The Book of Ashes

Down in Queenstown. 2:21AM

So I'm down in Queenstown now. It snowed last night, a medium dusting, covering all the hill tops with a sprinkling of icing sugar. Its just started raining again, maybe snowing on the hill tops. Queenstown is beautiful. Its also colder. We went skiing yesterday on the Remarkables. Its not a hard ski field so I wasn't too challenged. I even managed to ski the first run backwards which is a first for me.

So my previous week was busy. Lots of work to get done before I headed off. As per usual the work began to pile up on my desk just before leaving. I managed to get through much of it but not all. Then finally it was over. Friday morning we headed down to the ferry and were off. Around 12:30 we arrived in Picton, picked up our rental car and headed off down south. We spent the day driving, me doing 6 hours, Tom doing 3. Our rental was a Toyota Camry which was pretty nice to drive. We arrived in Dunners to the usual welcome of rain around 10pm. It was then off to a pub called refill to catch up with Eddie and have a few drinks. We finally retired around 1pm and fell straight asleep.

Saturday I spent showing Bonnie round Dunedin. We visited the gardens, the uni, walked through town, drove out to the beach at Aromoana and then drove round to St Clairs and St Kilders. It was a pretty nice day but by the end of it I got a headache, I think from being deyhdrated which was pretty suck. It stayed with me throughout the night even though I tried to drink it away. But that was just the start of my bad luck. First my batteries in my camera went dead (a portent of things to come) and since I had a headache I'd forgotten to get the spares. Mum went home to get them then my cell phone also went dead. We got in touch with mum and she brought my spare batteries back but then the camera died. I couldn't get anything out of it, not with 4 different sets of batteries nor two different media cards. It had finally given up the ghost. So my precious camera is dead. I don't know if it can be repaired or will be cheaper to replace. But now I can't take any more photos.

Sunday was a day for dead people to walk. Tom & Eddie were wasted from the excellent night before. Bonnie and I went driving up to Baldwin street then to the lookout while they slept it off. Eddies party had gone pretty well even with both our parents there who are not really on good speaking terms. Later that day we drove through to Alex and checked out the sights there before heading on to Queenstown. There we slept early in anticipation of a good days skiing.

Now its raining in Queenstown and we're looking to go check out some vineyards. Bonnie wants to drink. We might also go for a drive through Queenstown to check out the tourist shops. Tomorrow is the big drive back. Then its crappy old work again