Beautiful Thing

It's just a beautiful, crazy old world we live in, isn't it?  Yes, don't worry, I haven't gone completely off my rocker, I know it's dangerous, ugly and uncertain too, but it's times like these that you can't help looking around at your fellow humans and thinking, "You know, you guys are alright".

Perhaps I'm just writing this in a flood of good feeling - I finally heard from my friend in Christchurch that she and her husband (and even their cat!) are all okay.  Ma had already contacted me about the family I have living down there, and so everyone is present and accounted for.  I only have an email address for this particular friend, and of course, with the power situation, email and stuff like that is mostly out of the question.  But I was holding out hope that today would be the day I'd hear from her, and lo-and-behold, there was an email in the old inbox when I got up this morning to do this post.

There are still lots of people in Christchurch who are not alright though, so here are some things that Wellingtonians (and people who live elsewhere) can do:

Bake on Sunday: You heard right!  There's going to be a massive bakesale on Monday the 28th of February in Civic Square in Wellington.  I don't know who organised it, but The Great Sunday Bake Off is a freakin' awesome idea.  They've had so much interest that any extra goodies that can't be transported to Christchurch by their team will be sold from 10 - 2pm.  Follow the earlier link for more details. 

Donate to the Red Cross: Easy as, you can text a donation, slap it on the credit card, whatever the amount.  There is lots of information on their website, so follow that link for more of it. 

Drink Coffee, Eat Cake:  Seems a bit of a weird option, right?  But the glorious Caffe L'affare in College Street (opposite Moore Wilson in the central city) is donating all their proceeds on Sunday the 27th (which is tomorrow) to helping out the people of Christchurch.

Of course, there are a few... well, dickheads is really too kind a word for them, but you know where I'm going with that, who are trying to make a buck out of this horrible event.  Please, please, when you're making an online donation or whatever: make sure that whatever you're donating too is for real.  There have been reports of scams which say that they're charities wanting to help out the people of Christchurch, when really, they're just wads of dog poo wanting to help themselves.  So please be careful about that.

Moving on from that bring down, there are still lots of other ways to help.  TradeMe (for overseas readers, it's like a mini-version of eBay, which is often a pain for New Zealanders to use because of the shipping) has masses of ways you can help, things like volunteering labour, if you have a spare room that you can have someone stay with you, volunteering transport.  There are also links to resources like Civil Defence, the Red Cross, the People Finder and the Salvation Army. 

Phew! So three posts in one week!  My typing fingers are near worn out... hope that where-ever you are, that you're safe and happy and enjoying life.  Because that is the most beautiful thing.

We get these pills to swallow

No Queens of the Stone Age tonight, either.  They're too sick to play.  Not in the cool sense of being sick, more the ill sense of being sick. Lucky the self-titled re-issue came out on Monday, because that's all that we've got tonight... sitting in the dark, listening to the stereo.  Sad.

What a ratty week... dunno if the Melvins and High on Fire are going ahead, last I heard they were stranded in Christchurch.  Hope they got to Welly okay!

Christchurch

Total, heartfelt sympathies to all of Christchurch today - another big quake, and this one a bunch worse.  You poor, poor people.  Stuff has rolling coverage, but the big news so far is that part of the Cathedral is down (among lots of other buildings), and there have been lots of reports of death and injury.

It kind of pales into insignificance by comparison, but it does mean that QotSA have cancelled their Christchurch gig which was scheduled for tomorrow, and shifted the Wellington gig to tomorrow night.  If you need more info on that, you can go to the Ticketek website (especially if you were going to the gig tonight in Welly, but can't make it tomorrow - they'll give you a refund as long as you front up to the office at the St. James before noon tomorrow).

In the meantime, much love to the Christchurchians and those with buddies and whanau in the area.  Thinking of y'all.

Jumbo Blimp Jumbo

Ugh.  Mondays.  Plus, today really should be a public holiday.  It really should, and I'm not just saying that 'cause I fancy a holiday.  Waitangi Day (which is kind of like Noo Ziland's national day, fraught as it tends to be with racial tensions and politiking) was on Sunday, so happy birthday to my buddy Stephanie and to Bob Marley also.  Anyway, we're currently in a bit of a pickle, because this is the second year that some of our public holidays will fall on weekends.  We only get eleven public holidays here anyway, so we guard them preciously.  Our Prime Mininster reckons he's going to "think" about Monday-ising them, not that it's just his decision, and he should really know what all the workers of New Zealand want him to do.  If he doesn't he's an even bigger moron than I thought. 

But I digress.  Today did have it's uplifting elements.  And that was that we were having a shared morning tea at work (you'll be beginning to think that all us toilers at the information coalface ever do is eat morning tea) to welcome back a returning staff member.   Honestly, I did eclairs because they were the easiest think that I could think of to do.  Choux pastry?  Simple.  Seriously, the hardest thing about making them is figuring out how much 'six tablespoons of butter' is in grams... some stupid woman (me) wrote that measurement into her recipe book, and I'm stuck with it now.



Parle vous Francais, mon petit dessert?

Beast of the Yeast

I don't feature enough pizza on this blog.  Don't you think?  As far as I'm concerned, pizza is the Perfect Food.  I mean, it's bread, with anything you want on it.  How could that not be perfect?  Okay, so sandwiches are bread with anything you want on it, but I guess the sandwich is a good representation of the phrase 'familiarity breeds contempt'.