Ooo, I do like Fridays!

Cyllan saw what lay ahead of her, saw the whirling chaos of black light and impossible colours that tore the world apart beyond the Maze. She glimpsed the tortured crags of the mountains twisting in on themselves, moulded by the Warp to hideous illusions, and in terror she flailed at the gelding, struggling to stop its headlong flight before it was too late.
- The Outcast by Louise Cooper

The Outcast, for reasons unknown, is probably my all-time favourite book. Well, favourite fantasy book anyway. My lovely cousin and I were both entranced by it on the first read. The interesting thing is that it is the second book in a trilogy and yet the first book that either of us read from not only that series but also by Louise Cooper...at quite different times and quite apart from each other. I have since become a Louise Cooper fanatic. Her books are notoriously difficult to find as they are mostly out of print and many of the libraries no longer hold copies as they have become so old and worn but that's not stopped me from managing to source almost all of her adult fiction. Anyway, that was just a random aside!

I don’t work on Fridays for a variety of reasons but that doesn’t mean I am not generally incredibly busy. One of the things I generally try to do in the day is visit the library. This is both wonderful and deadly as it is like a kind of heaven (books are my home) but I’ll always end up getting more books out than I expect and will have to lug them up the hill to my apartment.

The highlight of moving into the Auckland City zone was finally being able to join the Auckland Public Library system. Although I’ve always lived in Auckland it has actually been divided up into 4 main centres (the outskirts of Auckland are also divided up but not included in this list): Manukau City (South and East Auckland), Auckland City, Waitakere City (West Auckland) and North Shore City. Each centre has its own library system among many other things. As a student I’d visited the library and been incredibly jealous of the amount and range of books that the Auckland library system had but living out of zone meant I had to settle for my local library system which I often found a little lacking in depth.

This Friday wasn't the greatest of days so I called into my favourite vegetarian café, Raw Power Café on Vulcan Lane in the central city (Friday is the only day I can go there as I’m working Monday to Thursday and it’s shut during the weekends) to pick up some food to brighten my day.

I treated myself to a kumara sandwich filled to the brim with all sorts of veges and hummus. It was so fat I could barely get my mouth around it! I also got a slice of their extremely good vegan chocolate cake (although to be honest it's pretty rich so I felt a bit ill afterwards!).

I also finally got myself a new bike helmet. Isn’t it pretty?!

As the girl in the shop pointed out, it matches my camelbak pack too! It also stops J from pinching it since he reckoned he wouldn’t be seen dead in it as it might ruin his manly reputation! Here are my random thoughts on girly things for tough sports: I like the contrast of pink and of flowers against the mud and rough terrain of the outdoors plus generally the other option is going to be blue and I’m not a big fan of the colour blue.