We have had considerable amounts of rain over the weekend.
LOCAL NEWS
A tropical illness was admitted to a Brisbane hospital suffering from an attack of Winston Peters. Unfortunately the attack was fatal for the illness but Winston survived. He thought a spider bit him on the butt.
There is a case running about some guy that was vomiting in the bushes near a gas station and was attacked by a police dog. He seems to have reason to have been very sick and in public, but the dog handler thought he was acting suspiciously. He lost a lot of blood, and was lucky to survive.
A woman that lost her uterus in some sort of accident is having ACC pay for a surrogate to have a baby for her. Interesting. I wonder if someone could get a concert pianist to play for them if they lose a finger? The ACC seems to continually lurch between being mind bogglingly useless at helping with the fundamentals but incredibly willing and forthcoming when it comes to the bizarre. They wouldn't pay for dental work for a friend of ours that bit on an olive stone in a Greek salad when all the previous olives had been stoneless because it was reasonably foreseeable that there might be a stone in any given olive. The accident of forgetting to bite carefully was not considered an accident and if it had been a piece of gravel and not an olive stone he would have been covered. Meanwhile, a couple who has additional children because a vasectomy was not successful get the entire education and outgoings of the resulting offspring funded by ACC (and probably all successive offspring of those offspring will be similarly funded).
There were a lot of fatalities on the road this weekend, about ten. The rain contributed I think.
Somehow a family got swept off the road in floodwaters in the North (did I mention it has been wet?).
A ten YO schoolgirl died near Clevedon when she got off a school bus and stepped onto the road in front of a truck.
Some trademe users have been caught out by a standard phishing scam. I cannot believe there are people out there that aren't aware of this technique. I have probably received about six or seven phishing emails, mostly for banks, all of which I do not bank with. Nobody legit ever asks for you password in an email. Ever.
An New Zealand man involved in that nasty drug trial thing in England back in March now appears to have cancer. Not sure that there is any proven direct causal relationship but it is implied.
WORLD NEWS
Iraq isn't getting much coverage. The rebels will have to step up the violence to get some media attention.
Fidel Castro is not well, but improving. No mention has been made of whether he was suffering from an attack of Winston Peters.
China wants to stamp out people laughing at "Chinglish" signs (where Chinese has been translated into dodgy English that native speakers consider humorous). There will be less laughter in the world.
REAL SPORT
Not as much real sport as a normal week. Rory was not well so didn't play for his club team.
Hannah's water polo team lost 2-5 to Liston. She played well, don't think she scored, played for defence. The girls team did not play.
Rory's club team won 4-3 on Friday night, and 6-4 in Hamilton on Saturday.
Hannah's soccer team were playing the top of the table team on Saturday. They scored first, which was good, but the opposition equalised just before half time. In the second half, Hannah went into goal, which I think was a really stupid idea. She had a sore arm from a vaccination and she is too important out in the field. She worked hard, booted the ball away a few times. One of the goals was very difficult for her to get near, the other was impossible. She had a lot more work to do than the goalie in the first half (not surprisingly). They lost 1-3. The normal goalie was away, she has been away both times we played this team. Not impressed about that either.
Hannah went to an U12 water polo training session on Sunday afternoon, then lurked with two other girls from school that play in her school team. They seemed quite happy (we had to wait a little while for Rory's game).
Rory played for school on Sunday night, he was feeling better. He played reasonably well, scored four goals, but the team lost 6-10. I think it is their last team in this league.
SPORT
The Silver Ferns thumped South Africa 94-25 in netball on Monday night.
Sri Lanka did manage to beat South Africa after their record breaking partnership. Those sort of games usually mean the pitch is tame and no result is likely, but Mulliah Murilitherran chucked his way through the batsmen, taking six wickets.
The Wallabies just beat the Boks in the tri-nations, which just keeps going on and on.
New Zealand Junior men's rowing eight won gold in world champs in Amsterdam. The women quadruple sculls came second.
MY SAD LIFE
Well, the letter arrived for Hannah from Soccer 2 about the Auckland Rep team. I was not allowed to open the letter, which was a bit rough. Anyway, she has been accepted for the "centre of excellence squad" which isn't quite the rep team yet (one final step away). Acceptance is to be written on the back of a cheque for $150 without knowing when the squad training is. She was very pleased, and I don't blame her, we were very pleased for her too. However, after serious consideration she is not going to take part in it. There are three trainings a week and they clash with dancing, school polo games, and club polo training. For her to do justice to the soccer, everything else would suffer. We felt pretty bad about it, but we gave her the choice, and she understands. If she wants to have a go at rep soccer next year we can reduce something else first.
Snuck off work on Friday and went to the museum with Brett to see the Vikings exhibit. It was good, but I think more swords and armour stuff would have been good. Ideal time to go, we arrived just as the school trips were leaving. There was only about six people in there when we went. One weird thing was an automated warning message every time we pointed to something on a map or anything (as our hand went over the security area). Some may consider me to be a little picky but I observed two things that were wrong on labels at the museum. One described the range of a torpedo as 3486 metres or 6000 yards (6000 yards is actually 5486.4 metres) the other was a large heading that said ANZACSs (given that ANZAC is singular, I am not sure it warrants an additional capitalised S). No wonder people hate me proofreading things. Perhaps Chinese officials should start making fun of English signs done by English speakers that are crap as revenge.
So the fallout from Rory's sleepover continued. Two of the attendees did not come to school for three days and then Rory was off school Thursday and Friday. Diana is not keen on repeating the exercise. Did not help that one of the attendees was sick and made everyone else sick.
We saw the Goodins briefly on Sunday. They take charge of their new company today. It manufacturers knitwear using mohair and possum mix. The stuff feels really nice, and is mostly sold to tourists. However, they do make brown cardigans, something that I can't handle. The company is called Lothlorian and is based in Pukekohe, which is a looong way from home.
Allan is off to the US (can't remember where, East Coast I think) for about three or four weeks). In four weeks, I believe the Goodins will have drive the equivalent of a flight to the US in commuting to Lothlorian. However, on the plus side they won't have been given any airline food, been strip searched by security, or risk deep vein thrombosis.
Found a cheque in Rory's homework diary. It was dated May. Then we looked at the diary. It hasn't had any entries made in it since early May. Talk about sprung.
One thing that I have been doing is using Google Earth to find places we have been. Can't find Heidi's house in Rotterdam, or Koos's either. Have found where I stayed in London, Mum's apartment, Penny's house, Judy's, a bach we stayed at in January, the West Wave pool (my second home), Gavin's house, all sorts. Can see our trampoline in the back yard of our house. Google Earth is a lot of fun.
I guess that about sums it up for the moment. Might do some news from 1996 next week.
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