Bummer

Yesterday Kevin had an operation for an abscess on his bum. I picked him up from Kenepuru Hospital. It seemed to be a success. He was given seven items of medication and told not to spend too much time sitting on his arse - that isn't an easy task for him. It's a problem he's had before - hopefully it'll now be sorted once and for all.

The highlight of last weekend was probably going to the zoo (it was Wellington Open Day so you could get in for a gold coin donation) and seeing the chimpanzees being fed.

You know, they eat sweetcorn pretty much how I eat it. A cheetah sadly died on the way to Wellington Zoo yesterday.

On Saturday, a wet and horrible day, I met up with this woman in her late twenties who I'd never met before. She's fairly new to Wellington and does a similar job to mine - she used to live in Geraldine and Mum put me in contact with her. We had a coffee on Cuba Street, then she took me out to Lyall Bay and we had another coffee. I quickly ran out of things to say and must have seemed very boring. I even felt very boring.

I'm looking forward to Wimbledon and the World Cup - two sporting events I actually care about happening at the same time. But right now the French Open is taking place. So many shocks already. Both the Australian Open champions, Li Na and Stanislas Wawrinka, were knocked out in the first round. I was thinking, heck, to have both champions lose in the first round of the very next grand slam must be extremely rare. I bet that hasn't happened for twenty years or something. Turns out it's never happened before.

I've just started reading Angela's Ashes. It's been sitting on my shelf for years but my dad told me it was very grim so I haven't dared read it until now. The word "arse" features quite prominently.

29 degrees but an ice-cold Christmas

Unfortunately all the tension between my brother and his partner has cast a shadow over what was supposed to be a family Christmas.

On Christmas morning we had bacon and eggs for breakfast, followed by champagne which I needed like a hole in the head. Mum made a wonderful dinner; as usual I ate too much. We watched Mary Poppins and the brilliant Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. The temperature reached 29 degrees but at least we could switch on the air con. No such luck when we visited my uncle and aunt's place in Woodbury that evening - I sweated like a pig. My brother's partner didn't go, saying she was sick. She probably did have a slight upset tummy (I don't think the drink helped) but she'd already made up her mind hours earlier that she wasn't going. That night the engaged couple (ha!) had an argument and at 2:30am she sped off back to Rolleston in her company car. Since then she's been texting and phoning my brother incessantly. She's also been sending long eloquent emails to Mum, giving her side of the story. She'll be coming over soon to pick him up; they've booked an expensive whale-watching tour at Kaikoura. I'm hoping they call it off after that.

Last Tuesday - that's the 20th - I played a freeroll poker tournament at the Realm in Hataitai. I found it stressful, I found it gimmicky, I felt out of place, I didn't play well and I didn't last long. Martin never turned up.

I saw The Intouchables with Tracy (along with only six other people) last Thursday. I organised it - that's a rarity for me. It was a damn good film. She can speak good French so we were able to compare notes about how they decided to translate this or that in the subtitles. We had a chat after the film over a meal (of sorts - she has so many weird and wonderful food allergies). She gets tired easily as a result of her thyroid problem so we didn't stay long, but I felt there was at least the possibility of something happening between her and me. Since then she hasn't contacted me at all, but she's a bit like that so I'm not giving up completely. Not yet anyway.

I was glad to finish work on Friday. It hadn't been an easy week with people seemingly still on a high from the Christmas party. The next day I went to the zoo - for the first time since I was a kid - with some people from the depression group. They take far better care of the animals than in the virtual freak shows I remember from years ago. Here are two chimpanzees with their arms out for food, a tamarin (which I always want to spell with a D) and a pair of gibbons (males are black, females are white):