This weekend mum and I went to Kaikoura as part of an extended birthday celebration weekend for one of mum’s younger sisters. Seven of us went, which, for my family, is a pretty big gathering, since we don’t all live in the same town. Although it rained for most of Saturday, and was pretty cold, we still managed to do quite a lot of stuff!

Yesterday afternoon we walked up to Ohau Falls, hoping to see some seal pups (who apparently like to hang out in that pool), but apparently it was too early in the season and they hadn’t been born yet, lol!

It was funny when we were going up there because my cousin and I had gone on ahead, and when we got to the top of part of the track we heard a noise behind us, which we thought was my uncle. She was just about to throw a stone down to give him a fright, when the heads of another group of men appeared around the corner! Luckily we didn’t throw anything! Although, after we arrived at the waterfall, we saw these young men proceed to light up cigarettes, smoke, and then drop the butts on the ground! We were not impressed. Perhaps she should have thrown that rock. :/

Eventually we did see some seals, sleeping on the beach across the road. It isn’t safe to get very close to them, since although they look fat and slow and lazy, but they can…er…flop (?) pretty quickly when they want to, but they didn’t mind being photographed with zoom.

After we saw the seals, my youngest aunt (Mum is the oldest of three) decided to see if she could light a fire on the beach. This would not have been terribly remarkable, if it was not for the fact that it was raining!

This event led to some disagreement within our family group. Some people, although amused by her attempt, thought there was absolutely no way she’d get a fire going, and chose to stand around laughing for awhile, before giving up and going to sit in one of the cars. Other people however, were convinced that it was in fact possible, and set about trying to find dry wood! I decided to sit on the fence, and simply take photos of what was going on. In case you were wondering, yes, she DID eventually get a fire going, and yes, we WERE responsible and put it out before we left.

I took a lot more photos, but since nobody wants to look through screeds and screeds other someone else’s photos (especially of people who don’t know they’re being blogged about), this is all I’ll post. Yep. Awesome weekend. Mum and I are campaigning for it to become an annual event for our family. :)

Back to the studio today, to continue cleaning out. I ended up in the loft today, hauling long-forgotten stuff out of storage and into either the "rubbish pile", or the "to shift pile". We didn’t find very much of anything exciting, although one of the girls did find a strange old container, which looked to be very dusty.

Curious to see what was inside it, she blew into the top of it to get rid of some of the dust. This was something she swiftly regretted once she realised the thing was a pepper mill! A huge cloud of old, dusty, smelly pepper came flying out, right into her face, and then proceeded to waft down the ladder towards me! Ugh! Needless to say, the horrible thing was thrown away!

After I got home, I hopped straight into the shower to get the dust out of my ears, nose, hair etc, and put the clothes I had been wearing into the washing pile. Once I got out of the shower I went to put the washing on. A few minutes later, I started wondering where my cellphone was. I went to check in my bag, but it wasn’t there. OMG! It’s in the wash! I ran up the stairs to check and, much to my horror, it was! I pulled it out, expecting to find that it would no longer work, but, surprisingly, it does. It was on when I had it in my pocket, and was still on when I fished it out.

I dried it out, and put it in the sun on my windowsill for a while, and, miraculously, it seems to be none the worse for wear after it’s unfortunate dip! I hope it stays that way, and doesn’t decide to randomly conk out on me after a few days. Hmm.

Ended up missing rehearsal last night thanks to being sick, so I haven’t had a chance to work on my character again, but there’s another one tomorrow morning, which I’m going to, so hopefully I should be able to make some progress there.

I HATE missing rehearsals, I always feel really terrible, especially when there’s only a very small cast of six people and we open in less than a month!

Oh well, I think I have ALMOST learned my first block of lines, which is good. The director has said that because it’s a very short panto-style show, he’s not terribly worried about us all being word perfect with the script, and that a bit of adlibbing and improvisation is fine, so long as the story flows appropriately.

However. This is not the way I tend to work AT ALL. I like feeling as if I know what I’m supposed to be doing! I can adlib and improv if I have to, but I prefer not to. My plan for this is to just learn my bit, and do it as it’s scripted, but at the same time be prepared for other people to do some random, unexpected things!

Also this weekend, my "main" theatre company is moving! We have a new "home" and are in the process of moving in. After rehearsal tomorrow morning I’m planning to go there and help out, since I haven’t done anything yet!

Here’s a pic of one of the members, packing up EVERYTHING ready to go! Yep. We have a lot. I commented on FB that I hope that cute little buzzy bee on the wall gets to come too! If he’s still stranded up there tomorrow when I go, I’m totally rescuing him.