This is half-pie.

So Tuesday was Rebecca’s birthday, and being one of those big ticket ones (like mine was recently) we had to do something special. I had planned to go to work in the morning, pretending like nothing was happening, and then I’d turn up at lunchtime, in synchrony with Rebecca’s parents (who were to take care of the children), and sweep her away into town. But this was perhaps taking a bit of a punt, especially as it turned out that both kids had heavy colds and were home from school. No fun being stuck at home on your birthday with two sick kids, right? So I took the morning off too.

About mid-afternoon, after lunch at home with the family, we took the bus into town, checking into Ohtel, a small but quirky luxury hotel. We got the top floor suite! But more on that later.

We had a bit of a look around town before coming back to get ready for dinner: Martin Bosley’s.

We’d been advised to take the dégustation menu, and this advice was good. Not only were we relieved from the chore of actually having to choose for ourselves, we could be sure of having the best of everything. And we did. I think it may have been the best restaurant meal I’ve ever had in my life. I’d thoroughly recommend it for that big personal occasion:

• elaborate and intricate dishes of surprising and complex tastes: check!
• beautiful outlook across water to the city: check!
• molecular gastronomy: check!
• fittingly expensive: check!
• annoying expense-account fuck-wits on the next table: check!

OK, so the latter point was the worst the restaurant had to offer, and that’s really no different from lots of other places. It is, without doubt, the best restaurant in Wellington. Book ahead. NOW.

But back to Ohtel. After we checked out I was all set to bag the place, but I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m better to list my small irritations in an email to them, rather than here (these are all irritations that one would forgive if the place were a little cheaper, and all very easily fixed). At the distance of a couple days we can more properly appreciate the things about the place we really liked. And like it we did. Good things about our Ohtel room:

• the interior design: some amalgam of 1950’s and kiwiana lite, classy and warm. We felt good in there.
• the location, and as a by-product of that, the outlook over Waitangi Park; open and inviting.
• the bathroom: big, and open to the rest of the room, which was very interesting.
• the bath: free-standing and just the right size.

So Ohtel is definitely another local place for the list of Places To Go To Reconnect With One’s Loved One In The Absence Of Distractions (others have suggested to me that the Museum Hotel is also pretty good place for this sort of thing). Check it out.

And, after all that, did Rebecca enjoy her birthday? Yes. (Phewf!) And Sweet Mother’s Kitchen for breakfast the following day was the crowning glory. We love that place.

The time-honoured bullet post:

• Where’s the snow? The extremes of Wellington weather tend only to the wind, which is a bit dull, frankly.
• Wagamama has opened here. Should I care? I thought I did, but now I’m not so sure. Shouldn’t I be supporting the local boys and girls? But we’ll be sure to go along at some point.
• The spore creature creator does not work on my two-year-old MacBook. Bah!
• I love being demo’ed skunk-works iPhone apps. I bet there’s heaps of these in the woodwork too. July will be an interesting month. And most of them will work on my iPod Touch.
• Speaking of the iPhone, I’m still not sure. Local gadget über-geek Brenda‘s chosen phone (the new, and rather astonishing SonyEricsson C905) seems a little too bulky for me, but its little brother, the C902, seems just the thing. So I’ve created a little Google spreadsheet to compare the various options out there:

• The biggest downside of the iPhone for me is the crap camera. From what I can see it’s not any better than the camera in my present phone, the k750i. There’s heaps of better cameraphones now.

Also, I am a nerd. But you knew that.

So I have this list, mostly to convince myself. The reasons for are legion; the reasons against I need to remind myself of. I’ll share them, just in case they’re useful for you, too.

1. My current phone is OK – actually, it’s quite good and small, and as a phone is excellent.
2. I have a perfectly cool iPod Touch – it does everything that the iPhone does (well, except for the phone bit… oh, and the GPS stuff… and the pervasive net connection… STOP!).
3. I’ve just re-signed to Vodafone on my existing plan – so I’d have to break the plan, causing a penalty, to take up any potential special iPhone plan.
4. It’s expensive – New Zealand always gets reamed on the relative prices of gadgets, regardless of prices overseas.
5. The iPhone camera is crap – 2 megapixel? PAH! I have my eye on a phone with 5 megapixels.
6. They’re going to be so popular soon that it’ll be more of a statement NOT to have one – so I can be a rebel without spending a cent.
7. Vodafone would take my firstborn to cover the data charges – or if I’m lucky, just a few pints of blood.
8. the new iPhone has a built in GPS chip – so THEY would be able to track my every move, and the black helicopters behind the Orongorongos would be able to sweep in at any moment.
9. All the networked iPhones will collectively host an emergent AI – which will beam brain-scrambling rays into the brains of users.
10. Making them faceless members of Steve Jobs’ zombie horde – shambling around the streets searching for free wi-fi access points.
11. On the plus side – I suppose the zombie hordes will target Redmond first.
12. Giving me enough time to train as a ninja – clad in tin foil, to SAVE THE WORLD!

So as you can see, lots of good reasons for not buying an iPhone.

Especially when you can achieve so much!

More to get, yet. I rather like that purple jump-suit.

I didn’t know I needed it… but… I’ve signed up for yet another website this evening (thanks bsag!). I think this one looks quite good, actually.

