Oh dear, what a wretched horrible week. Right from this time last week I’ve been feeling horrid. Absolutely despicable. I’ve been sick, see. With I don’t know what it was, but something that made swallowing feel like glass shards were shooting up my throat, with a headache that threatens to cave my skull in, and sore horrible achey muscles. My head might have been held up by string cheese for all the good my neck was this week.

Stupidly, I went to work everyday this week too. Because misery loves company. And because I didn’t have any sick days left, and going to the doctor was inconvenient. And if no one talked to me I could kind of get things done. Especially if instead of taking snack breaks I took naps in my car.

The only real adventure was exactly this time last week. Last Friday I met The Second Quarter + Broome for the second viewing of Inception (I’m still convinced that the entire movie is a dream, and is saying some serious things about the significance of dreams, rather than their insignificance, and is also a metaphor for all sorts of interesting rl situations).

After we met the Third + Fourth Quarters in the brilliant Ponsonby, where we danced the night away to the amazing Chris Reed (who I love, and who totally rocks my Friday Nights btw).

I dropped off The Second Quarter + Broome and I dropped in on the bar, so I could amused at the end of a Chilean Bicentenary Celebration. What was less amusing was being roped in to help close + clean. Oh dear, the amount of Chilean food that I swept up truly makes me amazed that people manage to find their mouths at all.

In a rather brilliant change of scene, I got a rather wistful txt from Lyth, asking me if I was still up. And oh hurrah! A chance to return the many favours and rescue Lyth from his rather amusing (for me) and awkward (for him) predicament. It meant much laughter, and was a brilliant way to end the night. We played creeps and tiki towers and gossiped. In the end I dropped him off home, and crawled into bed at an easy 5.30am, just late enough to hear the birds chrip themselves awake.

Needless to say, even though I wasn’t drinking I’m pretty sure the being sick all week can be put down to that night of wonderful madness.

I’m still sore, and haven’t been to the gym all week, and I have a really really mad weekend in front of me (Lyth’s Birthday, and working at The Bar and a Taiwanese Banquet) but hopefully I’ll be fine. If I’m not, well, silly me really.

Hope you are all healthy, and brilliant, and that you all have a wonderful weekend!

A friend of mine has the most gorgeous little daughter, who is turning one this month. She asked me to whip up something, and goodness, I got so excited about it I got all into the details. But check it, its cute, right?

I’ve also finished a few other site-type projects in the last little while. The first was my best friends blog, and can be found at lizandrob.co.nz. Loving the simplicity + bubble gum colours. Also, since they’ve moved to London (and I miss them terribly) I’m glad that they are updating fairly regularly – their posts nearly always crack me up (no, seriously. Like in the last post? They CYCLE their furniture home – how awesome is that??)

The other project I’ve finished recently is my portfolio. I wanted something super super simple, super minimalist. *shrug* It works for me, anyway :)

Looks good, right? I’m seriously loving the design projects I’ve got going on at the moment. Huzzah!

Last week, after months of pondering, and a few weeks of ‘but which one?’ I got a little frivolous and brought an HTC Desire. I’ve been pro Android well before I even considered purchasing a smart phone. This was in thanks to The Second Quarters avid convincing, but also because I managed to convince two other people to not buy an iPhone and to get a phone with an Android OS. When you’re convincing someone else, you inevitably end up convincing yourself and so there was no two ways about. When getting a smartphone: I was not getting iPhone.

There are a few reasons for this, but the ones that convinced me?

* While hurrah for open source OS’s, for me its the apps that make the phone. For the iPhone, the only apps you can get are ones that Apple decides you can get. With Android, there’s no censorship, and anti-competitive sentiments. You can have whatever apps you like, thanks.

* HTC Sense. One of the things it does: Your phone is ringing, so you pick it up. The volume drops cause you’re obviously aware now that your phone is ringing. You decide not to answer it, so you put it down, screen side down. Ringing stops. Your phone is totally aware that you don’t want to answer it. I don’t know if there is an iPhone alternative to this, but damn, I thought that was cool.

