What can I say? ... uh ... I'm a Libra?

So in One (1) week I'll more than likely (thanks raise!) be ordering an ipod (yes, I know, ipods are evil blah blah blah).
A white 30g ipod. And I'm getting it through the official website which lets me get it engraved.
And I am a total geek for engraving/personalisation.

BUT! I need help. Because





Option One



My name and Ad astra per aspera (to the stars through difficulty).

Option Two



My name and a quote from W.B. Yeats.

Option Three



My name and my absolute-favourite-word, an archaic word meaning of the evening/nighttime
BUT I have a bracelet which I wear a lot of the time which says Vespertine. It might be overkill.

Option Four



My name and Ecce Cor Meum (Behold my heart).
a little ... I think it makes me gag.

Option Five(ish)



I could have my full name with any of the one-line options. Like Vespertine.

Option Six



A line from one of my favourite poems, Spring by Gerard Manly Hopkins.

Option Seven



From another of my favourite poems, Love Sonnet XVII by Pablo Neruda.

Option Eight



From a poem by Sylvia Plath (I think it's Mad Girl's Love Song)

Option Nine



From The Tempest.

Option Ten



Simply : Vespertine

Option Eleven



Simply : Oh Darling

Option Twelve



Simply : Panda
again, I have a bracelet which says Panda.

Option Thirteen



Simply : Dracula


I think the shorter ones are my favourites at the moment. But please vote and help me out! Seriously!

OR!! you could make suggestions as well.




So please help me because I don't want it to end up like this :




(Craig's no use. He's a Gemini.)

Life is an ocean, and love is a boat ...

Craig and I made it to one year!



(like there was ever any doubt)

We celebrated with a picnic in the park (cemetary) where we had our wedding photos taken.



The rain helf off until we were finished eating and packing everything up, thankfully. I clambered about (in 3 inch wedge heels no less!) and took photos.

I despair for the monotony of modern grave stones. Victorian graves seem ever so sculptural.





I loved the tiling on this grave. It's so incongruous.



Can you tell I love the decay? I would love to live in a house like Miss Haversham's.
Well, only externally like that, I wouldn't want cobwebs and old wedding food everywhere.



(the full set can be viewed here)


We also celebrated this first-of-many anniversary with presents of bracelets (and no, I didn't think about and I am now ignoring all imagery of shackles). Marc by Marc Jacobs for Craig (Latin and leather) and silver and diamonds for me (Australian not Blood).



If the first year is the hardest (as they all say) and the first cut is the deepest then it should be ... smooth sailing form here on out.
(damn I hate that cliché but I've had the title song stuck in my head for days now and I'm hoping that using sailing metaphors will exorcise it)
London here we come!!

(one hundred and forty one days and counting)

Nothing's going to change my world ... In which Sarah is rambling and barely coherent.

Dear Fridge,
Today I am feeling a little resentful towards you. I had cherries! a large bag of ripe ripe ripe (and well priced) cherries that I was so looking forward to eating today and you HID THEM FROM ME. Fruit does not go in the Vegetable drawer!
And you knew I was planning on making pizza tonight and yet you did not remind me to take the tomato paste out of the freezer. Now I'll have to do that when I get home. Sadface.
I think this may all be because I put new things in you yesterday. New things like Capsicum and Mushrooms and Black Olives (not new but still a little foreign). But uh ... tough? it's my food. And you are not really anthropomorphic.
Love you Ice box!!!
Sarah-Rose


One year ago today I had received my first wedding present, Craig's parents were on their way down, I found earrings for my mother and got our wedding rings engraved.



I love that our rings are so different but so alike.
They differ in size, materials, and style but both not-gold but a silvery-grey colour, (his titanium, mine white gold) both have a middle-ring feature, (his shiny-matte-shiny and mind gold-diamond-gold) and the size difference? it's pretty much indicative of his 6'2" vs my 5'1.25" stature. My thumb is smaller than his pinky.
Now I'm mad at myself for getting teary-eyed at the symbolism of our wedding rings.

Have I mentioned that I've been really really happy recently?
(My heart feels swollen)
Even though yesterday when Craig went to pay for our Flights & IYTC card & Travel Insurance he found out that Surprise! it costs $400 extra. And that Surprise! his eftpos card only lets him use it for transactions up to $2000 in any one day. Not that anyone told us that.
So they are half paid for and he must return again today.

