The weather continues to provide some entertainment. It's getting cold (not like England which is very hot right now).
The house of sickness has continued, although we are seeing some recovery.
LOCAL NEWS
It isn't just us that are suffering from ill-health. Schools have been closing, classes have been reporting 50% absentee rates, and it is just as bad at some workplaces.
A couple of local astronomers helped find a far-away planet using a method called microlensing which relies on a second star being almost directly behind the one being studied. A planet at the near star distorts the light focusing effect and means that star has planets. The extent of the distortion gives clues to planetary size. It's all a bit too much deduction and not enough proof for me, but it excited the local media. The planet is named OGLE-2005-BLG-071, affectionately known as 071 (sad, isn't it, how could you have affection for an object many light years aware that you cannot see but can only deduce by a star going a funny shape?).
The first 20 year sentence on Friday was handed out to Antony Dixon, the twit with the funny eyes that hacked off hands with a samurai sword then shot a man (fatally) to provoke a confrontation with police. He said something incredibly intelligent and witty like "bring back the electric chair". The defence is appealing conviction and sentence, which is a complete waste of court time.
The last surviving person from the van that crashed last week died, making it the second worst traffic event in New Zealand's history. No news on cause yet.
A car accident in Ruatoria killed six, one car, a Honda Integra. How the heck do you fit six people into an Integra? They ran into a tree, in fog, at speed, and nobody was wearing their seat belt. One assumes the driver had never heard about driving to the conditions. A sad example of Darwinian evolution. Police are making noises about toughening laws on seatbelts but fail to realise that people silly enough not to use them are unlikely to pay attention to a tougher law (given that they ignore the existing one).
Road works on Whangaparoa have been causing fun, there was a queue one day last week that was 15 kilometres long. Koos stayed home and watched the rugby (Lions v Argentina).
Three men who tried beat up a woman who was pregnant (the girlfriend of one of them, a nice bunch of guys) in an effort to force a miscarriage (they failed) have done their time and now want to play League again. Diana reckons they shouldn't be allowed to, but if they weren't League players when they did the crime would we see it any differently? Would it be reported if they wanted to play tennis now?
Someone shot a bullet through the window of a Carterton policeman's house, but nobody was injured. Seems to be a bit of a warning for something. Now all police in Carterton are under guard (which seems kind of strange, police under guard).
An elderly couple were found dead in their house in Feilding, a murder investigation is underway.
The British and Irish Lions arrived this week, a great deal of fuss has been made. Yes, it is reasonably exciting, but I am not sure it warrants the media coverage we are getting. The Barmy Army wants to use an old America's Cup base as party central for six weeks, and the neighbours aren't too pleased (six weeks is a long time to have drunken rugby yobbos hanging around, you have to admit).
WORLD NEWS
Schapelle Corby was the second 20 year sentence to be handed out on Friday. Better than a death sentence but she wasn't too pleased. Her sister read a prepared statement which lost a lot of impact by her screaming at people incomprehensibly between paragraphs. We were given the run-down the whole day and got it live on about three channels when the decision was handed down. I read somewhere that her father had been found guilty of some small-time drug thing, which does make you wonder. However, if you consider how you would feel if someone actually put an illicit substance in your bag after it left your care, then you have to wonder whether such a system of law is actually justice. Whilst if they let her off then you might see considerably more people looking for that excuse, you wonder if it actually puts people off going to Bali rather than trafficking drugs. It is pretty sad when you consider that court cases would be considerably shorter and justice would be more even if people couldn't actually lie.
While there were calls for chemical castration of paedophiles in New Zealand, the US discovered that Medicare is funding viagra for more than 700 sex offenders. An interesting conundrum, given that not all would reoffend but it could be less likely without the little blue pill. This has an interesting parallel in the local league-player story.
The Italians are going to build a bridge across to Sicily. That seems like a very long way (over three kilometres). Wonder when Godzilla will have a crack at it? Or will the family behind the ferry company beat him to it?
REAL SPORT
We knew the water polo game was not going to be tough. They were playing St Marys 1, a team that beat Ponsonby's weakest team 4-3. Even worse, I knew two girls in the opposition team (Chelsea played in Hannah's soccer team last year, and Holly was playing for us the next day). I was expecting something like 12-0 win. I wasn't looking forward to scoring it. We were right, it wasn't pretty, they were 7-0 up at the end of the first quarter, then 13-0, 18-0 (higher than highest score last year), and final score was 24-0. That is also the highest score so far in the competition this season, and given that a game lasts 20 minutes they scored a goal every fifty seconds. At least the St Marys 2 team came on afterward and beat Ponsonby Gold 9-0.