* To sync your iPhone, update firmware or update contacts + notes and whatnot, I’ve heard you need to physically plug in your iPhone to your machine and do it all via iTunes. When I’ve played around on an iPhone (usually thanks to The Third + Fourths Quarters, or Lyth) I’ve never seen them do this. But regardless? You don’t need to mod your Android phone to do the same. You can do with wirelessly, if that works for you. And, you can sync it to your google account, if you want to too. Or your facebook account, or even twitter and flickr. I didn’t know this till I got my phone, and all my facebook contacts ended up in my phone book. Handy, and meant that I didn’t have to enter everyones numbers in.

* Voice to Text. I’m still playing around with this feature (so far its been alot of fun, even if I haven’t used it practically, yet). iPhones dont have this functionality without an app. Android wins.

* Customisation. If you’re not down with Androids interface, you can pretty much change every facet of the user experience. On an iPhone, I hear you can change the wallpaper if the mood strikes you. Awesome.

* Home page widgets! Ah! I am a fan of these, of being able to view tweets and facebook and calendar apps straight from one of the (many) home pages, without having to open the app. I hear iPhones are really really good with shortcuts. Uhm . . . yeah.

* Apple is apparently not a fan of flash. Android doesn’t care what its a fan of, and is more worried about what you are a fan of. You want flash? Android is going to give it to you.

* Price. The iPhone 4 was, when I was looking, an easy $1099 + gst. The Android HTC Desire was $830 incl. gst.

There are a million more reasons, I’m not even going to go into the physical specs of the phones I considered buying. It just came down to the HTC Desire worked best for me.

The only downside of the phone so far? That Android Market (which uses Google Checkout) doesn’t easily let you purchase with a Google Account that uses their Domain Hosted email service, rather than a Google Account using gmail. The Second Quarter said something about porting, but I haven’t had a decent look at it, yet.

It’s probably good thing, because I would have thrown a stupid amount of money for a silly amount of games. (Oh Doodlejump. Perhaps it was never meant to be . . .)

And, well, there’s another, but its more me being an idiot than something wrong with the phone. I parallel imported my phone from Dubai. And now my phone really really wants me to be Muslim. It tells me when to pray and everything. These apps are unable to removed (even with a hard reset).To remove apps like the iQuran and the Quran Calender, I’d need to root my phone (which would invalidate the warranty) and upgrade to Froyo. Which is probably what I’m going to do. Or rather, what I’m going to get The Second Quarter to do (the boy organises Andriod Meet-ups. He’s going to do it better than I will). Still, this is more me buying my phone from Dubai bug than it is an Android issue. *shrug*

Still, I’m pretty stoked with what I’ve got. Are you stoked with your phone?

Last week, Lyth and I took a few days off work, and drove down south to the snow. To be honest, we took it pretty easy. We spent a half day at Turoa (soft snow, unlimited vis, no queues, manageable wind – nice!) and a full day at Whakapapa (super soft snow, still making fresh tracks after lunch, unlimited vis, snow in the afternoon) so that was pretty sweet.

The other two days were spent eating pudding for breakfast, and watching an awful lot of downloaded tv (Top Gear, Band of Brothers, Pushing Daises, Mad Men . . . ). We visited the National Trout Centre, which was easily the best $2 I’ve spent ($2 gets you a bag of pellets) and it was super novel feeding the fish, and watching the ruckus caused.

We also spent an inordinate amount of time at Tokaanu’s geothermic hot pools. It’s meant to be $9 for 20 minutes for a private pool, but we easily spent an hour and a half plus soaking up the warmth – they were pretty generous! And I adore being that warm. What’s more, part of the pool (or all of the pool, if you’re in #5) is open to the heavens, which is delightful when its raining.

On the drive back (which was delightfully done in daylight, and not after dark) I somehow lost a whole bunch of brain cells, and convinced myself that there were all these rural houses who had yellow flags with the WordPress logo on it. It was a little weird the first time, but after we got to five flags I wanted to steal one to get a closer look. Well, we did steal one: lo and behold it was missing the fat bit on the top left of the ‘W’. I’d stolen a Waikato Times Flag. Someone was going to miss out on getting their newspaper.

