Sailing

Just been sailing for the first time in a couple of years or so. Went out on my friend James's Sunburst (though his doesn't have a spinnaker). It was very calm this morning, though with 40 knot gales forecast for this evening. As we were launching, the wind started picking up and everybody else was coming back in. We had a bloody good run though; timed it just right. The wind kept on increasing all the time we were out, and heading into the wind the swell tended to knock our bow off the wind but that was no biggie. We tacked halfway up Evan's Bay a couple of times and had a couple of brilliant broad reaches back down, planing on the waves with the boat humming. The gusts got up to 15-20 knots probably. Absolutely brilliant.

Even though it'd been a while, I found I had no problems at the tiller. A gust would come and I'd luff up automatically, without hving to think about it. I feel a bloody good summer coming on.

Film society

Just been to see Fassbinder's The third generation at the film society. I really enjoyed it, especially the soundtrack, which was chaotic to say the least. There were some brilliant visuals as well, such as the bank robbers and the gun-toting carnival clowns. Very nice.

Something in Chch to go to

My friend Scott has got a show on at the Brooke Gifford Gallery in Christchurch at the moment. Well worth checking out if you're down that way.

Doctor Who

I've just had a somewhat self-indulgent Doctor Who frenzy, watching last year's series over a period of 24 hours. I'd forgotten how good some of them were.

The big finale of this year's season is on Thursday. I've missed a whole lot of the episodes, so will have to do something similar when the DVDs come out.

Full on

Just had a big day. Well, a very full on week. Very full on. I've done a few things over the last wee while regardless, but I don't think I'm going to post them just yet. Got to have a few surprises for people coming to my show in December after all.

I'm pretty much all ready for it. Just got to get a couple of things framed. Even got invites printed, and there's still two months to go. Got to be happy about that. I want to do a lot more stuff so I've got a good range to choose from for the final line up.

The weekend

Spent the weekend racing around the lower North Island and drinking too much. We went to Peter Ireland's opening at Thermostat at Friday, and then to a house warming at the Tylee Cottage on Saturday. We stayed in a totally ludicrous room.

Olmec writing

See here.

Suitably humble

And another

And some more