Prodigal

Great Barrier Island. Has mobile phone reception in one or two spots. One shop. Place of great natural beauty. Getting there by ferry takes a good four hours. And that's where my Beloved Son was for a week.
It's good to have him home. He had a blast; they went sea-kayaking and did two overnight stays, there was rock-climbing, sailing - he got sunburn on his hands. The food was apparently not wonderful. I made apple crumble for pudding. Dad, Beloved Daughter and I each had a slice with cream and he inhaled the rest.

Harry Potter and the Thoughtful Mother

So, HP and the DH.
It was an illuminating experience; pun intended. Mainly 'cause I attended it in company of a large chunk of the school my kids go to, ungrammatically, meaning I wasn't quite prepared for the proportions of the cheer that went up when Harry Got His Kit Off. Well, most of it. No cruelty to horses was involved, though I did feel very sorry for the camera crew. You can imagine my perplexion some moments later when Ron's face swam (ha! - I see what I did there!) into view and the cheers were twice as loud. He was fully clothed at the time. It may be a New Zealand thing; but the female populace is very much Team Ron. I will not go into the noises that ensued when Harry and Hermione went all Ring-Galadriel-fanfic on us.
Things I Might Not Have Heard From A More Mature Audience.
"Voldemort is Michael Jackson. Unnaturally pale, no nose, displays an unhealthy interest in teenage boys. "
"OMG, is that actually how they actually dance in actual England?"
Sob. SOB, SOB, SOB, SOB (Dobby died. Sorry if that's a spoiler)
"That'd be a WICKED tattoo, I'm getting it Monday" (torn between agreeing and alerting police since subject is definitely no older than14).
Effects are WICKED (I quote). I would certainly agree, especially on the snake front. Apparently our shrieks were heard in the next cinema; admittedly we do have on our side the Shriek Queen. According to my Beloved Son, her spider scream  (school camp)  travelled two mountains. In winter.
I will say an awed word for the animation on the retelling of the Three Brothers, from the Tales of Beadle the Bard.  If you had wandered into the cinema in the middle of that sequence you would not have known where you were. They were surreal, beautiful, terrifying and succint.
What occupies my mind now is the level of giggling that went with the ten-inch wand line.
Movie good, though.

Cricked necks and vegetables

From todays’ paper :

"Police have issued a warning for people to keep an eye on their massage therapists' hands after the conduct of a Palmerston North masseur gave them cause for concern."

Can't help but think that following this advice could well lead to a boom market for therapists following an epidemic of cricked necks.

                                                                          

Quote of the week from a developer who shall remain nameless, upon discussion of a uni student who has been doing testing for us and concerning whether he will remain in testing or move to development.

“Because he’s really too clever to stay in testing, you know”

Somebody remember to water me.

                                                                       

The Girly Spoon

Because the money we could spend on fireworks would amount to a display that would have trouble stunning the cat, we have made a family tradition of spending Fireworks Night having supper out in Orewa, followed by a lazing (well, in my case) in the hot pools at Waiwera. We have recently shared round the family flu virus; exams are next week (in Beloved Daughter's case) and the week after (in Beloved Son's case) so swimming is Out Out OUT! Also, the pet restaurant, Sahara, has gone out of business. So, we went to Mayumi, for Japanese supper instead.
Mayumi is tiny and beautiful, like the oyster-shell carvings my parents kept on the mantelpiece. Their food is just as detailed.
But they're catering, tongue-in-cheek, for their Western audience, and my lot caved in and ordered deep-fried ice-cream.
Mayumi has a stunning selection of chopsticks - including baby chopsticks, which are rather like a cross between a plastic icing bag and sock-knitting-needles - and they are all elegant and gorgeous. However, they clearly lack for spoons (and no restaurant owner in the world wants to see the state of his floor after feeding people ice-cream with chopsticks)  and so every spoon in the place was being pressed into service. Dad got a tablespoon, which didn't bother him. Up until Beloved Daughter raised her first spoonful to her mouth, Son and Heir wasn't thinking about it, after that it was...
WHY DID I GET THE GIRLY SPOON?

You're not in the Hundred Acre Wood anymore, Pooh

We have a family passion for Trivial Pursuit; so when we saw the new updated edition on sale for $20 less than we'd seen it before, there was a mad undignified scramble for it - I won - and we read the rules on the way home. Much has changed, much has not. The categories are still there and still the same (although for some reason literature has changed from  brown to purple?) , but there's only one box of questions, and an envelope that has four card-sized gaps. As one card is used for question-and-answer, another is slid into the envelope. When the cards are in the envelope, all you can see is the Topic at the top. So if you land on a Question square, you have to answer the Question corresponding to the colour category, but you can choose the Topic - though there's no clue other than the topic name. This is not as helpful as it sounds. For example, Topic Oz has nothing to do with Australia, and much to do the The Wizard Of.
Thus, I found myself on Purple (art and literature) and selected Topic Elephants.. My 15-year-old Son and Heir enquired gravely whether I knew the name of the deity that is the principal object of worship in the Hindu pantheon. I opened my mouth to say "Ganesh" as he turned the card over, stared at it incredulously, and then fell over laughing. It took us a while to understand why; but it seemed he had glanced at the Pink (entertainment) answer by accident; and that answer was Heffalump.