I also stupidly decided that because I’m not sure when I’ll be driving around the country again, I wanted my 365 to be in a field with cows. So after we stole the flag, I picked a field, and trudged off towards the cows. Bad idea, super bad idea. I’d forgotten that most of the country had just had 4 days of torrential rain. So I was trudging through what looked like grass, but was really a cold, sticky mud puddle that sucked your feet in with each step. After I got back to the car, my pink+blue chucks were not pink or blue anymore. My socks (which used to be yellow) were now a rather disgusting brown. Still, its just mud. And I waved my flag like my feet weren’t being cased in frozen mud. Lyth laughed at me. And said this is why I’m the best to go on road trips with. I took it as a compliment.

But on the whole it was fantastic. There was a crazy amount of driving, and naps in the car, and playing a stupid amount of iphone games (Oh doodlejump! Oh creeps!). There was eating a stupid amount of food and sleeping in, and an undefeated champion of Gin (woo!). There was rain, and snow, and sore muscles (and even more sore tailbones…) and clambering over rocks and visiting the boundary line.

All in all, a pretty brilliant long weekend, really. :)

A few weeks ago a friend and I caught the ferry across to Waiheke, an island that’s about 40 minutes from the city. Honestly? It might as well have been hours away for all I thought about home. We were lucky enough to stay in a gorgeous little resort – the kind of resort that costs hundreds of dollars a night and is super luxurious. The kind that is surrounded by carefully manicured bush, with a private beach and boat house and spa pool almost big enough to swim in. It was all kinds of gorgeous and amazing.

It was a weekend of walks, and reading and naps. Of visiting farmers markets, and eating amazing bread. Of spending far too many hours submerged in hot water in the open air, looking up at the stars. Of picking ripe grapefruit from trees bowed down from the weight of all of them, and watching the rain storm across the ocean. It was about crazy random drives through the dark, of wineries and concerts that make you clap your hands and dance in your chair. It was about amazing food, and drummers that make you grin. It was a weekend of good company, and finally being able to take the time to relax, and recharge.

In short, it was amazing. A really brilliant weekend. Hopefully there shall be more like it.

I feel like I’m 18 all over again. He’s pushed me back into a badly lit corner, and we’re making out as others, oblivious, walk by, dance past, lost in their own worlds. The music pulses up through the floor, the bass rocks a beat that instinctively makes me want to move. I can smell the bourbon on his breath, and his fingers dance a rythym up my spine. It’s fun, this. A moment in the dark, a distraction, a brief visit to the opium den.

I shiver, glad the nights only just started, that the 3am time stamps mean nothing. I can feel my blood pulsing with the beat. This boy is gorgeous, he knows it, I know it. And he’s into me, which has it’s own kind of natural high.

We dance, mostly, and somehow the rest of the night passes in a blur. I don’t think he let go of my hand at all. There were drinks at the bar, and getting air outside, and pushing through the crowd so we could be up front, close enough to touch the band, if I wanted. There were words, carefully chosen he wanted to know who I was. I wanted to know where he’d been, where he was going. He asked me what I dreamed of. I asked him what he did to reach his own dreams. Verbal sparring, back and forth, twisting and turning. He’s quick, this boy. Quicker than I was.

Hours later, I get pulled out of the club, friends holding my hands, dancing out onto the street, out into the morning light and into a taxi. We’ll all collapse into a pile, probably. All of us together, ending the night as it started really. And even though I don’t have his number, or know his name, it seems fitting to leave it like this. To recognize it for what it was, and to go home with the people that really matter.

Still, I’m glad it happened. A meaningless moment that brightened the night. Sparked an undercurrent that changed the way the weekend felt, changed the way the world turned, changed the way I held on to things that don’t matter.

I won’t see him again, and I don’t mind in the least.

“Do you know what you’ve started? / I just came here to party / But now we’re rocking on the dancefloor, acting naughty / Your hands around my waist / Just let the music play / We’re hand in hand / Chest to chest and now we’re face to face” – Don’t Stop the Music, Rhianna

So, I attempted The Week of Reflections. And it was difficult. I’m really disappointed in these, mostly because they are fairly weak shots. There are sorts of reasons (a week of torrential rain, of projects with deadlines, and large multinational companies with large upgrades that need serious testing) but mostly? I just wasn’t feeling it.

I got through the week, though. Forced my through, really. Another week down, only a few left to go…

Past Weeks: The Week of Upside Down, The Week of Jumping, The Week of Random Headgear.