Hannah couldn't play for her soccer team, in fact we were missing five of our regular players. We got some ring-ins from another team but not surprisingly we didn't do well. It was a niggly match, the other team was aggressive but not that good. Our girls got a bit overwhelmed. They lost 0-3, we played them only a couple of weeks ago and lost 0-2, but I reckon we could beat them with a full strength team.
Rory couldn't play for his team either, woke up on Saturday with a 38+ temperature. The team was going to be pretty low on numbers. They lost 0-5.
SPORT
The Lions had an unlikely draw against Argentina in Wales before leaving for New Zealand.
In State of Origin I, Queensland were up 19-0 before NSW clawed back with 20 unanswered points. Queensland equalised then won in extra time. It was a fairytale with a sad ending.
Liverpool were munted at 0-3 down to AC Milan in the first half in the Champions League final. They conceded one goal in 1st minute and then two more in last five minutes. They started the second half with little hope, but managed to score three goals in six minutes, and AC Milan could not score another. It ended after extra time at 3-3 and they went to a penalty shoot-out that Liverpool won easily. This was the fairytale with a happy ending.
The Magic beat the Force in the first netball semi-final. The Force get to play the Sting after they beat the Diamonds. The winner play the Magic in the final.
The Crusaders beat the Waratahs reasonably convincingly 35-25 in the Super 12 final. The Waratahs came back quite a lot in the last 20 minutes but were down about 35-6 when the Crusaders eased off a bit but the Waratahs never really looked like snatching the win.
MY SAD LIFE
Hannah's sore hip turned out to be some sort of growth-related problem impacting the hip joint. She's had to be careful with it. Rory stayed home from school Monday and Tuesday. He watched all five star wars movies on DVD in two days, and Empire Strikes Back nearly made him fall asleep (it works every time for me). Diana wasn't well on Thursday. We are improving but it hasn't been a lot of fun.
Hannah has a dance exam on Wednesday but she hasn't been able to go to the last three classes and I am not sure she will sit the exam, because of her hip. We measured her on Sunday and found she has grown about two centimetres in the last month or so and is only a centimetre shorter than Diana. Diana said she would be the shortest in the family by Christmas, I think Christmas is coming early this year.
We've had a couple of home invasions over the weekend, a grey fluffy burmese cat. Olly had it cornered this morning, and was very proud of himself (Apparently Olly is spelled with a "y", not "ie", Hannah was reading this over my shoulder and told me off). It's bloody annoying when we get woken up in the middle of the night by our own cats, let alone foreign ones.
The inorganic collection is finally upon us. This is when the neighbourhood dumps all unwanted items on the kerbside, and eventually a truck comes and takes it all away. In the meantime, as a testament to the saying "one man's trash is another man's treasure", a bunch of generally unsavoury people cruise around slowly in dodgy vehicles grabbing what they think is of value. With the help of Gavin, we took a bunch of things to the road on Sunday. One box was requested by a guy still in his car before Rory had got it out of the trailer (we used a trailer for transport in bulk down the drive). A few years ago, we threw out a sewing machine and someone knocked on the door and asked if we had the pedal. It really bugs me when they take neatly stacked piles and spread them everywhere in their search. They dumped a bag of small children's books out which blew around in the breeze and wrecked an old TV for what looks like one connector. The garage is looking considerably better, but it would be nice to sort it out even more, hopefully I will have time this coming week.
I went with Rory to St Kentigern College for his interview on Friday. He was offered an academic scholarship, we didn't realise we would know that quickly. We have three concerns about him going to St Kentigern College: 1:even with a scholarship the first year will cost nearly $15,000 and five years would cost nearly $50,000. 2:it's a bloody long way to go and activities outside school hours will be problematic. 3: Chris thinks it would be a really bad idea (as many of you already know). We are still officially thinking about it but at this point I think it is looking very, very unlikely. We would have to fund the fees out of the mortgage and given that we couldn't spend that sort of money on Rory and then not on Hannah, that's a large dollop onto the mortgage.
The Goodins spent time sorting out their shift of stores in Rotorua over the weekend, living the dream.
I haven't heard from Charles, despite sending him a personal email about ten days ago (rude bugger).
Paul is still in Kiev. Not sure when he is back. Olwyn tells me he is texting and it seems like his mail server had died.
Gavin leaves for Ekatarenberg (or is it Ekatahuna) a week tomorrow. He hasn't got any foreign money yet.
Koos popped in with Sjaan, who we haven't seen for quite a while. They'd been shopping in St Lukes all afternoon, the poor buggers.
I took the kids swimming last night, all of us were pretty careful (I have somehow hurt my right arm). The kids were definitely both feeling better, they had a lovely time and were very noisy when we got home.
It is Queen's Birthday Weekend this coming weekend, so we get Monday off (hooray). We are hoping to be well and able to have some fun.
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