I feel like it's been seven thousand years since I was online. It's been about a month, I think. In that time, I built up so many things to post forum messages about that it will now take too long to post them, so here is a summarised version of all the things I *would* have posted about during the last month. Most of them are quite depressing; you have been warned.

1) I moved to a new place and I am attempting to get used to being single. It's difficult sometimes. There are Rinkworks regulars who weren't even *born* the last time I was single. I suppose it will get easier.

2) A week before I moved, I fried my laptop by (don't laugh) spilling ginger ale all over it. Really. That's why I haven't been online. Fate apparently has a sense of humour, and reads Rinkchat archives. I missed Rinkworks so much; I even had recurrent dreams about my friends here. However, it might have been providential that I had no computer during the past few weeks; it's been very hard to be so completely alone, but it probably stopped me from relying too heavily on Internet contact for support, at a time when I wasn't entirely rational and could have ended up losing friends here if I'd been hanging around Rinkworks being weird and unbalanced 24 hours a day. (Instead of hanging around Rinkworks being weird and unbalanced two or three hours a day, like I used to. Heh.)

3) Sir Peter Blake was shot dead by Brazilian pirates while on board his research vessel in the Amazon. I'm amazed the world hasn't come to an end. If you don't know who he was ... he was almost a god to most New Zealanders, including me. He was the sort of man who goes through the world like a bolt of lightning, maybe once in a couple of centuries. The sort of man who can leave you awed and humbled even to think you've lived in the same era. I hope Americans won't find it disrespectful if I compare the impact of this loss to the World Trade Centre tragedy -- Sir Peter Blake was more than a man, he was the symbol of everything New Zealanders like to believe they are and everything New Zealanders wish they could be, and his murder has made the world a very different place for us.

The men who shot him did so for the sake of stealing an outboard motor and two cameras. I'll move on to lighter topics now.

4) I saw the Harry Potter movie twice. The second time was solely so I could watch the Quidditch sequence again. Woo HOO! Other than that, it was a good enough movie, but totally lacked the charm, wit and humorous detail which made the book what it was.

5) I decided to get a motorcycle license. Yes, yes, I know this is the sort of thing people traditionally decide to do when going through stressful times. It isn't the standard thing you're supposed to do, but I *already* know how to play the electric guitar.

6) "Lord of the Rings" comes out here on the 19th, which I believe is concurrent with the US release. This is very fortunate for Peter Jackson, as I seem to recall vowing to hunt him to the ends of the earth, rip his head off and make him eat it if the movie was released in NZ four months after the rest of the world, as normally happens. Perhaps he heard about this.

7) I have two entire pages of Recent Messages, a month of Sluggy Freelance and a month of Planet Earth And Other Tourist Traps to catch up on. GAH. It'll be very enjoyable, of course, but it's annoying at the same time.

I'm glad to be back.

Brunnen-"hard to get rid of"G