December 25, 2005 00:28

It's 11:40pm on Christmas Eve and I'm watching Chris Rock standup comedy. Sure, I've seen this show before, but it is fucking funny. He was so much funnier before he started getting involved in family-acceptable movies and TV. Tellin' it like it is. Was. Whatever.

Anyway, the point is: it is 11:44pm on Saturday night and I'm back home at my mum's place. I rang my best friend who lives on this side of town to see what he was up to, and well, his girlfriend answered and they were just getting into bed. Hrm. I thought briefly about calling up CJ or someone else in town, but then I remembered it cost me $40 to get home last night, and I didn't want to have to pay that just to get into town. Granted, that was NZ$40, but still, I don't have that much in my wallet right now. And, for the record, that's about US$27, for a trip of about 12 miles. Which, now that I think about it, isn't too much different from Atlanta, but NZers don't get paid 45% more than USers, so it still is a rip.

So yeah, the trip so far: Tuesday was recovery. Wednesday was work trip to Masterton to pay for the entire trip. Thursday I went in to Takapuna to have lunch with one of my best friends, Brent, and his girlfriend (wife, just not married yet) Belinda. We went to GPK, which is a gourmet pizza place. Hrm, look at the initials; they might be on to something there. Anyways, the pizza was pretty good, but it wasn't Baroanda or Fritte. After that I went back to my mum's for family dinner.

Actually family dinner was really good. It was family and very close family friends who I hadn't seen in about eight years. It was really good.

[Chris Rock just finished. That was really fucking funny.]

After dinner (and three quarters of one litre bottle of Jack Daniel's), my dad dropped me in town to meet up with Brent and Anthony. We did the rounds of clubs of ill repute, saw plenty of naked women, and generally had a good time.

Friday I relaxed around my mum's place, watched TV and played Civ. Around 2:15pm my sister stopped by and took me into the city. I had to sit with my niece Charli while Celise went to buy some Christmas presents - not a problem, since Charli was asleep the whole time - in exchange for her giving me a lift to Galbraith's, a really good brewpub. I spent about eight hours at Galbraith's, but was very pleased to be able to catch up with: Karin, Simon and Kelly, Mike, Carolyn, Martin, Damian, Philby, Zeal, Paul M. I also spoke to Marcus, who was in Tauranga and who will hopefully be in town next week before I return to the US. I was pleased with who came out, but I eventually got to the point of beer saturation; eight hours of drinking beer can do that to a person. So it was time to go home.

Today I played more Civ, installed software for my camera on my laptop, played with my niece and nephew, and generally didn't do a lot. The way a proper holiday should be. Then I went over to my sister's place and had beers with her (in all but legal terms) husband (Roscoe) and his best friend (Matto). A lot of fun. We had tacos for dinner and Celise dropped me back to my mum's around 10pm, whereupon I watched The Royal Variety Performance. Those of you who know what that is can mock me, but I douby many of my readers do, so that should be okay. But I was forced to have a drink, especially since my best chance of an escape was already on his way to bed.

Hey wow. Simon's video has just come on. Yes, my friend Simon, who I was drinking with last night, has a band and I'm currenly watching his video on Juice, the New Zealand music channel. It's a pretty good song. His band is Ziko.

Merry Christmas everyone. If you're not Christian and are offended by that, then Happy Holidays. As for me, I'm an atheist: Christmas is all about presents and has been for the past 100 years - Christmas lost Jesus a long time ago.