I arrived (via tragically cramped overnight bus) in Auckland at seven in the morning and promptly took another bus, this time to Scott's house, where I banged obscenely on his bedroom window until he woke up. Friends. What else are they for.

This is from a photoshoot I did for Soap

(a wee magazine I put together at the end of last year)

Basically the best way to spend a rainy afternoon

My friend Ben.

Looked a total babe at our friends' wedding 

Told him this, declared I felt like 'a proud mama' 

Later I spilt champagne everywhere

And nearly ran into a glass door.

Spent Sunday afternoon hanging with these cats

eating chicken marinated in mango and pineapple

 

My optometrist took these amazing scans of my eyes today:

(My left eye)

(My right eye)

The bright orange spheres are my optic disc, where all the blood vessels converge, and the dark spot in the middle is my macula. Cool, huh? They have such a haunting, astronomical quality to them.

I tried to show them to my friend but as soon as he saw the first picture he yelped and started gagging, and my other friend informed me that he has a "fear of eyes", whatever that means.

The only thing more awesome than a taxidermied bison head is
a taxidermied bison head wearing a sombrero
regarding you suspiciously from the floor of the luggage compartment
on the ferry from Waiheke to Auckland

I don't think I've ever worked as hard as I'm working right now.

Well. Not right now, since right now I'm clearly procrastinating by writing about how hard I'm working instead of actually working hard. But whatever, I never claimed to tell the truth. Nor am I complaining. In fact, there's something inherently satisfying about working this hard, even though some of that work exists for the sole purpose of letting me have high tea with my two most favourite ladies on a Saturday afternoon.

You pay a price though, and I'm paying it right now. Sitting here, delirious on paracetamol and hot totties, swaying to The Smiths (who are growing on me) like a seventy year-old ex-motivational speaker who lost his hearing in his sixties and his sense of decorum not long after.

So Scott and I went to a wee place (this is my attempt to cutesy it up because I've totally forgotten what it was called) just out of Te Puke for his sister's wedding last weekend. We stayed on his uncle's farm, which boasted a lot of cows. This made a lot of sense, actually, because his uncle farms cows. I took some photos of the cows. I was pretty pleased. The cows seemed suitably unimpressed.

Shona's wedding was on the beach and it was beautiful.

I kept getting in the professional photographer's way, and though he was the jolly type I felt a little uncomfortable about trying to elbow my way into the whole 'taking photos' scene so I hid the camera back at the farm, where it didn't emerge again until two am that night when I couldn't find a light and blundered around taking photos so that I could use the flash to find my things.

Fanning the Flames

 Left to Right:

A lascivious man; a licentious man; an incestuous man

Feigning disgust though secretly she loves it

Breaking News

 Left to Right:

Just got engaged and waiting for the right moment to brag

It's her birthday. Nobody remembered.

Spilt the birthday girl's dog's ashes and is wondering whether to tell her

Wallflowers

Left to Right:

2010 or The Year I Decided to Become a Surfer Dude

Inexplicably and coquettishly flirting with my chair

The Many Faces of Dishevelledness

Borne from muted disgust, a naive contentment and general disapproval

The Tipping Point
Left to Right:
Distressed, she attempts to pick her nose with her shoulder
Seconds away from downing the beetle in his cider
Trying to hold the vom till the camera has moved on
Waiting for a taste

Fig. 1.1. Three ducks on a lake.

Note: There is considerable debate surrounding the distinction between lakes and ponds, and no internationally accepted definition of either term currently exists.

Fig. 1. 2.  Extensive testing revealed that swans (a) preferred Freyas and/or (b) were unimpressed with Matthew's approach of flinging whole slices of Vogels at their feet

Fig. 1. 3. While the majority of scholars maintain that Dr Loverdale refused to acknowledge his (then forbidden) attraction to eels, recent theorists have proposed that he merely chose to keep it a private affair.

Fig. 1. 4. Cygnus atratus (not to be confused with Anguilliformes)