A long last minute

I didn't get much writing done yesterday. Had to go out op-shopping with my daughter and buying stuff for Easter. Looked in the bargain box at the Salvos for "food" books to release on Sunday and I got a couple - "Reason with Honey", some sort of sweet romance i can leave on the "Reason" shelves, if I can find them, and "Secret Sins", which looks like a candidate for the chocolate section to me. 10c each a pop and then I turned up a copy of Rand's "Run For the Trees", a shocker/thriller which is worth $US25 on the second hand market.

And I found a "Small Business Server 2003" polo shirt, complete with logo. It was all I could do not to rip off my shirt right there in the street and swap them over. Ah, cheap thrills of a nerdly bookseller!

Apart from the prawn paste debacle, I checked out the Officeworks print shop. Deadline for Fed-Exing to St Louis is Tuesday and as it happens Officeworks is open all Easter Weekend bar Good Friday, which is today and I'll need that to get my book finished if I bustagut. They can print up A4 (letter size for you Yanks) copies and bind them up for me. Kind of kludgy, but it will be better than anything I can do on my inkjet and stapler (or chewing gum).

So that's a relief. Anyway, must get into it.

A Good Friday

Trout for dinner tonight. Trout and wok-fried chips and a very nice chardonnay.

And then we took a turn around the block to walk it off. Down to Constitution Avenue, up Anzac Parade, and home again along Blamey Crescent. It's getting colder now, shorts and polo shirt no longer quite enough, and the increasingly early nightfall all but rules out daytime walks.

Very pleasant, all the same. The highlight is when we turn right into Anzac Parade, the grand ceremonial city axis, with the wide avenue leading directly up to the War Memorial crouching like a grey stone lion under the symmetrical cone of Mount Ainslie. Behind us across the lake the two Parliament Houses are brightly illuminated, framed by National Library and High Court. And the footpath beside the memorials is wide enough for us to walk four abreast, little black terrier leading the way.

On the book front, I printed out a draft copy for Kerri, and she made appreciative noises and laughed at the jokes, so that was positive. I've been studying a Lord of the Rings location guide, inserting some brief notes about where the various bits were filmed in relation to our travels. Some can only be reached by helicopter, others are freely accessible.

But most of all I've been remembering the awesome beauty of New Zealand and trying to put it into words. I'll have to work long tomorrow to finish it all off, so I can get a copy to the printer on Sunday.

Pete, contemplating a pleasant working Easter