The Best Laid Plans

Well despite my proclamation... no woodchopping was done this weekend. We didn't go up the line till Saturday morning, had a quiet Friday night in instead. This allowed M the chance to attend her school picnic in the Bot Gardens.

Then we watched Calamity Jane... and really, this sort of movie has not aged well. Although... Doris Day was certainly a hottie, but her kind of acting would surely play better off a broadway stage. She's stiff. Oddly enough, we all agreed that Howard Keel was surprisingly animated as Wild Bill Hickock. We may have to tune into Deadwood to see how that show portrays Hickock & Calamity. Differently, I bet.

Also... "Whipcrackaway" is possibly the most ludicrous song ever written.

And the girls were sceptical... as they often are about my little theories on what a movie is "really about" (The Matrix BTW, is about sunglasses) but there is a gay subtext ("secret love"?) a mile wide in Calamity Jane. (Even more noticeable than the psychedelic drug subtext that underpins Mary Poppins, but that's for another blog...). Double entendre abounds, from what it takes to get Jane out of those dusty old (and probably Edith head designed & tailored) deerskin outfits (the chance to wear a pretty yellow dress and show off her "heavy artillery" does it pretty easily actually). To a poor guy who has to dress up in drag & entertain the cowpokes.... I mean really....

At Sunnyo, the order of the day was clearing up debris from previous projects. And I reassembled my partly built compost bays & toted a couple of cubic metres of horse dung, sawdust & zoo doo (the last was a Christmas present from family - nothing it seems, says I love you, like a few cubic metres of endangered animal shit). I have the sides of two more compost bays to construct, and then some slat doors for the front. And I'll have a compost processing area bigger'n'texas.

That's not true actually. The biggest compost processing area in all of New Zealand, if not the world, is right next door to SunnyO & is owned & presided over by Master Tim. He can back a truck full of horse manure into & out of it. And he visits the local race-course to get it (if he gets too much to process, he generously dumps the overflow at our place... I guess in most places having the neighbours dump trailer loads of animal faeces on your back lawn wouldn't be so welcome...).

It's all starting to come together up there.

Next weekend my plans may have to change too. It seems a couple of T's sisters (there are 5 in all) & a sister-in-law have asked if they can stay at Sunny O. T's decided she'll go with them. So M & I started planning our Saturday night menu (I see a New York cut steak in my future...) and entertainment (possibly Underworld, possibly Poltergeist - M's on a scary movie kick & I recall seeing Poltergeist many years ago & expecting to have a bit of a laugh at the lame scares... and I actually chewed through the jacket I took with me, it so spooked me... and I taped it off Sky the other night in preparation... it's only PG rated).

But then someone remembered that Tennis Club are having a camp next weekend. Yes, that's with tents & sleeping bags & things. Obviously T won't be going... and there was some suggestion that I should attend. But really, I'd rather have a testicle removed than do a multi-family tenting holiday in Wainuiomata.... so M can go camping with her friends, & I'll revise my Saturday night schedule (an even thicker steak, and possibly Bowling for Columbine, or Farenheit 9/11, I have yet to see either...).

All this may have consequences for the mulching plans... I may not have a car to go get the mulching machine. I daresay I'll think of something...