I aten't dead

To quote Terry Pratchett. Just busy. And, mostly, ill, thanks I think to a chilly winter, weird Southern Hemisphere viruses and a very uninsulated flat. Not that that should stop blogging, but there you go.

Anyway, I last posted in May, apparently. Since then I've spent very few weekends at home and very few weekends where there hasn't been something going on. The weekend after the last busy weekend there was a swimming meet in Levin (wonderful Levin ... well, not, but the meet was fun). The weekend after that a friend visited and we went to see Indiana Jones, which was gloriously cheesy and looked great on the big screen at the Embassy. And a bonus spot of Weta Workshop wizards Richard Taylor and Tania Rodger waiting to see the film too (they're the special effects and creatures people behind LOTR).

The weekend after that was Queen's Birthday weekend, with a day's holiday. So I jumped on the plane to Auckland and hired a car and drove to the Coromandel Peninsula, where I had a wonderful few days. It wasn't too busy, I had nice cosy hostels to stay in and found some nice places to eat. Spent some time walking, seeing the countryside and so on. The highlight was getting up early on the Monday morning and walking to Cathedral Cove as the sun rose. It rained, but it had stopped by the time I got there and I had the whole beach to myself for half an hour. Mine were the first footsteps on pristine sand. It was beautiful and quite magical.

Then I had a free weekend, which was a novelty. The next weekend my friend Jess popped over from Sydney and we went to see England play the All Blacks - England lost, predictably, but it was an experience and there was a good atmosphere in the stadium. We also had fantastic seats, so I felt suitably pleased about my seat-buying abilities. We'd planned to go and see penguins on Sunday morning at Kelly Tarlton's, but they'd cancelled the free shuttle to get there so we mooched around Auckland instead.

Last week there was a corporate rowing camp in Wanganui - my crew ended up not going but I went anyway and rowed a bit, took a double out with Erika, coxed a bit, and learned how to drive a coaching boat. The last was very good fun. We had a gorgeous day on Saturday and then it tipped it down on Sunday - incredible weather!

And now I'm packing and sorting stuff out ahead of going home for a fortnight to catch up with people and have some summer.

So, that's me, not dead.