Plane in the Hudson!

I am sincerely sorry for those of you who are unemployed and who aren't afforded aquatic entertainment to break up the monotony. I mean, all of you had to watch NBC's coverage of The Unsinkable Airbus, while I got to pull on a sweatshirt and trot a few blocks over and see it with my own two eyes with about fifty of my neighbours. Sadly, the current carried everything away, so we don't get a long-term water feature.

Aside from that... Shit, dude. I had no idea you knit blankets. That puts all my crazy scarf-making ways to shame.

And of course New Zealand has mobile plants -- something has to cull the hobbit population, and the sheep aren't carnivorous. Other NZ news from this past week includes a Wellington-area car rental place that attempted to charge an Aussie family $1600 to tow their car from down by Queenstown back to Wellington. On one hand, this is sort of fair: it's a damn long drive from the southwest coast of the South Island to the capital (I think it took us two and a half days) and taking the car on the ferry's expensive. On the other hand, the Aussie family had just seen their two sons crushed by falling ice at Fox Glacier, so maybe this wasn't the best time to hit them up for fees.

The moral of this story is: when in New Zealand, take out the extra emergency car insurance. Also, do not take a car from the North Island to the South Island, that's why most rental companies offer to change cars with the ferry in between. Also, when at Fox Glacier, pay attention to the fucking signs that make it pretty damn clear "you might get crushed here", "you are likely to get buried by a rockslide", and "you will both drown and get devoured by pirhanas" -- stay on the damn path. And as always, if under 4' tall, beware the man-eating mobile plants.

...sniff. I miss New Zealand. Also, it's summer there.