This is half-pie.

You know how you’re always told that no matter what the situation, there’s always someone worse off than you? That huge area under the bell curve of human experience means it’s true too. (As it is in many similar comparisons: substitute out “worse off” for, variously, things like “uglier”; “richer”; “more intelligent”; “bat-shit crazier”; etc. as per personal preference. This can be, or not, a comforting thought.)

Nowhere is this more true than at the hospital. And demonstrated in this conversation:

Bloke 1: Oooh, did she hurt her hand?
Bloke 2: No, that’s just where the shunt goes for the IV antibiotic. She’s got a bit of an infection. [Pause.] And yours?
Bloke 1 [looks down at the baby cradled in his arms]: Oh, we’re off to Auckland next week for heart surgery.

Last weekend, being helpfully annexed to that most sacred of Australasian secular holy days Anzac Day, was a long one. And so we went over the hill into the Wairarapa to Masterton to stay with Becky’s parents.

It’s lovely and autumnal over there at the moment, and while we were there the weather held (against expectations) and we had warm fine days for the most part.

Masterton is blessed with Queen Elizabeth Park. It’s a good place to wander about in at this time of year – acres of exotic trees all coloured beautifully; a lake; a pretty good kids playground; and at the weekend, a miniature train. Fun for everyone:

And I forgot to mention one of the best Cafés in the Wairarapa – Café Cecille – is in the park, with another café over the way at the very fine Aratoi Museum of Art and History.

But enough of the travel-guide stuff. At the end of it all, the kids had the most fun with the simple stuff – and some new friends – and so here’s my favourite photo of the weekend:

It’s been a long, mild autumn so far. Long may it last…

…although I think Hadyn is right, these are in fact slugs, and not flatworms as I had originally thought:

Bella found this pair of beasties under a large dried leaf (left over from the summer when the girls were using it as a sun umbrella). As far as slugs go, I pronounce them pretty indeed, with their semi-transparent leaf shapes and contours.

But what were they up to under there? Hmmmmm.

Observing that it’s been fifteen long days since the last posting here I feel compelled to write something, anything. Don’t know why.

So, exciting things that have happened lately (YMMV on the excitement factor):

• the Blackball Salami company make the most amazing bacon. It smells like maybe they used beech to smoke the stuff because just cooking it makes the kitchen smell like a bush campfire. Awesomely good.
• Galactica Is On Again. American friends provide in a very timely fashion; and now we have Sunday night viewing free of either crap movies-of-the-week or British “quality” drama full of the same tired faces.
• Saturday soccer. Bella is playing, and although I most certainly do not like having to haul my arse out of bed any time before about nine on a Saturday morning it’s actually worth it for this. The fine, still weather did help yesterday; later in the season we’ll probably curse the day we agreed to it.
• my fortieth is coming. Actually, I am less than excited about this, but have realised that I don’t have to have a party if I don’t want one. I need to think of something interesting and exciting to do. Or maybe buy – we’ve been cruising the galleries with aimless intent.
• cult game for the Wii, Zack and Wiki, is brilliant. Zack the boy pirate and his pet monkey must solve puzzles to win treasure. Doubly nice because the girls can and do make very good and useful puzzle-solving suggestions; while the point and click interface can be managed easily by them.

Well, that’s more than enough excitement for now. I’ve got Monday to look forward to, after all.

I am afraid to report that Monteith’s have jumped the shark.

DB have been giving away dozens of the new Monteith’s New Zealand Lager via a new text message voucher system on several high-profile blogs. Presumably the idea is to generate some buzz. OK, I can help with that.

I won a dozen via The Spare Room (ta!), thanks to an email from Martha, picking it up in Masterton en route to Napier for Easter.

So, what’s it like? It’s not unpleasant, which is about the best I can say. I don’t think I could care to tell the difference between it and any other green-bottled international lager: Stella; Heineken; Steinlager; it’s all bland alcoholic lolly-water. And I’m hardly likely to ever try.

But worse, I think, is the way that it so totally breaks with the brand of all existing Monteith’s products that even looking at the bottle brings on an uncomfortable feeling of dissonance in me.

