Monday morning, and I'm back in the saddle again. Had a great weekend: Saturday morning, I took an exhaustive walking tour of downtown Auckland 'til about 6pm. (Which my claves are paying dearly for now) It was great to finally have an opportunity to get out a do some 'touristy' type stuff... I've been working 10 to 12 hour days, which precludes doing much else during the week.

The Sky Tower's actually a lot like The Sratosphere back in my beloved Las Vegas- there's even a casino. Queen Street, which is the main drag leading down through the center of downtown, ends up right at the harbor where the ferries depart for all the different islands right off the coast. It's really gorgeous. I missed the ferry by about 15 minutes, but I did get some pics of the harbor. Maybe next weekend.

There's hundreds of cool shops and all sorts of interesting stuff to see downtown... I tried to check out as much as I could in a single day. I made a rule for myself when I arrived here that I wasn't going to eat anything I could get back home- but I saw a Wendy's and couldn't help myself. The ghost of Dave Thomas called to me from beyond with the promise of tasty Big Classics and Frosties.

Mmmmmm, frosties.

After I made it home, my uber-talented NZ buddy Brendan- the production artist for 30 Days of Night- showed up and we went bar hopping up and down Ponsonby Road. We had a great time... it was great to get out and about and to knock a few back. Brendan's a NZ native, he moved north to Auckland from Wellington, (where Peter Jackson and WETA Workshop are based), and like me, this is his first major studio film project. He explained a lot of the finer points of rugby to me- at least, as much as he could before we both got too smashed to continue.

Sunday I spent at David and Erika's palatial retreat getting out workload ready for this week. David's great to work with and it's really not much like working at all.

I know alot of my peeps are headed for San Diego for the big Comic Con this week. As much as I love it down here, I have to admit that I'm more that a little bit bummed that I'm missing it... this will be the first time I haven't attended in almost a decade.

We're all going to see "A Scanner Darkly" at the film festival tonight, which I'm pretty excited about. But right now, I have to get back to it. Here's a ton of pics from my walking tour of downtown.

Talk to you soon.