have been a few. New shoes! Finally. The old ones had almost fallen apart. More new shoes… with clips on the bottom and some pedals for my bike for them to attach to. So much more power! I tried them out on Wednesday before we went out for dinner. Average speed just under 30 for 21km with some crazy head winds and hail (and a bit of tailwind too). Also traded in a bunch of my PS2 games on Saturday because EB games had a promotion and ended up with Pro Evolution Soccer 5 and pre-orders for the next Buzz and the next Singstar.

Anecdote of the week. Was late for a meeting coming back to work on Friday, came round a corner a little fast in my car and watched my registration labels fly out of the pocket, across the dash and out the open drivers-side window. I went back, witnessed one being run over and picked them up. Then drove onto work. Went to put them back in the pocket a couple of days later… I still had the 2 expired ones which had been behind the current one, but I possibly should have checked that I had the current one when I was picking them up… Because I didn’t. Anyway, I went and got a new one printed today, so all is well. Except that I noticed that it expires in less than a month anyway. :p

I’ve probably missed stuff. I’ll leave you with this startling fact. Wait for it… I tidied my room this evening! So much floorspace. Here is a shot with my webcam that doesn’t show much except that webcams don’t like low light and that I look silly. The significant part is that you can see floor in this image.

I keep meaning to update my blog, but once I get there I just don’t feel like it. This will all be rectified now. Well partially anyway. Two weekends have passed, so I may gloss over earlier events due to fading memories.

The first of the two weekends, I went out to the navs camp that was at Lake Lyndon. Some good times were had, including some climbing on castle rock and a walk through cave stream. I then biked back to Christchurch from there with Merodie, the process of which had varying fun levels over the course of the trip. Down Porter’s pass was great, as was biking along the flat once the head wind went away. We stopped in Darfield for coffee and I stopped again in Kirwee for a banana and some chocolate. It then took a long time to catch back up to Merodie, but I did eventually manage it. Just as we were coming into town along Yaldhurst Road, cruising at a leisurely 29kph a guy on a road bike blitzed past us with a friendly I’m blitzing past you greeting. I decided I would quite like to catch up to him and was soon burning along at approximately 44kph right on his tail. Despite his efforts to lose me, he couldn’t. Eventually we had to stop at some lights where he found out that I had just biked all the way from Lake Lyndon (he asked how far we’d come) and then the lights changed and I left him in the dust. So I arrived back at the flat completely amped

I went to a flatwarming at Emily’s new flat on Thursday just been and then saw Lord of War at the movies on Friday which I enjoyed, but didn’t blow me away, which I guess you can’t expect from every movie.

Then on Saturday, we went whitewater rafting! Lots of fun. Started out with Macdonalds for breakfast on Colombo st. which meant that we got to see the Le Race riders go by, as we happened to be there at just the right/wrong time. Rafting was lots of fun. Despite it’s incriminating nature, I will link to Mark’s description, rather than repeating it, as it is very detailed. We had a bit of a competition to see who could do the most girly scream jumping off the 10m jump rock, which I was winning comfortably right until some actual girls actually screamed on the way down. There are some photos of before and after the rafting here. We are getting some photos of the actual rafting which does show us in the water as well after the raft flipped, which I may add when I get a hold of them.

Almost forgot.  Went and took photos of the sunset and moonrise last full moon at Sumner with Hobbs and Mark.  Photos here.  HIgh variance in quality due to low light and no tripod.