Actually, I’m wondering why it bothers me so much. OK, so I have been drinking Monteith’s, more on than off, for over 20 years. I’m kind of attached, but hardly exclusively. I guess I have a nostalgic affection for it: my heart believing the brand hype of a brown-bottle West Coast Miner’s brew, the same stuff I used to get in quart bottles from the pub down the road from the farm; even though my head tells me the stuff comes from Auckland from the same factory as this weasel’s piss.

This new lager comprehensively craps on my foolish heart’s delusional belief. The bottle is smooth, green, and glossily designed; it’s trying hard to scream I’M A SOFIST SOPHISTACK SOPHISTICATED BIG CITY LAGER AND NOT FROM A HICK LITTLE COUNTRY EITHER, HONEST. And as far as I can tell the Monteith’s label is there solely in a cynical bid to attach a ready-made heritage feeling to a beer that has probably only been created to compete internationally with those various aforementioned lolly-water lagers.

Fuck ‘em. My heart was wrong, and I must move on. And mostly I have; to Tuatara and Epic, and the occasional Sassy Red when I can’t find those.

It’s only beer, after all.

Update: Even the former brand manager for Monteith’s seems to find the new lager’s branding odd …

I’ve created a muxtape here. Muxtape is a flash-hyped (i.e., new today, the cool kids are on it in a server-groaning flashmob, only to forget about it by tomorrow) service for creating something akin to a mixtape of ye olde technology.

I always used to love making mixtapes for people I was either trying desperately to impress or felt had dreadful musical taste, and maybe things don’t change. You may therefore decide for yourselves which category you fit into.

The muxtape contains some of my favourite mashups… or it would be, if the damn uploading on the shite broadband connection I’m on wasn’t so appallingly slow. I should have completed it by next week sometime.

In the meantime, and if your own connection is a spanking one, let me know where your muxtape is…

Hannah Abby expired during the night.

Four year olds aren’t often sentimental types, it’s true, but even I was a little taken aback when Rosa turned up with these.

She explained that they’re to be used as decorations for her birthday, later on in the year. Very practical.

Although I would like to know where the rest of the butterfly is.

On the left is Hannah Abby. Reading to (let’s assume) her is Rosa:

Hannah is butterfly #2. She was among some spiderwebs under a weatherboard and got a bit tangled up on her way out; and since then, a couple days ago, she hasn’t flown away. “She’s very sick”, Becky explained. (“And she’ll probably die soon”, I rather too tactlessly added.)

So now Rosa’s looking after her.

Thanks to Matt from Mojo Becky and I got to go see Meow Meow the other night. It was our first (and probably only) Festival of the Arts gig this time around (and if the truth be known, more or less the first since the kids were born).

It was pretty entertaining, but I do wish Meow Meow’d done more singing and less mucking about. Still, I think the rather savage reviewer in the Dominion Post this morning was over-egging it a bit.

We had gone to the excellent Sweet Mother’s Kitchen for dinner – we’re still working our way through all the variously nominated venues and shops from last year’s Wellingtonista Awards – and on the way to the Festival Tent we passed the now-famous shadow wall (Body Movies) at Te Papa:

I had heard of the shadow wall from someone, I can’t remember who. Every festival has at least one public art installation or free performance that somehow gets into the collective consciousness, to the extent that it becomes the subject of ordinary conversation. This is one; Gravity and other Myths seems to be another (OK, it was from last year’s Fringe and is making a comeback as part of Summer City, but you know what I mean).

Anyway, photos of people are projected against the wall; the twist being they they are only really visible once people create shadows out of the very strong lights positioned behind the picture projectors. We could have stayed there for a lot longer, watching what people (literally) made of it.

All in all, it was damn good to get out for some adult cultural activity. We’ll have to do it again. Soon.

Keeping Sue in the loop, as requested, on the monarch situation at home.

Unfortunately it would seem a sad end has befallen this chrysalis.

We think a small visitor may have handled it roughly a few days ago, killing it (evidence for which is the small-finger-shaped-indentation on the left side); or else something has eaten it alive. Nice.

We still should have 15 after today though: there’s another caterpillar going into its chrysalis as I type. And at least an earlier chrysalis is starting to darken and colour up, so we might not be too far off the first butterfly.