Breakfast this morning with Mischief Bad Group was at Aro Cafe, and while I love Aro Cafe (they have good coffee, an excellent wine list and their dinner is outstanding), I'm not pleased with their breakfast.

They have a very small set breakfast menu, with just variations on an egg (benny, florry etc), and variations on a bagel. Then they have a build your own breakfast, which is clever, because it ends up being pretty expensive.

So I ended up building my own, and it was $18. Poached eggs on toast, with sausages, mushrooms & tomatoes. The sausages were pretty ordinary until I drenched them in Tobasco Sauce (another point lost; they should have Kaitaia Fire instead).

However, after we had all eaten, Chris ordered a brownie with yoghurt, and it was so incredibly good that I had to have one as well. It was really outstanding. Of course, I came home afterwards and felt guilty/sick/enormous.

So, I retain my previous judgement of Aro Cafe, which was: excellent wine, good coffee, great dinner, not very good breakfast.

Next week we're having drinks at our place on Saturday night and home cooked brunch here on Sunday morning.

more random words to describe the weekend:
swapper crate (yes, we are 18 year old boys), aro park, plastic cups, my kitsinga going to the vet and needing to be sedated in order to get bloods done, wanting to kill everyone, everyone, everyone, at the jackson street fair, the best new t shirt in the world, beautiful dogs, greasy chicken, not swimming, strange man visiting, the dukes of leisure being amazing, off the bat party plans for next weekend, off the bat party plans for joint birthday parties, long phone conversations with my sister, sun, laziness, coffee, aro bake and of course, scrubs.

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She talked to the floor, but he wasn't listening anyway

drinks & dinner at aro cafe, maya, fideliousness (5), writing more haiku in the little book, vodka at the southern cross, confusing the bartender, silly text messages and feeling giddy and being as politically incorrect as possible and exchanging numbers and addresses, everyone having the same name, not finding soymilk to bring home, laughing and giggling and stumbling up cuba street, having a new pet taxi driver, realising how early we got home compared to how drunk we were, fitfull sleep.

and capitalisation be damned.

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Words were, words weren't all I could say

I love Aro Valley. On my way home on Friday night I saw someone climbing a tree, and someone inside a clothing bin (although they made the mistake of poking their head out just as the police drove past).

On my way to work on Monday morning, I saw a United Future billboard, with the photo of Peter Dunne defaced with the words, 'POO FACE'. This I found highly amusing.

The latest polls are very worrying. If they continue, I might have to vote Labour rather than Green, come September 17. I don't feel very happy about the way things are going. On the other hand, everyone around me seems very excited about the election. My parents tell us that they have a Labour sign on their gate, a Greens sticker on their car, and have been busy meeting their local (Kaikoura) candidates. I'm going to the candidates meeting tonight at Aro Valley Community Hall.

I received a pamphlet from Mark Blumsky that made me very angry. phirate has already written about this, but it made me so furious I filled in the survey without just ticking the nice little options, but wrote a large piece about how manipulative and evil it was, and posted it back this morning.

M and I had a very good (almost laptop free) weekend! We went on a road trip and visited Summer Holiday Place Of My Childhood (Otaki) where we cavorted on the beach and sand dunes. I was carsick in the Akatawara Valley, due to a misguided icecream idea.

There were many asplosions at work, after my last post about it, but by about 8pm Friday it was mostly over.

I'm making a concerted effort this week to train myself back into the habit of getting to work early, since I don't really like working until 7pm. Yesterday, I managed to get here at 8:40, today at 8:20. So we're doing ok. Maybe tomorrow I'll get here at 8 (I doubt it, somehow). I haven't been setting my alarm clock any earlier, just trying to be more efficient about going to bed at a reasonable time and actually getting up soon after the alarm goes off. Before this new resolution, it sometimes takes an hour plus of snoozing to get up. This morning, only 15 minutes.

Buying hair dye is a very bewildering experience.

I was just walking home from work, and just before turning into my (long, narrow, badly light, quiet) street, someone pulled up beside me, wound down their window and asked me if I was walking up [streetname] road. I was so taken aback I said, "yeah" without thinking about it, at which point he asked me if I wanted a ride! I said, "no thanks" and kept walking, he drove off and turned into my street. I thought, fuck, he's waiting around the corner for me, so I called my flatmate, who was luckily at home already. I gave her a description of him, and his car, and after a few seconds, she said he had pulled up outside our house! But then it turned out that he went into a house across the road. So, I guess he's our neighbour and has seen me and was being friendly. I'm prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt that far, although not far enough to get in the car with him. Freaky.

Something I really love is the walk to work in the morning through Aro Valley. I don't know what it is, but in contrast to struggling to find my way in from Newtown it's just such a good start to the day.

Of course, it's all ruined when I get to the corner of Abel Smith and Willis and see the Bypass mess, but that's a story for another day.

Anyway, I took photos. Where marked, some of these were taken by M another day.

While walking to work this morning I came across a woman carrying a life-sized baby doll under one arm and a folded up pram under the other arm.

Not sure if it's just positive visualisation or something stranger.