It’s Blippr, a site that takes the Twitter approach to reviews. You get to make little 160 character media reviews; these are then are shared through the now-customary social networking approach: friends, followers, blipstreams, tags, comments etc etc. Plus some unobtrusive “Buy” links of course.

I’ve tried to do proper reviews here for the things I’ve been reading/viewing/listening to, but never got around to it for most things. Maybe 160 character blipverts will be easier.

The cool stuff comes, I think/hope, when they’re able to suggest things I might like based on people similar to me etc etc. OK, so I know the idea’s not super-fresh, with many other sites/Facebook apps doing similar things, but Blippr seems to make it easier. I think it’s got legs.

While I’d usually be hyper enthusiastic and recommend everyone sign-up IMMEDIATELY, the last time I did that (it was for Pownce) it turned out to be a bit of a dud. But I do have three invites for the closed Beta (that’s music for some…). Let me know.

Rosa turned five today. Tomorrow she goes to school. Why, it seemed like yesterday etc etc. You’ve heard it before.

Anyway, at her last Playcentre session this morning she had a few visitors: her elder sister, and a couple of slightly older friends who had started school themselves in recent weeks. It’s nice that her friends, who had already gone through this, could come and acknowledge her transition to school. Not that they would have thought of it like that – for them it was a good chance for a morning off, in a much loved and comfortable environment.

Not that school won’t be either of those things – Rosa’s had a couple half days there already; she’s been going to meet her sister after school for years now; and she knows her teacher. She’s so ready for it: she’s driven to make letters and decipher numbers; and ostentatiously feigns the reading of books.

I’m not sure if we are ready though. Like with Bella, we’re left a little bereft. And now Rosa, our last baby.

Oh well. I guess this is when I’m supposed to have one of those photos of the tiny wee girl, with her brand-new back pack on, walking to school, away from the camera. But perhaps better would be the same, but hand in hand with her big sister, laughing and shouting some nonsensical rhyme… probably the truer portrayal.

You can imagine.

That’s my favourite corner of the kitchen, right there.

The machine was a wedding present, a Brasilia Club, so it’s seen good service (and L’Affare, from whom it was purchased, have replaced the seals for us just twice in over twelve years). But the grinder is new from last week, and is the thing I am pleased with.

The old grinder, a previous birthday present, wasn’t grinding finely enough. We have a coffee über-geek in the family, and he advised that the Rancilio Rocky was the way to go. Of course, he’s long since upgraded his to a semi-commercial Mazzer (and so I can always be pleased that there is someone else who is much more of a nerd for coffee than I am). I can’t bear the thought of old coffee going stale in in those doser things, so we got the doserless model from Ripe in the Hutt.

And so in the last week I’ve discovered I can now make nicer shots using about 50% fewer beans than ever (although by “fewer beans” I’m using 18g – oh yes, I’m now rather anally weighing the beans – which is apparently at the upper end of the double-shot range). I now know what a blonde shot looks like. And I’ve had to purchase a new “coffee squasher” (as Rosa calls it) in an attempt to stop the new coffee-geek bugbear of channelling.

I’ve also discovered that while it is possible to have three very strong shots in close proximity, it does mean that sleep, when it comes, is troubled with strange dreams and bouts of partial wakefulness.

Living is learning, isn’t it.

So this very phallic object is one of the things I am very pleased to have entered the roster of my possessions on the recent occasion of my 40th.

For some months now I have been disturbed by an odd crunching noise as I’ve put on my iPod headphones.

It turns out that one of the signs of the onset of male senescence is the appearance of excess hair. And there it was, tufting away out of my ears and getting in the way of the music. If it wasn’t bad enough at puberty, apparently it starts all over again in new places, like ears and noses.

So I asked the girls to get me a trimmer for my birthday. At least that would stop Bella from grabbing an ear tuft and tugging on it while laughing uproariously at her father’s decrepitude.

The trimmer does eyebrows too. But my eyebrows will remain strictly off limits. One of my fondly held, although somewhat quixotic, ambitions is to grow eyebrows rivaling those of Hamish MacEwan‘s.

Thirty-six years ago Mr Henaghan, my mother’s dentist and possessor of an impressive yet not quite MacEwanite pair (and dispenser of liquid mercury which I lost when I put it in my pocket to take home), told me the secret to bushy eyebrows is “lots of gravy”.

I’ve been working on it ever since.

Work, work, plot & scheme, read, sleep.

In the meantime I’ll leave you with a photo from last weekend:

It was a fairly full on, and great time. But more on that later.

You know how you’re always told that no matter what the situation, there’s always someone worse off than you? That huge area under the bell curve of human experience means it’s true too. (As it is in many similar comparisons: substitute out “worse off” for, variously, things like “uglier”; “richer”; “more intelligent”; “bat-shit crazier”; etc. as per personal preference. This can be, or not, a comforting thought.)

Nowhere is this more true than at the hospital. And demonstrated in this conversation:

Bloke 1: Oooh, did she hurt her hand?
Bloke 2: No, that’s just where the shunt goes for the IV antibiotic. She’s got a bit of an infection. [Pause.] And yours?
Bloke 1 [looks down at the baby cradled in his arms]: Oh, we’re off to Auckland next week for heart surgery.