...
Didn't think so.
So here we are.
It's Wednesday, but seeing as I spent my weekend in Christchurch and haven't told y'all about it, I'll do that now.
Actually, I'll start back on Thursday, which is when my "twin" Julie arrived in Dunedin from Milford Sound. Julie and I met on the first day of high school and we share what she calls a "birthday bond" - that we were both born on the same day (actually, so was her real twin sister, Rosie). Technically though, Julie and Rosie are older, since they were born in Singapore and I was born in England. And, just in case you were wondering, Rosie is about 30 seconds older than Julie (ie, the doctor pulled her out of the gaping wound that was their mother's caesarian section before Julie).
Anyway, we went through high school together, and then Julie studied Resource and Environmental Planning at the University of Waikato, while I dithered about at a variety of schools and jobs. Julie then moved to Kansas, and THEN to Norway, and she's been living in Wellington for about a year prior to taking a job at the Sound.
You can imagine then, that it was quite exciting times to see her again. Even though we ended up spending about six hours together in a hair salon.
Mmm-hmm.
Julie once had waist-length, blonde dreadlocks. She's half-Asian, so you can imagine how much her hair loves her. When I met her on Thursday, she had a chin-length, Jackie O-styled bob in a colour I assume that was somewhere around natural. When we left, three hours later, she looked more like Jackie O after putting her finger in a power socket, after trading hair with a tiger. You can imagine then, that Julie was not too pleased.
And so it was that we spent three hours the next morning in the same salon, with a new hairdresser, trying her best to rectify Julie's hair disaster. I kid you not, when we left on Thursday, Julie immediately put on a hat. Can you imagine? leaving the salon wearing a hat? On Friday morning, we left and Julie looked mildly happy, which was a 100% improvement on her close-to-tears look from the previous day.
Still, that was six hours of gossip time for us. I'm calling it a success.
A few hours later, I got on a bus and went to Christchurch. The plan was as follows: track & field Saturday, Mandy's duathlon Sunday, home Monday. And that's pretty much how it panned out, with The Hurt Locker (I recommend it) thrown in there for good measure. Cheers for the comps, Hoyts Riccarton.
In the words of Nick Corban, a number of my old track team - Hamilton City Hawks - "disastered" on Saturday. There was "the video tape of fails" - namely Nick's sensational DQ in the 100m heats (he was so annoyed that he stormed off the track even before the officials had time to show him a red card) and then Jordan's even more dramatic fall on the second-last hurdle of the 110m race he was about to medal in. That afternoon I sat with a bruised, bleeding Jordan who, still in high spirits, played Pendulum through his cellphone and proposed that we "go to town!". Disaster was right, although Jordan managed to redeem himself on Sunday in the 400m hurdles event with a bronze medal. Unfortunately it was a race where Josh had his own disaster, coming last. But that's another story. The highlight of Saturday (from a Hawks-centric perspective, obviously) was Ann-Marie's lifetime best and silver medal in the 400m. It came 56.11 seconds after Jordan announced "come on guys. Let's cheer this fossil on". Ann-Marie is 29. There was also my uber-talented neighbour, Julia's victory in the W16 hammer event, something my mum calls the "most un-ladylike sport imaginable" but something that Julia dominates, holding New Zealand records in her age group and the next age group up. Not bad.
And then it was Sunday, and time for Mandy's first foray into the world of multisport. I "cleverly" wore jandals, a choice I later regretted as I scrubbed horse manure off my toes later in the afternoon. Mandy put in a superb effort, and later whispered to her dad that she "kicked mum's ass". So it was a successful day! I was so proud. She even managed to get on a finishing sprint, something I'm pretty sure that no matter how tired you are, you can always manage. And Mandy got a sprint on that Tirunesh Dibaba would be proud of.
So that was my weekend.
I've successfully managed to divert my attention away from my assignment for the last hour.
I think I have 28 hours until it's due.
This should be fun...
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