Monday 23 December

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Published at 7:20am

I thought I'd get something written before Christmas, and here I am.  Writing something.

I've had a most interesting 6 weeks.  I've been working after hours shifts during that time.  Two weeks from 12:30pm - 8pm, then two weeks from 5:30pm - 1am.  Then I had a week of annual leave.  For the first time since coming to NZ I took a week off work and didn't actually go flying somewhere else in the world.  I stayed at home and did absolutely nothing!  It was really nice to not have to go anywhere, not have to wake up early or be subject to traveling.  I stayed home, played a new computer game, slept in or stayed up really late, had lunches with friends, went for drives in the sunshine, read, or just thought about things.  It was truly a nice week of not working.  And then last week I was back at work doing a graveyard shift, from 12:30am - 8am.  And then someone on the weekend shift wanted a break, so I volunteered to do their shift as well, which means I just did 12 hours on Saturday (8pm - 8am) and the same again tonight.  It's almost 7am now, and only 1 hour to go before I can go home.  I'm going to sleep all day... and then come into work again tomorrow.

Christmas Eve.

Another year has gone by... I've been in NZ for 2.5 years now.  When will I leave?  One day, I know not when.

Last week I took a huge step closer to realising the dream of my lifetime.

Ever since 1985 I have had this dream of seeing Bruce Springsteen.  I'd never heard of him until 1984, when he released Born In The USA.  Then in 1985 I discovered some of his earlier albums (going back to 1972), and I loved the music so much I became a huge fan!  After missing his Born In The USA tour around the world (and Australia), I promised myself that I would see him in concert before he (or I) died.  I found out too late in the late 90's that he was in Sydney - I found out after he'd left.

But he's touring again with a new album (The Rising) and he's back with the E Street Band, and he's going to be in Auckland in March 2003 and I bought the ticket last week and it's now sitting in my wallet.

I'm going to see Bruce Springsteen in concert!  I've waited for this for 17 years!  To say I'm excited about it is probably quite a reasonable thing to say.

During all the spare time that I've had on my after hours shifts, I've been watching movies and stuff.  Last week I discovered that a friend has the entire season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer on DVD, so I've watched 36 episodes (Seasons 1 and 2) in the past 6 days.  That's how much time I've had to spare...  hehehe.  I'm going to borrow the next season or two tonight, and watch them over the next week or two.  I've really enjoyed it, catching up on all the shows that I've never seen, eventually getting to season 4 where I started watching it 3 years ago, but stopped when I moved to NZ after only half a season. 

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© 2002 Alan Howard