Labour weekend

It's been a long weekend (in the best possible way). Today is a holiday in New Zealand for Labour Day, celebrating a 40-hour working week. The irony of working through this day is long lost on me and I no longer let myself do it. This year, I took a day's leave on Friday and made it a loooooong weekend, leaving me with two short working weeks. This truly is food for the soul. Here's a quick roundup of what I've been up to lately.

• I had a town day on Friday. Although I love my job and where I work, I sometimes miss the buzz of working in town and being able to do all the little jobs that I used to fit into my lunch break. I got my hair cut, met up with former colleagues for coffee, had lunch with a friend, and had one more thwarted attempt to spend thwarted Farmers gift vouchers I have been carrying around for more than a year now. (Thankfully, they are valid for two years.) I say 'thwarted' because, after finally choosing some clothes to buy, I got to the counter to discover that their system was down nationwide and they couldn't accept gift vouchers on Friday. Unbelievable! Murphy's law was at it again.
• Friday night was spent enjoying drinks and dinner with some work colleagues before heading into a weekend alternating between informal socialising, casual bargain hunting, and domestic bliss.
• I started a new blog a couple of weeks ago, focusing on work-related topics. It may or may not result in this blog becoming 'quieter', and I still aim to blog a few times each week, but at the moment I've been spending more time getting into writing in a more 'professional' style.
• The shopping malls are still scarily busy, but not as many are as festooned with Christmas spirit (yet) as I had expected. Instead, it's all Halloween crazy, something which seems to be gaining in popularity each year.
• We had pancakes for breakfast today. Aren't sleep ins and lazy brunches the best part of long weekends?