The weather changes not halfway between your house and mine

Hello! This update is for all of you, but mostly Grace. I've been worrying her, you see, she thinks I'm either dead or unhappy. So I must correct her. I picked up a little New Zealand datebook here that I've been trying to keep track of my days in. Just little notes before I go to bed to recap what I've done.
But I haven't said much here recently, and for good reason: I don't have a hell of a lot to say. I've been working pretty consistently. I had today and yesterday off, yay! So Sunday night I rented a few movies so that we could watch Anchorman (which: they hadn't seen it, so I ran out and rented it, and then everyone but me and one other girl went to bed! However, since then I've heard Anchorman playing downstairs at least 3 times now, and I heard plans to watch it later, so they're all coming around), and yesterday I went to the beach with one of my flatmates, came back, and watched Madagascar and The Bourne Identity (I rented Bourne, someone else rented Madagascar. Bourne was superior. I was the only one watching by the end, but I was the one who hadn't seen it, so). And today I bummed around, mostly, and went shopping at one point, but didn't buy anything. Boring, I know, but there HAD been plans to beach it or shop it, but everyone else disappeared/got called into work, so I just did my own thing. Finally mailed out a package to Ben! So, hey, BVS, you'll be receiving something soon. Hooray! And just now I got to talk to Allie, which was cool. And a little earlier I hung out while people made themselves dinner and stole some of their food. Not bad.
Whoa! I am lying on my bed, and I just looked over and it looks like the sky is on fire. When did that happen? Hang on, I need to take pictures from my balcony. Oh no!! My camera battery is dead! What is this!!!
Anyway. I went out to watch the sunset and then someone informed me they were watching House downstairs, so it's 2 hours later now. What can I say, I'm a sucker for Hugh Laurie and medical dramas. Anyway, I really wish I could think of more interesting things to talk about, but I'm pretty well drawing a blank. Oh! I guess I could tell you about holidays in the summer.
Weird. As in, the first day it really felt like summer to me was when I was walking to work on New Year's Eve. Something about the air and the flowers felt especially summery. But it was New Year's Eve. And I worked. I also worked on Christmas Eve, and then came home to find that my flatmates'd bought stuff to make pizza with. So after a trip to the liquor store, we had a little Christmas Eve party. It was fun times! There were Christmas Crackers and bad jokes and boxed wine. All in all, a solid win for the away team. Then on Christmas Day, post-present-opening, post-breakfast, post-bumming around, a few of us headed on down to the beach. Where we found many other people engaging in a little holiday swim. We discussed the weirdness of swimming on Christmas, then we went home and watched DVDs all night. Boxing Day was another working day, although they gave me free food at the end of it, so I can't complain. My birthday I took off because I don't work on my birthday. I can't really remember what I did. I went shopping. Stopped by a friend's workplace to say hi and scored a free coffee. My flatmates baked me an apple cake which was tasty, so they popped some candles on that and I blew them out and then we feasted. Watched some more TV, then went to the natural hot pools by the river at night. It was damn cool, being there with all the stars out. And the water is superhot, and the river is supercold, so you can adjust your temperature by where you choose to sit/stand/swim. And there were stars. And then we went home, had more cake, met up with a bunch of visitors, and watched Sweeney Todd. The next day my boss asked me if Christmas and my birthday away from home made me very homesick, but there is a general consensus among us Northern Hemispherers that Christmas in summer is decidedly unChristmassy. So not so much. Same for New Year's! I checked out the fireworks, but other then that had to face the facts of working in the morning and didn't really do much. 2008 was good to me, 2009's been pretty fun so far, too. I've only been in Taupo for a month, but already we're getting close to when I'm leaving and I'm starting to get psyched up for seeing the South Island and meeting up with a certain Alaskan.