Is it so unusual to speak up or make a stand for people you care about, not just for yourself, that no-one recognises that you're even trying to be altruistic?

My wonderful M turned up on the doorstep at lunchtime (a.k.a. an hour after I got up) with flowers and sushi. Happy happy happy birthday to meeeeee.

No I'm not drunk. Just sappy.

I got a little carried away and put on mascara. Before going to a wedding. Wedding+dry-eyed dryad=highly unlikely.

Also, I am utterly entranced with the coolness of indicators and how they turn themselves off when you've made the turn. It's the simple things, yo.

Rasa actually makes a kick-arse gado gado.

I have rather a lot of yarn.

cactus_cat and I were in a bus that went off-road today.

We also had lunch by the beach.

And we visited a retail park. "Retail Park" is a phrase that gives me The Fear. "Business Park" is a concept the existence of which I refuse to acknowledge.

We now have plant pots and a mothers' day gift for my mother.

I really have to do a job application and get some new shampoo tomorrow.

I taught two newbies some dance moves tonight.

Now I have red wine.

Today, I walked down the hill to Island Bay, pranced around naked in front of a projector screen for an hour and a half while cactus_cat took photos, and walked home. Later I shall finish doing the dishes and make some dinner and do some sewing.

As the song says, I'm extremely pleased with myself. Although "extremely" may be overstating it a bit.

Anyway, ( have the answers to the unguessed TV show quotes. )

Just one of those days when practising is so disillusioning. F*ing brain. F*ing zills.

Being me is good, I just wish I were the new improved version already.

1. My joy at managing to do a layback the other day was muffled somewhat when I discovered that I can only do them when wearing sneakers. If I try in bare feet, my feet complain and the rest of me refuses to compound their pain, which is probably quite sensible really. But I wanna be able to do them in bare feet, especially as it seems well night impossible to get dance slippers in my size in Wellington *pouts*.

2. I've got a mild callous at the base of my ring finger on my left palm. I didn't *mean* to get a big ol' henna stain right there. It'll take weeks to disappear.

3. I have sore calves today (moo). I was wondering why for a while. It's not like I spent the best part of three hours last night on demi-pointe...oh wait...

4. I have a wicked crazy scratch/chain of what looks like superficial ruptured blood vessels running from my left breast to the right of the top of my chest. The only cause I can trace it back to is a pointy corner of soap in the shower this morning. Wacky.

5. I also still have a wicked bruise on my arm from walking into the studio door over a week ago. A few more degrees clockwise and it'd be centred just under my tattoo.

...and now, over to Martin at the cheese desk.

I'm dying my hair (with henna, of course), and it keeps seeping out of the Arabian Alien (cling film and a scarf) wrap that's supposed to keep it on my head. Ooky.

Flist, I would like to apologize for my general lack of commenting. I am a self-absorbed person, and rather busy. I'm supposed to be doing an essay on the nationalist movement in Germany before 1848, and I can't be arsed trying to do research, haven't decided which language to write it in, and would rather be wrangling with sewing/dancing stuff.

M sent me the lyrics to this song in an email titled "a waiata* to learn for the trip". I'd forgotten about Geneva being by a lake. It makes me more enthusiastic about going to a place full of French speakers.

But, the song? SO much rubbish. Yes.





*Inadequate translation for non-Kiwis = "song".

Fun: last night cactus_cat came over and we had food and wine and girliness and pretty henna and it was fun.

Cute: this morning there was a ladybird on my bag. A real live ladybird. On my church fair bag with the ladybirds and shamrocks embroidered on it.

Happy-making: my father prompted me to look up my results, and it appears that I got an A+ for my 200-level German culture/society/bollocks paper. This may mean RM isn't as strict a marker as we thought, or possibly that my second essay wasn't as rubbish as I thought. I have the Fear, though, that I am permanently stuck at 200 or 300-level standard and will never be brilliant at graduate/postgrad level. Oh well.

Geekery: at work I got to ferret out some German poems for a highly ambitious high school student to consider for the Goethe Society German oral competition. When I was doing these competitions at high school I remember reading Rilke and Trakl. I found him some Rilke and Enzensberger, and wished I'd had my papers from more recent study on hand so I could have provided some yummy Tucholsky and Kaestner, and some of RM's useful German mini-bios of the poets.

Mindblowing: hedonistacal is a teaching deity. I mean I knew she'd be good, but she surpassed my expectations. She is super organised and really knows her stuff, and is giving us the discipline we need. *Fangirls fearsomely*

A bit of a pisser: I have realised (while on the toilet, probably) that I'm more pathetically insecure and self-centred than I'd like to think, and am not as good at hiding it as I could be.

Weekend: I am probably going to be INTERNETLESS until Monday night, possibly Tuesday morning if I'm really buggered. Going to Akaroa to have Tribal goodness drummed into me, and to see the in-laws on the way. And both the books I've packed to read on the journey are collections of rants by amusing British men. I have this niggling sensation I should be embarrassed, but I can't be arsed. I did consider taking Irmgard Keun or Wolfgang Borchert, but they're not exactly, err, light relief, are they.

And in the slightly disturbing department: This morning I dreamt that I stole my workmate's boyfriend, but that he wasn't her boyfriend, he was that of a girl called Laura who bore no resemblance to any Laura I know. I don't even fancy this guy AT ALL in RL. And I dreamt that I was moving to either Christchurch or Dunedin and felt abandoned by my family, and that I was in a German play and was improvising my lines, and that there was sod all audience. And some other inexplicably strange crap.

So, no change there.