1 August 2005

Election Day is set, and Hannah bags herself a great goal - 01/08/05

Hannah scoring a goal had downstream effects. I had to shave off my face fuzz (it was part of a deal we made that had been running for a while). I may grow it back but not until after next Saturday's game. I think my face looks fat without it. Hannah and Diana think I look younger. I don't like it, but a deal is a deal.

LOCAL NEWS

I think Helen Clark read my comment about the election date and it was announced last Monday to be September 17th.

Polls are coming out thick and fast with small parties rising and falling monotonously.

News this week of a shortage of eligible men for women in their thirties. Good news for any of you lads overseas that are thinking about coming home. They reckon they have same prospects as 80 year old women. Hope they don't mean the eighty year olds want men in their thirties as toy boys, that is just wrong.

There was news this week of the visibility afforded by different models of car whilst reversing. Apparently young children are hurt, and three died in the last year, when people backed in driveways. Now, we back into our drive, which affords maximum visibility and then you can see where you are going when you leave. We don't even run over cats.

Big local news over the weekend when six Hastings teenagers smashed a Mazda Familia (a 323, small car, how you get six in one I can't tell you) at 130Km/hr into a tree coming the other way at, well, I suppose 130Km/hr. Four died, two had their day seriously ruined. It was in a 50Km/hr zone. We are getting all the usual follow-on stuff about age limits for licenses and so forth. No mention of working on numeracy of young drivers so that they can read speed signs.

The terminal cancer prisoner went home this week, then asked if his brother could be let out too. Someone told me that in the US they bury prisoners that die in custody within the prison walls, so family has to go to prison to visit their grave?

WORLD NEWS

News of the IRA ending hostilities is pretty big news, but given that they haven't really been hostile for quite some time it doesn’t have a massive impact.

News of London's search for bombers is still pretty regular. The protests about the death of the innocent Brazilian need to be put into a little bit of perspective, police in Brazil pretty regularly kill rioters randomly in groups of ten or more. The fact that they think they have found the four bombers is pretty impressive. That they haven't shot each of them eight times doubly so. One has to speculate as to why failed suicide bombers try to avoid capture. Finding one in Rome and one in Namibia shows some pretty serious commitment. You would think they could achieve some major inroads into the terror networks if they can track those four down so quickly.

An Australian man hurt himself whilst trying to climb his apartment building because he forgot his key. He fell off, landed on a car, and tried again. The second time he got further up, fell again, landed on his head. He survived. Any comments about Darwinian evolution are especially relevant as it was in Darwin (the place). His survival does go against the theory, of course.

REAL SPORT

Rory made the 14B team for the tournament at the end of August, which means things are busy for August.

I looked after Ponsonby Gold on Friday night, they led 2-0 for a while but couldn't defend very well. They lost 5-6 in the end, their best result so far this season.

Rory played for the other Ponsonby team (Blue) against his own team in water polo on Friday night. They were also missing Henry (also selected for 14B team) so Red was below strength. Rory was in goal for the first two quarters and out in the second half. It was pretty clear that Red is a better team than Blue, which we expected. Final score was 9-2 to Red, Rory scored the first goal for Blue in the third quarter. I was looking after Red team while Ms Hooper (teacher) looked after Blue. I didn't know who to cheer for. I was a bit worried about the result hurting Red in the long haul but theirs was the best result of the round in Division 1, and it was good for everyone in both teams.

Hannah's team were off to Pukekohe on Saturday. They just weren't very with it in the first half, they conceded a goal early and were 0-1 down at half time. They got the speech from me at half time. They were much more together in the second half, equalised reasonably early on, then Hannah slotted a scorcher for her first goal of the season to put them ahead. Very pleased she got one in a real game, she is the hardest working player in the team in many respects. It kept going and the final score was a 5-1 win for the sirens, who are now unbeaten in four games in a row.

Rory's soccer team had more players but didn't play that smart, they lost 0-1. Their goalie got kicked in the head, accidentally but I would have given the offender at least a yellow card because they could have avoided it. Ben was concussed, but was okay.

SPORT

Premiership soccer kicks off 13th August, I can't wait. I do miss it, even though I hardly watch it.

The Springboks beat the Wallabies 22-16 in the first tri-nations. All Blacks play Springboks next weekend in Cape Town. They haven't played for three weeks.

Been a bit of a fuss about a woman jockey who set the record for the number of winning races this week, who has been under a cloud due to a positive drugs test back in May. Seems to be very strange, and racing authorities don't look good.

The Warriors lost, four points out of the top eight.

NZers have been doing much better than normal at the World Swimming Champs, breaking New Zealand records and making finals but no medals, none really expected. Interestingly, a Zimbabwe woman won gold and there wasn't a fuss about that.

There's no ashes cricket until next weekend, which was annoying. The Black Caps are somewhere in Africa, about to start their Zimbabwe tour.

MY SAD LIFE

Sort of feels like nothing really happened this week, which is odd.

After the trip to Pukekohe on Saturday, finally got home then had to go rescue Diana, who had taken her old car to drop Rory off after his game. It overheated again (we were testing after it was again supposedly fixed). We had to hang around for about an hour then she drove it carefully home. Sunday was a pretty quiet day, although it seemed to go really fast. Did a few of the usual jobs around the house, some tidying, throwing out some rubbish (our neighbour Olga is in Siberia for a few weeks so we get to use her bin too).

I finally went swimming again, yesterday, after still feeling a bit under the weather all week. It was really nice to go, and felt great afterwards. It was just me and Hannah because Rory was at rehearsals.

Rory didn't get to enjoy his birthday an awful lot. Spent the whole weekend in rehearsals. He is at an age that is very difficult to buy for, we even gave him cold hard cash. It does seem kind of weird, he has been an almost teenager for quite a while. We had dinner last night with the grannies and talked about his unplanned arrival on the bathroom floor. His birthday party will be next weekend because there was too much on for everyone this weekend just gone. We are planning an evil party game.

I have a confession for Peter Evans. The postcard did actually arrive the week before, just forgot to get it into the email. I read something last night that said the Pitcairn islanders basically died out at one point hundreds of years ago.

Brett, you must be back by now, where did you go?

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