Of all the dumb things, I cleaned up my bookmarks, stupidly deleted the one for Movable Type, and then couldn't remember the address until I decided to set my mind to it right now. It wasn't so hard after all. I don't know why I didn't do it much earlier. Anyhow, here is part of how I spent the last eight months.

In August, Yann, Emily and I tripped to Christchurch. The Cupcake Parlour was one of our first stops.

I went to Napier in September with me pa and ma. We trawled op-shops. Here is a mannequin that reminded me of a Marcel Marlier illustration.

I made my first trek up Mount Victoria in October, after eight years of living in Wellington. Here we are at the summit, Erin, me and Blair.

I finally finished my lampshade in November. Look at how happy I am!

Emily, Yann and I celebrated our fourth Christmas in the flat together.

I turned 33 in the new year, and Emily made me this beautiful cake.

Also in January, I was privileged to attend the beautiful wedding of Kate and Wei.

And then, in February, our flat headed down south to the Marlborough Wine Festival. (Horrible sunburn not pictured.)

In March, we farewelled Emily to Auckland. Among countless other things, we miss the fringe benefits of her job. So I have started to bake again.

Just before Easter, I celebrated Passover with some friends. Here is my Seder plate, with beitzah, charoset, matzo and karpas. This was my first Easter in Wellington, and the most meaningful in recent years.

Salada crackers are crisp and flaky, lightly salted and packaged smartly in a Smurf-blue box.

The best thing about these crackers is that they are perforated, which allows me to very neatly break each large square up into four further little squares. It gives me much satisfaction being able to do this with minimal mess and crumbs.

Not surprisingly, Salada crackers are excellent with cheese. Marmite and crunchy peanut butter (separately) are next.

Still feeling rather sick and woeful, but as I haven't gotten worse since Wednesday, I guess I don't have the piggy flu after all. I was, anyway, well enough to get to the last glass class of the term. There was still so much left to do on my shade that I don't think I could have finished it even if I'd been feeling 100%.

While unpacking our projects, I got talking to one of the advanced students, Gill, and she offered to give me a ride if I want to come back for the next two terms. I hate to leave the shade unfinished, and I'm enjoying stained glass much, much more than expected. I guess I may as well take advantage of low-fee community classes now, whatever the government decides to do next year.

Okay, lampshade stuff...

Here, I am having more soldering fun joining the green and orange pieces together for the lamp skirt. The flux is oily and the fumes are awful, but the magpie in me finds it difficult to resist touching the beautiful shining balls of hot solder rolling off the iron onto the newspaper. I burn my fingertips several times during the class, but pride keeps me from yelping out with pain.

With all ten sets of the skirt pieces finally soldered, I prepare to attach the spider to the main part of the shade. Procuring the spider has been tricky. I was going to have to go all the way out to Pukerua Bay again to get one from Olaf, but fortunately found a place in Newtown that could order one for me. It then took several phone calls during work time to confirm I could have one in time for class, causing curious co-workers to send emails: "What are you ordering a spider for? And why do you have to have one by Wednesday?", except that they used about six extra question and exclamation marks. I work with some very excitable folks.

I need to apply patches of solder on to the ends of the spider's five spokes, so I can then solder the whole thing on to the shade. The spokes are smooth metal and the solder refuses to attach, even when Greg shows me how to roughen the spokes up a bit with some random tool I do not know the name of. In the end we resort to using a different type of flux, which is more corrosive and more spluttery, but helps the solder attach a lot better. Then at last I solder the spider to the shade. Here, badly framed, but looking yet another step closer to a real lampshade.

This is as far as I get by the end of the class. I chose to bring all my stuff home with me for safe-keeping and more photo opportunities. Here, witness up close, my stellar soldering skillz:

And, also, one of many burn injuries from the night, when I accidentally pressed one of the hot spokes of the spider against my arm. It didn't hurt for long, and now only resembles a soy sauce stain.

This is the end of my first eight weeks with stained glass. I expected to enjoy myself, but am surprised at just how much I actually loved it. This has to be the only community class I've attended where I looked forward to every single class (which says a lot, it having been a winter term and all). I especially liked the project-based aspect of the course, being able to work at something big and challenging, achieving a bit more every week, and seeing results without the bother of homework and mid-week practicing required in language classes.

Stay tuned for more stained-glass adventures, kids.

Wednesday is my favourite day of the working week, but I didn't go in today because I have a very sore throat and some general snuffliness. I'm sure it isn't the beginnings of swine flu or anything, but I notice people are rather more tetchy these days towards anyone who so much as sniffs or coughs. Besides, it's my last glass class tonight and I need to be well enough to go.

I had plans to work on my assignment, now three days overdue, but couldn't muster up the energy. Instead I drifted round the apartment, looked at the fish, took a photo of my scarf, ate some bread, and watched about two minutes of MASH, then retired to bed for more aimless drifting on Wikipedia and Flickr.

By courtesy of $27 Grabaseat fares, I recently got to trip up to Auckland with the flatties, which coincided happily with the Simon and Garfunkel concert I was going to with Rachael and our pa. Here are a couple of videos snaffled off others on YouTube, as a picture paints a thousand words, etc.

This is the wonderful Clooney where we ate on Friday night.

A dining experience that was, for me at least, right up there with Tetsuya's two summers ago. We were well looked after by head chef Des Harris, who is lovely and so humble for his astounding talent. Two especially amazing dishes were the ostrich carpaccio (thoughtfully created, melting and beautiful) and the citrus bombe glace (sharp, cold, sweet, clever). All splendid.

And this was the second highlight of the concert. My favourite S&G song, Paul Simon's microphone failing, the crowd coming to the rescue, making it all far more memorable than if everything had gone like clockwork.

After this, Paul said, "That was really cool. I'll never forget that", and Art, "That's the nicest thing an audience has ever done for us".

But the first and ultimate highlight of the concert - and the whole weekend - was having the privilege to be with my father when he saw Simon and Garfunkel live in concert for the first time. He has loved them since always, Rachael and I grew up on their music and later learned to play their songs on the guitar and piano, so it was really very moving and quite indescribable to watch him watch them.

Awesome-o weekend.