Yes it's raining. Yes I left my umbrella at work last night. I phoned Greg this morning - he'd offered, last night, to let me hitch a ride into Auckland City this morning, but because of the rain, his job in there had been cancelled, and therefore, so had the offer of the ride, how many, commas, do you think one person, can use, in a sentence? anyway - I asked if he a) had a spare umbrella I could use and b) if he would mind too much delivering it so I wouldn't get saturated on my way to work this morning. He duly arrived, as promised, and delivered a blue telescopic umbrella. As he pulled up at the ferry - because he was nice enough to give me a lift to the jetty rather than catch the bus, I joked "Did you test this umbrella before you came down? does it work?" as I opened the umbrella to see the thing *opened* broken - kind of *almost* inside out and with a few broken spokes to give it a "jaunty" look. At least Greg's day started with a giggle. It wasn't any drier under that umbrella, but at least - to the casual glance of a fellow umbrella'd pedestrian, it appeared as if I had been organised enough to be prepared for the weather. And I'm at work having flashbacks from my last two and a half years. I'm a normal phoneanswering - ezinecreating - answerphonemessengerrecording - cdburning - computercrashing - projectmanagering-projectstuffing - Michelle again. It didn't last long.

I am one happy contractor. I'd forgotten how nice it was to work "on task". It is a rare treat to be able to work on one project with [virtually] no interruptions. Rosie *will* be pleased with all the work Tom and I are getting done for her project. My aim is to have done so much that there's hardly anything for her to do when she gets back from Australia, other than check it flows the way she needs it to. And how glamorous, to have working lunches twice this week, and one lunch on my old boss to finish the week off. Plus, this weekend is another long one - with Friday being Waitangi Day. Clayton was in today. He was happy that he had a whole box full of Big Red Gum and was nice enough to share.

Today was my first day as a Freelance Multimedia/Graphic Designer and I have to say it was a hell of a lot like my last day [Friday] being an employed Multimedia/Graphic Designer - except I didn't have to answer the phone so often - which I truly didn't mind so long as I *knew* I was sposed to answer the phone. I need to make more of a point to get fresh air - that office gets so stuffy, I was exhausted by the time I got home. Auckland's humidity doesn't help, mind you. And, speaking of weather, it POURED this morning. Storm water drains fountaining water fit to lift their grates. The traffic was TERRIBLE. I ended up coming home and waiting until the rain and the madness stopped. Mera reminded me of something that happened early Saturday morning that I'd misplaced in my brain. While we were waiting for our ride outside the Ferry Building at about 1:30am or so [just guessing] a guy ran across the moderately busy, if not fast moving, lanes of traffic - to completely misjudge the speed and distance of the Taxi that hit him. He went up onto the Taxi's bonnet slightly then fell heavily on one arm - made the sound of eggs breaking on concrete - then bounced off and continued running saying to us "it's all right it's all right it's just Jackass" and running away off down the road. I am picking he woke up somewhere on Saturday and wondered why he hurt so much.