(Note that this is the first reason I've found since I moved by myself in August last year)

I am terrified of spiders.

Last night, I woke up to my cat prancing about stalking something on my bed. I thought she must have bought something inside and let it go, so I turned on the light and sat up.

She was chasing a giant spider, and it was making its way right towards me, it was up by where the top sheet folds over the duvet.

I shrieked and shoved the duvet away from me and leapt out of bed. Once I had calmed down, I went into the kitchen to get a glass to put on top of it, but I went back to my room and gingerly lifted the bedding up and couldn't find it anywhere. It wasn't on the floor anywhere near the bed, it couldn't have gotten under the bed (I have a futon with a sled base).

There was no way I was getting back into bed with a spider potentially in there, so I grabbed my sleeping bag and slept on the couch. This morning I got up and very carefully pulled the bedding apart to wash.

This amuses me:

James Culleton wrote:
You could make it if you caught the bus home, shopped, and drove back to
work after dropping shopping off. My calculations estimate that would take
179 minutes.

----

The rest of the weekend was fantastic. I got sun, read two and a half books, went to a party, swam at Balaena Bay again, read my book in the botanical gardens while listening to Module (and then shook my booty for the last 45 minutes), slept well, slept in, drank lots of coffee, had good conversation, some long emails from friends overseas.

Tonight I have to have a phone conference starting at 9pm but am free other than that, and then tomorrow it all starts again, with concerts at the gardens, Hope Bros, catching up with people, and then this weekend I'm doing wardrobe for a short film which is being filmed on a beach about 1.5 hours North of Welli.

Busy girl. Tis good.

I want to start a book blog sort of thing. Where I review books that I read all year and then can brag about how literate I am come the end of 2006. I'll have to do some catchup work though since I've read so many books already this year.

Over the last few days, I:

~ spent Friday night hanging out with my parents since they were in Wellington for one day
~ spent most of the weekend in this amazing beautiful huge house that a friend is housesitting in
~ sunbathed; and
~ got sunburnt in very strange configurations on my thighs that I believe are directly caused by uneven sunblock distribution
~ had friends around for drinks
~ took my bbq to aforementioned mansion and ate my weight in meat
~ read two books
~ was given yellow roses
~ went to a magic concert
~ walked to Balaena Bay, swum in rather transparent underwear, and walked home again
~ drove to the top of Mount Victoria at dusk

It's been a busy few days, which is really good. I feel pretty happy about getting out of the house and doing stuff.

I am very pleased with myself, I got to work, sat down at my desk, logged in and ran ntpdate (away for 2 weeks), all by 7:56 am. I rule.

Strangely, I still haven't figured out why ntpdate running on cron doesn't work. It says it runs in the logs, there are no errors... and yet, the clock has something like an hour offset a day. Weird.

I slept pretty badly last night. There was a hell of a storm, and the wind was screaming around the house and down the chimney.

I've been listening to Goldenhorse's Out Of The Moon, and I like it a lot. Run Run Run is not helping my state of mind though. I think I'm turning into Rob Gordon, it's a bit ridiculous really. I even reorganised my ipod, which I guess is the 2006 (2006!) version of reorganising your record collection.

I am slowly shrinking. This is good, it's a defence mechanism. Heh, people keep saying to me how good I look and when I say that it's a defence mechanism, they look confused and alarmed. This amuses me.

This christmas was quite possibly my worst ever, but I guess there's not much I can do about it now, so moving forward, I'm going to be optimistic about the new year.

I had an excellent day today, I lay in the sun and read the David Lange book, and then went to meet a friend for coffee at Aro Street Cafe, which was closed, so it was back to my house for coffee instead.

Then on to the beach for a picnic, where I was told off for a cyclist about parking on the footpath, because he had 'scratched my car trying to get past'. I found that pretty strange considering that a) cyclists should be cycling on the road, not the footpath, and b) he scratched my fucking car. But I was feeling generous so I moved it. And then to where Michelle was housesitting for cups of very strange tea and long talks and the strange cat.

And now I'm sitting in the lounge with my strange cat, about to watch High Fidelity. Tomorrow S and I are going to go pea/strawberry/cherry picking and I am going to visit my sister's cats.

Also, Samorost is a cool game, so I paid $15 for the full version, and it's neat.

I really like the idea of gardening, but after half an hour of pulling up grass in the small bordered off area outside the kitchen, and seeing at least 20 spiders, some really big, I am going to have to rethink it.

Red roses. From my flatmate. 'Just cos'. I've been feeling pretty tired and down for the last few weeks, and I guess she noticed and wanted to make me feel beter. It worked! Rules.