It's New! It's Improved! It's Grey!

Strange things are afoot at the Circle K...
Yes folks, I finally got around to playing with my template a bit, and now it looks like this.

I highly suspect it to look even more different in a short while.

Please hold the line caller.

Ha ha. Found it.

See post below.
(and for the something New Every Day List, images need to be converted to RGB before the can be added to blogs).

Handbook of highway construction

I've been playing with Google Maps lately when I have a couple of minutes to kill, usually travelling through the American heartland looking for freeway cloverleafs, and other pinnacles of highway design. On reflectio I think there's two reasons I like doing this - Douglas Coupland's Gen X or Microserfs made reference to a book on highway design, and I have this nice small artwork by Danny Landall that is done on a page ripped out of an old highway construction manual.

Here's my favourite freeway find so far - from just outside Phoenix Ar, and if I can find it, the work by Danny.

tra la la la la la la la la

Yesterday was Santa Parade day! What joy!

We bumped into a friend of mine and we stood at the back of the crowd and made cynical remarks about how close some of the floats were getting to the trolley bus wires, so I managed to not be entirely overwhelmed by all the good cheer and random tantrums. But it did make me realise that christmas is alarmingly close.

When I was a kid I'm sure christmas parades were bigger, and shinier, and, well, better (and I used to ride 87 miles to school on horseback with no shoes and only gravel for breakfast).

Deck the halls...

On Friday night we mixed it with the cool (young) crowd, at Indigo for soulful songstress Hollie Smith. Opening act was Fat Freddy's Dallas, doing a largely acoustic set. Then on to Hollie Smith, and her 'vey own band' for a solid followup performance to her somewhat brief Fly My Pretties appearance.

It was nice - good songs, stunning voice, cool atmosphere. I quite like her EP, but it comes across as muted and overmixed against the live version, but I guess that's not uncommon.

And I didn't even say'Indigo stole my baby' once!
How's that for mature?

Seize the day (and the wine)

So I'm sitting in Mr Bun eating a chicken and avocado on rye sandwich (result of 5 minute health kick due to watching Supersize Me last night), sitting at a bench that looks out on that wee street outside Askew.

A car pulls up, turning right onto the bigger street with the sushi place on it, and the passengers are all pretty tough looking. The car's there for a bit, which strikes me as strange, as there are no cars on the other st for it to wait for.

Then a woman gets out, walks over the pavement, and picks up a case of wine that is being transferred between courier van and the wine shop on the corner.

Oh the drama - car takes off, wine shop guy shouting, runs after car, bystanders get involved, but I think the car gets away.

Part of me is outraged, that this goes on in central Wellington, and that there aren't police on every corner with guns, like in London.

But a part of me is also going good on them for seizing the opportunity. Is this bad?

Courting Danger

I went to court today. Well, it wasn't court proper - it was the small claims tribunal. A friend was taking a former client to task over a contract breach, and I was there as a mute support person. I thought this would have been a lot more fun, and had devised a series of physical communications actions that would mean I could communicate vital information and shape the outcome without being un-mute. Kind of like baseball players. Or mimes.

But in reality it wasn't so exciting. Very interesting, but not what I'd describe as fun. It kind of made me want to be a lawyer, which really freaked me out.

All part of life's rich tapestry really.

Dynamite

I may just well be the last person in the world to see this, but watched Napoleon Dynamite for the first time the other night. I enjoyed it from that quirky low-budget-hip-young-filmmaker makes good perspective, and felt some connection to the central characters, but on the whole wasn't as blown away as I expected to be by it.