They're on their way

Only a few more days until the Outlaws arrive. They rang last night to say they were just about to set off on the first leg of their journey, the drive to London (they live in Wales). They’ll be in London by now, where they’re staying overnight and catching the plane in the morning. They’ve got a night’s stopover in Singapore, so it’ll be Saturday morning NZ time before they actually get here. Technology may be shrinking the world all the time, but the fact that it takes several days to get here reminds you that half-way round the planet is still an incredibly long way to travel. I *think* all is prepared for their visit – the house is almost spotless (totally spotless is just not possible with three cats who shed at every opportunity!), we’ve got the spare room sleepable in, I’ve had my leave approved (I have to work next week, unfortunately, but then I’ve got three weeks off to spend some time with them, and more importantly, to be there when they meet my parents!)… about the only thing we haven’t managed is to finish tidying up the garden (oh well, they know we’re not keen gardeners, and it doesn’t look *too* bad). I’m sure on Friday night I won’t be able to sleep because I’ll keep thinking of more things we should have done…

I used up some valuable cleaning time on Sunday to go to a Bookcrossing meetup. We’ve been trying out different places to meet since Trattorie changed ownership and went so far downhill in quality, and this month awhina suggested we meet in the food court in Riccarton Mall. I had my doubts, because food courts are generally noisy crowded places, but I didn’t want to seem dictatorial (I’m sort of the defacto organiser for the Christchurch group – in theory, anyone can arrange a meetup, but I kind of coordinate things, otherwise we’d probably never meet at all because everyone would be waiting for someone else to do arrange something), so I said unless anyone else objected I was happy to give it a go. Unfortunately, it was as bad as I’d thought it might be. For a start, they don’t have individual tables, just long rows on tables stuck together, so you can’t claim a table for a group to sit around. Lytteltonwitch got there first and tried to reserve some seats around where she was sitting, but some people sat down almost next to her anyway, and even when the rest of us (me, awhina, meerkitten, and natecull) arrived and it was obvious we were all together and there weren’t enough seats for us, they stayed where they were (even when I asked politely if they’d mind moving along one, because there was plenty of room on the other side of them). So the poor kitten ended up perched on the end of the row. And it was just as noisy as usual, so pleasant conversation about books was a bit difficult. But otherwise, an ok meetup 😉 I didn’t pick up any books, but I did pass on a few: The Cat Who Came to Breakfast and The Cat Who Said Cheese by Lilian Jackson Braun, Palm Prints by Fiona Kidman, and The Word and the Void by Terry Brooks. So at least for a change I reduced the nett number of books in the house…

Went to the movies last night with the Chick Flicks women. We saw Derailed, and none of us really knew what to expect. The woman whose turn it was to pick it had just gone off the blurb on the Hoyts site, which pretty much just said it was about two people who have an affair and get blackmailed by someone. In reality, it was a lot more complicated than that (and a lot nastier). I spent the first half of the movie thinking it was pretty boring and predictable, but then there was a twist (totally unexpected to me, but probably everyone else in the audience saw it coming from miles off – I just don’t watch enough of that kind of movie) that made it a lot more interesting in the second half. Still wasn’t a great movie (there were some huge plot holes, and some of the acting was a bit ropey, plus I’m just not into that sort of high body count film in general), so I probably wouldn’t recommend it to anyone, but at least I didn’t feel my $8.50 was totally wasted (I might have felt differently if we’d gone on a full price night, though!).

Oh, important news: I finally finished reading Cuentos en español and returned it to the library! Yayy!!! It only took me about 5 months to read it…