Rory made it into the baby geek class, parents very happy - 02/02/04

See more on that later.
Waitangi Day on Friday, the anniversary of our sad country's nationhood. Usual bollocks about who's there and who isn't has been in the papers.

LOCAL NEWS

We've had quite a lot of rain in the last few days, but it was needed pretty much everywhere. I think we are ready for it to stop now. Two people are missing as a result of the rain. A moron in Taranaki thought that inner tube riding on a rain swollen river was a good plan, and a guy crashed off a bridge (not the weather's fault) and got swept away in Nelson.

Writer Janet Frame (who wrote book/movie An Angel At My Table and a bunch of others) died on Thursday of leukaemia. Lots of fuss was made.

A woman who claims to have been raped by police officers in 1986 has stirred up things for the police force. Has made lots of news. Anything that casts doubt on the police force reduces their effectiveness. The coverage isn't good, especially when impressionable nine year olds hear on the radio what policemen do.

Lord of the Rings has got lots of Oscar nominations, but even more exciting is that Keisha Castle-Hughes is youngest nominee ever for Best Actress for Whale Rider - although she was born in Australia and lived there for four years so the Aussie press say she is an Australian (not unusual).

WORLD NEWS

A rather morbid irony when a dead 60 ton Sperm Whale exploded in a Taiwanese Street (although I don't think they "research": whales quite as much as the Japanese). This particular whale died when it beached, but covered the street in guts. Bet someone wishes they got it on video.

SPORT

The Under 23 Soccer team lost 0-2 and drew 1-1 with Australia for a place in the Olympics.

The Breakers had some controversy with a scrap between one of their players and one from Perth and then a follow up game with the same team a couple of days later. The Breakers won both games.

Man Utd won 3-2 over Southampton, Arse beat Man City 2-1, Chelsea won. Newcastle had a draw, and Liverpool a 0-0 bore with Everton in the local derby.

MY SAD LIFE

Well, Rory is in the "enrichment" class, read baby geek class (brainy class, Krelbournes, nerds, etc). It's great, we both really wanted him to get in to it, it's why Diana chose Ponsonby (in terms of research, she did about 95% and the parents of every other 11 year old kid in Pt Chevalier did the other 5%). He needs to be challenged and he seems to be prepared to give it a good go. Reckoned he didn't know anyone in the class but a girl Phoebe was at tennis with him, really nice kid, I got on well with her. 20 in the class, very small, only 8 boys in total. He wasn't hugely happy day one, but settled in really quickly. Lots of kids he knows at the school, including Bob's son Nico, Zak who is one day older and he's known since they were in utero, and a bunch of kids from his soccer team that have never been at his school before. He's been playing soccer at lunchtime, which is good.

Hannah returned to school on Thursday and Diana and I celebrated by going for a walk around Western Springs. We kept an eye out for escaped elephants but saw none, which was disappointing. Got some good photos of ducks landing on the water, though.

We went again on Friday morning. Things I learned on that walk:
- if it looks like it might rain, it might rain.
- if it looks like it might rain, don't take your camera out of it's protective bag and bring it anyway.
- if it looks like it might rain, consider a raincoat or umbrella to be a useful accessory.
- once it starts raining, stuffing a digital camera up your t-shirt isn't the best.
- if it starts raining really hard, grab a doggie doo-doo bag from the dispenser and protect your digital camera.
- if you need a bag for your camera, you should probably get one for your cellphones.
- if you are planning on getting rained on, make sure you've rinsed the shampoo from your hair properly, otherwise your eyes start stinging for no obvious reason.

Jono popped in out of nowhere, unexpectedly like, on Friday afternoon so we had a chat when I should have been working. It was nice to catch up with him. He nearly moved to Melbourne but is still in Sydney.

We (Diana and I) had dinner with Paul on Friday night at a restaurant we have failed twice to try. It is a pizza restaurant which had three pizzas for the dessert menu as well (and bugger all else).

The Grants celebrated Olwyn's 60th birthday on Saturday. I tried like seven times to ring and say happy birthday but the phone was busy every time.

Also on Saturday, our neighbour Jim turned 88. He's doing pretty well, but like us misses the cat.

Penny, Ben, and Matt went home on Sunday afternoon. The queues at the check-in counter were unreal. There must have been fifty or more people queuing outside the area for queuing. We waited for like 35 minutes and then Penny wangled checking in through the group booking area. We said our goodbyes and off Penny went, weighed down by Matt and with Ben off exploring.