The Eagle has Landed*

*I am the Eagle!

Today's post is brought to you by Me in Wellington. I got paid on Wednesday and decided that Wellington (henceforth abbreviated to Welly) was a good a place as any to spend the weekend. I love Welly. I moved back to Christchurch about 8 months ago and this is the first time I've been back to Welly (henceforth abbreviated to W) since. Travelling to W always feels like coming home - there's a scene in The Bone People where Kere arrives at her old holiday home, runs down to the beach, and spins around with her arms out shouting that she's back. This is kind of what I feel like doing every time I deplane in W Airport, except I don't because a) I would look mad and b) she shouted in Maori, and I don't know any Maori except the colours and numbers.

Weather is crap, though. Christchurch has gotten all sunny and WOO SPRING BREAK GET YOUR TULIPS OUT! but W is still hungover from winter. It was a good flight, though - the head cabin crew member, or whatever the fuck it is politically correct to call air hostesses these days, started off with "...Pacific Blue have some gorgeous cabin crew. Unfortunately none of them could be with us today, but the ones we have are fairly competent" and ended with "Gentlemen, please return your wives to the upright position for landing."

So far Miley Cyrus, Hi 5 and Prince are the frontrunners for Onesie Dance Music.

Today I would like to do a Blog Thing (I refuse to call them memes as it is INCORRECT TERMINOLOGY) from Andrea, who didn't tag me but is used to my self-tagging ways. Also I'm pretty sure I've done this particular Blog Thing before. Oh well. Anyway, the idea is that you name 7 of your personal traits, and here are my 7:

1) I adore going to the movies and find the whole business incredibly exciting. The previews! The seating! The lights! The dimming of the lights! The fact that I have just spilt half my popcorn on the floor! The lights! The seating!

2) Despite having no debts or dependants, I have a $10,000 life insurance policy. This is for one reason, and one reason only: I want fireworks at my funeral. My entire family are aware of this, and have agreed to honour my wishes. My funeral is going to be bangin'. You'll need to book well in advance.

3) I have more personality traits in common with my dog than I do with my mother or sister. They acknowledge this.

4) I feel that had I been born male and 2000 years ago, I would have made an excellent military leader, a la Alexander the Great.

5) I really like the name Alexander. Should I ever spawn a child, it will be called Alexander Tarquin, unless it is a girl child. Then it will be called something else, like Bijou or Bucket or Sparrow, which I notice is what Ashlee Simpson has called her latest. If the child's father is called Alexander, maybe then I will call the child Max or Zach or one of those other punchy one-syllable names (not Kane or Whit, though).

6) I am a really crap dancer. You will see this when Onesie Dance is released. Seriously, though, I am not a very good dancer at all. It is one area in which I never fail to fail.

7) I am remarkably clued up about politics - I read the newspaper, news websites, political columnists and opinion pieces. Everyone who knows this is really, really surprised.


And oh yeah for the two or three people who might be interested, here is a breakdown of my amazing NetHack game:

Samurai class, but not wielding two swords 'cause I can't figure out how to do that. So with the yumi as my alternate weapon.
Bought a magic whistle, polished silver shield (best thing ever: wands of lightening/magic missile and frost/fire blasts bounce off it) and long sword early on. Got pretty lucky with the shop inventory.
Found the Oracle on lvl 6: dipped for Excalibur in all the fountains. Got it. Happy chappy.
Went back up a couple of levels then down into the Gnomish Mines, exp lvl 7: Hachi (my dog) got killed on first level of mines. Was not happy chappy; avenged Hachi's death by killing everything, which to be fair I would've done anyway. Went down to the Mine Town level then got bored and came back up.
Made up for not having the luckstone from the mines by identifying all my gems and throwing the valuable ones at a white unicorn (lawful alignment) who was hanging about on the first Sokoban level. Did not do Sokoban as cba.
Picked up an egg which hatched into a tame soldier ant, who I called Anthony. Also tamed a little dog which was killed pretty much straight away, before I even got around to naming him. Anthony was tough, though.
Found teleporter to quest level on lvl 12 - went through with Anthony but was only exp lvl 11 and needed to be 14 to do quest, so went back into main dungeon and kept descending.
Got lucky, found a graveyard (ate wight corpses, which put you up an experience level) and bought a potion of experience. Also found a wand of death, which was pretty freakin' sweet.
Found a barracks on the next level down and got up to lvl 15 by killing everything that moved. Picked up tons of food in the barracks, also lots of gold, which I used to buy an amulet of ESP so I didn't have to wear a towel on my head all the time.
Went back into the quest level, Anthony in tow - accepted the quest, fought down through 2 levels to reach the bottom level of the quest. Which was where I got killed by a kunoichi. Was doing fine until they read a spell of create monster, and then I was surrounded by bugbears and that kind of thing. Wished I had bothered learning how to use two swords. Prayed but this did not help as I'd recently prayed to get out of being a werewolf.

Anthony survived and is, as far as I know, still hanging about the bottom quest level.