Look what just arrived

I thought it was only lytteltonwitch who attracts weird people, but it seems to be rubbing off on me. Last night I was in town for my ESOL class (which was really interesting – among other things we talked about cultural differences and culture shock, and had a talk from a Chinese woman who emigrated…

Yayyy!!!! We’ve got the internet back again!!! Oh, and the phone, but that’s not so important. Apparently the phone line across the street was broken, but when they fixed that, the phone still didn’t work – it turned out that our phone had broken as well. Presumably when the line broke it sent a surge…

I forgot to add – had a few good catches over the past week: Crisis on Conshelf Ten by Monica Hughes was caught in Akaroa, Light a Penny Candle by Maeve Binchy was caught at the hospital (I released it in the botanic gardens, so it had travelled, but not very far!), and Through a…

Yesterday marked the first step towards reopening the CBD, locked behind the red zone cordons since February. Only a very small step in actual space terms, just a couple of blocks, but psychologically a very important one, as those blocks make up Cashel Mall, so badly damaged in the earthquakes that only four or five…

We went to see Terry Pratchett last night, which was a highly entertaining evening. We skipped the free wine (I don’t like drinking when I’ve got to get up for work in the morning, and MrPloppy isn’t supposed to drink with the pills he’s on anyway), and the woman from The Press doing the interview…

As you can probably guess by the frequency of updates to my diary, things haven’t really quietened down yet. Work is still busy, I’ve got huge amounts of work to do study-wise, and the ESOL classes on Tuesday nights aren’t helping, because I have to go straight there from work to get there in time,…