i disagree with fraser here... i would absolutely advertise invercargill as a truly wonderful place to spend your holidays. maybe not if you are an average joe, in that case you can go to branson or maybe myrtle beach. but if you want a truly wonderful holiday, invercargill's the place. with invers as our home base, we spent time in bluff, home of fred and the late myrtle's paua shell house, site of my very first jimmy's pie, and overall lovely wee town. we saw a petrified forest, bought cokes in a church, and spent a night in curio bay with the very wonderful june and murray stratford. it was so beautiful there we almost got married (sorry mom and mrs. k). we saw minnie dean's hat box and henry the tuatara and walked on oreti beach, perhaps on the very spot where craig wells lost his car.
it was, all in all, a truly wonderful holiday destination. mick jagger, it would seem, is the arsehole.

am resting quietly in my room at the Wilson World Hotel & Suites DFW Irving. it is not quite the W Hotel i might have hoped for, but all in all not a bad sleep. it is hot here, i have gotten used to fall and it was somewhat disconcerting to walk off the plane into oppressive heat, especially in late october.

mom's here. shopping can't be far away.

a chill is in the air and i find myself longing for some dilmah tea. i have used my last bag and for three days have had to resort to freaking twinings.

i'm not one to complain about the amount of sex and violence we as a people are exposed to, in fact i am a strong advocate of one's right to turn it off or tune it out if the media offends. however, i am increasingly jarred by the sexual innuendo present in advertising for regular white-bread products. most people are growing numb to women orgasming while washing with herbal essences products, but i have to admit to choking on my milk the first time i saw reebok's "snake bite" ad where two men appear to be engaging in some good old man on man fellatio while on a morning run. this morning i heard an interesting reference to "OPP" on a yahoo.com commercial. now, they could have been talking about the office of pesticide programs or perhaps the oxford psychologist press but i have to tell you that the first thing that sprung into my head upon hearing it was a naughty by nature tune. weird stuff.

and speaking of weird, it's fraser's birthday.

moose had his good dog class tonight. he didn't bite anyone, so we were very proud of that. at the end he even got to run around loose with all the other dogs, and even when they sniffed him, he didn't bite anyone. so that was double good. moose was the only jack russell terrier there, but there was a beagle so he wasn't the only little guy. right now mike is trying to teach him to shake hands. good boy.

a bbc survey which shows that 62% of those surveyed in britain think that the phrase "dot.com" is wearing thin has me a bit worried. i mean, would else could we call it that would be more interesting? it seems a little like becoming tired of hearing your own name. i suppose the good news is that they at least realized that four other things were even worse. all british, of course.

the cruise wasn't bad. institutional type food, embarrassing 80's tunes done by a crap show troupe, but three hours of open bar on my company and time spent with friends evened it out to a decent evening overall. my colleagues were all there with partners and it made me wish, as i sometimes do, that fraser and i didn't live in seperate countries. brought mike, though, and he was game as always.
found out that the aquarium in camden has a dome that changes color depending on the next day's weather forecast. i thought that was pretty much the coolest thing i had ever heard of, imagining people living in tall buildings in center city philly looking down over the delaware river and thinking "hm, looks like rain tomorrow".
then mike told me that the prudential tower does the same thing and something about how boston was more original and paul revere and "one if by land, two if by sea" and i felt kinda deflated, like maybe every big city has a building which provides a weather forecast and i felt a bit revealed as a bumpkin.

tonight my company celebrates its 5th anniversary with a cruise on the fabulous spirit of philadelphia. I don't actually know if it is fabulous as i have never been on it before, in fact this guy seems to have thought it sucked. i guess i will let you know.

i've been seeing a lot of jesus christ lately. on the web, that is. in an unexpected and rather odd move, one of my least favorite activist groups, PETA, has begun an ad campaign in turin, italy, which asserts that jesus was a vegetarian and that if you believe in him, you should be, too. now, my own personal beliefs notwithstanding, i am reasonably certain that no sane person who reads the bible could possibly come to that conclusion. but as the PETA site says, the bible is real hard to understand, and that in thousands of years people have never been able to agree on what it means anyway. but i have the answer. it is my understanding that we have the technology to bring jesus himself here to tell us, once and for all, whether he actually ate fish and other animals.

