Too long without an entry

Isn’t it annoying when life gets so busy that you don’t have time to write diary entries, and then when you do get time, there’s so much to write about that you don’t know where to start, so you keep putting off writing anything at all, which means the amount of stuff you need to write about gets even bigger, which means you want to put it off even more, and… or is it just me?

In other words, it’s probably about time I wrote a diary entry 🙂

So, the bit most LJers have probably been waiting to hear about is rarsberry‘s hen night.

Amazingly, lytteltonwitch and I managed to travel down to Dunedin with the minimum of stops and detours – ok, so we did stop at Rakaia for a geocache or two, and to release No Highway by Nevil Shute by the side of the highway, and Leaving Cheyenne by Larry McMurtry at the fish; took a wee bit of a detour to Cave (well, I had Foxbat by Peter Cave, so where else could I release it?) and to visit a really cool old stone church,

and a war memorial (War Story by Derek Robinson); stopped for lunch at Oamaru (First Among Equals by Jeffrey Archer); more geocaches and releases at the Moeraki Boulders (Rings of Sand by Tom McNab) and Palmerston (A Domestic Animal by Francis King) – but we made it to Dunedin to under 8 hours, which is pretty good going for us! (“Normal” people do it in 5)

In Dunedin, we met awhina at the backpackers, and had a giggly time blowing up condoms to make balloons to decorate the presents. Which we then had to carry down the street to the restaurant… of course, I’m sure nobody actually noticed the um… *odd* shape of the balloons, but awhina was still very embarrased about carrying them 😉

We met boreal at the restaurant put on our princess hats and arranged the balloons and presents decoratively on the table and joked with the waitress about hiring the manager as a stripper.

(The extra hats are because boreal had invited a few other Dunedin bookcrossers, but they all cancelled at the last minute for various reasons.)

Eventually Rars and Richie turned up, and the look on Rarsberry’s face when she saw us was priceless.

For some reason she wouldn’t believe Richie when he said he knew nothing about it 😉

Rars was presented with her veil, bouquet and sceptre, with instructions they were to be worn for the rest of the night. Richie stayed to open their present from the BC/LJers (the framed embroidery), then we chased him away so Rars could open the other presents lytteltonwitch and awhina had brought – penis-shaped chocolates, a candy g-string, and an unfeasibly large number of condoms.

I’d arranged for otakuu to ring us during dinner (seeing as she’d been unable to come up to Dunedin in person), but of course I completely forgot, and left my phone in the bottom of my bag so I didn’t hear it ring. But eventually I remembered, and we called her instead, and the phone was passed around the table. A pity she couldn’t make it, but at least she got to be part of the party in a way.

After dinner, we got kicked out of the restaurant (no, not because of our inappropriate remarks about the manager 😉 but because they needed the table for another group), so we decided to take the party back to the backpackers, where we were pretty much the only guests, so we wouldn’t be disturbing anyone. Of course that necessitated a detour to the supermarket for supplies of wine, chocolate, and crisps (still dressed in our hats and veils, of course, which got lots of smiles from the other customers).

The rest of the night was spent sitting in front of the fire trying to out-shock each other (I’m not giving details, because what happens in hen night stays in hen night, but rarsberry did a pretty good job of shocking awhina by taking great pleasure in eating her special chocolates, though I think lytteltonwitch was the winner overall). A really fun night, and I think rarsberry enjoyed her suprise hen party.

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And now it’s getting late and I wanted an early night tonight, so the rest of the story will have to wait for another day.