But things keep happening like this:
We need passport photos for the IYTC card. I had some taken when I got my new (huh fancy that) passport. 4 taken and 2 sent away, which meant that 2 were sitting around my house but Could I find them? No.
I looked yesterday, a LOT. But they eluded me. I'd given up when this morning Craig comes into the lounge and sys Oh did you find those passport photos? and at the very moment I am saying No, sorry baby my eyes fall on the tiny green corner of shiny paper sticking out of the bookcase and I know, just know that it is the passport photos.
Almost serendipitous.

So This is what I know, For sure ...

Yesterday after picking me up from work Craig and I were standing in our lounge when wordlessly he bent down and put a copy of our brand-new wedding dvd in the player.
Rajeev dropped off ten copies the night before and (as always with watching myself) I saw them as exciting but worrisome, a good keepsake but causing an oh-god-it's-me kind of feeling in the pit of my stomach.

(Besides, I'd been trying to remember the speech I made and whenever I did, I got the distinct feeling that I had seemed a complete berk. Which was quite appropriate really.)

But we watched it, and I cringed but it was lovely. Very well made, so much more than I could have hoped for, and while the cinematographer boys were worried about the sound at the reception (technical difficulties) I thought that what they ended up with was more than just adequate. We heard every funny and touching word possible.
And besides the undeniable poncey-ness of my accent, I didn't die while watching my own speech. I even managed an annoying-Keira-Knightly-in-Love-Actually moment of I look quite pretty.
I also noticed that the left side of my face moves a lot more than the right side. Crazy.
So we can have copies made, and I might just see if I can manage to put clips online or something as it's coming up to a year now!

Finally, sitting there, curled up on the couch with my head on Craig's shoulder and noticing, out of the corner of my eye, that he was mouthing his vows along with himself-on-t.v. was the most heartbreakingly perfect moment I'd had in a while.

A successful christmas is a quiet, absorbed christmas

The problem with giving a great present?



You may never see the recipient ever again.

To see more A Very Oh Darling Christmas photos click here.

postcode : New Zealand

click to enlarge

Ho Ho Ho-cd

I looked down at my silver-wrapped presents under my silver-decorated tree and thought :



This is getting a little much ... even for me.

The Grizzly Adams Experiment ... is over. O-V-E-R over.

Craig grew his beard for Six months and Three days.
Why? Just to see how long he could make it. He wanted to shave it after 4 months but fool that I am, I convinced him to try and make it 6 months.
Which of course he did.

And what did we learn? That he can go without shaving for a very long time.
And that a full grizzly-adams beard is less terrifying than an intense 70s moustache.

From this :



(Sweet, darling husband.)

To this :



(Castro.)

And this :



(oh. dear god. terrifying.)

And finally finally finally this :

We're leaving! Just not as soon as we'd thought.

So it turns out that there are absolutely no seats available at a decent price from Bangkok OR Singapore for the ENTIRE MONTH of April 2007.
Crazy.

It took Craig and I 2 and a half hours at the travel agency on Saturday but we finally got our trip organised.

Our Itinerary (booked)

Monday 07-05-07 - Depart Auckland 4:15pm
Arrive Melbourne 6:15pm
Flight time : 4 hours

Monday 21-05-07 - Depart Sydney 4:40pm
Arrive Bangkok 10:50pm
Flight time : 9 hours, 10 minutes

Friday 08-06-07 - Depart Singapore 10:40pm
Saturday 09-06-07 - Arrive London 5:15am
Flight time : 13 hours, 35 minutes


We just have to work out what it is that we want to do in Australia and how to get to Sydney. And what we want to do in Thailand and how to get to Singapore.

It looks like to get from Bangkok to Singapore we may be able (now that we have so much extra time at work) to use Intrepid Travel as our guides, they have a trip that takes 15 days and journeys from Bangkok to Singapore by way of Khao Sok National Park, Krabi, Penang, Cameron Highlands, Kuala Lumpur, and Melaka.
And it visits my darling Wat Pho, a lot of markets, beaches for snorkelling and diving and possibly the most exciting thing of all, riding Elephants.

I'm trying to focus on all that and not the extra months at work.


NB: My play closed to a raucus house of 140 people on Saturday Night.
It was our biggest and best show, save only for Thursday night.

Man of the Moment

The show opened on the 23rd November. I chose that day to do another Photo-essay of A Day in My Life


(click to view.)

It was also the night that two newspaper reviewers came to see the show. Their reviews were published on the 27th and 28th November, respectively.

The Dominion Post


(click to view full article.)


The Hutt News


(click to view full article.)

I'm not going to lie - my favourite is the Hutt News review which reads, in part, Watch also for laugh-out-loud performances from Peter Hughson as Ruy the defeated Gardener, and Sarah-Rose Burke as the downtrodden nanny.

It's still showing ... just so you know.