"I thought home was slack" fraser, oct. 5.

you didn't just think it, honey, home *is* slack. just for example, i want to talk a bit about the time i flew out of the airport in christchurch. i won't even whinge about how my flight was actually booked in reverse, and how much trouble it was to try and re-book a flight on new years eve, 1999, but even *besides* that, once i got a flight sorted out, they were slack.
when i went to the counter to get my tickets, they just handed them over without asking for any identification whatsoever to see if i was actually who i said, no one ever scanned my bags to see if i was carrying a bomb or had a kiwi bird stuffed in my pack, no one ever took my ticket, at any time, before or after takeoff, and there were people on the plane before it took off that weren't even flying, they were just helping other people get their bags up into the overhead. i was so nervous that there was a name-stealing psycho with a kiwi bird set to explode just after liftoff that i could barely get my seatbelt fastened.
although i have to say that seconds later those excellent air nz hostesses came jogging down the aisle with magazines and about three seconds later they came to serve a full breakfast on the half hour flight to wellington, and i was so pleased that i forgot all about the lax security. That's "lax" security. security at LAX is excellent, don't even think of showing up there with an animal in your bags.

i miss my AvantGo...since moving to my new computer i can't get my visor to sync. if you are not using AvantGo i want to suggest it strongly. i can downloads 100 pages of useless knowledge to my handheld in seconds and it gives me interesting reading for when i am stuck in traffic, waiting in line, etc. some of it is even useful, like maps and weekend sections from the newspaper, although i'm not sure i can honestly say i use those much. oh wait, i use it for the weather. now *that* is useful.

just sitting on the floor. pre-bedtime melancholy. i like being alone best of all, but i feel lonely often. my bedtime is 8 minutes past. reckon i better turn in.

as a matter of fact, fraser, there is all them bad g dubya talking put together somewheres. read it here. Is Our Children Learning? : The Case Against George W. Bush

i will admit to past feelings of nausea at the thought of any of the current candidates becoming the next u.s. president, but after tonight's debate i think i may have found my man. i think many americans (and others) will agree that george w. impressed and surprised with some of his views.

BUSH: I want to take one-half of the surplus and dedicate it to Social Security, one-quarter of the surplus for important projects, and I want to send one-quarter of the surplus back to the people who pay the bills.

bush starts in with his very first statement saying something that is extremely meaningful to me, as a person who is dedicated to important projects. although he was just a little bit vague, i think it is clear that he is behind the same important projects as most people are. clearly, he is willing to commit fully one-quarter of the surplus to the success of these projects. can i just say "wow".

LEHRER: All right, three and a half minutes is up. New question.
BUSH: I hope it's about wealthy people.

now, i know that bush doesn't really introduce any new material here, but i like a man who isn't afraid to say what he is thinking. the plan for bush was to stick to what he knows, and clearly here he is just expressing his hope that jim lehrer would ask him about the thing he knows the most about, wealthy people. ballsy move, dub.

BUSH: I guess my answer to that is, the man's running on Mediscare, trying to frighten people in the voting booth. That's just not the way I think, and I that's just not my intentions. That's not my plan.

any man who can say "and i that's just not my intentions" and not burst out laughing has what it takes to lead the united states into the next millenium.

BUSH: Surely we can fight off these laws that will encourage doctors -- to allow doctors to take the lives of our seniors.

absolutely! i didn't even realise this was up in the air, but here's something i think we can all get behind bush on. surely no one wants to allow (and especially not encourage) doctors to take the lives of seniors. i hadn't even recognized this as a problem, and i think governor bush for bringing it to our attention. let's keep those seniors around!

BUSH: (talking about a public school in Texas) ...It's a school full of so-called at-risk children. It's how we, unfortunately, label certain children. It means basically they can't learn.

i'm glad someone finally has the courage to take a stand here. i think we are all tired of our tax dollars going to support children who cannot learn. those children should not be going to school at all. too bad bush is against late-term abortion or maybe we could get rid of them altogether.

BUSH: Well, I've been standing up to big Hollywood, big trial lawyers -- what was the question? It was about emergencies, wasn't it?

hollywood, trial lawyer, emergencies, who cares? what's important is that bush talked about what *he* wanted to talk about. we need someone in office who won't let some pansy reporter make him look foolish by asking him questions he knows nothing about. way to take control of the debate, governor bush.

in closing, i do want to encourage everyone, especially my parents, to watch the remaining two debates and decide for yourself whether george w. bush is a man you would want to have as your next (rich, white, christian, with children) president. i am neither desirous not qualified to decide for you, although i am always available to provide my opinion. read it here, fresh daily.

spent a second day without the internet today! how did we ever work without it? felt completely useless, i actually had to jump in my car and go out into the city to check out training sites in person. but on the bright side, had a lovely lunch at the Sheraton Suites with our wonderful sales manager, Audrey.

had an irritated moment when i missed a call from fraser. had to run into an office for two seconds but didn 't want to look like an idiot carrying around a phone everywhere i went. left it on the seat of my car and when i got back -- flashing voicemail light. damn! those calls are precious.

found fabulous source for kiwi food whilst searching for toffee pops. lads in london take heed. marmite can't be far behind.

we have rugby, we just haven't decided to be good at it yet. what we don't have is carlos spencer.

six words.