Perfect endings...

Yet another day where the lighting director turned the dial up to 12.

As a welcome distraction from the freelance article I was trying to write, the Animator's nephew (and godson) Hayden and his English GF Sam dropped by. Currently living in Sydney, the couple are on a fleeting visit home. We sat in the garden, rolled over to have our tummies tickled by the sun and caught up on the last few years of gossip and news.

Later, there was a walk with this wee fellow, a leisurely dinner and a glass of divine Martinborough pinot noir. Wherever you are, hope your Easter weekend was as blissful as mine...

Easter weekend

This long weekend hasn't been dripping with showreel moments; we both have too much work to be able to stray too far from our laptops.

Instead, we have been snug at home with an abundant supply of hot cross buns, red wine and sunshine. Stuff has been achieved, words written, characters animated, admin completed. I am one of those odd people who is made irrationally happy by such things.

Random scenes from the weekend include:

- this fabulous twist on traditional ratatouille (two tablespoons of honey, anyone?)

- a trip to the Sunday farmer's market for the first pears and feijoas of the season

- and hours spent playing 'fetch the pine cone' with this furry chap who makes my heart expand everytime he looks at me.

A very Good Friday

The weather forecast for Easter weekend was for rain, wind and cold. So my expectations weren't exactly hovering around the deep end of the pool.

Imagine our surprise then when we awoke to this bonza day. There was nothing for it but to call our friend Donna and head out to the Makara coast where Bristol and Donna's lovely woofer Billie enjoyed a play date while the two-legged participants indulged in a grand old gossip and coffee and cake at the charmingly down-at-heel cafe.

Later there was a long overdue run and some work. Another sunny day, another happiness dance...

Pirate love

The Pirates! Band of Misfits (also known as The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists if you're in the UK market), the stop-motion feature film the Animator worked on in Bristol, opened today in New Zealand.

We were first in line to see it and I am now drunk on sweet Pirate love. It blew my mind in the first few minutes and thereafter kept pounding the fragments into smithereens.

I tried to take a photo of the Animator's name in the credits (under Previs VFX, since you asked), but I got too excited and they were scrolling too quickly. I think his name is at the top of the screen on the right-hand side.

To make up for being so slow with my trigger finger, here's an official poster of the film.

Yes, I am in danger of becoming a broken record but you HAVE to see this. If you have room for only one movie this month, make it Pirates!. I am also not ashamed to say that I am ever so proud of that clever husband of mine...

Email of the week

Yesterday, while trying to make the large hand of the clock move faster, I was trawling through my LinkedIn account, seeing who I could annoy with a 'please join my network' type email.

Anyway, I found a few victims, including Lindsay Dawson, one of NZ's most amazing magazine editors who I started my feature writing career with way back when I first returned from London.

Anyway, Lindsay emailed me to say gidday and (swoon): "...glad to see you're still writing, you were always so good at it!" Holy crap! As well as being possibly the nicest woman in journalism, Lindsay is the high priestess of magazine publishing, the founder of landmark glossy mags NEXT and GRACE, both of whom I have written for (in fact, one of my proudest career moments was having a six page feature in the first ever issue of GRACE, about the boys from the NZ Ballet company commissioned, of course, by Lindsay). To have this woman say my writing was good was like winning the journalism lottery.

Sorry if that sounds like hubris, but WOW! I was so excited I had to have a pee.

Apols for the rubbish reproduction of the email below...

A calorific cuddle

If, like me, you're not religious then Easter means two glorious days off work and a generous dusting of subcutaneous fat.

I'm off to a good start with this haul from today's Easter Egg hunt at work, which was chased with boxes of hot cross buns and more chocolate.

Thankfully, I managed a run at lunchtime but the words 'too', 'little' and 'late' should probably be inserted at this point.

Blooming marvellous

A few months ago this old tub was barren. Today it's full of lush herb action.

The Animator is to be congratulated.

Now Jono, our long suffering sparky, has finished wiring the garden, it'll be easy to pop outside to snip a few herbs even when it's dark at 5.00pm.

And please don't email to say the coriander looks a bit feral; it shall be ripped out and used in a Thai fish curry this weekend.