Well to start this week off I took Rhiannon’s car in to get serviced. I somehow managed to miss the giant sign for the service entrance I was supposed to go in, but the guy at the desk of the one around the corner that I went into was nice enough to check it in for me anyway. While I was waiting for it to get done, I wandered down to the Arts Centre and had a look around for a while, then plonked myself down at the Dux. I played on my computer and drank non-Toms while I waited – a marvelous way to relax. ^^

Anyway, other things that I did this week: I went into university and saw a couple of my professors, I dropped of my costume back at the hire place, I had coffee with Lanky, saw Daniel briefly, I saw Shrek 3 with Siobhan, Dace and Mum (that was kinda funny, Siobhan got us all child tickets, so it was a cheap movie!), I saw Transformers with Dace, Laura and Dan Skipper (awesome!), did bits and pieces of work, saw Dad a bit, went out to dinner with Serah and Adam to a little Japanese place in town called Osaka (cheap and yummy ^_~) after which we went back to Serah’s place and watched Mean Machine, which they hadn’t seen… hm, what else? Oh yeah, Siobhan also sat me down and made me watch Napoleon Dynamite, which I hadn’t really been in any hurry to see. I spent most of the movie going “What the hell is going on here?”, but on the whole, I rather liked it. It’s a very random movie and in some ways I’m not even sure why it’s funny, it just is.

Did I mention it’s been raining and less than good weather for a little while? Seems to be a bit hit-and-miss, not staying on any kind of weather for too long.

On Thursday there was a family thing partly for Dace’s birthday, partly as Siobhan’s going-back-to-Ireland thing. All good fun, family-filled times. Siobhan left for Ireland on the Friday, and that night (Happy actual Birthday to Dace) I sat down and (finally) watched Casino Royale with Dace, Mum and her flatmate, Chris. Many thanks to Olivia Sinclair for letting me borrow her DVD. We watched it over at Mum’s place, since one of the things Chris brought to “the flat” was his big flat-panel television and surround-sound system. Awesome. On the whole I rather liked it, but then I generally like Bond films. I thought it was a bit more gritty and with a Bond that wasn’t quite as… polished as his predecessors.

Also this week: I met up with Serah’s aunt at her company and talked about possibly doing some work for them. The meeting was generally positive and I’m looking forward to seeing what I can do for them, although with it looking more like I’m heading back to the US, I don’t know for how long or in what capacity I’ll be doing that.

Well, this week I finally got my laptop back. Hallelujah! I spent a lot of time sorting out what stays and what goes on the hard drive, since I’d been doing other things in the 6 months since the last time I used it, and Angelina needed to reflect that.

Other things that happened this week: I went to the Dux and played backgammon with Dad, took Dad to the airport (he had a small trip up to Wellington), dinner with Siobhan at Grandma’s, played backgammon at the Dux with Rach (I really like doing that), dinner out at Lone Star with Siobhan, Dace, Laura (Dace’s girlfriend) and Sam (Joc’s girlfriend, whom I hadn’t met yet). All of these activities were great to do again, especially the backgammon at the Dux, having wedges and a Ginger Tom. Divine.

The main event this week was my brother’s 21st. He had themed it “Come as your hero”, and there were people coming as Anthony and Cleopatra, Laurence of Arabia, Claire from Heroes and much, much more. Earlier in the week I went costume shopping with Rach, having decided on what I was going as previously: The Dread Pirate Roberts, from The Princess Bride. Anyone at all who knows me and has seen this movie will note a large amount of similarities in our personalities. This is not an accident. I have seen that movie hundreds of times and base a large amount of how I operate off of the charming, suave and incredibly clever Westley. So, it was thus highly appropriate of me to go as him. I even stopped shaving (for a very, very long time) in order to grow the small mustache that he sports.

Apart from the costuming, I was also in charge of the music and the slideshow. The slideshow was mainly scanning a whole lot of photos, finding some other ones and somehow hooking it up in the right way. This didn’t quite come off as planned, since it didn’t loop properly on the system that they had at the bar, and you had to keep pressing play every 5 minutes. So probably not as many people saw the whole thing as would have been ideal. The music was a bit easier – I polled the table at dinner out with Joc et al., compiled a list, got as many as I could from my own files and Dace’s flatmate, then siphoned them all onto my cousins iPod, which he generously lent me for the occasion – thanks Dylan! Unfortunately I only did a fairly minimal shuffling of the songs to make sure they weren’t just one band continuously for a while, or alphabetical or anything like that. Later on, this turned out rather well when a couple of songs lined up with a moment where Dace was singing uproariously and swaying with his friends. ^^

I was disappointed to discover that everyone thought I was Zorro, except for the odd person who would get it immediately, and I would spout one of Westley’s lines.

On the whole, I kept myself sober over the course of the evening. I wasn’t really in the mood for drinking, which is odd for a 21st, particularly my brother’s one at that. In the end it turned out well though, I managed to play taxi to a bunch of people’s junk and get it (and them) to where they needed to be.

The morning after the 21st my Mum had a “big breakfast” thing at her place – Grandma and Grandad came over, Eamon and Lara were there (down from Welly for the 21st), Joc, Sam, Dace and Laura put in appearances as well. Mum’s cousin Bruce came over as well, since he wasn’t able to make it the previous night to the 21st event. Later that night there was a family dinner as well, although Eamon and Lara had left by that point and mostly people just sat around watching the Princess Bride.

So they could fully appreciate my costume, I’m sure.