I sent a text to a mate of mine on Saturday morning. I told her of my new cellphone number and also mentioned our mutual friend who suicided.
Uhm. It was her best friend and -oops- I'd just assumed she'd been told first, and went to the funeral even. So I called her rather than texted her to confirm the sad news and she was devastated.
I don't feel comfortable leaving my mate Tigger with news like that. She's going through enough hard stuff at the moment and really trying to make positive moves in her life, and I didn't want this to derail things. So I packed into the Scud and we did a mish to Invers. I've never been past Dundas before so it was interesting to see the rest of the country. In fact, I even saw Stewart Island (through a mist, dimly). Stayed with a friend of Tig's called Shan, and her incredibly drunk brother who came home and had a pleasant conversation with us, inbetween staggering out onto the balcony to be violently ill over the side. Three times.
We had a really neat couple of days together, and after a very comfy night in Tigger's spare room I left Invers at a civilised 8am and arrived back in Chch seven-and-a-half hours later. Very very light traffic (only 15 or so annoying slow people, and most of them were polite and moved over... eventually) and the roads were dry and there wasn't much roadworks. Apart from some idiots on motorcycles (brass monkey returnees) and some more with caravans, the trip was very pleasant. And I did the entire trip on ONE tank of gas.
It's an ecomonomical missle, officier! (I didn't get pulled over once, which is the great thing about an old-but-well-maintained-4-door-sedan. The cops assume if you had enough money to be up to no good, you'd have a better car. Tigger has a very classy electric-everything 2-door pretty thing and gets pulled over constantly. Mind you, the cops in Invers know her. So to speak.)