Something to look forward to

I flew back to Auckland yesterday morning. By end of the trip, the side effects - if that's what they were - had worn off and I was able to relax a bit. At the beginning of the week I really just didn't want to know.

Hanmer Springs was good. The town itself was way too touristy for my liking, but they'd done an impressive job of the pools. I could imagine as a treat spending half a day bathing in the hot pools and ordering drinks. I particularly enjoyed the sulphur pools, though ten minutes in that heat was about my limit.

From Hanmer we made our way over to the West Coast, staying one night at Westport and another at Greymouth. With Dad driving, we never get from A to B directly; we usually dawdle along, making sure we stop at X, Y and Z. Dad paints pictures for a living so he's always on the lookout for views that might make a nice painting. I don't mind this - I've got used to it over the years and it's his job after all - but all those extra hours stuck in the car give us many more opportunities to fall out with each other. That doesn't happen often, but I did fly off the handle somewhere between Reefton and Westport when Mum said I was boring. I'm always very conscious of how boring I am, so when my own mother says I'm boring I feel there's no hope for me.

The best day of the trip was Friday, a gloriously sunny day. We stopped at Punakaiki and tried to figure out how on earth those Pancake Rocks came about. Just around the corner we scavenged for fossils, finding perfectly preserved leaves. When I see millions of years of history like this, our own appearance on this planet seems like the blink of an eye, and all that complicated stuff we spend so much time worrying about hardly seems to matter at all.

When I got back yesterday I played pétanque again with Phil. Just like last time it was teeming with rain, but this time I came out on top, winning 13-5. We were tied at 5-all but from there I wrapped up the game in just four ends. I realise now the importance of scoring multiple points on the ends you win and limiting the damage on the ends you lose, much like in poker I suppose.

In my week off I hadn't given work a moment's thought. Well that's not quite true - I'd certainly thought about where the hell my job might be going - but the actual mechanics of what I do on a day-to-day basis hadn't figured at all. So in this morning's two-hour meeting it was back down to earth with a bump.

Tonight I had my Italian class which, as always, I thoroughly enjoyed. In my last post I mentioned that something strange happened to me. Strange because it happened to me. Two weeks ago a very nice English woman showed me her flat. The next day I sent her a text saying that although I liked the flat I wouldn't be interested in the room because it was too small; I thought it was a shame I'd never see her again. The following morning, to my surprise, she replied, inviting me for a drink. I figure she might not have many friends either - she's got an 11-digit phone number like mine (people with lots of friends tend to have shorter numbers) and she wasn't quite sure where the space bar was, which makes me think she doesn't send a lot of texts. Hopefully we'll go out later this week, and who knows, something might happen.