My web time at the moment is particularly cursory - no inane surfing for me! Being around my mother makes me achieve household and personal things, not through guilt but because she has such a vague, fluffy *determinedness*. She always seems slightly confused and at the same time on some kind of important, albeit slow-moving, mission that I feel I have to be a part of. She's so funny.

One of the many things to be thrilled about in New Zealand: repeats of Fat Albert on the Cartoon Network. Hey hey hey! (By the way, it seems somehow *wrong* that NZ has a Cartoon Network! When I left four years ago there were five public channels and three Sky channels - now the programme guide goes up to 100 and I am able to switch back and forth between E!, classic music videos and ad-free film noir on MGM. God, in 1989 we got our *third* public channel and it was this giant deal. I remember it distinctly. My entire childhood was spent switching between One and Two. And I always found something to watch in the one or two hours I had allotted to me per day... does that seem draconian to my US readers, a time limit on telly? I'm inclined toward it for my own kids, if I ever have any. And bedtime at 7pm sharp. I'm such an old fart in disguise, aren't I?)

We went to Piha yesterday (nearly running out of petrol, but that's another story of retardedness with which I won't bore you) and I was once again bowled over by how glorious this place looks. Brent calls the bush prehistoric-looking, dense with giant ferns and strange plants. He's right, but I don't find it scary - we don't have anything that bites! Coming down the clifftop road to the beach the view is utterly magnificent, and almost completely unspoiled. Twenty minutes from my mother's nice little suburb there's *this*. Hard to fathom.

Alex just moved and says he finds his blog one of the few elements of continuity. I know what he means!